A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,14
you see if I don’t!”
“Woman! Hold your tongue!” came the deep and furious response. There was the sound of something thudding against the wall and the shattering of glass. Seven years’ bad luck thought Mina hurrying past that one as fast as her blistered foot could take her. Unless it was a window of course.
The second room, disappointingly, was locked. The third she could distinctly hear giggling from. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was that blonde barmaid named Ivy.
“Oh, you rogue!” she cooed. “You know that costs extra.”
Mina pursed her lips and passed on to the fourth room which she prized open gingerly. At first, she thought it was a sitting room, for there were several chairs dotted around it, then she noticed a mattress in the middle of the floor and on it a half-dressed man sprawled out swigging beer from a stone-wear jar. He looked up in surprise and she saw his head was bandaged.
“That you, Ivy love? Frank didn’t take long then!”
With a hasty apology, Mina withdrew her head and shut the door. She thought he called something after her but didn’t stick around to find out what. There was only one door remaining untried and it was right at the end of the passageway. Mina approached it with some trepidation. Even as she set her hand to the latch, she heard an earthy moan from within and recognized the cockney accents of the redhead from the church.
“Ah Jeb, that’s it,” Effie groaned. “Do not spare me, my love. Oh, do not spare me!”
Do not spare her from what? Mina wondered, as she hastily retreated from the door. From Effie’s loud moans, she guessed Jeb was heeding her entreaties well. If her hands were not full of luggage, and candlesticks she would have covered her ears. She took three hurried steps backward and felt herself collide with a wall where there should not have been one. Swinging around in alarm, she found a large figure looming out of the shadows before her and realized with horror that it was none other than her new husband.
“Excuse me!” Mina burst out in mortified embarrassment. Something was thudding now against the wall in the room behind her, punctuated by animalistic grunts that made Mina’s ears burn. “I need to find an empty room,” she added shrilly, trying to dodge to one side of the bulk that was William Nye. “That one is taken.”
“Are you sure?” he asked dryly and seemed to block her path entirely, whichever way she tried to barge past him. He shot one brawny arm out and braced it against the wall, leaning down so his mouth was close to her ear. “There are no free rooms,” he said slowly, possibly so she could hear as Effie was now starting to wail with increasing volume. Mina dropped her carpetbag and clapped a hand to her neck to shield it from his hot, tickling breath. His eyebrows rose. “We’re full,” he added bluntly. That took the wind out of her sails and she gazed up at him in dismay.
“Full?” she yelled as Effie approached a pitch only dogs could hear. “But where am I supposed to sleep?”
Nye frowned at her. Behind them, Jeb bellowed like a bull. The thudding stopped abruptly with the sound of a masculine groan and collapsed mattress springs.
Mina drew a deep breath and picked up her carpetbag. “If you could be so kind as to direct me to the staff quarters,” she said, striving to sound composed, but even to her own ears sounding slightly hysterical. To her shame, she could feel herself beginning to tremble all over with strung-out nerves. Hot candlewax spilled onto her fingers and her bag nearly slipped from once more from her grasp.
He did not speak for a moment, just looked at her hard. Then he uttered one word. “Attic.”
Mina sagged with relief. She couldn’t help it. She felt exhausted and perilously close to tears. “Thank you,” she muttered, a slave to politeness even in the face of the worst manners she had ever been subjected to. He made no response, just turned his back to her, and walked back down the way he’d come. Mina’s eyes burned. Pray God he never knew how close she had come to humiliating herself and blubbering like a child.
With a suppressed sob, she started up the last flight of stairs. The ceilings were much lower and sloping up here, and she could well believe it was where the maids slept. The first