He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Salt

Erlend's POV

I could not stop thinking about the gap in the page.

It sat in my head through the whole afternoon, through the foremen and the cooper's bill and the quarrel about staves.

Two hundred and eleven.

Then two hundred and thirteen.

I had watched her face when she closed the book.

She had seen something, and said nothing, and I had let her say nothing.

I had spent twenty years being told one thing.

I did not know what to do with the first doubt I had ever had.

Torvald said the dealer was a drunk and a liar.

He said it at supper, easily, with his fork in the air.

"They all have my face at the Queen's," he said. "It's a common face. I've been mistaken for a minister."

"You never told me you played."

"A man must do something with his Fridays."

I nodded and ate and tasted nothing.

She did not look at me across the table.

She looked at her plate.

A strand of her dark hair had come out of its plait and lay along her neck.

I knew the exact weight of her under my hands, and I could not bear it.

I had never wanted anything I could not carry off a quay on my back.

I got up before the pudding.

I went down to the curing shed, because it was the one place on the Ness that was wholly mine.

It was a long barn of tarred wood with a stone floor.

In the dark it smelled of salt and cold iron, and the barrels stood in rows to the rafters.

← Chapter 6 · All chapters · Chapter 8 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend