The Lost Son Returns as the Duke novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Bread at the Cobb Door
Hild dragged the kitchen table out into the lane herself.
She set it in front of the door and put a slate on it and a piece of chalk.
"Da's daughter keeps the tally," she said. "One mark each."
"Hild," Edith said.
"They've owed it eighteen years. I'll count."
The captain's riders had cleared the green, and Thornwick came up the lane in a long, slow file.
Nobody was pushed.
I had said so, twice, to the captain, and he had understood me the second time.
I stood to one side by the hedge, because it was not my table.
The first to the table was the broad, red-armed woman from the well.
She stood with her hands wrapped in her apron.
She had tipped Hild's bucket into the dirt on the first morning, and she remembered it.
"I poured out your water," she said to Edith.
"You did."
"I said you'd lost the right. I had no right to say it."
"No."
"I spat in the road when you walked past. I called you what they called you, and I never asked once what you'd done." Her face worked. "I've a girl of my own. I should have known."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Lost Son Returns as the Duke are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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