This Time, I Won't Beg for His Mark novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Both Tables

They set one long table down the middle of the hall, because there were not enough chairs to do it any other way.

Cold Spur sat on one side and Ridgeback on the other, and by the second bowl nobody could have said which was which.

The Ridgeback cook ruled the stove.

Agnes sat at my right hand and sent back the stew twice for not enough pepper.

The big man from the back of the hall had fixed the infirmary porch before dinner, and he was told so, loudly, by three separate women.

At the far end, the Ridgeback girl who had given a Cold Spur boy her cookie was teaching him a card game that she cheated at.

Joss sat at my left.

He had a clean bandage over his shoulder under his shirt.

Every few minutes his knee moved against mine under the table, and every time, I heard it.

*Still here. Still here. Don't look at her mouth.*

I looked at his mouth instead.

*Valerie.*

"Stop that," I said under the noise.

"I'm not doing anything."

"I heard it."

"That's your end of the mark, not mine." His lips twitched. "Yours is louder."

I went red to the roots of my hair.

Agnes, who could not have heard a word, cackled into her stew.

By ten, the cook had put the children to bed on the benches under coats, and somebody had started a song.

Joss stood up and held out his hand.

The Wray house stood at the top of the hill, behind the hall, where the road ended.

It had been shut for sixteen years.

Somebody had been there that afternoon, because the stove was lit and the windows were clean, and a quilt lay folded on the foot of the bed in the biggest room.

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