My Mate Gave My Wolf to His Mistress novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Maud's Cart

A farm cart came up the Stonefell road at noon, pulled by a mule that looked about as old as its driver.

Maud sat on the plank seat with her black shawl pulled over her white plait and a flat leather case across her knees.

She had walked off from Ravenhold in the night with no escort, and nobody had stopped her.

The Stonefell sentries brought her into the great hall.

Bram stood by the fire.

I sat on the long bench with my wrapped shoulder and my wrapped wrists, in a borrowed wool dress too short in the sleeves.

Maud looked at me and her hands tightened on the case.

"You've your mother's chin," she said. "I knew it the first week."

"You knew me?" I said. "For seven years?"

"I knew you the day you came through the Ravenhold gate with that story about the drowned fisherman."

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"I thought you'd come to kill him." Her voice was dry and quiet. "I watched for it. Every year I watched. I was waiting for you to put something in his cup."

"And I never did."

"No. You slept in his bed." She said it without cruelty. "And last night I thought, she is going to let him take her wolf and die of it, and I loosened the bolts."

I let that sit between us.

She had loosened them with her own two hands, in the dark, while I lay awake upstairs in his bed.

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't. I'm seven years late."

She set the case on the table and undid the straps.

Inside was a ledger bound in oilcloth, and under it a bundle of linen that was heavy at one end.

"I buried them," Maud said. "The Aldanes. I wasn't asked. I was the chapel keeper, and the ground behind the chapel orchard was mine."

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