Fallen in Love

Fallen in Love Read Free Page B

Book: Fallen in Love Read Free
Author: Lauren Kate
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out
too
badly.
    They joined the crowd passing through the gates and followed the flow of people, which seemed to move in only one direction: toward the market in the central square. Turrets rose before them, part of a grand castle near the far limits of the city walls. The square’s cornerstone was a modest but attractive early-Gothic church (Shelby recognized the spindly towers). A maze of narrow gray streets and alleys sliced off from the market square, which was crowded, chaotic, stinking, and vibrant, the kind of place where you went to find anything and anyone.
    “Linen! Two bolts for tenpence!”
    “Candlesticks! One of a kind!”
    “Barley beer! Fresh barley beer!”
    Shelby and Miles had to leap out of the way to avoid the stocky friar pushing a cart with earthenware jugs of barley beer. They watched his broad, gray-robed back as he cut a path through the crowded market. Shelby started to follow him, just to get a little space, but a moment later, the smelly mass of chattering citizens filled the gap.
    It was nearly impossible to take a step without bumping into someone.
    There were so many people in the square—haggling,gossiping, swatting children’s thieving hands away from the apples for sale—that no one paid attention to Miles and Shelby at all.
    “How are we ever going to find anyone we know in this cesspool?” Shelby held tight to Miles’s hand as the tenth person stepped on her foot. This was worse than that Green Day concert in Oakland where Shelby bruised two ribs in the mosh pit.
    Miles craned his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe everyone knows everyone else?” He was taller than most of the citizens, so it wasn’t as bad for him.
    He
had fresh air and a clear sight line, but
she
was feeling a claustrophobic fit coming on: She felt the telltale flush creep across her cheeks. Frantically, she tugged at the high collar of her dress, hearing a few stitches snap. “How do people breathe in these things?”
    “In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Miles instructed, demonstrating his own advice for a second before the stench forced him to wrinkle his nose. “Er. Look, there’s a well over there. How about a drink?”
    “We’ll probably get cholera,” Shelby muttered, but he was already moving away, pulling her behind him.
    They dipped under a sagging clothesline damp with homespun clothes, stepped over a small parade of scraggly, clucking black roosters, and angled past a pair of redheaded brothers peddling pears before they ended upat the well. It was an archaic thing—a ring of stones around a hole, with a wooden tripod set up over the opening. A mossy bucket dangled from a primitive pulley.
    After a few seconds, Shelby could breathe again. “People drink from that thing?”
    Now she could see that though the market took up most of the open square, it wasn’t the only show in town. A group of medieval mannequins robed in burlap had been set up on one side of the well. Young boys practiced wielding wooden swords, tilting at the ancestors of crash-test dummies like knights in training. Wandering minstrels strolled the edges of the market, singing strangely pretty songs. Even the well was its own little destination.
    She saw now that there was a wooden crank to raise the bucket. A boy in skintight buckskin leggings had dipped a ladle of water from the bucket and was holding it out to a girl with enormous wide-set eyes and a holly branch tucked behind her ear. She drained the ladle in a few thirsty gulps, gazing lovingly at the boy the whole time, oblivious to the water dripping down her chin and onto her beautiful cream gown.
    When she was finished, the boy passed the ladle to Miles with a wink. Shelby wasn’t sure she liked what that wink insinuated, but she was too thirsty to make a scene.
    “Here for the St. Valentine’s Faire, are you?” the girl asked Shelby in a voice as placid as a lake.
    “I, uh, we—”
    “Indeed,” Miles jumped in, adopting a horrible fake British

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