Red Snow Bride (Wolf Brides Book 2) Read Free Page A

leave it alone for the most part. I’ll send her with you so she can show you the way. You must go before my husband returns from the ale house.”
    Nothing in me wanted to get her in trouble. I knew the risk she’d already taken by giving me money and advising on shelter. I squeezed her hand. “Thank you, Countess.”
    “I wish I could do more. Take your bag to the back entrance near the servant’s quarters and I’ll send for Analise. She’s the one who’ll make sure you get safely into a room.”
    Analise was a small and frightened looking sort of girl. Her eyes were overly big and it gave the impression that she found everything with suspicion. “Evenin’ Ms,” she said with a small curtsey before she opened the back door for me to follow her out. “It’s a bit of a walk from here. Are you sure you’re up for it?”
    “No choice for it, I’m afraid.” I had no choices at all in my life at the moment. What a horribly depressing situation I’d found myself in.
    “You can’t go the whole way dragging that bag noisily down the street like that. Heft it up, will you?”
    I grimaced and tried, but failed. I’d been toting it all night and my arms shook as if they were branches in the wind.
    “Here let me,” she said. She boosted it up onto her tiny hip and hobbled toward a back alleyway at a fast clip. It was amazing how her tiny body could shoulder that kind of weight. “Hurry up, then,” she snapped.
    I bustled after her. “Pardon me but I don’t appreciate you talking to me in such a manner.”
    “I can talk to you however I please now. You’re just like me.”
    Shocked, my legs locked into place and I skidded to an ungraceful stop. So the horrid truth of my scandal had already reached some of the help. I wasn’t just like her though. High breeding laced my veins with noble blood. I was a McGregor with family and lineage and money. Well, my family had money at least.
    “Hurry up before all the rooms are taken,” Analise called over her shoulder.
    Familiar streets passed into streets I’d never paid attention to from the cab of a fine carriage. Blistered and dismayed after what felt like hours of hobbling across the entirety of the city, exhaustion was my closest companion by the time I talked to the mistress at the hostel and secured a room. Room was a subjective term when referring to the closet I was renting. Analise grunted as she threw the bag onto the screeching, miniature bed.
    “There’s a poultry house two doors down. You’ll be pluckin’ chickens all day, but by the end of the month you’ll have enough to rent your room.” She shrugged. “It’s better than doing nothing at all with yourself.”
    “Thank you,” I breathed as she tried to shut the door. It was cut at an odd angle and creaked back open. Perfect.
    I pressed my body weight against the wooden structure to no avail. It wouldn’t be shoved into its frame tonight. Half the room was taken up with the tiny bed, and the other with a small writing table and waiting lantern. A fractured mirror hung on a cracked plaster wall that had been painted an atrocious shade of pink at some time in the building’s history. Now, long strips of the stuff hung down like the walls were shedding their skins. At least it didn’t smell of dirty men and cigar smoke though, so there was the upside. A washbasin sat atop the table beside the lantern and semi clean water graced the crude stone dish.
    I dared a glance in the spider web mirror. Blood had trickled down the side of my face and dried. It looked like some winding river eking out an escape through canyon country. Lovely. I must have looked a fool showing up to the Countess’s manor in such a state. My dark hair had come out of its pins and instead of looking perfectly coifed like it had earlier this evening, it looked like the nest of some wild animal. My amber eyes looked sunken, tired, and scared and I turned away from my reflection before shame could overwhelm me. Who was that