Nobody's Lady Read Online Free PDF

greeting had caused my cat.
    “I hear you’ve been selling those in the village,” he said.
    His hand appeared in my narrowly focused range of vision.
    “Do you mind?” he asked.
    I looked up. And quickly looked back down, numbly putting the wooden cat into his outstretched hand and laying my tools beside me on the stool. What was wrong with me? I’d had enough of these feelings to last a lifetime, and I had only ever bothered with one man before. Or two.
    “Let me see. A butt. But whose?”
    I laughed despite myself. “There’s no real-life model.”
    He grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t seen my former wife’s ass. If not for the tail, it might be a perfect match.”
    I shifted uncomfortably and stretched my smile into my cheeks as far as my lips would let me. It took an effort.
    The worker handed the cat back to me and held his hand out to shake mine. “I’m Sindri, one of the baker’s sons. Don’t know if you remember me.”
    I felt the uneasiness in my stomach cease instantly. Sindri, one of the boys I used to play with as a girl. I shook his hand eagerly, a much easier smile on my face. “Sindri! I’m so sorry! Of course. How could I have forgotten?”
    It was Sindri’s turn to pull an uneasy smile onto his face. “Well, you’ve never seen my face, so I’m not that surprised.”
    Bile rose in my throat again. Another face I’d doomed to masking.
    “Who was your goddess again?” I asked.
    Sindri swung the pickax off his shoulder and let it scuff the ground by his feet. He leaned on it and glanced over my head, his eyes squinting at the promise of a still-brighter morning.
    “Marden, Tanner’s daughter.”
    One of Elfriede’s friends. I’d never been that close to the girls. None of them wanted to swing sticks at pigs or roll on the hills and get their dresses caked in dirt. And Sindri had found his goddess early on in the process of maturing. I’d played with his brother Darwyn for far longer. I’d lost all track of Sindri and his goddess obsession soon after he stopped being one of the elf queen’s loyal retainers.
    “You got married?” I asked, picking up my chisel and going to work again. That was a rather stupid question, but I didn’t remember the marriage.
    “Yup,” said Sindri, punctuating the end of the word sharply. “Never got Returned to. Not that I care now. When I think of how stupid I was, I want to strangle my past self. All of that trauma over that cold-hearted, selfish bi—”
    He stopped. I thought of my recent bizarre feelings for Ailill and nodded. The chisel slipped awkwardly. Fur was starting to look more like scarring. Perhaps the fat cat would be a tomcat, complete with alleyway battle scars.
    “You know,” Sindri picked up again, “his lordship’s edict has been a real blessing.”
    A dog barked sharply, cutting him short.
    “Noll!”
    My eyes snapped up at the dulcet, airy tones of my sister’s voice. It was a little off-tune and shaky. She was coming through the fields from the east, taking a shortcut from our childhood home to my new one. Skipping beside her to one side was Bow, Jurij’s old, sandy-furred retriever, and on the other side was Arrow, Bow’s perky and easily distracted golden-colored son. He stopped twice within a matter of moments to sniff the grassy field at his paws before galloping to catch up.
    Elfriede hadn’t visited me since I moved. I’d thought it best to stay away from whatever was going on with her and her husband. And that included staying away from knowing whether or not they had convinced a specter to produce a paper for them to sign from his ever-useful inner jacket pocket.
    She was crying now, her golden hair limp against her flushed and fair oak-toned face. I felt a sharp pain slide into my stomach.
    “What’s wrong?” I stood, knocking the gouge off the stool. Arrow jumped in place, yapping.
    Elfriede took first one deep breath and then another but, much to my impatience, didn’t speak. Her gaze