The Devil's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

would they want to?
    “How long have you lived here?” she asked.
    Jed shrugged. “Going on six or eight months I guess.”
    “And what – exactly - have you been doing out here all that time?” He obviously hadn’t spent the time working on the house.
    “Settling in, stringing the fence--” he trailed off.
    “The fence?” She wanted to scream, but bit it back. “You didn’t think a proper house might be the better place to start?”
    His lip curled in a small grin. “You’re the one who told me you had all the strength I needed, so I saved the big work for you.”
    He was certainly handsome when he grinned like that; a delicious mixture of boyish charm and male determination.
    “But--”
    “No buts.” He took her by the hand and led her into the middle of the yard, then turned in a slow circle, his arms spread wide. “It’s going to be the best piece of land God ever set on the earth.”
    “But--”
    “We’ll build a house, a new barn,” he paused, then added, “we can raise a family here.”
    She clamped her mouth shut, grinding her teeth together. Hell would freeze solid twice before she’d agree to bring a child into this world. She was here for herself and no one else, not for this new husband and certainly not to have a child.
    She was here to claim three souls: Jed’s, Maggie’s and the baby’s when it was born. The baby was the most important; the other two simply stood in the way.
    Maggie should be easy enough to sway, given her fragile state of mind. But she had a feeling Jed was going to prove a bit more difficult.
    Once she’d completed her mission, she could hand their souls over to Satan and be free to do as she wished. And what she wished was for someone else to take her place in the bowels of Hell.
    Jed interrupted her musings by waving his finger in front of her and pointing to the strings of barbed wire snaking off in the distance.
    “I had to finish the fence first so we could start building a herd.”
    “A herd of what?” The stench of horse dung assaulted her senses, making her eyes water and her throat tighten against a gag.
    “Cattle.”
    “Cows stink,” Lucy groaned. “And they’re stupid.”
    Jed shot her a wink and grinned. “True, but they’re also money in the bank.”
    “But--”
    “No buts.”
    As he took her hand and headed back toward the wagon, Lucy’s next complaint fogged out of her mind. His hands were distractingly warm. And strong.
    “Why don’t you take this.” He pulled the parcel of new clothes from the wagon and handed it to her. “You can get changed into one of them other dresses, and then we can get started.”
    He set about releasing the horses, speaking softly to each animal as he unbuckled the straps, taking a moment to scratch behind their ears and across their noses.
    “Maggie might be sleeping,” he warned. “So be quiet when you go in.”
    The mention of Maggie redirected Lucy’s thoughts. She shouldn’t focus on the horrid land and piles of dung surrounding her, but rather on what she could do to hurry things along. Maggie was the first step.
    With a small flounce, Lucy took her package into the house and stood staring through the gloom.
    A tiny window faced north toward the makeshift barn and main pasture, but whatever light it might have let in was shadowed by a narrow overhang from the roof. She lit the lamp, turned it as bright as she could, then took a good look around the cramped space that was now her home.
    The one-room shack did nothing to boost her spirits. A small square table sat under the window, with two oddly crooked chairs tucked beneath it. Long narrow shelves hung on both the far wall and the one between the door and the table, each filled with cans of beans, bags of rice, and various other household items.
    Three hooks in the near corner held changes of clothes: a pair of faded denim pants, a blue button-down shirt, a tattered pair of gray long underthings, and two plain dresses.
    The other corner of the