The Light in the Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

heavily, “If you find you need help, will you find a way to contact me?”
    “Of course.”
    “If you ask for my help,” Carey went on, “I will—I will take care of you. I promise. And if you must, you know how to use the knife.”
    Jenny nodded. When she and Carey had begun meeting at the creek, they had spent much of their time simply talking. But Carey had also invested some time in teaching her how to use a knife in self-defense, even showing her how to throw it accurately. She had become quite adept at it. He had taught her when her figure first began to take on the curves of womanhood, and at his insistence she always carried a knife in the pocket of her petticoat. For some reason she was unable to understand, he had wanted her to be able to protect herself. It had never occurred to her that he might have planned on keeping her for himself, for, with her utter lack of vanity, she was incapable of such a thought.
    She knew, however, that she could never use the knife. Submission to the inexplicable rages of men had been beaten into her for too long. And surely she would never need to use it on her soon-to-be husband, the man who had saved her from her uncle’s fury. She was calmly certain he would never hurt her.
    “I ’ave to go and work now, or my uncle will be getting annoyed,” she said. “And don’t worry, Carey. I am doing the right thing. I’m certain.”
    She thought over what Carey had told her as she walked to the back of the ordinary. There an enormous cast-iron pot full of dirty sheets and boiling water was being stirred by her aunt, a quiet, withdrawn woman who had long ago been cowed into perpetual silence by her husband’s rages.
    Edward Greyson was no murderer, Jenny thought, remembering how he had protected her last night. He was anextraordinary and heroic man. Of that she had no doubt. It was inconceivable that he could be a murderer. Or was it?
    Then she remembered the expression on his savage face when he struck her uncle, and suddenly she was not quite so sure.

THREE
    J ennifer Wilton Greyson had never been so wretchedly miserable in her entire seventeen years of life. Even her uncle’s beatings had been bearable compared to the endless agony she was suffering through now. Every muscle in her body ached from riding steadily for two days. She wondered, for the millionth time, why the stranger she had married had not simply sailed from his plantation to Princess Anne County. Virigina was riddled with creeks and rivers that made it painfully difficult to get from one point to another by land. Roads were rarely wide enough to accommodate coaches, except in larger settlements such as Williamsburg and Norfolk, and a rider frequently had to pay a ferryman to cross bodies of water, while his horses swam behind. Sensible people generally traveled by water if they were going any great distance.
    But when she had diffidently asked Grey why he had ridden all this way, he had said only, “I like to ride.”
    His replies to her timid attempts at conversation had all been terse, almost angry, and she had long ago abandoned any effort at drawing him out. He was a strange, silent, brooding man, and she had been quickly intimidated into silence. She realized that she had very little to say to him anyway. They had virtually nothing in common. He came from a sophisticated, educated world, whereas her world was a backwater tavern.
    And she was discovering now that it had not been sucha bad world. This outside world appeared to consist of nothing but endless forests sliced through by rivers and swamps. They rarely caught sight of cultivated fields as they rode down the narrow dirt path. There was virtually nothing to look at to distract her mind from her aching muscles, aside from the occasional egret lifting gracefully away from a creek bank, or more rarely, a fox slinking through the underbrush.
    Her physical discomfort was bad enough, but her mental discomfort was worse. On the long ride, with little