Wicked at Heart Read Online Free PDF

weak, the unfortunate, the helpless.  Foyle was of that
mold; she saw it in the spoiled set of his mouth, in the swagger of his
stride.  And she could see him smiling, as though he'd found her remark amusing. 
Did he think Morninghall would send her running with her tail between her
legs?  Well, the both of them had another thing coming if they thought she was
some quaking ninny.  Gwyneth was about to open her mouth to say as much when
Foyle suddenly seized her elbow, steering her around a group of filthy,
vacant-eyed prisoners just coming up from the black mouth of a hatch.
    The sight was
enough to stop Gwyneth dead in her tracks.
    The prisoners,
their once-yellow clothes tattered and filthy, blinked in the sudden light,
knuckling their eyes and groaning before another midshipman angrily urged them
on.  Chains dragged from their ankles, making a horrible, rattling noise as
they scraped across the deck.  Their faces were bearded and encrusted with
grime, their backs were rounded and hunched, and some had advanced signs of
scurvy.
    "Dear
God," Gwyneth breathed, paling with horror as the group approached.
    "Come, m'lady,
you shouldn't have to look at these wretches."
    "They're in
chains," she murmured.  "Why?"
    "One of
their number escaped last night and drowned in the marshes, the stupid sod. 
They're being taken off the ship so that they might bury the wretch — hence,
the chains.  Come, let us move on."
    Despite the bile
that welled up in her throat, the sudden pity that tightened her chest, Gwyneth
resisted the midshipman's efforts to draw her forward, instead forcing herself
to watch in growing horror as each prisoner was led past.  One young man
paused, stretching a pathetically skeletal hand toward her as though she were a
vision he needed to touch in order to believe, before the midshipman cursed and
swung his musket hard across the back of the man's legs.  The prisoner went
down, smashing his chin on the grimy deck.  Wordlessly, he picked himself up
with what shreds of pride he had left, the threadbare yellow shirt issued by
the Transport Office and stamped with the letters "T.O." revealing
raw, bare patches of sore-ridden skin.  Gwyneth stood frozen, her fist against
her mouth, the back of her throat aching with unshed tears.  But the man was
now too ashamed to look at her.  He hung his head and, now limping, shuffled
off with his companions.  Gwyneth swallowed hard, determined not to let Foyle
see how much the sight had affected her.  She needed her wits, and her rage, if
she was going to do any good here.
    "Begging
your pardon, my lady, but as prison ships go, this is one of the good ones —"
    " Good ones?" she said angrily, his sniveling voice snapping her out of her
shock.  "I see nothing at all that is good about this — this atrocity ,
and I suspect that by the time I've finished touring the downstairs —"
    "Belowdecks,
ma'm," he corrected, sheepishly.
    " Belowdecks ,
I'll find enough information to condemn the lot of you.  I've seen pigs kept in better conditions than this!"
    A breeze, ripe
with the stench of the nearby mudflats, came up, whipping the laundry strung
above Gwyneth's head and tugging a long, blond curl from the severe bun into
which she had scraped her hair.  She shoved it back in beneath her hat, trying
to calm her shaken nerves.  With a sharp jerk of her head, she bade the youth
to move on.
    They passed a
hatch, a gateway into the stinking bowels of the ship.  Gwyneth paused, despite
Foyle's urging, and hesitantly took the handkerchief away from her nose.  Hidden
beneath the noxious fumes, the stench of sickness, imprisonment, excretions,
and death, was the faint scent of —
    "That's
vinegar you're smelling," Foyle said importantly, as she wrinkled her
nose.  "The captain orders the ship fumigated every night."
    "Obsessed
with cleanliness, is he?" Gwyneth drawled, with cutting sarcasm.
    "He does
his best, m'lady.  And we set the sails to direct a breeze down there,