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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

When she outgrew childish prettiness? Abigail studied her face. She could not have been as much as nineteen now. Had I known, she thought, I would have slept in the woods rather than take the man’s hospitality. “And did he turn you out of your home, as well as put you aside?”

“Oh, no, m’am.” Damnation seemed shocked at the suggestion. “The Hand of the Lord would never turn out one of his children! It was for us that God gave us the land we live on, so that none of us can ever be turned away. The last time Mr. Hazlitt came to Gilead, the Reverend Bargest commanded me to come here to take care of Mrs. Hazlitt, in return for Mr. Hazlitt printing his sermons for him. But this Realm of Iniquities is not my home.”

“My child—” The stairway door opened. Lucretia Hazlitt stepped out. Perfectly dressed, hair coiffed beneath a lace cap, she moved steadily, except for her head, which had a slight waver to it, as if the world before her eyes was in constant motion and needed to be tracked. When she came close—to take Damnation’s arm—Abigail saw by the last fading light of evening that despite the gloom, the pupils of her eyes were narrowed to pinpricks with opium. “My child, I’m going out,” she announced. “I shall be back in a few minutes—”

“I’m afraid you can’t, m’am,” said Damnation. “Mr. Hazlitt told me I wasn’t to let you, and—”

Lucretia Hazlitt’s face convulsed suddenly, swiftly, with an expression of agony, and her green eyes turned wide and desperate. “You must let me go,” she said. “My son is dead. He met with an accident, a terrible misfortune. I saw him.”

“Mrs. Hazlitt,” said Damnation gently, “you know that wasn’t really him.”

“It was!” she insisted. “He came to me, blue and glowing. He sat beside my bed and took my hand, and I saw then that a great beam of wood had been driven into his chest! I saw the blood, my child! I saw the bruises on his face, where it had been crushed in—”

“M’am, that isn’t true.” The girl took her mistress’s hand in one hand, and gripped her arm with the other. “You know it isn’t.” She turned to Abigail, added in a whisper, “That didn’t really happen, m’am. It’s just the opium, that makes her see things. It wasn’t a real spirit.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” said Abigail, startled at the girl’s assumption that it could have been and that Abigail would probably believe it.

“You must let me go find him!” pleaded Mrs. Hazlitt, as Damnation steered her firmly toward her chair. “You must let me speak to him, beg his forgiveness before it is too late—”

“Of course, m’am, but first you sit down—”