The innkeeper, evidently recognizing Andreas, opened the door to admit them before shutting it behind them and bolting it.
Being that it was very late, the common room was cluttered with sleeping bodies. There were people strewn across tables, on the floor, and some of them were simply sitting in chairs leaning against the wall. The fire in the hearth burned low, giving off a little light into the chamber as Andreas spoke to the tavernkeep about procuring some food and a place to eat it. The tavernkeeper didn’t have a problem warming up some food for them, but somewhere to sit and consume it was another matter altogether.
He indicated the common room, which was nearly full at that point of snoozing patrons, and he suggested using one of the rooms that hadn’t been rented for the night. Often, travelers would sleep at the table they had eaten at, thus avoid paying for a bed – leaving sleeping chambers empty.
Gavriella heard the tavernkeeper suggest that they rent a sleeping room where they could eat their meal and, suddenly, she wasn’t so willing to trust him anymore. A chamber with a bed? With a door he could shut and prevent her from leaving?
She wondered if this had been his intention all along.
Suddenly, she was feeling frightened again.
As they discussed the cost of such a thing, Gavriella was already backing towards the door. She reached the panel and tried to unbolt it, but the bolt was old and heavy, and she had to jiggle it for it to come loose. By that time, the man she knew as Wolf was directly behind her.
“Where are you going?” he asked softly.
She couldn’t get the door open quickly enough. Her fear, her rage, was blooming in her chest again. Perhaps now more than it ever had. Whirling around, she pressed herself flat against the door.
“I heard you speak to that man about renting a bedchamber,” she hissed. “I am not going into a rented bedchamber with you. I do not know what kind of woman you think I am, but I will not be seen as… as an easy target.”
He was a bit taken aback by her outrage. “An easy target? For what?”
“I did not come here with you to warm your bed!”
She raised her voice, partially rousing a few people who were nearby. They lifted their heads, yawning and groaning, and she looked around in a panic, thinking she’d just awoken everyone. They would be angry with her. Frightened and furious, she turned for the door again yanking on the bolt until it opened. When he tried to help her or stop her – she wasn’t sure which – she slapped his hand as hard as she could. She finally jerked on the door, throwing it wide and rushing out into the night.
As the woman bolted outside, Andreas followed, genuinely surprised at her reaction, but given that he was speaking to the tavernkeeper about renting a chamber, he supposed he didn’t blame her for being suspicious and angry. There was part of him that absolutely understood why she’d fled in terror.
“My lady,” he called to her as she ran into the fog. “Please come back. It is not as it seems. There are no tables for us to eat at. Renting a chamber would allow us a space to do that – eat!”
The fog was swallowing her up. “I will not be tricked,” she said. “The last time a man asked me to trust him was… oh, it does not matter. I’ll not let you touch me! Never again!”
She disappeared into the mist. Andreas watched her go, wondering if he just shouldn’t let her alone this time. He’d tried so hard to be kind and polite, so hard to be chivalrous because he thought it was the right thing to do, but she had fought him at every turn. She hadn’t believed him from the beginning; that much was clear. She had looked at him with such suspicion that, in truth, his pride was starting to take a beating. He done everything he could to be trustworthy and courteous, but it wasn’t enough. Kitten, or whatever her real name was, wasn’t the trusting sort.
She was suspicious of everything he did.
He could have been offended, but he ended up just feeling pity for her.
As he had told her, however, he felt some sense of responsibility towards her. She was a woman, alone in a dangerous city, and he simply couldn’t turn his back on her. He wondered why she was so incredibly mistrustful because it seemed to him that it really had nothing to do with him at all and everything to do with something she surely must have experienced in her lifetime. He’d never met anyone who was that suspicious who didn’t have a good reason behind it.
Before she’d run from him, he could see terror in her eyes.
There was something more to her fear.
A few moments after watching her red dress fade from sight, he followed.
No, she didn’t know where she was going.
All she knew was that she had to get away.
The fog had thickened as she headed back the way she thought they had come, but it was so misty that she couldn’t really see anything but the occasional public torches. There was a night watch because she could hear them calling to one another, distant voices in the fog.
Even so, the streets of London were treacherous.
Everything in London was treacherous.
Gavriella had never felt so lost or alone in her entire life. At least when she was at Falstone Castle, she was surrounded by people she knew, servants she had grown up with and friends from the small village that was near the castle. She was content there, living a bucolic life, or at least she had been until the events of last year.
That had changed everything.
She no longer felt safe. She no longer felt anything. As she stood there shivering in the mist, she realized that this moment was symbolic of what her life had become – dark, dreary, miserable.
There was simply no hope.
She could return to The Asher and face her cousins. Maybe they would care that she’d run off, maybe they wouldn’t. She was coming to hate Aurelia for dragging her out on this night and taking her to that horrific place, and here she was, wandering in the night and looking for the only home she knew in London, only it wasn’t her home.
It wasn’t her anything.
In fact, she had nothing.
The knight, the one who called himself Wolf, had been kind to her in the midst of her despair, but she realized it had only been a ploy to get her into his bed. And like a fool, she’d fallen for it. She had been coming to appreciate him in the slightest, and even trust him a little, but that had all been summarily dashed when she realized what he’d been up to. Now, all she could manage to feel was stupidity.
Desolation.
Gavriella de Leia had reached the bottom.
The tears began to come. She was so very weary, at the end of any semblance of patience she’d ever had for herself. Patience in her situation, in what life had brought her. She’d tried to remain pragmatic, to hope that something better was on the horizon, but she knew nothing was. She was damaged goods now, relegated to being a companion to a scandalous cousin and a victim to a man who had just wanted to seduce her.
God, why had she trusted him?
Everyone in her life had failed her.
Now, the knight who swore he was honorable had failed her, too.
Gavriella was wet and cold and hungry, and her left arm hurt where they man had yanked on her. Cradling her arm against her body, she turned around and began to walk. She didn’t know where she was going, but she began to walk. Tears streaked down her cheeks and her thoughts were those of utter despair.
Still, she walked. And walked.