Chapter 9: The Silver is Poison

“I just need you for a little while longer. I have a little time to become pregnant—

“All of this for your baby?” he asked coldly and my spine stiffened.

“If I can’t prove myself pregnant this month, I could be tossed out of this house and sent back to my father. I can’t even trust that Josuan will provide for me if I’m not pregnant. My mother in law assures me that he is even worse than my husband.”

“Your father will take care of you.”

“My father doesn’t care for me! He sold me to the man that left all of these bruises on my body!”

I held my arms out so he could take in the harshness of the fading bruising. He turned away from them.

“He will do it again! I can not be another man’s property.”

“So you make me yours instead?”

“Just for a little while,” I said, feeling the impact of the betrayal I’d committed at his expense and still trying to make him understand.

He turned away from me to look up at the ceiling.

“You could have told me the whole situation and just asked,” he said, making my heart fall.

“You have a family to get back to,” I muttered quietly.

“Yes, this is true. But, I would have gladly helped you.” His voice was a mixture of anger and disappointment that broke my heart.

“Really?”

“If you had simply asked.”

I swallowed and came closer to him. “And now? If I unchain you?”

“How can I touch you now?” he said, seeming more disappointed than angry now. “I thought you were my friend.”

“I am,” I insisted.

“I tell you these chains are killing me and you do this…”

He tugged and I realized he was more restrained on my bed than he had been in his cell.

“It’s just for—

“I don’t have a little while,” he interrupted me. I moved closer to touch him and he flinched.

I backed away realizing that I’d made a terrible mistake.

I retrieved the key to the locks and several tools to help him break free of the chains.

“I am sorry,” I said, removing the padlocks. “I don’t know what came over me.”

I stepped back and left the room so he could work himself out of the chains. When he finally emerged, the chains were left on the floor but the silver bracelets were still around his wrist. He was dressed in my husband’s clothes.

“I still need to remove these before I can return home.”

I looked at him, not understanding.

“Why? I’m sure there is a locksmith in the next town.”

He shook his head. “It is not safe for me until I get home.”

I still didn’t understand but I realized I owed him what I knew. “I know where the key is.”

***

A few days later, two guards showed up at my door with a sealed letter from Josaun Bokstein. I wrote to him to let him know that a doctor was slow in coming and that I wondered when he’d be coming back to Hamstead. In his reply, it seemed he was concerned for my health and safety and wanted to place guards at the front and back door. I breathed a very heavy sigh of relief as my first thought had been that of discovery and arrest.

I nodded my understanding, feeling slightly ill at ease at the thought of strange men guarding me. With Erich in the house, it was not a comfortable situation at all.

The following day, my mother in law came for a visit. Josaun had written to her as well. It was a harrowing space of time between her insistent knocking at the door and getting Erich quietly to the safety of the basement. For the hundredth time, I wondered why he couldn’t leave without taking off those damned silver bracelets.

“He likes you,” Caystance said when she came to check on me at the end of the week to find the guards at my door. She brought a young woman named Leena with her. “Josaun has insisted that I hire help for housekeeping and cooking while you remain in bed."

I looked Leena over, she was very petite with light brown hair. She appeared to be slightly younger than me with a warm tan complexion, indicating that she spent a lot of time outdoors. The warmth in her skin made a striking setting for her pensive green eyes.

“He’s just protecting the heir he thinks I might carry,” I replied to Caustance, paying attention to what might be overheard by Erich.

“I doubt that… No, this man really likes you. I don’t know why…”

I ignored the insult.

“He doesn’t want you to leave the house, so we can bet he’ll be back to check on you personally after the doctor comes to visit.”

“But the doctor will tell him I’m not with child.”

“It might not matter if he likes you.”

“I don’t want to play any charade to fool him,” I told her thinking about how awful I still felt for what I’d done to Erich.

“Oh, you will play for as long as I tell you,” she said evenly. “Don’t forget I have your letter where you explain that you are not with child while begging for his help. You will continue with this charade and speak kindly of me and my daughters or I will let him have that letter.”

“You wouldn’t,” I challenged. “It makes you look worse than me.”

“Maybe, but my daughters are his blood,” she countered. “He will provide for them no matter what. You on the other hand…”

“Wow,” I said, realizing that she was right. I nodded my compliance and she clapped her hands in victory. “I will send for the doctor early next week and then compose a sad letter to his attention at the front. In the end, if he likes you enough to marry you, we both might get what we want after all.”

When Caystance and Leena left for the day, I went to the basement to get Erich.

“You would marry him?” Erich asked.

“You heard,” I nodded, not liking that. “I wouldn’t have a choice if he asked. I messed everything up. My mother in law would make sure I went right back to my father if I refused."

“If you carried my baby, you would say it’s your husband’s.”

My heart sank.

“I never meant for things to get like this,” I admitted. “But, I’m not carrying your baby. So…”

He looked away from me.

“He will come and you will get the key from him.”

“Yes,” I assured him. “I am sorry, for all of this.”

“It is not your fault, Sasha. I understand that you were in trouble and I was just a prisoner to you. But, you saved my life. I realize I would already be dead if not for you.”

I turned to look at him and I could see that despite eating well, he was getting thinner.

I traced my finger over the silver at his wrist.

“It’s like poison to people like me,” he said.

“How? It’s a precious metal. We wear silver jewelry all the time.”

“I’m not like you,” he said and then turned away. “It’s why they trapped me, why Bokstein wanted to kill me. If you had my child, he would eventually know the truth and want to do the same. Our child would not have been safe.”

Those words caused a chill to run over my body and they made it hard for me to sleep that night.