13/100 The blacksmith's wife [17]

I’d extricated sovereigns and well-hid papers, ink damp-smudged, before Gabriel returned home with his brother, his arms and trunk blood-bruised from more than falling off a horse.   Face less pretty too.

Unaverse to slander, he’d implied I’d satisfied until Gabriel threatened branding.   He confined him tight-bound in the cellar, asking only ‘Did he lie?’ before we finally slept.

To be hauled awake too soon to harsh-grained hands at throat and thigh and Gabriel’s eyes near-blind with blood, stifled roaring from behind the cloth which gagged him.   

But not so blind he did not see what his brother did to me.

This is part 17 of 'The blacksmith's wife'.   The whole is a prompt-led serial  which began on the Friday Prediction, in March  and continued, one hundred words at a time, for forty-one episodes.   One of my aims in this 100 days project is to complete the illustrations for each episode and publish the tale in book form.   The  story can be read in its entirety here.