Chapter 4

Finally, when I was about to drop from exhaustion, a decent-looking guy stepped up and gave me a hand.

He hoisted the sack onto my shoulders for me.

The weight was so heavy that I thought my bones might crack right then and there.

Every step felt like I was walking on blades.

From the ship to the warehouse, it was only a short distance, but it took me almost forever to get there.

By the time I finally dropped the sack, I felt dead on my feet.

My shoulders burned, as if someone had pressed a hot iron right into them.

I worked the whole damn day.

When payday finally rolled around, the foreman tossed me half of what the men got.

"You're a woman, and you work slowly. You should be glad you're getting anything at all." He tossed a few coins onto the ground, acting like it was nothing.

I clenched those shameful coins in my fist and ran straight to the cheapest medicine shop in town.

The shop assistant looked me up and down, his gaze dripping with contempt.

"With that little bit of money, you can only buy two boxes of the worst junk medicine." He said it while wrapping up the medicine in paper and shoving it at me.

"Buying medicine for a dead man? You're throwing your money away," he muttered.

I clutched those two bundles of medicine and rushed back to the broken-down church.

I found an old cracked pot, got a fire going, and started boiling water.

I opened the boxes. The church was soon filled with the harsh, bitter stench of medicine.

I brought the medicine over to Benjamin. "Mr. Carter, take your medicine."

He turned his head away, wouldn't even look at me. "I said, I don't need your pity. I don't want to live."

My patience snapped.

I grabbed his chin and pried his mouth open by force.

"You have to take this." I shoved the bitter medicine right down his throat.

He thrashed, fighting me every step of the way.

The pills spilled everywhere.

In the chaos, he raised his hand and gave me a hard slap across the face.

The sound rang out, crisp and loud.

My head snapped to the side, ears ringing. My face was burning, stinging from the slap.

Time seemed to stand still.

He stared at me, at the handprint swelling on my face, completely stunned.

I couldn't hold back my tears anymore. They rolled down in big, heavy drops.

It wasn't because it hurt. It was because I felt so wronged.

I shouted at him, tears streaming down my face, "You think I actually want to be responsible for you?

"It was for Lady Winifred. Before she left, Lady Winifred shoved the hairpin into my hand and told me to stay alive.

"She never said I had to survive all by myself. If Lady Winifred made me promise to live, then you have to live, too."

I was sobbing so hard that I could barely catch my breath, pouring out all the pain, fear, and exhaustion I'd bottled up these past few days.

He looked at me, at my swollen face, at my eyes brimming with tears.

Finally, a ripple of emotion stirred in those lifeless eyes.

He slowly, slowly raised his hand, as if to touch my face.

But halfway up, his hand fell back, powerless.

In the end, he turned his back, shielding his face with his good arm.

His broad shoulders started trembling uncontrollably.

I could hear him crying, muffled and full of pain.

After his pride and dignity were shattered, this was the first time the young general, once so dazzling, finally broke down.

From that day on, he stopped trying to take his own life, and he no longer drove me away.

He stayed silent like a cold, lifeless stone.

Winter arrived in a flash.

The north wind was like a blade, slashing at my cheeks.

The ruined church let the wind in from every direction, leaving us exposed to the freezing air.

With the river frozen solid, there was no work at the docks.

I searched everywhere, but there was no other work to be found.

So he wouldn't starve, I started going down to the river to wash clothes for the wealthy families in town.

The river water was so cold it stung right down to the bone.

My hands turned red and swollen in no time, looking like raw carrots.

After a while, my hands were covered in painful chilblains.

Some spots even cracked open, and blood seeped out.

At night, my skin would stick to the blanket, and every little movement sent a sharp, piercing pain through me.

I made sure he never saw.

After washing clothes, I always hid my hands in my sleeves.

*****

On that day, I went to deliver the freshly washed clothes to the Lane Estate.

The housekeeper at Lane Estate was a sharp-tongued, mean old matron.

She nitpicked every little thing as she checked the clothes.

"Why is there still a mark on this collar? How did you even wash this?" She jabbed her finger at a barely visible yellow stain on one of the clothes and started berating me.

I quickly apologized. "Ma'am, I'll go back and wash it again right away."

As I was about to pick up the pile of clothes, a servant came over carrying a wooden bucket.

He had a nasty, malicious grin on his face.

He was one of the servants who always followed Richard around.

He walked right up to me and, without saying a word, dumped the yellow, reeking liquid from the bucket all over the batch of clothes I'd finished washing.

It was urine.

"Oops, my hand slipped," he said with fake innocence, but the mocking look in his eyes made it clear he did it on purpose.

The housekeeper let out a cold laugh from the side. "See that? That's a servant's fate. If you get it dirty, you have to clean it up for your master.

"If you don't finish washing them today, you won't get a single dollar."

I stared at that pile of clothes they ruined, my whole body trembling with rage.

But what could I do?

All I could do was pick up that reeking pile of clothes and drag myself back to the river.

The river was already covered in a thin layer of ice.

I smashed a hole in the ice with a rock.

When I plunged my hands in, it was like needles jabbing right to the bone.

My hands went numb in no time.

I scrubbed the clothes on autopilot, my mind completely blank.

The servant didn't leave.

He stood on the riverbank, arms crossed, looking down at me like I was nothing. "You know, General Lane said it.

"If Benjamin saw his favorite maid looking like this, what would he think? Do you think he'd be so ashamed he'd kill himself?"

My hands paused for a second.

I looked up, and through the swirling cold air, I spotted a familiar, hunched figure in the distance.

It was Benjamin.

Somehow, he'd ended up by the riverbank, using a branch as a crutch, limping over to the pile of grass.

He was far away, but I could feel his eyes on me.

He was watching me, crouching by the icy river, scrubbing clothes soaked in urine for the very man who ruined us, my enemy.

My heart felt like it was being crushed by an invisible fist.

I bowed my head and scrubbed with all my strength.

I couldn't let him see my tears.

It took me the whole afternoon to scrub those clothes clean.

By the time I made it back to the Lane Estate, night had already fallen.

But the housekeeper said I'd missed the time and told me she'd dock all my pay.

I stood in the snow, begging her over and over.

I told her I needed the money so I could buy a bowl of soup.

I needed it to save someone from freezing to death.

She got fed up with me.

She grabbed a handful of money from her purse and threw it hard into the pile of snow beside her.

"Want money? Go find it yourself. Whatever you manage to find, that's all you'll get," she sneered.

With that, she went inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

I crouched in the snow, scraping through it with my frozen, stiff hands, picking out the coins one by one.

The night was dark.

I could only rely on the faint glow from the lantern at the Lane Estate's entrance.

My fingers couldn't feel a thing anymore.

I knew I had to get them all.