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"Of course you don’t understand You’ve read a story, no doubt, where a man had infore his secret in time Good prevailed, and they all lived happily ever after"
She felt sick
"That was a tepid piece of fiction written by so a barely plausible tale for a gullible audience You don’t torture a man to find out the truth, Miss Marshall, no matter how the stories sound Any real scoundrel will tell you as much You torture a man to h of it can blot out ato use it, you can write whatever you wish in its place Want him to swear to Catholicism? Hand him off to the inquisitors Want him to believe the sun sets in the east, and the reen cheese? Ready the hot knives But once you spill that ink on his soul, you’ll never get it out He’ll say anything, be anything, believe anything--just so that you’ll stop You’ll ask him about Delacey, and he’ll invent any story you wish to hear, just to spare himself the pain But it won’t hold up under observation, because it won’t be true"
She sed
"So no, Miss Marshall I won’t give you your easy answer It doesn’t exist Go write theWe’ll not get any other sort tonight"
It was a good thing it was dark; she didn’t think she could look him in the eye
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the roo after the darkness of the archive room The women--her women, women whose children she knehose hopes she’d listened to--were bustling about Spreading sand to soak up the oil, shoveling that into buckets, and then scrubbing tables with soap and washing away the last of the residue with vinegar Already the s She’d never heard Mr Clark talk like this before That had been sos
What kind of scoundrel was he?
She took a deep breath He was the kind of scoundrel that was right
She had to hone her anger to a fine edge That poor, miserable creature in her back rooht, she needed a story Maybe it would be an ugly, bare story, one with no sis or clear explanations But it would be a story nonetheless
BY THE TIME THE CONSTABLES ARRIVED, solemn in their blue uniforms, and took Mr Bartlett into custody, Free’s press was running, spitting out pages
She’d stuck to the bare basics: that denial that she’d crafted before Amanda left, and then the story of the fire and the ht, Alice delivered an ar up a pallet in her office She was arranging thewhen Mr Clark ca?" he shouted over the sound of the press
She hadn’t been able to look at him since the archive rooray wool blankets in her hands instead "I’lared at her
"My house is gone" She had to yell to be heard above the noise, and it felt good to vent her anger "So else will happen Alice and her husband are bedding down in the archive roo," he said, leaning down to her, "I’"
"Mr Clark, don’t be ridiculous"
"I’ up as he said that His eyes were dark She’d expected hiument Instead, he seemed cold--ice cold As if he didn’t care about her, didn’t care about anything
He cast her another dark look, and then shook his head and turned away