His lips had pulled away from his tea-stained teeth in a grimace of unmitigated disgust. I’ll see you in the grave before you become a jezebel.” He’d thrust her roughly through the cellar door, causing her to stumble down the stairs and land in a heavy heap on the packed-dirt floor. “Just like your mother, allowing any gobshite to lift your skirts. The threat had been directed at the boys.īut as Cecelia had predicted, she was the one who paid the price for their sins.įor in the eyes of her father, the sin was hers.Īs the Reverend Teague marched her to the green room, he hissed at her the usual litany of condemnations, ignoring her vehement protestations. Rolland had threatened to go straight to her father, the Vicar Josiah Teague. He spat on her before shoving her on stomach over a felled tree and exposing her drawers to his entourage of lads, who all howled their mirth.įraught and humiliated as she was, Cecelia hadn’t shed a single tear until Mr. Thomas Wingate, the butcher’s son, had seized her at lunch, shoved his thin, ruddy face in hers, and called her nine kinds of foul names as he ripped her spectacles from her face and crushed them into the mud. Rolland then banished her to the corner to stand until her feet ached and her skin burned with humiliation. Rolland, the teacher, had accused her of cheating because of her age and sex, she’d reminded them that Maria Gaetana Agnesi had written the modern-day textbook on differential and integral calculus. She’d merely been the first girl, at thirteen, to best everyone at the village school at calculus. Nothing to merit her schoolmates’ violent cruelty nor her father’s pious fury. The questions pecked at her in the gathering dark like carrion birds at a fresh corpse. She couldn’t remember the last time her father had locked her in the cellar’s green room for so long. To all the girls who were told they couldn’t …Īccording to Cecelia Teague’s calculations, she approached the close of her second day in captivity. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us./piracy. Copyright infringement is against the law. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.

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All scot and bothered by kerrigan byrne