The blacksmith’s wife [part 6]

‘Jenever,’ he said, ‘from sloes, not Amsterdam.   You’re not enough a mother to be ruined.’
He tipped the glass, watched me drink, sloe-eyed himself, inscrutable, all personal emotion hidden, yet knowledge of the hurt I’d dealt caused blood to hammer in my head, tears to flow for what I’d lost.

Not the child, that never had existed, but his belief in me.

Another touch upon my back, forewarning.  ‘Charcoal, to mark the placing of the letters.’  
But gin-loosed tongue took me past sanity;  contemptuously ‘Can you spell?’  
His face hardened.  ‘Trollop, wanton, Jezebel, jade – there’s space to write them all.’

Parts 8 and 9  on this weeks Friday Predictions