The thought slipped into her mind unbidden and refused to leave.
If it had not been her — and she knew with absolute certainty that it had not — then who? Who would wander the woods at such an hour, and for what purpose? And stranger still, who would deliberately seek to mislead the Earl into thinking it washer?
There was no reason for such a thing. No sensible purpose for such a ruse. Unless, as he’d suspected of her, it was some sort of mischief. The thought made her pause. Made her simply stop her digging and consider. And it was in that moment that she registered the silence.
She shifted on her knees and glanced over her shoulder. The forest was still — too still. The usual morning chorus of birdsong was gone, and even the breeze had died, leaving the air heavy and unmoving. She told herself it was nothing, just nerves, but the sensation crept over her all the same — a slow, cold prickle at the base of her neck.
Then the silence was broken. Shattered by a single sound.
A sharp crack — the unmistakable snap of a twig underfoot — somewhere behind her.
Eliza froze, her heart lurching into a faster rhythm. She turned slowly, scanning the trees. Mist hung low between the trunks, softening every line and shadow, but nothing moved. No figure stepped forward. No animal darted from the underbrush. The clearing appeared exactly as it had a moment ago.
Exactly… and yet not.
Frowning, she rose from her crouch and walked a few paces toward the edge of the clearing. Her eyes caught on a patch of undergrowth to her right — a dense tangle of blackberry and bramble that had been intact when she’d arrived. Now the branches were broken and bent, leaves torn free and scattered across the damp ground. Something — or someone — had passed through here. Recently.
Her mouth went dry.
The sensible part of her mind whispered that it could have been a deer. Or a fox. The forest was full of life, after all. But another part — some long buried instinct for survival— insisted otherwise. Whatever or whomever had been there had not simple been a creature foraging for berries or a badger rooting through the soil.
Someone had been watching her. The certainty of that realization was as irrefutable for her as if the watcher had stepped forward and confessed.
A pulse of unease rolled through her, deeper than anything she had ever known before. She had walked these woods her entire life, alone and unbothered. They were as much a part of her as her own heartbeat. Never —never— had she felt unsafe within them. Until now.
And what had changed?
Only him.
Only the new Earl of Blackburn and his unsettling presence, his arrogant questions, his accusations. Only Gabriel Hawthorne.
Her fingers tightened around the handle of her basket as a soft breeze sighed through the clearing, rattling nearly bare branches overhead and sending leaves skittering across the forrest floor. She was no coward, but neither was she a fool. Whatever had unsettled the forest, whatever unseen eyes mightbe watching from the mist, she would not linger long enough to find out.
Elixa tucked the truffle into her pouch and gathered the few herbs she had already collected. There were still others she had planned to seek — roots and fungi that would not keep long without harvesting — but the task would wait for another day.
Self-preservation, her grandmother always said, was wisdom and not weakness.
With measured steps, Eliza turned and began her walk back toward the cottage. The path behind her remained silent, but the sensation of being followed clung to her like the damp morning mist. It trailed her through the trees and lingered at her back long after the cottage roof came into view, an unspoken question dogging each step. So much so that her steps became more hurried. So much so that as she cleared the small fence surrounding the cottage, she was all but running.
When she was inside, she closed the door firmly behind her, sliding the bolt into place. Her grandmother was in the back, hanging clothes to dry. Taking a moment to herself, Eliza drew in deep, calming breaths as she tried to make sense of it all. His presence. The unseen watcher. Her instinctive fear. It was all very strange, very new and out of character for both her and her surroundings.
Had someone truly been there? Or was this, too, part of the chaos Gabriel Hawthorne had brought into her well-ordered life?
Chapter
Six
Sunday dawned cool and pale, the morning sky gray with heavy clouds as the bells from the small church tolled across the village. Gabriel had not intended to attend services — not at first. It had been years since he’d set foot in a church for anything other than duty, and even then, the sermons had always struck him as more political than spiritual. But the habit was ingrained from childhood, and habit, as ever, won out over inclination.
The villagers of Dunrake-on-Swale turned out in their Sunday best, filling the narrow lane that led to the churchyard. Bonneted matrons exchanged gossip beneath the yew trees, children fidgeted in their starched collars, and the men spoke in low voices about harvest yields and the price of wool. It was an unremarkable, familiar scene — until the murmur of conversation altered ever so slightly. There was just a brief pause and then the rhythmic hum picked up again, louder and sharper than before.
Gabriel followed the change in the crowd’s mood instinctively, his gaze sweeping past the churchyard fence. There, moving with unhurried grace and their heads held high,came the two figures—one all too familiar and who had so thoroughly unsettled his peace of mind.
Miss Eliza Ashcombe had arrived in the company of someone he presumed was her grandmother.
Even the witches, it seemed, attended church.
They were dressed plainly, though not poorly — Helena in a dove-grey cloak, Eliza in the same claret wool he’d seen her wearing before— and there was nothing in their appearance to mark them as different from any of the other parishioners. And yet the distinction was there all the same. It was in the way conversation faltered as they passed. In the way eyes followed them, some merely curious, others cool and appraising, and still others openly hostile.
