“I didn’t ask him to?—”
“That’s just it.” He cuts me off. “It’s not about asking, Mrs. Wilde. You and your daughters being here alone…it isn’t right.”
“Ain’t lawful in some counties neither,” calls a man from the back, hand in the air. Around him, the other men mumble in agreement.
Mr. Clemens puts up a hand to quiet the crowd. “You’re putting your daughters at great risk, and we know that is not what anyone wants. Not you. Not us. You’re leaving them out here alone, unprotected. No husband to look out for you. Nopropername on the land.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Clemens, but your concern is starting to sound more like a threat.” I take a step toward the edge of the porch, and the men retreat like a wave pulling back to sea, fear in their eyes. It’s the most powerful I’ve felt in my life, save for the moments I brought my daughters into this world.
“No, ma’am.” He bows his head but meets my eyes again in a way that tells me he doesn’t plan to budge. “We just want things done the decent way.”
“My name will have to be decent enough,” I tell them, my voice firm. My next step takes me off the porch, so the hem of my dress drags through the mud and puddles left by this morning’s rain. “For it is the only name that will ever claim this land.”
“But you’re a woman.” He says the word as if it is a curse.
“And?”
“A woman can’t own land. Can’t protect herself and her family.”
“And yet I have.”
Another man from the back of the crowd speaks up, and I recognize his voice without looking for his face. Daniel Blackwell—a man who reeks of soured milk and old whiskey, with a face that looks like an apple rotting beneath its tree. Unbelievable as it is, his temper is worse than his breath. “You’re barking mad, woman. Be reasonable. You’ll only draw trouble if you mean to keep this place on your own forever. It’s already got folks whispering.”
“Better they whisper about me than some of you,” I say. “The village needs something to worry themselves over or else they’ll be bored, don’t you think?”
He snarls his upper lip, revealing brown teeth. “Ain’t it bad enough your line has been tainted by that no-good witch blood?”
His words burn me where I stand, and I feel water from the hem of my skirt brush against my skin through my stockings as I take another step forward. “You know nothing of which you speak.”
“I know enough,” he says with a snort from that oversized nose of his. “All you Wilde women up here alone. Half of you never marry, and the ones who do bury their men far too often.”
A wicked smile grows on my lips then, like mandrake sprouting from the ground. “Yes. Isn’t it strange how the men keep dying, yet the women live on?”
That, at least, seems to quiet them. Worry them. They’re nothing more than they’ve always been—fearful little hornets.
Mr. Clemens steps in front of me, keeping the rest of the men back with a wave of his hand. “We’re here to help, Mrs. Wilde. Like we said…concern is what brought us and nothing else.”
Lies.
“There is a man. A widower, like yourself. John Reardon is decent. He has land of his own, and he’d make an honest husband. We’ve already spoken to him, and he’s willing to take on the burden of your girls. Foxglove could remain in Henry’s name, or you and Mr. Reardon could sell it in. Or save it for your sons one day.” He looks over his shoulder, then back at me, lowering his voice. “For your daughters’ sake, ma’am, I beg you to think on it.”
I don’t need to think on it. “From the day my James died, I’ve done nothing but think. The answer is no.”
There’s a rumble of disagreement, and it surprises me when the youngest boy speaks up. “But surely you don’t mean to leave your daughters with nothing, Mistress. Mr. Reardon?—”
“They will not be left with nothing, not so long as Foxglove stands.” My voice is icy as I stare at them, an odd companion for the fire I feel in my gut, in my palms. “This house will be more than enough for them.”
“A house with no husband is?—”
“These walls were built by the hands of Wilde women.” I’m shaking now, my voice scarcely escaping my bared teeth. “The well was dug with our sweat and bloody fingers, the land cared for by our souls. No man had a hand in building this place, and none will claim it. Not as long as Wilde blood flows through our veins.”
“It’s unnatural,” someone shouts from the back, though I can’t tell to whom the voice belongs. It doesn’t seem to matter. They have but one brain between them all.
I take my time, looking over the faces of each one of them. I want to remember their eyes. “Unnatural? Is that what you think?”
Their heads bob.
I take another quick step toward them, and again, the men move back as one, like water crashing against a rock in a stream. As if I am stone, commanding their direction. “What’s unnatural is thinking the moment you were born a man, God placed the world in a box and handed you the keys for safekeeping. You are not needed to protect—not me nor my girls—and as long as I live, I vow it. Gentlemen, you will own neither Foxglove nor this land. Your keys may have gotten you inside a lot of doors, but they are no good here.”
