Beatrix spentSaturday morning catching up on house cleaning and the early afternoon mending stockings. Then she slipped out the back door to continue where she’d left off with Peter.
Rosemarie, harvesting beets in the garden, straightened and gave her that long-practiced look. The one for wayward children.“Whereare you going?”
“On a walk with me,” Ella said, leaning out of the doorway. “You’ll keep watch over Lydia, won’t you? Hang on, Beatrix—I need to get my boots.”
“Well.” Rosemarie returned to the beets. “All right, then. But please do recall whose turn it is to make dinner tonight.”
Beatrix wished Rosemarie would recall which of them was the landlady.
Ella rushed out, saying “sorry!” in a way that suggested they really hadagreed to go for a walk and she’d delayed them. Into the woods they went, dried leaves crunching under their feet. Beatrix caught Ella’s mischievous expression and laughed.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “Extremely well-timed.”
“I left my grade book at the schoolhouse. Figured I might as well walk you most of the way toyourdestination.”
Beatrix linked arms with her. “I had no idea I needed to start accounting for myself to Rosemarie.”
“I’m not the only one who’s noticed you’re spending a lot more time with our omnimancer.”
She groaned. “Honestly.”
“You must admit it looks suspicious.” Ella elbowed her. “And is.”
“He’s got an excellent library,” Beatrix whispered.
Ella smiled. “Temptation indeed.”
They walked along in silence for a stretch until Beatrix noticed that all the humor had drained from Ella’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh.” Ella laughed self-consciously. “Nothing. I got a letter from my father yesterday and was just stewing over it.”
“Not bad news, I hope?”
“It was a letter from my father. That in itself is bad news.”
Beatrix winced in sympathy and guilt. Ella spoke so infrequently of her life before Ellicott Mills that it was easy to forget shehada family, let alone one that caused her pain.
“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing Ella’s arm. “That’s even worse than I’d imagined your relationship to be.”
“Don’t be sorry—I’m delighted that all I have to put up with is the occasional haranguing by mail.” Ella shook her head. “I was so happy to get out of his house.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“No, but thank you.” She snorted. “I would, however, like to tell you about Marty Brocknell and the frog he smuggled into class on Friday. Pardon me—frogs.”
Beatrix let Ella deflect the conversation without objection. Some things were better left unsaid. Like dreamside.
When they reached Ella’s towpath to the school, Beatrix trudged on alone toward Peter’s house, thinking about possible futures. He might fall in love with another woman, which presumably would free her—from these feelings, ifnot from their sleeping bond. Or he might not, and she would go on like this, unable to form a connection with another man.
Or he might be killed.
As she shuddered over this thought, a stick snapped somewhere behind her. She turned, expecting Ella—back to tell her something—but nobody was there. Nobody she could see.
Her arms goosepimpled under her layers of clothing. The possible future this suggested was extraordinarily easy to imagine.
Garrett, standing invisibly a few yards away. Slipping into the mansion behind her. Seeing her break the law, hearing too-revealing conversations. Arresting Peter. Arresting her. Torpedoing her sister’s efforts—and Peter’s.
She had to shove down the instinct to run. Instead, she walked on to the Victorian at a sedate pace, never once looking over her shoulder. When Peter responded to her knock, she squeezed in before he’d fully opened the door and pressed it shut with her shoulder. Hard.
