Beatrix was almost home when it struck her that Blackwell himself had once been poor—mother dead, father unknown, only a grandmother to care for him. Odd how her childhood had faded to a half-remembered, impressionistic muddle, as if it were someone else’s past, while everything after her mother’s death was as crisp as a newly developed photograph. Happiness oughtn’t to be so easy to forget.
Were Blackwell’s memories the reverse—a string of dour snapshots followed by hazy recollections?
She passed under the towering trees at the edge of her property, the ones that gave Cedarlawn its name, and crossed through her back-yard garden, making a mental note to weed the next day. The hens in their tiny coop made sweet, sleepy noises as she passed by.
She walked into the house through the kitchen and gave a start at the sight of Rosemarie, alone at the table. Frowning.
“Sit,” Rosemarie ordered, as if Beatrix were her tenant, instead of the other way around.
Beatrix did as she said, feeling thirteen again, about to be told off for talking back in class.Yes, Miss Dane. Rosemarie was no different in essentials now than when she’d been the sole teacher in the town’s one-room schoolhouse.
“You certainly took charge today,” Rosemarie said.
She shot Beatrix the look, the one everybody of a certain age in town had experienced at least once. The look was usually followed by the ruler. Beatrix had the crazy urge to sit on her hands to protect her knuckles.
She cleared her throat instead. “I didn’t see you in the crowd.”
“I stopped into Reed’s for lunch.” Rosemarie crossed her arms. “Didn’t it occur to you that this was not something you needed to fix?”
“What? The town was ready to riot!”
“Nobody was going to riot,” Rosemarie said dryly, “but they would be awfully disgruntled had it been handled less skillfully, and a certain omnimancer would have had his hands full dealing with all the hurt feelings. I can’t believe I have to remind you of this, but please remember you are notsupposed to be making his life easier. The harder his alleged job is, the fewer problems he can cause us.”
“The magiocracy didn’t send him, Rosemarie. They’re not evenpayinghim.”
“And your evidence of this is … what? That he said so?”
“Not everything is a plot against us, for God’s sake!”
Rosemarie pursed her lips. “Don’t waste this opportunity—and don’t be so naïve.”
Beatrix stalked off to her bedroom, angry at Rosemarie precisely because there was no way to refute her arguments. It was all well and good to say it wasn’t a plot, but somethingwasoff about Blackwell’s return. If he’d come home to Ellicott Mills without official sanction, how could he hire an assistant?
And if he really was taking over the omnimancer’s job to give himself a break from D.C., shouldn’t he seem at least slightly happy to be back?
She slipped awayfrom her sister and Rosemarie after church the next morning, certain they would spend at least fifteen minutes debating the Apostle Paul’s seen-and-not-heard exhortation about women with Pastor Hattington, and walked briskly across the street to the omnimancer’s mansion. Before she could knock, its new occupant appeared from around the side of the house, brushing dirt off his hands.
“I hope you didn’t think I would go so far as to require your presence on a Sunday,” he said. “Pastor Hattington would beappalled.”
Beatrix couldn’t help but grin, despite her misgivings about what Blackwell was really doing in town. EllicottMills’ elderly Presbyterian minister went through life in a continually appalled state. She once counted two dozen uses of the word in a single sermon.
She sympathized, there being plenty in the world to be appalled about, but the verbal tic put her in frequent danger of bursting into laughter in the hushed sanctuary.
“You weren’t so concerned about Pastor Hattington’s opinion when you skipped his sermon this morning,” she said, then considered too late that a man used to people following his orders was probably also a man who did not appreciate jokes at his own expense.
“Ah,” he said, wagging a finger at her, “but you see, he’s on my waiting list. Thus, the best thing I can do to stay on his good side is to work through that list as diligently as possible, and for that, I need to get the greenhouse plants growing again. Also, I wanted to stop by Mrs. Clark’s first thing.”
Her heart gave a lurch at the memory of Mrs. Clark’s tears. A child in pain, and no money for a doctor. “How is her daughter?”
He sighed. “Miserable. I’ve got a concoction cooling inside that will dull the symptoms—that’s one of those afflictions we can’t do much about.”
“Mm.” She knew all about such infections. Her mother picked one up at the hospital while recovering from Lydia’s birth, and she was dead in under a week.
“So”—he held the front door open for her—“what brings you here?”
“I was hoping to borrow a brewing manual to look through today,” she said, sincehow exactly are you planning to pay me, assuming you’re not lying about why you’ve come homewas a question best broached carefully.
“Let me wash my hands, and I’ll find one.”
