“He told me that he found fossils in his garden, you see,” Jane explained for Terence before he even had a chance to speak for himself. “And he was hoping Father could appraise them for their value and decipher what fossils they are. With your permission, I would love to have a look at these fossils.”
“Please don’t fret over the matter on my behalf, Jane,” Terence interjected, perhaps a little too quickly. “I was merely curious about what value they may hold.”
“Oh! Dear, you won’t need Simon for a job like that,” Mrs. Sterling made a gesture toward her daughter. “Jane would be of great help to you if you need something identified. She’s been watching Simon work all her life. Everything he could possibly know, she would know as well.”
Jane flushed but couldn’t stop from holding herself a little higher. She did know her fossils, that much Mrs. Sterling had correct, though her truth may have been exaggerated. Jane was unsure if she would be able to provide Terence with an accurate analysis of the bones, not without her father’s knowing eyes. But if this meant spending more time with him…
“No, no, I wouldn’t wish to trouble Jane that way,” he said, and though Jane’s heart ached at the words, she was emboldened by the fact that he didn’t scoff or laugh at the notion of a woman knowing her fossils.
Mrs. Sterling snorted. “Oh, please, we insist! What else is a girl to do around Cambridge?”
Croquet, walks in the park, visiting the museum—again,Jane thought, but what enjoyment would she get out of them if she didn’t have a companion (who wasn’t her mother) to share them with?
“Just for a day, then? How about tomorrow? Unless you’re preoccupied…” Mrs. Sterling said with a prim arch of her auburn brows.
Terence licked his lips as he looked between the two women. A damp sweat beaded at his temples, making his dark hair and graying sideburns glisten. Lines around his mouth deepened.
Why is he so bothered by the idea of a simple house visit? Surely living in a marsh doesn’t seem so bad… And besides, I’m notthathorrible of a guest!Jane inwardly huffed to distract herself from the rising worry that Terence would turn down her mother’s offer, and thus they would never see each other again.
“Please, Terence?” She stepped forward and fluttered lashes in a toying blink, just as she had done when convincing him to sit beside her at yesterday’s lecture.
The same shadow of a leashed dog returned to his gaze, softening it as he looked at her. That peculiar sadness started to leak through her again, just as it did at the greenhouse. She hoped such sadness was because he, too, was aware of how this could be the last chance they’d see each other if he turned down her offer.
Eventually, to her relief, he nodded. “Alright. I shall be back in the morning. Early. Five or six o’clock? I wish for you tohave all day to work, Jane.”
Mrs. Sterling smiled. “Oh, that’d be perfect!” She held Jane’s shoulders. “We shall see you tomorrow, then, Mr. Hayes.”
“Yes, I shall look forward to it,” he ducked his head in a nod and secured his hat back on. As he turned to leave, he paused and looked at Jane. His mouth faltered once more into that wry grin, soft and plush at its edges. “Thank you for the company today, Jane. I hope to share many more with you before you’re gone.”
She had no chance to wave or offer her own thanks—which sat eagerly on the tip of her tongue—before he left them with a wordless stride.
She didn’t know how to feel other than a newfound hollowed longing, so she just turned to face her mother. She narrowed her eyes when Mrs. Sterling’s grin turned mischievous.
“Were youactuallysleeping this morning, Mother?” she asked, and Mrs. Sterling only smirked before returning to her paints.
CHAPTER
Three
The marshes of Wolf’s Run spanned far into the horizons on either side of the narrow dirt road.
It was an ocean of limply wavering grass and congealed puddles of slop, and all Jane could see through a creeping fog so thick that it blotted out the sun were crosses. There were hundreds of them, sprouted from the mud in sprigs of rust, wood, and stone that the carriage carelessly rattled past every couple of yards.
Jane’s mouth ran dry and her palms sweated within her gloves as she wondered how many of them marked the placement of a body.
Peat ensured that a corpse drowned in a bog would be preserved, making it into something of a mummy. And the more Jane thought of a potential hoard of mummified dead hauntingthe depths of the marsh, the more she fiddled with the trilobite necklace between her fingers. Once she imagined Terence’s brother’s grave being somewhere out in those reedy waters, she decided she was dwelling on the subject too much.
“The villagers believe they bring protection,” Terence’s voice startled her free of her morbid daydreaming as they passed a crudely made wooden cross with several rosaries draped across it. He had been abnormally silent during the ride north from Cambridge, and it waned Jane’s initial excitement about this whole trip into indistinguishable nerves. He was ill at ease, but not because of her. It was something else, she knew it, but not knowing what that something else was made her ill at ease, too.
The leers of the locals did little to alleviate those pins and needles prickling beneath her skin.
As they passed through Wolf’s Run—a gray little village bisected down its center by a road that branched into a spiderweb of alleyways, walls of mills, brick huts, a pub, a post office, a church with a bent steeple, and a graveyard—those who had been on the street abandoned chores of stringing laundry and sweeping front stoops to rush inside, where they then peeked from between their curtains to burn their stares into Jane. Those who remained on the road went still as they watched the cab roll past, lips curled, eyes dark. Jane wished Terence sat beside her so she could turn and hide against his shoulder.
As much as she tried to shake away the sensation, the sight of the multitude of crosses paired with Terence’s silence made it cling to her with cold, sticky fingers.
Protection against what?she questioned behind sealed lips as they passed another cross, rusted and bent.
“Are any of them bodies?” she asked instead. Not that she feared the undead. Though she never carried weapons with her,she at least had a hairpin that, when unsheathed, bore a wicked little blade. A weapon such as that would suffice when fending off the undead, wouldn’t it? Her confidence wavered into oblivion as she reached into her bag to grasp the pin, nestled among the textbook and parchment she’d packed that morning, and the silver bent slightly in her grip.
