Charlotte wanted to comfort her, but that one sentence had been her attempt. Silly to have said it. It was the sort of thing Arthur might have said, and that was well enough for him.
She didn’t like to sugarcoat things, though. If that’s what he did, she couldn’t do the same. If he believed the pleasant things he said, she wasn’t sure how he managed it. Denial, maybe, and that certainly didn’t do anyone any good.
Maybe not, then,seemed a worse thing to say. And if Charlotte had already considered that Maggie might have been here but taken everything with her when she left, Elspeth must have considered it, too.
She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “I don’t dislike you, you know.”
“Sure, it’s a fact I’m just about your favorite person.”
“Don’t...” Charlotte turned toward her. “It’s true that... Well, you do annoy me often enough.”
“There you are.”
“And we’re very different,” Charlotte said, ignoring her. “And goodness knows you have no sense of propriety.”
Elspeth snorted, but it seemed an improvement over the way she’d been staring into the stove. Charlotte heartened.
“But you’ve been good to me,” she continued. “Helping me home when we met, even though you didn’t have a clue who I was, and I know I was rather belligerent about it. You’ve been sharing your cloak with me for two days. I know you’ve been freezing today, but you wouldn’t take it unless we shared.”
“Right,” Elspeth said—acknowledging the borrowed cloak, Charlotte thought, but Elspeth crouched beside the stove to build a fire.
The greenery, sitting nearby in a tight ball, loosened slightly. Tendrils trailed toward Elspeth, turning between her and the stove.
“Don’t eat me or nothin’,” Elspeth said to it.
Charlotte’s lips twitched. Despite herself, she was, in fact, fond of Elspeth.
“I’m not sure what to make of you, I suppose. That’s all.”
Elspeth paused in the middle of sticking a log in the stove. “Gran and Granddad, neither. Must’ve been fifteen the first time they caught me with a girl.”
That hadn’t been what Charlotte meant, but she didn’t respond.
“They’ve come around pretty well in the last twenty years,” Elspeth continued, returning to the stove. “But times are it happens Granddad tells me about some nice man he’s met who’d provide for me good if I ever wanted to settle down, or Gran asks if she can use me to pin up a dress she’s taking in or letting out for someone, and once I’m all pinned in she makes a big deal about how beautiful I am.”
Charlotte resisted the urge to speak, because what had threatened to come out, foolishly, was,Youarebeautiful.
“They’re all right, most times, but then I got all them cousins hanging around, and God Almighty, the way they bang on about me being an old maid, or how I could find a nice widower if I wanted one, or how I’m giving menfolk dirty thoughts on account of my trousers showing off the shape of my legs—”
Charlotte flushed. She hadn’t noticed that herself, when they’d met. Now that it had been said, however—as Elspeth bent forward to light the stove—
Less her legs and more her buttocks, which certainly were shapely.
Of all the ridiculous things to think.
“Maggie’s about the only one who’s ever known what to make of me.” The fire flickered to life. The tangle of greenery relaxed, its tendrils turning toward the warmth. Elspeth shut the door, adjusted the damper, and sat on the floor. “Or she don’t care if she hasn’t. She was twelve when she made me my first pair of trousers. Gran wouldn’t then, and Granddad wouldn’t give me any of his old ones. It’s mostly his, what I wear now. Wore ’em down eventually. But that was my first pair, the pair Maggie made.”
“She’s older?”
Elspeth shook her head. She wrapped her arms around her knees.
“That’s the thing. She’s always taken care of me, Maggie has, never mind she’s the younger. Think I got it into my head over the years she don’t need taking care of, but I worried about her going to Seacliff with Bess—tried to talk her out of it, if you can believe it. Must’ve been the first time in my life me and Gran and Granddad were all right alongside each other agreeing on something. Oh, she was mad. She’s always spent plenty time in the wood, ever since we was girls. Said she’d be fine if anyone would,and why didn’t we trust her, and she was going with Bess anyhow, not by her lonesome. Didn’t much like it when I said she’d be coming home alone, the way they planned it.”
Elspeth rested her chin on her knees.
“Think that made her maddest of all. She thought for sure I’d be on her side when she told Gran and Granddad she was going, and I wasn’t. I was working when she left with Bess, but I figured when she come back I’d make it up to her. Only she didn’t come back. And now we’re here and she ain’t, and the Lord of the Wood ain’t, neither.”
She let out a long breath. “I don’t know what to do.”
