Her headache spread from its spot over her eye to the rest of her forehead. Different now, a crying headache, but with that threatening migraine throb beneath it. She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes.
Elspeth set the paper aside. “S’all right, Lottie.”
“It’s not the drawings,” Charlotte said, though it was. “It’s my head.”
Elspeth slid off the arm of the chair. A drawer opened; papers rustled; the drawer closed. Cupboards opened and shut. Elspeth muttered, “Where’d I put that benighted kettle?” The plant creature slipped off Charlotte’s lap. A moment later, Elspeth said in surprise, “Oh. Thanks.”
Water being poured, the clink of a kettle set down, the hiss of steam. Charlotte’s insides needled with guilt. She uncovered her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Elspeth.
“What for?”
“You didn’t find anything of your sister’s. Just more about my family. And now you’re making tea, because my head hurts, instead of continuing your search.”
“Who says the tea’s for you?”
Charlotte was mortified. Elspeth laughed.
“Of course it’s for you, you numpty.”
Charlotte wanted to object to the insult, but it felt so much like a caress she couldn’t bring herself to do so. She rubbed her forehead without saying anything.
Elspeth’s laughter faded. Wrapping her cloak around herself, she returned to her perch on the arm of Charlotte’s chair. Rummaging through the house had warmed her; now she was shivering again.
“Don’t think there’s anything of Maggie’s to find. If she’d been here recently like your brother, likely she’d’ve been in the sketches, or we’d’ve seen something sitting right out in the open. Less’n she took everything with her and got home, but I didn’t come after her until a good week after she was supposed to’ve returned. Told you, I know I’m probably lookingfor a corpse. For a moment, those sketches made me think... but she wasn’t in ’em.”
She ran a hand through her hair. She was seated precariously, one leg swinging off the side of the chair. Charlotte touched her thigh, hoping to comfort her.
Elspeth gazed at Charlotte’s fingers.
“Look, even if I hadn’t already tore the whole house apart... you need someone to take care of you. That’s me, long as we’re together. Whether that’s till our business is done, or...”
Charlotte longed to know what words clung to the end of thator, but she didn’t ask. She patted Elspeth’s thigh, then folded her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t do it again.
Elspeth bit her lip. “Well, I’ll take care of you. And I don’t mind doing it, neither. That’s all.”
The water boiled. Elspeth retrieved Charlotte’s medical kit.
“Which plant? There’s one in here for pain, aye? Or more than one?”
“It’s...” Charlotte couldn’t remember the word. It danced at the tip of her tongue, but all she could come up with wassilverweed, and that wasn’t right. “Just bring me my kit.”
“Sure, you don’t expect a city slicker to know her plants,” Elspeth said with amiable belligerence, but she obliged, then started closing the cupboards she’d wrenched open this morning.
“It’s not that,” Charlotte mumbled. “I can’t...”
She shifted the things in her kit aside until she found the plant. The name of the dried white petals floated frustratingly close to the surface of her mind without breaching it.
Silverweed, her brain supplied unhelpfully, over and over.Silverweedsilverweedsilverweedsilver—
She frowned, massaging her forehead with her knuckles. Elspeth turned from stuffing socks into their drawer and doubled back. She crouched before Charlotte, touching her knee.
“Find anything good down there? God staring back at you, maybe? You’ve been contemplating it long enough to be took for a monk.”
Charlotte handed the not-silverweed to her. Elspeth took it with an air of bemusement.
“Meadowsweet, aye. That’s the one, is it?”
