Charlotte glared at her.
“Need help getting uphill, don’t you?” the woman asked. “Must be your cottage I passed back there. Give me your arm. I’ll help you home.”
Charlotte flushed but begrudgingly allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. The woman took her medical bag over one arm and offered Charlotte the other.
Breathing hard, Charlotte leaned against the woman with her cane in her other hand. Despite the weak sunlight, the warmth made her dizzy and winded.
“All right?” the woman repeated, but Charlotte couldn’t respond until she’d caught her breath.
“Fine,” she gasped. “Let’s go.”
They made their way uphill. Although her cane helped, Charlotte was grateful for the support. Her father hadn’t thought to build handrails alongside the stairs all those years ago. She hadn’t thought about it, either, until her illness.
At the door of the cottage, the woman turned to go, but Charlotte said, “Half a moment.”
“Need help getting in?”
“No, but if you’re going down to the village, let me grab you a hat.”
“The sun ain’t so bad.”
“It isn’t that.” Charlotte considered the woman’s clothes, thinking uncomfortably of Agnes and her supposed cousin. When hunting, Gracie Buchanan might’ve gotten away with trousers by virtue of her riches, but this woman didn’t look rich. “Seacliff isn’t likely to take kindly to a woman running about in trousers. It’ll do you better to disguise yourself as a man, if you can. If you won’t be here long.”
The woman looked her up and down, like she was tryingto decide or communicate something, but Charlotte couldn’t imagine what.
Seeming satisfied, the woman nodded and followed her into the cottage. “I won’t be here long. Two, three days at most.”
The children’s voices trailed from the kitchen as Charlotte led the woman into the sitting room.
“...going to see if she’s on her way back,” Jonas was saying anxiously. They relaxed when they caught sight of their mother, but their brow furrowed at the stranger by her side.
Sasha, on the other hand, delighted in their unexpected visitor.
“Why are you wearing trousers?” she asked, eyeing them enviously.
The woman chuckled. “Because I don’t much care for frocks.”
“Me neither,” Sasha said, “but Mama and Uncle Arthur make me.”
Charlotte started up the attic stairs. “Please don’t encourage my children.”
Head spinning, she paused with her hand on the wall. The stairs were open on one side, and she had a sudden, horrible vision of herself falling off of them and breaking her neck.
Jonas appeared at her side. “What do you need, Mama?”
“That old flat cap, love. The one your uncle never wears.”
Jonas nodded, scrambled up to the attic, and returned with cap in hand. It was a hideous brown thing Charlotte’s mother had bought for her brother when he turned seventeen because, as she’d said,every young man needs a cap. Arthur had tried it on, thanked her politely, hung it on a peg in the attic, and never worn it. Their mother hadn’t noticed.
Charlotte handed the cap to the woman. “Here.”
“Awful ugly,” the woman said, but she set Charlotte’smedical bag on the floor, coiled her braid on her head, and jammed the cap on over it.
Charlotte’s chest stabbed with annoyance, though she and Arthur had always thought it ugly, too. “All the more likely to do the trick, then. The village men don’t choose their hats for looks.”
The woman tugged at her clothing, pulled the cap low over her eyes, and adjusted her stance. When she had finished, her figure was more or less hidden in folds of fabric, and what was visible of her face might’ve belonged to a boy.
Her voice dropped half an octave. “Thanks.”
