Arthur avoided his gaze. He certainly had been lonely, as a boy. If he thought about it, he might realize he was lonely still, so it was better left unthought about. He had Charlotte and the children. They were all he needed.
Not that he had them now. Nor would he, unless he managed to escape the vale.
Ira stepped back, releasing Arthur’s collar. “I have a salve that will help with your scratch. Use it whenever you need.”
Arthur touched his cheek gingerly. The scratch didn’t feel any bigger, but it hurt like a much worse injury. Something about the brambles, no doubt. Something magical and terrible to keep Ira in the vale by making any injury incurred in attempted escape worse than it ought to be, which now kept Arthurin the vale, too.
“For what it’s worth,” Ira said, “I think—I think you’re lovely. I’m sorry you can’t leave, but... I like your company.”
Arthur’s chest bloomed with faint warmth, like the first spring flower poking through the snow. He still wanted to leave, if he could—but if he couldn’t, at least he was stuck forever with someone who didn’t think he was odd. Someone who understood loneliness probably better than he did, since Ira lived alone—unless one counted a sentient tangle of greenery—and had, it seemed, for decades.
“It’s a small consolation,” Arthur said, “but thanks for saying it all the same. I’ve— Of course I want to go home, andI’m, er, well—” with a glance at Calyx, whose fronds turned in his direction “—I’d feel better if your guardian weren’t always glaring at me—notglaring,it doesn’t have eyes, but—”
Ira’s lips twitched.
“The point is—” Arthur wasn’t sure how to express what Ira’s words meant to him. “Well, I’m glad we’re friends.”
He blanched; maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Werethey friends, when he’d been here barely more than two days and spent much of it doing chores in companionable silence? So little of the silence in his life had been companionable that it felt like more than enough to him, but he suspected most people would’ve disagreed. Regardless, he wasn’t sure one was supposed toannounceone was friends with someone.
But Ira gave a small smile—a real one, not slanted or sidewise or wolfish—and said, “So am I,” and Arthur relaxed. Smiling that way, he thought, Ira was really quite striking.
Ira turned away.
“I’ll do a couple more shirts tomorrow. Then I’ll start on some trousers for you.”
xvii. In which Charlotte makes a promise she might not be able to keep
By Friday, Charlotte was desperate. She stopped at the general store to see whether any telegrams had arrived for her. None had. Of course. Without the horse, Arthur couldn’t have reached Port Lorne yet, if indeed he reached it at all.
Friday was market day. Shopping and trading for seafood, meat, and produce in the village square, villagers and visiting farmers crowded into the general store for goods they couldn’t get from each other. Busier than usual, Mrs. Armstrong, the wife of the owner, had been annoyed at Charlotte’s insistence on checking for a telegram that couldn’t have come.
“Perhaps it’s for the best,” she said now, unpacking a shipment lately arrived from Glenwhistle.
Charlotte stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”
Sasha and Jonas clung to her hands. Sasha had been uncharacteristically quiet since Maurice’s return without her uncle.
“Not meaning any offense—” Mrs. Armstrong slotted new bolts of fabric into place on the shelves behind the counter “—and Mr. Throckmorton was nice enough in his way—”
Anger boiled in Charlotte’s blood. Sasha’s hand tightened on hers.
“—but you’ve got two mouths to feed as is, and it’s not as if he was much help, was he? If he’d been a half-decent fisherman, or any good in the cannery, it would’ve put you in an awful spot, his being gone, but—”
She broke off, turning aside to help a farmer’s wife who wanted some thread.
Charlotte’s jaw clenched. That was all they’d ever thought of Arthur.He’s an odd one,the villagers said, when they said anything. After childhoods in which they’d bullied him, they’d spent adulthood ignoring him—until whatever had happened with Cormac Young. She was almost angry at herself for having expected them to help find him in the first place.
“Not that it isn’t a tragedy.” Mrs. Armstrong returned to her bolts of fabric. “And your weans without their father all these years—”
Charlotte’s eyes prickled at the unexpected mention of John. The second Mrs. Armstrong drew breath, she’d take the children and go home with their shopping undone. She couldn’t bear any more of the villagers’ heartless sympathies.
“—I understand what a loss it is to you as a personal matter, of course, but you can’t expect our men to go risking their lives for the likes ofhim.”
“Don’t talk about my uncle that way,” Sasha said, far too loudly. A hush fell over the shop.
Mrs. Armstrong peered down at her. “Not meaning any offense, lassie, but—”
“You’re mean.” Tears welled in Sasha’s eyes. “All of you! You won’t even look for him!”
