Charlotte sorted through her bags once more. A change of clothing, her travel medical kit—fully restocked, with extra items added—a bottle of water, a heating pad, a knife, firelighters, a torch, matches, a cooking pot, a kettle, and dried fruit.
Standing beside her, Elspeth grabbed her wrist. “You’re stalling, Lottie. You been through your bags three times this morning.”
“It won’t hurt to check again,” Charlotte snapped, shaking her off, “and stop calling me Lottie.”
She already regretted taking Elspeth’s offer, but if she entered the forest, better not to go alone. Besides her own supplies, she’d have Elspeth’s, including the knives at her belt.
Kitty Tierney sat across from them, chewing her lip but saying nothing. Apart from Agnes and the children, she wasthe only one Charlotte and Elspeth had told about their plans. Charlotte hadn’t wanted to leave the children alone for two days.
And in case she didn’t return... Well, someone had to make sure they went to the convent.
Not for the first time, she wondered if this was a mistake. She’d told Elspeth she couldn’t go, told Cormac Young she couldn’t go, because of her children, but here she was, leaving them anyway. Safer with Elspeth she may have been, but there was a good chance the forest would swallow Charlotte whole, never to be seen again. Or that she would only leave its depths veined in black, another victim of wood sickness. She resented her mother for all but abandoning her and Arthur after their father’s disappearance; could she risk actually orphaning her children?
But no one else would search for her brother. Sasha would never forgive her if she didn’t do everything within her power to bring him home. And part of Charlotte—possibly a nonsensical part—believed she might find a cure for the sickness if only she saw where it came from.
It was easier to focus on all that than on her own despair should Arthur never return.
Compulsively, she checked her travel medical kit to make sure she’d added glass vials to it like she’d intended. She had an idea of taking samples in the forest. Samples of what, exactly, she couldn’t say. The vials were right where she’d nestled them, wrapped in a pair of gloves.
“Youwon’t be safe,” Sasha insisted. “I could protect you.”
Unbidden, an image of Sasha yelling and hitting a bear with a stick sprang to Charlotte’s mind. Her lips twitched despite herself.
“I’m sure you could, but I’d much rather you stayed here with Miss Tierney. Please, love.”
Grumpily, Sasha banged her feet against the legs of her chair.
“Wheest, my little bug.” Elspeth tweaked Sasha’s pigtails and crouched beside her. “Think I’ll let your mam get ate up? She’ll come back all right.”
“Tell her to let me come! She’d have to say yes if you said.”
Elspeth laughed. “Oh, aye, I reckon she’d do anything I asked. She scowls at me so sweet.”
Charlotte flushed but didn’t dignify the comment with response. She resented how quickly her daughter had taken to Elspeth McIntire (and her trousers) and was trying not to because there was enough resentment in her life already.
Kitty touched the girl’s wrist. “Your mam tells me you like a good bedtime story. Times were I used to tell my sisters stories after Ma sent us to bed. I’ll tell you one tonight, if you like.”
“Every night,” Sasha mumbled, sounding less enthused than she usually did when negotiating such things.
Elspeth chuckled. Kitty frowned at her but merely agreed, “Every night,” and withdrew her hand.
Rain pattered, but when Jonas took Charlotte’s bags outside, everyone trailed out with them. Elspeth strode on ahead. At her insistence, Charlotte had borrowed a mule and gig from Agnes.
The gig was a good idea. Charlotte didn’t know how to ride, but Elspeth knew how to drive, and riding or walking for long periods would be hard on Charlotte. Sitting in the gig would likely be uncomfortable, too, but she’d last longer in a vehicle than on foot.
On their way through the cobbled streets, the villagers had stared. Cormac Young had raised a hand briefly before turning away. All her life, Charlotte had avoided giving the villagers a reason to talk about her, except when she’d married John. Then, the villagers had shrugged and said,Whatcan you expect from a silly young girl but to marry a stranger whose family isunknown?They’d blamed her mother instead, for shirking her parental duties and allowing it.
Now, however, Charlotte was doing something truly impractical, and this time she wasn’t a nineteen-year-old whose whims might be excused as youthful foolishness. Moreover, she’d given Seacliff a good reason for gossip, riding through town in a borrowed gig with a stranger who was, as far as the villagers knew, a single man.
Let them talk, Charlotte thought angrily. She had plenty to say about them, with how they’d always treated her family and her brother in particular.
Elspeth stowed their bags under the cross-seat. Charlotte stroked the mule’s nose, asking, “What shall we name him, Sasha?”
Sasha kicked at a garden plot. When Charlotte held out a hand, Sasha ran to her and buried her face in her mother’s apron. Charlotte’s eyes stung. She kissed her daughter’s forehead.
“Be good for Miss Tierney,” she said, and added, as a kind of prayer, “I hope to see you all soon. Thank you for keeping an eye on them, Miss Tierney.”
Kitty nodded. As Elspeth rearranged the bags to fit better, Kitty grabbed Charlotte’s hand. Raindrops frizzed her fringe and dripped on her nose and cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away.
