“You sure about this, Mrs. Prentice?” she asked in a low voice. “Mr. Throckmorton’s nice enough, but you got children. You really think you can find him? With that—thatwoman?”
Charlotte’s skin prickled. Elspeth had kept the disguise on through the village, but she hadn’t bothered in the cottage. Kitty had been astonished to find her sitting in Charlotte’s kitchen and had not warmed to her, eyes lingering with disapproval on Elspeth’s trousers and braces.
Sasha sidled over to listen. As with Jonas the other night, Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to spout false hopes with noreasoning. But she couldn’t bring herself to admit she wasn’t certain at all, either.
“I don’t know.” She left the comment about Elspeth unacknowledged. “But I can’t leave him out there, not if there’s a chance of bringing him home.”
Kitty bit her lip. “I hope you come back all right, Mrs. Prentice.”
She backed away, grasping the children’s hands and glancing suspiciously at Elspeth. Sasha’s eyes were liquid. The sight made Charlotte want to go back inside, sit on the settee with her children tucked on either side of her, and tell them a story as Arthur did while she worked on her needlepoint.
She swallowed. “Two days. Don’t forget.”
Jonas nodded. Sasha merely clung tighter to Kitty’s hand.
“Lottie!” Elspeth had finished with the bags. “You coming or not?”
“Don’t call me Lottie.”
Charlotte clambered into the gig, wedging her cane beside her. Elspeth vaulted into the other seat and clicked her tongue at the mule. The trees rustled in the breeze off the sea. Charlotte held her breath as they closed around her, ducking to avoid the branches reaching across the path like fingers.
The wind seemed suddenly quiet and distant. Leaves rustled overhead, but no wind breached the undergrowth. Though the rain continued, few raindrops made it past the thick canopy.
Charlotte’s skin crawled at the silence. She reached for the wedding ring hanging on its chain from her neck, rubbing it for comfort. John had ventured into the wood occasionally for firewood, or to hunt, never straying far because she’d worried about him, and he’d always returned. She tried to believe his ring would bring her luck as she journeyed through the forest, but she didn’t believe in luck. Each new storm life hurled at her weathered away the little she dared believe. Despite herself, she’d believed the rowan cross would protect her brother. Now his horse had come back without him. She’d been foolish to think anything could keep him safe. If the wood wanted to take him, it would.
She bit her lip. “Should we be doing this?”
“Too late for that. We’re in the forest, and I ain’t turning this mule around because you’re having second thoughts.”
Charlotte regretted, again, taking Elspeth up on her offer. She wondered how many more times she’d regret it before they were done. However it ended. With their siblings found, alive and well, or dead, or—more likely—Charlotte and Elspeth lost to the wood, too.
In the dirt before them, wheel tracks. Light impressions, as might be made by a cart weighed down with nothing more than a man, a cat, a knapsack, and a suitcase, but unmistakably wheel tracks.
“Arthur?”
Charlotte’s voice fell short. In the forest, she felt more insignificant than she ever had in her life.
“Sure, he’ll answer right off if you call,” Elspeth said. “Just off the path, I shouldn’t wonder. Not far from home at all.”
Charlotte scowled.
Glancing at her, Elspeth added, “Probably lost the path.”
“How would you know?” Charlotte snapped, though losing the path sounded exactly like something Arthur would do.
Elspeth smirked. None of Charlotte’s barbs ever seemed to land. Charlotte wasn’t sure whether that annoyed her. Every time she snapped, she remembered how Elspeth had helped her home Monday, without even knowing who she was.
“Been all through here before, remember?” Elspeth nodded at the trees. “The path don’t like to stay underfoot. I don’t know what kinda stories your village tells about the forest, Lottie, but it’s named like it is for a reason.”
Charlotte noted the way Elspeth dodged saying the forest’s name, the same as any villager in Seacliff. She wasn’t what Charlotte expected from a city slicker, except that she was so scandalously familiar in such a short amount of time. It was well-known in Seacliff that folks from Port Lorne and Glenwhistle didn’t behave right.
“Don’t call me Lottie. How’d you find your way to Seacliff, then?”
Elspeth snorted. “What d’you expect me to call you the whole way through this godforsaken forest? ‘Mrs. Prentice’? Sure, must be the trees care just as much for that horseshit as your villagers.”
Charlotte colored at the language, but Elspeth ignored her.
“I’ll leave you right here to be devoured by whatever eldritch beastie wants you the first time you call me ‘Miss McIntire,’ I swear to God, and I don’t care if I do need stitches again and don’t have a healer to do ’em for me.”
