Elspeth scowled. “Might as well be to his face, if they’re going to say it. Can’t deck a man if he’s only insulting you behind your back. Then folks think he’s right, because what’d you get so upset about?”
“I admit it’s difficult to imagine Arthur ‘decking’ anyone.”
“What about you?”
“I should think it obvious that I’ve never ‘decked’ anyone, either.”
“Not that. The villagers never talked about you that way?”
Her dark eyes were curious. Charlotte resisted the urge to look away.
“I made sure they didn’t.”
Elspeth nodded. “Explains a lot.”
“About what?”
“You. How proper you are. That’s it, ain’t it? You think folks won’t talk if you play by their rules.”
Charlotte flushed, mortified. Bad enough, Arthur knowing it saddened her to talk about the family’s losses, but he’d known Charlotte all her life. Elspeth clocking the reasons for her strict adherence to propriety barely a week after meeting was worse.
She opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.
Elspeth grinned. “Speechless, are you? Never thought I’d see the day.”
Charlotte glared at her, propriety be damned. “You—you absolute—”
“C’mon, Lottie. I’m sure there’s a nasty name in there somewhere.”
Nothing rude enough to satisfy Charlotte’s annoyance would agree to come out of her mouth.
“Numpty’d do,” Elspeth suggested.
Charlotte expelled a breath, angry to need a suggestion, but she took it. “Younumpty.”
It did make her feel better.
“Bravo,” Elspeth said with a smile. “Maybe next time you can reach for the big guns, if’n you know any worse words than that.”
She was quite the most annoying person Charlotte had ever met.
xxvii. In which Arthur runs afoul of the wild hunt
Arthur’s neck and hand ached. That was the first thing that was wrong.
The second was that morning light spilled through a split in the tree trunks.
The third was that Ira was gone.
Arthur scrambled to his feet. “Ira?”
Silly to call out like that. He could see the entirety of the shelter Ira had grown for them last night, a ring of wood with a smoke hole overhead—and a thin, splintered gap in one side.
Arthur scooped up the cat, who had been curled into a sleepy ball by the remains of the fire. She grumbled, but he clutched her to his chest, afraid to be alone with that gap in their shelter. He remembered hearing—dreaming about?—claws scraping, something trying to get in.
“Ira?” he called, slightly louder.
No response.
