Chapter Ten #2
“Petal? Did she flirt the museum guards into puddles of useless goo? That’s not even her magic, but your sister does have a talent.”
Petal barely even bothered to flirt. It was only that people took one look at her face and became instantly stupid.
“You don’t believe them, do you?” Sorcha asked.
“Well, as it happens—” Briar broke off, groaning. Charles bloody Aster and his horrid mother were coming up the path.
Sorcha followed Briar’s gaze and groaned even louder. “Bloody hell, not those two. I wish you’d knock his teeth out, just once.”
“I can’t.”
“You absolutely can. No one would blame you.” When Briar only shook her head, Sorcha added, “I could knock his teeth out. It would be my pleasure.”
And it would be a pleasure to behold. Briar did not care if that made her bloodthirsty. But instead she could only dredge up her best shopkeeper’s smile and the very last of her patience. “Mrs. Aster, Mr. Aster. Good morning to you.”
Go away, go away, go away.
Charles, in his new hat directly from Piccadilly, and his mother, with her capelet fringed with silver tassels, even though it was far too hot for a capelet of any sort, and her perpetually pursed mouth.
Her familiar stalked beside her, an elegant egret.
Charles’s familiar was a toad and rarely made an appearance.
It was far too common, not nearly smart enough for fashionable company.
Briar thought it rather sweet—the only sweet thing about him.
Briar could not afford to have them here with Petal as she was. They were too nosy, too meddlesome. But she also could not afford to antagonize them either. Not when she had yet to pay her mother’s debts and time was running out.
“What can I get you?”
“You look tired, my dear,” Mrs. Aster said with a glance at Briar’s cane.
“I do wish you’d let us help you. It’s simply too much land for two girls to manage alone.
You must see that now.” Sometimes they were girls; sometimes they were sad spinsters in need of a soothing skin tonic to keep the wrinkles at bay.
Pointed insults, barbed compliments. Mrs. Aster made a meal of them all.
Aster Apothecary was a favorite of the Mayfair set when they visited the island.
And the Asters had an eye on the Foxglove cottage, had done for many years.
They wanted Briar’s garden. Charles’s father had kept them at bay for a time, but now the only things standing in their way were the Foxglove sisters.
Who were struggling to pay their bills, truth be told.
The notoriety of the Keepers’ late visit would not help matters, not to mention Petal’s being involved.
Once word was out about that, Briar might well lose her Midsummer customers, the very ones she depended on to see her through to Samhain.
One never knew until it was far too late if notoriety would end in infamy or ostracism. Infamy would at least pay the bills.
And Mrs. Aster had been denied, and that she would not have. When her attempts to foist her son onto Briar in order to claim the land that way was also thwarted, her ire grew. She meant to have her way.
Briar might have told her that she only had to wait for her rent to come due.
She didn’t, of course.
But every month it was more and more difficult to pay what was owed. Tearooms and green witches were not rare, even on Lyonesse. Their mother’s love spells had been the real draw, as they discovered.
Briar forced herself to breathe calmly through her nose when one of the elms slapped a branch against the window.
Behind it, the sun shone placidly on her boisterous garden, humming with honeybees, birdbaths filled with sparrows.
Charles watched her with the same expression he always wore: some combination of a leer and a sneer that always set her teeth on edge.
“We manage just fine, Mrs. Aster. Thank you for your concern. Tea? Honey scones?” There wasn’t enough charmed honey in all of England to sweeten that woman’s disposition.
But Briar did try. “We have dandelion suns for Midsummer.” They were made of hardened honey with yellow dandelion petals laid out flat like sunrays on willow wands.
“And so many left in the jar.” Mrs. Aster clicked her tongue. “You really ought to try harder, dear, if you mean to make a go of it.”
Briar kept her smile in place while shifting to the right in order to step on Sorcha’s foot. Her friend was beginning to snarl.
“And now this terrible business with the shields,” Mrs. Aster continued. “And Keepers at your door.” She shook her head with patently false sympathy. “Just dreadful.”
“What can I get for you, Mrs. Aster?” Briar asked mildly.
“Sweet custards for a sunnier disposition?” Sorcha suggested with an equally false smile, one that was all teeth. At least she wasn’t biting anyone. Yet.
“Rose-chamomile tea,” Mrs. Aster demanded. “And none of those currant rolls of yours.” She sniffed. “Far too common. I’ll take three strawberry petit fours instead.”
Briar wondered if the woman knew how close she came to Sorcha shoving one of those common currant rolls right up her left nostril.
“You may bring it to us outside, if you please. And sit with my Charles when you do—he’s come all this way to see you. You ought to be grateful. He was so popular with all of the ladies at the assembly room last night.”
Sorcha snorted. Loudly.
Mrs. Aster sailed away. “Come along, Charles. And do use sunwater for the tea. I shall know if you skimp.”
Briar scooped the tea into her least favorite pot and went into the kitchen for the boiling water.
Her worktable was scrubbed clean, herbs drying from the ceiling above.
The cupboard shelves were packed with jars filled with dried rose petals, chamomile flowers, mints, and other herbs.
There were bottles of water gathered under the full moon, under the noon sun, at midnight, from sacred wells, rivers, the ocean.
Sorcha had followed her, incensed. “Why do you let them talk to you like that?”
“You know why.”
“If they call in your mother’s debt, I shall lend you money.”
“You have no money,” Briar pointed out fondly.
“Blast. You’re right. Well, you’re not marrying that tosspot.”
“Certainly not.”
“Fine, then,” Sorcha said, mollified. “Use dishwater for their tea. And add something to turn her stomach, I beg you.”
Briar felt a little better as she carried the tray, willing her hip to stay steady. Was there any fortification better than a fierce friend at your back?
The garden glowed, the sun glinting off the last of the rain dripping from the trees and hanging heavy in the roses.
Clay pots burst with marigolds and irises under the lemon tree Mrs. Aster envied so much.
It did not grow naturally on the island, and it was one of the few that Briar did not encourage anywhere else but the cottage.
She had to use every trick to keep customers coming back.
Even smiling at Charles when he sat and waited to be served upon with that haughty, entitled expression.
Briar set the tray down on the wrought-iron table, still painted white.
She had not yet had a chance to paint everything her mother had insisted on drowning in white.
“That pink is not at all the thing for a house,” Mrs. Aster said, somehow pursing her already pursed lips at the house. “You really ought to listen to me.”
Briar would paint the tables the same pink to match before the day was done.
“Here’s your tea,” she said.
“Do sit with my Charles, after you pour.”
“I really can’t,” Briar said. “I must get back to the counter.”
“I insist!” Mrs. Aster snapped. “Your prospects are not so fine that you can afford to be so particular. Acting as though it is not a great honor. The audacity.”
“We’re going to marry eventually,” Charles said, sounding bored. “Mother always gets what she wants, and your only other alternative is to live on the beach with the vagrants. So sit down and stop embarrassing me.”
The roses grew silver thorns like daggers behind him. He did not notice.
“Well, now. Such romance will make a girl swoon.”
Briar knew that voice: low and rough and perfect, touched with the wild green of Ireland.
Ethan Swansea.