Chapter Eighteen
Ethan Swansea did not murder her.
That was her first thought when she bolted awake. She could not say if it was because he had definitively decided not to, or had simply not gotten around to it.
Her second thought was that he had already gone, and she felt unaccountably cross about it.
She had slept better last night than any night in her recent memory.
And her not-so-recent memory. If the scariest thing in the room decided not to murder you, what fear was there for anyone else?
But then she had opened her eyes and she was alone with the knitted blanket and the tray of teacups she kept forgetting to bring back downstairs.
Her peevish mood did not improve upon having to stumble to the kitchen half awake, to get the baking started.
Sorcha brought the bread and the festival rolls, but Briar was the one who made the petit fours and the profiteroles and the custard tarts.
It was her least favorite chore. She always preferred to be in the garden.
She wanted to see how the jasmine clippings were faring, how the plum trees in the orchard were doing now that she had filled their roots with rock crystals.
If the slugs had been well and truly convinced to abandon the lettuce.
The cabbages and the leeks and the carrots would do so much better in a proper greenhouse, even with the added benefit of her magic.
Slugs did not seem to care if you were a witch or not.
But first: petit fours and cake in the shape of roses and hearts and mermaids.
Midsummer Festival was no time to go lax in the baking department. Especially as the visitors were now quite literally trapped here and everyone wanted a pastry when things turned strange. Chamomile tea might soothe frayed nerves, but sweets worked miracles.
She carefully measured flour into bowls, not wasting even a pinch.
Salt, honey. Dried currants for the iced buns, orange slices for the cakes.
Frosting colored pink with the help of beet juice for the roses she piped onto anything that could do with a bit more decoration.
Her mother had used them for love-spell cakes, but they had become tradition even without her magic.
Briar’s mood was further sabotaged when there was a hesitant knock at the door.
It was too early for customers this far up the hill.
They tended to take their breakfast in the hotels or the coffeehouse that served coffee, and chocolate pots out on their white-painted docks.
Briar wiped her hands on a towel. “Come in.”
A very tall, stoop-shouldered man ducked inside. Briar’s heart sank.
Mr. Crane, her solicitor.
He smiled as he took off his hat. His bald head gleamed. “Miss Foxglove.”
“Good morning, Mr. Crane. Would you care for some tea?”
He shook his head. “I’ve come for your mother’s debt, you see.”
“It’s not due for another two weeks, Mr. Crane. I promise you that they shall have every penny.” Even if she had to sell every spoon, every flower petal. Or make a thousand marzipan doves.
He bobbed his head this time, twisting the brim of his hat. “I’m afraid I don’t think it will be enough. I cannot represent you.”
Briar shut her eyes briefly. “My mother hired you for her will.”
“Yes, and I’ve seen to my duties. I was not party to the debt agreement. I would have encouraged your mother toward better terms.”
“I know.”
“But it’s out of my hands, I’m afraid.”
The mint on the windowsill wilted. “I see.”
“Don’t blame your mother. I too have a debt to pay,” he replied. “And the terms have changed.”
His debt was to Mrs. Aster and Charles, she would bet her hollyhocks on it. He was all apologies. And perspiration. He was not an unkind man, merely disinclined to fight the current in any way. And the Asters were not just a current—they were a deadly undertow.
Briar wanted to wilt like the mint. She forced herself not to. Also, not to scream. Shriek. Screech. Break something into a hundred pieces. She curled her fists, breathed in the smell of the fire, the dough, the sugared violets. Tea steeping in a pot. Rosemary from a clay pot by the door.
“I see,” she said again, finally. There were no other solicitors on Lyonesse whose services she could afford. No way to fight her mother’s debt. She had borrowed an ungodly sum and promised to return it within the year, using the cottage as leverage.
Briar would never make enough money to cover it in such a short time. She knew it. He knew it. The Asters knew it.
“I am sorry, Miss Foxglove,” he said before taking his leave. If the lilac bushes poked a branch into the back of his head, it had nothing to do with her.
She refused to cry. It would solve nothing.
They had lived here for nearly twenty years, when her mother had finally saved enough to move them to a fine cottage on the hill where she would not have to sell love charms furtively at the back door.
They had lived in a cramped gatehouse before then, on the edge of the moors, at the crossroads to the main way into Haven.
Briar had not minded. Her mother had minded very much.
Petal would have lived in a hole if it meant people stopped staring at her face.
They might yet have to resort to that.
But, as pressing as it was, it was still a problem that would have to wait.
She needed to help Petal first. They could worry about the roof over their heads when her sister woke up, when the shields lifted.
When the Keepers found her and arrested her, forcing her into an iron collar.
When the London museum locked her in a dungeon, or whatever it was they did to thieves who were smarter than they were.
No.
That line of thought was not helpful either.
Today she would fill the glass cases with delicate petit fours and brew sun tea and hunt for the moon.
She rubbed the mint leaves between her fingers. “Sorry,” she murmured. It perked her up immediately, its bright and crisp scent in her nose. A balm.
But when she glanced out of the window, her heart did not just sink—it felt as though it seized entirely in her chest.
All of the flowers in her garden had turned white.
The purple delphinium, the yellow larkspur, the red hollyhocks. The pink foxgloves, the blue cornflowers, the orange poppies.
All white, every petal and blossom. White as bone, white as salt.
Moon-white.
Ethan was still in hell.
And it continued to be ruled by a woman who should have been plain but was, in fact, alarmingly the opposite.
She was obstinate and charming and fascinating.
Her curves made him sweat. And he had been in regular contact with mermaids and sirens since the age of fourteen.
He was used to beauty, murderous and otherwise.
But Briar was unique. Her voice was soft, throaty. Made to moan his name.
Hell.
He watched her from the kitchen garden door, unnoticed.
She attacked a bowl of batter as if it had personally insulted her.
There was frosting all around her in bright pinks, mossy greens, lilac.
Flour dusted her arms and the tip of her nose, wrinkled with concentration. There was a furrow between her brows.
He wanted to eat her up.
At least the dark smudges under her eyes had faded. He had watched her sleep until he was content that she was truly resting, not merely pretending in order to jump out of bed at the first opportunity on some other foolhardy mission to save her sister.
Miss Petal Foxglove had a lot to answer for.
Iron Crows did not cleave to their families for this reason. If you stole amulets and grimoires and magic that did not belong to you, consequences came for you—but sometimes also for those who knew you. Better to surround yourself with other thieves and troublemakers.
They knew what to do when magical cargo exploded in the hull or when Keepers and museum gits came to your door.
And there were too many damned doors to this small cottage.
Front, back, front shop door, side shop door, kitchen door.
He’d already warded them all with iron nails and technically illegal bone dust from the Iron Witches, but he was running out of supplies.
He’d have to go back to the ship, where Anais and the others had already caught a Crow and two tourists attempting to climb aboard.
Needless to say, they did not make it.
And climbing anything at all would not be possible for them for some time.
Haven might consider itself the epitome of civilized behavior and graceful living, but that only meant it would be the first to devolve into chaos and cruelty when fear and scarcity truly hit.
He had seen it before. When the pearls and the freckle lotions and the glamours weakened, everything would change.
He watched as Briar crossed to the window where a fat bumblebee knocked against the glass, disoriented on its quest to get back to the garden.
She lifted the latch, scolding gently when it veered toward her, confused.
She cupped her hands, leaning out to place it on the rosebushes invading the side of the cottage.
Then she went back to icing little cakes with yellow roses.
She did not look particularly impressed with her work, which was delicate and fussy.
Not at all words he associated with her.
Where was the spark in her eye, the one she had when she tossed a teacup spell at two Keepers?
The flash of a grin when she sent ivy and brambles and thorns on little errands?
Did she even realize how she smiled then? As if she were full of sunlight.
But this cottage kitchen, her wayward sister, this bloody sparkling village… They were stealing something vital from her.
And he did not care for it.
Even if she was a softness he couldn’t have. Shouldn’t want.
Desperately craved.
Might yet commit murder to protect.