Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
“Irritating,” Eliza muttered, tossing a sprig of rosemary into the basket with far more force than it deserved. “High-handed. Arrogant. Unbearably proud.”
She paced the narrow confines of the cottage’s main room, still wrapped in her cloak, her cheeks flushed with color and her words growing sharper with each one she spoke.
“And utterly insufferable,” she added for good measure.
“He accused me of trespassing — me — when I have walked those woods since I was barely old enough to toddle. How dare he!”
Helena Ashcombe looked up from the kettle she was coaxing into a gentle simmer and hid a smile behind her teacup.
She had seen her granddaughter annoyed before.
She had seen her vexed by weather, by illness, by an unexpected visitor at the door.
But she had never — not once — seen her quite like this.
“Did he, now?” Helena asked mildly, her tone carefully neutral.
Eliza spun to face her, skirts swishing about her ankles.
“He did. And then he informed me that I ought to ‘confine my herb gathering’ to the garden as though the entire forest did not offer bounty enough for all of us. As though I were a thief creeping about in the shadows rather than a woman tending to her work.”
“Mmm.” Helena stirred the tea, the spoon clinking gently against the porcelain. “And I take it you told him precisely what you thought of that suggestion?”
“Of course I did.” Eliza huffed as she crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “I informed him that he has no authority over me — which he does not — and that he might consider tempering his opinions until he has a proper understanding of the land he’s so recently come to possess.”
Helena set the spoon aside and regarded her granddaughter over the rim of her cup. “I see. And did he take offense to being corrected?”
Eliza hesitated. “Perhaps. I cannot say. He was—” She paused, her brow furrowing as if the word itself eluded her. “—difficult to read.”
“Difficult to read?” Helena repeated softly. In all her years, from the time Eliza had been little more than a babe in swaddling clothes, she’d been an undeniably fine judge of character. And while Eliza herself did not see the magic in that, Helena always had.
“Yes.” Eliza began pacing again, gesturing animatedly as though the motion might help burn away the strange, restless energy coiling inside her.
“He’s so… composed. Too composed. Infuriatingly so, in fact.
He hardly raised his voice, not even when I contradicted him.
And yet there was something about him — something in the way he looked at me, as if he were trying to puzzle out what sort of creature I was and hadn’t quite decided whether I was dangerous or merely inconvenient. ”
Helena’s lips twitched. “Perhaps he has not encountered many women who speak their minds so freely.”
“Well, he should,” Eliza huffed. “It might do him good. If he intends to remain here — and I dearly hope he does not — then he will learn that the Ashcombe women do not shrink from titles or temper their words to soothe the fragile vanities of men.”
There was silence then, save for the soft hiss and pop of the low burning fire and hissing of the simmering pot suspended near it. Helena watched her granddaughter with the same quiet patience she had always possessed, but behind that calm exterior, her mind was spinning.
Flustered. That was the word for it. Eliza — her fiercely independent, unflappable, maddeningly self-possessed Eliza — was flustered.
She had seen her angry before, yes. Seen her unbothered, unimpressed, even openly disgusted when some village youth had dared offer a compliment or — on rare and regrettable occasions — an indecent proposal.
But this was different. This was not indifference dressed up as disdain.
Nor was it the righteous fury she had displayed when once confronted with a clergyman’s accusations of witchcraft.
This was agitation. Restlessness. And something beneath it that Helena had not seen before — a spark she had long been waiting for.
“You dislike him very much, then,” she said at last, carefully casual.
“Immensely.” Eliza’s answer was immediate. Too immediate. “He is presumptuous and insufferable. And proud. Did I mention proud?”
“Twice. And you’ve stated insufferable no less than three times I think.”
“Then I shall mention it again, because it bears repeating.” She sighed, pacing slowing, steps softer now. “And yet…”
Helena’s brows rose. “And yet?”
Eliza pressed her lips together, clearly regretting the slip.
“And yet,” she said more quietly, “he was a gentleman. Irritating as he was, he did not speak cruelly. He did not leer or sneer or make sport of me as others have done. And when I told him he had no authority over me, he did not try to insist that he did. He simply said that he had a feeling we would both be disappointed.”
Helena set down her teacup and leaned back in her chair, a small, knowing smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Ah,” she murmured. “So he was a gentleman.”
“I said he was irritating,” Eliza corrected, a flush creeping into her cheeks. “Irritating and infuriating and—”
“And handsome?” Helena’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
Eliza froze. “I did not say that.”
“No,” her grandmother agreed, the smile now fully formed, “but you thought it.”
The flush deepened. “Grandmama.”
Sensing that Eliza would rebel at any further teasing on the matter, Helena simply rose from her seat at the small work table they used for cooking—be it hearty stews or powerful potions and walked toward the window.
Looking out, she hummed softly, hiding the small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“A rare quality,” she mused, “to find a man who listens rather than demands. Especially one who is rather pleasing to look upon.”
“I did not say he was pleasing to look upon. I said he was irritating,” Eliza corrected, a flush creeping into her cheeks. “Irritating and infuriating and—”
“And perhaps not as easily dismissed as the others,” Helena finished gently.
“Grandmama,” Eliza protested, turning back toward the hearth, “I have no intention of wasting another thought on the man.”
“Of course not,” Helena murmured, returning her attention to the steaming kettle. “Not a single one.”
But as her granddaughter continued to mutter under her breath — about arrogance and entitlement and the sheer audacity of earls — Helena’s smile deepened. She said nothing more, only watched and listened, and felt a quiet certainty settle into her bones.
It had begun.
Eliza did not know it, and perhaps would not for a long time. But Helena did. The air itself seemed to hum with the promise of it. The one they had been waiting for — the one the forest itself had whispered of — had finally come.