Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
The cottage was quiet save for the soft crackle of the fire and the rhythmic clatter of knife against board. Outside, the afternoon had already begun to fade, the pale light slanting low through the window, painting the walls in bands of gold and shadow.
Eliza stood at the small table, slicing herbs into tiny pieces.
Across the room, Helena stirred a pot suspended above the hearth, the scent of herbs and broth filling the air.
It should have been a companionable silence — one of those easy, familiar moments that marked their daily life together. But it was not.
There was a weight to it — a sense of waiting, as though something unspoken hovered just beyond the edge of sound.
Eliza could feel her grandmother’s gaze even when her back was turned.
She focused more intently on her task, willing herself not to invite comment.
She knew that look too well — the one Helena wore when she was letting her thoughts steep like tea, growing stronger by the minute until she could not resist pouring them out.
With the task completed, she rose from her chair and handed them to her grandmother who then added them to the pot she stirred.
Eliza turned her attention to the small bread oven built into the side of the hearth.
Using a large wooden paddle, she retrieved the small round loaf from within just as Helena spoke.
“He is a very handsome man,” her grandmother said lightly, as though remarking upon the weather.
Eliza nearly dropped the bread. She recovered quickly, though not quickly enough to hide the flush that rose in her cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”
Helena did not look up from the pot. “I merely observed that he is handsome. Surely you cannot disagree.”
“I—” Eliza hesitated, fumbling the loaf from its pan onto the wooden board. “The Earl is not so handsome as all that.”
A small, knowing smile tugged at Helena’s mouth. “Ah. I did not say which man I meant, child. Yet you seem quite certain.”
Eliza froze, the knife still in her hand. “Grandmama, that is not fair.”
“It is also not untrue,” Helena replied, her tone mild but her eyes bright with amusement. “I am old, Eliza, but far from blind and not yet dead. The grave is far enough away that I can still appreciate the sight of such a well put together man.”
Eliza’s blush deepened. “It hardly matters how handsome he is when he is so terribly high-handed and proud. Arrogant, even.”
“Of course,” Helena said agreeably, stirring the soup. “All the best men are.”
Eliza stared at her. “That is not remotely comforting.”
“It was not meant to be. Merely true.”
Eliza huffed out a breath, crossing to set the loaf on the table between them. “You seem determined to think me smitten, when in truth I find him quite intolerable.”
“Indeed. So intolerable that you cannot cease speaking of him,” Helena murmured.
“I am not speaking of him!”
Her grandmother’s brows rose. “Then I must have imagined this entire conversation.”
Eliza bit back a retort and busied herself with arranging the table — bowls, spoons, the small crock of butter. Her hands moved briskly, efficiently, though her pulse still thudded far too quickly beneath her skin.
Helena, watching her granddaughter with a fond, knowing eye, said nothing more. She merely poured the soup, set it down, and began to eat with deliberate calm.
Eliza followed suit, determinedly silent. They ate without speaking, the only sounds the clink of spoons and the muted sigh of the fire.
When the meal was done, Eliza rose to clear the table. “I think I’ll retire early tonight,” she said, avoiding Helena’s gaze. “There are herbs that must be gathered before dawn. They’re strongest when the moon is still high.”
Her grandmother looked up, her expression unreadable. “A wise plan,” she said softly. “Though I wonder whether the moon is the true reason for your haste.”
Eliza froze for only an instant before forcing a small smile. “You always see more than you should.”
“It is a grandmother’s privilege,” Helena said, leaning back in her chair. “Go on, child. Rest, if you can.”
Eliza inclined her head, her composure brittle. “Good night, Grandmama.”
She climbed the narrow stairs to her room, the floorboards creaking beneath her light steps. But when she reached her bed, she did not lie down. She stood by the small window instead, staring out into the dark line of the forest beyond.
The Earl’s face rose unbidden in her mind — the breadth of his shoulders in his dark coat, the clean angles of his features, the quiet authority in his voice when he’d spoken at church.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips, willing the image away. “This will not do,” she whispered to herself. But even as she said it, she knew it was far too late for such vows.
The forest was quieter than usual that morning. It was almost as if the entire world were still sleeping. Or it might have been, if the remembered fear from previous days hadn’t still lingered.
Eliza told herself it was nothing — merely the natural hush of an early autumn day — but she did not quite believe it.
Her eyes flicked over her shoulder every few steps, scanning the tree line and watching for the slightest ripple of movement.
Every rustle of leaves set her nerves on edge, and every snap of a twig beneath her boots sent a quick jolt of tension through her chest.
She despised the sensation — this watchfulness, this creeping suspicion — and yet she could not shake it.
These woods had been her sanctuary all her life.
She had wandered them as a child and worked within them as a woman, and they had always felt like an extension of herself.
Never once had they inspired unease. Until now.
And still, she came. With the winter coming on, the herbs her grandmother required could not be ignored, and she depended upon Eliza to gather them more and more as she aged.
. More than that, perhaps, she would not allow herself to be driven away from lands that she’d run tame through all her life by fear and shadows.
She was so intent on glancing behind her that she failed to notice what lay before her — until she walked directly into it. Or rather, into him.
The impact sent her stumbling backward with a startled cry, her basket slipping in her grasp. A pair of strong hands reached out, encircling her upper arms and holding her upright when she would have fallen ignobly to the forrest floor.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, one hand pressed to her racing heart. “Are you attempting to frighten me into an early grave?”
Gabriel, looking far too composed for a man who had just been collided with, raised an eyebrow. “I assure you, Miss Ashcombe, the thought had not occurred to me. And I believe it was you who ran into me.”
“You ought not to skulk about the woods without announcing yourself,” she retorted, still breathless. “I might have been armed.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” he replied, his tone maddeningly even.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you following me?”
“I am not following you,” he said. “However, I did come into the woods with the intention of speaking with you.”
“Well, you have spoken,” she replied sharply. “You may go now.”
“I fear I am not finished.” He folded his arms, regarding her with steady patience. “I wish to know why this arrangement exists between our families — the one that grants you and your grandmother residence upon my land.”
Eliza blinked, taken aback by the bluntness of his question. “I am afraid you will have to direct that inquiry to my grandmother, my lord. She has never explained it to me.”
“Never?”
“Never,” she confirmed. “Whenever I have asked, she has dismissed the question as irrelevant. It was all settled long before either of us was born.”
Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “And you have never felt compelled to learn more?”
“Of course I have,” Eliza said, her voice softening despite herself. “But wondering and knowing are two very different matters.”
For a moment, they stood facing one another, the mist curling about their feet and the scent of damp earth heavy in the air. And then, as it had before, the forest changed.
The birdsong faded into silence. The wind stilled. Even the faint rustling of small creatures in the undergrowth vanished, leaving a hush so profound it pressed against Eliza’s ears.
She felt it before she could name it — that same creeping sensation of being watched, of unseen eyes fixed upon them.
“Do you hear that?” she asked softly.
“I do,” Gabriel replied, his tone suddenly sharp.
The stillness shattered an instant later.
A sharp report split the quiet — louder than thunder and far too close.
Gabriel moved before she could so much as draw breath.
His arm shot out, seizing her firmly by the waist as he pulled her down into the damp leaf litter just as something hissed past them.
The ground jarred her bones, and a cry escaped her lips, but he was already shielding her with his body, his gaze scanning the trees with soldierly precision.
“Do not move,” he ordered quietly. Then another loud crack ripped through the silence, but this time there was no mistaking it for anything else. It was gunfire.
The acrid tang of gunpowder drifted on the cold morning air.
Above them, a tree branch splintered and cracked where a pistol ball had embedded itself — scarcely a hand’s breadth above where her head had been moments before.
The realization that his quick reaction had likely saved her life was not something Eliza was quite ready to acknowledge yet.
Acknowledging it made it real, rather than simply an aberration or mere accident.
And she desperately wanted to believe that anyone making such an attempt would surely have to hold in the lowest of regard.
Eliza’s heart thundered so violently she thought it might burst. “Was that—?”
“Yes, it was,” Gabriel said grimly. “Shots. Two of them.”
They stared into the misty expanse of trees, but nothing stirred. No figure revealed itself. No second shot followed. Only the silence — deep and heavy and more unsettling than the sound of the pistol had been.
“Do you believe…” She swallowed, her voice barely a whisper. “Do you believe the shots were meant for you?”
“I do not know,” he admitted, his jaw tightening. “And that, Miss Ashcombe, is what troubles me most.”
Neither spoke for several moments. The forest remained eerily still, as though holding its breath.
Whoever had fired the weapon was either long gone or lying in wait.
And whether the intended target had been the Earl of Blackburn or the granddaughter of the village’s infamous witches, one fact was certain — some unknown person for unknown reasons wished one, or possibly both of them, dead.