Chapter 14
Fourteen
After combing his hair as neatly as possible with cowlicks like his and applying wax to the ends of his mustache, Harry sat down among the moth collection that had overrun his sitting room.
Several weeks ago, before he had begun to make such regular trips to York, Harry had begun a sketch of Dicycla oo.
Its beige wings were made of intricate patterns, and a heart adorned the center of each.
It was most romantic. Harry pushed away little flutters of excitement when he imagined telling a woman about the beauty of this creature one day, maybe even showing her his detailed sketch.
Would she hold it up to the light and study it closely, her eyes shimmering with wonder?
Perhaps women were not wooed by declarations of love made by moths.
But maybe, just maybe, one particular woman could be.
In just an hour, he would leave for the station. Staying away from York was proving difficult. Several five-hour train passages were an appropriate sacrifice to visit a friend. And beyond friendship, he had made a vow to assist Lady Skelton.
Right now, all he could do was buy her more time.
Lord Skelton had visited his office each week, requesting Harry to put pressure on Agnes to move from the home, perplexed by how long it was taking for him to receive his property.
Harry assured the baron that these matters took time.
Widows couldn’t simply be kicked out onto the street.
Harry’s fervent attention to the accounts did enough to convince Lord Skelton that necessary procedures were happening, but slowly.
Harry’s stalling tactics were working for now, but still he could not locate the missing steward, nor did he find anything new in his examination of the Skelton records.
Harry had admitted to himself that his reasons for visiting Lady Skelton were just excuses, some more convincing than others.
In his first visit to York, he inventoried trivial estate holdings that Richard had mentioned in his ledgers.
She had invited him to stay for tea, and they spent the rest of the morning in easy conversation.
The next visit was to obtain her opinion on the staff that served the Skelton properties so he could make appropriate recommendations to Lord Skelton.
It was something that could have been completed through written correspondence, but he made the journey anyway.
She had looked puzzled by his inquiry, claiming all of her staff were competent and treated her like family.
The staff obviously adored her as well. They stared Harry down with caution, judgement, and a healthy dose of disdain.
When they chatted over tea and Harry made her giggle with stories of his brothers’ antics, flashes of maroon across the open door served as constant reminder that he was under close observation.
Ward peered into the room every few minutes, sending silent warnings to Harry that he’d better stay in his chair.
The housekeeper made him a lunch for the road, encouraging him to say his goodbyes.
The younger staff were more amused with his frequent visits. Kitty blushed furiously whenever he was around, and the footman repeatedly gave Harry winks and approving nods when Ward wasn’t looking.
Bram, on the other hand, was aligned with Ward’s mission.
The creature alternated between eyeing Harry suspiciously—sometimes perched protectively over Agnes’s lap, other times lurking farther away—or hissing at him.
There were times when he thought the cat had begun to warm up to him, but a quick swat on his hand told him otherwise.
Harry couldn’t recall what excuse he had made for visiting Agnes today.
His work in London had stalled, and his body had become fatigued from the constant train travel.
That didn’t stop him from boarding the train to York after visiting his office to postpone his meetings.
This was his fourth visit in the past ten days.
The stiffness in his back and the pain in his tailbone were evidence to the fact he was pushing himself too hard.
“I’m afraid Skelton plans to begin refurbishing the house by the end of the month. But I promise, Agnes. I’m trying everything. I’ve looked through all of the late Lord Skelton’s ledgers. Maybe there are other properties, other accounts—”
“No. Richard didn’t promise me another property. This is the only one that’s home for me. The end of the month is too soon.”
“I don’t think Skelton would forcibly remove you, but I do expect you should prepare yourself for—” He shifted in his chair, groaning and tilting his head to the side. He thought he’d hidden his pain well, but Agnes’s eyes darted to him.
“Harry? Are you feeling well?” His pulse quickened, knowing that she had been watching him closely enough to notice the small signs of his discomfort.
“I’m all right, just getting comfortable.” It wasn’t true. The pain had begun after the third trip to York, and after sitting for the entirety of the afternoon with Agnes, it felt like a knife through the shoulder blade.
“But your face when you moved—you’re in pain.” Having this much of Agnes’s attention and concern was addicting. Heat encircled his body, distracting him from the pain in his shoulder.
“It’s just a stiff back from sitting on the train.”
“Where is the pain?” She moved to the edge of her chair.
“Usually here.” He patted his upper back. “But sometimes it radiates lower.”
“If I may, I could provide some relief and release the tension.” That sounded absolutely delightful to Harry, and his mind immediately conjured multiple ways that Agnes could release his tension.
No. That’s not what she meant. Friends don’t offer that.
“No need to trouble yourself. Some simple stretches when I get home tonight should be sufficient. Maybe I can even convince Mrs. Abbot to bring me a hot bath.”
“I insist. Please, allow me to assuage my guilt over you burdening yourself with such frequent travel for me . . . I mean, for the Skelton estate.”
“It’s no burden. It’s part of my job.” He had promised her husband that he would handle all matters of the estate upon his death. This was probably not what the man had expected. “Besides, I’m really starting to enjoy this city.” Because of you.
“I will just be a moment. You sit here and eat these chocolates,” she commanded, pushing the plate of confections into his lap.
Her proximity flustered him. He no longer commanded his own body. She did. Agnes scurried from the room with silent footsteps. The same silent footsteps that had captivated him from the very beginning.
Running up the stairs, Agnes knew she would have to work fast before Harry perished from Ward’s lethal gazes in the parlor.
She rushed through the door of the apothecary, and it bounced against the wall.
Her fingers traced the labels of vials filled with various oils before finding what she needed. Oil of garlic. Oil of ginger.
She tore a strip of fabric and folded it into a large rectangle.
In a bowl, she combined warm water from her iron kettle with several drops of oil from each vial.
He would leave smelling like the beginnings of Mrs. Smith’s signature stew, but she knew it would give him relief by reducing the inflammation that was causing the pain.
Her reappearance in the parlor surprised him. He was standing to look at the landscapes on the wall of the Skelton country estate, stretching his arms over his head. He jolted around.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“You walk so quietly. It’s almost as if you were a ghost or . . . a witch.”
She had been told that before. It was something that cultivated the rumors, always unintentionally appearing behind the people when they spoke ill of her.
She noticed Harry’s hesitancy to say the words, weary of bringing them into the conversation.
There were witches in the city, but she wasn’t one of them.
And there were ghosts in the house, but she wasn’t one of them either.
Her unsettling propensity for walking quietly had developed as a child as she tried to make herself disappear in the one-room flat when her mother had guests. It was safer to remain undetected by the men, so she hid away in the alcove tucked behind the curtain.
“It’s a habit.” She shrank in shame at the memories.
While Agnes had told herself over the years that nothing had been her fault, she still couldn’t make the pressing weight of it all go away.
It was hard to forget the many horrid nights of sitting in front of her secret window, watching the people in the alley below to block out the sounds and smells from the other side of the dank, dusty curtain.
A whiff of the pungent liquid in her bowl broke through her memories and brought Agnes back to the present. She looked at Harry’s shoulder under his jacket and shirtsleeves. She had been so focused on concocting the herbal compress that she hadn’t considered how she would apply it to him.
“I need–I need to apply this to the troubled area. If you would be so kind as to . . . remove your clothing so I may lay this on your shoulder.”
Her own stammer took her by surprise. She was an herbalist. Over the years, she had treated hundreds of patients, many of them men, and a good number of them young, working men. Never before had she been shy in her work.
He looked around the room and focused on the door behind her. “You want me to remove my jacket?”
“Yes,” she said, gaining confidence, just a hint. “And then you will need to unbutton your shirt and pull it down past your shoulder.”
“And this will help with the pain?” Harry questioned, nodding to the bowl she had placed on the tea table.
“It is a warm compress mixed with oil of garlic and ginger. Both assist in reducing inflammation, which is causing your stiffness and pain. It’s a bit potent, though. Few will want to share your train car this evening. I hope you enjoy the solitude.”
She wafted the aroma from the bowl in his direction. His eyebrows crept up to his forehead and his eyes watered. He laughed and her own laughter mingled with his. The beauty of the melody struck her.
Slowly, he brought his hands up to his jacket buttons, and she then heard the commotion from the hallway.
“Go!” It sounded suspiciously like Ward.
A footman tumbled into the room and then straightened himself and displayed a false, overdramatic grin. “Sorry for the interruption.”
From outside the door, Ward cleared his throat. The footman continued, “I’m here to offer my services of applying the remedy to Mr. Evans. Lady Skelton, you may wait in the hallway.”
Her authority of the house was being challenged. Rather than feeling insulted, she was embarrassed that she had almost put herself in a compromising situation.
She needed to remember the social rules she had learned when she first became a baroness, not for the sake of her title, but for the sake of her role in the community as an herbalist. If people no longer trusted her judgement, they might stop coming to her for help.
There was also Harry’s reputation to protect.
“Very well. Mr. Evans, I will give you privacy.” Her polite expression cracked as she ran out the door.
After the remedy was applied, they had finished their tea and Harry had left. She had not been able to hide her humiliation, but at least neither one of them addressed what had happened.
She walked him to the foyer to bid him goodbye and returned to the drawing room to pick up one last chocolate. There was no better cure for embarrassment. She paused at his teacup.
While Ida told fortunes from information she gleaned in visions, Edith read tea leaves.
She passed this knowledge onto her, though Agnes did not use the energy from the other realm to guide her readings.
She hadn’t practiced the art since Edith’s death.
Agnes was more interested in what went into someone’s teacup, rather than what was left behind.
Yet she remembered enough to decipher basic prophecies.
Curiosity won, and Agnes lifted the cup.
The shape revealed itself at once. She tried to yank her eyes away.
Her stomach twisted around the guilt formed by her uninvited intrusion into Harry’s private life.
He had not asked her to read his fortune, nor did he know she was capable of such.
But try as she might to look away, she couldn’t stop staring at the shape left behind in the leaves near the rim of the cup. A parasol.
It was a simple composition of a semi-circle and a curved line, easy to overlook, but Agnes was well acquainted with this shape. Edith, being the romantic that she was, loved to see parasols in her clients’ leaves. It was the symbol of a new lover.
Her gut lurched. Harry was a deserving partner. She should be delighted that he would find love, and so soon. Its placement at the edge of the cup signified that the fortune would play out in the next few weeks, if not earlier. He might already know her.
Harry would make a great husband, if that was his future, evidenced by the tenderness that existed within their friendship. He was funny, attentive, and caring. And if the way her body reacted to him was any sign, he was more than capable of igniting passion.
But it wouldn’t be her. She was a widow with more than ten months left in her mourning, and Harry was a respectable man. He wouldn’t court her while she still wore black.
She continued to examine the cup, focusing her attention clockwise around the edge. Her jealousy and curiosity glued the teacup in her hands despite her misgivings. A sheep—good fortune. A stork—new beginnings.
Frustrated, she flipped the teacup over onto the saucer. A loud clink echoed through the room, and footsteps approached the door. Kitty stopped, startled.
“Do you need anything, my lady?”
“No.” Agnes brushed past her maid and fled from the room for a second time that day.
In the attic, Agnes mixed the herbs with a heavy hand, grinding them into a smooth paste. Realizing that she was taking her anger out on the plants, she put the pestle down and lowered her face into her hands.
It was true that she had made a friend in Harry, but with new love coming into his life, his attentions would move elsewhere.
His frequent visits would slow. No woman would allow her paramour to go on nature hikes with another, especially a widow with their reputations for taking liberties.
And especially not a peculiar woman like her, the Witch of York.
Here in the city, few people believed the rumors, besides school children who repeated the story as a playful diversion.
Most people in York knew of her actual talents, having benefited from her remedies themselves or knowing someone who had.
However, she was still a mystery in London.
Richard’s death had only revived the old rumors, painting her not only as an outcast, but a dangerous one.
What man would tie himself to that legacy?