Chapter 22
Ruby wove her way through the copse until she spied a small stone building up ahead. The smell of damp clay that hit her—earthy and metallic—told her she’d found what she was looking for.
She pushed the door open and found Charlie right where she’d expected to: at the pottery wheel, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair pinned up in a careless knot. The studio looked like it might once have been a small barn or storage shed but Charlie had transformed it into something warm and bright. Shelves lined the walls, heavy with bowls and mugs in various stages of drying. The kiln squatted in the corner like a toad, heat radiating from it and chasing away the September chill.
Charlie glanced at her and smiled. “Come to have a go?”
Her foot pumped steadily at the treadle, the wheel turning smoothly. Her hands coaxed the clay upward, narrowing the neck of what would soon become a jug. She made it look effortless. Charlie had always been the creative one of the family, whilst Ruby had all the artistic flair of a rock.
“Looking for you, actually. Flora told me you’d be here.”
“Came out first thing this morning. Working clay gives me something to do with my hands and stops me worrying. You should try it.”
Ruby stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind her. “Ihavetried it, remember?”
The first time Charlie had coaxed her into a pottery studio, Ruby had tried to find something soothing in it—the rhythmic spin of the wheel, the quiet concentration—but all she had found was frustration and a wobbling lump that collapsed in on itself no matter how carefully she tried to shape it.
“Tried it?” Charlie said, arching an eyebrow. “As I recall, you sulked for twenty minutes and then declared that the clay had it in for you.”
“Itdidhave it in for me!” Ruby replied indignantly. “It was determined to stay a useless lump no matter what I did.”
She crossed the room and perched on a low stool, tucking her hands into the folds of her skirts. She watched the clay rise and fall beneath Charlie’s fingers and wished—desperately—that she had something like this. Something she could shape. Something she could control. Instead, all she had was waiting. Worrying.
“You haven’t slept?” Charlie asked.
“No. You?”
“Not really.” Charlie’s hands stilled. The clay wobbled and began to slump. She caught it, coaxing it back into shape with gentle pressure. “You’re worried he won’t come back?”
Ruby stared at the floor. “Yes.”
The wheel slowed and finally stopped. “We have to trust him,” Charlie said. “Trust that he knows what he’s doing. We can’t make this work if we don’t.”
“I know,” Ruby replied. “It’s just...” She threw up her hands. “I feel so helpless. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I...I’ve had an idea.”
Charlie wiped her hands on a rag. “Oh?”
“I want to enlist Hamish.”
“Hamish MacLaren? The headman at Evan’s village?”
“As a go-between,” Ruby said, nodding. “If Evan can’t be seen speaking to us, someone has to keep an eye on him, warn us if something goes wrong, carry word if needed.”
Charlie leaned back, considering. “Good idea. We’ll go speak to him.”
Ruby blinked. “We?”
Charlie gave her a flat look. “Of course I’m coming with you. I’m not letting you sneak off alone.”
“Sneak? How dare you? I never sneak.”
“Well, we’ll both be sneaking this time,” Charlie said. “Because we can’t tell anyone else. Not Niall. Not Bryce. If this goes wrong, the fewer people implicated the better.”
Ruby nodded. “Agreed.”
They returned to the house only long enough to get themselves a pair of long, hooded cloaks then they slipped away, cutting through the woods towards Evan’s lands, and keeping to the narrow deer tracks rather than the main road.
The forest smelled of pine and damp leaves and their boots sank softly into the earth. They walked in companionable silence for a while, the only sounds their breathing and the occasional snap of twigs beneath their feet.
