Page 64 of Bane Bloom

“Heavens, no,” I said, touched. “It will be delicious. But you don’t have to—”

“I’m going to stay on at the house, too, if that’s all right. For as long as you’re here. I don’t wish to get in your way, but—”

“I’m glad, Thomas. I’m grateful.”

He nodded, and he moved to unhitch Daisy. I stood mesmerized for the span of several heartbeats, watching his movements as he worked. Listening to him murmur to the mare.

At last I made myself turn for the house, ignoring the butterflies flitting around in my chest. Ignoring my mind spinning out a fantasy of Thomas and me living on in this house together. Or at least trying to ignore it.

I brought myself back to reality by letting Thomas’s words echo: “For as long as you’re here.” Which of course was only a matter of weeks.

As I crossed the rose garden to the front door, I noticed pops of color where some of the buds were just opening. There were bushes with pink, peach, white, yellow, red, and even black buds. The branches of a weeping willow dangled over the iron fence to the south, stirring in the breeze. I spotted a stone bench behind the curtain of silvery leaves—another inviting seat from which to sketch.

This place was an artist’s paradise. There would never be a need to sketch the same subject twice.

On my way upstairs to change into a dress more suitable for working, I realized I was eager to return to the glasshouse, despite its perils. It was easier to face them with curiosity and an open mind knowing they weren’t products of a diseased imagination. Having a Viking protector didn’t hurt.

After changing, I went down to await Thomas’s return. I noticed he’d brought what was left of the curd tart from his hut and left it on the kitchen worktable. I cut and ate a slice while boiling water for tea.

I drank my tea in the dining room, then picked up one of my sketchbooks to draw the daisylike ragwort flowers I’d noticed in the churchyard—a spring-blooming variety that I’d also found in London churchyards. A hardy clump of the gangling stalks with their cheerful yellow blooms had sprung from the base of Prudence’s headstone. I’d read in her father’s book that both fairies and witches were said to use ragwort for flight.

In the churchyard, I did see

Ragwort nodding ’neath the hawthorn tree.

As the rhyme came to me, I opened the sketchbook to capture it before it flew from my head. My breath caught to find Thomas staring back at me. I’d drawn him my first morning here—the likeness was surprisingly good. I ran a finger along the bearded line of his jaw.

Then, near the gutter of the page, I noticed a wilting sprig of flowers that I didn’t remember placing there. I picked it up and studied the flowers more closely. I doubted I would have recognized the plant had it not been the first one I’d taken a sample from in the glasshouse. Winter daphne. I’d already forgotten the medicinal uses listed on its plaque, but the back had listed what sounded like a kind of charm . . . unrequited love.

I twirled the sprig in my fingers, recalling that I’d made this drawing while Annie was busy in the kitchen—before I’d gone to the glasshouse that morning. I hadn’t revisited this sketch since then—I’d in fact forgotten it—so I definitely had not been the one to put the daphne in the book. It could only have been Thomas. But why?

I thought about the spells I’d heard Thomas use. They were simple. Lines of poetry. Bundles of flowers. The daphne had been placed next to my sketch of him.

Might it be a love charm?

My heart stumbled, and I set the sprig down, eyes fixed and staring while my tea went cold.

Yet I could not bring myself to believe that Thomas would use a love charm on me. Besides it being wildly uncharacteristic, he was the first to take a step back after we’d given in to . . . heated impulses.

I rose from the table and carried the sketchbook and daphne up to my room, where I’d left my glasshouse journal. When I went to place the things on the desk, I gasped to find another torn-out page—another covered in Prudence’s hand.

“Is anyone there?” I called out in a tone edged with both impatience and fear.

I took shallow breaths as I looked around the room.

Finally I sank stiffly into the desk chair, fingers gripping the edges of the new page while my gaze drifted out the window to the lake. The sky had darkened while I’d been inside. The earlier breeze had quieted, and Thomas’s boat glided through the glassy water, oars leaving silken trails. All was so still and soft I could hear the oars thunk against the boat. Fog concealed the peaks, making the scene feel close and rather ominous. Like a storm about to break.

I watched the boat nuzzle up to the shoreline. The bodies of several fish flashed on a line that Thomas pulled from the bow. Shingles ground under his boots as he walked toward the house.

“Careful, Catherine.”

I jumped up and spun at these words that had come very close to my ear, spoken in a sighing feminine tone. A shiver ran the length of my body. Nothing—no one—was there.

Then I did see . . . something. A vapory ribbon, thin and sinuous like the smoke that curled from an extinguished candle, trailed along the floorboards toward the door.

“Mrs. Bane?” I called out in a reedy voice. The trail dissipated as it crossed the threshold.

I jumped again as I heard a door open and close downstairs. Then came sounds of Thomas working in the kitchen, and I let out a breath.