* * *
Polly useda bit of twine to bind another bundle of herbs which she then transferred to the rack above the large work table in the kitchen. They were the last of the season, a remnant of the harvest. But they would be useful in the love potions that were always so popular during the long, lonely winter months. There was nothing like the cold, barren landscape to make people long for companionship and comfort.
A wistful sigh escaped her. Spinsterhood was both a blessing and a curse. She was free to do as she pleased, for the most part. But in the evenings, when the house was so painfully quiet after Mavis had returned to her own small cottage, which she shared with Hampton, her own loneliness became impossible to ignore. It hadn’t been by choice, after all. If things had been different—if she had been different—she would have had a husband and perhaps children of her own long ago.
Pushing that thought aside, Polly elected to focus instead on the here and now. With her tasks done, she tidied up her work area and was just wiping her hands on her apron when she heard the kitchen door open. No doubt it was Mavis coming back from the woods. She’d taken Elspeth, Polly’s spaniel, to hunt for truffles. The pup had a rare gift for sniffing them out. And with company staying through Christmas, they would be much appreciated to elevate their normal country fare.
“I saw the cart through the trees. Crossing the bridge, so it’ll be a bit still till they arrive,” Mavis said, her tone brusk as usual. She was a no-nonsense sort, always practical. A fact which only served to make her continued employment at Mansford Hall something of a puzzle.
“In time for dinner, so long as we make it late by a few minutes,” Polly replied. Even as she said it, she was moving toward the massive oven—a heavy, cast iron contraption that, if possible, was even more difficult than cooking over an open fire. It had taken a great deal of adjustment to learn her way around the kitchen. Slowly, they were coming to terms with one another.
In fact, she had just come to terms with everything about Mansford Hall. It had only taken ten years of living there, ten years since her brother had reached his majority and been able to claim the place, for it to finally feel like home. For the longest time, she’d been afraid to settle in, afraid to let herself grow content there. Their lives had been one upheaval after another following the deaths of their parents. With her, for lack of a better word,oddities, they had never been welcomed anywhere for very long. And now, she was being asked to give it up.
That cannot happen, she thought. She would not allow her brother’s birthright to be stolen out from under them when she knew he would return. After all, everything had indicated that to be true. Scrying. Runes. Cards. Every form of divination that she had tried had indicated the same outcome—he would return before the year was out, and in some instances, even by Christmas. Even without the tools of divination, she knew it. It had come to her in dreams and the feeling was inescapable. Her brother, contrary to what the news sheets had reported and what their cousin Cecil was insisting upon, was not dead.
Opening the heavy iron door to the oven, she pulled out the roasting pan. Inside it, the duck she’d prepared sizzled in a bed of herbs and butter. The aroma of it filled the kitchen and her stomach growled. She’d been so busy throughout the day that she had not taken time to eat. Now she was ravenous.
Rather than destroy what she had planned to be a beautiful display during dinner by picking at it to halt the growling of her belly, she placed the roasting pan on the counter and retrieved an apple for herself from the bowl of fruit nearby. She’d retrieved them from the storeroom earlier as she meant to make a tart the following day. It would suffice until she could enjoy a true meal.
“Your cousin is still holed up at the inn in the village,” Mavis informed her. “Telling anyone who will listen that your brother is dead and gone and you are refusing to give up property that rightfully belongs to him.”
“Then he will look like even more of a fool when Clay returns,” Polly snapped. Immediately, she felt terrible for having been short with Mavis. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be curt. The man simply infuriates me, is all. He’s no claim to Mansford Hall. Not really. If I could prove his documents were fake, it wouldn’t matter whether Clay returned or not!”
“And now he’s got a solicitor coming to your door. Do you mean to greet him just like that?” Mavis demanded.
Polly looked down at her rather drab gown. There were a few which were in better condition, but her wardrobe was sadly lacking. She hadn’t the time or the funds to fuss over such things. “If he dislikes my appearance… well, that is hardly my problem, is it?”
“You should want the man to like you!” Mavis protested. “Tis a sad but true fact that men are more apt to help a pretty woman than a homely one!”
“I’m not homely,” Polly fired back, offended at the very thought of it.
Mavis’ lips curved with smugness. “No, you most certainly aren’t! Tis high time you remembered that. But if you dress like a drudge, he’ll never see you as anything but! Go upstairs and put on your red dress. It’s at least not gray or brown like everything else you own! Never in my life have I seen any young woman with your beauty so completely unconcerned with her appearance!”
That was because her appearance had never mattered. She’d always been so very different from everyone else, so strange as they often put it, that no amount of beauty would make up for it. But saying such a thing out loud smacked of self-pity, for which she had no patience. “It hardly matters what I’m wearing, Mavis. Mr. Hawthorne is not coming here for flirtation. He has come to evict me from my home—to claim what belongs to my brother in the name of that toad, Cecil!”
Feeling her temper rising, Polly took a deep calming breath. She reminded herself of the very thing she’d been all but chanting since she’d first learned of Cecil’s plan to contact his solicitor. “It isn’t his fault that he’s been given incomplete information. I’ve no doubt that Cecil only told him that Clay was dead, not that he was missing. Mr. Hawthorne will see reason and then go his merry way.”Not according to the cards.
Polly brushed that thought aside. The cards had predicted all manner of things, But he was a stuffy old solicitor and she was a practicing witch about to be evicted from the only place she’d ever truly felt at home. A more unlikely pair had never been proposed! Two of Cups, indeed. The cards had been wrong before.But the tea leaves said it too!
“Just stop it!”
Mavis’ eyebrows shot up. “What the devil has gotten into you?”
Polly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mavis. I wasn’t shouting at you. I was talking to myself… I’m worrying myself sick over all of it,” she lied.
Mavis settled then, clucking her tongue in a concerned fashion. “Go on up and get yourself tidied up a bit. I’ll finish up in here. It never hurts to make a good impression.”
But it did. If she appeared as any sort of normal, average woman—even if she was a spinster—and he then discovered that she was unmarried not by choice but because every prospective suitor cast her aside—it would be an unmitigated disaster. Add to that the fact she cast love spells for others and used cards and tea leaves to tell the future—well, it would go very badly for her. Best to show him all her eccentricities out of the gate and get it over with. Still, she needed to steady her nerves, and going upstairs under the guise of changing to greet their guest would permit her a moment to clear her head and corral her raging nerves. With a nod, Polly wiped her hands once more, removed her apron, and then headed up the narrow, creaking back stairs to her chamber.
TWO
It had begun to snow in earnest a few miles after leaving town. By the time they were turning off the main road and onto a narrow, rutted lane, the ground was completely white. Looking ahead, blinking against the falling snow, he saw the shape of the house ahead.
Mansford Hall was hardly the palatial home he’d been led to believe by his client and by his employer who’d gone on and on about how much Mr. Cecil Winters-Beaton loved the ancestral home and how much history it held. For starters, the home was not old enough to hold that much history. It might have been standing for fifty years, if he had to guess. It was small. Small enough that Mansford Cottage might have been a more appropriate moniker. Given that Mr. Winters-Beaton was a wealthy and influential gentleman, what about that property was so appealing to him?
The mute servant removed his valise from the back of the small cart and marched up to the front door with it, depositing it there as Oliver climbed down from the narrow bench seat. He hadn’t even reached the door to the house when the servant was already driving away with a snap of the reins, heading around to the back of the house.
Climbing the slight incline to the front door, he stood there next to his valise and wondered at the very odd situation that he now found himself in. Staring up at the darkly finished wooden door, his gaze narrowed as he inspected the unusual door knocker. It was a cat, its long tale curling upward to form a sort of loop. Hooking his finger through that loop, he lifted it and let the thing bang against the plate underneath.
