at least for today. Please make my excuses to the Hyde-Smiths and the Derbyshires and the Whitmores, will you? I’m sure they will understand.”
“Yes, of course I will,” Annis said. “I’ll go to the stables now, shall I? Perhaps the housekeeper could send word to Jermyn through one of the footmen. Tell him to expect me—that you have deputized me.”
“How very kind. I will do that, and thank you very much.” Lady Eleanor’s smile was more gentle than usual as Annis curtsied again and let herself out of the study.
She was halfway to the front doors when the thought occurred to her that Lady Eleanor had accepted her offer with no resistance at all, though it must be an unusual suggestion for such an ordered household. Despite everything, Annis found herself smiling over Her Ladyship’s cleverness.
James’s mother had put Annis in the post of the mistress of Rosefield Hall, however briefly. Annis could guess Her Ladyship hoped she would like it. Would change her mind, accept James’s offer of marriage. Solve the problem of Seabeck’s debts.
She would have to be careful around Lady Eleanor. She had secrets now, secrets that must be protected.
She hugged the thought to her as she hurried out to the stables. She wasn’t sorry to have something so marvelous, so remarkable, to hide. She was a Bishop. A woman with abilities. She was a witch, and she thought the word was a marvelous one, with connotations of knowledge and power and independence.
Despite the sadness of the day, Annis felt a surge of joyful freedom, a feeling she had never before experienced. It was the best feeling in the world.
35
Harriet
At the Four Fishes, Harriet went straight to her room and rested all through the day. She didn’t rise until after five, and though she was still bone weary, she was also ravenous.
She found the two pieces of Frances’s manikin in her basket, mashed together into a shapeless lump. As the creator of it, she could dispose of it. It had done its damage, of course. There was no more harm in it, but she wanted to make certain it could not be put back together. She crumbled the wax into fragments. She separated the pebbles and moss and the bit of bark from the pile and tossed them out onto the thatch for the birds to take. She wrapped the now-formless wax in the flannel that had served as its dress. There was no longer any danger in the crumbled wax and scrap of cloth. Her fingers told her that, sensing no electric tingle of magic.
With a sense of mingled relief and guilt, she set the bit of flannel in her basket and went to run a bath.
She presented herself downstairs for dinner at about seven. The innkeeper, with his hands linked under his apron, came to say that “the wife” had made shepherd’s pie. “Salad, too, if you like that sort of thing,” he said. “The wife uses her own lettuce from the garden out back, with radishes and some watercress she bought this morning.”
“I will have both,” Harriet said. “And bread and butter, please.”
“Ale?”
“No, thank you. A pitcher of water.”
He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Other patrons came in and settled at the other tables. The villagers had gotten used to Harriet’s presence. They nodded, and two of the men touched their forelocks. When her dinner arrived, she ate hungrily at first, then at a more moderate pace once her appetite began to ease.
And she listened.
It was amazing, she thought, how swiftly news flew through the houses and shops of an English village. By the time she had finished the excellent salad, she had heard that “the influenza or some such” had struck Rosefield Hall. As she worked on her serving of shepherd’s pie, which tasted unpleasantly of old mutton, she learned that only two people had fallen ill. There had been, the gossip said, three old couples there who had departed in haste, eager to avoid infection. Since then, no one had been allowed in or out.
Harriet waited, toying with her fork, to hear more details of who was ill and if they were recovering, but those weren’t forthcoming. Surely, she told herself, as she pushed away the unappetizing remains of the shepherd’s pie, if someone had died they would know. Evil news always had wings of its own.
There was an hour left of daylight. She went up to her room to retrieve her jacket and her basket and hurried out of the