scarf, looked up from a tray of pain au chocolat fresh from the oven. Elena gave a heartbreaking sigh at the sight and averted her eyes as she stumbled for the front door, narrowly avoiding the seduction.
“Thief!”
Tilda chased her to the door with her spatula held like a weapon, shouting her accusation into the street for everyone to hear. Shop owners, the postmaster, and even a pair of waiters stuck their heads outside to see what had happened. Elena dared a quick look over her shoulder before darting into the road to maneuver around a couple strolling arm in arm on the sidewalk.
In her desperation to escape, she didn’t register the rumble of the engine rattling along the cobblestones. Didn’t see the headlights bearing down on her.
The driver slammed on the brakes, locking up the wheels. The rubber tires skidded on the stones as a woman shrieked in warning. The horn sounded and the goose-nosed auto jolted to a stop a mere foot from Elena’s body. The hot gasp of the engine exhaled against her legs as she froze with her eyes dead set on the driver.
A cloud of steam roiled up from the car’s engine. The man rose out of the driver’s seat, waving his hat to clear the air. Seeing how close he’d come to hitting her, he gripped the windshield and leaned forward to inspect the front of his car for damage. “Blast it, goat woman, what were you thinking running into the road like that? Didn’t you see me coming?”
She’d already felt the rough chafe of his voice against her heart, having listened through the bricks, but she wasn’t prepared to meet him face-to-face in the street. To look into the same eyes that had once stared deep into hers and claimed everlasting love. Eyes that quickly betrayed her after a sideways glance toward his new lover: ambition. Eyes she now wanted to scratch out with her bare hands.
He continued yelling at her, more worried about his confounded machine than whether he’d injured a pedestrian. Seven years he’d had her cursed and left for dead, and he couldn’t even be bothered to look up after nearly killing her a second time. But she thanked the All Knowing the man was such a self-centered ass. It might just give her the small chance she needed to escape. She wrapped the end of her cloak back over her face and turned for the opposite side of the street.
“You there, stop! Someone stop that woman.”
Nettles. The inspector sprang out of the pâtisserie, eyes on his prey. Despite the weakness in her legs, the doubt in her heart, and the closeness of the growing crowd, Elena ran from the car, away from the inspector, desperate for a way out. In her panic, her clumsy sabot caught on a cobblestone and she stumbled, tearing her skirt and scraping her knee. The postmaster beckoned her forward, showing her the open road behind him. She got to her feet and lifted her hem, ready to run, when a firm hand grabbed her by the arm and spun her back around.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jean-Paul’s mind swayed over everything he’d read as he nudged his horse onto the village’s main road. As the sun went down he realized he’d been gone nearly twenty-four hours. Scratching at his new beard confirmed it. But she could have no quarrel with the way he’d reacted. The world had changed, not him. Though that wasn’t quite true. For good or bad, he would never be the same after the things he’d seen.
He gave the horse a kick to hurry the beast along when he noticed a commotion on the street ahead. A crowd had gathered in a circle to gape at what he assumed was yet another traffic accident. He fancied the new automobiles and nearly bought one himself when he still lived in the city, but they were unquestionably a danger in these country villages. Twice now there had been a collision between a car coming down the main road at top speed and a horse-drawn cart stubbornly plugging along at last century’s pace.
It occurred to him he’d been the cart most recently, nearly run over by the revelation that the witches of the Chanceaux Valley were no mere superstition invented to draw in tourists. They were real. Their magic was real. Even the thing he’d seen. To say he’d been blindsided by the revelation would be an understatement. And yet he’d walked away from the collision mostly unharmed.