“Lindson,” Mae said quietly. “Mrs. Lindson.”
Miss Adaline was a wide woman, with gray hair pulled back tight and up into a bun on her head. She wore a soft shawl the color of wheat over her shoulders, and her modest day dress was deep forest green, seamed to give her figure the best advantage. She was unmarried, and monied by her father’s investments in the wars.
She had been a force in Mae’s life when she was younger. And she had not lost her command in the years that had passed.
Miss Adaline turned. She had the kind of beauty men would turn their heads for, even now at her age. But there was no kindness behind that beauty. Not for Mae.
“You have told outsiders we are witches. You have put our sisterhood in danger.”
Mae waited. She didn’t know what to say. It was true. But she could not change what had happened.
“Before you left the coven, it was suggested we cast you out. We knew you would bring trouble upon us. In these most unsettled times.”
“I meant no harm,” Mae said softly.
“And yet you have caused harm.” Miss Adaline sighed. “It was my voice that raised on your behalf all those years ago. I thought your love of Mr. Lindson would keep you…far from us. And yet you return.”
She made it sound like it was Mae’s fault. Like Mae was some kind of bad penny she could not be rid of.
Mae prickled. “I was not the one who cast the spell to bind me to coven soil. I would not have come of my own volition.”
Miss Adaline took a sip of tea, her brown eyes sharp. “That was sister Virginia’s idea. She always worried you’d be alone and astray in the world. Of course, she thought that of any wild thing.”
Mae stood out of the chair. “I am not a wild thing. You have made it clear I am no longer welcome here. I will leave as soon as my companions are recovered enough to travel. And,” Mae said walking across the room to her elder, “I will break my ties to this coven. But only if the sisters assist me in breaking the curse on Mr. Hunt and his brother, and in healing Rose.”
“We will want something in return.”
Mae literally took half a step back, shocked. “Is that the way of the coven now? Bargaining for your advantage?”
“The war has changed us all, Mae Rowan. Time has changed us all. We adapt, and we survive.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to cast a spell for me.”
Mae shook her head, but just then the front door opened and one of the younger sisters she didn’t know stepped in. “Miss Adaline, the supplies from town have come and there is some mail for you. It looks official.”
Adaline smiled and it seemed that warmth filled up the hard edges of her. “Thank you, Becky. Take it to my room, please. I’ll be there shortly.”
Becky shut the door.
“We will speak later.” Adaline crossed the room to the other door, and left Mae standing with nothing but her doubts and anger.
The sisters had almost killed her trying to bring her home. Yes, she’d agreed to let them bind her blood to the soil of the coven, but she had never agreed that they could torture her as she tried to find her way home.
She could have died. Rose, Captain Cage, Wil, and Cedar, all could have died. She didn’t know if the sisters intentions were to kill others, but they had clearly not cared if they killed her.
The travelers had spent the last week at the coven, resting. The sisters had left them mostly alone, though warm meals were provided.
She, however, was an outsider. Feared.
Mae had spent the last week trying to find forgiveness in her heart. But this place that she had always thought would be home to her was spoiled now. Closed. They did not want her here.
She didn’t want to remain.
A woman’s soft laughter and a man’s low tone echoed from the hallway connecting the gathering hall to the guest rooms.
Rose and Captain Cage had been nearly inseparable.
Mae smiled despite her sour mood. She had to admit their courtship made her happy for both of them, but most especially for Rose.
“Mae,” Rose said, walking into the room. “We hoped we’d find you here.” Rose was moving slowly, as if her feet dragged a great weight behind them. But her color was better, the tin having faded from her face and neck, though there was still a sheen of silver to her skin and hair.
The sisters had very few guesses as to how to help Rose. It wasn’t magic, exactly, that was plaguing her, nor exactly a physical ailment.
Strangeworked devices were well outside the realms of their spell craft.
“Where else would I be?” Mae meant it to be teasing, as she’d found herself here, by the fire at all hours of the day and night. But her words came out with the bitterness of someone sentenced to pace the same cell for the rest of her life.
“Well, it’s a lovely place, and everyone has been so pleasant,” Rose said. “You could be almost anywhere.” She was leaning on Hink’s arm pretty heavily as she made her way across the room.
Hink had recovered from most of his injuries to the point that he was moving smoothly. All, that is, except for his broken arm and missing eye. He wore a soft cloth over the eye, with a bandage messing up his hair a bit as it held the patch in place and covered the burn on his forehead. Once both the eye wound and the brand on his forehead were less sensitive, they’d fashion a patch, which he would wear for the rest of his life.
There was nothing they could do to hide the five-pointed star branded into his forehead, other than see it healed properly. He would carry that scar to his grave.
While he hadn’t exactly taken his injuries gracefully, after spending three days drinking and coming up with new cuss words for Alabaster Saint’s damned soul—an activity that his crew, and the Madder brothers, had joined in quite readily—he had shouldered the fact that he would never have his full eyesight again. Nor go unnoticed as the president’s man.
As for having Rose at his side, leaning on him, well, he didn’t look one bit upset about that.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to support you a bit more, Rose?” he asked. “Perhaps my arm around your waist?”
“Like yesterday?” Rose asked.
“Yesterday?” he asked glibly.
“Yesterday. When you helped me,” she said. “If you thought you were putting your hands on my waist, you need a refresher on body parts, Paisley.”
He stopped cold and Rose was forced to stop too. “What?” she said, searching his face. “Are you all right? Your eye. Is it hurting again? The scar? Do you need the medicine?”
“Who,” he bit off, “told you my name is Paisley?”
Rose’s look of concern slid into one of wide-eyed innocence, though she was having a hard time keeping a smile off her face. “I’m not sure I recall. It must have been one of the crew.”
“Seldom,” Hink groused. “That man talks too much.”
“It’s a lovely name,” Rose continued as they got back to walking. “And a lovely fabric. Why I’ve always admired paisley dresses, haven’t you, Mae? They’re so…frilly.”
“Yes,” Mae agreed. “Very pretty.”
“My mother,” he said through his teeth, “happened to like paisley. She had this one dress, given to her by a man who—” He shut his mouth.
“A man who what?” Rose asked.
“A man who—” Hink narrowed his eye as if just figuring her game. “Never mind what the man did, all right now? I prefer you use ‘Lee’ when you address me.”
“What? Not ‘Captain’ or ‘Marshal’ or perhaps ‘lord king of all the land’?”
“Well, I’d never stop a woman from calling me king.”
“King Paisley,” Rose mused. “Certainly has a ring to it.”
“Forget it,” he said, blowing out his breath. “You may call me Captain Hink. And not a syllable more.”
“Didn’t mean for you to get all flustered,” Rose continued mercilessly. “It’s just so difficult to sort through all your names. And you’re sure there aren’t some other things you’d like me to call you?”
“I can think of several things I’d like to hear on your lips,” he said with a wicked grin, holding her gaze as he helped her sit in the other chair near the fire. “But not in polite company, my dear.”