Page 56 of Bane Bloom

His brows raised slightly, as if he was about to comment on this, but all he said was, “Aye.”

“Thomas . . .” I took a deep breath. “I understand now the complexities that have kept you here. But I can’t help feeling how hard this must be for you, living here alone with shadows and ghosts. Shouldering responsibility for decisions you never made. Outcomes you had no part of.”

His gaze wandered to the lakeward window, and a muscle in his jaw tensed. “It’s what I know.”

This, too, was a perfectly reasonable answer. Plenty of people spent their whole lives in ways that didn’t make them happy because it was what was expected, or it was what they knew. And the world away from Pine Cottage could prove difficult for Thomas, having never experienced it. The fact he was literate would make it easier, but there was no guarantee he’d find employment away from Buttermere. He wasn’t good with people, and he was self-aware enough to know it.

Yet I wasn’t sure I believed him entirely.

The clock chimed nine, and Thomas’s eyes came back to my face. “I think it’s best if I stay with you tonight.” I swallowed, and he added, “I’ll sleep in the other bedroom.”

I took a breath, steadying myself. “If I was truly brave, I’d say, ‘Please don’t take any trouble over me,’ but . . .”

“You can say whatever you like. I’ll not leave you alone.”

My heart flopped.

“You go on up. I want to have a look around outside before turning in. I won’t be long.”

I nodded. “Good night, then.”

He hesitated a moment, studying me. “Good night, lass.”

He went out the glasshouse door, and with a trembling hand, I picked up the candlestick. The fact we’d be spending the night under the same roof was equal parts reassuring and agitating. It wasn’t an unpleasant sort of agitation.

Anticipating that sleep might not come easily, I took Plant Lore of Britain from the bookshelf. Then I returned to the dining room for a slice of bread and wedge of cheese, leaving the rest in case Thomas might be hungry.

When I reached my room, I cracked open the casement to let in some fresh air, and then I knelt before the hearth. The basket next to it was freshly stocked with kindling and wood, and it wasn’t long before I had a fire going. I draped my wet dress over the chair to dry.

After my modest supper, I plaited my hair, dressed for bed, and crawled under the coverlet with Mr. Bane’s book. It’s impossible to overstate what a comfort it was knowing Thomas would be close tonight. Though the Elfbloom’s spell seemed to have been broken, I would have worried the spirit might make another attempt. Or that another spirit might appear. I would have dwelled on the idea of Prudence Bane’s ghost. And I would have worried about what Mr. Carroll might get up to in the night.

Though I had thought myself too wound up to sleep, a few sentences into the entry for ragwort—which had associations with fairies, witches, and the dead—I felt myself drifting.

As the book slipped from my hand onto the coverlet, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye and sat up. A breeze had teased through the window, which I’d forgotten to close, and disturbed a sheet of paper, which had fluttered to the floor.

I got out of bed and closed the casement. As I picked up the sheet, I noticed it was covered with writing—but not my own. The edge was ragged, like it had been torn from . . . Prudence’s diary. I recognized her hand. Heart thumping, I scanned the room, much as I had downstairs when I’d discovered the diary missing.

No movement. No ghostly figures. Nothing out of place.

Trembling, with goose bumps lifting the fine hairs on my arms, I carried the sheet back to the bed and sat down.

He came to me in the glasshouse on the night of the dark moon. If I’d thought he’d be beautiful, I was mistaken, but from the moment I saw him, I could not look away. His eyes were arresting, though there was only starlight to see by, and I only knew their color when you arrived, my bairn—the pale blue of a starling’s egg. He was bearded and rough, like a warrior from another age. His hair hung in a single plait down his back, russet against his fine white tunic.

He never spoke a word to me, only took me in his arms. There was wildness to him, and fierceness, too. When his head dipped to my ear, I heard the roar of the ocean. His lovemaking was full of its rhythm. His eyes glittered like moonlit foam left by the lapping waves.

He stayed with me through the night, but at first light he was gone. All but the echo of hooves pounding the shoreline.

According to Thomas, the heart’s desire of Prudence Bane had been “a child that wouldn’t require her to be shackled to a husband.” Though Thomas referred to himself as fatherless (much as I told people I had no mother), this passage seemed to be a description of his father, and perhaps even of the night Thomas was conceived. I flipped the sheet over to read more, but the other side was blank.

This felt like confirmation that Prudence had been trying to communicate with me using the diary. Yet after all the years of secrecy, I couldn’t think why. Why now, and why me.

Unsure what to do with this new information, if anything, I carried the page back to the desk and tucked it into the drawer. I could consider it again in the morning, when my mind was clearer.

At last I went to bed, but for a long time, I lay thinking about what I’d read, and who—or what—Thomas’s father might have been. He was bearded and rough, like a warrior from another age. It strongly reminded me of my earliest assessment of Thomas. Of course I’d only been amusing myself with that, but Norsemen had settled here centuries ago.

I heard a creak on the stairs, and yellow candlelight seeped under my door. Thomas was at last turning in. As I listened to the soft sounds of him readying for bed, I felt myself sinking toward sleep.

Fog blankets the lake. I stand alone in my nightdress, the beach’s shingles digging into my bare feet. Lake water coldly kisses the tips of my toes. I’ve seen something moving in the fog, and I am searching for it. But the meager light of my candle can’t penetrate the milky vapor.