A town gripped by fear. A woman cast out. Can he save Pale Harbor from itself?

Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor.

But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband.

As the incidents escalate, one thing becomes clear: they are the work of a twisted person inspired by the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And Gabriel must find answers, or Pale Harbor will suffer a fate worthy of Poe’s darkest tales.

HESTER FOX is a keen painter and has a master’s degree in historical archaeology, as well as a background in medieval studies and art history. Hester lives outside of Boston with her husband, cat and new baby.

The Widow of Pale Harbour is her second novel.

Also by Hester Fox

The Witch of Willow Hall

The Widow of Pale Harbour

Hester Fox

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Tess Fedore 2019

Tess Fedore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9781474083898

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Everyone is enchanted by Hester Fox!

‘This debut recalls Georgette Heyer, with extra spookiness’

The Times

‘Creepy, tense, heartbreaking and beautifully, achingly romantic’

Cressida McLaughlin

‘Steeped in Gothic eeriness it’s spine-tingling and very atmospheric’

Nicola Cornick

‘Beautifully written, with an intriguing plot full of suspense and mystery, The Witch of Willow Hall will cast a spell over every reader’

Lisa Hall

‘A wonderful debut novel’

Linda Finlay

And readers have fallen under her spell too!

‘I could NOT put this thing down!’

‘Do yourself a huge favour and read this NOW!’

‘Historical fiction with a side of romance and major helping of creepiness, this debut novel hits the mark!’

‘Hester Fox has the unique and amazing ability to transport readers to another time and place’

‘The perfect autumn read’

‘The ULTIMATE page turner!’

To Mike

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Praise

Dedication

Verse

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

AUTHOR NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Extract

About the Publisher

“And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.”

—Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”

1

This was the fourth dead raven to appear on Sophronia Carver’s front path in as many weeks, and there was no explaining it away as coincidence this time.

Except that this one wasn’t dead, not quite.

Sophronia had never killed a living creature before, but as she stared down at the raven and its crooked, twitching wings on her front path, she got the queasy feeling that the most humane course of action might be to snap the poor thing’s neck.

Tugging her shawl tighter against the chill, salty air, she crouched down to peer at the bird. Its feathers were blue and black—darker even than her own inky hair—and as iridescent as the ocean on a moonless night. The bird stared back at her, unmoving except for the slow blink of its glassy eye. She wanted very much to reach out a finger and stroke its slick feathers, but that somehow felt like a breach of confidence, like telling a secret that did not belong to her.

“Helen?” she called, without tearing her gaze away from the bird. “Helen, come quickly.”

Slowly rising to her feet, she gazed about the estate grounds and craned her neck to squint at the roof of the great old house, silhouetted against the heavy clouds. Perhaps the bird had fallen from the eaves. Or perhaps Duchess had felled it, though the old cat could barely bring down a mouse. That at least would explain how it had come to be lain so carefully across the center of the front path, as if it were some sort of pagan offering.

When Sophronia had come across the first dead raven, she had assumed it had been the victim of some sort of sickness, or perhaps weakened by storm winds. The next two she had likewise justified, but with a growing sense of uneasiness.

A prickle of cold blossomed down her spine as she realized that she could no longer dismiss the dead and injured birds. Someone—or something—was leaving them for her to find.

She stiffened, with a darting glance about her, as if someone might be lurking just beyond the broad lawn or out past the gate, watching her. But there was no one—the only movement the breeze through the flaming autumn trees, the only sound the faraway cry of a gull.

The path was supposed to be Safe. The entire grounds of the estate were supposed to be Safe. It was only out past the wrought-iron gate and into the town beyond that chaos and uncertainty reigned. Better to stay inside the grounds, where she had control. Sophronia had long ago learned to push all the bad memories and specters out of the house and into the world beyond, firmly shutting her heart and mind against them. So to see a creature in distress, so close to death—well, that was not Safe.

“Helen?” Sophronia called, louder this time, her voice carrying up the path to where the front door stood open. A moment later, a pale woman of about forty, her dark hair pulled severely back from her face, appeared in the doorway. She frowned at the sight of her mistress standing over the bird.

“Duchess must have caught it,” Sophronia said with a shake of her head as the woman stepped briskly over to where she was standing.

Helen gave her a skeptical look, and then leaned down to examine the bird for herself. “Duchess couldn’t catch her own tail,” she said, scorn edging her husky voice. “It’s the town brats making trouble again, I’d wager.”

Sophronia pressed her lips together tightly. They’d certainly had their share of children from the town coming up to the house, peeking through the windows and knocking at the door, all so that they could earn the distinction among their friends for glimpsing the infamous widow.

Suddenly, it was too unbearable to look at the exposed and broken bird a moment longer. Sophronia might have called for Garrett, the groundskeeper, but he was out on the far end of the property, cutting back the grass. Helen was capable and strong, though, and had a way with animals. “You’ll try to save it, won’t you? And if you can’t, you’ll make it...” Her words trailed off, but her meaning was unmistakable. Quick.

Carefully, Helen positioned her hands under the motionless bird, holding it slightly away from her as she lifted it. She ran a practiced hand along its wings, her dark brows furrowing in a mixture of concern and anger, as if the cruelty of humankind never ceased to surprise her. “Wings are both broken. And there’s something wrong with its foot.” But then she caught Sophronia’s anxious look and softened. “I’ll see what I can do, Sophy.”

Sophronia gave her a warm smile and watched Helen whisk the raven off to the carriage house, her movements brisk and efficient, her posture as neat as a pin. She had taken Helen on as a servant and companion during her early days as a lonely young bride, but over the years, the older woman had proved herself to be a true friend in every sense. Now it was just the two of them against the world, as Helen was so often wont to remind her.

The first raindrops were starting to fall when Sophronia finally allowed herself to stop thinking of the crooked bird and what it might mean and return indoors. Before the thump of the raven landing on the path had startled her from her reverie, Sophronia had been watching the storm roll in upstairs. Her late husband had always pompously referred to the large room lined with bay windows as the “upper piazza,” taking the big old house’s name, Castle Carver, to heart. Sophronia liked to watch storms approach from there; it was a sort of entertainment, drawing back the curtains like those in a theater, the harbor and endless gray sky a stage on which the rowdy gulls acted their plays.

She wandered through the house, unsettled. There were submissions to her late husband’s magazine piling up, submissions for which she was now responsible. Usually she enjoyed curling up in the parlor, tucked under a warm quilt with a cup of tea as she read through the stories and essays, curating which ones she would send along to the board for publication. But the raven had rattled her, and Sophronia was too anxious to read.

Instead, she continued back upstairs and threw the windows open. The rain was picking up now, the clouds building into something even heavier and more expectant. There was no moment so promising, so exciting, as the moment before a storm broke. Living on the Maine harbor, with naught but a finger of land to separate her home from the gray Atlantic, she had the opportunity to witness many storms, all from the safety of her window. On clear days, she could see the old lighthouse jutting out on the rocky promontory outside of town, winking back at her from its empty windows, an ally in her solitude. In the other direction lay a lonesome expanse of trees, dark and wild. It was a deceptively beautiful landscape, the sheer scale of woods and ocean promising endless possibilities, but in reality, it only swallowed up the hopes and dreams of young brides. At least on stormy days, the mist softened the harsh realities of the world, cloaked its darkness.

But today’s storm was different; she could feel it reverberating in her bones. Perhaps the raven had been a harbinger of things to come, an omen. Or perhaps it was just as Helen said—children from the town playing their cruel tricks on her, just like they had for years since her husband had died so violently and suddenly.

Sophronia sighed, drumming her fingers against the windowsill. God, she was so weary of it all. Weary of the solitude, weary of the little town, its people and their narrow minds, weary of the shell she had become. Tonight, she and Helen would eat a small supper in silence—they had few words left to say that weren’t old and stale, used up over the years—and then they would sit in the parlor, play a game of cards, and perhaps Sophronia would read a book or philosophical pamphlet while Helen plucked away at the old pianoforte. Tomorrow the laundry girl, Fanny, would come, and hopefully bring some gossip or news with her. They would chat for a little, and then Fanny would leave, and stillness would settle back over the house. It would be the same as every other day, but monotony was the price of safety. If the grand old house was indeed a castle, then Sophronia was its ghost, forever trapped, restless and roaming the halls.

She leaned out to close the window, but paused, letting the wind sweep up around her in an invigorating embrace. The building energy of the storm electrified her bones and caused tears to prick her eyes. Yes, there was something different about this storm. Change was sweeping toward Pale Harbor, and God knew, she needed it.

2

If Gabriel Stone had known what was inside the dilapidated old church and what it would lead to, he might have turned around, climbed back on the boat and returned to Concord immediately. But the rain was coming down in unforgiving sheets, and after days of travel, the time for reservations had long since passed.

Wiping the rain from his eyes, he stepped back, craning his neck, and turned his face up into the stormy night, taking in the church that he had trekked halfway up the east coast to reach. It was made of unassuming white clapboard, and its steeple barely peeked above the thrashing trees, as if in humble deference to this wild terrain in which it was an outsider, a latecomer, just like him.

It had taken him two coaches, a rail and finally a ship to arrive in Pale Harbor, only to find that no one was awaiting him at the dock. When it had become obvious that it was too dark even to locate his new lodgings, Gabriel had decided to go to the only other place he knew of in the town: his new church. He had followed the sight of the steeple, slogging through muddy roads that weren’t much more than old cow paths, lit only with the occasional lamplight from a lonely cottage window. But when he’d finally arrived at the church, the doors were locked. He was a sopping wet, hungry, short-tempered outsider and damn it, churches were supposed to be a refuge. Putting his shoulder against the old wood door, Gabriel gave another push, and cursed when it would not budge.

The wind howled around him. He shrugged the collar of his coat up in vain, trying to keep the slicing rain from penetrating any farther down his back. He would get in, spend the night, and then, in the light of day, find his lodgings and hopefully the trunks that he had sent ahead.

A glint of shattered glass in the fleeting moonlight caught his eye. A broken window. Gabriel peeled off his sopping wet overcoat, balled it around his fist and punched out the rest of the glass. With all the grace of a wet cat, he shimmied himself through the opening.

The musty air hit him like the release of a breath held in for too long, and he landed awkwardly on his ankle. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, and then, remembering where he was, grumbled an apology. It was as cool as a mausoleum inside, the air untouched for who knew how many years. The only light came from the brief flashes of lightning, and the occasional gasp of moonlight through the racing clouds. His wet clothes clung to him, chilling him down to his bones. It was not an auspicious beginning to his new venture.

“Anyone here?”

His voice echoed off the empty pews and hollow nave. There was no reason anyone would be in the old church, but one never knew if a lost soul had seen the steeple and wandered inside, looking for shelter or religious succor.

Gabriel let his gaze wander over the dark, indistinct shapes of the crumbling interior. It was not a large church—he could have reached the altar in less than twenty paces—but the rows of pews gaping with expectation gave it a sense of restless hunger, repelling and beckoning him at the same time.

So, this was to be his, then. Good God, what business did he have leading a congregation? It had always been Anna’s dream to found a spiritual community, to bring to life the ideals and values about which she so voraciously read and that had surrounded them in Concord. But now she was gone, and the fulfillment of her dreams was left to him. Perhaps he could make her proud in death where he had so often failed in life, but he rather doubted it. He had not been the intellectual, the enlightened thinker that she had so wished of him. This whole plan was madness; he was counterfeiting a version of himself that had never existed, all in the hopes of redeeming himself in the eyes of a woman who was gone. It was pathetic. He was pathetic.

He shook out his hat and pushed the wet hair out of his eyes. Cobwebs hung from the exposed rafters and dust grimed the stained glass, thick and dark. Gabriel cursed again as he tripped over a loose floorboard, steadying himself on the back of a dusty pew. The idea that he could make this a welcoming space was nearly as daunting as the thought of leading a flock to transcendental enlightenment. “Damn,” he murmured again, before he could stop himself. If he was going to be an even half-convincing minister, he was going to have to curb his vulgar habit of cursing.

Discarding his dripping coat, Gabriel cast his eye around for something that would make a suitable bed for the night. An old splintered pew couldn’t be any worse than the coach he had shared with six other gentlemen on his journey, all of whom had apparently been ill-acquainted with the concept of soap. He was just about to lower himself down onto the sturdiest-looking pew when a sound rose above the howling wind outside. Gabriel froze.

Someone was trying to get in. The door at the far end of the aisle was rattling, thumping, as if someone were pushing on it, just as Gabriel had tried at first. Without thinking, he grabbed the first thing that might reasonably serve as a weapon—a tarnished and cobwebbed brass candlestick—and crept to the door, where the latch was jiggling violently. It might have been a decrepit old church, and he might have been there only for a matter of minutes, but it was his decrepit old church, and by God, he would defend it.

Gabriel reached the door, held his breath and waited. His heart was beating in his ears, his mouth suddenly as dry as cotton. He wasn’t scared—he’d long ago lost the capacity for that when he’d lost everything that he held dear—but he didn’t particularly relish any more excitement for the day either. All he wanted was to close his eyes and get as dry as possible.

Just as the door swung open, he raised the candlestick above his head and lunged at the dark shape silhouetted against the rainy night.

“Sweet Jesus, don’t hurt me!” The figure dropped to the ground in a huddling mound. “I—I’m the sexton,” the man said, his voice muffled and pathetic.

Cursing, Gabriel stopped his swing. The candlestick dropped from his grasp, clattering to the floor. Of course it was the sexton. Who else would be interested in this rotting old church?

“Gabriel Stone,” he said, offering his hand to help the man up. “The new minister.” The words tasted strange on his tongue, and he realized it was the first time he had said them out loud.

The man staggered to his feet, wide-eyed and dripping wet. He regarded Gabriel with lingering panic. He was slight, with stooping shoulders and, at about thirty, was only a couple of years younger than Gabriel.

He knew what the man saw: Gabriel was too tall, too broad, too much like a lumbering giant. People glanced cautiously at him out the side of their eyes, as if he were a criminal, a tough. His voice, low and raspy, didn’t help. He was used to the reaction, but it never eased the pang of annoyance—and self-consciousness—that he felt. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he bit off, unable to keep the irritation from his voice. Then he raised his hands, palms up, in a gesture of pacification.

The sexton gave a hesitant nod and swallowed, extending his hand. “Ezekiel Lewis, but folks just call me Lewis. That’s quite the grip you have,” he said, rubbing his hand and warily eyeing the discarded candlestick.

Gabriel had corresponded with someone before coming to Pale Harbor, but as with all things concerning this new venture, he had been unsure of his footing, of exactly what he was supposed to say. Now he wasn’t sure if it was Lewis he’d written to, or someone else in the town when he’d sent ahead notice that the minister who was supposed to come to Pale Harbor had died and that Gabriel was his replacement. That wasn’t strictly true, but it wasn’t a lie, either. When the brilliant Reverend Joshua Whipple of Concord had died in a carriage accident, Gabriel had seized on his chance to be the man that Anna would have wanted. It had all moved so quickly after he’d set the plan in motion, and then there had been no going back.

Gabriel regarded the nervous man and decided to take a gamble.

“I believe you were expecting me?”

Lewis nodded. “I was meant to meet you at the dock, but my cart got stuck in the mud and delayed me. When I couldn’t find you, I figured you might have come up to the church. I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting me to take you to the cottage now, after all?”

The poor man might have been even more soaked than himself, and he had only a threadbare coat to protect him from the elements. “Might as well bide here for a while yet. No use in going back out into the storm,” Gabriel said.

Lewis nodded his agreement, looking grateful. He had closed the door behind him and was rubbing his arms to get warm. “It’s a wonder the ship was even able to make dock in this weather,” he said, after a particularly harsh clap of thunder.

It had been a bumpy ride, the dark water endlessly churning like a witch’s cauldron, and Gabriel had watched more than one of his fellow passengers be sick over the rail. The two men lapsed into silence, the pounding storm outside making the church feel somehow smaller, more intimate. Gabriel, though never one for small talk, somehow found himself falling into conversation easily in the dark.

“Have you been the sexton long?” Lewis was decades younger than Gabriel would have thought someone in his position would be, and it was hardly a trade for an ambitious young man.

“No, sir. That is, there isn’t much need for a sexton these days,” Lewis said, jutting his chin vaguely into the shadowy church. “I work at the cemetery, digging graves and groundskeeping and the like. I come around here a couple of times a month to cut the grass and make sure no one has broken in.” His look grew sheepish. “Might have been a few months since I last came inside.”

Gabriel had begun to move away from the door and farther into the church, inspecting his new domain as much as he could in the near blackness.

Lewis followed him, swallowing. “I’d wanted it cleaned up before you saw it...” he said, trailing off, as he dashed a cobweb away from his face.

“I’ll see to all the cleaning later.” Gabriel squinted into the darkness. The last of the moon had long since slid behind a heavy bank of clouds. “You don’t have a match, by chance?”

Lewis fumbled in his pocket, miraculously producing a dry matchbox, and struck a match. He touched it to a piece of wood, throwing light onto the empty pews and casting grotesque shadows from the forgotten saints.

The cross at the altar would have to go, and Mary stared at him with accusing eyes, as if she knew that her tenure would be short-lived. The stained glass might stay, but everything else was the vestige of an outdated religion and had no place in a home for transcendentalism. Or so he assumed, though he wasn’t quite sure. Anna would have known; she had been so smart, so clever. Unitarianism—with its strict interpretation of monotheism and all things scientific and rational—might have taken root in Boston, but it was transcendentalism, with its wild abandon to the spiritual, that had so enamored her in Concord. Stop thinking about her, he chided himself. Do this for her, but for God’s sake don’t wallow in self-pity.

A flash of movement snapped Gabriel from his thoughts. “What was that?” He put his hand out to stop Lewis.

Lewis swung the light back around toward the altar and took a sharp breath. Something was moving, rustling about in the debris under the cross.

Without thinking, Gabriel began making his way up the aisle, pushing aside detritus. There was something at the altar, a shape blacker than the rest of its dark surroundings. And it was moving.

His skin prickled and despite his cold, wet clothes, sweat beaded along Gabriel’s neck. The walls danced with quivering shadows, the wind howling and gripping the creaking church tighter. He swallowed. It was not a particularly welcoming place, but now a sense of wrongness took hold of him, as if he were not supposed to be here. As if something did not want him here.

A crash and fluttering broke the stillness. Lewis fell to his knees, and Gabriel flinched as something disturbed the air over their heads.

“What the—”

Taking the torch from Lewis, Gabriel held it up, dimly illuminating the rafters. From the darkness above, a pair of gleaming black eyes blinked down at him.

“It’s a bird,” he said, feeling foolish that his heart was still racing, his palms sweating. Lewis, who had lost about three shades from his already pale face, let out a shaky breath. “There are holes in the roof. It must have come through one to get out of the storm.”

The bird—a raven or a crow, something big and black—cocked its head and blinked down at them with vague interest. Then it shuffled its wings a few times and settled down to roost.

Suddenly, Gabriel just wanted to sleep, even if his new lodgings were cold and empty. He’d had enough of the dank church and its accusing shadows. He was just about to broach the idea of plunging out into the storm when he caught a hint of a strange odor.

The whole church had a musty, unused smell about it, but this was different. Pungent, sweet. Acrid to the point of making his eyes water, and only growing stronger. Curiosity overcame apprehension, and he drew closer to the altar.

He jerked backward. “Oh, God.” Gabriel buried his nose in his handkerchief, fighting the rising gag in his throat. Beside him, Lewis made the sign of the cross over his chest.

This must have been what had attracted the carrion bird, why it had been pecking about the altar. It was a wonder he hadn’t smelled it right away. Bones and fur lay before them, strips of rancid flesh. It was such a mess that it was impossible to tell what the animal might have been in life, or even if it had been a single animal.

“What the hell is that doing here?”

Maybe some forest creature had found its way into the church and then perished after it was unable to get out. But something about its position on the altar sent a chill down Gabriel’s spine. Why wasn’t it nearer a door, or window, if it had died trying to get out of the church? How had it come to lie on the most conspicuous feature of the building?

Lewis shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t say I’ve seen anything particularly like this, but—”

Just then a loud crack of thunder rang out, swallowing his words. Lewis jumped back and the light stuttered out, leaving them in darkness.

Gabriel had had enough. The church was in ruins and clearly would need to be addressed in the light of day. The animal remains weren’t going anywhere, and there wasn’t anything they could do about them in the middle of the night anyway.

“All right. Let’s leave it for now.”

A hiss of relief came from the darkness behind him. “Very good, Reverend.”

They gingerly made their way back to the door, and Gabriel shoved his wet hat back on his head. A pang of melancholy ran through him at the thought of arriving at an empty house. He was running away from a painfully empty home in Concord; had he really done all this only to exchange it for another, and in an unfamiliar place, no less?

Between the unsettling discovery at the altar and the icy impassiveness of the church, what little luster his plans had had now faded to a dull and miserable gray. Gabriel was cold, weary and utterly alone. And it was only a matter of time before the town of Pale Harbor discovered him for the fraud he was.

3

The invitations began almost immediately.

If Gabriel had thought that his arrival would be quiet, that he could slip into Pale Harbor unnoticed, then he had been sorely mistaken. It was a small town—Lewis had informed him that their police force consisted of one constable, and the nearest schoolhouse was ten miles away, in the next town—and the arrival of a new transcendentalist minister from Massachusetts had set everyone talking. If he had been a true minister, he would have relished the chance to recruit fresh faces and gather up a flock for his church. But he was not a true minister, and every time he thought of espousing universal truths to a church full of trusting, upturned faces, his heart twisted with guilt. He had thought that doing it for Anna, for making her dream come true, would have been enough, but he was quickly learning that it was not. Without her by his side, his actions were meaningless, his words hollow.

The first invitation came from the Marshalls, who—Lewis had explained in admiring tones—were the foremost family of Pale Harbor, having made a small fortune in the shipment of granite down the east coast. If Gabriel could persuade them to join his congregation, Lewis had assured him, then the whole town would follow. Whether Gabriel wanted a robust congregation was another story, but he would play his part, and at the very least enjoy a hot meal.

He slogged through the dusky little town, the scent of damp fallen leaves and wood smoke filling his lungs. Most of the homes he passed were modest, weather-beaten cottages like his, but old captains’ mansions with stately pillars punctuated the main thoroughfare, reminders of the town’s once-thriving whaling and trading industries. These could have been Anna’s streets, her soft footsteps evaporating into the yawning gray sky. She would have delighted in the tall pines creaking in the wind, the hawks that sat sentry in the spindly boughs far above. The ever-present roll and crash of the ocean would have been her nightly lullaby. Gabriel shook his head, trying to dislodge the painful thoughts.

The road ended abruptly at a steep-gabled house, painted a lush pink and trimmed with white latticework. Rosebushes, nearing the end of their season, climbed defiantly up either side of the porch. Among all the weathered clapboard and peeling paint of the other homes, the house looked like something dropped straight out of the pages of a fairy tale.

As Gabriel climbed the front porch steps, a rosy, stout woman came out and greeted him at the door, beaming at him from under a frilly cap. His melancholy thoughts evaporated, replaced by an anxious knot in his stomach that always formed when mixing with anyone of higher social standing than him.

But Mrs. Marshall put him at ease immediately. “Come in, you poor darling,” she said, tutting at his coat, which had never dried properly from the night before. “You must be the minister. I’m Clara Marshall and I’m so pleased to meet you.”

Gabriel glanced to his side, half-expecting to see a black-frocked minister to whom Mrs. Marshall had addressed her greeting. But, of course, she meant him.

“Er, yes,” he said, recovering. “Gabriel Stone.”

“Mr. Stone, then. Come in, come in. Here, give me that damp coat.”

No sooner had Gabriel stepped into the hall and surrendered his coat to a maidservant than Mrs. Marshall called out, “Girls!” and ushered forth two identical, golden-haired little girls. “Cora and Flora,” she said proudly.

Gabriel dipped his head. “A pleasure.”

“You’re tall,” said Cora, or maybe it was Flora. The other hid her giggles behind her hand.

“Girls, manners!” Mrs. Marshall shot Gabriel an apologetic look, and then passed the twins off to a servant with instructions to have them wash before dinner, and this time make sure they didn’t just pass their hands under water, but to really scrub them.

Throughout the harried introductions, a small, wiry man with graying whiskers was hovering in the hallway, fiddling with a cigar case. “Mr. Stone,” he said, pocketing the case and sticking his hand out. “Horace Marshall. A pleasure to meet you. Come, will you join me for a drink before dinner is called?”

Before Gabriel had a chance to respond, Mr. Marshall was thrusting a cigar into his hand and leading him into a dim parlor, brimming with expensive furniture and fussy ornaments. It was just the kind of place that made Gabriel nervous, as if all it would take was one careless movement to send a priceless figurine crashing over. He held his breath as he followed Mr. Marshall past a stuffed owl under a glass dome and a vase quivering with silk flowers and feathers.

“I can’t tell you how good it will be to have that church cleaned up and full of parishioners,” Mr. Marshall said, lowering himself into an overstuffed chair. “Not just because it’s a shame to let that old building rot away, either. Did you know it used to be a Quaker meeting house back in the last century? One of the oldest in Maine, if not New England. More recently, the Irish here were using it as a Catholic church, but they hadn’t the funds to keep it up.”

Gabriel murmured that he had not known. Perching gingerly on a precarious-looking settee, he searched for an ashtray in which to snuff out his cigar. He’d never liked the things, and the ash was growing long and threatening to spill onto his sleeve.

Oblivious to his predicament, Mr. Marshall tugged at his mustache and continued with his line of thought. “Might do the town good to have more of a godly presence, too.”

Gabriel commandeered a vase and discreetly tapped out his ash. “Oh?”

When Mr. Marshall didn’t respond immediately, Gabriel asked, “And why is that?”

“Hmm?” Mr. Marshall looked at him as if coming out of some deep private thought. “Oh, nothing. It’s only we’ve had some troublemakers lately, and a bit of fire and brimstone might be just the thing to keep them in line.”

“I see.” Gabriel frowned. “Well, transcendentalism generally doesn’t go in for that kind of thing.” That much he knew, at least. That’s what Anna had loved about the spiritual movement, “the exquisite freedom” of it, as she had once told him. There was no good and bad, no heaven and hell, only a beautiful energy that permeated the universe, connecting each and every soul. It was a nice way to look at the world, but it simply wasn’t true. There was good and evil—he had seen so for himself.

Mr. Marshall looked a little disappointed and cleared his throat before taking another puff of his cigar. “Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing. You’re the big city man, but I think hellfire would go a sight farther around Pale Harbor than any of this wishy-washy transcendental business.”

Gabriel choked on his cigar smoke but was spared the need to respond by the maidservant sticking her head into the parlor and announcing dinner.

He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the covers were lifted off the dishes, revealing steaming platters of buttery fish and fried potatoes, roast beef, succulent green beans and thick chowder. He shifted in his seat so that his hosts wouldn’t hear the rolling growl of his stomach.

Mr. Marshall clapped his hands and rubbed them together in anticipation. “You won’t find food better than this anywhere in Pale Harbor,” he said. “Tell me, have you employed a cook yet?”

“Er, no,” Gabriel said as he helped himself to a heap of potatoes. He’d barely opened his trunks yet, let alone found domestic help.

The twins, who couldn’t have been more than ten, had apparently been deemed mature enough to dine with their parents at the table, and were in the process of trying to wriggle out of their starched smocks. Their whispers and giggles were a constant backdrop to the conversation, and more than once Gabriel glanced up to see them sharing secret conversations behind their hands while staring at him.

With a careful glance at them, Gabriel swallowed his food. “Mr. Marshall—” he started, only to be waved off.

“Please, we don’t stand on ceremony here. Horace.”

If the wealthy businessman had known who Gabriel truly was, would he still have allowed Gabriel to address him so informally? He shifted a little in his seat. “Horace,” he began again, “you mentioned something in the parlor.” He chose his words carefully, mindful of the young girls seated at the table. “When I first went to look at the church, there was...” He cleared his throat. “There was some sort of...” How to describe the pile of remains that had left him so unsettled and had lurked at the back of his mind since the night before? “Some sort of...animal at the altar. A dead one.”

Despite his best efforts, Gabriel had attracted the attention of the twins, who immediately left off their whispers and regarded him with eyes the size of saucers.

Mr. and Mrs. Marshall shared a look. “I expect you will have heard something of the troubles that are plaguing the town?” asked Mr. Marshall cautiously, after a long pause.

“Troubles?”

“Horace!” Mrs. Marshall’s ruddy cheeks pinkened further. “That is not a conversation for the dinner table.”

Unperturbed, Mr. Marshall gave her a dismissive wave and settled back into his chair, swirling his wine around in his glass. “Well, he’s going to hear it sooner or later. He might as well hear it from us without all the embroidery some of the other townsfolk will give the story.”

Mrs. Marshall pressed her lips together before snapping at the twins to cease their giggling.

“Troubles?” Gabriel prompted again.

“Just last week Maggie Duncan found a pile of skinned squirrels in the woods behind her house,” Mr. Marshall said. “At first she thought it was the work of a fox, but what fox eats just the fur and leaves the meat? Then there was some sort of...of effigy. Crude little doll with all manner of buttons and strings sewed about it and stuffed into the hollow of the old elm tree in town.”

Gabriel stiffened in his seat at the descriptions that were eerily similar to what he had found just the other night. This must have been why Mr. Marshall had wanted his church to preach crime and punishment.

A thick silence had settled over the table. Gabriel put down his glass and looked between Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. “What is it?”

A meaningful look passed between the husband and wife. “No one has been apprehended,” Mrs. Marshall said tightly. “But most people around here know who’s behind it without a signed confession.”

Gabriel looked at them blankly, waiting for one of them to elaborate.

“Sophronia Carver,” said Mr. Marshall, as if it cost him something just to say the name. “Nathaniel Carver’s widow.”

“She killed her husband,” Mrs. Marshall added. “And lives in...an unsavory manner that I won’t expound upon in front of the children.”

Gabriel barely had time to ask what constituted an unsavory manner, when the children in question piped up.

“She’s a witch,” said one of the twins.

“It’s true,” said the other twin, nodding gravely. “Lucy Warren looked through her window and saw her stirring at a great pot. And what do you think was sticking out the bottom of her dress?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to say he was sure he had no idea, but the twins were too fast.

“A tail!” they exclaimed in joyful unison.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Marshall seemed particularly taken aback by this outburst, Mr. Marshall continuing to saw away at his beef, and Mrs. Marshall only saying indulgently, “A tail! I don’t know where you girls get such stories.”

The twins dissolved into giggles again. “And she has the most horrid scar running down her face.”

“Probably from one of her victims trying to escape!”

“Well, tail or no,” said Mr. Marshall, taking the accusation against Mrs. Carver in stride, “the woman is queer and you can lay your last nickel on the fact that she’s behind all this unpleasant business.”

The dinner was taking on a decidedly peculiar slant and, unused to drinking so much rich wine, Gabriel’s temple was starting to throb. The widow in question would have to be a queer woman indeed to go traipsing about in abandoned churches, setting out dead, mutilated animals. It seemed more likely that it was, as the Marshalls had first suggested, the work of some cruel youngster.

The conversation continued in that vein for a while longer, but Gabriel was no longer listening. He was tired and on edge from trying to say the right things, to sit the right way on these damned uncomfortable chairs. All he wanted was to stand up, thank the Marshalls for the hospitality, and then go back to his empty little house and fall into bed. But then the conversation took an even more horrifying turn.

“Are you married, Gabriel?”

He froze, his fork hovering over his plate. It had been nearly a year, but the question still made him feel as if the carpet had been ripped out from under him, the breath stolen straight from his lungs. He put down his fork, hoping to appear composed in his answer. “My wife passed away. Childbirth,” he added, knowing that if he didn’t provide the cause now he would only be asked later anyway. “The baby died, as well.”

Mrs. Marshall’s face creased and fell. “Oh, dear, I am sorry to hear that.”

Gabriel waved off her concern, but it took a considerable amount of effort to keep himself in the present. It seemed that no matter how far he ran from Concord, Anna would haunt him, never mind that he had hungered for her ghost to follow him here.

“Well, I don’t like to impose where it isn’t my business, but Pale Harbor has any number of good, capable young women who would make good wives to a minister.”

“Clara!” Mr. Marshall exclaimed.

“Well, it’s true,” she said in an injured tone. “I don’t pretend to be a matchmaker, but there’s no hurt in him considering his options.”

Mr. Marshall gave Gabriel an apologetic look as if to say they both knew how women could be. Gabriel dropped his gaze to his plate, his appetite gone.

They finished dinner in silence, even the twins apparently content to be quiet. Afterward, the girls were sent up to bed while the adults retired to the parlor for dessert. Gabriel drank the coffee that was offered to him and ate the fruitcake, nodding politely along at the depthless conversation about the weather and the new portrait studio in Rockport.

Coming here had been a mistake. Why did he think he could converse with prominent, wealthy families? Social graces and etiquette had never been his strong point. What need had a man like him, from his background, for social graces? He’d had to learn everything painstakingly from Anna, and even now he was more suited to enjoying a good story in a tavern than polite small talk over delicate china cups of coffee.

“I should be going,” Gabriel said, standing abruptly.

Mrs. Marshall’s brows drew quizzically together, but she pasted on a bright smile. “Of course, I hadn’t realized how late it was getting. Horace?”

“Mmm? Oh, right, right,” said Mr. Marshall, standing with a grunt.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, giving Mrs. Marshall a stiff bow of his head. “Dinner was delicious.”

Gabriel’s coat had almost completely dried after the benefit of being on a stove, and the men went out to the porch, where Mr. Marshall lit another cigar. The storm of the previous night had rolled off, leaving in its wake a steady drizzle and crisp breeze.

“You’ll think all it does is rain here,” Mr. Marshall said with a hint of chagrin. “We seem to be stuck in some sort of weather pattern, with storms from the sea rolling into the harbor every few days.”

Gabriel welcomed the rain. Every drop that chilled him to the bone was a penance, a reminder. He deserved to be wet and cold for the role he had played in Anna’s death. If he hadn’t gotten her with child, she would still be here. She had been too delicate, too fragile, for childbearing, and he hadn’t protected her. God, he was doing it again. Stop thinking about her, you dolt.

Mr. Marshall reached for something in his waistcoat pocket, pulling Gabriel from his thoughts. “I hope you won’t mind the presumption, but I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a list of all the families in town for you.” He handed Gabriel a folded sheet of paper. “Thought you might want to make the rounds and introduce yourself.”

Gabriel took the list and scanned the jumble of names, unable to fathom actually having to put faces to them. “Thank you. I’m sure this will be very useful.”

But Mr. Marshall wasn’t listening. He was worrying at his mustache, staring out into the gray dusk. “There is one name I omitted from that list.” He paused. “You would do well to steer far and clear of Sophronia Carver.”

“The widow?”

Nodding, Mr. Marshall took a slow puff from his cigar. “My wife has a flair for the dramatic, but there’s no getting around the fact that something’s not quite right about what goes on in that house.”

Gabriel followed Mr. Marshall’s gaze to the tip of a white cupola that just showed above the treetops in the distance. His heart grew heavy and his gut churned at the thought of meeting with anyone on the list, least of all the odd widow who had so captured their imaginations.

4

Sophronia looked down at the deluge of ink slowly spreading across her desk and bit back a curse; nothing had gone right that morning. First, she had taken out her favorite wool shawl for the winter, only to find that moths had eaten the fringe clean off. Then the magazine’s board had delivered a stern missive, warning that subscriptions were down from last year and that if she couldn’t bring in a higher caliber of submissions, then the magazine’s future would be in grave jeopardy. It was all bluster on their part, but it still was never a good sign when the board was unhappy. The last straw had been when Duchess had knocked a bottle of ink over a stack of unread submissions. Now half of them were stained and stuck together, and would be unreadable. If the next brilliant submission to save the magazine had been in that pile, she would never know.

But even on the hard days like this, she relished her role as owner and editor of the magazine, and wouldn’t give it up for anything. All the work could be done from her desk in the parlor, and then Garrett would take her packets of papers and notes and mail them to the office in Portland. It gave her a sense of fulfillment, like maybe her solitary life on the hill wasn’t completely fruitless and without merit.

She had worked hard to achieve success as the magazine’s owner. There were half a dozen editors and businessmen who would have been only too happy to see her stripped of her position. So what if her ownership was the result of a technicality? Nathaniel had thought that, should anything happen to him, the magazine would be safest in her name, somewhere competitors couldn’t get at it. She suppressed a grim laugh. If he’d had any idea when he would die, and in the manner he had, no less, he never would have taken the liberty.

“Duchess, you may have cost us the next Shelley or Byron,” Sophronia muttered as she tried to peel the inky pages apart in vain. Duchess gave her an unapologetic glare from the windowsill.

Crouching down, she set all the salvageable pages in front of the grate to dry, and rocked back on her heels. Her vision began to swim as she stared down at her hands, and for a moment they were not stained in black ink, but crimson blood. So much blood...beneath her nails, crusted into her cuticles, smeared across her face. Just like on that fateful night.

The smell of damp earth filled her nostrils, and she could feel the unforgiving wind biting at her cheeks, though the fire was licking away in the grate. Clean, clean... She had to wash her hands, scrub them until they were pink and innocent again before anyone saw and realized what she had done. Heart racing, she rushed to the kitchen sink, pouring scalding water out from the kettle and mercilessly scouring the offending flesh.

The waking nightmare didn’t break until her hands were raw and burned, the skin singing with pain. She jumped back from the sink, trembling with how quickly the chimera had come on. A nervous laugh threatened to erupt, but she held it in. God, what a foolish creature she could be.

A breath of fresh air would revive her and clear away the bad memories. She gave her hands one last harsh wipe on a towel, and then went and fetched her cloak and bonnet and steeled herself to face the outside world.

She pushed the door open. The first few steps outside the house were always the hardest, but if she could just get a little momentum, then by the time she was out the door she could keep going, at least a little ways.

If it wasn’t for the quiver of movement from the breeze, she would have completely missed the sliver of black marking the door. Slowly, she took a step back into the foyer, her gaze trained on the door and the alien object attached to it.

Below the elaborate brass knocker, a long, black feather hung from a nail.

With a trembling hand, Sophronia slowly reached out and touched it, half-hoping that it would be as fleeting and insubstantial as the delusion that had just gripped her in the kitchen. But the soft bristles met her fingers with heart-sinking solidity.

Sophronia’s blood ran cold as she jerked her hand back. It had been still and quiet in the house all morning. How had someone managed to hammer in the nail without her hearing anything?

It was as if whoever had left the ravens had read the doubts in her mind and wanted to make certain that she understood none of this was coincidence or an accident. This was as bold a statement as Martin Luther nailing his theses to the church door. This was a declaration, but of what?

In a fit of panic, Sophronia tried to pry the nail from the door. When it wouldn’t budge, she snatched at the feather, sending torn black filaments floating to the ground. But the quill would not budge.

“Blast it.” She would have to ask Garrett to pry out the nail and patch the hole. At least it could be easily fixed, and Garrett was nothing if not discreet.

But that was little comfort to Sophronia, who felt as if the world were pressing in around her. Felt as if eyes watched her every movement, even through the walls of the house. If she had thought that the change she had felt coming to Pale Harbor was to be positive, then it seemed she was sorely mistaken. Now it was a growing sense of dread that hung over her, as if a predator was circling just beyond her line of sight, slowly closing in on her.

With a letter in his pocket, Gabriel wandered down toward the harbor, looking for the post. It was a small town, with most of the homes and buildings rising up from the edges of the water, clinging to the salty lifeblood that provided its food and industry. His walk took him past the same run-down houses he had seen the previous week, now benevolently gilded in gentle sunlight. He had been in Pale Harbor for a week now, meeting with the townspeople, cleaning out the church and generally gathering his bearings. But it still felt wrong, and he no more felt that he belonged in Pale Harbor than he had in Concord without Anna.

Restless and a little homesick, the night before he had written to the only person in Concord he considered a friend, Tom Ellroy. Tom, who he had known since they were both boys running wild through the Massachusetts countryside, had stuck by him through thick and thin, and there had been plenty of thin, especially when they’d both joined the navy on a boyish whim. Gabriel had four older sisters, and Tom was the brother he’d never had. Tom alone was privy to Gabriel’s reasons for coming to Pale Harbor and the deception he had practiced in getting here.

The morning dawned dry and warm, a crystal-clear September day. Dirt mingled with sand, and every breath carried with it the faint promise of the great ocean beyond. Gabriel was small and inconsequential, a drop of salt water among many in the seaside town, and how liberating it was. In the light of day, the dark discovery in the church seemed far away, and his awkward dinner with the Marshalls insignificant. Maybe he would not be a success as a minister, but he had come this far, and if nothing else, it would be the fresh start he so desperately needed.

Despite the fair weather, the waterfront was quiet, subdued. Only a few small boats bobbed in the placid water, and a handful of dockworkers leisurely unloaded nets full of fish. Mr. Marshall had told Gabriel that twenty-five years ago, Pale Harbor would have been a bustling port, with all sorts of languages being spoken as ships unloaded their goods from lands as far away as China. But the war with the British in 1812 and the subsequent closing of trade routes had strangled the cosmopolitan breath from the town, leaving it choked and withered.

Gabriel ambled down to the water, watching seagulls squabble over a dropped fish. Despite his pledge to take all the rain as a penance, he was enjoying the early autumn sun on his face.

He found two young men taking a rest from unloading crates on the dock, their shirts stuck to their backs with perspiration, their sleeves rolled to the elbows. When he asked them where he could post a letter, they directed him to the dry goods store on the other side of town.

He thanked them and was about to turn to leave. He knew he should introduce himself, tell them about the new church. That’s what a minister was supposed to do. But the idea of proselytizing made him shrink into his skin, and despite days of practicing in front of the mirror, he still tripped over his words and came across as a fool. They would probably scoff at him, just as the Marshalls surely had as soon as Gabriel had left their home, and he couldn’t bear to hear Anna’s dearest beliefs disparaged.

“Not from around here, are you?”

Stopping in his tracks, Gabriel reluctantly turned back. He took a fortifying breath. “No, not from around here.”

The man who spoke had light brown skin and a musical voice with an island lilt. “Thought you might not be local,” he said. “Not with that accent.”

Gabriel hadn’t bothered trying to disguise the brusqueness of his lower-class voice; he felt comfortable here on the docks in a way he hadn’t in the Marshalls’ dining room. But apparently he had been found out as an outsider anyway.

“Might as well be from Dixie,” rejoined the other man.

“Concord,” Gabriel told them, and then added, “Massachusetts. My name is Gabriel Stone.”

“Well, Gabriel Stone from Concord, I’m Manuel,” said the man with the lilting voice. “And this useless lug is Jasper.”

Jasper nodded his introduction. He was young, red-haired and pale, with a smattering of freckles. “You’re the one taking over the old church, then?” he asked Gabriel without preamble.

“That’s right.” Gabriel hoped that his curt response would be the end of it, but Jasper was giving him an assessing look, and both of the men’s curiosity seemed to be piqued.

Manuel raised a brow. “What is it you’ll be preaching?”

Damn it. Gabriel had memorized his little speech, which he had given some dozen or so times in the past week. Unsurprisingly, it came out mechanical and dry.

“Transcendentalism. It’s the belief that God is in nature, and that the answers of the universe can be found within man instead of without. The spirit comes from nature and so knows more than our minds. It’s, uh...” He paused, trying to remember all the correct words. “It’s very popular in Concord,” he finished lamely.

There was painful silence until Manuel finally said, “Meaning no disrespect, but you don’t do much in the way of putting a polish on your creed. If Saint Peter had been as ho-hum in his preaching, then I doubt Jesus would have had a church to name him the rock of.”

The man was right, of course. Without conviction in his words, Gabriel came off as a charlatan. “Well, if you change your minds, you’re always welcome.” He was just about to turn to leave when Jasper stopped him again.

“Seeing as you’re new here, you wouldn’t happen to be looking for some help around the house, would you? A cook, maybe?”

“I might. Why?” Gabriel had imagined that he would keep his own council, moving about an empty house as a monk might a cell, reveling in the solitude. But the mundane day-to-day tasks of keeping a house were proving a drudgery, and the night crept in so close and thick that he longed for some sound other than the groaning of the wind. A light footstep around the house would be welcome, and that was to say nothing of a hot meal. For the past week, he’d been subsisting entirely on bread and molasses and the charity of the townsfolk, the latter of which he was eager to stop using.

“My sister, Fanny, she needs a new position.”

“Does she have references?”

Jasper’s sharp green eyes darkened. “She works up at the castle for that woman,” he said, barely able to choke out the last word.

Gabriel looked between the two men, brow raised. “Woman?”

Manuel gave a jerk of his head toward the hill. “Mrs. Carver,” he said. “The widow.”

Her name had now made its way to his ears several times over the course of the past week, usually in conjunction with the shaking of heads and disdainful grimaces. The people here spoke as if the devil himself was in their midst, and Gabriel was growing more and more curious about this almost mythical figure.

“It’s not a fit place for a young lady of her birth to work,” Jasper continued, his jaw tight. “Me and my sister might be fallen on hard times, but we’re of good stock, and it’s beneath her to be scrubbing away and laundering for the likes of her.”

Mr. Marshall’s warning came back to him. “People here really believe she killed her husband, then?”

Manuel spat in the dirt and went back to unloading crates without a word.

“She’s as guilty as sin,” Jasper said, his gaze still trained somewhere past the hill. “She’s the worst sort of fraud, living in her grand house like a lady, as if she’s better than the rest of us. Meanwhile, her hands are stained with blood.”

“I see,” Gabriel said, surprised at the force of the young man’s words.

“She doesn’t leave her grounds, thinks she’s too good to mix with the likes of us. But she’s not too good to work Fanny like a slave.”

Gabriel rubbed at his jaw, considering the proposition. “Send your sister to the church cottage tomorrow, and I’ll see what I can do.”

The distant, steely look in Jasper’s eyes softened into genuine relief and gratitude, and he took Gabriel’s hand, shaking it heartily. “I will. Thank you, sir.”

Gabriel said goodbye to the men and left them to their work. But instead of continuing to the post, he looped the long way around from the docks so Jasper wouldn’t see where he was going.

He wasn’t sure why he found himself drawn to the house on the hill, but his feet carried him there as if they knew the answer. For the first time in months, Gabriel’s mind was preoccupied with something other than his loss, his restless heart. He wanted to know why everyone here seemed so very determined to keep him away from the widow who lived on the hill. And if the people of Pale Harbor would give him only fairy stories and gossip about the notorious Mrs. Carver, then he would get the real story himself.

The trees hid what a grand house it really was, with its two-story facade of glass windows facing the harbor, flanked with ostentatious turrets in the Gothic style. The confusion of architectural styles and additions gave it a certain vernacular charm, but it was far from the secluded, ramshackle estate he had envisioned. The grounds teemed with activity: a squirrel chittered nervously in a tree, the grass had been raked free of fallen leaves, and the garden beds were mulched and fresh. From somewhere around back came the rhythmic pounding of an ax. For a house that had created such unease in the town, it was remarkably benign in all appearances.

A movement flickered above him from the windows, and Gabriel stopped short, craning his head up. The curtain in the window stirred, and then fell back into place, but not before he’d glimpsed the sliver of a face.

If Gabriel had thought the Marshalls wealthy and above him, their home was nothing compared to the scale of Castle Carver. What in the hell was he thinking? What would he possibly say to this woman? But he had come this far, and his curiosity had reached a peak. Gabriel took the five shallow brick steps that led up to the front door and knocked.

There was no answer. He stepped back to crane his head up to the windows again, but it was still, and no one peered back down at him. Perhaps it was true what they said: not that she was a witch, of course, but that she was a recluse, a madwoman.

The sound of the ax splitting wood had stopped, and just as Gabriel was reluctantly going back down the steps, he ran into a weathered old man, clutching an ax in his meaty hands.

“Excuse me. I’m looking for—”

“Mrs. Carver don’t take callers,” the man said. “You’re wasting your time knocking.”

Everything in the man’s posture indicated that he didn’t want Gabriel to linger for a second longer on the grounds. But Gabriel wasn’t in a hurry. He crossed his arms and squinted up into the cloudless sky. “Unnaturally warm weather, isn’t it?”

“Don’t bother me,” the man said with a scowl.

Ignoring the man’s contempt, Gabriel asked, “So you work for Mrs. Carver, then?”

The man tilted his bristled chin up defiantly. “That’s right. And she wouldn’t want some busybody skulking ’bout her property.”

There was something about the imposing house that tugged at Gabriel, beckoned him. “A bandage,” he said, lifting his hand and showing off a miniscule scrape on the palm. He had gotten it while hauling debris from the church and had all but forgotten about it. “I cut myself and need a bandage.” He was sure that if he could just get inside that he would see her, that he could put his curiosity to rest.

The man stared at him with incredulous scorn. “This ain’t a hospital!”

This was maddening. He was a minister trying to call on an old widow, not a thief walking up to a jewel vault in broad daylight. But before Gabriel could let his temper get the better of him, there was a rattle at the door, and then it opened, revealing the widow herself.

Now here was a woman who might have been the picture of widowhood in an illustrated encyclopedia. From her high-necked black dress to the tightly pulled-back hair to the disapproving pucker in her brow, she radiated severity. Though at about forty, she was younger than the white-haired and bent-backed old woman that he had been imagining.

“What do you want?” she snapped, her voice husky and brittle with irritation.

Clearing his throat, Gabriel stepped forward. “Mrs. Carver, my name is Gabriel Stone. I’m the new minister and—”

She said something that he couldn’t hear, and Gabriel stopped. “What?”

The lines around her mouth tightened. “I said, I’m not Mrs. Carver.”

“I...” Gabriel looked around at the vast, rolling grounds of the estate, the unmistakable cupola atop the great house. This was Castle Carver, he was sure of it. If this stern woman in dark dress wasn’t the infamous widow, who was she?

“Do you know where I might find her?”

“She doesn’t take callers,” the woman said, echoing the groundskeeper’s pronouncement, and moving to close the door. “Now be off with you.”

Too stunned to say anything, Gabriel just stood there as the door started to swing shut. Perhaps everything he had heard about Mrs. Carver was an exaggeration. She wasn’t a murderous witch, but was probably old and infirm, cared for by this brusque nurse. In the absence of regular sightings, the townspeople must have built up a legend around her.

Coming to Castle Carver had been a distraction, but now it was over and he would have to go back to his cottage and sit alone with his memories. Gabriel was just about to leave when a voice stopped him. It was light and feminine, musical.

“All right, Helen, that’s enough,” the voice said as the door swung back open. “I’ll not have a man collapse on my front step for want of a bandage.”

5

“I... Excuse me, but I was looking for a Mrs. Carver?”

The man was huge: tall, with broad shoulders, a gently squared jaw and a low, gravelly voice. She had only hesitated a moment before deciding to go to the door; if whoever had been leaving her the nasty surprises had decided to show up on her doorstep, they certainly wouldn’t have announced themselves. Beyond that, only one other kind of person would call on her, and that was someone who wasn’t from Pale Harbor. And that had to be the new minister that Helen said everyone was talking about. But with a dusting of light brown beard and shadowed eyes, he looked as if he had just lumbered off the docks, not come from a church. Suppressing her own surprise at the man who looked more like a sailor than a minister, Sophronia raised a brow.

“And you have found her,” she said with a gracious smile.

The man opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then looked behind him, as if checking to make sure that he had indeed come to the right house.

“I... My name is Gabriel Stone. The new minister.” He paused, and she let him stew in his confusion for another moment. “I’m sorry, but I thought that you...” He trailed off.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said with a sigh, “that you’ve been to dine with the Marshalls or the Wigginses already.”

Reddening, he started to explain himself, but she gave an airy wave. “No, no, you mustn’t apologize. They’re all well-meaning, but they haven’t the highest opinion of me. I suppose that goes for most of the town, as well. Please, come in.”

He was rather handsome in a rough sort of way, but when he passed her in the doorway, she couldn’t help her instinct to shrink back. He was so tall, so...big. Life with Nathaniel had taught her that men were dangerous creatures, and here she was, inviting a giant specimen inside her house. Closing the door behind him, she took a breath and drew herself up to her full height. Garrett was chopping wood in the yard, and Helen was nearby. She had nothing to fear. Besides, he was a man of the church.

“You’ll have to forgive Garrett and Helen their manners,” Sophronia said, giving him an apologetic smile. “We don’t do much entertaining nowadays.”

That was an understatement. They had never done much entertaining, even when Nathaniel was alive. But ever since learning that the town was to have a new minister, she had felt her heart lightening, a flicker of hope growing in her chest. People left Pale Harbor, but few came, and even fewer of those were anybody other than a poor fisherman down on his luck. Here was a man who hailed from Concord, the epicenter of all the exciting new schools of thought. If anyone could bring fresh ideas to Pale Harbor and persuade the townspeople to leave off in their superstitious ways, it would be him.

The minister followed her mutely, obediently. It was a strange sensation to feel the presence of a body behind her, in her space. Strange, yet not altogether unpleasant.

She led him to the parlor, her favorite room, with its circular walls studded with paintings and plush furniture upholstered in golds and greens. The parlor was also the Safest room in the house, thanks to the charms Helen insisted on hiding around the threshold, and the salt she was always sprinkling. It occupied the ground floor of the turret, so it was cozy and had only one door leading in and out to the hall. Cozy, beautiful, Safe.

“Please, have a seat.” She turned to clear some papers she had been reading off the sofa. When she turned around, the minister was lowering himself into the large armchair. Nathaniel’s old chair.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Not that one!”

He shot up like a bullet. “Oh... I didn’t... I’m so sorry.”

His cheeks flamed red and he looked genuinely distressed. What was wrong with her? He couldn’t possibly know the rules, and here she was proving the townspeople right in their belief that she was a madwoman. She took a deep breath.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just...that was my husband’s chair.” She paused, twining her fingers together. “No one sits there anymore.”

“Oh.” He flicked his gaze to the chair behind him and then cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize.”

She forced a tight smile. “Of course not. Here,” she said, pulling up another chair and patting the back. “This one is more comfortable.”

Sophronia seated herself on the sofa, compulsively smoothing out her skirts. It had been so long since anyone besides Helen or Fanny had sat in the parlor, let alone an attractive man around her own age. Her pulse fluttered like a butterfly, but she was determined to be cool and composed. He might be a great thinker, but she had always been an excellent conversationalist, given the chance.

But the minister was silent, clasping his hands on his knees and looking exceedingly uncomfortable. Goodness, she knew the townspeople would have painted her in an unfavorable light, but what exactly had they told him to make the poor man look as if he were about to have a leg amputated?

She would just have to draw him out. “I heard you were making the rounds through Pale Harbor,” she said. “I wondered when I would find you at my door.”

He had been looking at her with unmasked curiosity, but at this he dipped his head and dropped his gaze under the fringe of his golden-brown hair. “I should have called sooner, but—”

With a wave of the hand she stopped him from having to make some paper-thin excuse. “No matter. I am very glad to meet you now.” And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she gave him a conspiratorial smile. “I’m not what you were expecting, am I?”

His gaze shot back up to meet hers, his lips parting as if in surprise at her frankness. He had full, sensual lips. They softened some of the roughness of his demeanor, and Sophronia had to force herself not to stare. She rushed on before he had a chance to respond.

“You’re not what I was expecting either. For whatever you have heard of me, I confess that when I heard we were to have a new minister, I envisioned a man of quite advanced years, with a gray beard down to his watch fob.” She stole a glance at his work-roughened hands, his broad shoulders. “It seems we were both mistaken in our preconceptions, for you must have imagined me quite the specter if the people of this town are to be believed.”

The minister looked down at his hands, as if it pained him to admit the truth. “Yes,” he murmured. “Something like that.”

Satisfied, she sat back a little in the sofa. “Well, I assure you I don’t have a tail.”

At this, the corner of his full lips quirked up ever so slightly, and an unexpected jolt of warmth ran through her. His face lost some of its hardness and his hazel eyes shone warmly, his smile all the more rewarding because of his reserve. To make a man like this laugh, well, that would be a coup indeed.

Some of the tension from her blunder about the chair lifted, and she saw him relax in his seat as well, crossing his long legs at the ankles. He draped his hands on the chair arms, and she caught a glimpse of the cut on his hand that was so bad that he had supposedly needed medical attention. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling...it was tiny, hardly more than a scratch, and all at once she understood his game.

“Oh! Your cut. I nearly forgot,” she said, moving to the door. “I’ll ask Helen to bring some linen and hot water.”

“I really don’t need anything. It’s nothing.”

Sophronia blinked at him with big, innocent eyes. “Oh, but I thought you were injured?”

The tips of his ears pinkened. “It’s not so bad as all that,” he mumbled.

Just then Helen materialized in the door. “You called?”

“Yes,” Sophronia said, trying not to enjoy herself too much. “Our guest has quite the injury, and I was wondering if you would be a dear and fetch us some dressings for his wound?”

Helen’s sharp gaze darted to the minister and she scowled. But she dipped her head, murmuring, “As you wish.”

She stalked back out into the hallway, and Sophronia felt her cheeks flushing. Helen’s dislike of the minister was obvious, and terribly rude. “I apologize. She’s always been protective of me, but especially lately since—”

The minister’s gaze sharpened and Sophronia clamped her mouth shut. He didn’t need to know about the ravens, the feather, the sensation that she was being watched.

Sitting back down, Sophronia finally broached the subject that had been keeping her awake with excitement for the past week. “So, tell me about this new church.”

The minister opened his mouth and then closed it again. It might have been her imagination, but something like panic momentarily clouded his eyes and she thought he might leap out of his chair again. But then he cleared his throat and the look passed. “It’s... It will be transcendentalist. Similar to Unitarianism, if you are familiar with it?”

Transcendentalist! She had always admired the Unitarian school of thought, but the churches themselves were rather somber affairs. Transcendentalism, on the other hand, incorporated all the most progressive tenets of Unitarianism, such as the rejection of original sin and predestination, and then soared even higher with the idea that society and politics were corrupting forces to the purity of the individual. With transcendentalism, there was no need for society, and that suited her just fine.

She waited for him to elaborate, but nothing more came. She gave him an encouraging smile. “Well, I think it’s splendid. You must know Emerson, of course. I absolutely loved his first series of essays, and am anxious to get my hands on his second series. I devour everything I can from the leading minds on transcendentalism.”

“Emerson? Oh, yes.” He knotted his fingers together, not meeting her eye. “He’s very good.”

Sophronia frowned. He had not looked like she was expecting him to, and now it seemed that he would not converse easily on the subjects to which she had so looked forward. She tried again.

“I’d be curious to know what you think of his concept of the oversoul.” The essay explored the fascinating idea of the human soul and its relationship to other souls and how every person, alive and gone before, was connected. It was unlike anything Sophronia had ever read. “I found the theories intriguing and very much wanted to believe that Emerson’s beautiful prose held the truth, but it was difficult to do so when he gives us only anecdotes and stories. Perhaps, as a spiritual man, you need no such proof, but surely the purpose of an essay is to persuade?”

The minister looked like a fish out of water; he opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Just as Sophronia was about to repeat herself, Helen appeared with the tea, and whatever he had been about to say was forgotten.

“Thank you, Helen,” Sophronia said as she set the tray down. “You’re a treasure.”

“It’s nothing,” Helen said brusquely, but there was a faint glow of pride in her eyes. “Will there be anything else?”

“That will be all, thank you.”

The minister didn’t say anything as she poured out two cups of tea, just absently rolled some of the linen that Helen had brought around the cut on his palm. She hazarded a glance at him, and wondered what she looked like to him, with her scar, silver and smooth from time, tracing a path from her temple down to her jaw. Did he see a poised, well-spoken woman of means? Or was he able to see beneath her mask, to the scared, haunted ghost of a woman underneath?

When she looked up, she realized she had not been the only one studying the other. He had been staring at her hands as she prepared the tea. He cleared his throat, as if aware he had been caught, and took the china cup from her. He nodded to the paintings on the wall behind her. “You’re a collector,” he said.

She craned her head around and followed his gaze. Turning back, she gave him a shy smile. “Oh, yes. Are you an admirer of art?”

He nodded. Standing, he moved carefully to the wall. Sophronia knew her collection was exquisite, rivaling some of the best in places like the Athenaeum in Boston. But whereas the walls there were covered in somber portraits and classical allegories, her collection skewed toward the wild, with lots of rugged landscapes and people who were no more than tiny smudges against the grandeur of nature.

He must have been so lost in a world of turbulent waterfalls and sun-soaked valleys that he hadn’t turned when she stood to join him. Her sleeve brushed against his wrist as she pointed to a large watercolor in an elaborate gilt frame. “That’s a Turner,” she said, unable to keep the pride from her voice.

“It’s...beautiful,” he murmured.

It really was. A tempest of black waves swirled about an achingly fragile ship, shafts of light fighting to break through the cocoon of dark clouds. The painting was alive, full of movement, yet somehow peaceful; the ship was just one element of the storm, one little drama among the greater backdrop of nature. It was her favorite piece.

They moved along the wall as she pointed out some of her finer pieces, transfixed by the animation in his eyes as she discussed the merits of each.

He stopped in front of a small-framed article, illustrated with a lithograph, and nodded toward it. “Was your husband a writer?”

Pressing her lips together, she paused before answering. Why were men always so quick to attribute accomplishments to other men? “He owned a magazine,” she said. “That was Nathaniel’s one great kindness—he left me his magazine when he died. This was the front page from the first printing I oversaw as owner and submissions editor.”

He peered closer at the yellowed paper under glass and looked up at her in surprise. “What, you own Carver’s Monthly?”

“The one and only.”

He gave a long, low whistle and rocked back on his heels. “Damn.”

She raised a brow at the unexpected profanity, and he immediately colored. “Sorry. Only that I used to read it every week.”

“Then you have exceedingly good taste,” she said with a broad smile, finding herself unable to take offense. “It’s funny how for all their distrust of me, as soon as the townspeople think I can help them with something, they’re more than happy to put aside their prejudice and knock on my door. Just last month, Jasper Gibbs came to me with a volume of stories he had written, asking me to publish them in the magazine.”

“And did you?”

“Goodness, no. They were awful.”

Sun was coming through the windows in a low, hazy slant. They sat back down as the clock in the corner struck three. He’d been in her parlor for almost an hour, and though he was quiet, he was a good listener and she found herself wishing he would stay for hours more.

But before she knew it, he was rising to his feet and setting aside the tea, which he had hardly touched. “I’m afraid I’ve imposed on your hospitality long enough.”

“You did no such thing,” she said, trying not to let her disappointment show. “As you can imagine, visitors are few and far between, and I always welcome good conversation.”

Her hand paused on the doorknob before she released him out into the chill evening. “Do come again, Reverend. I believe we have much more to discuss.”

6

Gabriel emerged from the house in a haze. Nothing was as it seemed. Dark, abandoned churches in the middle of a roof-shaking thunderstorm didn’t scare him, but the erudite widow thinking him simple horrified him. Damn, but he had made a fool of himself when he had sat in her dead husband’s chair. Of course she wouldn’t want a hulking man like him breaking a beloved relic. She had seen right through him, he was sure of it, saw his charade, his roughness, his deficiencies. It was as if she could read every piece of ugly gossip in the town printed on his face.

There had been something comforting and cozy about the room, not to mention the enigmatic woman who had sat across from him, her silver eyes trained on him as if he were the most interesting person in the world, her smile as warm and honey-mellow as the late-afternoon light. And those hands, those lovely hands. He could no more imagine them taking the life of a man than he could them snapping the necks of birds and building a macabre altar in an abandoned church. He felt a sudden rush of guilt for even entertaining the idea that she could have been responsible for such a thing.

The sun was sinking fast, and the cold air roused him from his reveries. He looked up to find the other woman, Helen, standing on the front path. She was holding something black and sleek in her arms. Was that... Was she holding a bird?

As he grew closer, he saw it was a raven. It was large and sleek, and apparently docile. As carefully as if she was cradling a newborn, Helen crouched down and let the raven hop from her hands. There was something wrong with its leg, and it bobbled uncertainly before gaining its balance and pecking at the ground.

The crunch of gravel under Gabriel’s shoes gave him away. Helen stood back up, her expression turning stony as she watched him approach.

“Helen, was it?” Perhaps she could answer the questions that Gabriel had been too diffident to ask Mrs. Carver.

She scowled, an expression that he would have thought permanent on her face, if he had not seen her light up when Mrs. Carver spoke to her. He kept one eye trained on the raven; could it be one of those he had seen his first night in the church?

“You’ll forgive me for asking, but do you know about all the dead animals, the strange things that people have been finding around town?” The tack might have been too direct, but he had nothing to lose by asking her; she already clearly disliked him.

Helen gave him a measured look, answering him slowly, as if he were a small child. “I know that folk like to make a fuss out of nothing.”

“But you work for Mrs. Carver...you don’t share their opinion of her?”

In an instant, the closed, suspicious look evaporated from her face, and her dark eyes misted. “Never,” she said. “Sophy saved me.”

“Saved you?”

“That’s right,” she said, jutting her chin.

“How do you mean?”

Helen heaved a sigh and crossed her arms. “If you must know, after my husband left, I ended up in the poorhouse.”

She was staring at him with unnerving intensity. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

Her scowl deepened. “I don’t need your pity. She took me on as a housemaid, and I haven’t left her side ever since. We saved each other,” she said, her eyes frighteningly bright.

“Saved each other?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she snapped at him, apparently done with her nostalgic reminiscing. “Now, if that will be all?”

She didn’t give him a chance to respond before she was scooping the raven back up and briskly making her way to the house.

Gabriel walked slowly back toward the road, Helen’s story swirling in his mind. He could picture the gentle and elegant Mrs. Carver, basket on her arm, leaning over women in their sickbeds in the poorhouse and doling out comforting words. But good God, what was he missing? How could that same woman be painted as a witch, a murderer?

When he reached the gate, he stopped and glanced up to the windows, but again, no face stared back down at him.

Helen stood in the carriage house window, watching the interfering minister finally turn and leave the grounds. She let out a breath.

What right did he have to come in here, dredging up painful memories and upsetting Sophronia? Sophy would never say as much, of course, but Helen could tell that the visit had taken its toll on her.

The raven let out a soft squawk in her arms, and she absently stroked its head. She still remembered the day Sophronia had come to the poorhouse. She had been like an angel with her bright blue dress and ready, sympathetic smile. She’d come armed with charity baskets for the women, God bless her soul. When she passed by Helen’s bed, she’d asked her in the kindest, gentlest voice what ailed her. Helen had told her it was a chest complaint, though in truth it was so much more than that. It was a broken spirit from being abandoned by the man who had sworn to protect her, a broken heart for the children she would never have.

Sophronia had come back the next day with a bottle of medicine. Helen had taken her hand to thank her, and it was then that she knew that their destinies were intertwined. She felt something pass between them, like a flame leaping from the match to tinder. When she was well enough to leave, Sopronia had taken her on as a maid, and since then they had grown as close as sisters, as dependent on each other as mother and child. But no matter how close they were, Helen knew from experience that pretty words and promises were not enough.

She hadn’t been resorting to hyperbole when she’d told the minister that she and Sophronia had saved each other. When Sophronia had whisked her away from that wretched poorhouse, Helen had felt forever in Sophronia’s debt. But Helen had since returned the favor.

Sophronia would never know how much Helen had done for her, would never know the lengths to which she had gone to keep her safe, and Helen would not burden her with that. But a childhood spent learning herb-craft and spells from the woman on the farm next to her family’s in Vermont meant that Helen had the tools to protect Sophronia in a powerful, binding way.

Moving away from the window, she let the raven down onto its wood perch. She paced about the empty carriage house. Sophronia hadn’t stepped foot in here since that night four years ago, and Helen was glad for it. It gave her a private place where she could come to practice her craft. Sweeping up and down the dusty room, she recited the words that she had muttered so many times that they might as well have been engraved on her heart.

“Love me well and bind the spell,

I cast the charm against those who mean thee harm,

But should another love thee, untethered ye shall be.”

It was a strong charm; once undone it could not be done again. She could give her mistress protective herbs, sprinkle salt at the threshold, but it was the spell that bound her. No, she would not let that minister tempt Sophronia away from her. For if he did, it was more than just Sophronia’s heart that would be in jeopardy—it would be her very life.

7

Gabriel ought to have gone to the church and continued in his work of clearing away the debris and rubbish. He’d long since undertaken the unpleasant task of disposing of the animal remains, but there was still dust caking the windows and splintered pews that needed repairing. If he was going to have the church up and running anytime soon, he needed to stop procrastinating and embrace this new life that he had forged for himself and Anna’s memory.

But instead of going to the church, after he left Castle Carver, he found himself meandering down the wide, tree-lined road to the water. He was caught between being disappointed that Mrs. Carver hadn’t been an old crone or a witch—because that certainly would have been very interesting—and uneasy that she was so charming and gracious. Even more disturbing was that he was able to find a woman charming at all. After Anna, how could he even think such things?

When the trees gave way to the broad vista of gray water, Gabriel stopped, hands in pockets, and breathed in the sharp, salty air. A little boat loaded with fishnets slid by, the boy in back raising a hand in greeting to Gabriel as he sailed past. Though his mind was far away, Gabriel absently returned the gesture and watched him go.

It was unfathomable that the woman with clear silver eyes and frank, intelligent gaze could be responsible for such depravity as murder. But then, he knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving, that people were not always what appearances suggested.

When he finally turned toward home, it was with heavy feet and a dull sense of apprehension. After the cozy and well-decorated parlor at Castle Carver, his walls looked sad and barren in comparison. He’d thought that he would do his penance of living alone with grace and forbearance, but perhaps his heart wasn’t as dead as he had once thought if he was capable of such pressing loneliness.

Prying open one of the two trunks into which he’d piled all his possessions, Gabriel began lifting out the artwork in their chipped gilded frames and wiping the dust off them with his sleeve. The art that had hung in their little cottage in Concord looked lost and out of place on the walls here. Like Mrs. Carver, Anna had loved art and the collecting of it. She had been drawn to amateur sketches, small pieces found in dusty old shops or given to her by friends. It was her imagination and eye that had imbued the artwork with meaning. But without their benefactress, they were simply trifles, not particularly attractive, and without substance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stripped them from the only home they had ever known and taken them to this lonely place.

With a grunt, Gabriel lowered the trunk lid and stood. He didn’t want to think about Anna and the mementos she had left behind. He didn’t really want to think about anything. He was just about to see if either of the crates contained a bottle of whiskey he thought he remembered packing, when there was a knock at the door.

For some reason, as he put his hand to the latch, he fancied that it was Mrs. Carver on the opposite side, come to continue their conversation. So when his gaze landed not on Mrs. Carver, but on a girl of a few years younger and with bright red hair, he couldn’t help his disappointed exhalation. Then he remembered that someone had told him Mrs. Carver did not leave her house. Quickly regaining himself, he coughed and tried to look polite and nonthreatening. “May I help you?”

“Begging your pardon, sir; my name is Fanny Gibbs. My brother sent me, said you were looking for some house help?”

Gabriel stared at the girl blankly until he remembered his conversation with the young man named Jasper that very morning, and the promise that he would send his sister around. How long ago that already seemed since meeting Mrs. Carver. “Of course,” he said, holding the door open for her.

With a little sigh of relief, the girl stepped inside. Except for a rounder face and a brighter, gentler demeanor, she was the spitting image of her brother, right down to her sharp green eyes and generous smattering of freckles. She must have caught his look, because she smiled and said, “We’re twins, Jasper and me.”

She turned her attention to the modest entryway with wide eyes, and Gabriel ushered her into the front room.

He offered her a seat on the only piece of furniture—a threadbare sofa that the previous owners had left—while he stood, leaning against the door frame. “Jasper tells me you work for Mrs. Carver. What makes you want to leave?” He was more than a little curious about what she thought of her notorious employer. “Are you unhappy with your position there?”

Fanny Gibbs was small and plump, and Gabriel couldn’t picture her elbow-deep in laundry, or lugging buckets of water up and down stairs. He couldn’t even imagine her in Castle Carver; the house would swallow her up.

At his questions, the girl’s brow puckered in confusion and she stopped scanning the room to meet Gabriel’s gaze. “Leave? Oh, no. I’ve no intention of leaving Mrs. Carver.”

“But Jasper said you were looking for a new position.”

Something like anger flickered briefly in the girl’s green eyes. “I’m sure he did, but I’m more than capable of taking on more work while keeping my place at Castle Carver.”

Gabriel didn’t have experience with interviews, or anything to do with domestic help, for that matter. He wasn’t sure what he ought to ask, or what was a normal amount of work for a girl like Fanny. “What is it exactly you do for Mrs. Carver?”

“Well, I help around the house with light chores, and I do the laundry once a week. She needs me,” Fanny added with a stubborn jut of her chin.

“There aren’t other girls that she could hire?”

Fanny shook her head in exasperation. “I can’t leave Mrs. Carver, not after everything she’s done for me. She’s my friend. She knew that Jasper and I needed the money, and she hired me on to help.”

For a woman who claimed that the whole town was against her—and by his own accounts, Gabriel had found this to be true—here was someone who not only didn’t revile Sophronia Carver, but claimed to be her friend.

“Why did Jasper say you needed a new position then?”

She gave a sigh, fiddling at her worn cuffs. “Because Jasper hates her,” she said simply. “But she’s been kind to me, very kind. I know what her reputation is in the town, and I don’t share their poor opinions of her.”

There was so much more Gabriel wanted to ask her, but he couldn’t very well endlessly interrogate the girl. “Well,” he said, “if you’re already employed then I don’t suppose you’ll want the job.”

“Oh, no,” she said, sitting up straighter, her face becoming animated and her eyes shining. “I can do both. I only go over to Castle Carver a few times a week, and aside from laundry days, I’m only there for a couple of hours. I can do both,” she repeated, as if trying to convince herself as much as she was Gabriel.

“Well, I’m not looking for much. I can manage my own breakfasts, but you would be responsible for preparing dinners. Maybe some dusting. What do you think?”

“I think that would suit very well,” she said, smiling eagerly.

A weight that Gabriel hadn’t realized had been pressing on his shoulders suddenly lifted. He need not be completely alone in his exile, and Fanny was a good-natured, cheerful girl who would help keep the melancholy at bay. “Good,” he said. “If you’re ready, you can start today. But first, maybe something to eat?”

He’d heard the gurgle of her stomach, seen her slightly abashed expression and recognized the signs of hunger from his own youth. He vaguely wondered what Jasper earned on the docks, and onto what kind of hard times their family had fallen.

Fanny followed him to the kitchen and sat on one of the rickety stools while Gabriel scrounged up some leftover bread and hard cheese. “All I have,” he said apologetically as he laid it on the tabletop.

But Fanny eagerly broke off a piece of the bread, piled the cheese on top and chewed contentedly. “It’s perfect.”

They sat in comfortable silence while Fanny devoured the little meal and Gabriel let his thoughts wander. He’d spent so long fortifying his mind and his heart, forcing himself not to think of Anna or the events of the past year, and inevitably failing miserably. But since meeting Mrs. Carver that afternoon, his thoughts kept turning to the gentle curve of her neck, the quickness of her smile, and her generosity and warmth to the likes of him.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Fanny said, breaking the silence.

Gabriel realized he’d been staring at her as his thoughts ran away from him. “I’m sorry?”

She gave him a chastising look, a trace of hurt in her voice. “You’re wondering what someone like Mrs. Carver would want with someone like me.”

He hastened to deny it, but he was curious. Mrs. Carver was the wealthiest person in town, pariah or not. She need not associate with the likes of poor ministers or serving girls. “I’ve heard a lot about Mrs. Carver, and I’m curious,” he said, opting for honesty. “How did you meet her? Your brother couldn’t have been too happy when you accepted a position with her.”

Fanny shifted in her seat, her expression suddenly uncomfortable. “Jasper and me, we needed money. Castle Carver was the finest house in town, so I took it upon myself to inquire about a position there. Everyone warned me about her, but she was nothing but kind to me. Pays me well, and I go over not just on working days now, but other days too just to talk and keep her company.”

“All those rumors, though. Weren’t you afraid they might be true?”

She crossed her arms and looked affronted. “’Course not.”

“And what about the strange happenings around town?”

She surprised Gabriel by smiling, wide and slow. “Oh, I think it’s wonderful,” she said breathlessly.

“Wonderful?”

“You wouldn’t understand what it’s like, coming from a big city like you do.”

Gabriel didn’t bother correcting her. Everyone here conflated Concord with Boston or envisioned it as a bustling city in its own right, neither of which was even remotely close to the truth.

“Pale Harbor is so poky and boring,” she continued. “Nothing ever happens here. Oh, it’s probably just some troublemaker, but you can’t imagine the thrill it gives us. It’s like a riddle, but no one understands the meaning. Or hidden treasure...things seem to be found in the most surprising of places. Jane Fisher’s sister found the strangest little doll stuffed into a tree.”

“I see.” Recalling the stories he’d heard from Lewis and the Marshalls, Gabriel doubted as to whether the rest of the town shared in Fanny’s enthusiasm. It seemed that everything that had been found had been hidden, secreted away out of sight: the remains left in an abandoned church, a doll hidden in a tree, skinned squirrels in the woods.

He rubbed at the two-day growth on his jaw, not wanting to speak of such things anymore. “So you knew Mr. Carver?”

If Fanny was caught by surprise by the change in subject, she didn’t let it show. Indeed, she seemed to be enjoying the gossip. “No, he died before I came on.”

“She’s so young to be a widow,” he murmured.

Fanny shrugged. “She’s better off without him, if you ask me. Anyway, when he was alive, they had a cook and a whole score of help. But when he died, Mrs. Carver sent them all away.”

“All except for Helen,” he said.

“That’s right. Helen is so kind to her. She takes good care of Mrs. Carver, even if she is a tough old thing.”

“I’m sure she’s lucky to have you both,” Gabriel said diplomatically. His curiosity about Mrs. Carver had already been piqued, but as he spoke with Fanny, it had flared into an insatiable hunger for answers. He had sat across from the elegant woman herself, listened to her proclaim her innocence in her silky-smooth voice. He couldn’t explain why, but he was desperate to see her again, to peel off the rumors surrounding her and discover the person underneath.

Fanny gave a little sigh, though whether of contentment or sorrow he couldn’t tell. “And Pale Harbor is lucky to have her.”

8

Sophronia rubbed at her throbbing temple, willing the impending headache to hold off just a little longer. She had been editing a submission all day, and the author’s penmanship was particularly atrocious, cramped and hard to read. She had only a handful more pages to get through, but they seemed to multiply every time she turned the page, the tight lines of text stretching on forever. As she closed her eyes to give them a respite, her thoughts turned to her unlikely visitor the other day.

The minister had not been what she was expecting, but she had liked him all the same. She had been prepared for a genial older man with kind eyes and a white beard. She had been prepared for polite conversation, tiptoeing around the lies and suspicions planted by the townspeople. What she had not been prepared for was the racing heart, the trembling hands and the sensation that she had known him all her life. And that’s what made it all the harder to have to look him in the face and refute all the horrible rumors about herself. What would the reserved man with the watchful hazel eyes think about her if he knew the truth?

Yet she could still hardly believe her luck. How she had prayed, watching that storm roll in, feeling the change that was coming to Pale Harbor. And here it was, packaged in a young minister—a little rough around the edges perhaps—but as fresh as sea-salt air.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Helen came in, bearing a tray with a steaming pot of tea. Sophronia glanced up over the top of her desk, watching as Helen set the tray on the table. Putting her pen down, Sophronia stretched her aching back and yawned deeply. “Is that for me?” she asked with a hopeful smile.

After the minister had left, Helen had not been shy about letting her feelings for him be known. She didn’t trust him, didn’t like outsiders coming and sniffing around. But she must have forgotten that she was supposed to be sulking, because the tray was decadently laden with all Sophronia’s favorite tea cakes.

Bristling, Helen didn’t look up as she poured out the tea. “Of course it is. Who else would it be for?” But her bad mood was clearly already dissipating; a smile tugged at her lips.

Sophronia’s heart lightened in relief and she sprang up, sending her papers fluttering to the floor. “There’s a dear! I knew you couldn’t stay angry with me. Now,” she said, clasping her hands together as she surveyed the tray of cakes, “which shall we have first?”

Helen took a butter biscuit and sat down. She looked worn and tired, older than her forty years, and a twinge of guilt ran through Sophronia that she had been so short with Helen yesterday. But they settled into an easy conversation as if they had never had a disagreement. They had lived together too long, too closely, for such a trivial matter to come between them. Like two cogs grinding along in the same clock, it would take far more than a tiny, stray pebble to bring them to a halt.

“How is our patient doing?” Sophronia asked as she poured out another cup of sweet, milky tea. She had seen Helen going in and out of the carriage house with the raven, making splints and removing the old bandages.

The little lines at the corners of Helen’s eyes softened. “A real fighter, that one,” she said. “Had him eating grizzle out of my hand today.”

Helen had the touch when it came to animals, though Sophronia suspected some of it had to do with the craft she claimed to practice. Over the years, she had rescued seagulls that blew in from storms, an orphaned litter of kittens and even a fox cub that had found itself the worse for wear after a tussle with a dog.

“You’re a wonder,” Sophronia said indulgently as her gaze swept over the tempting tray of cakes. She’d been working without pause since breakfast, and she was famished. Just as she was selecting a little honey cake with lemon icing, there was a knock at the door and her hand froze. She caught Helen’s eye. It couldn’t possibly be the minister again so soon, could it?

As if reading her mind, Helen’s face darkened. “Probably that nosy minister come back,” she said, and she stalked out of the room to answer the door.

Sophronia hastily swept her hair up, tucking it back into its chignon. Her heart beat a little faster as she followed Helen to the door.

Helen yanked open the door and hissed, “What do you want now?”

But there was only darkness there, and nothing more. Helen stepped back as the door swung the rest of the way open, and Sophronia heard the sharp intake of her friend’s breath. “What?” she whispered, afraid that she already knew the answer.

Helen shot out an arm to keep her from going any farther. “Go inside, Sophy,” she murmured.

“What? No! Let me see!” Sophronia craned her neck, trying to see past her to the bottom of the steps.

“I’ll take care of it. Go inside.”

“Helen!” The force of her voice surprised them both, and with a reluctant sigh, Helen dropped her arm and stood to the side.

Sophronia blinked into the darkness, trying to make sense of the dots of light that danced before her.

Candles. Seven white candles stood in the middle of the path, their flames gently guttering in the night’s thin breeze.

A chill ran down her spine and rooted itself in her gut. They were laid out so...precisely, so deliberately. Not ten minutes before, someone had been on her front path, carefully arranging the candles and setting flame to each one. Just as the day with the raven, her neck prickled at the thought that someone might be watching her at that very moment.

Darting her tongue over her dry lips, Sophronia finally dared to break the taut silence. “Is...is it some sort of witchcraft?” There was something sinister about the way in which the candles stood, as if they were a jury, judging her, damning her to some dark fate. One of the most popular myths in town was that she was a witch; was this someone’s way of accusing her?

After sweeping down the steps, Helen began pinching out the flames with wetted fingertips. Sophronia’s chest tightened in fear as she watched her friend descend into the darkness, away from the safety and warmth of the house.

“No, not witchcraft,” Helen called back with authority. Then she paused, opening her mouth as if she was going to add something else but had thought better of it.

“What? What is it?”

Carefully, Helen plucked up a little white rectangle from amid the candles. “It’s addressed to you.” Coming back, she held the note out to Sophronia, who took it and unfolded the paper with shaking hands.

The two words were black and stark against the paper and sent an arrow of cold dread straight into her heart. “I know.”

9

I know. I know. I know.

Sophronia’s footsteps clipped along in time to the words. They spun through her head, imprinting themselves on the back of her eyelids. How could anyone know? They could have their rumors and suspicions all they liked, but the people of Pale Harbor did not know the truth, or her version of the truth, at any rate. The note with the candles was meant to scare her, rattle her. Well, it had succeeded. The question was, why now? Suspicion had followed her about like a cloud threatening rain in the four years since Nathaniel had died, so why send her this now?

After Sophronia had ordered Garrett to dispose of the candles somewhere out of sight, she had paced about the house, as restless and on edge as a caged animal. By the time dawn had broken, some of her fear had faded, replaced by anger and indignation. How dare somehow violate her Safe space? How dare they threaten her with their cryptic messages?

When she couldn’t take the racing thoughts anymore, Sophronia had told Helen that she needed to go for a walk to clear her head. Helen had pressed her lips tight as if she wanted to caution her against it, but ultimately let her go without a fight.

It had been ages since Sophronia had taken a walk by herself without Helen insisting on trailing behind her like some sort of medieval lady-in-waiting. But Sophronia was only going up to the hill anyway.

The hill—which was really more of a gentle slope—was Safe because no one else ever went there, and Helen had told her that she’d designated it as the outer edge of the ring of protection. It rose up alongside Castle Carver, and while it was part of the parcel of Carver land, it was so ambling and expansive that it could hardly be considered private property. It was the farthest that Sophronia would ever go, and at the top she would still be able to see Castle Carver, safe and snug, tucked into the surrounding trees.

The leaves under her boots were satisfyingly crunchy, and it felt good to let her legs stretch out under her layers of petticoats. The September breeze was crisp and cool, holding the promise of colder winds to come. Soon, the candles and the reason for her walk in the first place faded from her mind.

She walked without a bonnet, relishing the wind in her hair. Nathaniel had disapproved of her walking, especially without all the gloves and hats and cloaks that kept her proper. Without them, she’d be no better than a common housemaid in the eyes of the townspeople, he’d said, and it was their job as the most prominent family to set the standard for polite living.

Oh, everyone had loved Nathaniel. He’d been tall and just aloof enough that people deferred to him, but had penetrating blue eyes that made one eager to please him, to win one of his rare smiles. He was distinguished and well dressed, and everything that a wealthy man should be. Sophronia alone was privy to the streak of cruelty that had made him a monster to live with.

Now that she was free of him, she could walk without any time spent fussing over her appearance. But her world had shrunk down since his death. The people of Pale Harbor had worshipped Nathaniel, the wealthy businessman who had donated generously to charity and had given their little town a cosmopolitan flare. The first time she had ventured out into town after his funeral, there had been hissing, spitting and even whispered threats. The cold looks, the eyes flared with hatred, had eventually driven her back to the house, where she took sanctuary. Helen had cossetted her, making spells and charms that she claimed would keep Sophronia safe. It was all right, though; she had no need of the world beyond the grounds of Castle Carver. For all the bad memories that those walls held, there were a thousand more outside.

But when she got to the top of the hill, Sophronia found that she was not alone. She stopped in her tracks, her heart freezing in her chest like a rabbit stumbling across a fox. A man stood with his back to her, hands in his pockets, staring off across the misty landscape.

Sweat sprang to her palms and her throat tightened. What if it was the writer of the note, come to attack her somewhere no one would hear her scream? She turned to run back the way she had come, but tripped on a branch, snapping it. The sound rang out in the hollow air, giving her away. Unable to regain her balance, she went sprawling face-first and landed hard on her hands.

The man’s head jerked around at the sound. This was it. Squeezing her eyes shut, Sophronia braced for an attack.

But nothing came.

When she opened her eyes again, she recognized the tall, hatless man striding toward her. Her pulse slowed, but only a little.

“Mrs. Carver,” the minister said, his surprise nearly equal to her own. His coat had been slung over one arm, but when he saw her on the ground, he dropped it and offered her his hand. As he leaned over her, she could see the concern creasing his brow. “Are you all right?”

She let out a long, unsteady breath, and her fear dissipated into embarrassment. Now he would think she was a flighty, clumsy mess of a woman, as well as an eccentric. For all that she was used to being disliked, for some reason it cut her to the core that this man might share in those opinions of her.

Her dress was heavy and cumbersome, but she wouldn’t accept his hand, not when she was so vulnerable. With considerable effort, she scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping on her hem.

He stood, hand still out as if he didn’t quite trust her to manage on her own. She teetered for a moment, swaying into him before regaining her balance. Before the breeze wound between them, she caught the faint scent of sandalwood and whiskey. It had been so long since she had been touched, at all, by anyone, never mind an astonishingly attractive man. She found herself wishing she could take his hand. “Quite all right,” she said briskly when she finally found her voice, taking a good step back.

He gave her a look of lingering concern but only nodded. “I didn’t think that you—” He stopped himself, though Sophronia knew what he was going to say: I didn’t think that you ever left your house. Clearing his throat, he just said, “The path up was overgrown, and I didn’t think I’d see another soul.”

She pretended she didn’t notice. “It’s the highest point in Pale Harbor. In the summer, the blueberries will be ripe, and in the winter, when the trees are bare, you can see clear across to the old lighthouse beyond the harbor.”

“I should like to see that,” he said.

She gave a grim little laugh. “You say that now, but you’ve yet to experience a winter here. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“And yet you brave it to come up here.”

“Well,” she said, bristling, feeling the need to defend her home, “there’s a beauty in the bleakness. If there wasn’t, the endless months of snow and gray would be enough to make one go mad. Besides, it’s part of my property.”

She wasn’t sure what perversion made her say that, other than she felt he should know that she did exert some control, that she was not a completely ridiculous person.

She waited for him to redden and stammer an apology, but he only leveled a curious look at her. “Is it now?”

“It is.”

He nodded without further comment, squinting out into the distance. The shadow on his jaw she had noticed the other day had lengthened into the beginnings of a beard. It became him. Parlors and manners and polite society didn’t suit him, and his broad frame looked much more at home here on the rocky hill than it had folded into a chair in her parlor. Unlike her, he was not trapped in a cage of his own construction. He came and went as he pleased, beholden to no one and nothing. An acute pang of envy ran through her.

The breeze was picking up, the sky darkening, and she began to wish she had brought a cloak after all. To change the subject, she asked, “And what brings you here? Gathering inspiration for a sermon?”

He reached into his pocket and held up a notebook, the pages blank. “Something like that.” Although he didn’t smile, there was just a hint of chagrin in his hazel eyes. “I thought a walk might get the words flowing.”

Should she warn him that he might write the most illuminating sermon and it would only fall on indifferent ears? The people of Pale Harbor were not exactly keen for outsiders to come to try to enlighten them. When Mrs. Whittier had come from Rochester and tried to start an abolitionist society, there had been such an uproar that she had been forced to abandon her plans and had eventually left town. The townspeople might fill the pews and listen with upturned faces, but their hearts and minds would not bend from the prejudices that shaped them. Sophronia hadn’t the heart to dash the minister’s naive hopes, though, and so she bit her tongue.

Pocketing the notebook, he gave a shrug, as if the sermon and the inspiration for it were suddenly unimportant. “And what brings you out here?”

“I was craving some fresh air,” she said, omitting the reason for it.

It would be so easy to let her guard down with a man like this. A man who looked at her with eyes as warm as cinnamon, a man who did not judge her or ask anything of her. But neither did he want to offer her anything, as it was becoming clear. He did not wish to engage with her about his church, and he certainly did not seem interested in sharing his thoughts.

“Well, I don’t want to frighten away any inspiration,” she finally said, turning to leave. She would go and calm her racing mind, seek her solitude elsewhere, and leave him to the privacy he so clearly craved.

“Wait.” His hand shot out and he caught her by the elbow. She froze.

“Please,” he said without removing his hand, “don’t leave on my account. I trespassed on your property. I should be the one to go.”

His hand was big and his grip strong, his fingers encircling her arm like a manacle. Panic sluiced through her, and suddenly it was Nathaniel clamping his hand around her in his bruising grip, berating her as if she were a contrary child. She let out an involuntary gasp, wrenching her arm away from him as hard as she could.

At her cry, he released her, dropping her arm like a hot coal. He took a hasty step back. Through her receding panic, she saw the alarm on his face.

Safe. Safe. You are Safe. Just breathe.

She hadn’t bothered with a corset today, and she was glad of it as she gulped down the cool, salty air like a tonic. “I...you’ll have to excuse me,” she said with a shaky laugh. But when she nervously looked up at him, there was no sign of humor or understanding in his expression, only intense scrutiny.

“No excuse necessary,” he said, his graveled voice dropping to a soft murmur. “I shouldn’t have taken the liberty.”

She bit her lip, burning under his level gaze.

“Would...would it be possible, do you think, for us to start over?” She didn’t want to be the woman whom he’d heard rumors about, nor the woman who had flown into a panic at an innocent gesture of goodwill. Most of all, she didn’t want to be pitied.

For a moment, it seemed like he would not answer. He dipped his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. When he looked up again and met her gaze, his face broke into a dazzling grin. It was glorious, lighting up his whole face and flooding her stomach with warmth. “God, yes.”

A weight lifted from her shoulders. His smile was infectious, and she found herself grinning back at him.

He stuck out his hand. “Gabriel Stone,” he said. “And you must be Mrs. Carver.”

With only a second of hesitation, she put her hand in his and shook it. This time, she did not shrink back from his touch, instead letting the warm strength of his grip envelope her. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Stone.”

It seemed silly to cling to such formal conventions when they were surrounded only by grass and open skies, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to call her by her given name. But oh, Lord, what would it look like spoken on those sensual lips of his?

“When I come up here I like to sit.” She pointed to a little depression in the ground that acted as a natural windbreak. “Will you join me?”

He followed her as she lowered herself to the grass, arranging her skirt and petticoats around her. In a surprisingly fluid motion, he sat down beside her, stretching out his long legs in front of him. How much more at home he seemed out here, what an easy grace he possessed when not confined by parlor walls and social orders. She envied him his ease. Where tea and polite conversation might be confining to him, to her they provided a scaffold of safety, a framework where expectations were clearly delineated. She knew where she stood, and she was Safe. But out here there were no rules, no expectations. It was both intoxicating and terrifying.

Reclining, they rested their heads on the natural pillow the earth provided and stared out over the choppy harbor. Gulls wheeled and cried, sending up the alarm for the coming rain. The familiar tableau was reassuring, but the vastness of it made room in her mind for all the bad thoughts to bubble up again.

“Someone left candles burning on my front path,” she blurted without taking her gaze from the diving gulls.

She heard his head turn on the brittle grass and felt his gaze on her. “Oh?”

Her cheeks flushed hot. Why was she telling him this? How did she know she could trust him? She had trouble reconciling this man as the minister he claimed to be, not when he seemed so unwilling to discuss his church or his philosophies. Sophronia did not trust easily, and there was something about the minister, no matter how ruggedly attractive he was, that didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t ministers be in the business of proselytizing? Shouldn’t he at the very least wish to discuss his views and ideas? He was proving a pleasant companion, but that did not make him her friend, her confidant.

She feigned casualness. “I suppose it was some mischief by local children.” She didn’t tell him about the accompanying note.

He took in a breath, as if he were about to say something else. But nothing came, and they lapsed back into silence.

She was just about to try asking him about the church again when he spoke.

“I’ve hired your friend, Fanny Gibbs.”

Sophronia pushed herself upright and looked at him, unable to keep from smiling. “You did! Oh, I’m so glad to hear that.”

He squinted one eye open and looked up at her. “You aren’t worried I’ve stolen her away from you?”

“Worried? Goodness, no. The girl is a treasure and I know she needs the work, though she won’t let me give her a dime of charity. Has she made you one of her sweet cheese buns yet?”

His lips curved up in the hint of a smile as he reached into his pocket. “Fresh from the oven this morning. Shall we?”

She’d left in such a fluster, she’d forgotten that she hadn’t eaten a bite of the meal Helen had prepared, and her stomach grumbled an unhappy reminder.

Breaking off a piece, he handed it to her and she inhaled the warm aroma of yeast and sweet cheese. It melted in her mouth, and she closed her eyes, savoring it.

When she opened her eyes again, he was regarding her with naked curiosity. “Yes?”

He hesitated. “It’s nothing.”

She expected that he wanted to ask her something about Fanny, something innocuous about where she had found such a treasure of a girl. “Oh, go on,” she said with good humor. “I can see the question practically tripping off your lips.”

“Not a question,” he said. “Only I think I begin to see why the town thinks you’re a witch.”

Sophronia’s heart seemed to stop. Wetting her suddenly dry lips with her tongue, she tried to make her voice come out light and carefree. “Oh?” Instead, it cracked.

“Mmm. You live in a castle on a hill with an old maid for company. You’re rarely, if ever, seen. And it seems you pay no mind to all the stories about you.”

Here she had thought they were sharing a pleasant view and a lighthearted conversation, and all he could think of was the petty gossip of the town. He had said he wanted to start over, yet he still seemed to be fixated on first impressions. Was her judgment with men still really so poor? When he had sat in her parlor with her, she had found it so easy to laugh about the rumors because he had seemed so different from what she had been expecting.

His graveled voice held a note of amusement, but there was nothing amusing about the suffocating life she led. Why had she thought she could share this special place with a stranger? Why had she thought he was different?

Abruptly, she sat up and brushed the dead grass from her skirts. “Indeed,” she said, her words clipped. “I do hope I’ve provided you with more fuel for the gossip mill. If you will excuse me, I promised to help Helen in the garden this afternoon and it looks like rain. Good day, Mr. Stone.”

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