All Nessa wanted was to nurse her disappointment in private. She wanted to be out along the cliffs, where the wild sea wind would scour away the tears before they could even fall. Where she could think in private.
“Nessa?” Her father found her at the garden gate just as she was trying to slip out. “Ah, there you are. I’m sure you won’t mind—I’ve a sermon for you to copy out. There’s a good girl.” He thrust the wad of foolscap into her hand and with a pat on her shoulder, started for the vestry without even waiting for an answer.
Which she gave anyway. “But where is Cods?” Cods the Curate, as they called him, was her father’s assistant. By rights, he ought to have the responsibility for editing and copying out the thrice weekly sermons, as well as teaching in her father’s schoolroom, not Nessa.
“Mr. Coddington is, no doubt, presently engaged with some other work of the parish this evening. God’s work comes in many forms and at all hours, Nessa. You should know that.”
Cods was always engaged in the work of the parish, if wandering around at all hours in a sort of incompetent haze while telling everyone how busy he was, qualified as work. He was late for every service, behind tempo on every hymn, and never, ever where he was most particularly needed to be.
Nessa thought Cods the most useless curate in all of God’s creation. Especially when she had to do his work. Which was always. “Yes, Papa.” She entered at the back of the house, dragging her disappointment with her.
“I saw you, you know.”
Nessa paused at the bottom of the stairwell to find her younger sister, Tressa, peering through the balusters above.
With their Cornish names for first, second and third-born, the villagers had treated Kensa, Nessa and Tressa as a set piece—the Teague Sisters—interchangeable, one for the other. Kensa had married a young gentleman farmer from Truro three years ago, and was now the mother of two fine sons. But neither of the two remaining Teague Sisters looked to follow her matrimonial footsteps. To be fair, Tressa was only nineteen, and opportunities to meet eligible young gentlemen were few and far between—the fête notwithstanding. The war always seemed to take the best young men, like Lord Harry, from the village. Only the simple, the feeble, and the selfish remained. And the heirs, but no heir wanted a poor country vicar’s second or third daughter for a wife.
“Saw me where?” Nessa asked. She had spent the rest of the afternoon minding the apple bobbing, but didn’t remember much of it—it was all blotted out by disbelief and disappointment. How could it all have gone so wrong?
“I saw you with Lord Harry.”
“Mmm.” Nessa made a noncommittal sound of assent to cover the coiled skein of despair that snarled up her insides at the mere mention of his name.
“I saw, Nessa,” Tressa insisted with quiet, subdued vehemence. “I saw him take your apple.”
The ache that had only a moment ago been disappointment sharpened into something more cutting—it was one thing to have experienced such a devastating moment, but it was another thing entirely to know that someone, even a beloved sister, had witnessed the whole affair. “Oh. That.” Nessa retreated into silence until she could calm her wretched feelings. “But there is nothing to it, for it all came to naught.”
“Only because you let Elly Gannett say it was hers.”
The crushing weight of her disastrous day bore Nessa abruptly down to sit on the bottom step. “What was I supposed to do? Call her a liar? Let her make a fool of herself?” She shook her head. “That would have been cruel.”
“Instead, you were cruel to yourself. You let her make a fool out of you.”
“Oh, lord.” Nessa took her head in her hands, as if it might hold her fragile dreams together. “No one could have known it was my apple. Everyone should have just assumed she was in the right.”
“Not everyone.” Tressa’s tone grew softer and more sympathetic. “Not me. And when has daft Elly Gannett ever been in the right? Never. All anyone had to do was look at you, at your face, to see the truth.”
“Oh, no.” By now, the whole of the village might know of her stupid susceptibility.
Tressa reached a comforting hand through the balusters. “But I suppose no one else knows you like I do. You hid it well, really. Only I could tell how distressed you were. Because you’re my sister.”
They looked out for one another, the Teague girls did. They may not have been made to the same pattern, but they were cut from the same strong cloth. The disappointment had hurt Nessa badly—it still hurt—but admitting it drew some of the venom from the sting. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. So what are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do?” Nessa stood and smoothed down her skirts. “You saw—she ate the apple and took whatever fragile magic there was. If there ever was any at all. Which I should never have allowed myself to believe. It was wrong of me.”
“I believe.” Tressa’s voice was strangely vehement. “And I think you need more magic. Better magic. Stronger magic than just a silly Allantide apple.”
“Stronger?” Unease slid down Nessa’s spine like a cold raindrop under her collar. “Tressa!” You don’t mean…” Nessa lowered her voice to the merest whisper. “One of the witches? But that’s just gossip and rumor. Isn’t it?”
Bocka Morrow abounded with tales of secret meetings in the dark of the night. Most of the tales were true, especially about the smuggling. But there were other tales of the gypsies in the castle’s woods telling dark fortunes and buying unwanted babies for half a crown. Tales of secret groups of women who met by the light of the blood moon, worshiping the old ways from the days before the word of Christ came to their island nation, celebrating the earth’s own powers with fire and herbs and spells.
Rumor had it that charms and real enchantments, for good and for bad, could be had from one of these hedgerow hags—gypsies and witches alike—for a little as a penny.
And that was what she needed, wasn’t it—charm? Because she had none of her own, not a drop. No captivating smile, no witty banter or flirtatious ways. No ability to say the right thing to captivate such a man as Captain Lord Harry Beck.
“Tressa, what do you really know about such things?”
“More than you, obviously.” Tressa wasn’t giving anything away. “But if I were you, I would march myself down the cliff road to the Widow Pencombe with a shilling in my pocket to buy myself a real, honest to goodness love charm.”
Nessa knew she ought to protest—ought to say something serious and corrective to her sister about flirting with the powers of evil, about their position in the community as daughters of the vicar, and about how their faith ought to be strong enough to carry them through without resorting to spells and charms.
But she didn’t.
Because her prayers seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears, or were perhaps worn out by familiarity. And because she wanted Harry Beck to love her more than she wanted anything else in this world.