Dawn bit back a laugh. “I suspect the whole village knows. How do you disguise the fact they do not age? Elijah has taken forty years to grow from a babe to a young man.”
Marjory’s pace slowed as she considered her response. “The earl once told me they take fifty years to reach maturity. Master Elijah was in nappies for so long I thought it was some eternal punishment for my wandering eye as a girl. But we are a close-knit community here. The family protects us and we protect them. There is no need for anyone outside of the village to know.”
“I still don’t know if I believe it or not.” She walked through a dream plucked from a story, but this one was not found in any book. Instead it was a tale whispered from lips to ears and passed down through the millennia.
“You have time for the truth to settle into your bones. I think it took me quite a few years before I stopped pinching myself, I was so convinced I was going mad,” Marjory said.
Lord Seton said they had time to become better acquainted, but did they really? He had centuries to wait while she clutched only a handful of years. Her lifespan was that of a summer butterfly compared to a tortoise. How many paramours had he seen bloom and wither over the centuries? “There is so much I need to understand, but I worry what Jasper is not telling me.”
“Jasper is it? Well, it seems I might owe that old goat Hector another kiss.” Marjory laughed, a rich throaty sound that belied her years.
The earl’s name had slipped over Dawn’s lips while she was mulling the bigger problem. A faint blush heated her skin at using the familiar term, but at least he hadn’t overhead. “What bet have you and Hector been making?”
Marjory turned to her and grinned. “Hector said you were just what the estate and Lord Seton had been searching for. I said he was daft. He wagered me a kiss if I were wrong.” Then the older woman winked. “Of course I actually agreed with him, but that would go to his head. Plus this way I get to protest about having to kiss him again.”
The two women laughed and soon emerged into the open meadow. Elijah picked flowers while Lady Letitia’s yellow gown flashed between the branches of an oak. Seeing the other woman behave like a young girl made it easier to think of her as Lettie. Whereas Lord Seton, with his perpetual frown, suited his more formal name.
Dawn walked to the tree and placed a hand on the trunk. She peered up through the foliage. “Are you having fun up there? I’m not sure I could make it up in these skirts.”
Her thick cotton skirt was stiff and unwieldy, and she doubted she could hoist the fabric up around her thighs to climb a tree like Lettie did in her flimsy silk gown.
“I like the old trees because they don’t say much, but I much prefer the lake,” Lettie called from high above.
Dawn understood her preference. Ancient trees always seemed to her like old and wise sentinels. Except for the poor elderly citizens of the forest walk battling the invasive vine. There they had turned from sentinels to soldiers. The brave old trees might be why the vine hadn’t touched the lake area.
“I’m not mad, you know,” Lettie said from her perch in the tree.
“No one ever said you were.” Dawn didn’t think that was a lie. No one had said to her outright they thought the earl’s sister mad. It was certainly thought and inferred, but that wasn’t quite the same thing as saying it aloud.
Lettie jumped down to the ground and pulled leaves from her plaits. They wreathed her head and made her look like a forest sprite.
“It’s her. She poisons everything, and she has tendrils in my mind that I cannot pull out. But no one believes me.” Lettie thumped her fists against the side of her head and let out a soft yelp.
Dawn reached out and took Lettie’s hands to still the frantic motion. Hatton reached into her satchel, but Dawn shook her head no. This was important. “Her? Do you mean Ava?”
Dawn glanced around, expecting to see a snake creep through the grass at mention of the unseen woman’s name, but there was no sign of her woody minion in the meadow.
“Yes.” Lettie’s eyes were wide pools. “First she poisoned Julian, then she reached for me and Jasper. All the while she spreads the horrible vine that strangles and deforms everything it touches.”
Dawn blew out a sigh. She finally understood what she battled, a woman wielding nature as her weapon. Well, Ravenswing was under Dawn’s care and protection now. Ava sounded like a blight that needed to be cut out. “What if I told you I intended to defeat her and make the garden harmonious again?”
The jerky movement of Lettie’s fists stopped and tears welled up in her eyes. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous.” Lettie pulled on Dawn’s left arm and turned her hand to reveal the angry red mark on her wrist. “She has poisoned you too.”
Dawn inhaled a quick gasp and tugged her hand free. “This is just a scratch from gardening, nothing more.” She scoffed at the idea of being poisoned, but her fingers rubbed at the cut.
Dawn had no idea what sort of battle she was embarking upon, but perhaps that ignorance gave her a certain level of confidence. If she could distil everything down to a gardening concept, then she had some hope of tackling the problem. Jasper had said Lettie’s problem was tied to the state of the garden. If Ava had stolen Lettie’s senses, then Dawn would retrieve them. And she would expel whatever poison the vine tried to spread under her skin.
Dawn glanced to Elijah, picking cornflowers. Poor lad, how could she plot the removal of his mother without giving him a say in her downfall?
“We never know what we can achieve if we don’t try.” She might fail, or she might bring peace back to this troubled family, but for the first time in her life, she had a larger purpose.
“You should never have come here. It’s too dangerous.” Lettie shook her head.
Danger was a relative concept. Dawn could have expired climbing the stairs in Whetstone. The threat of death had hung over her all her life and somewhere lost sting. “Life is fraught, Lettie. None of us know what dangers lurk around the next corner. We simply live our lives the best we can.”
“No, you don’t understand. You should have stayed hidden where they couldn’t find you. Here, the garden will reveal what you truly are.” Lettie wrung her hands as though she tried to remove something from her skin.
“What do you mean? Who will find me?” Dawn wanted to dismiss the woman’s ravings, but a familiar cold dread stroked between her shoulder blades.
Lettie turned back to the oak. She huddled against its rough trunk. “The Soarers didn’t know about you. You were hidden so long as you stayed in Whetstone.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Who are the Soarers?” Her book about the elementals was going to need an index with all these strange terms explained.
“Soarers are the other side of the pendulum. The sylphs and salamanders. Here, you will be exposed. You’re not safe. Jasper couldn’t save Julian, and he won’t be able to save you.” Lettie’s voice rose as she became agitated. “The Soarers killed your parents, and now you have stepped into the open, they will find you.”
Cold water rushed down Dawn’s spine. “You are mistaken. My parents died in a terrible accident.” She glanced to Elijah, who abandoned picking flowers and walked back to them, a frown so like his uncle’s marring his young brow.
Lettie turned so her back rested against the tree and waved her hands in the air. “It was a trap. Did you not wonder why your parents didn’t get out of the carriage when the train bore down on them?”
Dawn gasped for air as her heart tightened and strained as the pain of loss flooded back through her. “You’re wrong. It was an accident. There was a heavy fog that afternoon and they never saw the train. Why are you saying such things?”