“What have you done?” he rasped, standing up and running his hands over his face roughly. “I heard rumors of Malvina giving you herbs to stifle life, and I figured perhaps you remained on them for our dalliances. You stopped taking them, didn’t you? To force my hand?”
“No!” I lied, bile rising in my throat at the unfamiliar glare in his eyes. “We have been but at fate’s hand with our relations. She has now turned her fertile smile at us.
This can be a gift! We can be together now.”
“Nothing has changed, Mary,” he grunted roughly. “Except now there are complications. How will you explain this in town? You will be marked an adulteress if it comes out that I father this child, and you and I both know the law will have you as a witch.”
“We will leave together,” I pleaded, jumping up and grabbing his hands, trying to force him to meet eyes with me, but he wrenched his hands free and stalked away. “We will go far away.”
“No,” he roared, voice immutable. “I am married with children. I cannot leave with you.”
“I thought you loved me,” I screeched, my head beginning to fill with a roar as I started to panic. I could barely hear over the rush of emotions whirling in my head.
“I do, but it does not change the finality of our situation,” he answered, voice pulsing back to dealy calm.
“Why do you shun me?” I sobbed, unable to grip my emotions and pour them back into the safe bottle they’d been trapped in.
“I warned you all those years ago, Mary,” he reasoned, grabbing my shoulders and looking straight into my face. “I told you I had nothing to offer you. I resisted your advances to avoid this very situation, but you insisted and you tempted me.”
“Leave,” I whispered, avoiding his eyes and pointing toward my ramshackle door. “Remove yourself from my sight.”
“I warned you,” he repeated, before shaking his head and striding out the door, leaving me to crumple to a heap, no solace to be found, my tonic gone.
The doubts and shame flooded my mind, augmenting the roar there. What crazed madness had driven me to this and what arrogance had perpetuated my plan into motion. Attempting to ensnare George had only laid my own trap, and only I would be brought down by this. A meadow witch, impregnated with a bastard was a sure way to end up at the hanging tree. I’d be leaving Iris to fend for herself, left to a world of wolves hungry to feed on her beauty and youth, as they’d fed on mine.
I vomited for the fourth time that day, wiping my face with my sleeve before sliding down the wall I gripped. There I attempted to form a plan, knowing I could not stay in Bishop.
Desperately I tried to figure how I could leave, what money I could earn from my belongings, what I could safely travel with in my rickety old wagon. We would be two women alone who had no prospects, and my pregnancy only heightened our helplessness. I did not know Malvina’s recipe for a potion to abort George’s baby, and even if I did, I didn’t think I could possibly do it.
I began attempting to recall all my family’s distant relations, and eventually a cousin in Boston who my mother had been close with in youth came to mind. I would throw myself upon her mercy, and would claim my husband had died after impregnating me.
My furious planning did not negate the grief I was feeling from being without George. I cried every night, craving his arms, his soothing voice and his loving touch. I dreamed that I would open the door to see him standing there, beckoning me into his embrace, ready to commit to me, no matter what the circumstances were.
It was one of these reveries that I was jostled out of by a firm knock on my door. I looked up, wiped my face, trying to squash the hope in my heart that it was George, conjured straight from my dreams. I told myself it was likely a prospective customer as I walked to open the door. They came when they wanted, and I usually didn’t refuse them and at this moment I was grateful for something to break up the monotony. My belly had not yet swelled enough to uncover my delicate state in a dress as of yet, so I made no attempt to hide it as I swung open the splintered door.
I nearly gasped when I beheld her, standing there like a blight upon my doorstep. Unbidden and unwelcome, she stared at me expectantly, her unremarkable face inscrutable. Her very presence felt like an affront, despite it being I who had bewitched her husband. Sarah.
Chapter 16
Kat
The next day is rife with uncommon sunshine and warmth for fall. It’s as though without Mary marring the air, Bishop has reclaimed a decent weather pattern.
I cozy up against the pool chair and turn my head up to welcome the rays, glad to not have that constant nip of cold nagging at me. I’m a born and bred Massachusetts girl, but Los Angeles has beat that resilience out of me, one warm December after another.
I carefully replace my sun hat and root around for my book. I had raided the gift shop for the flowery bikini I’m in and the cozy mystery I’ve begun reading lazily between sips of Mojito. Despite the reversal of fall, not many people are taking advantage of it, and I am perfectly happy to be alone.
In just hours Erik will arrive at my suite to enjoy room service with me. At the briefest thought of it, my stomach begins to jump and I wonder if I should hit the spa again for a wax. Now that things have calmed down, it’s hard to imagine us not getting intimate this
