Elizabeth shook her head. “Walker has eyes only for you. I wonder what—” She bit off the end of her sentence and just smiled. Avery’s curiosity grew. Was there someone else Elizabeth wanted to impress?
Interesting.
“Your turn,” Alice told Avery and ushered her to the fitting room. She helped Avery change into the fabulous gown, then led her to the mirrors.
Tears pricked at Avery’s eyes when she took in her reflection. She was no tall, dark beauty, but the draped fabric accentuated her curves, while the delicate overlay took the design to a higher level. With her auburn hair tumbling over bare shoulders, the fitted bodice emphasizing the curve of her breasts and the long skirts trailing behind her, she’d never felt prettier.
“Walker is going to lose his mind,” Elizabeth told her when she saw her. “Avery, that’s wonderful.”
“Thank you,” Avery said happily. “You’re right,” she told Alice. “It’s perfect.”
When they left the studio some time later, she reminded herself that Elizabeth was the one who’d supposedly tried on wedding gowns and tried to erase the beatific smile from her face. Jericho and Curtis were suitably impressed with Elizabeth’s new wine-red gown, which she was still wearing.
“Can we check out that hedge maze?” Jericho asked when they were done oohing and aahing over Elizabeth’s new clothes.
“Of course,” Alice said.
“I’ll take them.” A woman stood up from where she’d been weeding rows of carrots nearby. Sadie Reed. Her kitchen garden was enormous, and Avery knew she ran a vegetable stand through the summer months along with brewing herbal remedies in her greenhouses.
“I’ll help Cass with the tea,” Alice said. She squeezed Avery’s hand before she left. “Sometimes your dreams come true even if your dreams don’t come true,” she said kindly and was gone before Avery could ask her what she meant by that.
She followed the others to the hedge maze, Alice’s words tickling at her like the buzz of a fly in a bedroom at night. She’d heard rumors of the woman’s fey qualities, as Riley called them. Had Alice seen a glimpse of her future?
Were her dreams not going to come true?
Avery shook off her fears and hurried to catch up to the others. Alice wouldn’t have spent an hour helping her choose her wedding dress if she didn’t think she was going to marry Walker.
She forgot all about the strange incident as they paced the dark, green passages of the maze, the evergreen shrubs that formed the walls stretching high above their heads.
“How do you keep it trimmed?” Elizabeth asked.
“It isn’t easy,” Sadie told them. A young, sprightly woman, her love for all growing things was evident. She ran her hand along the hedge as they walked. If Avery didn’t know better, she’d have thought Sadie was communing with it.
When they finally reached the center, Elizabeth gasped. “How did that get here?”
A huge, upright slab of stone stood at the center of the maze like a monolith stolen from Stonehenge and shipped across the ocean. Jericho and Curtis immediately went to inspect it.
“No one knows,” Sadie said with a shrug. “One of our ancestors must have put it here, but there’s no record of it, and the stone itself comes from hundreds of miles away.”
Elizabeth walked around it in a circle, disappearing behind its broad back and reappearing on the other side. “It’s remarkable.”
Jericho and Curtis were arguing. “… faster than you,” Jericho was saying.
“No way. You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag,” Curtis said.
“Wanna bet?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you ladies do without us for a minute?” Jericho said. “We won’t go far.”
“We’re perfectly fine,” Sadie told them.
They watched the men position themselves at the opening of the nearest passage. In a sudden burst, they raced off. Sadie shook her head. “They’re in for it now,” she said. Turning back to Elizabeth, she added, “The stone will answer any question you have.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Answer it? How?”
Sadie shrugged again. “Try it and see. Just touch it and ask what you want to know.”
Elizabeth contemplated the tall stone, shrugged. “Oh, why not?” She stepped forward and put her hands on its surface. “Will I… win?”
A breeze picked up, lifted tendrils of Elizabeth’s hair and brushed Avery’s cheek.
“Well?” Elizabeth asked the stone. “Where’s my answer?”
“It takes time,” Sadie told her.
Elizabeth dropped her hands and brushed them off on her gown before she seemed to realize what she was doing. She sighed. “I don’t have time.”
The wind gusted through the clearing again, and a scrap of newspaper floated along with it, lifting and twirling until it almost hit Elizabeth in the face.
With a little cry of surprise, she snatched it out of the air and crumpled it in her hand.
“No!” Sadie jumped to rescue it. She smoothed it out again. “Look.”
Avery came close to peer at the faded newspaper. “Climate Change is Unstoppable, Experts Say,” read the headline. Elizabeth expelled a breath.
“Unstoppable? That’s my answer?” She turned back to the stone. “There’s no hope at all?”
“Wait, look at the subheading,” Sadie said, pointing.
“But with Effort We Can Mitigate Its Effect,” Avery read out loud slowly. “With effort—like what you’re doing testifying to Congress.”
“You’re testifying to Congress?” Sadie looked impressed.
“No one can know that,” Avery told her. She was doing a lousy job keeping secrets today.
“I won’t say a word.”
The men thundered into the clearing, both of them clearly confused by how they’d gotten there.
“I told you that last turn was wrong,” Jericho said.
“We’re supposed to be guarding the women,” Curtis bluffed. “I brought us back here on purpose.”
“Avery? You want to try asking a question?” Sadie asked.
Avery remembered Alice’s strange prophesy earlier and shook her head.
“Another time.”
Chapter Nine
‡
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Angus said. “You’re killing Avery, and you’re going to wish you were dead, too, if you go through with this wedding.”
One more day, Walker promised himself. In less than twenty-four hours, he’d bring Elizabeth to the airport, and he
