Page 30 of A Lady’s Guide to Witchcraft

“We manage just fine, Mrs. Aster. Thank you for your concern. Tea? Honey scones?” There wasn’t enough charmed honey in all of England to sweeten that woman’s disposition. But Briar did try. “We have dandelion suns for Midsummer.” They were made of hardened honey with yellow dandelion petals laid out flat like sunrays on willow wands.

“And so many left in the jar.” Mrs. Aster clicked her tongue. “You really ought to try harder, dear, if you mean to make a go of it.”

Briar kept her smile in place while shifting to the right in order to step on Sorcha’s foot. Her friend was beginning to snarl.

“And now this terrible business with the shields,” Mrs. Aster continued. “And Keepers at your door.” She shook her head with patently false sympathy. “Just dreadful.”

“What can I get for you, Mrs. Aster?” Briar asked mildly.

“Sweet custards for a sunnier disposition?” Sorcha suggested with an equally false smile, one that was all teeth. At least she wasn’t biting anyone. Yet.

“Rose-chamomile tea,” Mrs. Aster demanded. “And none of those currant rolls of yours.” She sniffed. “Far too common. I’ll take three strawberry petit fours instead.”

Briar wondered if the woman knew how close she came to Sorcha shoving one of those common currant rolls right up her left nostril.

“You may bring it to us outside, if you please. And sit with my Charles when you do—he’s come all this way to see you. You ought to be grateful. He was so popular with all of the ladies at the assembly room last night.”

Sorcha snorted. Loudly.

Mrs. Aster sailed away. “Come along, Charles. And do use sunwater for the tea. I shall know if you skimp.”

Briar scooped the tea into her least favorite pot and went into the kitchen for the boiling water. Her worktable was scrubbed clean, herbs drying from the ceiling above. The cupboard shelves were packed with jars filled with dried rose petals, chamomile flowers, mints, and other herbs. There were bottles of water gathered under the full moon, under the noon sun, at midnight, from sacred wells, rivers, the ocean.

Sorcha had followed her, incensed. “Why do you let them talk to you like that?”

“You know why.”

“If they call in your mother’s debt, I shall lend you money.”

“You have no money,” Briar pointed out fondly.

“Blast. You’re right. Well, you’re not marrying that tosspot.”

“Certainly not.”

“Fine, then,” Sorcha said, mollified. “Use dishwater for their tea. And add something to turn her stomach, I beg you.”

Briar felt a little better as she carried the tray, willing her hip to stay steady. Was there any fortification better than a fierce friend at your back?

The garden glowed, the sun glinting off the last of the rain dripping from the trees and hanging heavy in the roses. Clay pots burst with marigolds and irises under the lemon tree Mrs. Aster envied so much. It did not grow naturally on the island, and it was one of the few that Briar did not encourage anywhere else but the cottage. She had to use every trick to keep customers coming back. Even smiling at Charles when he sat and waited to be served upon with that haughty, entitled expression.

Briar set the tray down on the wrought-iron table, still painted white. She had not yet had a chance to paint everything her mother had insisted on drowning in white. “That pink is not at all the thing for a house,” Mrs. Aster said, somehow pursing her already pursed lips at the house. “You really ought to listen to me.”

Briar would paint the tables the same pink to match before the day was done.

“Here’s your tea,” she said.

“Do sit with my Charles, after you pour.”

“I really can’t,” Briar said. “I must get back to the counter.”

“I insist!” Mrs. Aster snapped. “Your prospects are not so fine that you can afford to be so particular. Acting as though it is not a great honor. The audacity.”

“We’re going to marry eventually,” Charles said, sounding bored. “Mother always gets what she wants, and your only other alternative is to live on the beach with the vagrants. So sit down and stop embarrassing me.”

The roses grew silver thorns like daggers behind him. He did not notice.

“Well, now. Such romance will make a girl swoon.”

Briar knew that voice: low and rough and perfect, touched with the wild green of Ireland.

Ethan Swansea.