Spellbreaker

And then he’d left as abruptly as her parents had. Somehow, he’d seen that bit of her that was detestable, and he ran from it. Ran right into the arms of another woman, who now lived the life Elsie had once dared to imagine for herself.

The conclusion was inevitable.

She was unlovable.

Tears blurred her vision, but she blinked them away. The sound of trotting horses broke her reverie. Blast it! Her vision cleared just in time to see the omnibus leaving, the enormous carriage’s horses pulling into the thoroughfare. It was full to the brim, people crowded within and on top, but the two tiny platforms on the back were free.

Somehow Elsie summoned enough sense to run after it and catch the pole on the omnibus’s back end, planting her feet on the right platform. Gripping the pole until her knuckles blanched, she rode with her face in the wind, letting it dry her out until her eyes burned.

She felt stiff as a wooden board by the time she reached Brookley, grateful that the stonemasonry shop sat near the edge of town and not in the center of it. The last thing she wanted was attention. Her head was hollow, her hands sore.

She saw the squire’s cabriolet on the street by the front door. No. The last thing she needed was that man inside her home.

She stalked past the carriage, only to stop when she heard the spell on his horse’s flank—a chirping spiritual spell that would allow an aspector to speak to the animal to better train it. The same spell the post office used on its post dogs. Elsie unwound it with a flick of her finger and trudged inside through the side door. Let him think the spell was haphazardly placed and came off on its own. It wasn’t an uncommon issue.

“Elsie! Where have you been?” Emmeline said as Elsie started up the stairs. “The dressmakers put up a new display, and I thought it would be fun to stop by and—what’s wrong?”

Elsie couldn’t summon the will to pretend everything was all right. Not yet. Shaking her head, she said, “It’s nothing. I just . . . need to think for a moment.” She slipped into her bedroom, grateful Emmeline didn’t try to follow after. She closed the door, tore off her hat, and fumbled with her chatelaine bag. Coins and a fan had spilled onto the floor by the time she got her hands on her handkerchief.

She caught the tears just before they rolled down her face.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Elsie chided herself for crying. She’d already recovered from this. It wasn’t the loss of Alfred that bothered her, precisely. She was better off without him, though the night he left her still stung. It’s not right, Elsie, he’d said. You and I. It’s been fun, but I’ve found someone actually suited to me. And he’d taken his umbrella with him to leave her soaking in the downpour just down the street from his house, miles away from her own. She’d been sick with fever for two weeks after that, sick with heartbreak even longer. But Elsie was a strong woman. The Cowls knew it. Ogden knew it. Even Mr. Kelsey knew it.

Yet the soundest logic in the world could not heal her old wounds. It could not silence the voice that insisted she was unlovable. Unlovable. Unlovable.

She sobbed into the handkerchief until there wasn’t a dry spot on it. Until the room began to grow dark. When there wasn’t a stripe of energy left in her, she flopped onto her pillow and stared at the wall, her eyes dry and aching, her throat tight.

She didn’t say anything when a knock sounded on the door. Nor did she protest when it cracked open, revealing Ogden in the doorway.

“Oh, Elsie,” he said, warm and sad. “What happened?”

She merely shook her head. She couldn’t speak even if God demanded it of her. A frog would be better understood.

Ogden stepped into her room, leaving the door ajar, and shoved her knees over so he could sit on the edge of the bed. Just like he had when she’d first arrived there. He had acted the part of the father she couldn’t remember, reading her bedtime stories and telling her old fables. It was his fault she had an addiction to novel readers.

She’d wondered, back then, if he was as lonely as she was.

She hid her face in her stained handkerchief.

“Someone say something to you?” he guessed feebly. Elsie was not prone to hysterics, especially not in front of other people. She refused to be the seed of someone else’s gossip. “The Wright sisters?” he tried again.

She shook her head.

“Might as well tell me, or I’ll stay here all night, and the neighbors will talk.”

A sore chuckle popped up her throat. Anyone who really knew Ogden knew any scandal between them was nigh impossible.

He touched her elbow. “Not the squire?”

“No.” Her voice was raw and childish. She hated it.

Ogden waited.

After a few almost smooth breaths, she said, “I saw Alfred.”