Page 12 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

C laire didn’t eat very much.

How could she?

The day in the orchard had affected her, of course.

Why else would she have floated off to Tommy’s dower house for hours afterward?

Why else had she allowed days to blur into an incomprehensible muddle of memory?

Why else had she continued to run and to hide as though she’d been born to do nothing else?

So yes, that had been the whole of it, hadn’t it? She’d cried. She’d watched her son get the father he’d always dreamed of. She’d felt her heart ache for this Freddy, who knew when to joke and when to listen.

That had been it. She’d already gone through it!

So why had today felt like being split open? Why had it felt like a perfect seam had opened from the base of her throat to the center of her belly?

Why had she frozen again?

When would it ever end?

The wedding, she reminded herself. She just had to survive until the wedding, and then he would leave again. Then everything would go back to how it was.

Just survive until the wedding.

She did her best to listen without hearing, to watch without seeing, as Freddy and Oliver took their places in the center of the stone circle to prepare to tell their story. Freddy knelt, holding her son’s eyes in serious conference as the two debated their strategy, gesturing here and there.

Freddy stopped any time Oliver began to speak. He watched where the boy gestured. He nodded attentively.

She felt it again, that seam, pulling at the cosmic stitches she had willed into it to hold her body together.

Freddy never really listened, did he? Not like that.

This was wrong.

“Claire,” said Dot with a frown, putting her hand on Claire’s knee, her fingers a featherlight weight through the yellow skirt. “Do you want to go for a stroll? Do you want to check the horses?”

Claire took a shallow little breath and put her hand over Dot’s, patting it in two stiff motions. “No, no,” she said as airily as she could manage, shaking her head. “No, Oliver would never forgive me if I missed his story.”

“He would forgive you,” Dot said softly, but did not otherwise push the matter.

When Freddy rose, standing at his full height, every bit as regal and commanding as any mythic king, everyone instinctively fell quiet. He let Oliver walk in front of him and dropped a hand on his son's golden head.

Their hair blew in harmony in the warm breeze.

“Once upon a time,” Oliver began, without preamble or ado, “there was a wicked king and his army. They wanted to take England. They were bad.”

Freddy nodded with solemn agreement.

“They came here to fight and take England,” Oliver told everyone, gesturing around to the stone circle. “They were going to do it, but then a witch came. The witch told them they should leave, but the wicked king said he wouldn’t and said he would kill the witch.”

“Oh, a witch!” Millie whispered to her husband from their neighboring blanket.

“The witch said if the king could stand here and see all the way to Long Compton, he would win and be king and she would go away,” Oliver said, getting louder as he got more excited.

“So the king tried. He stood here and he looked, but he could not see it. It was smaller then, in the ancient times.”

“It was,” Tommy agreed, nodding. “I was there.”

It won a chuckle from a few of the people in earshot, and Raul’s aunt whispered in baffled awe, “Stubby Compton?”

They got shushed.

“He couldn’t see it, so the witch said he should go home. He was going to lose, and he could be a bad king that was alive or no king at all because he died,” Oliver said, his eyes so wide and blue that they rivaled the sky. “The king didn’t listen!”

“Naturally,” Ember Donnelly said with a scoff. “Typical king.”

“He said he wanted to try again, and the witch said he could take … um …” Oliver hesitated, glancing up at Freddy, who quickly flashed him five fingers on one hand and two on the other.

The boy heaved a sigh of relief and turned back to his audience, still deeply serious.

“He, he could take seven steps and try again.”

“Lotta steps,” Abe grumbled. “Too generous.”

“The king took great, big steps, like this!” Oliver moved away and took the longest, straight-legged strides he could manage. “He cheated!”

“He very well bloody did,” Abe agreed, louder this time.

“But then the wold came! This one, right here!” Oliver said, standing on his toes and pointing to the little barrow hill between the stone circle and the village.

“It stopped him from seeing. He said ‘Fine, witch, I will go home,’ but she said it was too late. The king had already decided to walk farther into England. He made a bad choice.”

Oliver shook his head sadly. “His soldiers said they would still fight. Some bad knights had already picked the bad king too. They all still wanted to fight. They wanted to kill the witch!”

“ Tolice ,” said Raul’s aunt, winning a nod from Raul.

“The witch said they didn’t have to die, but they couldn’t live anymore,” Oliver said, his voice dropping into a dramatic whisper as he plodded back to Freddy’s side from his demonstration of the wold.

“The king said she would die all the way and told his men to cut her with their swords, but she stopped being a woman then and started being a tree. The elder tree! It’s not here anymore because the witch probably turned back into a lady after that. ”

“Sensible,” said Dot.

“But when she turned into a tree, the king and his men started to change too. They couldn’t be a tree, because trees are alive.

Instead, they turned into rocks. The king, all the soldiers, and the knights too all turned into rocks right where they were standing, here, in this circle!

” Oliver held his hands out wide to demonstrate.

“And that rock by Papa Raul, that’s the Stone King! He’s still here. Forever!”

Everyone turned in tandem to observe the Stone King, the largest of the rocks, and perhaps believably human shaped, after a fashion. The king was not part of the circle. He was alone in his own private meadow, forever.

“These are the soldiers,” Oliver said, pointing at the rest of the circle, “and over there are the Whispering Knights. Don’t count them!”

“Oh, but I already did,” said Millie, frowning. “Twice.”

“Don’t count them, Aunt Millie!” Oliver said, dropping both hands on top of his head and squeezing his hair. “If you get the same number three times, you will die!”

“I will?!” Millie returned with a gasp. “I was so close! You saved me, Oliver!”

“I saved you,” Oliver agreed with a relieved sigh and a nod, releasing his hair, which retained the unfortunate spiky shape of his fists. “Because the Hightowers are related to the witch, you know. We have a little bit of magic too.”

“Well, you certainly do, lad,” Abe put in, throwing an arm around Millie. “You just saved my wife! Just like the witch saved England. Here’s to Oliver, the hero!”

Claire felt herself exhale as the gathered group cheered and applauded. She tried not to stare at her husband, at the way he beamed down at their son.

Related to the witch indeed.

Maybe they were.

She knew without asking that Tommy had told him that particular bit of lore. Whether or not it was real family legend or not was irrelevant, Claire supposed, finding her feet as the others began to do the same, many of them making a direct path for the Stone King.

“What if I count them first and then you count them and then we compare numbers?” Ember was suggesting to Joe, who just kept shaking his head and frowning. “Oh, come on, spoilsport. Then we can ask Millie. No one dies then, it’s just comparing notes!”

“Stop that,” Joe mumbled as they passed, making Ember cackle.

“The king,” said Raul’s aunt from the other direction, gripping his arm as they walked the circle, “he stands alone. Kings are always alone, are they not?”

“Ours certainly is,” Raul responded with a shrug. “England’s is too, I suppose. Alone in his own mind.”

When Claire had first heard this story, she’d marveled at it too. She’d never heard a fairy tale or a myth or a legend before where the witch was the heroine. Even if the woman had stayed a tree, there was still a romance to it, still a heroism.

In the Cotswolds, the savior of the kingdom was female. Claire liked that very much. She liked it even better that her son liked it, and that he would grow into a man who believed that women could save the world too, and that the powerful ones were good, not evil.

She frowned.

Freddy loved that story too. He’d grown up believing the same things, hadn’t he?

She leaned down to swipe a bit of bread and decided to check on the horses after all, just behind the barrow. No one would see her there. She could fill her lungs with beautiful, unobserved air and find her sanity again.

Of course, that’s not what happened.

She rounded the crest of the hill only to find herself wedged between carriage and wold opposite none other than Freddy, who, it appeared, had decided upon the same course of solitary action.

He was leaning against the door to the carriage, one foot propped behind him on the foothold, gazing up at the clouds as they passed. Her appearance immediately drew his attention, those ice-blue eyes falling and landing on hers with the same violent physicality that they always had.

If it had knocked her knees out and sent her tumbling in the grass, she would not have been surprised.

Somehow, however, she still stood.

He smiled at her, just half a smile, something gentle and familiar and so very much worse than that wide, toothy grin he flashed at everyone all the time. He looked … he looked happy to see her there, the bastard.

“Don’t run away,” he said by way of greeting. “Please.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she said haughtily, while still very much considering doing just that.

He kicked off of the carriage and walked toward her, holding his hands up in front of him like he was approaching a spooked farm animal.

She narrowed her eyes, thinking how very satisfying it would be to smack those hands as hard as she could until they fell back to a neutral place at his sides, where they could not provide demeaning commentary upon her temperament.

“We haven’t even said hello to each other,” he said, perhaps in kindness ignoring that he had very much said hello to her that day in the master suite. She had simply refused to accept it. “Claire, please. Let us at least speak to one another as allies, if not friends, if not … if not …”

“Lovers?” she guessed sharply.

“Man and wife,” he completed, raising his eyebrows with surprise at the word she had chosen. “I was going to say man and wife.”

“Of course you were,” she snapped, coloring. Lovers?! Why had she said that?! “Fine. What have you to say to me?”

“I …” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair and giving a short little laugh of surprise. “I don’t actually know, to tell you the truth. A thousand things, obviously. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” she mocked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Verbosity was never one of your weaknesses, Freddy.”

She had meant to wound him, but instead he paused and turned that smile back onto her, his eyes softening with familiarity, with warmth.

“And yet …” he said with a little shrug that made her heart hiccup.

Again, she imagined slapping him. Quite hard.

“You have done such wonders with Oliver,” he said, his voice lowering to an octave of sincerity.

He dropped his hands in front of him. If he’d had a hat, she imagined he’d be twisting it around in some pantomimed approximation of an honest everyman.

“He is remarkable. He is a gift, Claire. He is perfect.”

“I …” She cleared her throat, furrowing her brow. “Of course he is. And I … he …” She stopped, holding up a hand and shaking her head, desperate to just turn Freddy into one of the stones until she could remember how to use words again.

He didn’t rush her. He just stood there politely.

She found that very cruel.

She sucked in some air and forced herself to say something. Anything. “Yes, good. You are both very taken with one another. I am pleased to see it.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, of course I am,” she hissed, perhaps a bit too harshly. “And I expect you to write him every bloody day once you’ve left him alone again. You chose to embrace him, Freddy, so now you have to commit to it.”

He held those hands up again, like she was some errant bovine trying to kick him.

She fumed. She raged. She stood completely and silently still.

“You look beautiful today,” he told her, tilting his head to observe her in the afternoon light. “The earrings … they still suit you.”

“The … what?!” She balked, her hands flying up to touch the little spheres that dangled from golden hooks at her earlobes.

“Enjoy the afternoon, Claire,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. It was too sudden to stop, too unexpected to receive the appropriate violent backlash. It was soft. It was gentle. It was very bloody chaste.

And it awoke every nerve in her body.

By the time she was ready to claw the flesh from his face, he was already walking away, whistling to himself, like a man who had just won a great victory.

And she stood there like the damned idiot Stone King, petrified forever, because she’d underestimated her opponent.