‘Well?’

‘Well yourself! Who’s your mistress when she’s at home?’

‘Miss Greenwood. Rosa Greenwood.’

‘Well, Mr Well, you’re out of luck. They’ve left. Didn’t they tell you?’

‘Left?’

‘Yes, she caught the early train back to London this morning with her brother. I expect you’re to follow with the horses. Why Lordy, what’s the matter with you? You’ve gone quite pale. Here, sit down.’

She shoved a chair at him and Luke groped his way to it and sat, feeling the blood pound in his head.

‘Had a bang on the head, did you?’ She looked sympathetically at the bandage and he managed to nod.

‘Nasty things, horses. I never did like them. My dad was an ostler and his father too, but it skipped a generation with me. To me they’re just nasty great beasts what’d step on your foot any day of the week and never say sorry. Here,’ she pushed a huge brown teapot at him, and took a cup from a shelf, ‘have a cuppa, and I’ll run out to the yard and see if the head groom knows what you’re to do.’

‘Thanks,’ Luke said hoarsely.

‘Miss Greenwood,’ the girl said slowly as she filled up his cup. ‘She’s that lass what’s just got engaged to Mr Sebastian, right?’

Luke nodded, dully, the pain in his head throbbing until he thought he might be sick.

‘Well, isn’t that nice,’ she beamed. ‘Nothing like a wedding in the family to cheer things up. We’ll be seeing a fair bit of you round here, I dare say.’

After she left Luke put his head in his hands. He didn’t feel like tea – he felt sick and faint, and full of dread-soaked questions. What would happen when he got back to London? Would he be sacked? Why had Knyvet allowed him to live, after what he’d seen? And, most importantly of all, why did everyone think Rosa was still engaged to Knyvet?

Rosa was sitting in her bedroom, staring blindly out across the roofs, when she heard the slow, weary clop of hooves in the mews alleyway behind the house. When she looked down, through the gathering fog, she could see the dark shape of a horse and rider approaching. Only one rider and only one horse. Cherry . . .

For a minute her eyes pricked with tears and she thought that she would give way to one of the helpless fits of weeping that had taken her since she’d arrived back in London. But she drew a deep, shuddering breath and pressed her lips firmly together, pushing the tears back down where they belonged. She would not give in. Not to this. Not now.

The rider turned in at the gate and then dismounted. Through the thick yellow fog she could see only the outline, but it was Luke, she would have known his silhouette anywhere, the slow deliberation of his movements as he unbuckled Brimstone’s harness and led him into the stall, next to Cherry’s empty one.

He looked bone-weary, his movements slow and dragging. She watched him until he was gone from sight, inside the stable, and then turned her eyes back to the rooftops, to the spiky chimneys and the circling starlings, looking for a place to roost. The sparrows and pigeons were long gone, to wherever they sheltered, and a thin sickly moon was on the rise, its light a sulphurous yellow through the swirling fog. How could London be so beautiful and so filthy at the same time? She thought of the wide gleaming lawns at Matchenham, at the soft golden stone of the house in the winter sun, and the tears rose inside her again, a trapped grief trying to get free.

‘Rosamund,’ came a voice from the doorway, and Rosa turned, her heart beating fast. It was Mama. She stood in the doorway, her emerald-green silk skirts rustling against the threadbare carpet as she came into the room.

‘You know what you must do.’ Her expression was unsmiling.

Rosa closed her eyes. Yes, she knew.

‘Come.’ Mama put a cold hand on Rosa’s cheek, against the worse of the purple bruising. Rosa steeled herself, forcing herself not to flinch away. ‘It’s not pleasant, I know, but it must be done. You’ve done well; don’t falter at the last fence.’

She nodded.

‘Go now, before he goes into the kitchen.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

She looked at the carpet, refusing to meet Mama’s eyes. She could not bear the reflection of herself that she would see there.

Mama turned and left, and Rosa stood, letting the blood come back into her stiff limbs. Before she left the room she turned, quite deliberately, to the mirror over the dressing table. For the journey back to London she had worn a veil, for there were limits to what magic could heal. She had done her best – the bruises were purple, not black and blue. Her eyes were bloodshot but the bones in her nose had started to knit. The kink would remain, a broken ridge to remind her, always, of Sebastian’s power.

A fall out riding, Mama had told Ellen. Most unfortunate. Miss Rosa will keep to her room for a few days while the bruises heal.

But she would not hide herself from Luke. He had seen the worst already.

Her own eyes met her in the mirror, gold-brown and red-rimmed.

It was time.

Luke was sweeping Cherry’s empty stall as Rosa entered the stable and did not immediately hear her above the slow rhythmic swish of the brush. She stood in the shadows, watching him, wanting to remember this moment always. A single lamp burn in the window and the light glinted from his straw-coloured hair, catching the small golden stubble on his cheek and at his jaw as he turned. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and she could see the muscles in his arms move and flex as he methodically worked his way across the small space. Brimstone nuzzled at his shoulder as he came close, more trusting and affectionate than she had ever seen him with Alex. A lump rose in her throat and she stepped forward into the light, before she could think better of this.

He turned as he heard her footsteps and his breath caught in his throat.

They stood, neither of them saying anything, and then he crossed the stall to her and took her shoulders, turning her face to the light.

‘My God.’ She could feel him shaking. ‘I’ll testify against him if you want to prosecute. I’ll speak for you in court, tell ’em what he did.’

She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so like crying. Testify! He would never even get to the court. It would be his death.

‘I came to tell you . . .’ She tried to make herself hard, cold, as Mama would be. ‘I came to tell you . . .’

She couldn’t finish. The words stuck in her throat, choking her.

‘Rose . . .’ he began. There were tears in his hazel eyes. She could not bear it. Then his gaze went to her finger, where she was still wearing the ring. The colour left his face. ‘Why . . . ?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said stupidly. It was not what she had meant to say. This was turning out all wrong. ‘Luke, oh Luke, I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Take it off.’

‘I can’t.’ It was true. The ring had shrunk, the metal band biting into her finger until it could not be removed.

‘What?’ He took her hand and his eyes widened. ‘We’ll get pliers – nippers. I’ll get it off, I promise.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m not . . . I’m not going to take it off.’

‘What?’ He gripped her very hard and she fought against the stupid treacherous tears. ‘Rose, don’t do this – there must be another way. Are you afraid of him?’

‘Yes,’ she said. At that one word, as if he couldn’t help it, he pulled her into his arms. They stood for a long moment, clinging together, her face against his chest, listening to the frantic pounding of his heart. She could feel him trying to form words, trying to speak, and she knew that she must speak first, before he broke her resolve. She rested her cheek against the soft roughness of his shirt and drew a breath.

Like this, not looking at him, she could do it.

‘Listen, Luke, there’s no way out for me. I have to do this – for Mama, for Alexis, for Matchenham.’ For you, she added silently in her head. She swallowed, trying to make him understand. ‘I have no choice – there’s no escape except through him.’

‘He’s no escape, Rosa, can’t you see that? He’s just another prison and a worse one. Please . . .’ His arms tightened around her. ‘Come away with me. We’ll start again.’

‘Can’t you see, it’s impossible? The difference between us . . .’ She couldn’t finish, but it hovered there, the impossible chasm of identity and class and magic that lay between them. He was a stable-hand and, worse, an outwith.

‘So that’s it? That’s what it comes down to, he has money and I don’t?’ He pushed her away and she heard the crack in his voice as he turned, as if he couldn’t look at her. ‘You’re selling yourself for a house, Rosa.’

I’m selling myself for you, she cried in her heart. If I don’t do this, they will kill you – do you understand that? I can’t save myself – but I can save you.

But she could not tell him that.

She only nodded, and swallowed against the pain in her throat.

‘I want you to go away, forget me.’

‘How can I forget you?’ He turned, his face full of anger, but she was not afraid, not like she had been at the sight of Sebastian’s fury. Luke might hate her, for a while, but he would never hurt her, she knew that. He would hurt himself, first. ‘How can you ask me that? I love you.’

The words were spoken almost before she had time to realize what they meant. There was silence in the stable as the words hung between them, like a spell. His eyes held her. She could not look away.

She moved across the space between them and put her hand on his cheek, feeling the rough stubble of his beard beneath her fingers, drinking in his clear hazel eyes, the way his brows were dipped in anger or incomprehension, the lines at the corner of his mouth and eyes, the dusting of straw fragments in his hair and on his shirt.

With her other hand she took his collar and pulled him down to meet her. His lips were soft against her bruised ones and he kissed her gently, carefully, as if afraid to cause her any more pain.

‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m tough.’

His lips on hers, his hands around her waist, lifting her up, holding her to him. She never wanted him to let go. Her hands were in his hair, caressing his face, smoothing away the lines and the dust and the pain . . .

Then she steeled herself and pulled away.

‘You have to forget me.’

‘I will never forget you,’ he said fiercely.

‘Oh!’ She put her hands to her face, pressing against her eyes, feeling the bruises that Sebastian had left flare with pain. ‘I wish that were true.’

She moved across to the lamp standing in the window, high above the straw, and opened the tiny glass door that shielded the flame. Luke watched her for a moment, puzzled, and she took out the rosemary from her skirt and began put it to the burning wick.

As it flared up his face changed.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I want you to forget, Luke. Forget everything that happened. Forget my family. Forget Sebastian and Southing and this house. Forget everything you ever knew about witches, forget—’ She stumbled and choked, and forced herself on. ‘Forget me.’

‘No!’ Luke’s face was full of a blank horror. For a minute he stood, frozen, too horrified to move. Then as the rosemary twigs flared up he seemed to come to his senses and leapt across the few feet between them, his hands outstretched, reaching desperately for the lamp and the burning sticks.

‘Oþstille!’ Rosa screamed before he could reach her, and Luke dropped like a felled tree, his head hitting the flags with a crack that made her cry out.

He lay very still and for a moment she could only stand, her breath sobbing between her teeth as the rosemary twigs burnt. At last the flame died away and there was nothing but ashes left.

‘Luke?’

He lay face down, unmoving, but when she put her hand to his back she could feel he was breathing, his shoulder moving almost imperceptibly beneath her palm. There was fresh blood soaking the white bandage across the back of his head. Brimstone gave a whicker of concern and shifted uneasily in his stall.

‘Luke?’ Rosa asked again. He didn’t answer. She knelt on the cold stone floor and kissed him, once, very gently on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Luke. Be happy. I hope you get your forge.’

Her throat swelled suddenly with unshed tears and she straightened and turned to go.

20

‘Two days? I don’t care if there’s only two hours to go, he’s not well!’ William’s angry voice filtered up the stairs to where Luke was lying in his narrow bed, his face to the wall.