Greer supposed he’d meant it as a kindness, something warm tofill her belly before the long, cold wait, but Ailie had warned her of drinking too much, ruefully musing how differently the Hunt played out for the Hunters and the prey.
The men began their morning with a great feast, eating their fill of rich, hearty foods, drinking coffee and tea, and even little nips of whiskey, so that they’d be warm and full of energy for the search to come. But the women needed to remain silent and still. Some would have to wait the entire day to be found and claimed. Greer often wondered how many marriages resulted from a too-full bladder.
“Thank you.” Greer wrapped her fingers around the mug, letting it warm her even without drinking.
Hessel shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot, his size taking up an uncomfortable amount of space in her room. “I imagine you’ve picked your spot?”
She nodded.
He waited.
A strained smile tugged her lips. “You don’t think I’ll tell you where, do you? That would hardly be sporting.”
“Of course not,” Hessel said after a long moment passed between them, as wide as a canyon. “I wish you luck. Today is an important time in a young person’s life. I didn’t ever…I never thought it would come.”
She frowned. “Didn’t you?”
“It seemed so far off. Ailie always…” He stopped abruptly.
“What?” Greer pressed, needing to hear something of her mother, today of all days.
He glanced away. “I found her once in a flood of tears. You and Louise were playing outside, making little dolls out of pinecones or some such….” He shook his head as if those details didn’t matter. “She’d been watching you from the window as she worked on a pile of mending. And I noticed she was crying. I thought she must have stabbed herself with the needle or…” Again, he paused, ill at ease with the words and phrases used so frequently in the feminine realm. “I asked if she was all right, and she said that that Beaufort boy had brought Louise over. That he’d said something to make you smile.”
Greer tried remembering the day in question, but couldn’t.
“She said he’d go on making you smile just like that and you’d follow after him. She said she could see it all—that you’d follow him down the aisle, follow him all through life, follow him even into death. She said there wasn’t a place on earth you wouldn’t follow that boy to.”
Greer’s heart warmed.
It didn’t matter if it was by special sight or mere conjecture. Her mother had been right.
Hessel’s thick eyebrows furrowed, and he almost looked ashamed. “I rebuffed it. Told her that was nonsense. That you were nothing but a little girl, still tied to her skirt strings. Told her that you were too good to wind up with some Beaufort. That your Hunt was ages away and it was foolish to be worrying over some imagined…” His hands fluttered in the air, fruitlessly trying to grab hold of the right words. He sighed. “But here we are.”
“Here we are,” she echoed, feeling a stab of pride in her chest.
Like the explorers in her tattered adventure novels, Greer was about to embark on a journey, new and exciting. Shewasgoing to marry that Beaufort boy, no matter how Hessel had tried to forbid it.
For the good of the town.
Greer hadn’t understood what Hessel had meant last night, but now, standing on the edge of this great precipice, her life about to unfold, just like a map, she thought she almost did.
Mistaken was facing dangerous unknowns. Its very air was rife with uncertainty, sour with fear. But in just a few short hours, Greer would have someone to face that fear with, someone to wrap her hand around and hold on to, no matter what was to come.
And that filled her with hope. Hope for miracles and better days. Hope for a future spent with the one she loved. It was hope that allowed a person to keep going on, even as it seemed the odds were stacked against them.
She would have Ellis. And he would have her.
And that was something.
“Father…” she began, feeling suddenly inspired. “Thisisa special day.”
Hessel nodded.
“Mama always told me so much about the day of her Hunt. YourHunt. I…It would mean so much to have something of hers with me today. Do you think I might…” She swallowed, growing bold. “Could I wear her cape? The velvet one she wore when you found her?”
Hessel’s eyes darkened. “No.”
“I just…I thought that maybe—”
