Star's Crossing

2. Girls in Storms Should Not Be Trusted

Mare's heels sank in the mud as she wound between the bur oaks and still-green red maples. She held her skirts in both hands, Northanger Abbey pinned beneath her arm. His note rested between her wrist and sleeve, each word a brand, searing into her skin.

The rain thickened, pounding the canopy above, punctuated by a long sigh of thunder close nearby. Mare quickened her pace. She spotted her destination just ahead, ducking for shelter beneath the vast, stoic trunk of a single bur oak. Her mother would have her hide if she discovered Mare in this state: stained hem, hair a tangle, hat and shoulders drenched. Mare's elder sisters would never have been so impertinent.

But Mare was not her sisters.

Mollie, Madrigal, Medley, and Matilde. The Atwood girls. With four before her, Mare could never have been her own. Her own Atwood, her own woman. No. She'd don their shadows like fashionable gowns until they died or moved away, or their propensity for landing rich husbands faded. Mare was certain death would come before her family's reputation lost its luster.

She gathered her skirts and leaned against the bur's great, gnarled twist of a trunk. It was one of the oldest in the woods, its sprawl of branches close-knit and laden with secrets. Flourishing just off the footpath, it was no doubt the sight of many a clandestine moment and stolen kiss. A place of confessions and first meetings. A sanctuary for lovers the fates sought to keep apart.

Mare brought her glove to her lips and bit the seam, pulling her hand free and wriggling her fingers. Austen would have to wait. Mare wanted his words. Once more, before she was forced to face the storm. And then, worse, the seamstress.

"Miss!"

Mare gasped, note sailing from her fingers. It dropped squarely in a footprint she'd left behind, facedown, where it was promptly swallowed by a tide of browned rain water.

"Miss, I apologize, I-Mare? Is that Mare Atwood?"

Mare quickly placed her boot over the note, flinching at the audible squelch of her sinking shoe. She squinted beyond the bur, where a figure in a hat took form.

"I apologize, Ms. Atwood. You'll have to share your shelter."

Mare shrank back, blinking beneath her boot at the pulp that remained. Her precious note. Gone. She lifted her eyes accusingly. "Sir. You startled me."

He ducked beneath a low-hanging bough, cane in one gloved hand, crooked smile upon his lips. Rain gleamed in his dark curls and gathered in the eave of his top hat, and a shower of beads shook loose as he released the tree limb above his head, intruding on Mare's small, hidden sanctum.

"Theodore Bridge," she said coldly, retreating far as she could in the enclosed space. A cold draft followed the boy between the branches, and she wrapped her arms around herself. "You've been away some time, but surely you're aware it is indecorous to invade a woman's secluded shelter." She narrowed her eyes and added, "Without a chaperone, no less."

Theodore laughed, a sharp, surprised sound, and removed his gloves. With a flourish, he bowed. "Mare Atwood. It's been too long. You have my gravest apologies."

Mare eyed him cautiously. She'd known Theodore, like most of the boys in her year, all her life. He'd never been tall, and now stood barely an inch above her at full height. When he was a boy she towered over him at church and school. She recalled a birthday she'd attended when no one would dance with poor, rich, handsome Teddy Bridge on account of his stunted height. Such shortcomings had obviously failed to affect his veneered confidence.