‘Work,’ he said. Voice strangled, as though shame squeezed around his throat. ‘Farm cannot wait, tasks to be done and we have been delayed by events too much.’ He rose and walked to the door. ‘About it, lads.’

Daniel made to follow, but Gabriel stood and blocked his path, a great mass darkening the doorway.

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he said. ‘She had me fooled awhile there too.’

Daniel shifted. Gabriel reached his arm to the doorframe.

‘I – I don’t grasp your—’

‘Did you think your courting was stealthy? She did not hide it from me. There must have been some spell upon us to see a beauty in her that was not there. Even I, that’s laid with so many girls, when she pushed herself against me I was taken in, so how were you, with only our Betts to compare with, supposed to see the trickery?’

‘Pushed against you?’ The smile upon Gabriel’s lips surely, Daniel hoped, showed there was no truth to his words.

The smile lifted on one side. ‘Aye, a time or two, though soon enough I saw through her sorcery and was disgusted by her. Ugly, underneath the spell, she is.’ He bent his head low to reach Daniel’s, eyes level. Voice lowered. ‘Did you see how ugly she was?’

Daniel saw the turbulent blue eyes, soft curved lips and smooth river of skin. Remembered laughter strung through the air like stars in the night. Longed with every part of himself to believe in their love, yearned for it to be true.

He saw her pressed against Gabriel.

A wash of heat ran through him. Foolish, he had been. Weak in his need to be seen for his true self, loved. Nothing about her had been as it appeared – her innocence of spirit, her loyalty to him. All conjured.

She had understood his frailty and appeared to him that day, with Bonny, made him see in her everything he yearned for. Entranced him to give himself and turn away from all he knew. And all the while her mother worked fatal magic on Sam and the brother commanded his demon to slaughter the parson. Her own acts of vile magic, the cursing of Gabriel and the moving of the branch to trip Molly, were even seen by his own eyes. Some part of him had known all along that she was not as he thought, that there was truth to the stories about her. The only time in his life he did not listen to the voice of doubt was the one time he should have.

None of it was true. The strength she saw in him. The bond between them, the life they planned.

Wild, beautiful witch. She had devised all.

Gabriel laughed, slapped Daniel on the shoulder. ‘You should revel in the turn of events, Danny. You’ve been saved a fate as witch-husband.’