Rebecca was happy that she had pleased her daughter with her purchases. “I know you better than you thought I might,” she said cheerfully. “We’re of the same blood and we favor the same things.”

In her way, Rebecca loved her child dearly, but what you give up you can learn to live without, even if it causes you heartbreak at the start. Whether you are mortal or not, you go on, even if sorrow nags at you. Rebecca did not bequeath her Grimoire to her daughter, but then Maria had not expected her to do so, for it was still in use, and Maria had written down all of her mother’s knowledge in her own book. Instead, Rebecca gave her a leather bag which included several packets of useful herbs, beeswax candles, and a spool of blue silk thread, all for the creation of amulets and potions.

“Never be without thread,” she told the girl. “What is broken can also be mended. Remember that in your dark days, as I have.” There was also a bag of oranges from Spain bought at a market and worth their high price. “This will keep you well and healthy on board a ship. Take my advice and stay away from men for as long as you can. Love is trouble, and trouble is love.”

A fine bit of guidance from a woman who’d so thoughtlessly loved the wrong man not once but twice. Even here, along the docks, where life swirled all around them, she couldn’t take her gaze away from Robbie. Likely it was true that the flaws you saw in other women you didn’t notice in yourself. Love everlasting, love wished for desperately, love that walks in through the door, love that is a mistake, love that is yours alone.

Robbie had fashioned a bargain with the captain of a ship from Amsterdam that, in his opinion, would favor everyone, including himself. Now that the deal had been struck, he was waiting with the horses, more than ready to go. He let out a low whistle and bowed, the most handsome man in three counties. Rebecca grinned and waved, as if her heart were in her hand. Anyone with even a bit of the sight could tell there would surely be trouble ahead.

“Is this what love is?” Maria asked her mother, who was gazing at Robbie on the pier.

“Oh, yes,” Rebecca said. “I’d die for it.”

In fact, she would. When Robbie was caught by the sheriff for crimes he had committed, she would be hanged alongside him, not for witchery, of which she would have likely been found guilty, but as an accomplice to horse theft, a crime with which her man was well acquainted. When there was gossip about Rebecca—she had herbs with her, and wore talismans on her wrists and at her throat—the jailers clasped iron shoes on her feet, and as witches are helpless in the grip of that metal, she could not work her magic, she could only weep tears that scalded the ground beneath them. Robbie would give a speech that many in the crowd, especially the women, would remember for years to come. He’d speak of a love that would never end, about the world they shared and the heaven they would share as well. He would quote from The Tempest, a revival of which he’d had the honor to be a part of, though his words to Rebecca were so heartfelt, everyone thought they were his own.