“Oh my Lord.” Madeleine pushed past Hæra toward the mouth of the alley that led to Thornhill’s main thoroughfare. Hæra couldn’t help it: her hand extended after Madeleine to seize her, pull her back. Madeleine tugged away and kept going.

“You said you wouldn’t run!” Hæra shouted.

Madeleine froze in place. Then she turned, the look in her eyes so bleak that anything Hæra might have said died between her teeth like a fish.

“I need time, okay?” Madeleine whispered. “I didn’t expect any of this. I have to think.”

“What’s there to think about?” Hæra took one step forward. If that interfering bastard opened the window again, she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. “I want you, and you want me. Can’t we figure it out together? Let me go wherever you’re going, I don’t care⁠—”

“Hæra—”

“Don’t leave me behind!”

Oh shite. She’d barely managed to choke down one more word: “again.” Don’t leave me behind again.

Return to me.

Madeleine wrapped her arms around herself like she had that night she’d come to dinner, when she and Hæra had spoken by the pasture with no idea this lay ahead. She repeated, “I need time to think.”

“How much time?” Maybe Hæra should slow down—Jonathan said she tended to “charge like a bull”—but nothing seemed less possible right now. If she slowed down, Madeleine might speed up.

“I don’t know. A couple of days.”

“Days?”

“Or more. It’s up to me,” Madeleine snapped. She seemed to see something in Hæra’s face—desperation, maybe—and for a moment, her own expression softened. “We’ll talk again. I promise. But I have to go. Don’t follow me, just go home.”

Without another word, she bolted out of the alley, turned the corner, and was gone. Hæra stood alone, surrounded by flowers whose purpose she didn’t understand, body still aching for what had left her.

Just go home, Madeleine had said, meaning the farm. If she’d stayed another moment, Hæra could have explained something important.

She’d found her home at last, and it was in Madeleine Laurent’s arms.

Madeleine couldn’t go back to the hotel. The front desk was officially closed by now, but Harry Duggan was the type to linger and chat up anyone who came through the door. After what had happened earlier that day—her tumble down the stairs, Hæra sweeping her up as if she were a fainting maiden—it would be better to jump off a cliff than face him.

Where was there to go? The shops were closed, and the chippy didn’t have tables, just a counter where you ordered food. The Sunrise Café stood across the street, dark and silent.