“I saw you,” he said, his eyes taking a quick inventory of her attire, the merchandise in the shop, and the shawl hanging on the peg in the back room visible beyond the curtain.
She saw no weapon on him other than the simmering anger and fear that threatened to boil over. That and the confidence he was in the right, which he wielded as deftly as a blade as he locked the door and turned the sign in the window so it read CLOSED.
Edwina retreated another three steps to the side toward the back room. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He caught her in his gaze again, recognition so sharp in his eyes it stopped her in her tracks. He knew her. Knew she’d hovered over him that morning. Oh, she’d been a fool to give in to her sister’s whim. How could her instinct have been so wrong? What had she thought? That he’d be laid out under a white sheet by now, his death absolving her and Mary of any wrongdoing? Her guilt over what they’d done to the man’s mind somehow interred in the grave alongside his cold-as-winter flesh?
“I think you know well enough,” he said, glancing again at her hair and clothing.
“What do you want? Money? I haven’t got much.” Edwina eyed the jewelry case beside her with the new gold ring as she moved to stand behind the till. She’d sacrifice it, if she must.
But her question seemed to confuse him. He leaned against the door as if thinking to himself, trying to find the answer. She waited a precious moment for the welcome sound of her sister’s return or a customer attempting to enter the shop, but no one jiggled the handle.
“You and another lass,” he said as he staggered slightly. “You stood over me on the riverbank.” He turned his chin to indicate the back of his head, but the movement pained him and he had to close his eyes for the briefest second before training them back on her. “You did this to me.”
“I most certainly did not. You were already wounded.” The response had raced out of her mouth nearly involuntarily. But with the denial she’d admitted she’d been there, and so she relented. “My sister found you unconscious on the foreshore.”
“Mary.” He was fishing, the way he dangled the name in front of her, waiting for her to bite and confirm it. He was less certain about the situation than when he’d entered the shop, though he found his confidence again soon enough. “You both stole something from me, something . . .” His face tightened in frustration when he couldn’t form his thoughts into the right words. “Something important. Something I must have back.” He stared at his empty hands before squeezing them into fists, as if he could grip the thing that eluded his mind.
“What is it you think I took?” Edwina knew the shame in her eyes betrayed her as soon as she looked away to avoid his scrutiny. She never could brave her way through a lying face. But only two others—she declined to call them victims—had ever been left alive when Mary took her baubles, and so she hoped to tease out exactly how much he’d observed. How much he remembered. And how much damage Mary had done to his mind and memory.
“Aye, so you admit you were there.”
“It isn’t what you think.”
“Nae?” He advanced and tapped his finger pointedly against the counter glass. “Whatever you and your sister nicked from me, I’ll be having it back. Now.”
Mary had taken all the memories he held up to that point in time on the muddy bank, but she hadn’t affected the new ones he’d formed since. And though he’d appeared dead to the world then, he apparently hadn’t been unconscious the entire time. He remembered them standing over him. Knew they’d taken something from him. But how much could he truly know? Or understand? Whatever he might have seen would retail as a hallucination in the telling, coming from a man recovering from a head wound. Things might still be all right.
She studied him again in the shop light. He was no dock worker, judging by the cut of his jacket and trousers and the thick leather on his boot soles. No whiff of the fisherman on him, other than the damp of having collapsed on the shore. Had she been right about him being a ruffian, then? Or a drunkard still under the influence? Perhaps she could find a way to placate him after all.
Edwina slowly reached under the counter and retrieved the gold ring. There was no way for her to explain to a mortal what they’d truly taken, so a bit of gold would have to suffice. “Here,” she said and slid the ring nestled in its velvet across the glass to him. “It’s yours. Take it.” And she meant her offer. She was proud of the find, but if the monetary value of the ring was enough to compensate for the harm they’d caused him, she could live with the loss. All settled, she thought, and restrained herself from actually brushing her hands together in a matching gesture.