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Porter, when really she meant nothing at all. She only knew she had to fill the silence, lest Widow Porter realize how Elizabeth actually felt.
    â€œFrom now on, I’ll see that you leave a little earlier on our afternoons,” Widow Porter said. “Keep you out of the way of temptation. Nat, too. You know he was courting the sweetest girl, over in New Barton, but now she looks likely to become an invalid.”
    â€œWhat a shame,” Elizabeth said, wishing Rebecca Hornby dead, dead and buried, only a pile of bones moldering in the ground.
    â€œWe’ll find some young man worthy of you soon.” Now Widow Porter was beaming at her as though her matchmaking was the greatest gift she could bestow. Here she was, declaring that Elizabeth should stay away from her son forever, and she wanted Elizabeth to be grateful.
    Elizabeth simply smiled, nodded, and repeated, “Soon.”
    Widow Porter went back to her own home then, leaving Elizabeth to walk the final few steps to her house alone. She did so almost in a trance. Anger and desperation clouded her thoughts, made it impossible for her to focus on anything around her—only the calculations in her mind.
    Still, the Widow Porter hadn’t given any real reason for Elizabeth not to marry Nat, other than the First Laws forbidding it.
    But it would take more than smiles and chance meetings and stolen beauty to get him. Nat was close to his mother, and if she discouraged him from courting Elizabeth, then he would never do it, no matter how fond he might become of her. And if Widow Porter would make no exception for Elizabeth, then there was no hope of them ever marrying in Fortune’s Sound, not without earning her condemnation.
    Elizabeth tried to imagine Widow Porter shouting her down at a coven meeting the same way she had Catherine Crews—declaring her a witch no more, taking away her charms. If that was the price Elizabeth had to pay to be with Nat, could she bear it?
    Elizabeth refused to contemplate that ever taking place. She’d have Nat and the Craft, and nobody would stop her. Once they were married, and she was carrying Nat’s child, everyone would have to accept it.
    How?
    They would have to . . . elope.
    Yes. She and Nat would have to run off together to be married. They could go someplace far away, like Providence, and live as man and wife there. Elizabeth was willing to go even farther if need be, to Boston or New York or even all the way back to England.
    That would work. But Nat would have to be deeply in love with her. More than in love. He would need to be wild with the need to have Elizabeth, so much so that he would be willing to abandon his mother and the only life he’d ever known, for good.
    Elizabeth didn’t know what spells could possibly affect a man so deeply, but she could find out.

3
    P RUDENCE G ODWIN MIGHT HAVE BEEN SILLY AT TIMES , always laughing and easily distracted, but she wasn’t stupid.
    â€œYou’ve been awfully quiet lately,” Pru said one afternoon as summer drew on. “Keeping to yourself a lot.”
    â€œI’ve been studying with Widow Porter.” Elizabeth hardly paid attention to her friend; her mind was filled with thoughts about the creation of a new spell. “Takes up a lot of my time.”
    Pru crossed her arms. “You mean you’ve been spending as much time as possible running into Nat Porter.”
    Embarrassment flushed Elizabeth’s cheeks—not at loving Nat, but at being so easily seen through. “We hardly see each other at all now,” she said. “Widow Porter makes certain of that.”
    â€œAnd she’s not wrong to do it. You understand that much, don’t you, Elizabeth?” With a sigh, Pru propped herself on the fence, near where Elizabeth was contending with the milk cow. “Honestly, I can’t imagine what you’re thinking.”
    Elizabeth’s little cousins had woken her three different