The First Midnight Spell by Claudia Gray

Let’s pretend he didn’t become obsessed with you afterward as a result of black magic.”
    â€œYou don’t know anything,” Elizabeth said. “You can’t prove anything.”
    Pru’s face contorted with anger. “No, I can’t. If I could, I would’ve gone to Widow Porter straightaway.”
    â€œIf you’re done—”
    â€œI’m not done!” Pru cried. “How can you live with it? Knowing a good man is dead because of you? That he died thinking himself a rapist and a monster?”
    That’s not why he hung himself, Elizabeth wanted to retort. It was the suggestibility of the spell. But she had too much sense to say it out loud.
    Voice shaking, Pru continued, “Word came from New Barton the other day. Rebecca Hornby’s dead. A fever, they said, but rumor has it she died of grief after hearing what became of Nat. Two people dead because of you. Why couldn’t you just have let him go?”
    â€œWe have no more to say to each other,” Elizabeth said, and she turned to go.
    Behind her, Pru shouted at her back, “I thought I knew you! I always thought—that we were friends, we’d be friends forever.”
    â€œI need no friend like you!” Elizabeth said, walking faster.
    â€œYou haven’t got one. You’ve got an enemy. Never forget, Elizabeth, one person knows who and what you are. I’ll stand against you as long as I live!”
    Her final words were masked by the wind rushing by. It was cold. Autumn was coming.
    Â 
    One day not long afterward, Aunt Ruth took Elizabeth aside before dinner. “The young ones can look after that kettle well enough on their own,” she said as she ushered Elizabeth toward the door. “This will only take a few minutes.”
    They walked out into the dusk, cool air cutting through Elizabeth’s dress. She hugged herself against the chill. “What is it, Aunt Ruth?”
    â€œWell, child.” Aunt Ruth’s face took on that awkward look she only had when she was trying to talk about what had happened with Nat, without actually saying his name. Elizabeth prepared herself to bear it, whatever it was. “You must realize—you’re of an age to be married.”
    A shadow of her old longing for Nat fell over Elizabeth’s heart. By now she’d banished her need for him to the furthest reaches of her mind—and yet it could still find her in moments like this. “I don’t suppose anyone will want me now.”
    Men were foolish like that. Even though they all believed Nat had forced himself on her, that she was the victim of a crime, Elizabeth was no longer considered a desirable wife. Every man intended to marry a virgin; everyone knew she was a virgin no longer.
    â€œA woman cannot remain unmarried,” Aunt Ruth said. “Then she has no one to support her. No one to care for her. No children.”
    Elizabeth shrugged. “Then I’ll be one of the old crones who lives at the edge of town, near the wood. I can live by my wits and my spells.”
    Her aunt’s expression hardened. “That’s who the men come after, whenever they suspect witchery. It’s the old women they burn first.”
    She thought she could handle any men who tried, especially now that she was well on her way to carving most of her materials into rings.
    Before Elizabeth could say so, however, Aunt Ruth continued, “Besides—you know we haven’t much. We’ve no dowry for you, and—and you need some other source of support. It would all be so different if your dear parents had lived.”
    In other words, her family couldn’t afford to keep her. Elizabeth’s cheeks stung, as if she’d been slapped.
    Aunt Ruth smiled. “But there’s a man who’s willing to take you without a dowry.”
    â€œWhat?” Elizabeth hadn’t even considered the idea that her marriage might be arranged in her