“Yes, dear. That big round ball of greenery hanging in the foyer. Surely you must have seen it? It’s enormous!”

Baxter merely grunted. “Another of Madeline’s works of art, I presume.”

“You presume right, dear.” Cecily decided to ignore the hint of derision in her husband’s tone. Madeline Pengrath Prestwick was one of Cecily’s best friends.

Tall and slim, Madeline resembled a woodland nymph rather than a doctor’s wife. Her frocks were of the finest linen, but flowed to her bare feet without any of the confining tucks and seams that fashion demanded. With great disregard to protocol, she often left her black hair unbound, allowing it to fall to her waist. It pained Cecily that not one hint of gray appeared in the gleaming locks. In fact, Madeline had not seemed to age at all in the years Cecily had known her.

That her perpetual youth was due to her mysterious powers with herbs and wild flowers was never in question, and Cecily had often been tempted to ask for a bottle of whatever magical potion kept her friend looking twenty years younger than her age.

Only pride had kept her tongue still. Pride and the knowledge that if Baxter were to ever find out, she would never hear the last of it. Madeline was considered a witch and feared by many of the inhabitants of Badgers End. Baxter shared in that belief. He tolerated the woman solely because she was a beloved friend of his wife’s.

Cecily leaned forward and studied her face in the mirror. No matter how much cold cream she smeared on her skin at night, the little lines at the sides of her eyes seemed to grow deeper every day. Just a few short years now until her fiftieth birthday, and the closer she got, the less she liked it.

She glanced at her husband’s image again. Baxter looked no older than the day she’d met him. Drat the man. Why was it that men appeared better looking with age, while women just became old and decrepit?

“Isn’t that in questionable taste?”