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THOMAS HAD BEEN SO angry at her last night, and so busy this morning with gathering the wood, he had not asked how she came to be here or where she had come from. He had certainly not bothered to ask if there were other kin in the colonies besides her brother, or where she and he had been before coming to Fearnought Farms.
And just where were they going?
Another breeze skipped around them. She shivered again.
So much for his resolve to remain aloof and unkind. He tore the cloak from his shoulders. He dropped it around hers.
“Non, Monsieur, you are the one with a cough.”
“I am heating up rather quickly.” Thomas stepped back. “Nor am I covered in wet mud.”
“But—”
“Wheest, Lass!”
She blinked a veil of tears from her eyes.
Fingal whined.
Thomas grabbed the wagon’s side and squeezed till his knuckles ached. If the lass would just not try him so.
Ach! ‘Twas not her. ‘Twas him. He had grown up around womenfolk. He liked them. He had loved more than a few.
This sprite was no different than they. ‘Twas he who no longer knew himself.
“Tha mi duilich.” The Gaelic slipped from his chest.
Her brows bolted upward.
A smile eased to his lips. He bothered not to fight it this time. “I am sorry for my harshness. No doubt I need a good skelping at my maither’s hand.”
“No doubt she would give it to you. Shall I oblige for her?”
“Nae need,” he chuckled. “But please dinna argue about the cloak. I may have been fighting a war the past two years, but I have nae forgotten how to be a gentleman.” No one was more surprised than he. “Ye can give it to me when we get back to the house.”
“Merci.” Tears streaked through the dirt on her cheeks.
A gentleman would offer a handkerchief. But then, a gentleman would have one.
“Ye can use the edge of the cloak to wipe your face free.”
Her mouth rounded. “Oh no, ‘twill dirty.”
“‘Twill have to be washed with the rest of my clothes. If ye were not so caked in mud, ye could smell it.”
“Will you let me help wash it while I do the same to Josué’s coat?”
He stifled the groan in his gut. “Ye dinna give up, do ye?”
“Not usually,” she whispered.
“I can manage the cloak myself. But there are plenty of other things for ye to help me with, like replacing this sling.”
Her mouth relaxed.
“Or getting me some tea.”
She smiled.
His gut hardened to iron. There could be no more of this. After all, kindness bred friendship. Friendship bred intimacy.
Where he was to go, both were useless.
Twenty minutes later, he heaved the last log upward to the pile in the lean-to on the north side of the house. It missed its mark and rolled to the ground with a thud. Spasms ripped from his throat. Even Fingal, who had tired of the adventure and curled next to the house for warmth, whined and scanned him with worried eyes.
Thomas grabbed Dominic’s harness and pulled him to the front of the house. He stumbled up to the porch and inside, desperate for warm air and tea. He raced to the fireplace. Suddenly, Miss Johns stood before him. He reared backward.
“You sit down. I will get the tea,” she said.
He wanted to grab her shoulders and toss her to the side, but he dare not. His limbs were shaking, and his chest felt like it might explode with the next breath.
He sat in a chair as she bade. She flitted this way and that like one of the Highland faeries his father spoke of in his stories from home. All she needed was a green kirtle, and he would have been certain he had left this world for another.
He focused on quelling the cough. After what seemed like forever, but surely was only a few minutes as fast as she moved, a
teacup was set to the table before him.
He turned. Her womanly curves bumped Josué’s shirt forward.
How had he not noticed? When she had taken the coat off after she had fallen in the mud, he must have turned so quick he had not seen her.
A throb ached his throat.
This woman was neither a lad nor a faerie. He scrounged his fingers across his beard. He forced his gaze upward. The innocence slammed him.
She has nae idea of her charms.
He ground his jaw tight.
She needed a bath and out of the pants and shirt and in something more respectable.
Thomas needed her in something which lent far less to his imagination.
“While the tea readies, will you let me sling your arm?”
“I would verra much like ye to sling it, but we both need baths and clean clothes, and I canna verra well fill water in tubs with one hand.”
Her brows lowered.
“But after we are both cleaner, I would welcome you to do so. Now, please.” He pointed to the other side of the table. “Warm yourself with some tea as well. Then we will get on with the washing.”
“What of the last load of wood?”
“I think we have plenty. ‘Twill nae be as cold tonight.”
Thank God she poured herself some tea and sat. Maybe he could bargain with her to burn the shirt since she was keeping the coat. He never wanted it to appear on her person again. Here or anywhere else. He had quite a bit of self-control. The next man may well not.
He lifted his eyes but not his head. She blessed the tea, then reached for the handle and lifted the cup to her lips.
She may have no family left, but she had to at least go back to her people. Come to think of it, she and her brother had come from somewhere. Had a group of Acadians been living with nearby neighbors?
Not likely. The Acadians had not been welcomed at any of the places where they had been more or less dumped. Boston. Charleston. Annapolis. Some of these last had been sent to . . .
Thomas’ fingers numbed. He plunked the cup to the saucer. The porcelain jangled in his ears.
Surely, she was not from there. “Where did ye say ye and your brother were from?”
“Nova Scotia.”
“Nae. I mean before ye came here to my house.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “Baltimore Town.”
His gut twisted.
“But I—”
He slammed his hands on the table and pressed himself upward.
Her eyes widened. He closed his.
A nearly forty mile trip with her in tow. Every minute. Every mile. How was he to stand it? Her nagging. Her eagerness to please and to help.
Her innocence.
“I go to get water for bathing.” He lunged for the door. “Ye will never get the mud from ye otherwise.”
Or that shirt from your person.
“Monsieur! Wait!” Her footsteps pattered along the floorboards.
Thomas sped up. He had to be free of her, at least long enough to think of what he was to do.
She was between him and the door.
He reared backward. If he touched her now, he had nae idea what he might do.
“I am not going back to Baltimore Town,” she said.
What did she say?
“Perhaps that makes your anger less so?”
Not go back? “Nae, it does not,” he cried. “And where pray tell, will ye go?”
“I am not certain.” She shifted her gaze sideways. “But I will not go back to the Fottrell House.”
“The what?”
“’Twas an old house in town we were given.”
“Edward Fottrell’s place? Fottrell’s Folly?”
“Oui.”
Thomas was familiar with the house. The man had poured a fortune into the place, but before it was finished he had left for England and never returned. The last time Thomas saw it, ‘twas barely habitable for the pigs which had invaded it.
None of which concerned him at the moment.
“Are your people in Baltimore Town?”
“The Acadians are there, but they are not my people.”
Not her people? “Was that not where ye and your brother were living before coming here?”
“Oui, but I will not go back. They do not want me.”
“’Tis nae my concern if they want ye or no.” He did not want her either. “Ye will go back. Ye have nae choice.”
She flattened herself against the door. “Your moods roll in and out like a Nova Scotia fog.”
The heat fired to his head.
“I have been quiet and not spoken. I have tried to be pleasant. I have plied you with teas and slung your arm.”
“Miss Johns,” he growled
“None of it makes you happy. In fact, the least little thing sends you into a well-controlled rage.”
He was not as controlled as she thought. “I go to get water. Ye start a fire in the bedroom.”
She beaded a dark stare into him. “You cannot tell me what to do.”
His nerves rankled. “Are ye not staying in my house?”
“Oui, but—”
“Have ye eaten my food? Are ye using my firewood?” His taller frame towered over her. “Then ye will do as I say. Ye will go back to Baltimore Town and to the other Neutrals.”
She lifted her chin. She opened her mouth.
“Now get out of my way!”
She slid down the wall. He flung the door open and lurched outside. He grabbed for the porch railing.
Behind him, the door slammed closed.
He ought to open it and close it again, just to show her he was in charge. Instead, he let the cold wood of the railing douse the fight coursing through his fingers.
She would only retaliate with a slam of her own. With her, that could go on all day.
His fingers tightened into the wood.
When he had earlier touched her, nausea had swept him like a green, foamy Atlantic tide. When they shared a smile? His insides thinned, and his gut crashed against his spine with needs he had long thought dead.
When she touched him?
His blood turned to war and he was ready to hurt her. Badly.
And I am at war with this lass for she demands things of me I canna give.
He fisted his right-hand fingers and slammed them to the railing. He listed his bad shoulder to the porch post.
He really had only three choices. Take her back against her will, leave her here, or set her into the wilderness on her own. He was nae cruel enough for either of the last two, although the lass may well argue that the first choice was little better.
Go back she would, though.
He had a war to end, and he had nae time to start a new one with her.
––––––––
THOMAS TOSSED THE BATHING tub to the floor.
The boards rattled beneath his feet. The lass cocked her brow upward again.
Thomas thought he would go mad against the strain.
He sloshed the warm water into the tub. She frowned at the puddles on the floor, grabbed a rag, and wiped the boards dry.
She never said a word, which only irritated him further.
He slammed the bedroom door. He stomped up the stairs and flung open the attic door.
He opened and closed trunk lids. He tossed clothing here and about. He managed to find a pair of pants and a shirt he had worn in younger days but now, to his thinner and weaker frame, fit well enough.
He checked on the trading post. Except for a spool of unwound red thread and a few swatches of fabric, the shelving along the back wall was empty. Thomas lifted a few coins and bills from the counter, but ‘twas not nearly enough to account for the lack of inventory. Either his family had taken nearly all of the store with them, which meant they were to be gone a long time, or others had depleted the shelving and not left just compensation.
The herb house was just as empty. His maither must have taken it all with her.
He checked the nearby traps. Most had bones, but he did find a fresh rabbit near the creek.
Now, he leaned toward the fireplace in the main room and turned the rabbit on the spit. The smell of fresh meat waved toward him. To either side, water for his own bath warmed in kettles.
By the time he was done bathing, the rabbit should be ready to eat. His stomach growled.
The bedroom doorknob twisted. Thomas turned.
The door opened.
What little fight he had nursed fled. If he could have grabbed for air with his fists and shoveled it into his mouth he would have.
A green skirt with tiny yellow gold stripes swirled around her hips. Laces stretched across her chest and imprisoned a red vest in place. The hair had been harnessed into a braid that swung over her shoulder from beneath a lacy triangular scarf. A wooden crucifix swung from a string around her neck.
This was worse than the shirt.
Much worse.
Fingal pranced into the room ahead of her. He stopped and barked once, then craned his head around to look at her.
Elizabeth giggled, then rubbed clean fingers across his black head.
She lifted her gaze to Thomas.
“Is that rabbit I smell?” she asked.
“Aye.” All he could smell was clean woman and peppermint soap. “It should be done by the time I am finished bathing. All ye have to do is turn the spit.”
She nodded. “I set water to boiling in the room for you, so ‘tis warm already.”
“How did you do so?”
“I had them filled and waiting when you came in with the tub.”
“Thank you, Lass,” he whispered. “With what I started in here, I have only to drain the tub, then fill and bathe.”
Another yawn widened her face.
How little sleep had she found last night? And how many nights had she nursed her brother?
She smiled. “And hopefully you will smell better after a bath.”
“I canna think I would smell worse.”
“And all that hair will be cleaner, too?”
His belly warmed. He had also forgotten how a woman’s soft ways and easy words could dull a man’s sharp edges.
And his edges had sharpened more dangerous than most the past two years.
Ach! He had nae use for such feelings where he was going, nor with what he needed to do.
He grabbed the two kettles of warm water despite the ache in his left shoulder and made his way across the room. Once inside, he shoved his foot against the door and slammed it closed.
He had to get the lass to Baltimore Town as soon as possible. If he did not, he could be in real trouble.
And ‘twould no longer be the lass he warred against.
It would be himself.
––––––––
HOW COULD A COMMENT about cleaner hair turn him angry?
She tossed herself into the chair.
Do I really wish to ask for his help?
He was temperamental. His moods changed with every breath he took.
But he was a woodsman. He was the only one she could ask.
And she was not going back to the Fottrell House.
Ever.
She yawned again. She turned back to the rabbit. Turning the spit was easy. Staying awake might not be.
She spied the corner cupboard to her right. Pewter dishes lined the shelves. She could set the table. She turned to the cellar door. She could scrounge for the last of the apples. She could boil them down and add honey or maple syrup for a sweet treat.
Fingal curled against her feet. She turned back to the fire. Would such kindnesses soften his heart when she made her request? Or would they further anger him?
Another deep yawn stretched her jaw. Fingal joined in.
Of course, there was always prayer. But thus far, the Almighty had not seen fit to hear her petitions. ‘Twas as if she dropped out of His graces when her feet stepped to the Leopard.
No, she was better off with setting the table and making a sweet treat.
She yawned again. She leaned her head against the chair back.
She would do so in a minute.