The sunlight dribbled through the half-closed curtains lazily, as though it had just melted from a pot of gold. Abigail’s eyelids fluttered, and then snapped open.
It was Tuesday morning – an entire week since little Matthew had come into the world, and he was now a week old. Thomas, on the other hand, seemed to have aged a few years in that time.
Abigail smiled to herself, luxuriating in the feeling of the cool linen bedsheets. Poor Thomas: he had no idea what had hit him, and he adored it. Katherine had become like an empress from her bed, resting from the birth, with her husband rushing around her like a dog desperate to please its master.
She had visited the day before, and her smile widened at the memory of it. Elizabeth had been there, wide and heavy with child like a budding tree. Jonathan had been astonished at the amount of bustle required to keep a child alive, and Mariana had laughed to hear the fuss Thomas made of his wife and child.
It was glorious. It had been family, and love, and joy, and it had been almost perfect.
Almost.
Abigail sat up in bed and stretched out her arms. Why did it feel as though every memory, every moment that did not include Laken Weston was a moment wasted? There was a gap in her day when he did not appear in it, and she was beginning to find it completely unaccountable.
The heat of the June sun was rising, despite the early hour, as she pattered about the room, performing her toilette and getting dressed. This was the time of day she loved the most: calm, quiet, with none to interfere with her. It did not matter if she said nothing, or blushed, or was easily startled. This was her time, and there was no one she was forced to share it with.
Tapping down the stairs lightly, she opened the front door as silently as possible and stepped out into the street. The heat was stronger here, but she had chosen her gown well, and was wearing her lightest cream gown – and with only one petticoat, which made her blush just to consider it.
A crunch and sharp intake of breath made her twist around violently, trying to discover where the noise had come from. It had sounded like a man, and a man in pain – but surely no one could be up this early?
“Blast it,” muttered the voice. “And my last handkerchief too.”
Abigail frowned slightly. If she had been pushed to choose one of the men who now lived in Sweet Grove, she would have guessed it was . . .
Laken Weston stood in the herb garden, shirt sleeves rolled up, spade in one hand, and bloodily bandaged thumb on the other.
“Laken,” she breathed. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Laken dropped the spade. “Abi – Miss Bryant – Abigail! What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” said Abigail simply. The words he had last said to her rang in her ears: “Thank you, Miss Bryant, but I am a wandering spirit, and I cannot be tied down.”
He stared at her, and then down at the spade that had fallen to the earth with a thud. “Yes, I know.”
Abigail stepped over the little fence and picked up the spade. “So what are you doing here?”
“Gardening,” said Laken quietly. “I thought I could dig over that soil you wanted moved, and then I . . . well, I hurt my thumb.”
She stared at him and smiled nervously. “It is good of you to tend my garden – the herb garden, I mean. Thank you.”
For a moment, she did not think he would answer, and then he grinned good naturedly and airily moved his injured hand in the air, wincing. “‘Tis no trouble.”
Abigail giggled. “It looks like a great deal of trouble to me! Here, let me have a look at it.”
He hesitated, and then held out his hand. “It is no sight for a lady, Abigail.”
Without looking up from the handkerchief she was now unwinding from his hand, Abigail said nervously, “I grew up with a blind sister who seemed to have no comprehension of how she may be injured, Laken. I am quite accustomed to dealing with cuts, scrapes, burns, and blisters.”
“You never cease to amaze me, you know.” His words were low and brimming with emotion, and Abigail smiled.
Being this close to him was strange. He was just a man, after all – but so unlike any of her brothers. He made her heart do altogether unusual things.
“Why do you think I started growing herbs?” she said lightly, finally reaching the skin and seeing the cruel cut along his thumb. “It became easier to grow and use the herbs myself than constantly ask our grandmother for a few cents. This will need cleaning.”
She looked around the garden for the watering can, and tried not to notice the way his eyes never left her face.
“The best thing to do is keep it out in the air, and use thyme in water to clean it, morning and night.” Abigail held his palm out while she drizzled the cut in water, and was surprised to find her hand shaking, unable to quite keep still.
“Jonathan told me you were a caring one,” said Laken. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”
Abigail laughed softly. “He said that, did he? Sometimes it is hard to remember Jonathan is my brother and not my father.”
Laken’s eyebrows rose. “He does not strike me as having an overly paternal nature.”
“He is eleven years older than me, after all.” Abigail put the watering can down and examined the wound.
“Will I live?”
Abigail giggled. “I think you may make it, but it was a close call. I would not advise you to do anymore gardening today, just to keep it clean.”
“That is a shame. I was hoping to have this finished for you.”
Abigail looked up, and saw care and affection in Laken’s expression – and his gaze was directed straight at her. She was overwhelmed with joy, and a sense of mischievousness.
“My my, Laken Weston, have I domesticated you at last?”
Laken stared, and then allowed the inner grin to bloom on his face. My, but she was an astonishing woman. Each and every time he thought he understood this Abigail Bryant, she seemed to immediately prove him wrong.
“Domesticated?” he said, grinning. “I am not sure if I would describe myself as such; what are the criteria for such an accolade?”
“Oh, I do not know exactly,” Abigail mused as she sat herself down on the nearby bench. Laken tried not to notice the Laken-sized gap which had been left there. “I suppose for a gentleman to be domesticated, he must be obedient, well-mannered, and willing to do whatever it is he is instructed to do.”
Laken chuckled. “That just sounds like an excuse to have a servant! Would you describe any of your brothers as domesticated – is Doctor Anderson a domesticated man?”
As he spoke, he strode over to where she was sitting and carefully lowered himself onto the bench beside her, careful not to sit on her gown. His heart was beating painfully, but he would not heed it. How could he step away from this woman?
“I think they are,” she mused. “Jonathan has been domesticated, I think, since the moment he was born. Thomas has grown so; Katherine has made an enormous difference to the way he sees the world.”
“To be so altered by the one you love must be a strange and terrible thing.”
Laken had not intended to speak the words aloud, and he only realized they had tripped off his tongue when Abigail stared at him, confusion across her face.
“You truly think it is that bad?”
“No, no,” said Laken hastily, picking at the long grass growing up around the bench with his uninjured hand. “It is just . . . well, you are who you are, and then someone comes along, and you change for them. It seems odd to me. Unnatural.”
There was a moment of silence as Abigail took in his words, and Laken found he was unable to look at her in the quietness between them.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, “I see it more as growing together. Becoming more suited to each other as your love blossoms.”
Laken stared at her. “I had not considered it like that.”
“Well, no two people are perfectly matched from the beginning, are they?” Abigail spoke in a calm, measured voice, but now he knew her better, he could see her temples were tinged with pink – the first sign of an incoming blush. “Everyone is different; it would almost be impossible to find a person with whom one is entirely compatible.”
“But then . . . they grow?”
Abigail nodded. “I have seen it with all my siblings, I suppose, to varying degrees. Mariana is so different now to what she was.”
“She is almost a different person,” said Laken, thinking back to the bitter and twisted elder Bryant sister who had always been sarcastic when he had visited before.
She sighed and leaned back against the tree behind them. “I think, actually, she returned to what she was. Or what she would have been without the accident. Jonathan was five then, and he and Thomas remember her as a very happy and merry child.”
Laken tried not to look too closely at her as she closed her eyes, reveling in the sunshine. She was quite exquisitely beautiful, and never more so than when she was speaking of her siblings. She truly cared for them, and that care glowed from her, transforming her already pretty features into something superb.
“Perhaps one day someone will smooth off my rough edges. Perhaps you already have,” Laken found himself saying, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on her.
He got the response he wanted. They snapped open, and the blush threatening almost the moment she had espied him here in the herb garden now spread across her cheeks.
“I-I have – rough edges?” Her embarrassment almost prevented her from speaking, but this time Laken would not back down.
“You called me domesticated,” he continued, smiling and looking deep into those bright blue eyes. “Perhaps you have already set me on my way to domestic bliss.”
But this was too much, and he knew it as soon as he said domestic; too much, too direct, too soon. Abigail rose and smoothed down her skirts.
“I must go inside; breakfast will be wanted and I said I would – ”
“Abigail, wait,” Laken rose to follow her, cursing himself silently that he had pushed her too far. He had known this would discomfort her, so why had he done it? “Wait.”
His fingers enclosed upon her wrist, and she stopped, but did not turn to face him.
“Abigail, you – you cannot hide from the fact . . .” Laken swallowed. Why did this have to be difficult? “I like you, and I feel as though you like me. Am I wrong? Tell me. Tell me if I am wrong.”
For a moment, he thought she would just stand there, entrapped by his fingers but unwilling to fight him off. And then she turned and looked at him, and there was joy and sadness mingled in her look.
“The herbs are almost grown,” Abigail said in a whisper. “Soon they will be grown, and I will not need your help to keep them growing. What then?”
Laken swallowed. This was not what he wanted to hear; he wanted to hear – well, if he was honest with himself, he wanted her to ask him to stay. To beg him. To tell him her life simply would not be the same without him. If he left, she would be bereft without his company. Without his kiss.
“We agreed,” he said shakily, “after the growing season, I would take one quarter of the harvest, and then . . . be back on the road.”
She stared at him, all innocence and radiance, and his heart hurt to look at her, but he could not look away.
“Well then,” she said coolly, slipping her wrist out of his now shaking fingers and rubbing at it where his fingers had caught her. “That is what you asked for. And you have not asked for any other arrangement.”
Now, Laken urged himself silently. Say something now; she wants you to. She almost said it herself, so say something!
“No,” said Laken finally. “I have not asked for any other arrangement.”
Bitterly hating himself, he looked at Abigail, the woman he loved and yet did not have the strength to fight for.
Abigail dropped her gaze and smiled sadly. “And neither have I.”
She walked away, and within ten seconds was out of his sight. Laken dropped back onto the bench and dropped his head into his hands. Is Abigail’s fear and my restlessness going to prevent our mutual affection? Laken bitterly questioned his heart, but it brought him no relief. Fear threatens to become the very weed smothering any joy that may thrive between them. If they did not uproot it soon, they may never see true love blossom.