Page 21 of The Winter Husband
“Marriage is complicated. Life is complicated.” Cecile sighed. “But what choice do we have, but to accept our lot?”
The door swung open so fast both of them startled when it banged against the wall. Lucas stepped through, a sack over his shoulder. The boy slipped in from under his arm. With a shove of his boot, Lucas shut the door behind them, but the latch didn’t quite catch. He tried again, to no avail.
“Loose hinges,” Cecile explained as Lucas tried again. “When I arrived, the door was swinging in the wind.”
Lucas grunted and sank his burden to the floor. “I’ll fix it later.”
“You both must be hungry.” Cecile sprung from her chair and headed to the hearth with an air of brisk efficiency. “There’s enough sagamité here for the evening and the morning, too. Come sit.”
“Boy,” Lucas said to Cecile’s stepson, who straightened like a soldier. “Fetch two bowls. We’ll be bedding in the barn tonight.”
Cecile shot Marie a worried look, but Marie was still shaking from Lucas’s sudden appearance. The room that had seemed so comfortably large now didn’t seem big enough for all of them.
“That isn’t necessary, Captain,” Cecile said into the awkward pause. “Etienne and I slept quite comfortably in the barn last night. He’s already stoked the fire and set up our pallets—”
“You two have some talking to do.” He nodded at her and Marie. “The boy and I will do fine out there.”
She went all hot-prickly as he looked at her, past her, away from her. Etienne darted to the hearth, took two bowls from Cecile, and with a curious look at all three adults, he followed Lucas out of the cabin. Lucas banged the door closed once, twice, until the latch finally caught. The porch floorboards creaked as Lucas and the boy made their way to some barn she hadn’t noticed when they arrived.
“By the love of Mary.” Cecile flattened a hand on the mantelpiece. “He’s an enormous man, your husband.”
An image of him shot through her mind, looming at the end of her bed when she woke up this morning. She pressed a palm against her chest to hide the leap of her pulse.
“But he showed great kindness by asking me here.” Cecile pushed away from the hearth and mustered a tight smile. “That’s promising, Marie. I’m sure the Captain will be a very good husband.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, Lucas slapped another log on the stack of firewood piled against the cabin wall, trying to ignore the scene at the river’s edge. Marie and her friend hugged like they would never see each other again. The boy, Etienne, waited patiently in the canoe, paddle in hand. Seizing his ax, Lucas tossed it into the barrow and wheeled it deeper into the woods. He had asked Cecile to come here as a kindness to Marie, but now he wondered if he’d only made things worse. Every damn thing he did or said seemed to make things worse.
He worked off frustration chopping fallen pines. By the steady curl of smoke rising from the chimney, he knew she was keeping the hearth fire going, as he’d tasked her to do. He imagined her sitting with her head in her hands, waiting for him to bust in as he had last night, causing the terror that had made her face blanch. He intended to put off returning to the cabin for as long as possible, but when daylight failed and snow began to fall, he made his way back like he was walking against a gale. On the porch he found a bucket of water, a linen, and a square of lye soap. Taking the hint, he scrubbed the pine sap from his hands until his palms were raw. Then, scowling at the effort, he set the soap aside and pushed open the door.
Marie stood by the fireplace, limned with golden light. The sight of her—a beautiful woman in his house—made him scuff to a stop. The room was too warm, the fire too high, and the woman too damn fetching.
“The stew is ready.” Her voice, high and tight.
Flicking the throat-tie of his leather jerkin free, he seized the hem and pulled it over his head, leaving him in a long linen shirt and leather leggings. He sensed her sudden stillness. Not used to seeing a man stripped to his shirt, then? She’d best get used to it. He wasn’t going to spend the winter walking around his own cabin dressed for outdoor work and outdoor weather, especially if she kept burning through cords of wood. He hung the jerkin on a peg and stepped toward the table.
“Cecile helped me with this,” Marie said, filling a bowl. “She took one of the rabbits hanging in the smokehouse and showed me how to chop the meat.”
He pulled out a chair. It screamed under his weight. These chairs were made for pretty girls in petticoats, not soldiers who’d spent more time crouched on sturdy logs sharing peace pipes.
“She told me how much water to put in,” Marie continued, setting the bowl on the table before him. “I thought to add a few turnips, but she put some herbs in it instead—”
“It’s fine.”
“What I’m trying to say,” she continued, pulling out the chair across from him, “is that I’ve been trying my best since Cecile left not to burn it. I swing the arm in, I swing the arm out. But we’re not born with it, you know.”
“Born with what?” He shoveled a spoonful of stew in his mouth. It tasted of smoke and ash.
“Knowing how to cook. It isn’t something that just comes to a woman. She has to be taught at her mother’s knee. I didn’t have a mother.”
“Everyone has a mother.”
“Mine died when I was five.”
Damn it.He was an ass. He knew she’d come from an orphanage, like so many of the King’s Daughters. He might as well have curled a fist over the haft of an arrow and stabbed her with it.
He offered up, “Mine died when I was twelve.”
