Page 14 of The Autumn Wife
“Very well.” She hugged her arms not because it was cold—it was decidedlynot—but because she could feel herself unraveling. “I’ll come to the stable in the evenings after dinner, while there’s still light, to teach them to read.” After all, while trying to entice Sister Martha to let her take vows, she’d told the nun that she could be a teacher for the convent school. Wouldn’t this be a fine way to prove her skills? “I’ll borrow slates from the school and primers—”
“You have a good heart, Madame Tremblay.”
That voice seeped through the cracks in her control. She forced her spine into an iron rod. “I’d better have a good heart,” she retorted, “since I intend to become a nun.”
He rumbled a low laugh that left no doubt that his skepticism hadn’t waned. In truth, she didn’twantto be a nun—that was a tactic to protect against the long reach of the law. She couldn’t tell him that, sohow was she to explain her choice? And why did she feel like she should? Was it the violet shadows of the deepening evening, or the music of the breeze dancing in the pines, or the fragrance of honeysuckle drifting over the field? No, no—such things no longer held any power over her. She wasn’t a foolish young girl anymore. Yet somehow, tonight, Theo had dragged up a yearning to have, for her own, the same kind of care and protection that this man, at great effort, now offered these orphans.
He murmured, “You’ve done a fine thing today. I am in your debt, Madame Tremblay.”
“Cecile.”
The name slipped out before she could stop it, before she could even think of taking it back, before she could chide herself for being addled.
“I suppose,” she breathed, “it’s futile to stick to formality now. After all, we’ve just become co-conspirators…Theo.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
With the sun beating on his head and six feet up on a scaffold, Theo thrust his trowel into a bucket of mortar, which gave way to the blade like thickened cream. He pulled up a dollop and smeared the mortar across the top of the uneven wall, making sure it filled every gap. The backs of his hands burned in spots from drying smears, but Theo didn’t mind. Soon, his hands would be hardened against the caustic filling. Feeling that pinching sensation brought back the years of his apprenticeship, when he was a soft-handed boy first working the mortar in the shadow of a rising cathedral, feeling like he was stirring up the very stuff that held the world together.
Before his world exploded.
A throaty woman’s voice rose among the babble of working men. He didn’t have to look down to know to whom it belonged. Steady in timbre, firm intone, with a husky undercurrent that gave promise to softness. The sound vibrated in his ears and amplified throughout his body, rippling in dangerous places. He focused on spreading the mortar while bracing for her to throw a bolt of lightning by calling him by his first name again.
Jules’s voice joined hers and Theo’s mood hardened like the mortar under his trowel. He couldn’t pick out the conversation, but by the jocular lift in the other man’s voice, Theo knew the mason was flirting in his swaggering way. His grip tightened. That arrogant redhead had been a thorn in his side from the first, a boastful, skilled worker too easily distracted by the pretty novices hanging laundry outside the convent schoolhouse.
And now, by Cecile.
Theo set a stone on the spread mortar and turned, squinting against the blaze of the August sun. Below, Jules stood right in front of Cecile, dangerously close. He must have stepped into her path, for she tended to walk wide circles with her head down around any gathered masons. She now held her ground but leaned back, the cords in her neck tight.
Afraid.
Realization struck him hard. Some man, at some point in her life, had physically hurt this lovely woman. He’d suspected since he’d first noticed the scar at her temple that she tried to hide. The fact that she’d been abused kicked up a whole barrage ofquestions, as well as a burn in his belly. Right now, it made him keenly aware of Jules standing too close, gripping Cecile’s willowy waist.
“Jules!” he barked, biting back the surging, ridiculous wordshands off my womanas he clanked the trowel upon the wall. “Get back to work.”
Jules didn’t flinch—or look up—but his swaggering smile stretched. Cecile’s gaze slid up to Theo’s. Through a vein of red fury, Theo read a plea in those fathomless eyes.
He leapt off the scaffolding, hitting the ground hard. Straightening to his full height, he glared at the dirty, hairy-knuckled hand splayed upon Cecile’s waist. Gripped by the urge to seize the mason by the scruff and launch him bodily against the wall they were building, he took a few strides until the stink of Jules’s sweat filled his nose.
“You have work to do.” Grabbing a handful of the fool’s smock, Theo yanked him away from Cecile and then pulled him around so they stood nose-to-nose. “Get back to it.”
Jules’s bloodshot eyes shot flames. “I’ll get back to it when I damn well please.”
Though Theo’s hard-earned survival lessons screamedMind your business, keep your head down, don’t start any trouble,his fist had its own mind. It headed toward Jules’s jaw with a blow that sent the mason reeling. The punch having landed, Theo shook his hand, bones aching, as Jules tumbled over a wheelbarrow and fell hard on his tailbone.
Damn, Theo should have known better, and yet, hadn’t this confrontation been inevitable? Hadn’t the antagonism been building between them since the first day they’d met?
Didn’t a lady like Cecile deserve to be protected from grabby, greedy fools?
It took the sprawled mason a few seconds, but he came to his feet enraged. Jules’s fist aimed for Theo’s jaw but Theo anticipated it. He turned so his shoulder took the impact. Recovering, he lunged, throwing his weight into the mason’s gut, forcing the air out of Jules’s lungs and driving the fool to the ground. Theo straddled him and struck several blows. Dust billowed up as Jules bucked free his legs, clamped them around one of Theo’s thighs, and rolled Theo over in a move that would have impressed Theo, if he weren’t the one who’d lost the upper hand.
Jules’s shadow loomed over him, his arm raised. Theo took a punch and returned two, then lurched up to throw off his opponent. The mason tumbled to the side and hit the dirt hard.
Theo surged to his feet and stood over the mason, fists ready. Jules raised his arms, palms open, then coughed blood-strewn spittle onto the ground.
When Theo saw the blood, his better sense resurged. Beating Jules to a pulp would feeldamn good, but he had his position as an indentured servant and overseer to consider—and his workers were watching the melee with sharp eyes.
This had to end now.
