Page 10 of The Autumn Wife
She held no power over him.
“I spoke to the Reverend Mother this morning,” he began, “as she was climbing into the canoe to go to Quebec. She agreed to the terms of my employment and told me to start today as overseer.”
The lady lifted her pretty chin. “I spoke to her, too, before she left the convent with her satchel. She made no mention of me at all?”
“Not a word.”
She tented her fingertips on the table and leaned into them. “It is becoming clear that though Sister Martha is a holy woman capable of persuading bishops and kings to bend to her will, when it comes to smaller matters, she relies on blind faith and grand assumptions.”
He couldn’t make any sense out of that muttering, so he stood and breathed in the scent of cut grass and violets coming off her. The fragrance muddled his senses in a way that it shouldn’t, for a man who’d be on his way home to France in ten weeks and one day.
“Why,” he said, harsher than he meant to, “are you still here at the congregation and not with your husband?”
Her head swept up, brown eyes flashing, but her attention rested on him for only a moment—like a bird alighting upon a branch—before darting away. Her flitting unease brought to his attention the fact that he was head-and-shoulders taller than her, sweaty, breathing hard, covered in stone dust, andbursting with frustration at this delay. He uncrossed his arms in an effort to look less intimidating.
“Sister Martha—the Reverend Mother,” she said, keeping her gaze low, “has agreed to take me into the convent as a laywoman, until she gets back from Quebec. As for my husband…he has disappeared into the wilderness. I’m…I have reason to believe I’m widowed.”
A rush of something went through him, blowing away the phantom husband he’d imagined at her back. To think this lovely woman might be unclaimed by any man.
“Sister Martha,” she forged on, “has taken me in on a provisional basis, in the same way she has hired you. She has tasked me with two duties—first, to reconcile the convent accounts that have been neglected in her two-year absence, and two, to keep a daily journal of the work accomplished, and expenses spent, on the building until she returns.”
He dragged hot air deep into his lungs, the acrid ash of the nearby lime ricks searing the lining of his windpipe. This utter lack of respect…. He should be used to it by now. “The Reverend Mother,” he said, “doesn’t trust me.”
“She doesn’tknowyou. Or me, for that matter. We’re both strangers she took in on faith.” She crossed her arms. “But I’m here as a volunteer, paid only with meals and a pallet. Her expectations for you are higher, since your wages are costing the congregation dearly.”
Theo suppressed a flinch. Only his master benefited from those outrageous wages. Making the congregation pay was the only way the bastard would give up his favorite slab of muscle. Theo would have worked on this building site for free, after so many years of hauling out stumps. But an indentured servant had no control over his world.
Suddenly, he couldn’t bear to stand here any longer like a servant in her ladylike presence.
“If we’re done”—he took a step into the sun—“I’ve got work to do.”
“Not yet.” She stopped him with a tense but quivering voice. “I admit I am completely ignorant of building matters. Yet I find myself tasked with the responsibility of making sense of such matters in a journal that will be read by Sister Martha when she returns. To that end… Would you explain to me, in a way that I can understand, why you must destroy that wall?”
He opened his mouth, ready to give her an earful, for he’d built a chateau in Maincy for one of the Sun King’s ministers, he’d built the Church of Saint-Roch in Paris, and he’d had a hand in enlarging the Palace of Versailles. But when he faced her, he ran into a chin raised in pride, cheeks pale as clouds, and a trembling mouth.
She was terrified of something—could it behim?He could all but see the fear pulsing under that fair skin. What the hell was he doing, terrifying this woman? He uncurled the fists he’d made at his sides.
“Let me ask you a question.” He drew in a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. “Do you want this chapel to stand for a thousand years?”
“Of course.” She swallowed so hard he saw the flex of her throat. “Though the Reverend Mother may agree that five hundred years would do—if it means the work could proceed more quickly and with some savings.”
“If a wall can be shattered as easily as we are shattering that one,” he said, tilting his head toward where the crash of mallets continued, “you won’t getfiveyears out of this building.”
A pulse jumped in her jaw. Seeing it made him want to touch it.
With his tongue.
Damn, he needed a night in a tavern.
“Surely,” she said in a low voice, “there’s a better way to fix it than knocking the whole thing down.”
“There is only one way to build a stone building, and that’s therightway.” He held up a hand before she could protest. “The problem is just as your son said. The wall is riddled with stones mortared against the grain.”
Her forehead rippled. “How did this happen?”
“One—or more—of the masons are careless or inexperienced. I don’t know who yet.” Theo suspected several might not be masons at all, but they had claimed they were in order to secure the higher wage. “I don’t know who mortared that part of the wall, but when I find out, I will teach them that everystone has to resist the pressure of the stones above. One ill-laid stone weakens the entire building.”
“Such a small thing…”
