He wassuffocatinglyattractive. And overwhelmingly masculine. Her mind was beginning to repeat itself.
She turned from the window to take the biscuits out of the oven. She should go and do some more knitting, always soothing to the nerves. She really did need to rescue that stitch she had left stranded between two needles and in danger of becoming enlarged beyond repair. Instead, she glanced outside again. He was stretching, one hand spread over his lower back, the other clasped about the handle of the axe, the head of which was resting on the ground. His buff-colored breeches were skintight and showed off long, shapely, well-muscled legs. His black top boots were old and supple but obviously well cared for. His shirt had pulled partially free at the waist. Sometime since she last looked, a mere few minutes ago, he had discarded his neckcloth, and his shirt was open at the neck. His fair hair, which appeared almost golden in the sunshine, was disheveled. One lock of it had fallen over his forehead.
Snowball was outside with him. After taking noisy exception to his arrival earlier and his obvious intention of staying and taking possession of her back garden and her axe and her woodpile, the dog had capitulated without striking one blow in defense of female independence. She had patrolled the back fence and the trees of the copse a few times, yipping at any bird or squirrel that dared come too close, but she lay now in a fluffy ball of contentment a safe distance from the action to watch and yawn in the sun.
Lydia caught herself feeling envious. She distracted herself by brewing a pot of coffee.
Perhaps they could be friends if nothing else, he had suggested last evening. Was it possible? With a man? During the past year she had acquired a few women friends for the first time in her life. But even an innocent friendship with a man would surely be misconstrued if they spent time alone together. Someone would find out. How could it possiblynothappen? Besides, how could one stop a friendship from developing into something else when one already found the other impossibly attractive?
She must thank him with all sincerity when he was finished, offer him refreshments, and then firmly send him on his way.
And then knit him a scarf.
Were ginger biscuits and coffee enough to offer a man who had been hard at work for well over an hour? Perhaps he would need something more substantial. Toast, perhaps? With eggs? She had never had to wonder about such things with Isaiah. Mrs. Elsinore had cooked for them, and Isaiah had always given her orders for the day before he went about his own work. Lydia had hated that arrangement, the way she had been cut out of what ought to have been one of her principal duties. But Isaiah had explained when she had broached the subject with him one day that she ought to be above such menial tasks as planning and preparing meals. She was far better employed doing the Lord’s work as his helpmeet in the parish.
How she had come to hate that word—helpmeet.It was dehumanizing. No, maybe not that. Depersonalizing, then. That was more accurate. If one was a helpmeet, one was useful, perhaps. Busy and helpful, perhaps. Indispensable, maybe. Loyal and obedient, certainly. But one was nothing in oneself. One had no identity separate from the man for whom one was a help and a mate.
It felt undeniably good to be in charge of her own kitchen, wondering what she ought to put before Major Westcott when he had finished chopping her wood. She could feel domesticated to her heart’s content, but she could also please herself, not be forever at the beck and call of some man who happened to be in charge of her life. She did not have to offer the major anything. She did not suppose he expected to be fed, and there was a pump outside from which he could drink water. She could enjoy doing it anyway because she did not have to.
When she left her kitchen, Lydia didnotgo into the living room to rescue her stretched stitch before knitting on. The blue sky and sunshine beckoned her, and if she remained inside it would be only becausehewas out there and she was too self-conscious to join him. This washerhome, she reminded herself, and that washerwood he was chopping. At the rate he was going there would be enough to last a fortnight even if the weather turned cold again. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders, opened the back door, and stepped resolutely outside into air that was even warmer than she had expected. It felt like early summer.
Snowball came dashing toward her on legs that were virtually invisible beneath all her white fur, and yapped excitedly about her ankles until Lydia stooped down and picked her up and cradled her in her arms, drawing back her head with a laugh to avoid the little pink tongue that would have lapped at her face. Major Westcott looked up from the chopping block.
“Harry,” Lydia said. “Enough. Please. I will have to knit you a scarf ten feet long to make up for all this. And perhaps a hat too. Come inside. I have coffee on and biscuits fresh out of the oven. May I make you some toast and eggs too? You must be hungry.”
He propped the axe against the block and turned toward her. “Yellow with red stripes?” he asked—and grinned. And oh dear, he was the one who ought to be breathless, not she. But he was lean and long legged and broad shouldered, with muscles in all the right places. And if he did not close his shirt, though it was only very partially open, she might never get her breath back.
“With orange dots?” she suggested. “Wouldyou like toast and eggs?”
“Perhaps toast and cheese if you have some,” he said. “And freshly baked biscuits, you said? If you feed me so lavishly, Lydia, I will release you from the obligation to knit the hat. It would probably look like a tea cozy on my head anyway and I would be a laughingstock.”
She laughed as though to prove his point and went back inside to slice the bread and start toasting it on the end of the long toasting fork held to the fire. When had she last felt this lighthearted? she asked herself as one side browned and she turned it on the fork. Life had always been a serious business with Isaiah. Frivolity was sin, or at least opened the door to sin. But shewouldnot think about the years of her marriage. Not in any negative way, at least. He had been a good and earnest man.
She had four thick slices of toast piled on a plate by the time Harry came inside. They were keeping warm by the hearth while the butter with which she had lavished them soaked in and she was slicing the cheese. The biscuits were heaped on a plate on the table. The coffee was ready to pour into the large, cheerful mugs she had bought on a whim the last time she had been shopping in Eastleigh with Mrs. Bailey—the same day she had bought her pink dress and the bright yellow wool.
He had washed his hands under the pump outside and was rolling down his shirtsleeves when he stepped into the kitchen. He had already closed his shirt and donned his cravat and his waistcoat.
“Are you willing to tolerate me without my coat, Lydia?” he asked. “I want to go back out after I have eaten to tidy up a bit before I leave.”
“I did not expect you to chop the whole pile,” she told him. “The least I can do is tidy up myself.” Though she had not noticed much of a mess when she was out there.
“I will do it,” he said. “You will be busy knitting.”
“I have made the toast,” she said. “I can make more if necessary. The cheese and the biscuits are on the table. So all I owe you is a scarf? No hat? How sad! Hats are my specialty. And no one has ever mistaken them for tea cozies.”
“Toast and cheese at the expense of cold ears,” he said. “It sounds a fair enough exchange to me. Especially if those biscuits are ginger ones. They smell as if they are. Are they?”
“They are,” she told him as he sat down while she poured their coffee. He stirred milk and a little sugar into his.
“This is a man-sized mug,” he said, lifting it from the table to examine the design. “I approve.”
He ate in silence for a minute or two while Lydia held her own mug between her hands, something she would never have done either as a girl or as a married lady. She even had her elbows on the table. It was quite ungenteel, but the mugs and the sunlight streaming through the window—and his lack of a coat—somehow invited informality. She gazed at him for a while, consciously enjoying the sight of him.
There was definitely darkness in him. But he had not allowed it to prevail in his life. He was habitually good-humored, as he was now. She could not remember seeing him in a somber mood or hearing him say anything that suggested irritability or anger. He was not a complainer. Even his criticism of the pianoforte at Tom and Hannah Corning’s had been made in the form of a joke. She believed he was also a solitary man, though. Despite the friends and friendly acquaintances he had in the neighborhood, there was something suggestive of loneliness about him. He had even admitted it to her that night, though he had spoken of it as part of the general human condition.
She knew there were many facets to his character. The sadder ones he kept to himself while the world saw only the cheerful good nature. She wanted to know all of them, Lydia realized—a disturbing admission when she knew she must discourage any further acquaintance at all.
“Do you resent the man who became Earl of Riverdale in your place?” she asked him. His hand, carrying the last bite of toast to his mouth, paused halfway. He frowned in thought for a moment before returning the toast to his plate.
