She’d thought of turning to laundering when he brought up how she might spend her time when Phin wasn’t making demands. He’d held in a chuckle and suggested that she take up watercolors instead.
Following an awkward negotiation, they’d agreed she would practice reading, a skill she had not been taught wherever she came from.
And that was a fact he still did not know: whence she had come. Erasmus was patient, but he feared that the longer her story remained unsaid, the harder it would be to tell.
They still shared Erasmus’s gigantic bed, the child safely in his basket between them, but they did not otherwise live like husband and wife. There were no intimacies, or secrets, or tender words. And why would there be? Pragmatism had launched them at each other. It wasn’t something Erasmus regretted, not when he had Phin in his arms.
But Amy’s face when she gazed at her baby made something in Erasmus’s heart twist. It seemed she sought something in his face and was puzzled by his very existence. Oh, she was a conscientious mother when feeding the boy, but he appeared to give her no joy, none of the lightness of spirit that illuminated the grief-shrouded avenues of Erasmus’s mind.
As he squired his little family to the green, his wife’s new skirts brushed against his leg and Erasmus walled up the burgeoning tenderness he felt towards her. She wore fine attire like a lady born to the manor, though she seemed to chafe at her crinolinesand bustles — while plucking at her gloves with satisfaction and using her new silver-backed brush and comb to coax her hair into a smooth mane rolled into a fashionable hairstyle with the help of a maid.
His wife looked well, and he was pleased that she looked after Thea as they crossed the street to the tent he’d had erected for their picnic.
“Do you see any friends you’d like to invite to join us?” Erasmus asked his daughter, casting his eyes around the green for children her age.
“I don’t think so, Papa,” she sniffed. “The other children do not know Greek. Not even Latin.”
“Thankfully, you know English,” he said, raising an eyebrow at his toplofty little miss.
“I’ll stay with Amy. She needs me. She’s new.”
Husband and wife exchanged amused glances at Thea’s solution to the awkwardness of a quarter-day picnic. His heart caught in his throat. It was the first time they’d done something so domestic and, well,marital. Erasmus would need to calm his hopes; one glance does not a marriage make.
“I am very thankful for your company, Theodosia. I haven’t made friends yet because I’ve been so busy with the baby. Maybe we could make the rounds to other families after lunch together.”
***
After eating and greetings were done, Erasmus had helped the servants pack their picnic things into a wagon from the farm and his family into the carriage.
He’d watched Amy study her gloves on the ride home and rub at a spot between her thumb and index finger. When Thea read a book, he pulled his wife into their bedroom.
“What’s this about?” she asked. He studied her reaction and found that she didn’t seem scared of him, simply curious about what he was up to. He could proceed.
“I’ve seen you regarding these gloves, and I wonder if the craftsmanship is poor,” he said, placing his hand over the buttons running down her wrist.
Amy snatched her hand away. “They’re the finest things I’ve ever owned,” she whispered hoarsely. “That you own.”
“They’re yours,” he said, taking her hand again, this time even more gently. He slid the buttons through their corded loops, allowing the movement to feel like a caress, hoping to gentle his spooked wife.
“You bought them,” she said, a pout in her voice as she looked down at where he slid a finger into the glove’s opening.
“I’ve forgotten something,” said Erasmus.
“What’s that?”
“To give you an allowance. So you might have money of your own for whatever you wish to buy for yourself,” he said, placing a finger below her chin so she’d look at him. “I’m sorry to have been remiss.”
“But you’ve given me everything I need,” she said, her eyes drifting down. Someone must have taught her never to hold a man’s gaze, even that of her husband.
Erasmus found the fingertips of her glove and pulled to whip it off.
“Oh,” she exhaled, her cheeks suddenly rosy. She balled her hand into a fist.
He caught her hand and simply held it. “Whatever you think you must hide from me, what might cause things in our family to change, those are false doubts.”
Erasmus coaxed her fingers open and saw rough patches and scars despite months as a lady at the Abbey. She must have worked with her hands for a living before stumbling into his barn.
“I’ve been so pleased to have gloves. To cover myself,” she whispered.
