She couldn’t answer with any truthfulness, at least not the answer he wanted. Nor did she believe he’d truly forgiven her. She’d never felt less like a wife since he’d come home. This didn’t feel like her home. She felt like an intruder despite the ring on her finger.
Something pulsed between them in this kitchen that was anything but harmonious. Lest she add more shards to the brokenness, she abandoned her task and fled out the back door.
Rhys pushed away from the table and his unfinished breakfast and reached for his crutches. By the time he’d hobbled to the back door, Mae had disappeared, well beyond reach. Snow was coming down again on a raw December wind, blowing into the kitchen. He leaned into the doorframe and looked past the plot of frozen ground meant for the kitchen garden to the wall of woods behind the house.
Where had she gone?
“Mae!” His aggrieved shout brought Bronwyn, which aggravated him as much as Mae’s absence.
“Mercy, Rhys!” His sister hurried into the kitchen. “Shut the door before we all freeze to our roosts like chickens.”
“Mae just left,” he told her, refusing to shut it as if somehow Mae might take that as him shutting her out.
“Left?” She stood to one side of the hearth, her back to the dwindling flames. “What means you?”
“We had ... words.” He bent to a stack of wood near the door and heaved a piece of oak onto the fire from where he stood. “A misunderstanding.”
“Oh? I don’t want to get in the middle of it, but I am concerned.” She looked to the cornmeal Mae had been grinding. “Father and I have tried to leave you be, let you both come to terms with being together again.”
“Obliged,” he said, sitting back down at the head of the table, appetite gone.
She looked toward the open door. “Do you want me to go after her in your stead? She may be in the pasture where the sheep are kept. I’ve noticed she likes to walk there.”
“Let her return in her own time,” he said, resigned. Still, she’dworn no cape or coat, and he was always mindful of the baby. “She won’t be out long in this weather.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Stir the soup and finish grinding the meal.”
She gave the pot a stir, then resumed Mae’s work at the table. “The miller, bless him, has decided to dress the millstones, so we’ve not had any corn ground lately. Being so aged he’s quite slow—and quite stubborn. He refuses any help.”
The miller had a rebel son who’d been cut down at Brandywine Creek. How Rhys ached to ride to the mill and insist on dressing the stones himself. Taking a drink of lukewarm coffee, he felt the thunder return to his head. Fevered again?
Looking at him warily, Bronwyn made short work of the rest of the corn and took a seat. “Have you told her about how you came to be injured? What brought you home?”
“Nay.”
“Why not?” Her forthright questions were always broached gently, which made them more agreeable. “I’m sure she wants to know. I sense she’s trying not to rush you but letting you recover first.”
“I’m still mulling the wisdom of saying anything at all.”
“The truth is always better than secrecy, especially between husband and wife.”
How would she know? Though she’d been denied the wedding she wanted, she was wise to the ways of marriage. She should be in her own kitchen and not his, with children around her skirts, their small hands keeping her from her work or trying to help her as children liked to do. And yet here he sat, in a tangle of turmoil, with a wife and child, and had it all instead. Guilt nicked him like a wayward knife.
“She’s a good woman, Rhys.” Bronwyn’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “She means to be a good wife. And whatever is wrong between you can be righted.”
He got up, made his way to the back door again, and stared intopines and leafless oaks and maples bedecked white. What he’d give to go in search of her. If she stayed out much longer...
He heard the front door open and close quietly. Bronwyn brightened and his heart gave a leap. Footsteps sounded lightly on the stair, and he finally shut the back door, wanting to follow her yet realizing she wanted to be out of his reach. He might have mastered the front steps, but he hadn’t attempted the second floor yet.
Perhaps the time had come to do just that.
fifty-four
Truth will ultimately prevail where pains is taken to bring it to light.
George Washington
