I was four winters past twenty, still brewing a bitterness in me towards my sister and my first love. I tried to swallow it. My sister never seemed to sense it when I visited. She never noticed the way Thane made himself scarce if I was in their home. Rowena and Thane’s marriage had settled into a companionable happiness that centered around Adelaide. I had taken lovers here and there and had felt nothing but an itch scratched. I was convinced no one could ever have my heart the way Thane had it.
And when the new blacksmith tried his luck with me, forward, brash, and fleshly, I was not ready for courtship let alone love. I spurned his every advance for some time before I let him in my bed.
It was on such a visit to dote on my niece that I first met him. I began the day early, delivering comfrey and feverfew to my sister. I spent an hour with her taking tea, noting down what plants she needed, and kissing the sticky cheeks of my niece who had gotten into my jam and toast. While Rowena fussed over her, I gathered myself and left. I was outfitted in my boys’ breeches, a loose braid over my shoulder. Before I returned back to the farm, I was setting out for the copse bordering the castle keep for mushrooms. Clusters of Tallowgill, a white growth that helped with tremors, could be found there. Rowena would dry them and grind them down to a powder to be mixed with drink.
I stepped out on the main street, crossing the town square, aware of the sidelong glances at my breeches. I did not care. Foraging in a dress resulted in frayed hems, and I was vain and poor enough to want to keep my dresses neat. And the town was nearly used to me, the profane Miller girl, the older twin and her scandals.
“My gods, they grow them ripely in the low country, don’t they?”
The man’s voice was new to me. It was saucy and full of mirth. I did not recognize it nor its accent. My teeth gritted as I turned to confront him. Surely, they had not sent yet another unit of Perpatane infantry to Sheridan. We were overrun with them. It repulsed me that these supposed holy men could so often be found drinking and leering.
“I thought your god said such lechery was a sin,” I said, spinning around. I planted my hands on my hips under the loose short-sleeved tunic that fell to my natural waist.
But the man leaning against the smithy’s front door was not clad in the Perpatanian gray uniform with its armband of scarlet. He was in leather breeches and boots, a similar short tunic on his large figure, muscles flexed as his arms crossed over his chest. A long,thick apron covered him from chest to mid-thigh. His hair was dark and wild, tucked behind his ears. His beard was long, reaching his collarbone. He was perhaps ten winters my senior and a stranger to me.
“I could never serve a god that hated my prick that much,” he replied.
“Hated your—What?” I asked, struck stupid by his ease.
“Hated my prick. I don’t understand this Rodwin. He seems to loathe the idea of a man dipping his prick into anything unless it is to make a child.”
The sun was not yet at the midday apex, and something about his saying such ribald words in the earlier part of the day was astounding to me.
“What did you say?” I breathed.
He smiled, not at me but at my middle, eyes drifting from my chest to the place where my thighs met the rest of me. “I suppose you should know my name before we discuss things like coupling and religion. I am called Avery.”
I still did not know what to say. So I said, “You cannot comment on a woman’s body like that. It isn’t done here.”
“Because of the church?”
“Yes,” I answered. “And furthermore, it is rude. My body is not meant for your perusal or opinion.”
His head cocked to one side. “Then tell me, my trouser-wearing lady, whatisit meant for? I am a blacksmith. That is the very nature of my work. I shape iron to its intent. I know that all shapes have purpose, and I must know what yours is. That and your name. I must know your name.”
“You have offended me,” I responded. “That is not how you address a woman in these parts. I don’t know where you hail from, but this is a town of?—”
“Don’t bother,” he interrupted, still smiling. “I know you are not a believer.”
“And how do you know that?” I asked before I could stop myself, stepping even closer to the smithy’s door and the stranger.
A look of gratification fell across his features at this.
I was a fish being reeled in on his dragging net.
“Because of the trousers. No Rodwin woman, no pious lady, would show the whole damn world the shape of her fat, sweet little sex like that.”
My face was red. I was consumed by wrath and something else I could not name. My hands fell from my hips to become fisted at my sides. I fought the urge to cross them over the part of me he had just so lewdly described. Unable to speak, I could only stand there, aghast and incensed.
“Now,” he went on, shifting in his lean against the doorway, “I do not condemn you for this. I follow no faith and would last pick one that kept a woman from being proud of her finer qualities. I just wonder at your endorsement of it if you insist on parading yours around the town square.” He removed one of his big hands from where it was tucked against his arm and flicked his forefinger from the height of my neck to where my knees were, my fitted boys’ breeches tucked into old boots.
“I shall tell the lord and the priest of your speeches,” I whispered, barely trusting my voice. “You’ll not last long in this place if you behave like this to the women of Sheridan.” I would of course do no such thing as I heartily hated both men. But I was appalled and infuriated.
“I assure you, lady of shapes,” he countered, “you are the only woman I have delivered such speech to. But you are also the only one who?—”
“Enough,” I said, my voice firmer this time. I had regained some control. “I see that while you are without piety, you disappoint the same as any man here. Led around by your prick and not your mind. How dull.”
He straightened, something like worry in his manner. “Forgive me, madam. I meant no such?—”
