Chapter 18 #2
Footsteps sounded on the path behind us.
In only a week of waiting to hear David join us every day, I’d become very familiar with the rhythm of his gait.
I didn’t turn around, instead keeping my eyes trained on Walter.
I always needed a moment for the excitement to settle before I met David’s gaze.
It was a delicate balance we had to keep as husband and wife.
“Let me spell you for a bit, Walter.” David’s playful, spirited voice made it impossible not to glance at him.
His coat and jacket were gone, and he was in his shirt and waistcoat.
The waistcoat looked to be an older one, made for warmth instead of style.
He wore thick work gloves with his shirtsleeves rolled up just above his wrists.
David had come to work. Images of his powerful arms swinging his leggett on the Walkers’ roof flooded my mind.
It wasn’t gentlemanly to work so deftly with his hands, but his skill at it made me feel sorry for any young wife not fortunate enough to have the pleasure of watching her husband handle tools and work up a sweat.
His hands gripped the shovel as he ruffled Walter’s hair and bumped him out of the way. Almost immediately, the shovel hit one of the strong roots that had prevented Julia from removing the gorse earlier.
David lifted the shovel, slammed it into the root, and jumped onto the blade with both feet.
What little bit I could see of his arms, just above the top of his gloves, flexed as he pushed the handle of the shovel straight down.
The root snapped under his weight, and the shovel sank deep into the earth.
I knew I shouldn’t spend the afternoon watching David shovel dirt and pull bushes out of the ground—especially after I’d chided Mr. Harris about allowing Julia and me to do our part—but I also couldn’t look away.
He worked the shovel from side to side, loosening the earth around the roots in steady increments.
The bush groaned and lifted in response.
Walter and Anders were only a few years younger than David, but those years had added a strength and power into David’s lean frame that the Mortensen boys couldn’t match.
Julia turned to me and opened her mouth to speak, but then stopped. She tipped her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.
Immediately, heat rushed to my cheeks. My appreciation of David’s vigor must have been written on my face. “What is it?” I whispered in her direction.
She took a step closer to me. “If I mentioned the way your eyes like to devour him while he is working during dinner tonight, I wonder what David would say.”
A strangled laugh escaped my lips. “Eyes can’t devour someone.”
“It seems yours are trying very hard to do just that.”
“No, they are trying very hard not to. And your brother doesn’t need anyone telling him he looks decent while working the land. I’m certain he already knows it.”
“He spends most of his time with me, Mr. Allen, and some of the tenant families’ sons. He might need someone to tell him.”
“Well, it won’t be me.”
“Would it be so terrible for my brother’s wife to find him handsome?”
“Julia.” We’d had too many talks about this while working. It was unfair of her to say things like that, and I’d told her so every single time.
“You and David can lie to yourselves if you want to. I never agreed to do the same.”
“We aren’t lying to ourselves,” I hissed. “We are keeping to our agreement.”
“And your agreement included not enjoying watching him work?” she asked.
I gritted my teeth and didn’t respond. If Julia had noticed the way I couldn’t keep my eyes off David, then I might as well enjoy watching him while I could.
Because she was right, our agreement hadn’t forbidden it.
In some ways, it encouraged it, especially when we had an audience.
David moved on to another stubborn bush.
At the moment, there were no roots to break through—only dirt—but even his less-forceful shovel strokes didn’t take away from the fact that his arms flexed with each movement or his hair flopped forward until he blew it away with an exasperated huff or dragged his forearm along his forehead to get it out of his eyes.
His body was compact in a way that spoke of muscles ready to spring and lithe movements waiting just below the surface.
When we sat still at dinner or when he wrote letters with us in the drawing room, all that power was buried beneath the surface, but I could always feel it, humming and waiting for him to unleash it with a kick to an unsuspecting rock on our walks or on bushes that refused to give up their place in the ground.
He was achingly attractive.
How in the world had I landed myself such a specimen of a husband?
That answer was obvious, of course. I was destitute, and he was kind.
He glanced up and caught my gaze. I don’t know if I was making the same face Julia had teased me about earlier, but the head of the shovel landed in the ground with less force than its earlier blows, he put no force behind it, and gravity alone pulled it to the earth.
He took two heavy breaths—from exertion, certainly—and raised one solitary eyebrow in my direction. “Am I doing this correctly? You look concerned.”
Concerned? I looked concerned?
Julia snorted. “I think you know you’re doing it right, David. Carry on. Your wife is enjoying the exhibition.”
“I’m not . . .” David’s neck seemed to flush. “This isn’t an exhibition. I’m clearing the land.”
Walter straightened from the pile of rubbish he’d been gathering and puffed out his chest. “There is no reason you can’t do both,” he said with a wink in my direction. “Roll up your sleeves a bit more. I think they are getting dirty.”
David’s flush went away, and his eyes narrowed at Walter. “I don’t think my work will improve by rolling up my sleeves.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt, would it?” I called out, emboldened by Walter’s teasing.
David’s face whipped to mine. His mouth pursed, considering his options.
Walter nudged him with his elbow. “Your wife wants you to keep your sleeves clean, Mr. David. I don’t know much about wives and things, but I do know everyone in our house is happier when Pa listens to what Ma has to say.”
“Why, Walter,” I said, “I believe you are wise beyond your years.” I smiled broadly at him, and he shifted his feet and sneaked a glance at David.
David scowled. “If my wife’s intentions are to keep my sleeves clean, I would do better to leave them down. Touching them with my gloves will sully them more than leaving them in place.”
Julia put her hands on her hips. “Are you implying her intentions could be anything besides helping you keep your sleeves clean?”
I pulled off my gloves, lifted my skirt, and made my way over to David.
With Walter here, we had to play the part of a happily married couple, after all.
Having an audience made my decision completely logical—it made it easier to pretend I was doing this for their sake and not my own.
“I’ll help you. Then your sleeves won’t need to get dirty. ”
David’s eyes flashed to Julia’s, and for a moment, I saw pure panic in them.
I kept walking, but when I reached David, instead of immediately rolling up his sleeves, like I’d planned, I stopped in front of him.
“David?” I asked softly enough I hoped neither Walter nor Julia would hear.
His eyes met mine, and they were not the confident blue I’d become accustomed to.
These were the eyes of young David, scared and unsure.
The eyes of the boy he’d been before he’d even dared speak to me. “May I help you roll up your sleeves?”
It felt like a very formal question for a wife to be asking her husband.
True, his jacket was off, and I’d been eyeing him, perhaps a little too forcefully, but we’d spent a week together as husband and wife, and he’d never looked at me this way, like he was preparing to run.
With a deep sigh, he forced a word through his lips. “Once.”
I leaned in toward him, and he stiffened even more. “What do you mean by ‘once’?”
He glanced down at his wrists. “Please just roll them once, no more.”
Had my gaze disturbed him so much he was worried about what I would do if I saw more than two inches of his forearms? I’d been a very obedient wife. I wasn’t going to do anything to disturb our charade outside with Walter and Julia looking on.
“Of course,” I responded, not knowing what else to say. “I wouldn’t do it at all, except Walter might be quite disappointed in us if I didn’t.”
David’s mouth twisted, and his spine finally relaxed.
He held out his hand. I could feel his eyes upon me as I slid my thumb underneath his cuff.
His skin was warm and smooth. My thumb tarried, investigating the feel of the inside of my husband’s arm.
A wife shouldn’t find such a small slip of skin fascinating, but I wasn’t a typical wife. David stiffened again.
He leaned forward and put his lips to my ear. “If you’re trying to put on a show for Walter, I think there are better ways to do that than acting as if you don’t know what to do when your skin touches mine.”
I froze because of course he was right. I gritted my teeth, rolled the sleeve on top of itself in the quickest, if not tidiest fashion I could, and held my hand out for his next arm.
His chuckle was low and soft as I rammed my hand under his cuff this time, my thumb encountering smooth, warm skin once again, which I pointedly ignored.
Or at least tried to ignore until my thumbnail caught slightly on the rough edge of a slight bump.
If he hadn’t just remarked on my inability to simply roll up his sleeves without being affected by his skin, I would have explored the raised flesh longer, but I’d exercised all my privilege of curiosity on his other arm.
I pretended I hadn’t found anything interesting and turned the sleeve over without sparing him another glance.