Chapter Four
As Minny finished her breakfast—nothing special, just some eggs Ted’s daughter had brought round as a thank you for completing the sickles for her husband so swiftly—her mind started to wander.
Would he come?
It all felt like a dream after waking in the cold bedchamber above the forge.
“So you will teach me, then?”
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Had she really said that? Would Mr. Everleigh really come?
More importantly, Minny thought as she washed her plate and the frying pan in the bucket of water at the back door, would he pay her?
For that was the only reason she was even thinking of permitting this. There could be no other reason; he was an insensitive, brutish, idiotic—
“So, where do we begin?”
Minny whirled around, wiping her damp hands on her gown as she stared at Mr. Everleigh.
He was leaning against the doorframe with a wry smile, as though congratulating himself for having discovered her. In a most irritating fashion, Minny decided, ignoring the pattering of her heart that threatened to tell quite a different story.
It was most unusual for a man to come around the back of the house, and Minny hated how the unexpected appearance of the man so unsettled her. It was most provoking.
Still. She was not about to be utterly stunned by a mere man. Even if his eyes sparkled.
“You’re here then,” she said stiffly. “Finally.”
Mr. Everleigh’s confidence immediately started to wane. “I had not realized you had expected me earli—”
“When one is a blacksmith, Mr. Everleigh, one has to learn to be up and about earlier than everyone else,” Minny said sharply, turning away.
She did so in an attempt to demonstrate just how little she cared about his presence. This was, after all, her kitchen. Her home.
The trouble was, it had the unintended effect of making her unsure whether he was looking at her. Of course he was looking. She could feel the heat of his gaze on the back of her neck, hotter than any furnace.
Minny wished to goodness her neck wasn’t pinking, as she was sure it was.
Then she wished she had not turned around—but she could not immediately whirl back, could she?
Trying to distract herself, she picked up a tea towel, shook it out, then started to fold it again. “I shall expect you here the moment day breaks.”
“Whatever you want of me, Miss Banfield,” came the low, teasing reply.
Minny’s stomach lurched. Oh, that such a voice could speak to her…almost as intimate as a lover’s. Not that she had much experience…
She turned around. Mr. Everleigh was smiling, but his expression soon fell.
“Now, you will find outside that door a large pile of logs that need quartering.”
Mr. Everleigh drew back and glanced to his left. “So there is.”
“And an ax.”
Minny almost laughed aloud as the man’s eyes widened. Well, he had not expected special treatment, surely? A man like him could not just turn up at a forge and act the gift horse and not expect her to take advantage.
“You cannot mean me to—”
“Welcome to the beginning of your training, Mr. Everleigh,” Minny said smartly, placing the tea towel down and folding her arms as she grinned. “One of the most important tasks in a forge is to keep the furnace blazing. That is what you will be helping me with.”
She watched, eagerly taking in every twist of expression on the man’s face as he clearly tried to compose himself.
Not on your high horse now, are you?
“But I thought—at the very least I would be with you in the forge!”
Minny raised an eyebrow. “You did, did you?”
Her mother had warned her about men. Men who would expect things, try to take what wasn’t theirs. No man had been foolish enough to try it, not yet, but Minny was prepared.
And if Mr. Everleigh had cooked up this whole charade in an attempt to be alone with her by the anvil—
“Miss Banfield,” he started, taking a step forward.
Minny’s smile immediately disappeared. “Did I give you permission to come into my home?”
Her icy tones could not have told him more swiftly how unwelcome he was. Her heart had also, rather painfully, skipped a beat as he did so. It refused to settle into a calming pattern as he stepped back.
“My apologies, I did not—”
“You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I want you here, Mr. Everleigh,” said Minny quietly, fixing her gaze on the man. “You have convinced me, yes, but I am yet to see any money, or any reason why I should give you any knowledge of my craft. Now pay up, and get chopping.”
Oh, it was exhilarating to be able to speak to a man like this! Minny tilted her head proudly, boldly, enjoying the way Mr. Everleigh just had to stand there and listen to her!
Would she ever have the opportunity to speak like this to a man again? Perhaps never.
Mr. Everleigh thrust a hand into a pocket and pulled out something that glittered. “Here.”
Minny hesitated, then reached out. It would be churlish to expect him to throw it into the room after she had all but forbidden him from entering.
Their fingers touched as the guinea was transferred from one to another, and she tried not to gasp at the intense heat between them. Dear God, it was hotter than the forge! It was her imagination, surely—but her imagination had never given her such blazing warmth, such intensity of—
“All the wood?” Mr. Everleigh asked wearily.
Minny blinked, attempting to center herself after such an encounter. He had not felt it too, then?
She forced herself to nod curtly. “All the wood.”
Turning, Minny left the kitchen and entered the forge. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She had more than enough danger in her life at the moment, did she not?
So why was she risking it all by having a man like that—a man who just with one simple touch of his fingers could throw her heart into such paroxysms?
The sound of very poor chopping came through the open window. Then—
“Oh, blast!”
The heavy thudding sound of wood falling from a chopping block made Minny chuckle. Everyone thought chopping wood was easy, but there was a real knack to it.
The furnace was almost at the right temperature, her arms already aching from the bellows, when she heard it again. A thud as wood slipped from the chopping block, the heavy thump of an ax being dropped into grass.
“Damn and blast it!”
Minny snorted. It was no worse than she had heard her father say when burning his hand accidentally, or seeing a perfectly good piece of metal go to waste because someone was careless.
Still. She had no wish to lose all the wood. It would surely be destroyed if she did not go and rescue it.
Rescue him.
Sighing heavily, and wondering whether all this was worth a guinea—safely tucked away in the strongbox at the back of the forge along with the next note she had to pass along—Minny placed down the bellows, wiped her forehead, and meandered outside.
All around the chopping block was wood. Not carefully quartered logs, as she had hoped. Not even halved, which was all she could manage some days when her arms ached from pumping the bellows and her hands were heavy after delicate work at the anvil.
No. Mr. Everleigh was standing there, sweat beaded on his brow, jacket off, and sleeves rolled up over muscular arms, frustration clear in his eyes as he surveyed the broken, chipped, and whole logs.
Minny’s gaze wandered where it absolutely should not. From his hands, still grasping the ax, to his forearms, scattered with dark hair and pulsing in rage. His upper arms, partially hidden by linen sleeves that could not hide the strength within them.
His chest, broad and heaving as he fought to catch his breath.
His eyes…
Minny gasped as their eyes met. This was foolishness, she told herself. She was merely seeing things that weren’t there, that was all. Feeling things that weren’t there.
She leaned against the doorframe, much as he had done earlier that morning. “Having fun?”
Contrary to her expectations, Mr. Everleigh was able to smile. “Not in the slightest. How does your man do this?”
Minny blinked. “My man?”
What had he heard? Surely the gossip could not have reached the village; but no, she could trust them all. They would not make tittle-tattle out of what they already knew to be the truth.
Especially not to a stranger. They would not betray her.
“Your manservant, whoever normally does this,” Mr. Everleigh said with a wave of his hand toward the logs.
“Manservant?”
“You don’t call him a manservant?”
A wry smile crept across Minny’s face. “Let me show you.”
She strode forward at once, hardly knowing what was propelling her save the fact that she knew precisely the expression she would cause on that handsome face. It was always pleasant to prove someone wrong.
Taking the ax from his unresisting hands and trying not to breathe in the heady scent of the man’s efforts, Minny did not look at him as she pushed him away.
“Give me some room,” she said airily, picking up one of the logs he had attempted to chop in two.
Placing it carefully on the chopping block—an old tree stump, one that had been there even when she was a child—Minny eyed it and aligned herself beside it.
Her fingers gripped, then relaxed, then gripped. Her shoulders settled. She swung.
Thump!
The log fell from the chopping block in two equally sized halves.
If she were not very much mistaken, the man behind her breathed a word that had to be a curse—only swearwords were spoken like that. But it wasn’t one she had heard before.
She would have to save that for future use.
“There,” Minny said with a grin, turning back to Mr. Everleigh. “Easy as—oh.”
Mr. Everleigh had been a lot closer than she had expected. So close, in fact, that when she turned around, she turned into his arms.
Arms that steadied her as her legs threatened to fold underneath her.
Minny looked into the stern and yet impressed look of the man she had somehow managed to claim as a strange sort of temporary apprentice. Her breath caught in her throat.
He was not supposed to be this close.