Chapter 16
HENRIK
Ipulled the brim of my damp woolen cap low over my brow, shielding my face from villagers who wandered near the harbor.
Frost bit into my knuckles before the sun ever bothered to crest the jagged horizon.
I stood at the base of the crumbling retaining terrace, ankle-deep in freezing mud, and stared at the damage the sea had wrought.
Salt spray clung to my eyelashes. The air smelled of cold earth, rotting kelp, and the damp canvas of my jacket.
I dragged a gloved hand across my jaw, feeling the scrape of three days of stubble, and turned my attention to the scattered stones of Oakhaven’s seawall.
“Henry,” the foreman barked. He was a broad man with a thick beard and eyes narrowed against the coastal wind. “Grab the sledge and start clearing the loose shale from the base. We need a clean foundation before noon.”
“Understood,” I said. My voice was a low rasp in the morning chill.
I grabbed the iron handle of the sledgehammer.
It felt strange in my grip. For a decade, my hands had held nothing more taxing than crystal tumblers, gold-nibbed pens, and custom yachts.
I had built a legacy in state summits. I had commanded rooms of ministers.
I solved problems with a royal decree or treasury allocation.
I had treated every emotional fracture in my marriage as an administrative error, a complication to be patched over with diamonds or delegated to assistants.
I had outsourced my apologies. I had outsourced my presence.
Now, my only task was to break rock and move earth.
Under the cover of night, I had arrived in the village and parked my simple vehicle three miles away.
In the morning, I found the foreman, a man who cared nothing for paperwork or royal decrees.
I showed him my soft, uncalloused hands, offering to work for lodging and a handful of coins.
He laughed, a sound like grinding stones, but he was short on men after the storm.
He handed me the sledge, pointed to the crumbling seawall, and called me Henry. I simply nodded.
I swung the sledgehammer. The iron head struck the jagged shale with a brutal crack.
Vibrations tore up my forearms, rattling my teeth in my skull.
Pain flared in my right shoulder, a sharp spike of protest from muscles unaccustomed to real labor.
I gritted my teeth and swung again. Mud splattered against my worn leather boots.
Shards of gray stone flew into the freezing rain.
This pain was exactly what I needed. I craved it. The blisters already forming on my palms were the first honest things I had earned in years.
High above me, perched on the edge of the limestone cliff, stood a weathered wooden structure.
Natalie’s workshop. The roof was patched with rusted tin, and the windows were foggy with condensation, but a warm golden light spilled from the glass into the gray morning.
She was up there. She was awake. I pictured her standing at her workbench, her hands coated in grape skins or sawdust, her brow furrowed in concentration.
She had fled my sterile, manicured estate for this raw, unyielding coastline.
She had traded marble floors for drafty floorboards, and she had traded me for solitude.
My next swing of the hammer cracked a large slab of shale down the middle.
I dropped the sledge, knelt in the freezing mud, and drove my gloved fingers into the fissure.
I hauled the broken stone out of the earth.
It weighed a massive amount, dragging my shoulders forward.
I grunted, hauling it up against my chest. The rough edges dug into my canvas jacket.
I carried it ten paces to the discard pile and let it fall.
It landed with a dull thud, splashing icy water onto my jeans.
I went back for the other half.
The wind off the ocean was a living thing.
It howled through the gaps in the cliffs, tearing at my clothes and biting through the layers of cotton and canvas.
I could smell the salt water stinging my nostrils.
I smelled the sharp, biting scent of cedar from a pile of freshly cut posts stacked near the foreman’s truck.
I smelled my own sweat, sharp and metallic, mingling with the freezing rain.
Hours bled into one another. The rhythm of the labor took over my mind.
Lift, carry, drop. Dig, scrape, haul. My body became a machine fueled by regret and adrenaline.
I focused entirely on the placement of my boots in the slippery mud, on the tension in my thighs as I hoisted granite boulders from the surf, on the searing ache in my lower back.
I was stripping away the prince, the heir, the untouchable titan of industry.
I was carving out a man capable of standing in front of his wife without hiding behind a checkbook.
“Henry, fetch the mortar mix,” the foreman called out. “And bring another pallet of fieldstone.”
I nodded, wiping a mixture of rain and sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist. I trudged up the muddy slope to the supply drop.
A flatbed truck sat idling on the gravel road, loaded with bags of concrete and stacks of raw, uncut fieldstone.
I hoisted a fifty-pound bag of mortar onto my right shoulder.
The abrasive paper bit into my neck. I grabbed a second bag with my left hand, gripping the thick paper until my knuckles turned white.
Gravity fought me every step of the way as I hauled the supplies down the steep incline.
My boots slid in the wet clay. I dug my heels into the earth, fighting for traction, forcing my legs to stabilize the shifting weight.
Every step was a battle against gravity and the slick terrain.
I dumped the bags near the mixing trough and turned back for the stone.
The fieldstone was jagged, irregular, and covered in a layer of freezing grime.
I grabbed a large, flat piece, testing its weight.
It was dense and unforgiving. I carried it to the base of the wall, where a mason was troweling thick, gray mortar onto the exposed foundation.
I set the stone down, positioning it according to his gruff nod, and went back for another.
By noon, my hands were raw. The cheap work gloves I had bought at a hardware store two towns over were soaked through, the fabric failing to protect my skin from the sharp edges of the stone.
I peeled the right glove off. A massive blister had formed at the base of my thumb, and another had torn open across my palm.
Raw red flesh wept clear fluid. I stared at the wound, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction.
In my previous life, a paper cut would have warranted a trip to the estate’s private physician.
Here, it was simply the cost of doing business.
Fishing a roll of friction tape from my pocket, I tore off a strip with my teeth and wrapped it tightly around my palm, binding the torn skin. I did the same for my thumb, ignoring the sharp sting as the adhesive gripped the raw flesh. I pulled the wet glove back on and returned to the stone pile.
The sky darkened from gray to the color of bruised iron as the afternoon wore on.
The rain intensified, transforming from a steady drizzle to a freezing deluge.
Water cascaded down the cliffs, turning the construction site into a treacherous swamp.
The foreman shouted orders over the roar of the surf, his words snatched away by the gale.
“Keep the tarp over the mortar,” he bellowed, gesturing wildly. “Don’t let the mix drown.”
The thick plastic tarp flapped wildly in the wind.
I lunged for a corner and dragged it over the wooden trough.
A gust of wind caught the material, ripping it from my grip.
I cursed, lunging forward again, and pinned the plastic down with a large rock.
I secured the other corners, my fingers numb and clumsy in the cold.
“Good man, Henry,” the foreman yelled. He slapped my shoulder, a rough gesture of approval. “Get back to the wall. We need to close this gap before the tide comes in.”
I waded back into the mud. We were building a dry-stone retaining wall, a complex puzzle of interlocking shapes relying on gravity and friction rather than cement.
I knelt in the muck, studying a gap in the structure.
I needed a wedge-shaped stone, roughly the size of my head, with a flat top and a tapered base.
I scoured the pile, tossing aside smaller rocks, until I found a piece of dark basalt that looked promising.
I hauled the basalt over to the wall. I hoisted it into the gap, testing the fit.
It wobbled, refusing to seat properly. I pulled it back out, dropping it into the mud, and grabbed a mason’s hammer.
I struck the corner of the basalt, chipping away a sharp protrusion.
Shards of rock flew against my jeans. I lifted the stone again, sliding it into the cavity.
It locked into place with a satisfying scrape of stone on stone.
I looked up, wiping freezing rain from my eyes.
Natalie’s workshop loomed above me. The golden light was still burning in the window.
I imagined her standing there, a mug of hot tea in her hands, looking out at the storm.
Did she see me? Did she know that the anonymous laborer freezing in the mud below was the man who had broken her heart?
Probably not. I was wearing a canvas jacket stained with mud, my face hidden beneath a wool cap and days of grime. I was unrecognizable as the immaculate heir apparent she had married.