Like marrying William Thatcher.
She brushed off the thought and stepped inside to look about the mill house. There was a hearth at the rear of the snug room, and, thank fate for this one small miracle: a basket of twigs and a pile of wood. If they could get a fire lit, perhaps they would not freeze.
“I have a fire steel in my satchel,” Henry said. He tried to fumble through the leather bag to retrieve it with his uninjured hand, but seemed to flounder, for he was right-handed.
“Let me,” she said. She found the tool in his bag and crouched in front of the hearth, arranging twigs into a pyramid and lighting a flame. She blew on it until the tiny flame had grown into a small, feeble blaze. Henry knelt beside her, shivering.
All she wanted was to touch him.
“We must do something about your hand,” she said decisively. “Here, let me remove your gloves so I can see the wounds.”
Chapter 21
Henry held himself still as Alice attempted to peel the leather from his hands, pausing now and then to pick out tiny shards of glass. Normally he would be rigid with nerves at a woman touching him so intimately. But he was growing so used to Alice’s nearness that he sometimes failed to mark the sin of it when his hands found hers. And besides, the cuts smarted so fiercely that he could think of little beyond pain.
(Liar.)
Alice accidentally nudged a tiny shard of glass deeper into his palm and he sucked in his breath and snatched his hand away from her, tucking it to his chest.
“I’ll just leave them on,” he said.
She looked at him with a mix of frustration and affection, like he was a disobedient child. “No you bloody won’t, you goat.” She gently pulled his hands back to her lap. “Wounds left unattended breed sickness. I wish I had some brandy to give you for the pain.”
“I wouldn’t drink it if you did,” he muttered, to distract himself.
“I know,” she sighed. “You are a tiresome, saintly man.”
She said this with a wry smile that lightened his mood. Her manner made him feel well nursed in a way he was not accustomed to. It was like a balm after the harsh raillery from his father. His father who must be even now looking at the window and smiling, rubbing his ever-knowing wrist in vindication.
The thought made Henry want to smash another window.
“Don’t move,” Alice told him, rising.
She fetched an old pot attached to the wall with a nail and stepped outside. When she’d returned, the pot was filled with snow. She set it next to the weak fire, then returned to the business of slowly, painstakingly, freeing his hands from his gloves.
When she was done, she held both of his hands in hers, turning them over to observe his injuries. His left hand had only a scrape or two, but the right one was pocked with little cuts and smeared with blood.
“My father will be so smug.” He had not meant to say that aloud, but Alice looked up at him with a malevolent glint in her eyes.
“Your father is a plague-bepissed weasel whose opinion matters naught.”
“Alice!” he cried, unable to avoid laughing at the sheer fluency of her expletives, however he felt obligated to disapprove of them.
“What? You told me I must be honest,” she said piously, albeit with a grin.
She went to the fire and retrieved the pot. The snow had melted into icy slush.
“Plunge,” she instructed, looking at his hands. He obeyed her, dunking his stinging flesh into the cold water.
When he lifted them out, she used the sleeve of her dress to clean away the remaining smears of blood.
His thoughts flashed to that night in the meeting house, the maid offering to wash him. To the dream he’d had of Alice, performing a similar act.
Despite the chill in his raw hands, and the innocence of Alice tending to his injuries, he flushed.
He shouldn’t let her do this, if he was going to corrupt her Christian-natured gesture with sinful longings. He pulled away from her. “You’ll ruin your gown,” he said, by not entirely convincing way of explanation.
“Better than your hand,” she said, snatching the hand back. She leaned over him to dab carefully at the worst cut. She was so close, he could smell her hair. He wanted to lean in and bury his face in it. Pick her up and put her on his lap and absorb that smell into his skin.
Evidently deeming him well enough to survive, or perhaps sensing that if she lingered he might pounce on her and never let her go, she stood. “There you are.”
She walked over to the hearth and added two large logs to the fire, grumbling as she tried to coax the feeble embers to light the wood.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Come here and blow on those a bit,” she said. Her accent, amidst the cold and the stress of their situation, sounded more like a countrywoman. He found it charming, because he knew it meant she wasn’t being careful.
He knelt down to blow on the embers, praying to God they would light, for he had never been this cold in all his life.
Alice took the pan outside and came back with clean snow. “To melt for the horses,” she explained.
His heart squeezed for the poor horses. He was a fool for dragging them out into an ice storm, a bigger fool for dragging Alice. And the worst of it was, his father had been right. If they lived through this nightmare—and God willing, they would—he dreaded his eventual return home. His father’s glee at having been proven smarter than his feckless son would sting more than Henry’s shredded hand.
When the snow had melted in the pot he reached for it, hoping to spare Alice another trip outside. She swatted him away.
“Don’t even think about using them bedeviled hands, Henry Evesham,” she said. “Not after I worked so hard to save them.”
So he sat, feeling useless and yet strangely … anticipatory.
His brother’s words came to him unbidden. You always did like the small ones.
Is that what this was? Is that why he felt so curiously light despite being trapped in the snow and in acute pain?
(Yes. Phrasing it as a question will not excuse your intellectual dishonesty.)
When Alice returned, she was covered in snow from the top of her head to the hem of her dress. She looked like a frozen winter fairy.
“What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at the smile on his face.
“You look …” (Enchanting.)
“Frozen as a witch’s cunny?” she provided.
“Alice!”
She grinned as she removed a handkerchief from her pocket, which she opened to reveal the contents of a plate of cakes he’d last seen at breakfast.
“I took them,” she admitted sheepishly. “I thought my sisters would like to try a taste of something so fine.”
He smiled. “That was kind of you.”
“Now he approves of theft,” she said mordantly to the walls. “I’ve thoroughly corrupted him.” She offered him a cake. “Will you have a nip of devil’s sugar or will you be starving tonight, Reverend?”
He rolled his eyes at her, snatched the cake with his good hand, and took a bite. He closed his eyes as the sugar hit his tongue.
He loved sweets. He truly did.
“Praise God,” he murmured.
She reached out and brushed away a bit of sugar from his bottom lip. His entire body seized at her touch. She glanced down, pretending not to notice that he’d gasped.