“I want toseeeverything.” She moved closer to him, fervor glittering her eyes. “I know I am the niece of an apothecary. I know my name. I know where I attended church, and now I know my own secret.” Her hands clasped. “I want to know more. I want to know what I did in the evenings, what books I read, who I laughed with. My weaknesses and my strengths.”
“Ye didn’t read.” He slapped more paint on the wattle-and-daub wall. “And ye laughed at me.”
“I see.”
Slap.
“You do not wish to help me.”
Stroke.
“Why?”
His mind pulled in too many different directions. Eating roasted hazelnuts in front of the hearth last Allantide. Belting sea shanties to Brownie’s wheel fiddle one afternoon by the rocky shore. Grumbling as he worked and tugged the knots from her hair with that old bone-carved comb.
She always had tangles.
He always worked them out.
“I thank you for your time, sir, and apologize I have misused it so tiresomely.” He almost laughed as that old temper fired her voice and she spun to leave.
How she planned to do so, he was not certain.
The carriage was gone.
“Fine.” Tom threw the brush to the ground, fighting an irksome grin. “Go inside. There’s a shirt and trousers on the floor in the bedchamber. Joanie will show ye. Put them on.”
“What?”
“Ye heard me.”
“You cannot be earnest.” She glanced from her dress to the bucket of paint, understanding softening—but not diminishing—the concern between her brows. “I most certainly shall not wear your trousers.”
“Aye, but ye would.” He grunted. “What ye wouldnae do is let me paint the cottage alone.”
Several seconds fled in silence.
A breeze fanned through them, rustling the leaves of the crab apple tree, touching her curls, cooling the sweat on his skin.
Then she huffed in resignation and marched inside.
His reluctance swelled. He wiped his forehead. All this time, he’d had his memories—the old Meg, fresh in his mind, as far removed from the woman of Penrose Abbey as night was to noon.
He was not certain he was ready to reckon the two.
He could not lose them both.
The netted silk and spotless white linen piled at her feet, strange against the tarnished floorboards. She adjusted the gusset ties back of the waist. The woolen trousers were airy and itchy against her legs, and her elegant leather walking boots seemed ridiculous against the frayed hems.
Joanie pulled the soft white shirt over Meg’s head. The girl had been washing and salting a calf’s head in the main room, with a stewpot of sweet herbs, onion, mace, and pearly barley prepped by the hearth.
“You’ll need help,” she’d offered, then followed Meg into the tiny bedchamber.
Meg should have declined.
All of this.
But she popped her head through the shirt hole, annoyed that she still recognized Tom McGwen’s smell in the fabric—and that it was so pleasant a scent.
