My fists clenched.
Had I told Sayla I’d punched our half-brother in Ashpoint? Laid him out in Kit’s house? She would be delighted by the fact. Or maybe Merrick would give me cause enough to recreate the scene now.
But Kit was watching me and shaking his head so scarcely anyone else would have missed it. So, I shook my fingers out and rolled my shoulders back, then deferred to my intended.
“I’ve asked Kit to be our foreman,” I said. “He’ll be giving the orders, and you’ll be taking them. Or you can take your things and leave. I don’t abide surly hands on my farm.”
Merrick was already steaming, red in the face with his eyes bulging. I thought he might explode, and I half-hoped he would. Lethimspoil everything. Lay us bare, and himself in the process. But Kit said that would ruin us. Ruin my mother who had not been nearly as pleased about my engagement as I’d hoped. My mother who had not been herself since my father died.
“Very well.” Merrick choked on the words. “I’ll be working with you then, Kit?”
Kit gave a sharp nod. “Plowing. Penny and Warren will be in the barn.”
Merrick’s nose wrinkled. “Doing what?”
That remained the question a few hours later when I was sitting in the hay loft, peering out the open window at the fields below. Kit and Merrick worked together as separately as possible, my half-brother leading the horse while my intended minded the plow, all with barely a word exchanged.
The dreary weather left the sky dull and gray with a drizzle in the air that had both men soaked through. I’d long since stopped tracing the plow lines cut in the dirt and switched to studying Kit’s form instead. His wet shirt stuck to his skin, contoured to his chest and arms.
And his shoulders, gods forbid I overlook those.
This was almost as tantalizing as seeing him in the bath. Dark curls were plastered to his brow, and his muscles flexed and strained. Never before had I been jealous of a plot of land, thinking how gladly I would let Kit workmeover like that. A strapping blacksmith turned farmer, drenched and muddy and doling out orders to my half-brother as the most competent foreman I’d ever seen.
I wasn’t sure which was more tantalizing: Kit’s soggy state reminding me of soap bubbles and the sensation of his warm bare skin grazing against mine, or the sight of someone taking Merrick to task.
The imagined heat of a bath became increasingly real, pooling in my belly then traveling south. I curled against the window frame, letting my palm ghost over my crotch to adjust the growing stiffness there. I was still tugging on my trousers when a brunette head peeked over the edge of the hayloft, and Warren called to me.
“Pen?”
The other man’s sudden appearance made me startle and squeeze, which then made me yelp, so I couldn’t fault Warren’sbefuddled expression as he hung off the ladder and stared, awaiting my response.
With pain replacing the spark of pleasure in my groin, I scooted around to face him. “Yes?”
“I’ve finished throwing hay out for the cows,” Warren replied, still looking a bit puzzled. “What’s next?”
Come to think of it, he always seemed a bit confused. It may have had to do with my lack of instruction for his first day of farmwork. Kit was definitely a better foreman than I was, and I would rather watch him toil in the rain than find menial tasks to occupy Warren’s time.
There was plenty to do, but most of it required me venturing out into the chilly wet, and Kit would have none of that. Though, I did wonder if he would think I looked as dashing in a wet shirt as he did.
“Penny?” Warren pressed, reminding me I had yet to answer.
Despite his insistence, my attention wandered. I should have been looking at my eager charge but gazed over my shoulder instead, watching Kit trudge through the mud. Without turning, I waved Warren off.
“Familiarize yourself with the tools,” I said. “A farmer is only as good as his equipment.”
I vaguely recalled my father saying something about that. Likely in reference to the plow blade I’d left dirty and rusting without his reminder after he died.
Rather than climb down the ladder and restore my peace, Warren grumbled. “There’s a few pitchforks, rakes, shovels…”
“The chickens,” I said, a fleeting thought. “They need tending.”
“I did that first,” Warren replied. “I’ve taken to helping Sayla with them most days…”
He kept talking, hugging the ladder and telling me how he and my sister collected eggs and kept the coop full of fresh strawfor warmth in the winter months. There was some mention of a fox or maybe a snake getting into one of the nesting boxes. Eggs stolen. These things happened.
I nodded through the tale without peeling my eyes off the scene playing out in the field. Merrick had stuck his boot in a mud hole and was kicking the ground with his other foot to try to free it and shouting words I couldn’t discern.
My laughter must have seemed odd in response to Warren’s story about the chicken that got eaten by the fox—or snake?—as he clambered the rest of the way up the ladder and crawled across the loft to sit next to me. He settled in, leaning against the other side of the window frame and gazing out at what held me rapt.
