Page 15 of The Autumn Wife
“The only thing in your hands should be a trowel and a bucket,” Theo barked, straightening as he loosened his fists. “Keep your hands off her.”
Through squinting eyes, Jules looked from him to Cecile and then back to him, setting loose a laugh that launched more streaked spittle. Cecile hadn’t moved an inch, Theo noticed, except to go pale and shrink into herself. He realized he must look like a monster to her, covered in stone dust, streaked with blood.
Stepping away from Jules, Theo strode toward Cecile. Her eyes widened as she took a shaky step back.
He stopped in his tracks. “I apologize for my insolent worker.” He wanted to add,Cecile, the name lurching to his mouth, but he forced himself to choose formality since every man on the site was watching. “That won’t happen again.”
She straightened a few inches, laboring to relax her terrified expression into a stony mask he knew too well. And yet he’d caught her off guard in inky twilight the other night, when she’d gazed at the children he’d brought in for laborers. Her eyes, many shades of brown and black, had swirled with feelings she’d held in check.
“I…I thank you, sir.” She lowered her voice and her gaze. “It seems you have a habit of intervening in other people’s trouble.”
More than you will ever know. “That mason will keep hands to himself from now on,” he promised. “I’ll see to it.”
Her lashes fluttered as her attention shifted to his jaw. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing.” He swiped his mouth.
She frowned and looked over at Jules, still on the ground, head down, arms slung over his knees. “Should I tend to—”
“No.” He imagined Cecile taking care of the mason, and Jules in his brutish rebellion reaching around and probing the soft curves of her backside. Theo would have to punch the man a lot harder—and maybe punch himself, too, for wishinghewas holding her like that.
He forced the thought away. “That man—” he flung a hand toward Jules “—has taken worse beatings. He’ll be fine. Is there a matter you wanted to discuss with me?”
“No…. I just came by to see how Etienne is doing.” She blew air out between her lips, the breeze making a slip of silken tress fly up. “I’ve been neglecting him.”
“He’s probably in the woods. I sent him to collect firewood for the lime ricks.” It hadn’t passed Theo’s notice that Etienne was most sullen just after Theo’s morning conference with his mother. Theo preferred to send the boy away to brood in private, rather than yell at him. “It’s good your son wasn’t here,” he added. “He’d have come to your rescue, andJules would not have spared him because of his youth.”
“I appreciate you keeping Etienne out of such melees.” She frowned. “Perhaps, going forward, I’ll stay away from the site altogether.”
“If you’d like. But you didn’t start this, and most of my men know their manners. As for the tussle between us…” He gestured to Jules, still sitting, slapping the dust from his mason’s smock. “That was a long time coming.”
“The blood on both your faces suggests it was more than a tussle.”
“The fight is over. Watch.”
He swiveled on a heel and took a few steps until he towered over Jules. “No more work for you today.”
Jules leaned back on his hands and squinted up, one eye swelling fast. “Are you firing me, Monsieur Overseer?”
Theo frowned. “Are you going to bother the women anymore?”
“Yeah,” Jules retorted, giving him a bloody smile. “Just not the ones around here.”
Damn fool. Pushing his luck, even in defeat. Theo recognized the type. Back in France, when he’d finally become a master mason, he’d had to discipline more than one young apprentice. This Jules was like a wolf pup—he needed to feel teeth in his neck before he’d fall back in with the rest of the pack.
“How badly you behave when you’re not in my sight,” Theo said to the grinning mason, “is someone else’s fight. Now stand up.”
Theo thrust out his hand, urging Jules to take it. Jules eyed the outstretched arm, tilted his head, and took a long time to think about it. Theo was about to pull his arm back when Jules seized Theo’s forearm.
With a lunge, the mason was on his feet. The flames in his eyes had dimmed, but his gaze still danced with bravado.
Jules tapped his swollen eye. “Nice right hook you got there, Overseer.”
Theo accepted the backhanded compliment and met it in kind. “That leg twist of yours knocked the breath out of me.”
“Learned it in the back alleys of a port town in Brittany.” Jules tested his jaw in the cup of his hand. “Where’d you learn how to fight? Was it in the streets of Guéret…or during your time in prison?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
