Page 4 of The Autumn Wife
Despite his assertion of being a mason, he was likely a simple laborer. Though not many laborers had board-straight shoulders like this. Most were bowed and broken by tough work, like felling trees or hauling stumps out of the ground. And his teeth were strong, white, and well cared for—which she noticed as he suddenly smiled.
“The blood there,” she blurted, gesturing to his shirt as if it were the blood she’d been staring at. “Is it all from your head wound? I don’t see any wounds anywhere else.”
“Don’t know.”
His eyes slitted against the sun. He pushed himself up straighter within her shadow, probing the wound on his temple with dirty fingers.
“Stop.” She slapped his hand away. Her palm stung. So did her audacity. “You’ll—you’ll only make it worse.”
In her shadow, his eyes lost their squint. Green eyes, she noticed. Or gray. A color like the edge of thick glass.
Get hold of yourself.Water sloshed out of the bowl at her hip as she startled.Don’t be a coward.
“Keep your head down, sir.” She planted the bowl of water on the bench and pushed his thick, dark hair off his brow less gently than she ought to. The smell of crushed pine needles and something metallic rose up from his body. “Stay still while I clean this.”
Despite her orders, he leaned back a fraction to catch Etienne’s eye. “Bossy, isn’t she?”
Etienne barked a laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Not bossy enough.” Her voice went shrewish, and she didn’t care. “Perhaps, if I were firmer in my discipline, I wouldn’t be here tending to both of your wounds.”
Etienne made a sound in the back of his throat. “IsaidI wassorry. I shouldn’t have gone over there.”
“I hope, the next time,” she said, dipping a linen in the water, “you will consider how sorry I would be if something were to happen to you, Etienne.”
The man flinched under her touch. She pulled her hand away from where she was swiping, but he didn’t appear to be in pain—just annoyed.
“Etienne,” he said, in a low voice. “Listen to her. She’s right. It’s clear your sister loves you.”
“Sister?” Etienne hooted. “I have no sister. She’s my mother.”
CHAPTER THREE
The boy’smother?
Impossible. The two of them couldn’t be ten years apart in age. Yet Theo had witnessed how the woman had drawn the boy tight against her side earlier and how the boy—despite his struggle to act unaffected—had, for a brief moment, let his head fall against her shoulder. Theo had assumed they were children of a different father or mother. The boy was lanky, dark-haired, black-eyed, his complexion more Huron than French.
The woman was all sunshine. Her fair blonde hair was gathered at the nape of a neck that looked too slender to hold the weight of motherhood. Her pale skin looked as soft as clouds.
Only her eyes were dark. Swirling shades of earthy brown, like the chocolate in a porcelain cup that had been served to him once, back when he’dbeen allowed to visit the house of the man who’d fathered him.
“IamEtienne’s mother, sir, in all but blood.” The lady spoke the words like he’d pulled them out of her, then returned to poking at his wound with a wet linen. “Etienne is the son of my husband and his late wife.”
Ah, a stepmother. That explained the narrow age gap. The strength of the affection between the two ran deep—not always the case, as he knew very well from his own home situation.
“My mistake,” he said, tilting his head to give her better access to his wound. “But mother or sister, what I said still runs true. Etienne, a good son gives his worried mother no trouble.”
Like he hadn’t caused his own mother a heap of trouble before he’d been exiled across an ocean.
“You will have a scar, Monsieur Martin.” Her voice tightened as she shifted the topic of conversation. “A small one, but it’ll leave a ridge.”
Like yours?His gaze slid to a scar and small divot by her hairline.
“Perhaps,” she continued, “if I bind the wound—”
“Don’t bother.” Returning to his master’s land with his head bound by a bloody linen would invite a thousand questions. “Stop the bleeding as best as you can and I’ll get back on the road. I’ve got business in Montreal.”
He nudged her hand away and felt her retreat more than was warranted by a brief touch. Curious, he dared to meet those wary brown eyes. Damn, she was a beauty. In another time, a better place—when he had something to offer a woman other than a night’s pleasure—he would have flirted with her. The urge rose up in him, but he pushed it back down. Not only was she cringing at their proximity—and trying not to—she was also married.
