by Sophia James
‘It’s the first thing we have in common. Shame it had to be something so unfortunate,’ Fell remarked darkly to Lash, the dog considering him gravely from his spot beside the open door. It was the habit of a lifetime for Fell to consult his dogs on all manner of things and several generations of scruffy lurchers had found themselves as his only confidants. As a young lad many of the village children had shunned him, encouraged by their mothers not to play with the bastard of the Roma girl Rector Frost had seen fit to take into his household. The dogs were often his only companions in the absence of anyone else—another experience he and Sophia shared, and which once again thinned his lips into a tight grimace.
Who would have thought a high-born lady to be so friendless and unwanted? It’s a wonder she bore it as long as she did.
A bold flash of admiration sparked into life. She had endured life at Fenwick Manor for far longer than most would have been able, showing a different kind of strength to the more obvious obstinacy of his own. To withstand ill treatment day after day and still set one foot in front of the other showed a resolve Fell respected, a quiet tenacity in the face of unrelenting unkindness that she didn’t deserve—even if Sophia would beg to differ. Clearly she had believed her mother’s ridiculous accusation that she’d been the cause of her papa’s sorry fate, the claws of such a horrific idea tearing her soul to ribbons and leaving her sure she was a monster. Perhaps she might consider his suggestion to the contrary—or perhaps he had intervened too late, the idea of her carrying her shame for the rest of her life piercing his chest like a knife.
I want her to be happy. If I could only help her see she’s worth so much more than she thinks…
Fell held the shoe up and inspected it in the sunlight streaming through one unshuttered window. The rain hadn’t lasted long, but had left its mark on the yard: deep puddles stood in the muddy, rutted ground and the air was scented with the dense freshness that always followed a storm. Under other circumstances he might have walked the forest, taking in the new life breathed into the scorched leaves and brown grass, but the thought of Sophia’s unhappiness the day before made him pause. He found he didn’t want to leave her, the desire to stay close at hand in case she needed him unable to be denied.
The pain in her face was something he never wanted to see again. Somehow she had gradually crept into the very centre of his heart and now unwittingly lived inside him, enhancing each day with her mere presence in his life. After Charity’s rejection a measure of fear still prowled through Fell’s soul, although surely Sophia was a different kind of woman entirely, possessing none of the laughing cruelty of the first he’d loved… But still his insecurities ran deep, a lifetime of shame and uncertainty as to his very sense of self something he couldn’t quite shake.
‘To confess my feelings for her would still be a mistake. The very idea is madness. Don’t you agree?’
Lash said nothing, although by the way he wisely twitched his ears Fell could tell he understood.
‘Precisely. I might only be setting myself up for a bitter disappointment and I don’t feel inclined to taste another.’
Again Lash didn’t reply—although this time somebody else spoke up from beyond the door.
‘Talking to your dogs again, Barden? Why doesn’t it surprise me you speak the same language?’
The familiar mocking voice made Fell turn and when he laid eyes on his visitor it was with a swift stab of intense dislike.
‘It’s the only way I’m assured of a sensible conversation in this village, Turner. Where else could I find a creature with at least some wit?’
The other man scowled and stepped out of the sunlight into the shade of the forge, his doughy face flushed red with heat and bad temper.
‘Always so quick with that tongue. It’ll land you in trouble one of these days and I won’t be sorry to see it.’
Fell wiped his grimy hands on the front of his apron, attempting to stem the rise of his irritation. Samuel Turner was somebody he wouldn’t wish to see at the best of times, and even less so while roused by the thought of Lady Thruxton’s cruelty and Sophia’s distress. He had dogged Fell’s stride since they were boys, always ready with some dull-witted jibe about bastards and travellers. Even as a grown man the paunchy farmer still tried to needle Fell whenever he could and it was with a growing difficulty that Fell kept his composure.
‘What is it you want? I assume this isn’t a social call.’
‘You assume correctly. I wouldn’t set foot here unless I had good reason.’
At Fell’s flat stare the farmer’s frown deepened. ‘The shoes I commissioned from you Friday last. I need to take them today.’
‘They aren’t ready yet. We agreed on next week—come back then.’
Fell turned back to his anvil and took up the hammer again, ignoring Turner’s angry curse. He couldn’t suppress a glint of satisfaction in denying the other man’s demand, even if it was the truth: there were few people in Woodford as determinedly insufferable as Turner, an overgrown playground bully with an equally overgrown sense of his own importance.
‘You don’t seem to understand. I need them today. Today. Do I need to spell it out further, so simply even a half-bred gypsy bastard like you can grasp it?’
Still with his back to his unwanted guest Fell hesitated. His blood was beginning to run hotter and surge within him with dangerous force, tempting him to answer Turner’s hostility with some of his own. Already piqued from his thoughts of Sophia’s suffering at the hands of her mother Fell’s temper felt frayed, raw at the edges and easily provoked, but he forced himself to take a deep, steadying breath.
Remember what Ma said. They’re just words… Words I’m sick of hearing.
Fell drew in another breath and moved round to look Turner full in the face, seeing he’d stepped closer and was now almost alongside Fell at the fire. The farmer was shorter than him by at least six inches and far less powerfully built, a low-slung belly contrasting sharply with Fell’s work-honed muscles. If Fell abandoned his usual self-control and they were to come to blows, there was no question who would win, a fact that didn’t seem to have occurred to the man who glowered up at Fell with piggy eyes. No doubt he thought himself safe—Fell had never risen to any bait and there must seem little danger now in taunting him despite the strength in his arms.
‘Well?’
‘Well nothing. They’ll be ready next week as agreed.’
Out of the corner of his eye Fell saw Lash move closer with the strange, stiff-legged creep of a hunting beast. Turner must have seen it, too, for he backed away a step and cast an angry glare over both dog and master.
‘Too distracted by your gypsy woman to complete your work on time? Perhaps I ought to warn the rest of Woodford you can’t be relied on any longer, now you doubtless have other…activities to occupy you.’
The sensation of being doused in icy water washed over Fell to make him halt in whatever he’d intended to reply. He knew exactly what the other man was implying and it made every sinew in him tense with anger, casting aspersions on Sophia’s honour that were grossly untrue. Turner simply wanted a reaction, frustrated at not being able to get his way—but he didn’t know how close to the wind he was sailing, his slight against Sophia suddenly bringing Fell’s blood to the boil.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Why not? Isn’t a pretty Roma distraction precisely what she is? The same as your mother for whoever your father was?’
Fell smiled, the curve of his lips brittle and his eyes bright and cold. His heart had begun to beat more quickly, almost as savagely as he had hammered the iron laid across his anvil. ‘Don’t speak like that about my mother or my wife. I’m not in a good humour today and I should hate for you to bear the brunt of it.’
Turner puffed out his chest like a cockerel. ‘Do you threaten me, Barden?’
‘Do you insult my family, Turner?’
‘I’ve wasted enough time on you this morning. See yourself out and find somebody else to make your shoes. I don’t need your business.’
He heard Turner’s wordless sound of fury, but didn’t trouble himself to watch him leave, instead intent on regulating his shallow breathing. The desire to meet the man’s malice with a hard blow pulsed through his veins and for a long moment Fell stood with his eyes closed as he tried to force it back.
How dare he say that about Sophia and Ma. If he only spoke ill of me I could take it, but to spit such filth about them—
Lash’s loud bark of alarm sliced through his thoughts and Fell spun just in time to bring an arm up across his face, deflecting the poker Turner held in his hand. The corner of it just caught his cheek and he felt a swift sting bloom into vivid pain that dribbled down his face, but he didn’t stop to think before raising his own fist and bringing it round to land squarely on Turner’s nose.
The farmer reeled backwards, the poker dropping from his grasp to clatter to the ground. He staggered for a step or two, one hand clutched to his face and the other held out in front of him as if it could possibly keep Fell away.
‘You’ve broken it!’
Fell lurched towards him, his fingers itching to grab hold of Turner’s lapel and haul him off the ground.
‘You would attack a man with his back to you? Knowing he was unarmed and unprepared?’
Turner glared at him above his cupped hand. When he moved it away Fell saw his nose bent at a strange angle and blood dripped from it, more like a scene from a butcher’s shop than a blacksmith’s.
‘Gentlemen’s rules don’t apply to the likes of you, Barden!’
The edges of Fell’s vision seemed to be blurring, clouding over with hopeless rage. His jaw was taut and his pulse leaping, begging him to raise his fists and show Turner exactly what the likes of him could do—just as the other man balled up his own hands, both only hesitating when a shadow cut across the sunlight still streaming through the open forge door.
* * *
Sophia’s wide eyes flitted from the stranger’s face to Fell’s, taking in what lay before her. Both men were flecked with blood, she saw with an instinctive twist of her insides, and each stood like a boxer about to aim a heavy blow. The reflexive urge to flee from their fury seized her with cold fingers, recalling the way Mother’s features would set into a rigid mask of rage, but the sight of the fresh wound on Fell’s cheek stopped her in her tracks.
‘Stop this!’ She looked again from one to the other, two crimson-streaked faces turning her stomach once again. ‘Stop it at once!’
Fell’s brows twitched together and his fists dropped a fraction, although the other man seemed less inclined to obey. He shot a glance at Fell, assessing the momentary distraction as though he might take advantage—until Sophia limped over the threshold and stood between them as firmly as she could manage.
‘This is no way to behave. If you’ve a disagreement, you ought to settle it like gentlemen, not savages!’
‘Easier said than done when one party is a savage.’ Turner almost spat the words, although he backed a pace away from Sophia’s white face. ‘He attacked me without warning!’
She heard Fell’s inarticulate sound of anger, but held up her hand, the most severe look she could manage creasing her brow. Whatever fleeting glint of apprehension she’d felt on bursting into the forge was retreating now, instead anger at the stranger’s actions and desire to support her husband overtaking her fear. It was the strangest thing to feel protective of a man more than capable of defending himself, but there it was, the same desire that had seized her in the grocer’s when she had faced down Mrs Cairn, and now when she spoke her voice was cold.
‘That is a lie. I saw you enter the forge and could clearly make out what was happening through the open door. You set upon my husband while his back was turned and if you had any honour you would leave now without another word.’
There was a long beat of silence so tense it could have been shattered with one of Fell’s hammers, before the squat man curled his lip.
‘Protected by a woman, Barden? You’re even less of a man than I thought.’
Sophia saw how the tendons in Fell’s neck flexed with the effort of keeping his restraint and laid a beseeching hand on his arm. He glanced down at it and she felt a skewer of something pierce her as a complicated look passed between them like a streak of lightning.
‘Mrs Barden is more your saviour than mine. Now you heard her. Get off our property.’
Fell dismissed Turner with a contemptuous jerk of his chin and Sophia watched as the farmer stumbled to the door, affecting to leave of his own volition rather than to escape the disconcerting tic in Fell’s clenched jaw.
‘I’ve better places to be than this hovel. But you’ll regret this day; I’ll make sure of it.’
Lash followed him outside with a low growl and pinned-back ears, leaving Sophia alone with Fell—and too preoccupied by her racing heart and concern that Turner might come back to immediately realise her hand still rested on warm muscle, until a dry laugh brought her back to her senses.
‘So that’s what you meant by spirited, was it? Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked to see the fire in your belly. For a moment I was almost afraid.’
She tried to smile, releasing his arm with a shadow of reluctance. Not only was the shape of his muscles delightful, but they had the added bonus of keeping her upright, something the dripping wound on Fell’s cheek called into question as it made her head swim.
Blood. There would have to be blood.
He must have seen her pallor, as he kicked a stool out from beneath his bench and nodded quickly towards it.
‘You should sit for a moment. Seeing that must have been unpleasant.’
Sophia eyed the stool with keen longing, but shook her head.
‘It’s you who should sit. You’re injured.’
‘Just a scratch. Turner came off worse, I’m pleased to think.’
Fell touched his fingers to his cheek and inspected the blood that stained them, Sophia gritting her teeth on her revulsion. A horrible combination of nausea and apprehension curdled her insides at the scarlet that slicked Fell’s face, but she knew what she had to do.
‘Come back to the cottage and I’ll take care of it.’
There was a flicker of one dark eyebrow. ‘I thought you didn’t like blood?’
‘I don’t, but I find I like the sight of you bleeding even less.’
The other brow rose to join its twin, but to Sophia’s relief Fell neither argued nor questioned her further, instead following her across the sodden yard and into the shady kitchen without a word.
Sophia saw how her hands shook as she poured water into a bowl and took up a clean rag. Fell sat on a low wooden stool and watched her uncertain activity in silence, his mismatched eyes giving no hint of whatever thoughts were unfolding behind them.
With unpractised fingers Sophia wetted the cloth and took a breath before applying it to Fell’s injured face. Bile rose in her throat at the sight of the blood and she hurriedly tried to distract herself from the nausea clawing at her stomach.
‘Who was that man?’
Fell grunted. His forehead creased briefly at the first touch of the rag, but he submitted without complaining. ‘His name’s Turner. He’s delighted in taunting me since we were boys and today he finally went a step too far.’
‘What did he do?’
‘It’s of no consequence. I’d say I hope he’s learned his lesson, but men like Turner don’t have the brains to learn much of anything.’
There was no doubt
more to it than that, but Sophia said nothing as she continued to clean the wound. It wasn’t deep, but it bled freely, the water in the bowl growing steadily pinker with each soak of the cloth. Unease still stirred through Sophia’s innards, but in truth another sensation had begun to hold sway, one that managed to capture her attention more than her fear of blood. Leaning over Fell with her hands on his face brought them as close as the first time she had brought her lips down on his, in the silent darkness of the forge, and now the temptation to repeat it whispered to her so loudly she feared Fell might hear its voice. His skin was warm and roughened by black stubble that grazed her fingertips with each careful stroke, the friction travelling through her to lodge behind her breastbone. Standing so near, she could catch the scent of the forge that clung to his shirt, smoke and fresh sweat mingling to make a uniquely masculine fragrance more pleasing than any other she’d ever encountered.
What would he think if I were to kiss him again?
The question crossed her mind before she could stop it.
In the darkness of our bedchamber is one thing; what about now? When there’s nowhere to hide and he could see my feelings laid out in the light?
Ever since he had comforted her the day before she had wanted to do just that: press her lips to his and take whatever consequences that might bring. He’d been so kind, so quick to offer reassurance she hadn’t believed she deserved… She’d thought revealing her past would drive Fell away, but instead his sweet reaction had kindled her feelings for him into brighter flames and now all she desired was to let him know how much that comfort meant. It was still uncertain whether he was right or Mother, but either way his belief in her was something beyond price.
‘You’re good at this. Gentle.’
Fell’s voice took her by surprise, altogether too engrossed in her thoughts. She peered down at him, half-suspecting he was jesting.
‘Clumsy, you mean.’
‘I meant what I said. You’ve skill as a healer.’
Sophia blinked, her brow furrowed doubtfully. That particular compliment was the very last thing she expected to drop from his lips—lips she ought to spend less time dreaming about—but she couldn’t deny the pleasant warmth it sent spilling through her.
