Freedom Forever (Southern Romance 3)

“Yes.” Cecelia found her voice once more. His gaze was warming her as well, blue eyes fixed on her own, plain brown ones. She tried a smile. “Thank you.”

“Cecelia.” He cleared his throat, and looked away over the fields and the barn.

“Yes?”

Cecelia wondered what he must be seeing as he looked. The farm had been her home for all of her life, and when she looked at the fields she saw the memory of a hundred games of hide and seek, blind man’s bluff in the forests beyond the barn. She remembered climbing up to walk along the stone wall that bordered the peach and apple trees, and she knew that the snug farmhouse would have warm cider on cold days like this one. But Abraham was a man from the town, and had never worked a day in his life. Did he see poverty when he looked at all of this?

When he looked back at her, she forgot everything but his regard.

“You will think me a cad for asking this now,” he said, “but I cannot hold my words back. Forgive me, Miss Dalton.”

“I...” She had not the faintest idea what he was speaking of.

“Would you allow me to...” For a moment, she saw lust in his eyes—she did not have to be worldly, or understand anything, to know what that was. It was naked and powerful, and he did not seem so much a man as a beast. And then he swallowed and looked down, and it was gone when he met her gaze again. “Would you allow me to court you?” he finished.

She hesitated. Why, she could not say.

“Cecelia, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever known,” he said urgently. “Say I can. Say you would not be unkind to me.”

He was a good match, Cecelia told herself. In fact, there was no better match, save perhaps the mayor’s son. The Thompsons were well off, everyone knew it. She would be at the height of society in Knox. Her marriage would eclipse even her sister’s.

So why could she not seem to reclaim the warmth she had felt even a moment ago, the heady pleasure at being desired?

But her mouth, it seemed, was more practical than her heart.

“I would be very pleased for you to court me,” Cecelia heard herself say, and she smiled even as Abraham squeezed her fingers to the point of pain.

Chapter 4

Cold water splashed into the bucket and Cecelia put her hands on her hips as she waited for it to fill, slumping and letting her eyes drift closed. Her back ached and her hands were about to bleed with cracks and blisters. She had been working herself to the edge of exhaustion for weeks now, always the one to offer when there was more water needed for tea or washing, always the first up and feeding the goats, or brushing Beauty, or kneading dough for the day’s bread.

She pulled herself up and looked out over the orchard, trying to take some sense of joy in the beauty of the day. Winter was losing its grip now, the worst of the snows come and gone, and sometimes the ground was not so hard beneath her feet when she left the house in the mornings. The sunlight warmed ground that hid, Cecelia knew from her life’s experience, the first green shoots of spring—onions and garlic, crocuses, corn. It would not be long until the very first stirrings of summer were felt even in the iron coldness of the winter nights.

But nothing stirred in her chest. This place was alive with ghosts and no more for Cecelia, memories crowding her until she thought she might scream with them. When she looked at the trees, she heard Solomon telling her how to prune them. When she broke the ice over the water butt, she remembered how he taught her to use the axe before their father would have allowed it. And she remembered how, even from her earliest years, it had always been Solomon and Clara, and Cecelia had hung back, desperate to be noticed and taken into their circle. She should have fought harder for it. That way, she might have more memories of her own, and not snatches of overheard conversation as he confided in Clara.

She felt a stirring of fear now. She had worked so hard to exhaust herself, thinking it might plunge her into sleepless nights and monotonous days, that she had nothing left to protect herself from memory. And she could not afford to surrender to it now.

“There you are.”

Her heart leaping with relief at the distraction, Cecelia turned. Clara looked like a ghost, her blonde hair drawn back in a severe braid and her face pale as death save for the dark circles under her eyes. Her voice was rough with tears shed and unshed, and not for the first time, Cecelia wanted to launch herself into her sister’s arms and sob until the tears let them both go, and sent them to sleep in true peace.

She knew better than to try. Once, and only once, she had crept into her sister’s room when she heard the sound of muffled sobs, and when they had lain together in the darkness, fingers clasped tightly, Cecelia had listened to the sound of her sister’s grief and felt that she was allowed, at last, to cry. While Clara stroked her hair and whispered choked reassurances, Cecelia had admitted, to the darkness, that she was afraid Solomon was truly gone.

She did not even have to see Clara’s face to know the change in the room. It was as if the air itself carried the charge of a storm. Clara’s fingers clenched around Cecelia’s so tightly that Cecelia gave a little cry of pain.

“He is not dead,” she had whispered fiercely into the dark. And Cecelia had fallen all over herself to say of course he was not, until Clara had turned away, cold, to cross her arms over her chest and hunch her shoulders. She would not speak to Cecelia after that, or for days afterwards, until time and tiredness smoothed away the worst of it.

So instead of crying, or confessing what was in her soul, Cecelia only hefted the bucket. “What do you need?” she asked awkwardly.

“Mr. Thompson is here to see you,” Clara said simply. “Go up the back stairs, fix your hair. I’ll make him some tea.”

Mr. Thompson. Wash your face. As if Clara had ever cared about nice words or perfect manners. But she had retreated into etiquette as if it was all that would shield her from the fear that Cecelia knew—knew—ate at her as well.

Up in her room, she stared at her face long and hard, and tried to make herself smile. She forgot how between every visit, Abraham’s presence a spark of humor in an otherwise humorless world. He would laugh, joke, sometimes bring her a bit of ribbon or some bright thread—as if he knew that when she was left alone at the farm, the world faded into greys and browns.

And he brought warmth. Always, he stood close so that she could feel the heat of him, and she blushed at his closeness, knowing what he wanted—in the meaning of it, if not exactly what he hoped she might do. The thrill of danger, what every woman was warned against, made her pulse beat a little faster.

When she appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a fresh ribbon in her hair, he rose at once and bowed. In the presence of Clara and her mother, he was the most perfect of gentlemen, and the eager press of his body against Cecelia’s when they embraced was all the more a shock. She curtsied.