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“Well, women have had to put aside suffrage arguments for the duration of the war, but this work”—she gestured with her hands toward the horses and the machinery—“proving that women are equal to the tasks that have been men’s domain, well that’s still suffrage.

It’s showing that women are as valuable a part of this country as its men and deserve the right to vote for its government.

” Silas made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat and Ophelia continued.

“Really though, the women here rescued me, tolerated my flat-footed attempts at both farming and feminism, pushed me to strengthen my mind as much as my body. I might have left my father’s estate of my own volition, but I could never have imagined what billeting with Mrs. Darling, Hannah, and Bess would change. ”

Silas was quiet, his brow furrowed as he listened, thumb rubbing absently along the length of the cheek strap he held. Ophelia chanced a look at him and he turned immediately, eyes intent on hers.

“Everything is different for you here,” he observed.

“I almost can’t imagine you as you were before.

You’re more ... vibrant, maybe? But also, mmm .

.. sharper?” He pursed his lips trying out the words in his head, deciding if they were apt.

“Not sharper, like harsh, but somehow more keen, like a new blade.”

“Oh,” she said, taking this in.

He laughed and shook his head, pushing a hand through his hair. “I expressed that clumsily, I’m not sure I can describe it properly. More you, somehow. Like you’ve changed from a watercolour to an oil painting. Your self is so clear here.”

“Perhaps, but things are also muddier. So many things I held as facts have turned out to be incorrect. I have lived in a pond my entire life, Silas, and mistaken it for the ocean. I could scarcely argue for my own enfranchisement, let alone anyone else’s.

Before I started reading the books and pamphlets Hannah recommended, I assumed all women thought as I did.

I didn’t realize that Hannah, who grew up poor, and Bess, who is Irish, or even Mrs. Darling who does both men and women’s work on the farm, would all have entirely different views on almost everything.

That a woman might choose to pursue work or love another woman or love no one at all, and that having those choices benefits everyone.

It is all related and I never knew that, never understood.

” She felt her heart pounding as she spoke, wondering if he would be discomfited by her thoughts, if she was expressing them well.

Speaking her mind was still new to her, even after a year, and she felt slightly wary of sharing her thoughts with a man.

But Silas needed to know that she was working to change.

Ophelia didn’t want him to mistake her for the person she had been on the estate.

“My father thought me little more than a child, and his protection of me was concerned only with preserving what he considered his investment. My only thought was to marry someone not chosen for me by my father, but the more I learn, the more I wonder if the question is whether to marry at all.” She took a deep breath.

“I’ve come to see that so much of the protection we women gain from marriage is really just ceding control to our husbands.

If we were actually treated as adults, capable of rational thought and decision making, there might be an argument for a marriage of equals.

As it stands, those cases are few and far between, I’m afraid. ”

Silas was quiet, and Ophelia wondered if he was thinking of his own parents’ marriage or if she had simply said too much, too quickly. She cleared her throat, prepared to defend herself, when Silas spoke.

“I also find myself questioning many of the ideals I held before France.” He gestured vaguely toward his leg.

“Being back is uncomfortable and not only because of my injury. I don’t know quite where I stand these days .

.. though I am certain that enfranchisement is the right of all, and that loving another person is no one’s business but one’s own.

I certainly didn’t slog through hell only to tell other people what to believe or who to care for. ”

Ophelia nodded and waited for him to continue.

“Not sure what I did slog through hell for in all honestly,” he said almost to himself, then shook his head.

His overlong hair slid forward across his brow, and Ophelia had the urge to brush it back for him.

She imagined the slide of it between her fingers, the way it might feel to tuck the strands behind the fine ridge of his ear, and squeezed her hands into fists to make them behave.

“You’ve given me a great deal to consider, Ophelia,” Silas remarked, turning a crooked smile on her.

“I’m still considering much of it myself,” she said, then noticing the changed angle of the sun through the barn door sighed.

“God, I’ve a deal of work to get done today, so we’ll have to continue another time.

” She wiped her hands on the rag hooked on the nail above the workbench and ducked outside before her desire to keep standing next to Silas, talking and listening, got the better of her.

“Course. I’ll put these on their hooks,” he said, replacing the lid on the tin of saddle soap and gesturing to the bridles.

Silas stood beside the pump in the farmyard, silvery drops plinking into the tin bucket beneath the spout.

He wiped the remnants of saddle soap from his fingers, running the rag around the edge of each nail, and took a deep breath.

He couldn’t settle his thoughts; they raced like grasshoppers around his head, leaping and beating their wings while he tried to cage and order them.

Ophelia’s questions unnerved him, not being able to tell her the whole truth gutted him.

He tried to assess the situation, his options; reassignment wasn’t a possibility, the potential repossession of the farm worried him, and he had nowhere else to go.

He would have to stay, and he would have to find a way to ignore the hungry desire for Ophelia he could feel taking root in him.

Hands dry, he walked toward the long field that bordered both the house and the lane.

He thought of his mother and the way that his father had cared for her before his death.

Silas thought of the moments between them—the quick kiss at the door before the day began, his father’s hand at the small of her back, the way his mother passed her hand over her husband’s shoulders as he sat at the kitchen table.

Was his father not protective of his mother?

Of his sister? He tried to imagine whether his mother had felt childish for the care his father bestowed and found he couldn’t form an answer.

Wasn’t a man meant to protect those he loved or who were under his care?

Silas had always equated protection and care of one’s family with the state of a man’s character.

It was how he had understood his father as a loving presence.

He tried to understand how Ophelia could say it wasn’t his duty to protect those he loved.

If he wasn’t able to do that, what else had he to offer?

Silas felt heat rising up his neck and the now-familiar ache beginning to pound in his ankle.

He had been stomping across the uneven ground without realizing it, his confusion and irritation gathering force in his body.

“Bloody leg,” he muttered, leaning down the massage his calf and ankle.

Even through the fabric of his trousers, he could feel the hard lines of scar tissue, the pitting in the muscles of his leg.

It made him feel weak to have to stop and rest, to tend to his body, which he now understood he had always taken for granted.

He rubbed gently at his calf and down the hard line of his ankle, trying to soothe the ache that persisted months after the injury.

He felt the disappointing, salty burn of tears at the back of his throat and tried to swallow them away.

What kind of man was he now anyways, he thought bitterly.

Worrying about whether he should protect someone he loved when he couldn’t even walk halfway across a field without stopping to rest. Half a man at best, broken at worst. He pushed his fingers more firmly into his leg, trying to loosen the knots of his scars.