Page 24

O phelia followed Silas down the hallway, slid her feet into her boots, and closed the door quietly behind them.

The night air was warm, and looking out across the farmyard, Ophelia could see just a hint of the sunset, coral and mauve, left in the arms of the trees, hear the bright chirrup of robins settling to their nests all around them.

Standing next to Silas, she listened to the whir of night insects and the thuds of animals subsiding into rest.

“Shall we?” He began to extend his arm toward her, then the movement stuttered and he tucked his hand back into his pocket.

They moved, as if by agreement, toward the lane.

At the end of the drive, Silas opened the gate into the long field and they made their way along the grassy verge.

Heading up the long slope to the top of the hill, Ophelia felt a shimmer of heat where their hands swung between them, felt the warmth of his body so close to hers travelling in waves along her skin.

She tried not to bump into him as they walked, but the uneven ground and Silas’s injured leg caused her to stumble against him.

“Sorry.”

“No, ’tis this leg. Makes me unsteady when I’m not paying attention.” His voice was quiet, and Ophelia detected a note of sadness, of resignation in it.

“Does it bother you much? The injuries, I mean?”

“I’ve not had to test it on much beyond the therapy the doctors gave me while convalescing. Some days my leg and ankle aches, but I imagine some work will do them good, make them stronger. Make me stronger.”

“I’m sorry, Silas. I can’t imagine what it must have been like ...” She was unsure how to ask him what had happened to call him to war.

A flood of emotions flew across his face: sadness, surprise, embarrassment, and then settled into a wary defensiveness. He stopped and toed the loose dirt with his boot.

“There’s no need for pity, Ophelia,” he said quietly. “I’m far better off than so many others. Able to return to my life mostly the way I left it—” He broke off midsentence, an odd look in his eyes.

“I didn’t mean that I was sorry for you like that, Silas. Only sorry you had to go,” Ophelia said into the silence. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, you’re alright,” Silas said through clenched teeth. “You’re not prying, only making conversation.”

Ophelia felt irritation rise in her chest. “Not making conversation, Silas. Wanting to know about your life since the estate, wanting to know how you really are.”

“I ... ah, Christ, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He ran his hands roughly through his hair, blowing out a long breath. “I feel so prickly ’bout it still.” Gesturing vaguely to his leg, he shook his head and motioned for them to continue on.

Ophelia fell in beside him once again. Silas extended his arm, and flustered by their conversation, Ophelia forgot to maintain her distance and took it.

Too late, she realized her mistake. Heat and awareness bloomed where her hand rested over his arm.

She felt the press of his bicep against hers and couldn’t keep the image of Silas in his shirtsleeves from her mind.

He made to lead them along the outside edge of the field, and she let herself be carried along, matching her steps to his.

She liked the feel of his warm, solid body next to hers entirely too much.

“How did?—”

“I meant?—”

They both spoke at once, then Silas, gruff, said, “You first.”

“You left a letter saying you’d enlisted, and I know earlier you said you felt your work wasn’t enough ... but it did seem so sudden. I guess I thought perhaps there was something else to it,” Ophelia finished softly.

It felt important to her, suddenly, to know the reasons.

The vague worry that her father had influenced him somehow took on more substance in her mind.

His leaving and her leaving had always felt intertwined somehow, not cause and effect, but something more tenuously tangled.

He was quiet for so long that they had made their way up over the rise and down the other side toward the setting sun before he spoke.

Finding a wide stile built into the fence, he stopped, turning to look at her.

His face was lit on one side by the fading light of sunset, all angles and planes, the sweep of his eyebrows and eyelashes dark against skin turned golden.

“I suppose I caught the same patriotic fever that all the foolish young men did ... a plough handle felt useless in my hands, and I thought a rifle would feel more ...” He paused, his eyes travelling slowly over her face. “Something,” he finished on a breath.

They stood almost chest to chest, Ophelia’s hand still resting on his crooked arm. She could see the glint of the dying light in his eyes, the green-shot golden and moss. She felt rooted to the spot, pinned like a moth under his gaze.

“It was horrible,” he said, voice so low she had to pitch the tiniest bit closer to hear him.

“Well, basic training was boring, endless drilling and posturing by boys so young all I could think of was Samuel. And then France.” He dropped his arm and turned away from her, looking out across the field.

“I still hear it in my head, this roar of weapons and commands and men, like animals, screaming. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever fade.”

She watched his back, his shoulders a tense, dark outline in the sunset.

She didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t have any idea how to offer comfort in the face of such utter devastation.

He didn’t move or say anything more, so she closed the distance between them, not examining her motives too closely, and took his hand.

It was warm and firm in hers, larger, so that she had to flatten her palm against his to be able to wrap her fingers all the way around and squeeze gently.

“I can’t imagine what it was like for you there.

” She waited to see if he would ask her to stop or tell her she needn’t try to comfort him.

When he didn’t, she went on. “However you feel about all or any of it, you can talk to me. Without fear of judgement.” She tried to emphasize the last words, tried to tell him that he needn’t be alone in this.

He squeezed her hand in reply, and she felt the calluses on their palms rough against each other. Two sets of working hands, she thought.

“I don’t know if I can talk about it,” Silas said, his voice rough. “I don’t know if I want to.”

“That’s okay,” Ophelia replied, hazarding a sideways glance at him. “I just wanted you to know that you could talk to me ... that you oughtn’t be alone in what you saw.”

She saw him nod out of the corner of her eye and then he was pulling her to him, his long arms wrapping around her back.

She stiffened, then felt Silas lower his head and press his cheek to her hair, and she let herself relax into his embrace.

He said nothing, just held her, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, the warmth of his body seeping into hers through their clothes.

She shuddered out a breath and raised her arms to circle his waist. She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, silent, while the light faded from the sky and the air began to cool.

Moments, probably, but she felt her heart, tight almost to pain, somersault in her chest. Then, with a final press of his body to hers, Silas whispered, “Thank you,” and stepped away.

Ophelia’s arms fell to her sides, something inside her irrevocably rearranged.

“Shall we go back?” he asked, arm crooked out toward her.

Ophelia didn’t trust herself, so she fell into step with him without taking his arm.

The birds were quiet in the edges of the field, only the odd rustle and the early evening hoo of an owl let one know they were there.

This far from the main buildings of the farm, there were none of the daily noises, and Silas suddenly felt very alone with Ophelia.

The quiet of the countryside at dusk was a balm to his soul; it had taken him months in the hospital to stop expecting the peace to be broken with shouting and explosions.

At first it had been eerie, an absence like a vacuum that only reminded him of innumerable deaths, but gradually it was becoming soothing again, a quiet stillness that he remembered from his childhood.

Tonight though, the stillness was infused with a thread of tension, a filament of awareness flickering between he and Ophelia that seemed to glow brighter every day.

He couldn’t decide whether holding his tongue would break the tension or thicken it.

He heard himself say, without any real thought, “Do you remember the cake you made me for my birthday that summer?” It had seemed an innocuous memory when safely in his head, but out loud it reminded him of a thousand other things better left alone.

Ophelia’s step stuttered the tiniest bit and she chuckled, her laugh low and throaty.

“Calling it a cake was generous then and still is now, Silas,” she said, a smile in her voice, and squinted at him doubtfully. “It was an utter ruination,” she said decisively. “Batter held together with jam more than a cake.”

That wasn’t untrue, Silas had to admit, but the cake wasn’t what he remembered about that day anyways. “Oh, aye, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t that what they say?”

“It is,” she agreed, her long hair slipping over her shoulders with the movement.

He let the sound of her laugh ripple around him in the open field, let it take him back to that day on the estate.