Page 31

O phelia moved quickly through the barn, slowing when she passed Samson in his temporary paddock, a comically tiny pile of hay at his giant hooves.

He ducked his head and blew a breath out over the hay, sending it fluttering.

Then his mobile mouth was moving over the ground capturing each stray piece.

His ears were floppy and relaxed, his tail swishing absently.

Ophelia’s heart squeezed with relief; he was going to be okay.

Everything was going to be okay. Everything except Silas.

She ducked her head into the house to let Mrs. Darling know that she was taking a walk and would be back directly.

“Just need a minute to get my head together,” she replied when Hannah called out to ask if everything was alright.

“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Darling commanded, emerging from the kitchen hands on hips. “Upstairs and into bed. You’ve been walking all night, what you need is a rest.”

Suddenly unable to even form an argument, Ophelia registered the aching weariness of her body for the first time since sitting down on Silas’s bed and gave in without protest, her leaden legs carrying her up the stairs.

When Mrs. Darling came up to bring her a cup of tea, Ophelia was already asleep on her bed, still fully clothed.

Waking with the next morning with a pounding headache and a stiff neck, Ophelia hobbled through changing into a fresh shirt and breeches before making her way down to the kitchen for tea and anything still left from breakfast. The house was quiet and empty, so she had obviously slept through everyone leaving for the day.

Pocketing a scone from the larder, she headed around the kitchen garden and across the long field.

It wasn’t quite warm yet, but there was the promise of it in the late April air.

Her tunic and breeches felt tight against her stiff body, and the faint smell of stale sweat still clung to her.

She wanted to wash away the lingering fug of fear.

Heading to the bottom of the field, she made her way along the edge of the creek that made its wrinkled way between Mrs. Darling’s property and Mr. Bone’s.

A higgledy-piggledy hedgerow demarcated the property line in front of which the green bank sloped down to the creek.

On Mrs. Darling’s side a grove of willow trees formed a shady spot in the crook of the creek before it dashed off into the distance.

It was deeper here, a calm, shaded pool that Ophelia had discovered on a ramble one day in the depths of winter.

Seeing the still water steadied her, and she felt the breath she had been mentally holding since the night before leave her lungs in a rush.

Crouching to remove her boots, gaiters, and socks, she made a pile on the bank and stepped into the water.

It was cold enough to make her toes curl, but it felt so good.

Crisp and clear and real. It emptied her mind, drawing all her attention to the sensation of the gritty gravel under her soles and the cold water lapping at her ankle bones.

The longer she stood in the water, the more urgent it seemed to take a dip.

Stepping back onto the shore, she shucked her tunic and shimmied out of her breeches.

Fingers already unhooking the busk of her corset, she was toeing the clothes into a pile beside her boots before she thought better of the idea.

Wading in up to her thighs, Ophelia almost regretted her eagerness.

In for a penny, in for a pound she thought and let her body sink into the water up to her chin.

She gave a little shriek of surprise when every fibre of her being contracted at being submerged in the creek.

The hairs on her arms and legs rose in a vain attempt to generate body heat, and her nipples tightened to dagger points in protest. On the other hand, the cold had chased every thought of the previous night and day from her mind, scouring away the dread and worry.

Afraid she might not last much longer, she forced herself to lay back in the water, letting her feet drift off up the bottom, and felt the cloud of her chemise float out from her body.

Closing her eyes against the sky, she let the silence fill her ears and her mind focus on the gentle shush of her own breathing.

The clinking of pebbles under the water alerted her to movement before his voice did.

Ophelia opened her eyes and blinked a tall figure into focus.

His familiar face was upside down, shaggy hanks of golden-brown hair framing his high cheekbones.

His careful smile was a lopsided question mark.

She thrust her feet down, pitching awkwardly to stand.

Water streamed down her body, her wet hair pulling at the back of her head, and she clutched her arms across her transparent chemise.

“How long have you been here?” She gulped, adding as she came to her senses, “Pass me my tunic, please.”

Silas moved to step backward and lifted the tunic from the pile. Passing it to her with averted eyes, he said, “Only a moment. You heard me as soon as I stepped into the water.”

She fisted the fabric in front of her before clutching it around herself. “I rose late and thought I might clear my head,” she said, gesturing to the creek behind her.

Silas nodded. “I came across this spot a while ago myself. Mind if I stay and dip my feet, too?”

She shook her head and watched as he toed off his boots and slid his socks from his feet. He stepped gingerly over the pebbly bank and hissed when he stepped into the water. “Jaysus!” he yelped. “How’d you get your whole body in this? It’s bloody freezing!”

Ophelia laughed aloud, the sound loosening her body. Silas took a tiny step forward, and Ophelia watched his feet, long and palest white, in the green water. He wriggled his toes, and the flex of tendon and bone under vulnerable flesh sent a wild flash of tenderness through her.

“I want to say again how sorry I am for reading your telegram, Silas.” She wasn’t sorry to have discovered the truth behind his enlisting, but she was sorry about how it had come out.

He was silent for so long that she raised her head to look at him.

His eyes were dark and serious, roaming over her face.

She felt her shift clinging and cold. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck, beginning to curl slightly at her shoulders.

Unaccountably, she felt shy. He pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, and his shoulders lifted and bunched under his linen shirt.

“It’s alright, Ophelia, honestly it is. I do wish I’d told you sooner.

Having it all inside has been killing me.

” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been an arse, I know.

I feel like I’ve no bearings anymore, like all the things I thought about being a man, a person, no longer apply.

I believe in suffrage, I truly do, and I’m also a bit lost about where it leaves me.

I truly thought I was doing right to shield you, to not bring the problem to you, only a solution, once I had one.

But you’re angry about it, I can see you feel betrayed and I’m not totally certain how I should have done it differently.

Honestly, I feel a bit angry about it all, too.

” His face was stern, a furrow of unhappiness carved between his dark brows, his mouth drawn down at the sides.

“I don’t mean for you to solve it or pat me on the head, of course, only I wanted to tell you, well, tell you that I want to do better.

That I’m trying so hard to figure out if being here with you will harm my family and how I might change that. ”

Ophelia wasn’t sure what to say for the space of a breath; her heart and mind couldn’t seem to agree, to say nothing of her body.

She was covered in gooseflesh, somehow freezing and burning at the same time.

She clenched her fists in the tunic. “It wasn’t until I left the estate that I realized I had been existing on the periphery of my own life, and I promised myself I’d never feel that way again.

I know it’s entirely presumptuous of me, as I’ve no idea what we are to each other, but I wish you’d spoken to me.

At least let me know my father’s part in it.

Asked if I might have been involved, rather than wondered. ”

He was quiet for so long that Ophelia thought the discussion was finished. Looking up, she found him watching her. “What we are to each other?” he echoed quietly.

Her rabbiting heart leapt wildly in her chest and she looked down, focused on his pale watery feet, the hems of his pants clinging, sodden, to his ankles.

“I only meant, here in this situation, this time.” She was babbling now and she hated how unsure she felt.

“I think that what we felt for each other that summer is still here, but we are different people, want different things ... and some days I don’t even know what those things could look like.

” Drat. This had gone off course quickly, and Ophelia wasn’t sure how to get back onto safer footing.

“I suppose they could look however you’d like them to,” Silas said.

“I hadn’t imagined a farm run entirely by women before the war, but now I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be the norm.

Perhaps all the things that feel impossible to us are only that way because we’ve not seen it done yet?

I think if people let themselves experience an unfamiliar thing before judging it, we would all be better off. ”