Page 37

He nodded, thoughtful for a moment. “I prefer you however you feel most yourself, Fee. You take my breath away in trousers ... all that strength and capability.” She watched as two patches of pink rose on his cheeks.

He swiped a hand through his hair, sending the strands into disarray.

“Honestly, I feel the same about you in a dress. It’s not your clothing I care about, it’s you. ”

She could feel her smile, giddy and wild, before she snapped her mouth shut, heat creeping up her neck and across her cheeks.

She felt herself tilting toward him, a sunflower toward the sun, pulled ever closer by the charge between them, by his earnest desire to learn more and do better along with her.

She wanted to pull him into her chest, to feel his arms around her, to press her mouth to his again, and it all made her feel wildly out of control, insufficiently serious about her desire for independence.

Tension roiled in her stomach and she could feel Silas’s eyes upon her, the warm scrape of his callouses over the back of her hand, and all she wanted to think about was a whole day in his company, away from work and the worries of the farm.

She didn’t know how to answer the sweetness of his words, so instead, she looked up at him and noticed how similar in height they were now that she wore her higher heeled boots.

She could almost meet his eyes straight on, and she liked the sense of equality it gave her.

“It feels surprisingly luxurious to wear a dress again, though as Bess said, I didn’t really expect to miss it.” She fingered a sleeve and said, “The fabric feels lighter and softer than our uniform, but it feels strange to have my legs bare again.”

There was a noticeable pause as they both processed the image of her bare legs under the frothy lawn skirts of her dress. Silas made a choked sound in his throat and muttered, “Christ, Fee,” under his breath, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.

“Sorry, I didn’t—I only meant?—”

“No, no, ’tisn’t you. I find myself drunk with you these days, hardly able to focus on anything else. You only spoke aloud what I was already contemplating in some detail.”

“Oh,” she said. Lord, was this to be her only reply to anything he said? She frowned, then said, “I see.”

“I’m not sure you do, Ophelia,” Silas countered.

“Have you any idea how beautiful you are? Truly? How entirely distracting that cloud of embroidery and filmy fabric is on you? I pride myself on being a man capable of restraint, but now I know what it feels like to hold you in my arms, kiss you ... and, well, my restraint is in what might generously be called tatters.”

She opened her mouth, felt at a complete loss for words as Silas’s admission swept through her, and closed it again. Her chest felt hollow and too tight at the same time, each breath dragged from deep within her. Silas extended his hand to her, a soft smile on his lips.

“Let’s go before Mrs. Darling comes back for us, or I find I can no longer resist you.”

Ophelia laughed and swatted at him, but slid her hand into his.

They made their way down the lane toward the road in companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts, their palms pressed warmly together.

The verge was lush, alive with nodding bluebells and delicate clusters of lady’s smock, and Ophelia felt sure she had never felt more alive, wandering along next to Silas.

It felt completely right. Did she dare to dream of this for her future?

She pushed away the worry and squeezed Silas’s hand.

He squeezed gently back. They reached the bottom of the lane and turning out into the road, saw Mrs. Darling’s tall silhouette ahead of them in the distance.

Emerging from the dark of the barn into the bright sunlight of the May morning, all Silas had seen ahead of him was a halo of pale light, Ophelia at its centre.

Now moving down the pebbled drive to the winding lane that led into town, Silas couldn’t totally remember what he had said to Ophelia once he had blinked her into focus.

He glanced down at her now, her dark hair swept up into loose rolls looping away from her face, gathering in a soft cloud at the base of her neck, and found his throat tight with longing.

She strode along beside him in a dress so fine it might have been made of cobwebs, the shiny toes of her good boots swinging into view with each step.

She was slightly taller than usual, her shoulders only an inch or so below his own, so when she turned and caught his gaze he found himself close enough to see the marine blue of her eyes shot through with gold and grey.

She blinked and the fan of her inky lashes gave a momentary reprieve.

He tried to gather his thoughts to make conversation, but his mind refused to provide him with anything but images of Ophelia in this disastrous confection of a dress.

The tissue-thin fabric clung to her curves emphasising the swell of her breasts, the easy glide of her waist into ample hips.

He noticed that it was a little snug around her biceps and recalled with pleasure the muscles he had felt flexing under her skin when they kissed.

Her shoulders were broader, and she held them more confidently, straight and powerful, even as she looked shyly at him, so many questions in her eyes.

He couldn’t remember ever noticing so many things about a woman’s dress before; the way the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons caged Ophelia’s slender wrists, or the way the blue satin ribbon she had tied at her waist had him thinking of positively bone-melting things he could do with it, or the way the high collar ran all the way up her graceful neck highlighting the freckles that ran across her cheeks and disappeared into the prim, lacy fabric at her throat.

He felt entirely unmanned by the vision of Ophelia in a dress now that he had seen the outline of her legs in breeches every day and could imagine their naked contours under the thin layers of linen and lace.

He wondered if it had been wise to let Mrs. Darling start off ahead of them, leaving him stranded like a sailor before his own personal siren.

He focused on the feel of her hand in his, grasping for a foothold, like a drowning man at sea.

Don’t maul her like an animal, Larke. She deserves better than a mangled wreck like you, still haunted by the war, casting about for a purpose.

But he couldn’t make himself listen. He wanted to be certain she was real and not his most fevered fantasy come to life.

Her skin was warm under his thumb, and he felt the pulse at her wrist fluttering unsteadily against his fingertips.

And when he told her that she was beautiful, a vision in both dress and trousers it was because he could not yet say the words that were in his heart, the truth.

That he was already half in love with her, that he could think of nothing but her lips on his, that he felt at the end of every rope he used to keep himself bound to his better nature, that every moment away from her felt like a lifetime.

Before he could blurt out any of his ill-advised thoughts, he tugged her along the lane, following the others as they made their way to the fair.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he caught a ghost of disappointment flit across Ophelia’s face, but then it was gone and she fell into step beside him.

The warm glide of her palm against his was wonderful, and though their hands were both a little rough from the farm work, he loved that Ophelia’s smaller, fine-boned hand fit perfectly into his larger one.