Page 17 of The Autumn Wife (King’s Girls #3)

Mother Superior returned to the congregation.

From his position atop the scaffolding, Theo saw, across the roofless gape of the unfinished chapel, the Reverend Mother’s stout, white-capped figure stepping out of a canoe and striding across the grassy lawn.

Standing by the trestle table set out for the midday meal, Cecile waited for the head nun, her shoulders as stiff as a ship’s spar.

Theo stared—he couldn’t help himself. It’d be easy to think Cecile’s firm stance was only a nervous reaction to the reckoning to come, for the returning nun would want a full report on the budget and the building site. But Theo knew there was more to it.

He’d been keeping his distance since their reckless kiss, not wanting to destroy this fragile trust between them.

But for a few fleeting, polite, and public interactions with her since—as he left the stable before she arrived to teach the children, or in the mornings when they discussed the workings of the building site—he’d held himself apart, kept his eyes above her throat and his hands stiff at his sides, not trusting himself.

Because all he could think about, day and night, was kissing her again.

Harder.

Longer.

Theo forced his attention back to the work at hand.

He slapped a dollop of mortar on the stone he’d just set, passing the flat of the trowel across it.

The creak of the ladder alerted him to Jules climbing up with a fresh bucket of mortar.

The burly mason slid it onto the wooden boards, then hauled himself to his feet beside Theo.

“The wind’s got a chill.” Jules swiped his forehead with his stained sleeve. “Feels good, but winter’s coming early.”

Theo grunted in agreement, welcoming the distraction as he handed Jules a clean trowel. “With luck, we can still set stone for another few weeks.”

“And after that?” Jules asked, spreading a hunk of mortar and pushing it into every crevice. “Are you sending us away until the spring? I’m not looking forward to chopping wood all winter for some habitant. I’d rather stay here and hew bluestone for the chapel lintels or something.”

“I’ll keep you and the men through early October at least.” He frowned, still trying to redirect his thoughts. “We should gather more fieldstone for when the building starts up again in spring. I’ll talk to the Reverend Mother about—”

“Monsieur Martin.”

His words ceased. He would recognize Cecile’s voice from a crowd of thousands, but the uncertainty in her voice pierced him with cold. He stilled with his trowel inches above the swiftly drying mortar.

“Hey.” Jules cocked his head toward the bottom of the ladder. “Don’t keep a pretty woman like that waiting.”

Theo gave Jules a ferocious eye, but the mason returned the look with a wicked grin. “Every fool here is hoping for her attention. But you’re the only one she’ll talk to—”

“Enough.”

“Monsieur!”

Her voice, louder now. Theo glanced down the scaffolding, a good twenty-five feet to the ground. There she was, in a pool of nun-gray skirts, her face bleach-white as she stood next to a squinting Mother Superior.

“Sister Martha,” she called up, “would like to speak with you for a moment.”

Jules snickered. “Wrong woman.”

Ignoring him, Theo scraped his trowel free of mortar—scraping and scraping to give himself time to compose himself—and placed the tool on top of the last stone he’d set.

He swung one foot down to a rung and then another until he could hop onto the churned-up ground.

Turning, he focused on Mother Superior instead of the woman he ached to seize by the arm, drag behind a wall, and kiss not-so-softly into submission.

“Reverend Mother,” he said, bowing his head. “Welcome back.”

“And what a welcome!” The nun spread her arms to take in the solid walls of the rising chapel. “Sir, I’m astonished. You’ve accomplished in my absence more than has been done in twenty years.”

He absorbed the tribute with a swelling of his chest even as he strained to see, out of the corner of his eye, how Cecile reacted.

Did she take note of this praise and let him rise in her estimation?

No sooner had the thought darted through his mind than he batted it away.

He shouldn’t want her to notice. Whatever feelings had been growing between them, he had an obligation to stop those feelings now.

“I’d hoped for progress,” the nun continued, grasping the wooden cross hanging around her neck. “I prayed fervently for it in every church and chapel in Quebec. I’ve been disappointed so many times before, but you’ve worked a miracle, sir.”

“All acclaim goes to these men,” he said, throwing a hand up to the workers. “They have labored long and hard. It’s them you should be thanking.”

“Ah, you’re hiding your light under a bushel basket.” The nun raised her voice. “With my thanks, gentlemen, I shall lay out a feast for you, come Sunday.”

Amid the distraction of cheers, Theo couldn’t resist any longer. He slid his gaze to Cecile, who had dropped her attention to the grass while flexing her fingers over a covered tray she held tucked against her side.

He couldn’t help himself. Inside, he commanded her, Look at me.

“Well, that’s settled,” the nun said. “Attend me in my office later, sir. I have many questions. Come now, my dear.” The nun patted Cecile’s shoulder. “We have accounts to go over, and it’s best to get the unpleasantness done first.”

“I’ll join you in a moment.” Cecile jiggled the tray digging into her hip. “Monsieur Martin has not yet had his dinner. I was just setting something out for him.”

The nun frowned. “You really mustn’t skip a meal, sir, with all the hard work you do.” The Reverend Mother slid a curious glance between them both before turning toward the main building. “Cecile, see me after.”

“Yes, Sister Martha.”

“You must be famished,” she said gently, raising those fathomless brown eyes as the nun walked away. “You skipped breakfast.”

“I started work early. I had a section to finish.” It was as good an excuse as the true one—that he’d missed breakfast to keep away from the woman who was serving it.

“The food is getting cold.” Cecile granted him a soft smile that was nearly his undoing. “Follow me to the table—”

“I’m not hungry.”

His stomach growled.

Above, Jules snickered.

Hungry or not, Theo figured the best place for him right now was twenty-five feet off the ground.

She leaned in, whispering, “Don’t be stubborn, Theo.”

“Just leave it on the trestle table.” It was taking all his control not to seize that pretty chin and set his lips on hers. “I’ll eat it later.”

“If I leave it there unattended,” she argued, “your prickly pet will devour it, and you know it.”

He glanced toward the table and the creature sniffing the ground beneath in search of scraps.

“Also,” she said, still whispering, “because Sister Martha has returned, you and I have important matters to discuss before I go to her office to report.”

She turned on a heel, heading toward the trestle table, assuming he would follow.

After casting one last glare up at the grinning Jules, Theo fell in line.

He kept his head down to avoid watching her walk, but he couldn’t block out the swish-swish of her skirts.

The night he’d kissed her—and left her on the riverbank—he’d paused in the shadows to make sure she was safe.

He’d watched as she’d submerged herself in the water and then climbed out soaked, hair half undone and clinging to her neck and shoulders, looking like some unworldly river nymph pulsing with enchantment, a thing of beauty brighter than starlight.

The rattling of a tray dropped on the trestle table brought him back to that river nymph, now yanking the cloth off the food before stepping out of his way. He swung a leg over the bench and sat. The porcupine settled at his feet, wriggling snout raised in expectation.

“I’ll be speaking with Sister Martha in a few moments.” Cecile, standing just beside and slightly behind him, knotted her hands at her waist. “She’s waiting to hear about every detail that concerns the building of the chapel.”

“Leave that to me.”

“In the matter of the construction, I will.” She took an audible breath. “But on another matter. Well, I have made a decision.”

A decision? Was this about her joining the religious congregation?

Or did it have something to do with their kiss?

Certainly, Cecile would know better than to confess their kiss to the nun—nothing good could come of that but having both of them expelled from the grounds—but he was at sea as to what matter bigger than that she was so concerned with.

“I’ve been considering this for days,” she continued. “And I’ve decided that I’m not going to tell Sister Martha about your troubles with the law.”

He held his spoon suspended, gravy dripping. That? He’d nearly forgotten about it. To think a single brush of his lips against hers had eclipsed the memory of his confession.

“You’ve been badly treated,” she continued, “and I see no reason to extend the injustice.”

“You have a kind heart.” He glanced over his shoulder and drank in the quiver of her lower lip and the compassion in her eyes. “But, Cecile, you mustn’t lie to the Reverend Mother. Tell her everything.”

She reared back. “What?”

“If she finds out about my conviction in any other way but from you, she won’t trust you anymore.”

“But…but if I tell her, then she may send you back to the man who holds your papers—”

“Maybe.”

Maybe that’s for the best. Then, at least, they’d be parted. He’d be far away from the temptation to kiss her again.

“I suppose, even if I told Sister Martha about your past, she may keep you here anyway.” Cecile strode around the far end of the trestle table, where she paced a short furrow. “After all, she just said you performed a miracle, and you have proven trustworthy these past weeks—”

“Except when I’m alone with you.” The words rose up with a force he couldn’t stop. “Except,” he added, managing a rueful smile, “when I kiss you.”

“Theo.” Her throat flexed as she swiveled hard and laid a hand on her brow. “Let’s not discuss that right now.”

“Tell the Reverend Mother about my crime. You’ll stay in her good graces. But keep the kiss to yourself, or she’ll never take you in as a nun.”

That’s what you say you want, isn’t it? ?

To never know another kiss?

Cecile took a deep breath, walking around the end of the table to come to a stop just across from him.

She stood as if she had been shoved upright into one of those iron cages he’d once seen hanging from a spike high on the wall of the Paris prison courtyard.

The torture cage had been fixed with spikes so that a person couldn’t slump or wiggle without being pierced with dirty iron.

“Since you brought it up,” she said in a low voice, “that kiss was…was lovely.”

“Cecile.” Cool air hit the bottom of his lungs as he sucked in a sharp breath. “That kiss—hell, I sure can’t forget it.”

“Theo, leave me some dignity, please.”

How she flushes like the sunrise.

“It was lovely,” she continued, breathless, “but I’m ashamed at my behavior.”

“Your behavior?” Beneath the table, the porcupine made a mewling sound. “Cecile, you shouldn’t be ashamed of what we shared—”

“Please stop.”

She burrowed into herself like a frightened turtle before stretching her head high again. He despised with a new fierceness the husband who’d hurt her and made her feel ashamed.

“You are a beautiful, warmhearted woman.” Look at me. “I took advantage of the moment. I can’t say I regret it.”

“There’s nothing to regret.” She grasped her own arms, digging her fingers into her sleeves. “I was a willing partner. You were kind and…restrained.”

Barely, he thought.

“You also proved something to me that night. Now I know not all men are monsters.”

She held his gaze, her brown eyes soft and vulnerable.

Theo had thought the Reverend Mother’s earlier praise had been gratifying—restoring a measure of his self-respect—but Cecile’s gentle confession propelled him a thousand miles into air so thin he stopped breathing.

“I’m grateful for the lesson,” she continued, flexing her fingers on her arms, “as well as the advice about not telling Sister Martha about the kiss. Because as much as you think I’ll never be a nun, I have no choice but to persuade Sister Martha to make me one.”

Why?

Why be a nun when I can make you mine?

The words slammed against the back of his throat, only to shatter against the solid wall of another vow.

Back in Guéret waited unfinished business, as well as a grieving mother and six sisters and two brothers too young to be burdened with family responsibilities.

He’d spent four years vowing to put the pieces back together.

A future with Cecile was impossible

“I’ll be working on the chapel for a few more weeks,” he said, “until the temperature drops closer to freezing. I’ll do my best to be a gentleman.”

She ducked her head to hide a smile. “But you’ll be back again in the spring to finish the chapel, Theo. Keeping your distance will be difficult.”

Woman, you have no idea how difficult this is.

Even the wind conspired against them. He couldn’t drag his eyes away as the breeze toyed with a few curled strands that had fallen from the pinned bun at the nape of her neck. Best to tell her his plans and leave no shred of hope between them.

“I won’t be back in the spring.” He dropped his voice and rose to his feet. “In five weeks and four days, I’ll be a free man—sailing on a ship back to France.”