The Bride Price

Chapter Fourteen

The house, Emily surmised, and all of the work required to make it truly habitable again, would serve as the perfect distraction.

As soon as they returned, she removed her bonnet and gloves, tied her apron around her waist, and filled a bucket with water from the pump. Her immediate focus was the kitchen, where every surface would need to be scrubbed twice over before she would allow a crumb of food to pass through its doors.

She worked until her back ached, until her shoulders began to tremble and the dry, cracked skin on her hands burned with every dip into the bucket. She paused only long enough to nibble on a slice of bread from a loaf they'd purchased while in Crowford and to slake her thirst with a cup of cold water before she moved her efforts upstairs.

There were three rooms upstairs, all of them quite small, and only one of them possessing that most advantageous honor of containing a bed. The other two rooms had been stripped bare, and when Emily examined the bed in the first bedroom, she understood why it had most likely been left behind.

It was a large thing, quite ornate and altogether unsuitable for the age or architecture of the house. How it had come to be here in the first place, she could not know. Perhaps it had been a gift, or purchased from a neighboring estate when one of those esteemed houses had exchanged owners. But however large the amount of effort that had gone into placing it within the house, she did not want to begin to imagine how much physical strain would be required to again remove it from the premises.

Unfortunately, the bed hangings had been removed, and the mattress appeared to have been left uncovered for some time. Emily thought of the linens she had been fortunate enough to bring with her, but there was no counterpane, no heavier covers designed to defeat the chill that would undoubtedly seep through every crevice of the room in the earliest hours of the morning.

The thought of warmth sent her to the fireplace, and there she worked for quite a while, sweeping up ashes and scrubbing down the wood of the mantelpiece.

By the time she had finished making the bed and had gone over the floor twice with a broom, the light outside the windows had begun to darken. She was tired, hungry, and indescribably filthy. The nightly baths that had become such a part of her routine during their journey to Cheshire now seemed to have traveled to the realm of unsupportable luxury, and she thought she might weep for the want of a large tub of hot water in which to submerge herself.

She returned downstairs with her bucket in one hand and her broom in the other. She stepped into the kitchen just as William entered through the back door, his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows and his own arms bearing the scratches and streaks of grime that showed the amount of work he'd accomplished while outside.

She stopped when she saw him, the steady stream of her thoughts tripping over itself the moment her gaze found his face, his eyes, his mouth. The knowledge that she had kissed that mouth made her feel breathless, and when she noticed his own gaze dip down to trace the curve of her lips, she wondered that she was able to remain standing at all.

"Here," he said, and she noticed then that he held something in his left hand. When she moved closer, she caught a delicious sweet scent, and then she saw the plump red fruit cupped in his palm.

"Strawberries!" She immediately put down her bucket and broom and leaned over his outstretched hand, her fingers twitching with the eagerness of a child presented with a treat. "Where did you find them?"

"They grow all along the side wall. Most of them aren't yet ripe, but there were a few I couldn't pass up."

She picked up one small berry and bit into it. It was still firm, still a bit too tart, but after hours of hard work, with the dust clinging to her hair and the sweat drying between her shoulderblades, it tasted nothing less than exquisite.