Out with Lanterns, page 10
Silas dipped his head and stepped across the hallway in one easy stride. Next to her at the waist-high shelf, he pulled one of the bridles toward himself, and taking a piece of rag, began gently wiping down the leather, removing the dust and grime of the previous day. Almost immediately, Ophelia realised her mistake; sharing the jar of cleaner meant that he stood close enough to brush her elbow with his. She couldn’t help but watch his long fingers moving against the leather reins, every stroke of his hand sending ripples of movement along his muscled forearm, the pale skin sprinkled with golden hairs, revealed by his rolled-up shirtsleeves. He made no attempts at conversation, nor came any closer, but worked steadily at the task, his body seeming to fall easily into the rhythm of the work. Ophelia found herself listening to the steady metronome of his breath, instinctively matching her own movements to the timing of his. They worked in silence, surrounded by the soft snuffing of the horses eating and the clucking of the hens.
It felt so easy to work next to each other like this, Ophelia thought. She tried not to let herself imagine a future version of her life where there was nothing that they couldn’t face together, no burden they could not shoulder side by side. But even as she felt her body sway ever so slightly toward Silas, their shoulders companionably close, she had an inkling that he hadn’t shared everything with her.
“And what of you?” His voice was soft and worn like the leather they worked on.
“What of me?” she said, irritated by her unsteady voice.
He snorted softly, and she could feel the warmth of his smile against her cheek. “I’ve spilled my guts and still know no more than that you arrived here without your father’s blessing.” He paused. “Which I have to say is no mean feat given the sway he held over your life last I saw you.” He turned toward her at the bench, his hands stilling in their work. “I can’t imagine how much has changed in your life and I find myself eager to know. If you’re willing to share, of course.”
Ophelia huffed a small laugh into the warm air and tried to ignore the sizzle of nerves in her belly. She wasn’t sure why she felt nervous to tell Silas about her move to the farm. They were both here now, so surely it made no difference how they had arrived. He had enlisted, and as much as that had thrown his life into disarray, the decisions she had made in his absence had changed the course of hers. She cleared her throat.
“Things were much the same after you enlisted, with my father, I mean. There was another potential proposal, and when I told him I didn’t intend to marry his choice, he threatened the usual retributions.” She paused, and Silas nodded to show he understood her shorthand. “I wasn’t supposed to visit your family, though I did stop by a few times. I saw that the visits made your mother melancholy, so I didn’t continue. ” She kept her hands moving to keep her mind from dwelling on the loneliness of that time; the empty manor house seeming colder than she could ever remember, the bleak, sere fields echoes of her own isolation, pushing her to seek change, connection, some new version of her life.
“When I met Hannah at the recruitment meeting, she was doubtful of my intention. But by the time I got home that night and got over the embarrassment of being called a lightweight, I knew I would join. The WLA makes sense to me, did then, and still does now.”
“How do you mean?” Silas asked.
“Well, women have had to put aside suffrage arguments for the duration of the war, but this work”—she gestured with her hands toward the horses and the machinery—“proving that women are equal to the tasks that have been men’s domain, well that’s still suffrage. It’s showing that women are as valuable a part of this country as its men and deserve the right to vote for its government.” Silas made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat and Ophelia continued. “Really though, the women here rescued me, tolerated my flat-footed attempts at both farming and feminism, pushed me to strengthen my mind as much as my body. I might have left my father’s estate of my own volition, but I could never have imagined what billeting with Mrs. Darling, Hannah, and Bess would change.”
Silas was quiet, his brow furrowed as he listened, thumb rubbing absently along the length of the cheek strap he held. Ophelia chanced a look at him and he turned immediately, eyes intent on hers.
“Everything is different for you here,” he observed. “I almost can’t imagine you as you were before. You’re more . . . vibrant, maybe? But also, mmm . . . sharper?” He pursed his lips trying out the words in his head, deciding if they were apt. “Not sharper, like harsh, but somehow more keen, like a new blade.”
“Oh,” she said, taking this in.
He laughed and shook his head, pushing a hand through his hair. “I expressed that clumsily, I’m not sure I can describe it properly. More you, somehow. Like you’ve changed from a watercolour to an oil painting. Your self is so clear here.”
“Perhaps, but things are also muddier. So many things I held as facts have turned out to be incorrect. I have lived in a pond my entire life, Silas, and mistaken it for the ocean. I could scarcely argue for my own enfranchisement, let alone anyone else’s. Before I started reading the books and pamphlets Hannah recommended, I assumed all women thought as I did. I didn’t realize that Hannah, who grew up poor, and Bess, who is Irish, or even Mrs. Darling who does both men and women’s work on the farm, would all have entirely different views on almost everything. That a woman might choose to pursue work or love another woman or love no one at all, and that having those choices benefits everyone. It is all related and I never knew that, never understood.” She felt her heart pounding as she spoke, wondering if he would be discomfited by her thoughts, if she was expressing them well. Speaking her mind was still new to her, even after a year, and she felt slightly wary of sharing her thoughts with a man. But Silas needed to know that she was working to change. Ophelia didn’t want him to mistake her for the person she had been on the estate. “My father thought me little more than a child, and his protection of me was concerned only with preserving what he considered his investment. My only thought was to marry someone not chosen for me by my father, but the more I learn, the more I wonder if the question is whether to marry at all.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve come to see that so much of the protection we women gain from marriage is really just ceding control to our husbands. If we were actually treated as adults, capable of rational thought and decision making, there might be an argument for a marriage of equals. As it stands, those cases are few and far between, I’m afraid.”
Silas was quiet, and Ophelia wondered if he was thinking of his own parents’ marriage or if she had simply said too much, too quickly. She cleared her throat, prepared to defend herself, when Silas spoke.
“I also find myself questioning many of the ideals I held before France.” He gestured vaguely toward his leg. “Being back is uncomfortable and not only because of my injury. I don’t know quite where I stand these days . . . though I am certain that enfranchisement is the right of all, and that loving another person is no one’s business but one’s own. I certainly didn’t slog through hell only to tell other people what to believe or who to care for.”
Ophelia nodded and waited for him to continue.
“Not sure what I did slog through hell for in all honestly,” he said almost to himself, then shook his head. His overlong hair slid forward across his brow, and Ophelia had the urge to brush it back for him. She imagined the slide of it between her fingers, the way it might feel to tuck the strands behind the fine ridge of his ear, and squeezed her hands into fists to make them behave.
“You’ve given me a great deal to consider, Ophelia,” Silas remarked, turning a crooked smile on her.
“I’m still considering much of it myself,” she said, then noticing the changed angle of the sun through the barn door sighed. “God, I’ve a deal of work to get done today, so we’ll have to continue another time.” She wiped her hands on the rag hooked on the nail above the workbench and ducked outside before her desire to keep standing next to Silas, talking and listening, got the better of her.
“Course. I’ll put these on their hooks,” he said, replacing the lid on the tin of saddle soap and gesturing to the bridles.
Silas stood beside the pump in the farmyard, silvery drops plinking into the tin bucket beneath the spout. He wiped the remnants of saddle soap from his fingers, running the rag around the edge of each nail, and took a deep breath. He couldn’t settle his thoughts; they raced like grasshoppers around his head, leaping and beating their wings while he tried to cage and order them. Ophelia’s questions unnerved him, not being able to tell her the whole truth gutted him. He tried to assess the situation, his options; reassignment wasn’t a possibility, the potential repossession of the farm worried him, and he had nowhere else to go. He would have to stay, and he would have to find a way to ignore the hungry desire for Ophelia he could feel taking root in him.
Hands dry, he walked toward the long field that bordered both the house and the lane. He thought of his mother and the way that his father had cared for her before his death. Silas thought of the moments between them—the quick kiss at the door before the day began, his father’s hand at the small of her back, the way his mother passed her hand over her husband’s shoulders as he sat at the kitchen table. Was his father not protective of his mother? Of his sister? He tried to imagine whether his mother had felt childish for the care his father bestowed and found he couldn’t form an answer.
Wasn’t a man meant to protect those he loved or who were under his care? Silas had always equated protection and care of one’s family with the state of a man’s character. It was how he had understood his father as a loving presence. He tried to understand how Ophelia could say it wasn’t his duty to protect those he loved. If he wasn’t able to do that, what else had he to offer? Silas felt heat rising up his neck and the now-familiar ache beginning to pound in his ankle. He had been stomping across the uneven ground without realizing it, his confusion and irritation gathering force in his body. “Bloody leg,” he muttered, leaning down the massage his calf and ankle. Even through the fabric of his trousers, he could feel the hard lines of scar tissue, the pitting in the muscles of his leg. It made him feel weak to have to stop and rest, to tend to his body, which he now understood he had always taken for granted. He rubbed gently at his calf and down the hard line of his ankle, trying to soothe the ache that persisted months after the injury. He felt the disappointing, salty burn of tears at the back of his throat and tried to swallow them away. What kind of man was he now anyways, he thought bitterly. Worrying about whether he should protect someone he loved when he couldn’t even walk halfway across a field without stopping to rest. Half a man at best, broken at worst. He pushed his fingers more firmly into his leg, trying to loosen the knots of his scars.
CHAPTER 13
The day after the committee official’s visit, Ophelia made her way along the edge of the top field, Samson and Delilah on either side of her, their heavy hooves denting the softening soil as they plodded along, heads low, harnesses jingling. The afternoon of his visit, Ophelia had taken a quick walk over to the new field to acquaint herself with its terrain. She was nervous to plough an uncultivated area; so far, all her practise had been on ground that had been turned over for decades, but this new plot resembled nothing so much as a patch of wildness, covered with crabgrass and dotted with the odd primrose, edged by waist-high blackberry, wild rose bushes, and the remnants of a laid hedge, now gnarled with age. Having been sown with a cover crop for a number of years, the land had eventually been let to go wild when Mrs. Darling’s workload on the rest of the farm became too much. It was neither the worst nor the best piece of land, forming a kind of crooked dog leg between Mr. Bone and Mrs. Darling’s farms. It was a little hard to get to, and Ophelia wasn’t entirely sure that she could command the team well enough to get the ground broken with sufficient speed and to the correct tilth, and it preyed on her worry that she wasn’t pulling her weight on the farm. She didn’t want to let Mrs. Darling down, but she also didn’t want to make more work by doing her job poorly because she was afraid to ask for help.
Cresting the rise, she saw Silas at the far end of the track. He was stacking the unearthed stones at the base of a hedge in his shirtsleeves, back already dotted with sweat, waistcoat hanging from a thick pleach.
“Woah, Samson.” The gelding stopped obediently, the traces jingling gently between he and Delilah. “There’s a good boy, eh?” she murmured, scratching behind his ear and down his neck.
Hearing the horses, Silas straightened and put a hand to his eyes. “What do you think? Can we make something of it?”
Ophelia surveyed the land, noting how much he had already cleared that morning, and nodded. “Not sure we’ll be ready to plough this afternoon, but I brought the horses with me in case. Let me secure them, and I’ll help you finish up this end.”
Silas stepped forward. “I noticed a stout beech a little farther down, we could tie them there until we’re ready.”
“I’ve kept them in their halters so we can graze them for now.” Ophelia tugged Samson forward and she and the horses fell into step behind Silas. She took a deep breath and tried not to watch the way his trousers hugged his backside or the way the muscles in the broad expanse of his shoulders moved, smooth and sinuous, under his shirt. As though he sensed her thoughts, Silas turned, a sly smile on his face.
“Alright back there? You’re awfully quiet.”
“Uh, yes, f-fine,” she stammered, sure her blush could be seen from the other end of the field.
She was tongue-tied and awkward, and what would she say anyways? I suddenly find myself thinking of kissing you, but I am terrified that wanting you means I must give up the independence I am imagining for myself for the first time? The curse of a broad chest and a fine arse, she thought irritably.
“I suppose I’ve been thinking about how strange it is to be here, together. After all this time.”
Up ahead he nodded, then stopped and waited.
“It was lovely to talk with you yesterday . . . made me think of that summer, I suppose,” she finished, her voice lifting with uncertainty. “How different it feels not to hide, to just have a conversation.”
“God, yes,” Silas huffed, his mouth hitching up at one corner. “There are some who find subterfuge enticing, but I’ve no stomach for it, myself. I’m a simple man when it comes down to it and prefer my conversations out in the open.”
Ophelia’s mind stuttered to a halt as Silas approached, reaching out to take Samson’s lead rope. His fingers brushed hers, but when she made to pull away, he slid his hand up to her wrist, circling it with his long fingers. She could feel her pulse hammering against his fingertips and looked up just as he turned her hand over, running the fingers of his other hand across her palm. She almost clamped her hand shut, surprised at the tickle of his thick fingers moving across the creases of her skin. Her breath rushed out, delight and shock filling her when Silas lifted his head, eyes heavy lidded. He still held her hand, his blunt forefinger circling the flesh of her palm hypnotically. She pulled away, closed her hand, and rubbed it self-consciously against her thigh.
“I shouldn’t have—” he began, stepping back.
“No, I didn’t mind,” she blurted. “I mean . . .” But she didn’t know what she meant. She more than didn’t mind, but they needed to work together, needed to secure the harvest and the farm. She worried this strange flame flickering between them could derail it all.
“I’m sorry, Ophelia. I overstepped. I know we need to work together,” Silas said. His voice was soft and low; from a distance they might be discussing the best place to tie the horses, and Ophelia was grateful for his consideration. She felt giddy and disappointed. She wanted him to take her hand again, wanted to feel his lips on her skin, instead she only nodded and said, “No need to apologize. Let’s get to work, shall we?”
Silas smiled, his mossy eyes warm and bright, and she felt her stomach roll unsteadily. He looked so reassured; she couldn’t tell whether she was glad or disappointed. She looped the horses’ lead ropes over two thick branches, hurrying through the task so she could move away from Silas’s warm bulk. The V of skin visible at his throat was distracting, and she was horrified with herself for noticing the sunlight on the dusting of hair that disappeared into his open collar. She made sure the horses had plenty of room to graze without becoming tangled, and finished, strode after Silas. He stopped to reach into a wooden trug and handed a sickle to Ophelia, then turned to pick up a scythe. Spreading out across the new field, they bent to the task of pushing back the brush and thorns.
Ophelia was glad of the mostly silent work, forcing herself to focus on the necessity of working well together. Surely this fluttering in her belly, the shivery anticipation she felt around him was mere attraction; it was only natural. He was beautiful, thoughtful, and gentle in his speech. He had occupied her thoughts since his arrival, if she were being honest. But she had deliberately chosen this path for herself, away from a conventional life, the conventional ties of partnership. She didn’t see how the two could coexist, and she knew she was not willing to give up on her own liberation.
It wasn’t just that he had appeared in the middle of her new life, like some particularly handsome spectre from her past, his presence threatening to upset the carefully balanced bridge she was building between her old life and a still-unknown new one. It was, Ophelia discovered to her horror, that she wanted him; his friendship, but also his smile, his kisses, his regard, and she wanted them with a hot, uncomfortable urgency. She didn’t know how to reconcile this desire for Silas with her desire for a life not circumscribed by marriage to a man chosen by her father, or perhaps marriage at all. She was upset by the strength of her feelings for him and discomfited by their resistance to her attempts to ignore them.
