As if she suddenly became aware of her actions, she whirled away and focused her attention on the bubbling pot. Keeping her face turned from him, she said, “Sit down and I’ll fill a bowl for you. After supper, I’ll help you repair the barn.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, taking his usual seat at the head of the table.
“I didn’t ask if it was necessary,” she said, placing a bowl in front of him.
Hal was beginning to learn that arguing with Nancy about anything was a losing battle, so he bit his tongue and prepared to savor his meal.
Nancy sat opposite him. After giving thanks for their meal, they dug in.
The stew was a good bit thicker than he expected, but he scooped a heaping portion with his spoon and brought it to his mouth. The scent of bacon filled his nose and made his mouth water. He was starving. He blew once on the hot spoon and shoved it into his mouth – and froze.
Gads! How could something that smelled so good taste so bad?
He clamped his mouth shut, smiling as he forced himself to swallow the unappetizing glob of whatever she’d prepared. He honestly had no idea what he was eating. It tasted like flour and grease.
“It’s delicious, Nancy,” he forced out of his lips as he spooned another bite. She smiled at him and dipped her spoon in as well, taking a bite as he forced another into his mouth.
Her eyes rounded and she clapped a hand over her mouth. She glanced from him to the kitchen door and back to him again before bolting from the table. She flung open the door and spat out the gooey mess. “Argh. This is terrible!” Nancy wiped her mouth on her apron, her eyes tearing. “I’m so sorry, Hal. I thought I might be able to make a meal from what we had in the pantry, but I’ve created an unappetizing mess. I’m sorry, but I simply could not swallow that disgusting stuff.”
Hal had taken advantage of her rush to the back door to spit his mouthful back into his bowl. But it was seeing his petite, beautiful wife spitting a glob of mush out the door made him laugh until his stomach hurt.
“It’s not at all funny, Hal.” She sniffed and glared at the gummy mess in her bowl. “I have no supper for you.”
“It’s alright, Nancy.”
“It’s not alright. What are we going to eat?”
“We have apples left, do we not?”
“Two.”
“Then that shall be our supper.”
“But that’s not enough.”
“It will be plenty for me. But if you need more perhaps you can borrow a couple of eggs from Mary. I’ll find a way to return them to her tomorrow.”
Nancy’s upset seemed fade and she shook her head. “There’s no need for that, Hal. After tasting that vile stuff, I’m not at all hungry. I’m sure an apple will taste lovely later, though. If you like, I’ll help you with the roof now.”
He couldn’t leave her in the kitchen with the potful of mush feeling she’d failed him, and so he said, “I’ll be glad to have a helping hand. If we go now we can enjoy a bit of sunshine before it sets for the day.” With that he hooked his arm around Nancy and guided her out the door.
When they reached the barn, Hal adjusted the ladder and climbed back onto the roof. While he sawed the limb into smaller pieces, Nancy milled about below, clearing smaller branches that had come down and chucking aside the scraps from the limb.
“What else can I do to help?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Hal looked down and saw her looking up at him, her pretty white throat exposed to the waning sunlight, tempting him to place a kiss in the hollow above her collarbone. “I can manage this now. Go back inside and I’ll be in when I’m done.”
He saw frustration and determination cross her face as she planted her fists firmly on her waist. “As long as you’re up on that roof risking your neck, I intend to stay right here.”
Hal grinned. He loved her spunk. And he knew she was still dwelling on the inedible meal she’d prepared, so he thought he would set her mind on another track. “If you keep up this obstinate streak, I’ll cart you into the house and lock you in the bedroom.”
Nancy’s eyes rounded. Then she laughed, which is exactly what he’d hoped for. “I don’t believe for one minute, Hal Grayson, that you would do that since you refuse to set foot in our bedroom!”
She had turned the tables on him so swiftly and with such impact that Hal felt his face heat. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to set foot in the bedroom. He wanted to, but Nancy deserved to be courted first, and so he’d been tamping down his growing desire for his beautiful wife to allow them time to become better acquainted — and to explore the obvious attraction they felt for one another.
Bantering and playing with each other was simply another way of deepening their relationship, but sometimes Nancy’s witty repartee hit too close to home.
“What are you going to patch the hole with?” she asked, gazing up at him with her hand shading her eyes. The sun was at his back giving him a view of her face and her white smile. She was enjoying their play, and he was enjoying the fact that he’d put that gorgeous smile on her face.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Look in the barn and see if you can find a board about a foot wide and maybe eighteen inches long.”
“At your service, milord.” She executed a deep, ridiculously beautiful curtsey that made him laugh. Flipping her skirt aside, she spun on her heel and ducked into the barn.
Hal finished sawing the limb into pieces and extracted the last of the debris from the hole.
Just as he was about to climb down, Nancy returned with an old piece of barn siding that had been leaning against a stall in the back of the barn. “Will this work?” she asked, stepping onto the bottom rung of the ladder to hand the wood up to him.
He inspected the board and then the hole and determined it would be sufficient to create a temporary covering.
“I think this will work nicely. But I need to figure out how to seal the board to keep the water out,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Do you have patching compound I can fetch?” Nancy asked, standing at the bottom of the ladder.
“No, and that’s got me perplexed. I need some pine tar or something that will create a seal the rain won’t wash away.”
“Well, perhaps you can use the stew I made for supper,” she said. “I still can’t get the grease out of my mouth.”
Hal gave a shout of laughter and immediately clamped his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her feelings, but gads her comment about the thick, greasy goo was so appropriate he couldn’t stop laughing. He held his mirth inside, but his shoulders shook from the effort.
“I know you’re laughing, Mr. Grayson. I can see the smirk on your face and your shoulders are shaking.”
Her twitching mouth and the laughter in her voice was his undoing. Hal laid the board on the roof and let loose with a belly laugh.
Her own light laughter filled his ears and the air around them.
Hal leaned over the edge of the barn, gasping. “You won’t hold this against me, will you?”
“Not if you won’t hold my supper disaster against me? It was awful stuff, wasn’t it?” She wiped away tears of laughter.
Suddenly, the fact that they had a hole in their barn roof and no supper to eat didn’t seem so bad. They still had the ability to laugh in the face of dire circumstances. They had each other.
“Perhaps you should fetch your mush and I’ll see how well it holds a seal.”
Nancy shook her fist at him. “Keep this up and I’ll serve it to you for breakfast in the morning.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. I’m saving my apple for breakfast. But you’re welcome to have the stew for your breakfast,” he said in jest. He watched as she continued to smile and again thought to himself how beautiful she was — and how he wanted to make her laugh every day.
Together they completed a temporary repair to the roof. Hal ran to Tuckers and borrowed a bit of pine tar from William and a couple of eggs from Mary. Then they
secured Hal’s tools and closed up the barn. Hal accompanied his wife back into the house, determined to spend a few minutes with her before heading to his woodshop. He’d rather spend the evening with her, but they were in desperate need of funds. He needed to finish one of his projects tonight so they could eat tomorrow. But the possibility of that seemed frighteningly slim.
And so he thanked Nancy for her help and the laughter and returned to his shop, his thoughts still on his wife. The more time he spent with her, the more intrigued and enchanted he became. She invaded his thoughts and his dreams. Even at times when he needed to focus, his thoughts strayed to his wife: her smile, her stubbornness, her industriousness, and her gentle beauty. He was thoroughly enchanted with her and was going to court his wife.
Chapter Fourteen
The next evening, Hal entered his house with his stomach touching his backbone. He was exhausted and hungry. But what carved a trench of pain through his gut was the thought that his wife was hungry too.
He’d worked all night to finish carving a walnut parlor lamp table and had then carried the small table into town at first light. He delivered it to Addison’s home and said he’d be grateful if Addison could pay him on delivery in this case.
Addison Edwards pulled him inside, paid Hal, and offered him breakfast. But Hal couldn’t eat knowing his wife was going without. So he thanked Addison and headed directly to the mill where he’d worked all day. He quit early, though, so he could walk back to the village and purchase a few items for their supper.
And so with utter exhaustion and a small measure of relief, he carried the small sack of staples into the parlor. A gentle breeze blew through the house and he paused a moment to enjoy the refreshing coolness from the heat of the day. The sweet scent of honeysuckle growing alongside the house mixed with the scent of baking chicken. Both the parlor windows and kitchen windows were open. The evening sun shone through clean windows, casting dancing shadows on the hardwood floors. The sight of the gleaming floors reminded Hal to shuck his boots, so he stepped back into the foyer and used the boot jack. He placed his boots in the corner and pulled on the hideous looking slippers Nancy had made for him. As he headed to the kitchen, he nearly tripped over a sleepy Captain who was dozing on the floor, basking in a warm swath of sunlight coming in through the open window.
“You little rascal, you nearly got squashed,” Hal said as he picked up the sleepy cat and tucked him in his arm. “I see you’ve moved in lock, stock, and barrel.”
Sleepy, Captain settled himself in Hal’s arms. A rush of affection for the cat took Hal by surprise. What was happening to him? He was becoming a happily married man. With a cat!
Stunned, he surveyed his home. Clean curtains flapped in the breeze. Bright white and stiff with starch, the curtains had been recently laundered and bore no resemblance to the dingy linens that had hung at the windows when John and Hal lived here alone. Looking around, he noticed all the little things about his house that Nancy had added. An old jar filled with sprigs of honeysuckle blossoms sat on the table atop an embroidered linen, a treasure she’d found in the attic with an old sack of rags that she proudly displayed on the low parlor table. Nancy was a resourceful woman and it was clear she’d gone out of her way to make his house a home – for them.
The aromatic scents of supper reached his nose.
And then it hit him. The pantry had been empty last evening. So why was he smelling a chicken roasting? He returned Captain to the floor and his warm swath of sunshine.
Hal headed to the kitchen, surprised to find it empty. He opened the stove to see a whole chicken roasting. Beside the roasting pan was a pie tin filled with fresh spring vegetables and a fluffy loaf of cornbread in another pan. He drew in a deep breath, savoring the scents of supper – of home.
He had worked all night to get funds so he could provide a meal for them today. And yet he was staring at a whole chicken roasting in his oven. How could that be?
“Nancy?” He called out to his wife, wanting to see her, needing and dreading her explanation for how she’d come by the meal that was making his mouth water and his stomach howl with hunger.
Hal closed the stove door and turned to see Nancy coming in the kitchen door with a large basket heaped full of clothes in her arms. So she’d been out back taking clothes off the line when he arrived. That explained her absence, but it didn’t explain the delicious smelling meal.
When she saw him her face lit up with a beautiful, beaming smile that made his knees weak.
“I didn’t realize you were home,” she said. “You’re a bit early, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“It’s certainly a nice surprise, but I hope nothing is amiss,” she said, lowering the basket to the floor.
“I quit early so I could go to town to pick up staples for our supper,” he said, lifting a small burlap sack in his hand, “but it appears you’ve taken care of that task yourself.”
The way her eyes shied from his made his stomach knot.
“Let me take care of this and I’ll explain over supper.” She carried the basket through the parlor and into her bedchamber.
Hal let her go, but he intended to get an answer when she returned. He walked over to the sideboard and dipped his hands into a large pail of water, scrubbing with the soap until he’d removed all remnants of his day at the mill. He was drying his hands as Nancy returned to the kitchen.
“Please tell me you didn’t borrow food from our neighbors for our supper?”
“Of course I didn’t,” she said, appearing offended by his question.
“Then how were you able to secure the items baking in the stove?”
“It’s not important —”
“It is important and I’d like to know. I didn’t think we had any staples in the pantry,” Hal said.
“We didn’t,” Nancy said cryptically and then went about putting supper on the table.
“You must have gone to Mary or Martha then. How else could you have come by them? Gads, Nancy, I don’t want our friends thinking I can’t provide for my own wife.”
“I did not ask our neighbors for charity, Hal Grayson! I visited the watchmaker’s shop and sold a piece of my jewelry today.”
“What?” Hal felt his breath sail out as if she’d planted her small boot smack in the middle of his gut. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because we need to eat.”
“It’s my job to provide for us, Nancy.” He jiggled the sack in his hand. “I’ve brought provisions for our supper.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “We can have them for our supper tomorrow night.”
He felt the heat rising in his face as his embarrassment grew – what kind of man couldn’t provide for his wife? Hal plopped the sack on the table, attempting to slow his pounding heartbeat. He looked at Nancy but she stood with her chin cocked at a defiant angle. For as hard as he had been working at the mill and in his woodshop, he still couldn’t adequately provide for them.
“Please don’t look so shocked, Hal. Mr. Bosworth is a very nice gentleman and he gave me a good price for my broach.”
That she had to sell her jewelry to eat struck Hal in the heart.
“I was able to get the chicken and some other staples that we needed,” Nancy continued. “I’ll get several meals from the chicken and the other items I purchased. Why, I even negotiated a good price with Squire White, so it didn’t take too much of what Mr. Bosworth paid me. I still have a few coins to help keep our pantry stocked. Or for whatever you might need.” Nancy pulled a few coins out of her apron pocket and placed them on the kitchen table in front of Hal’s chair.
Hal barely heard her explanation through the roaring in his ears. His blood rushed through his veins, coursing hard, his head filled with anger and embarrassment. He sought to control the crash of shame sloshing like vomit in his stomach. “Never do that again, Nancy. I’ll not have our neighbors and local business owners thinking that I can’t provide for my own wife.”
&n
bsp; “Hal, I’m sure other women purchase and sell their jewels, and not simply because their pantries are empty. Mr. Bosworth didn’t require a reason for my wanting to sell the broach, nor did I offer one. We needed staples for the house much more than I needed that broach.”
Hal felt humiliation burn through his chest. “Well, I need to be able to hold my head up in this town, and more importantly in my own home. I’ll not have you selling your jewelry, do you hear me? I’ll not have the town folk gossiping about poor Hal Grayson not being able to take care of his own wife.”
Rather than wilting beneath his admonishment, Nancy lifted her chin and placed her hands on her hips. “It was a discreet sale, Hal. We’re in this marriage together and I’ll do whatever necessary to ensure we have food to eat. And frankly, selling my broach is my business. It was mine to do with as I saw fit – and I saw fit to eat, so I sold it.”
Hal’s mouth fell open. In all his years he’d never seen a woman stand up to a man in such a manner. His first thought was to issue a stern reprimand and show his wife who ran the roost, but she had a right to find a way to put food in her belly. She hadn’t known he would bring home staples for supper. She had sacrificed for both of them, had prepared a delicious meal for them, and all he’d done was think of himself and his own wounded pride.
“Come here,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “I’m sorry I was harsh with you. I know you meant well, and supper smells so good my mouth won’t stop watering, but please trust me to provide for us.”
He felt her nod against his chest. “I’d never meant to hurt your pride, Hal, and I’m truly sorry that I did. But it’s my job to feed us, and if my pantry is empty I’ll do whatever it takes to put together a meal. Even if that means serving something you can shingle the roof with.” She leaned back, met his eyes, and gave him a soft smile. “Now please sit down and let me dish up supper before it burns.”
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