She patted Owen’s back. “Go and wash up for dinner.”
Owen trudged after Jimmy, who was making a show of stomping up the path.
Jimmy’s apology hadn’t been good enough, but at least he’d obeyed and offered one. “Why didn’t you get after them for how they talked about you?”
Mercy moved past him to follow the children to the house, purposely avoiding looking at him. “You’ve said worse things.”
“That doesn’t mean the children shouldn’t be corrected.” He followed after her.
“You can’t tell me no one ever tried to correct you.”
“A few did.”
“And did you obey?”
“That doesn’t mean we give up trying to correct them.”
She shrugged and continued up the path.
“Are you just resigned to being talked about poorly? You couldn’t stop me from doing so when we were younger, but you could stop these children.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “With all the problems Jimmy has, you want me to focus on his petty name-calling and insults?”
She was trying to look brave, but he could see the pinched lines between her brows. “Yes, because it bothers you.”
She turned back around and ducked under a low-hanging branch. “After working with these children, you must realize that today was not the first time they’ve said something mean. I’m used to it.”
Had his constant belittling made her believe she had to live with it? “Why not find another job, where you don’t have to be subjected to such things?”
“Do you really think I can get away from people like you and Jimmy? They’re everywhere.”
He’d not said a mean thing to her since he’d returned. Would she ever see him for who he was now? “You can’t tell me you’ve gotten used to insults if you’re still upset over what I called you years ago.”
She just continued up the path, shoulders taut, steps measured and fast.
“You told me you forgave me, but maybe you don’t realize how very sorry I am. Even when I spouted those terrible things, I didn’t actually mean . . . most of them. And now that I’m grown, I don’t believe any of them.”
He stopped for a second to detach the thorny vine that ensnared his pant leg. “I know you’re tough enough to endure Jimmy’s taunts since you endured mine, but I also know what it’s like to live in an abusive situation. Where nothing you do, nothing you say, will ever make someone think better of you. As a little girl, you didn’t have much choice but to endure my abuse, but you could find a different job now, where you’re treated with respect.”
She scoffed. “What job do you expect me to get?” She waved around her shortened arm. “It’s not as if I have many choices. I can’t sew fast enough to appease an employer or amass clients, unless they pity me. I have no talents in the arts. I get light-headed at the sight of my own blood, so that’s a no to nursing. Teaching won’t keep me from having children make fun of me. And marriage isn’t going to happen either—as the boys just pointed out—so I go wherever my brother goes, and for now, that’s the orphanage.”
Years ago, her grit had driven him to try to break her, but now it only made him want to hold her. “So you actually believe what Jimmy said, that you’ll never get married because no man wants to kiss you?”
She didn’t answer, though her neck turned red again. She kept trudging through the underbrush, the edge of the woods just coming into sight.
He sped up and grabbed her arm. If she made it to the lawn, he’d lose his chance to talk to her.
She wouldn’t look at him, so he stepped in front of her. She kept her gaze pinned to his collarbone, but that didn’t keep him from seeing her throat working hard to hide how near she was to tears.
He wanted to tip up her chin, but he knew how hard it was to look at someone while trying not to cry. “Mercy, if you believe what boys of five and thirteen say about you, you can’t claim it doesn’t hurt.”
“You can’t tell me there’s no truth in what they say.” Her voice came out in a rough whisper.
“The part about no one ever wanting to kiss you?”
She nodded just once.
He did lift her chin then. The sheen in her green eyes only made them look brighter.
Jimmy and Owen were wrong. Very wrong.
He leaned down, and the second his lips hit hers, he lost his breath. Though his lungs had seized, he kept his mouth against the surprising softness of her lips.
When her mouth moved against his, his body warmed in a way it never had before. He cupped the sides of her face, a perfect fit for his big hands. Her mouth broke away for a second, but he stepped closer, the feel of her making his heart—
The warmth in his body disappeared with the loud slap that echoed through the woods and the stinging pain that pulsed in his cheek. He forced his eyes to open despite the side of his face smarting.
Her green eyes bore into his, her tense muscles belying how soft she actually was. “How could you?” Her question was an angry, whispered growl.
Very easily, apparently. He closed his eyes and swallowed that answer. He stepped back, refusing to put a hand to the painful heat she’d left on his cheek.
“I don’t know what’s worse”—she took a step toward him as if she were a mountain lioness ready to pounce—“the names you used to call me or your manhandling me now.”
Manhandling? He’d responded to the soft loveliness of her lips with a tenderness he’d never felt for . . . anyone. How could he apologize for something that had felt so . . . wonderful?
She stared at him, her body shaking with anger.
Over the past two years, he’d apologized for things he actually regretted, though hardly anyone believed him, so why would she believe he was sorry for this?
Considering the fire dancing in her eyes, she clearly thought he should apologize, if not hang from the gallows, for proving she was indeed desirable enough to kiss. “I . . . I apologize. I didn’t mean to.”
He certainly hadn’t set out to anyway.
“Oh, I see. It was an accident.” Her face got harder. She spun on her heel and stormed toward the mansion without looking back.
He took a few harried steps, intent on catching her, but slowed. What good would it do to talk to her now?
Spotting a fallen tree off the path, he waded into the grasses and sat, looking up at the fluffy clouds visible between the trees’ crisscrossing branches. Dull gray clouds would’ve been more fitting for this moment.
He should’ve known kissing her wouldn’t go well—not that he’d really thought that much before he’d kissed her.
And though it had ended with a slap, it hadn’t felt wrong at all. She’d kissed him back at the beginning, hadn’t she?
Considering she’d called him Aaron earlier, he’d somehow gone up in her estimation, but the kiss and the following slap had surely sent him back to the beginning of his quest to gain her trust.
How dare he kiss her?
Swiping at her eyes, Mercy smeared away the tears, trying her hardest to stop them from coming. The longer they flowed, the more likely someone would notice she’d been crying and would ask what was wrong.
Which was everything. Everything was wrong.
She barreled up the grassy pathway, watching her feet so she’d not trip. Not an easy task, considering the tears swimming in her eyes.
That no man would want to kiss her was not something she believed because Jimmy had said so, but because the fact was self-evident.
No man would be interested in a one-handed wife. Never had her girlhood friends asked her about the husband she dreamed of when they talked of boys, because even as little girls they’d all known she’d never marry. She’d overheard Patricia whine several times about how they’d be stuck with her forever, and Timothy had never contradicted her, just told her life was what it was.
That’s why Mercy had determined to work her family out of this job instead of tattling on her brother for his drinking.
Because she was stuck. No businessman who cared about his bottom line would pay her the wages she needed to live alone for the rest of her life. No man would marry a woman with a stunted arm. She’d resigned herself to that, refused to allow herself to dream of a husband and children.
But now?
How dare her body react to Aaron’s kiss! He hadn’t kissed her because he wanted to. He’d only kissed her to prove some point. Or worse, kissed her because he pitied her.
Her first—and likely only—kiss was with George Aaron Firebrook!
She blinked and looked at the edge of the woods only a few feet away. At some point, she’d stopped walking. She wrapped her arms around herself and forged forward again.
Aaron didn’t deserve the reaction he’d just created in her. He deserved slap upon slap. And she’d . . . she’d—
“Why’d you hit him?” Owen’s voice rang out like a bullet in a cavern.
Mercy pulled up short, and every part of her body flushed.
The five-year-old was standing at the edge of the lawn, peeling a long piece of dead grass.
“Didn’t I tell you to go in and wash for dinner?”
Owen shrugged. “I was waiting for you.”
“Well, I’m here now. Let’s go.” She charged toward the house. Maybe Owen would forget—
“I thought you said no matter how angry someone makes us, we aren’t supposed to hit them.” He caught up to walk beside her.
She didn’t bother to look at him, just continued marching through the grass. At least Owen’s sudden appearance had dried up her tears. “Well, yes. You shouldn’t hit people.” Of all the things for him to have seen. “But a gentleman is supposed to ask before kissing a woman. . . . At least the first time.” Surely there were rules like that. Whenever her friends had started talking about men and future families, she’d always found a reason to excuse herself. It had been easier to walk away from such talk than sit through it. But now she didn’t have the first clue what was proper for courting.
“Did the kiss hurt?” Owen’s face contorted with confusion.
“Well, no.” About the opposite, actually.
Which was a bad, bad thing. Oh, it would’ve been so much better if it had hurt . . . or been revolting. “But just because kissing doesn’t hurt, doesn’t mean a man should force one upon a woman.”
“Well, that time Jimmy yanked my hair out, he deserved to get kicked, but you punished me for that. And that actually hurt.”
She shook her head—these children and their logic were going to make her rip her own hair out. “That’s different. Jimmy wasn’t trying to kiss you.”
“Ew.” Owen stuck out his tongue. “I’d kick him for that too!”
She couldn’t help but chuckle at the conversation’s silly turn. “Well, I mean, if Jimmy were trying to kiss a girl—”
“He’d have slapped her back!”
The image of Jimmy kissing a girl and ending up in a slapping fight made her laugh outright.
Owen didn’t laugh with her. He looked over his shoulder toward the woods. “Good thing Mr. Firebrook likes you, then. Otherwise he’d have beat you up.”
Wait. “What do you mean, he likes me?”
Owen screwed up his face. “He told you sorry and didn’t slap you back.” He shrugged. “Means he likes you.”
Mercy turned Owen around and pushed him up the stairs but didn’t follow. She looked over her shoulder, but Aaron hadn’t left the woods yet, or maybe he’d already disappeared into his cabin.
He couldn’t like her—not like that. He’d only been trying to prove some point about how she shouldn’t let anyone call her names anymore.
But his tentative lips on hers, and his large, rough hands sliding across her cheeks in such a gentle manner, had made her heart beat uncontrollably—right before it scared her witless.
She could not fall for her tormentor—she just couldn’t. She tried to march up the stairs, but her feet felt as if they slogged through molasses.
If it wasn’t for the hatred she’d felt for him for so many years, what would have kept her from going back and apologizing?
She wouldn’t have slapped any other man who’d made her feel as if the world had stopped in awe of her.
15
“My brain hurts.” Robert rubbed his temples as he stared at his last row of math problems. “Can I stop now? It’s not as if I’m going to use ratios in real life.”
Aaron smothered his smile, keeping the list of ways one could use ratios in real life to himself. “You’ve only got five left.”
Groaning, Robert picked up his pencil again, and Aaron ran his finger down a page of American Gardener’s Assistant. Where had he left off?
Owen’s laughter drifted through the open window, and Aaron couldn’t help but look up. Max tossed the ball over Mercy’s head as she pretended to be unable to catch it. Owen dove for the ball and ran when Mercy chased after him.
They’d been playing in the flower garden for nearly half an hour, while Patricia watched from a bench.
Robert was staring out the window too and sighed heavily. Max had finished his work in thirty minutes, though the material was supposed to have kept him busy for an hour.
Aaron cleared his throat, and Robert gave him a side look before getting back to work. He couldn’t exactly be miffed at Robert’s inattention, since he himself had read the same paragraph three times already.
“Excuse me.” Mrs. Lowe’s musical voice sounded from the doorway.
He turned with a smile but lost it at the sight of Jimmy’s angry mug as he walked into the room in front of Lydia, who was carrying Isabelle on her hip. The little girl’s face was pressed against her mother’s neck. Her dark little ringlets obscured her expression from view, but they didn’t muffle her sniffles.
“What can I do for you?” Though he was asking Lydia, he pinned Jimmy with a warning glare.
“Jimmy was sent inside because he mouthed off to Mrs. McClain and was overly rough with Owen. But instead of going to his room, I found him snooping in mine, so I took him to the nursery. Frankly, I don’t know what to do with a boy who pinches a toddler hard enough to bruise her because she wouldn’t stop handing him toys.” She lifted her hand but let it fall limply. “I don’t want to disturb Robert’s instruction, but Jimmy can’t stay with me.”
It seemed a shame to take Mercy away from Owen because of Jimmy’s behavior. “I’ll take him.” He tilted his head toward the captain’s chair, and Jimmy obeyed the silent command by throwing himself onto the seat, turning his back to the room.
“Thank you.” Lydia sighed and turned to leave.
Isabelle peeped over her mother’s shoulder just enough to look at Aaron, her big brown eyes glistening with leftover tears.
He swallowed against the anger welling up in him over a thirteen-year-old causing physical pain to someone so young. If he couldn’t help the desire to tear into Jimmy over this, why had the adults in his life allowed him to get away with hurting Mercy and Fred and all the others he’d once targeted? They might not have been as young as Isabelle, but they’d been just as vulnerable.
Robert huffed and shook his head at Jimmy. “Hurting little girls makes you so scary.”
Jimmy pinned a glare on him.
Aaron poked Robert in the arm. “Worry about yourself, please.”
Jimmy closed his eyes as if settling in for a nap.
He really couldn’t just let the boy get by without a reprimand after hurting Isabelle—he didn’t deserve the luxury of a snooze. Aaron got up and tapped him on the shoulder.
Jimmy opened an eye.
“What are you getting out of behaving this way?”
“It’s because he’s mean and spiteful.”
“That’s enough, Robert.” Seemed no matter where Jimmy went, he caused problems, even sitting here in self-important silence.
Jimmy’s shrug was unconcerned. “She was annoying me, and it shut her up.”
“Making her cry is hardly making her quiet
.” He pushed Jimmy’s legs off the arm of the captain’s chair. “Sit on the expensive furniture properly.”
Aaron pulled over his desk chair and sat in front of the boy, who’d at least left his feet on the floor, though he wasn’t exactly sitting properly. “You can’t go pushing people around if respect is what you want. Fear’s a type of respect, sure. It’s the kind I went after at your age too. It’s easier to get, but it doesn’t satisfy. What do you really want?” Maybe Jimmy wanted to be kicked out of the orphanage. Nicholas had mentioned he was looking for somewhere else for Jimmy to live after catching him frightening Isabelle into handing over her piggy bank. Once Lydia told Nicholas about the pinching, he’d likely double his efforts to find Jimmy a new home.
Jimmy only closed his eyes and settled back into his chair.
Would anything he’d say get through that boy’s thick skull?
Robert’s chair creaked. “All you have to do to earn my respect is finish my math work.” He eyed Jimmy as if trying to convince him to do it.
Aaron shook his head but couldn’t help the chuckle. “Not going to happen. Finish.”
Robert sighed. “I don’t know why you’re making me do so much work when school’s almost out.”
“Because it’ll help you be prepared for next year.”
“I already told you I’m not going back to school.”
“Then it’ll help prepare you for life.”
Robert gave him a look he saw more often on Jimmy’s face than either of the Milligan brothers’, but Aaron kept his mouth shut and raised his brows.
Robert sighed and turned back to the desk, but a shout from outside drew Robert’s attention instead.
Maybe he should shut the window. If the room was quiet, Robert would finish sooner and leave him to lecture Jimmy without an audience to bicker with. That’s all Jimmy seemed to do lately—pick fights until everyone stayed clear of him.
Aaron crossed over to the window and pushed the sash down.
Owen dodged Max, then threw the ball at Mercy’s back. She jumped when it hit her and turned around to chase him with a huge smile on her face.
His heart clenched. He’d never seen her smile like that before.
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