Naomi Rawlings - Sanctuary for a Lady

“Come on, now. Up with you.” He tapped the pig with his boot. She snorted, then closed her eyes.

Two stubborn females. Just his luck. “I’ve no mind to put up with you today. Out with you.” He poked her with the handle end of his fork. The swine squealed and rolled over.

Michel sighed and rubbed his temple. First the girl, then the sow, what would come next? Maybe the roof on the stable would collapse, or the dam on the lower field would break. A perfect ending to his day.

Images of the girl flooded his mind anew. The tears that glistened in her eyes, the raise of her chin and set of her shoulders when she told him she had to leave, the pain that lanced her features when she strained her arm. The look of triumph on her face when she left the bed.

She was determined, if nothing else. But only a featherbrained child would expect to walk after lying incoherent for over a fortnight.

Michel raked his hand through his hair, knocking his hat into the straw.

Hopefully she’d settle in a bit, because she’d be in that bed awhile before she could visit her aunt.

In Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.

His grip on the pitchfork tightened. He wasn’t a half-wit. She was headed to England, sure as the sun would set. Not that it was any concern of his.

With nothing left to clean but where the sow lay, he shoved the fork into the straw beside the beast’s belly. Squalling and grunting, she rolled to her feet, baring her teeth and stomping the straw as though she would charge.

He growled in frustration. How much could a man endure of a day? Not intending to get bitten, he pushed his pitchfork into the ground near the gate and trudged away from the stable. He should finish mucking the stalls and fix the plow wheel. The stable roof needed patching as well as the roof over the bedchamber. He must get to town and buy that ox. And he had to check the sandbags on the lower field before the rains came and flooded the tiresome parcel of land.

He huffed a breath. The responsibilities of the farm pressed down upon him as they did every spring since his father died and his brother, Jean Paul, left. At any given moment, he had two weeks of work to finish and days to do it.

Yet he stormed past all the places needing his attention and opened the door to his workshop, the small familiar building the same as he had left it yesterday. The scent of lumber, instantly calming, wrapped around him. He inhaled deeply and moved to the center of his workspace, his eyes seeing nothing but the chest of drawers he’d spent the past six months making.

He wiped his hand on a rag and trailed his finger up the side of the piece. The elaborate sculpting on the posts contrasted with the straight lines and gentle curves of the wood, and the design of acorns and oak leaves he’d carved twisted and curled daintily against the deep hue of the walnut. This chest of drawers would match the design on his mother’s bed. A bedroom set, of sorts. He need only sculpt along the top edge of the dresser. Another week and it would be finished.

Sooner, if that impatient girl drove him to the shop every day.

He reached for his chisel, squeezed the familiar wooden handle, then rolled his shoulders. Too tense. He let the chisel fall to his workbench. He’d gouge through the middle of an acorn if he carved now.

Two strips of walnut lay on the floor beyond the dresser, a reminder of the wood he’d used to set the girl’s arm. A walnut splint. Who had that?

She’d uttered nary a comment about how smooth he’d sanded the wood so no sliver would pierce her porcelain skin.

Maybe he should have left her arm broken.

Guilt swamped him at the thought. He raised his eyes to heaven. “Oui, Father, mayhap she doesn’t deserve a broken arm. But she could still say thank-you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. He needed to create, to saw, to build. Something—anything. Drying wood rested at the back of his shop, an odd assortment of anything he could collect. He blew out a breath. He’d have to start a new piece. But what?

He didn’t need another bed frame. Or another dresser.

Mayhap a table and chairs? He didn’t need those, either, but perhaps Leopold would sell a dining set in his store.

Michel picked up a single piece of richly burled maple and ran it through his hands as he studied his wood selection. He didn’t have enough walnut to work with. He could buy more, if only the farm didn’t need an ox. So the table would be oak. He walked to the back, hefted a long plank and brought it to his workbench.

Frustration melted with each push and tug of saw against wood. The tension slipped from his shoulders and neck as he planed the wood with long, smooth motions that shaved the legs into equal widths. Fragrant, curly strips of oak floated down and covered the floor as he toiled. He inhaled the aroma, heard the faint crunch of the shavings underfoot, felt the rough wood beneath his palm.

This was all a man needed to be happy.

Betwixt the rasps of his block planer, footsteps echoed on the stone walkway. Mère. With the girl and the sow, he’d forgotten his mother. Surely she hadn’t been turning over the garden all this time. He stopped the calming movements and dropped his planer with a thunk onto the workbench before heading to the door. He deserved a day in the stocks for forgetting his own mother.

“In here, Ma Mère.”

“There you are, Michel.”

She wandered over to him, carting a burlap sack behind her.

A lump of fear rose in his throat. “You went to town? You can’t up and head to Abbeville. I’ve told you, there are dangerous men about.”

She hauled her sack to the workbench. “I thought you’d be in the stable.”

So had he. But that didn’t change that she’d left despite his warnings.

He grasped her wrist. “Ma Mère, look at me. You cannot go off by yourself. Not into town, not into the woods, not anywhere until we know who hurt the girl.”

Eyes vacant and dull as two glass marbles stared back at him. She was having another bad day, which at least explained her wandering off.

“It’s Monday. I go to town on Monday. You muck the stalls. Did you get the stalls mucked? It’s Monday.”

Unable to stop himself, he pulled her to his chest and held her head over his heart, which beat at twice its normal pace. “I’ve some stalls yet to clean.”

She wiggled under his hold. “Have you looked at the bottom field?” Her voice muffled against his chest. “The wheat’s not flooded?”

He released her, looked at the woman who’d raised him and tucked a stray tuft of graying hair back into her bun. “It’s still Germinal.”

Her brow wrinkled in more confusion, and he ran a hand through his hair. What had the revolutionary government been thinking to give France a new calendar with ten days in a week and different names for the months and years? He could barely remember the new names or keep track of the day. Was it any wonder his mother got mixed up?

“April, Ma Mère. It’s the beginning of April. We’ve not planted yet, and we’ve not had much rain.”

“Oh.”

“It’s all right. Everyone gets befuddled at times.”

She glanced around the shop, her eyes resting on the freshly cut lumber in front of them. “More wood for the chest of drawers?”

How could she forget the month but remember what piece he worked on? “This is for a table.”

“You’re starting a new piece?”

“That’s what happens when I finish one.”

“You’ve a buyer for the finished one?”

He looked at the dresser. Not even close. “Mayhap.”

Hope, like wildflowers blooming in a field, sprang into her eyes. “And this table, you’ll be able to sell that, too?”

“Aye.” Right after the bottom field stopped flooding and the animals started mucking their own stalls.