Beauty and the Blacksmith(8)

Diana looked down at her copy with URSULA labeled at the top. “Really, I didn’t think this was settled. Why am I playing Ursula?”

Charlotte said, “It’s the easiest role in the play, I promise you. The rest of us will be running about screaming and pleading for our lives, and you just stand there and look pure.”

Diana lifted a brow. Pure? Would they still find her the ideal person for this role if they knew she’d been kissing Mr. Dawes in the vicar’s curricle yesterday?

No, not kissing Mr. Dawes. Kissing Aaron.

Aaron, Aaron, Aaron.

“Diana.”

She shook herself. “I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s your line.”

She scanned the first page and found her part, then read aloud in an even voice. “Oh, wreck and woe. My father hath betrothed me to the son of a heathen king. I should sooner die than be so defiled.”

“Do speak up, Diana,” her mother chided from across the room. “No one can hear you. Imagine Lord Drewe is standing just offstage, waiting for his cue.”

“And put emotion into it,” Charlotte added. She stood and flung one arm to the side, pressing the other wrist to her brow. “Oh, wreck and WOE. I should sooner DIE.”

Diana sighed. “I don’t think I possess the dramatic talent for this.”

“Of course you do.”

“Well, perhaps I just don’t feel equal to it today.”

“Are you ill?” Mama asked sharply.

Diana paused. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t hide behind this excuse any longer. But she didn’t want to be sitting here in the rooming house when she could be with Aaron.

Kissing Aaron. Touching Aaron. Embracing Aaron and feeling surrounded by his big, strong arms.

She had no heart to play the martyred virgin right now.

“I knew it,” Mama wailed. “Oh, I knew that sun would do you an ill turn. No more rehearsal for you today. Go straight upstairs and rest. I will not have you falling ill when it’s time for our outing to Ambervale. Do you have any more of that infusion from Lady Rycliff?”

“I’m sure I don’t need an infusion, Mama. But perhaps I will go.” She turned to Miss Bertram. “Would you be so kind as to read my part for today?”

Miss Bertram’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “Oh, I . . . I don’t know.”

“I think you would make a marvelous Ursula. And you would be doing me a great favor.”

The girl took the booklet from Diana’s hand, smiling shyly. “Well, Mr. Evermoore does love my reading voice.”

“I’m sure he does.”

Diana tried to soothe her conscience as she left the room. She hadn’t lied. Mama had merely assumed, wrongly, that she felt ill. Just like she assumed, wrongly, that Diana would follow her instructions to go upstairs and rest.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she gathered her cloak and slipped out the rear door.

As she neared the smithy, a giddy flutter rose in her chest. No horses or wagons in the front meant she’d likely caught him alone. A sheen of perspiration rose on her brow even before she entered the steamy, spark-filled forge.

She entered to find Aaron not pounding at the anvil but hunched over a bit of fine metalwork at his worktable.

“Good morning,” she said, swaying her skirts a bit.

He looked up only briefly and gave her a curt “Good morning” before returning his concentration to his task. “Sorry you’ve caught me in a busy moment. I can’t leave this, or it will cool unfinished.”

“Of course. Should I come back another time?”

A furrow formed in his heavy brow. “No, don’t go. Unless you want to.”

“I’d like to stay.” She settled on her usual stool. “If I won’t be troubling you.”

Now he looked up, and his dark eyes caught hers. “You could never be any kind of trouble.”

Never mind the roaring forge, that look sent heat rushing through her. Oh, dear. And here she was, caught without her fan.

He returned to his labor, and she sat quiet and still. She did love watching him at his work. This was different from his display of brawn and sweat she’d admired the other day. When he worked with fine metal, all that power was pushed through a narrow funnel of concentration.

The result was passion. He had an artist’s passion for his creations. She touched the quatrefoil pendant in her pocket.

“There.”

He set the piece aside and wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. He left a black smudge of soot on his temple, and she found it strangely enticing. A mark of that passion, emblazoned on his skin. It spoke of virility in a primal way.

“What are you making?” she asked.

He showed her a silver bracelet, formed of two twining vines. “It’s a special order for a jeweler in Hastings.”

“You’ve been selling your work in Hastings?”

He nodded. “Rye and Eastbourne, too. I’m hoping to expand to Brighton soon.”

“And London after that?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. But there’s only one of me. There’s a limit to how much I can do on my own.”

“Have you thought about taking on an apprentice?”

“It’s not working the forge that I need help with, so much as everything else. Fosbury says what I really need is a wi—”

He cut off the word, but Diana completed it in her mind.

What I really need is a wife.

It made sense. Marriage was a partnership in any social class. Among gentry, the lady’s contribution was a dowry or well-placed connections. As a craftsman, Aaron would do well to marry a woman with practical skills to help him manage his household and his business.

Skills women like Diana didn’t possess.

They traded awkward glances, and they both seemed to be thinking the same thing. What were they doing here? He wasn’t the kind of suitor her mother would accept, and she couldn’t be the wife he needed. If marriage was impossible, they were only flirting with heartbreak and scandal.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

We have something, he’d said yesterday, and he was right. Diana wasn’t ready to give up on it yet.

He went back to his work, raking the fire and pumping the bellows that fueled the forge. “Much as I’d like to take the day off and spend it with you, I have to finish this piece. I’ve promised to deliver it tomorrow.”

“I understand. Is there any way I can help?”

“That’s kind of you to offer, but I’m not going to have you hauling wood and water.”

“Why not? I helped with such things the night Finn was hurt.”

“Aye, but that was an emergency. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied, I never would have allowed it.”

“If you’d tried to send me away, I wouldn’t have listened.” She had a tenacious streak. There had to be something she could do. “Have you eaten your noon meal?”

He shook his head.

“Then that’s what I’ll do. While you finish that piece, I’ll prepare a meal. Then we’ll sit down to eat and have time to talk, but I won’t feel I’ve distracted you from your work.”

He looked uncertain.

“Aaron, please. Let me do this. You did say you’d trust that I know my own mind.”

“So I did.” He blew out his breath and wiped his hands on a rag. “Very well, then.”

He turned to the hearth and scooped some red-hot embers with a tiny shovel, then handed the shovel out to her.

She moved to take it, though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it next.

“For the fire,” he explained.

“Yes, of course.” Of course. How could anyone cook without a fire?

“One of the fishermen brought me something fresh from the catch this morning, and there’s fresh butter and cream, as well. Potatoes and onions in the bin. Poke about the cabinets, and I’m sure you’ll find whatever else you need.”

“I could do with a kiss. Will I find one of those in the cabinets?”

“That I have right here.” He tilted his head and gave her a brief, yet exhilarating, kiss.

She clutched the scoop of glowing coals. “I’ll be just fine, you’ll see. Now back to work with you.”

She turned and headed toward the rear door of the forge. Beyond it, a narrow yard separated the smithy from his cottage.

“Diana?”

At the sound of her Christian name spoken in that intimate, low baritone, a thrill went through her. She nearly spilled the coals. “Yes?”

“If you need anything, you will ask?”

“Oh, of course I will,” she assured him. “Don’t look so worried. It’s not as though I’ve never done this before.”

Diana had never done this before.