Beauty and the Blacksmith (Spindle Cove #3.5)(3)

After tethering his horse on the village green, he made his way through the familiar red-painted door of the Bull and Blossom. He hunkered down on a stool in the nearly empty tavern, stacking his fists on the bar.

“Be right with you, Mr. Dawes,” the serving girl sang out to him from the kitchen.

“Take your time,” he answered.

He had all night. No one was waiting for him. No one.

He lowered his head and banged his brow against the anvil of his stacked fists. Coarse. Mutton-brained. Lout.

“Dawes, you need a woman.”

Aaron’s head whipped up. “What?”

Fosbury, the tavern keeper, plunked a tankard of ale on the counter. “I hate to say it. Unhappy bachelors are better for my profits. But you need a woman.”

“Tonight, a woman is not what I need.” He took a long draught of ale.

“She came around the forge today, didn’t she?”

Aaron lifted the tankard for another sip. “Who did?”

“Miss Highwood.”

Aaron choked on his ale.

“It’s no secret.” Fosbury wiped down the counter. “Ever since she showed up in this village, you’ve had eyes for her. Not surprising. You’re a man in your prime, and she’s the prettiest thing to grace Spindle Cove in some time.”

Aaron scrubbed his face with both hands. Curse him, Fosbury had too many things right.

From the first sight of her, he’d been utterly smitten. He had a weakness for finely wrought things, and by God, Diana Highwood was just so . . . perfect. In any other village, men might sit on these barstools and debate which woman deserved the honor of most comely in town. In this tavern, that debate would begin and end over a single sip of ale. Diana Highwood took the honors, without question. She had the face of an angel. Delicate and beautiful.

But though her fair looks might have caught his eye, other qualities had snared his heart.

It had all started the night they’d spent struggling to save Finn Bright’s life. The youth had lost his foot in an explosion, and he’d been brought to the forge for surgery. Miss Highwood wasn’t a healer or a nurse, but she’d insisted on staying to help. Bringing water, mopping blood, dabbing the sweat of delirium from Finn’s brow.

That was the night Aaron had learned the truth of Diana Highwood. That her delicacy was only skin deep—but the beauty went all the way through.

The longer she lived in this village, the more he found in her to admire. She wasn’t only beautiful; she was brave as well. Then determined, intelligent, charitable. By now, she was some sort of paragon in his mind, and Aaron worried that long after she left, he’d be comparing every woman he ever met to her.

And they’d all fall short.

He stretched his hand, regarding it in the dim light. The pad of his thumb still burned where he’d brushed a lock of hair from her neck. It felt singed, cinder-kissed. He pressed it against the cool tankard, but it still throbbed, hot and achy.

Damn, he was hot and achy everywhere. He’d let this attraction get away from him, and now she was deep under his skin. In his blood, it seemed.

“She’s not for you,” Fosbury said.

“I know it. I know it well.” And if he’d been harboring any other thoughts, her frantic escape today would have driven them out of his head.

“She’s not the only woman in this village.”

“I know that, too. It’s just . . . so long as she’s living here, I can’t seem to take an interest in anyone else.”

Fosbury leaned close over the counter and lowered his voice. “The answer could be right under your nose. You don’t have to look far.”

The tavern keeper tilted his head in the direction of the serving girl, who’d emerged from the kitchen with a rag to wipe the tables clean. She cast a friendly smile in Aaron’s direction, and he returned the greeting with a nod.

When she was out of earshot, Aaron muttered, “You want me to court Pauline Simms?”

“She’d make you a good wife. Hardworking, clever with sums. She’s grown up well, too.” Fosbury rapped the countertop with his knuckles, then drifted away. “Think about it.”

Under the guise of stretching his neck, Aaron had another look at the girl.

He thought about it.

Fosbury was right. Pauline Simms was the sort of woman he ought to set his sights on. She was one of his kind. Working class, the daughter of a farmer. As Fosbury said, she was quick with her hands and her wits. She’d be a help to any man with a trade. Admittedly, she had a few rough edges, but nothing some care and time wouldn’t smooth.

As he watched, she tipped over a decorative plate, muttering, “Bollocks.”

He smiled. But even though they were only four years apart in age, and even though she’d long grown into a woman—a pretty one, at that—Aaron couldn’t look at Pauline Simms without seeing the gap-toothed, freckled girl who’d grown up a year behind his own sister.

That was the problem with a village this small. Every available woman felt like a sister to him. Or maybe it was his own circumstances that had permanently cast him in the big-brother role.

When his father had died ten years ago, slumped over the anvil from a heart attack, it didn’t matter that Aaron was barely seventeen. He’d needed to become the man of the family, and quick. He’d taken over the forge, working hard to support his mother and sisters.