“I’m working,” she said.
Stephen noticed Mr. Pike hunched over something and decided to cut his ride short. He brought the animal in through the east gate for once, led it past the stable boy with a pat.
When he arrived closer, what he saw instead was his wife on her knees in the bed behind the south hedge, her hair pinned out of her way by war rather than ornament, her hands in the ground, the hem of her dress already dark with wet. Mr. Pike had set boards, and she had avoided them to get closer to the work.
He stopped, and the weather seemed to have stopped with him. Under the white sky, he took a closer look at what she was doing and then found himself getting angry immediately.
He walked straight to her.
“Up,” it was not a request in the slightest.
Maria fitted the last of the small box into the hole and pressed the earth around it with her bare fingers. “I am busy, Your Grace.”
“It’s too cold. Stand up,” he said to her in an annoyed tone.
“It is cold,” she agreed. “Which is why the holes stay holes. If we are quick, the frost will hold the shape and we can mulch before it sulks.”
“Up,” he said again. “Now.”
She put the trowel down and looked at him. Her cheeks were bright with cold; her lips were the wrong color; her eyes were the correct kind of alive. “If you have come to scold me for the money…”
“I don’t care about the money.”
She blinked, once. “I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t care about the money,” he said and then held out his hand. “Your gloves. Where are they?”
“They’re in my pocket,” she shrugged out a response. It infuriated Stephen just how cavalier she seemed to be about the entire thing.
“And why are they not on your hands?”
“I need to feel the roots,” she replied as though it was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
It was moments like this that he came to the realization that the two of them approached and looked at life so differently.
“You need to feel your fingers,” he snapped. “Name them, quickly.”
“What?” Her brows drew together. “You are asking me to name my fingers?”
“Name them,” he repeated, furious. “If you can’t name them in order, you can’t feel them, and you’re done.”
She scowled at him, then at her hand. “Thumb. First. Middle. Fourth. Little.” She held his gaze. “Satisfied?”
“No.” He caught her hand anyway. The skin across her knuckles was roughened and pale; the color would return like needles. Heresisted the urge to rub them to make them warm again. “Get inside, it is for your own good.”
“No,” she replied stubbornly.
“Maria, I am not requesting. You must go inside.”
“Stephen, I am not arguing with you about this. I am fine here.”
“You will not kneel on ice to prove that you can plant a hedge,” he said.
“It is a winter bed,” she had the gall to correct him. “Not a hedge.”
“Inside,” he said through his teeth. “Why are you not listening to me?”
“I am not fragile,” Maria replied. “It would be useful for you to not look at me like that.”