“What happened?” she asked.

  He turned awkwardly, side-stepping around until he faced her. He looked as though he was attempting to hide his injury from her — for an injury of some sort it clearly was — even though his pallor had descended to a decidedly peaky state.

  “It is—” He was interrupted by his own reaction to another step on the injured leg, a grunt taking the place of the swears now that he knew Mary was near enough to hear. “It is a stone,” he continued, his tongue slicing out the words with the precision of a knife blade. “In my hoof.”

  “Oh… oh!” She looked down at his hoof, barely touching the ground as he tried to shift his weight again. “What should I do?”

  He stopped again. A sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead, the ends of his hair turning dark as they adhered themselves to his skin. At his sides, he tightened and relaxed his fists over and again, pumping like little valves of discomfort. “Nothing. There is nothing—”

  “Nonsense.” She moved nearer to him. Not close enough to touch him, but enough to show that she was there. “Tell me what to do.”

  His teeth ground against the pain. “I cannot ask you to… to…”

  “You do not have to ask.” She still held out her hand, her fingertips stained faintly violet from the blueberry juice. “I am here, and I am offering my help. Now, please tell me what to do.”

  It seemed simple enough, in theory. She merely had to pick the stone out from the sole of his hoof. In her bag, she had a small pair of sewing scissors. She fetched them, tested the flimsy weight of them in her hand, and wished their shining blades would confer some measure of confidence onto her for what she was about to do.

  Mr. Beechum looked at her as though he would’ve wanted anyone else but her to help him. “You will have to…” He glanced away and back again, his jaw so tense it could have served as a cornerstone for one of Egypt’s pyramids. “You will have to stand behind me and… and hold my leg.”

  “Oh. Like…?” She reached towards the leg, but he shied away from her, his steps restless on the forest floor.

  “Not like that!” he snapped.

  “Then how?”

  “Well, have you ever watched someone fit a horse with shoes?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve not, no.”

  He rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead. “It will be easier if you… if you stand behind me and brace my leg between yours. I will be less likely to kick you that way.”

  “Kick me?” That was Mary’s turn to take a step back.

  He sighed. “I cannot guarantee that I will not.”

  “Perhaps you could…” She waved her hands a bit. “Lie down?”

  “No, no.” His injured hoof barely touched the ground again, and the leg twitched as though it had been burned. “It hurts too much.”

  “Right. Of course.” She approached him again, her steps careful, as though she was afraid of startling him. He danced a bit — either from anxiety or pain, she wasn’t sure — and finally lifted up his rear leg, but as soon as her fingers came near him, he gave a small kick and pranced away.

  “Now, just…” She tried again, turning around as he raised his leg for her a second time. She grasped his ankle before he could drop it again, hiking up her skirts as she brought his hoof up between her legs, bracing him with her knees.

  “Hold still,” she told him. Her palms had slickened with sweat. She didn’t want to hurt him, and nor could she abide the thought of failing to remove the stone or somehow worsening the injury. The sheer size and solidity of him at her back startled her, and she had not realized until that moment just how much larger he was in comparison to her, how easily he could harm her if either of them took one step wrong. “Hold still,” she repeated. She turned up the hoof and spotted the rock — an awful, sharp thing, all gray and striped with white — buried in his sole. “Please.”

  He shifted again, but she held her balance, aided by a small yelp and a brief swear of her own. It was an ungainly position, but she bent over him, the scissors in her right hand, her eyes and thoughts debating over the best way to go about this.

  “Now, I cannot promise this won’t hurt,” she warned him in advance.

  “I doubt it could hurt worse than it already does.”

  She blew out a breath, twitching a tendril of hair from her cheek. “I’d rather you not tempt fate in such a way. Especially when I am holding something incredibly pointy so close to you.”

  “Is that a threat?” he huffed out on an attempted laugh, though it rapidly deflated into a groan.

  “Take it however you like,” she said, and dug her heels into the ground.

  And then she set to work. It was not hard, once broken down into the basics of written explanation. She simply had to use the end of the scissor’s closed blades to pry the stone out of its place. But her heart chose that moment to skip more than a few beats, and the sight of the stone itself and her responsibility towards seeing its extraction caused a brief wave of giddiness to wash over her.

  “If only my mother could see me now,” she whispered, and dug the scissors as far beneath the edge of the stone as she could. Out it popped, like prying a fine gemstone from its setting. (Not that she had ever done such a thing, but she imagined it would be an easy task if she set her mind to it.)

  A little gasp of astonishment tumbled from her mouth at the fact it was done so swiftly and without apparent complications. Mr. Beechum set down his hoof and allowed his weight to shift tentatively onto that leg. Mary turned around and watched him take a few steps. He was still wincing but not as severely as before.

  “Does it hurt?” she ventured to ask.

  He tipped his head from side to side. “It is tender, but…No, nothing like it was.” The color had already made a return to his cheeks. A few more steps — still limping slightly, but only noticeable to Mary because she had spent an inordinate amount of time watching him throughout the day — and he turned himself around to face her.

  He breathed, first of all. A heavy inhalation that shuddered through him with the vehemence of a small earthquake. “Thank you.”

  All of a sudden she found it was difficult to meet his gaze. Ducking her chin, she performed a quick bob of a curtsy, meant to lend a touch of humor to the situation, but instead only made her more aware of the odd floating quality to her limbs now that the fear of his injury had begun to wear away. “I was glad to help. I mean, not glad you were hurt in the first place and in need of my assistance, but…” She looked down at her hands, stretching out her fingers as a tingling spread through them. Her fingers were not particularly long and elegant, and she had a tendency to bite her nails down to the quick when she was nervous. Or hungry. Or in need of something to do.

  But she had helped someone with those inelegant digits, and he was sincerely thankful for it. That knowledge alone allowed a lightness to fill her belly, like a froth of bubbles threatening to pull her upwards onto the balls of her feet and send her floating away into the air. “Is there anything else you need?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, Mary looked up. Mr. Beechum’s attention was fixed on her, his gaze startlingly intense. The rest of him was all creases and unkemptness. His hair was untidy and sticking up in some places, while his shirt bore perspiration stains from the heat of the day and the strain of the stone in his hoof. Bedraggled. That was the first word that came to her mind. And yet his eyes — that deep blue with rings of hazel around the pupil — held her with unerring precision. “We should…” he said, and faltered into silence.

  Mary nodded, as though his incomplete thought had been a full statement, clearly spoken. “I found some blueberries.” The words felt absurd and out of place as soon as she said them, but it was either that or continue to say nothing while also continuing to stare earnestly at Mr. Beechum in return.

  “Blueberries?”

  She nodded again, as though she couldn’t think of what else to do with herself. “They’re not all fully ripe yet, but if you’d like some?”

  It meant taking more time, she realized. It meant admitting that they needed to stop and rest and perhaps even accept that the day would soon be at an end and they had yet to find their way out of these infernal woods. And it seemed to mean something a bit more than that, but Mary couldn’t yet quite parse through the rest of it.

  “I would, yes.” Mr. Beechum ran the back of his hand across his brow. “Thank you.”

  It was a meager feast. They shared the berries she’d gathered along with a few more she was able to glean from the bushes, and accompanied that with several handfuls of water from the brook. The sun showed a marked descent as they finished their puny repast, and Mary looked up at the sky, her gaze narrowing on the streaks of clouds marching across the firmament.

  “It will be dark soon,” she said, musing out loud.

  And that seemed to be the final drop of ink placing a period at the end of their unspoken decision. Neither of them were inclined to start a fire, though Mary boasted that she could if they truly wished to have one.

  “I would not doubt your incendiary skills for anything,” Mr. Beechum remarked, purposely looking away from her as he said it.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, I did mistake you for a witch upon our first meeting,” he reminded her.

  She sat up taller on her fallen tree, her ankles crossed primly beneath her. “A fact I will never forget and for which I have yet to forgive you.” But she smiled to herself, and she glanced again at Mr. Beechum, something tightening in her abdomen as she watched him.

  And so, without a fire, without any food to cook, and with no reason to worry they would freeze to death under a cloudy sky in the first weeks of summer, the only task left before them was to find a place that might offer a reasonable amount of comfort for the night ahead. A patch of ground nestled between several elm trees showed promise, as it was mostly devoid of too many rocks or underbrush, or any plants displaying either thorns or the ability to leave them with a rash by morning.

  Just as the sun dipped its lower edge below the horizon, Mary settled at the edge of the brook, removed her boots and stockings, and dipped her feet into the cool water. They would no doubt hurt even worse in the morning, but for the moment she could pretend they would feel fine again after only a few minutes submerged, her toes wiggling against the slick rocks and silt that made up the brook’s bottom. Behind her, she heard Mr. Beechum doing something that involved the breaking of branches and the snapping of twigs, along with various grunts and even a few more expletives as he probably believed her too far away to hear them.

  But they were sounds that made her feel… comfortable. At home, with her mother and her sisters and even her father — when he deigned to involve himself in affairs of a more domestic nature — their mere presence beneath the same roof as her had always left her feeling tense, as though every moment of every day was a careful walk on a path constructed out of translucent porcelain. Every movement she made, each word from her mouth was weighed and measured and set against some invisible standard it always seemed impossible to attain. But whether it was the woods or Mr. Beechum’s presence or a combination of the two, at that moment, at the end of a long and exhausting day, she felt more like herself than she had in quite some time.

  Plucking up her stockings and boots — both of which she was determined to throw into the first fireplace she came across once they found their way out of the woods, just so she would never have to inflict them on herself again — she walked barefoot back to where Mr. Beechum was putting the finishing touches on…

  Well, it was a roof of some sort.

  During her absence, and despite her advice to him to rest and recuperate for the remainder of the evening, he had constructed a slanted shelter for them out of branches and layers of bracken and ferns he’d spread overtop. It looked extraordinarily solid, considering how little time he’d spent at it and what materials were available.

  “Oh, that’s lovely.”

  Mr. Beechum startled at her return. Apparently her steps were considerably softer without her boots. “I made it,” he said lamely, then crinkled his brow in frustration. For who else could have been responsible for its creation? “For you, I mean. In case it rains overnight. It should at least keep out the worst of the wet.”

  “And where will you sleep?”

  He waved a hand towards a gentle embankment where the slow rise of the ground itself would provide some protection, at least if a strong wind swept through. “Somewhere, thereabouts.” He dropped his arm back to his side. “I will be fine, Miss Clegg.”

  “You do not have to suffer on my account.” She tossed her boots into the corner of the shelter, beside where he had already placed her bag. “There is room enough for both of us.”

  His eyes widened and his tail twitched behind him. It was a subtle change, but she did not miss it. “It would not be right.”

  “Why not?” And then it dawned on her, just as her tongue touched the roof of her mouth for that final “t”. “Oh, I see. You're trying to be gallant, aren’t you?” She shook her head. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve already spent the entirety of the day in each other’s company. I’ve not worn my bonnet for hours, I cannot remember where I set my gloves,” she added, holding up her bare hands. “And you’ve already seen my feet.” A quick hoist of her damp hem showed off her pale ankles and calves. “As for you, I’ve already—” Her gaze dropped down to his rear leg, his weight resting on it comfortably, she noticed. “Well.”

  “I still do not think—”

  “I will feel better,” she said quickly, before she could think over it and keep silent. “If you’re close.”

  Mary left it up to him after that. She turned away and crawled into the shelter, keeping herself to one side in case he decided to join her. The shelter wasn’t large enough for him to fit entirely beneath it, but she thought if he could at least duck his head inside, then it would allow him to feel as though he wasn’t being forced to sleep fully outdoors solely for her sake. Or for the sake of her reputation. (And what did she care for that, if all it did was make her marriageable in the eyes of someone like Eustace Haverstick?)

  She sat with her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped around her legs. Mr. Beechum made a point of remaining outside, circling their makeshift campsite for another minute like an agitated cat before he finally settled down on the ground, lowering himself with infinitely greater amounts of grace than Mary had managed.

  “So…” she began, her hands dancing over a few leaves she picked up and twirled between finger and thumb. “How old are you?” It was the first question to pop into her mind, and without her mother there to act as a filter, she asked it without a single qualm tightening in her gut.

  At first, she feared he would not wish to speak to her in the waning daylight, wanting to keep both space and silence as a barrier between them. But his hesitation lasted less than a minute, and he said — accompanied by a small sigh — “I am twenty-nine.”

  She smiled, if only because his tone had returned to that brittle exasperation he had exhibited earlier in the day. “And you said that you live with your brother? Near Sheffield?”

  His right eyebrow quirked at that, a small prick of astonishment that she had remembered such a detail. “Yes, he’s in banking, actually. He has done rather well for himself, if I can say that without it sounding like boasting.”

  “It sounds like you are proud of him.”

  “I am,” he said, and nodded for good measure. “He has taken on a great deal of responsibility since… since our father died.”

  “Oh.” She rested her chin on her knees. “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It was ten years ago.”

  “But that shouldn’t mean you no longer feel the loss, should it? I had a cat, Mrs. Fluffyfoot, and—”

  “Mrs. Fluffyfoot?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “I was three years old when I named her. I thought I was being very clever. And how dare you impugn my naming abilities.”

  “I weep for your future children,” he said, in a low voice that he must have fully intended for her to hear.

  “Anyway,” she pressed on. “I had Mrs. Fluffyfoot for fifteen years. She was… a horrible cat. She was always getting herself caught on the tops of doors, and do you know what they say about cats always landing on their feet?” Mary shook her head. “Flat on her back, every time. Like a sack of potatoes. With claws. But even though it’s been three years since she died, I still miss her terribly. She was a mess, but she was my mess. Or I was hers, quite possibly.” She held out her hands in front of her, palms forward. “Not that I am attempting to compare your father to my dead pet, I simply mean…”

  “I know, Miss Clegg.” A few more seconds passed before he spoke again. “You are right,” he said, and his tail twitched behind him on the ground. “I still miss him. Every day.”

  Mary sensed a change in him as the daylight waned and the shadows spread into night, a brief lowering of his defenses. But she was afraid to take advantage of that opening, and so instead she said, “Tell me about your work for the railroad. What exactly do you do?”

  And he did tell her. Slowly, her continued questions drawing the answers from him as though she was spinning wool into yarn. He told her about his brother’s work at the bank, about loans and finances, about how he had considered stepping into that world but would have only been doing it because he thought it was what his family wanted of him.

  “But I enjoy surveying,” he said quietly. “I prefer it to being inside all day, dealing with gentlemen who believe we should lend them thousands of pounds simply because they have a name or a bloodline or the hope of a marriage with someone of the same.”

  “Do you think you will ever tire of it? Looking for the best place to lay a track between rivers and mountains and sheep?”

  “I might.” He shrugged. “And if I do, I suppose I will find something else that interests me.”