Page 91 of A Bloom for a Blacksmith

“This morning?”

Iris didn’t miss the implication of his simple question. “He drove me here,” she said. “He did yesterday as well,” she added.

Due to the quick trip from Agremon House, Angus had been long gone by the time the florist arrived with that day’s stock of flowers. Due to the events of the afternoon before that, she had kept her conversation with her boss to a minimum, fearing she would break down in tears if he learned she had been attacked.

“Gave you blunt, didn’t he?” Mr. Jones asked, his voice kept low.

Iris immediately checked her pocket to ensure she still had the coin Angus had given her. “For food, yes,” she replied.

“For your virtue, don’t you mean?”

Gasping, Iris had to resist the urge to slap the man across the face. “Mr. Jones!” she scolded.

“Oh, he’s promised marriage, but he’ll be long gone by the time you’re no longer wearing those mourning gowns,” he said, waving to her black bombazine frock.

Iris struggled to breathe, unsure why the old codger seemed so convinced Angus Thompson would abandon her. “Why do you say that?” she challenged. “He works for Mr. Agremon. I work for Mrs. Agremon at her bookshop after I’m done here in the afternoons. They’ve assured me he’s trustworthy. He’s done nothing to suggest otherwise.”

That bit of news seemed to surprise Mr. Jones. He huffed and dipped his head. “When he was building that greenhouse, I asked him if he was married, and he told me he wasn’t—”

“Because he isn’t,” she said, shrugging.

“And that he couldn’t see himself ever gettin’ married.” He said the last words with extra emphasis, as if they were to be believed even weeks after they had first been spoken.

Iris held her breath for a moment, not sure how to respond. Perhaps her initial fears about the young man were true—that he merely wished for better quarters. Having access to her body was a bonus given the arrangement to which she had agreed only the afternoon prior. “I have not known him long, it’s true,” she admitted, “but he has been nothing but… honorable.” She tried not to wince at saying the word given what he had done to her not even seven hours earlier.

He had taken her virtue. She had encouraged him to do so given he promised they would marry when she was done with mourning her brother.

Had he saved her from the attacker believing he would be rewarded? With her body? She shook her head at the thought—he had beaten the man, and then when he succumbed to his injury, helped to… well, she wasn’t even sure what he and Mr. Agremon had done to hide the body.

“Guard your heart, young lady,” Mr. Jones said, waving a gnarled finger. With that, he turned and left the market.

Before she could begin arranging the bunches of flowers into various buckets, their colors blurred due to the tears that filled her eyes.

Chapter Forty

A Blacksmith Shares His Concern

Later that morning, Agremon House

By the time the sun lit the sky in the east, Angus had the forge at its hottest. Wearing his heaviest leather apron and gloves, he went to work on the Swedish steel. Grasping one end with tongs, he hammered a rod until it was nearly flat before setting it back into the fire. After repeating the process for the other rods, he began a new cycle of heating, pounding, and folding the malleable steel until it required more heat.

He had been at it for nearly an hour when Darius appeared in the workshop. Angus paused and lifted a pair of thick glasses from his face. Darius had insisted he wear them to shield his eyes, a practice he found to be far superior to the “safety squint” he had learned to employ as an apprentice. “Morning, sir.”

“You’re here awfully early,” Darius remarked, moving to the work bench where he had been drawing the plans for the reverse drive shaft.

“I took Iris to the market and came straight here,” Angus said. “Might I be allowed to borrow your dray cart and leave early today? So I can move some of my things into the second floor?”

Darius shrugged before nodding toward the work he was doing. “Are those for the chisels?” Only the day before, they had discovered regular chisels weren’t up to the task of carving the polished granite for Jacob O’Connor’s gravestone.

“They are the chisels, sir. I should have them done and ready to go into their wood handles in a couple of hours.”

“And after that?”

“Sir?”

“Didn’t you have another project to do for Mrs. Agremon?” Darius asked, crossing his arms as he leaned against the work bench.

“Are you referring to the drapery rods?”