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Her eyes flashed once more. “Do not blame this on me, Mr. Reeves,” she warned. “You have had three weeks to tell me the truth, but you spent that time lying to me instead.”

He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. “You’re right. I have no excuse, no good explanation. At first I didn’t say anything because I told myself I could explain later. Before I knew it, it was later, and I was caught up in the tangle of my own omission.”

She folded her arms and all but glared. “Did you ever intend to tell me the truth?”

He nodded meekly. “That was my purpose in coming up to the house so early this evening.”

“You’ll forgive me if I have trouble believing that. The fact of the matter is that I’m having trouble believing anything about you.”

He had anticipated his confession creating tension between them. But he’d lost her faith in him entirely. His heart fell at the realization.

“I can abide a great many things, Gregory Reeves, but dishonesty is not one of them.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

“You can take your supper on the back porch tonight just as you did your first evening here.”

He didn’t know if that meant she intended to send him off in the morning or not. He wouldn’t blame her if she never spoke to him again. He’d come to care for her even more over the past three weeks but, through his own cowardice, had ruined his chances.

Chapter Eight

“So, Gregory is Josiah’s friend Reeves.” Mother didn’t seem so much distressed by the revelation as intrigued. Mrs. Jamison had long since gone. Supper had been served— with Gregory noticeably absent—and Helene had pulled her mother out to the back porch to make the revelation. “I must confess, I feel a bit foolish for not having sorted that out on my own.”

“But how could you have? He didn’t tell us anything about his connection to Josiah or his real reason for coming.”

“Well, no, he didn’t.” Mother tapped her bottom lip with one finger. “But I do think he was quite honest about who he was, other than that bit of information.”

“That ‘bit of information’ seems rather important, doesn’t it? He pretended to be the hired hand sent over from the Jamisons’ aunt’s farm. He never told us the truth.”

“He should have, I agree. But he told us his full name, which, if we’d known the name of the man the Jamisons were sending, would have solved the riddle from the beginning.”

Helene had been chastising herself for exactly that lack of oversight over the past couple of hours. She’d been inexcusably irresponsible in not making absolutely certain she knew the identity of the man she’d hired, who would live on her land and interact with her family.

“Still, he should have been honest with us,” Helene said.

“Oh, I agree. Even with the awkwardness of explaining things after realizing we were mistaken, he ought to have done so.” Mother looked out at the barn. “What do you intend to do now?”

Helene sighed and leaned against a post. “I don’t know. It is a little late in the season to try finding a replacement, and he has done good work. Liam and Bianca like him. Aside from his glaring omission of information, I’m rather fond of him myself.”

“‘Rather fond?’” Mother raised a doubtful eyebrow.

“Considering I’m not certain whether I can even trust the man, ‘rather fond’ is all I can feel at the moment.”

Mother stepped up beside Helene and set a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I do wish your father were still with us. If he had lived, perhaps you wouldn’t struggle to trust men even a little.”

“Are you saying I should forget this entire ordeal and go on as we were before?” She didn’t think herself capable of that.

But Mother shook her head. “That man misled you,” she acknowledged. “And you have every right—indeed, a responsibility, even—to make absolutely certain he can be trusted.”

“Then where does that leave things? I don’t know how to move forward.”

“Were I in your shoes, Helene, I would march myself over to the barn and start over. Begin again with the knowledge of who he is. Allow him the summer and harvest season to be himself and prove to you whether or not he’s worthy of your regard.”

She took a shaky breath. “What if he isn’t? My heart has been breaking all day. I don’t know if I can bear two or three more months of this.”

Mother gave her shoulders a squeeze. “If he proves himself to be someone you cannot love, the pain will pass, and you will move on. But if you don’t find out one way or the other, you’ll spend years wondering.”

Mother was right, but that didn’t make the prospect easy.