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She turned toward the house but didn’t take more than a few steps before stopping and looking at him once more. Though her shoulders remained squared and her expression stayed every bit as firm, something in her eyes had softened.

“I can see by your uniform that you served during our long years of war.”

“I did, miss,” he answered.

“I know this job won’t pay anything beyond a place in the barn and food to eat, and I’m sorry for that,” she said. “Those who fought to keep our union strong deserve better than that, and I hope you’ll find it.”

In that moment, he realized two things. She had mistaken him for a hired hand that she’d apparently arranged for, and, beneath her demanding exterior, Helene was every bit as good as he’d believed her to be.

As it so often did, embarrassment paralyzed his mouth. Only a nod emerged in response to her kind words. She gave him a quick, small smile, sending his heart soaring.

Quick as that, she returned to the house, and he was left standing in the yard, trying to decide what to do. He couldn’t simply leave. He’d not yet fulfilled his promise to Josiah. More compelling still, he wasn’t ready to give up on his goal of getting to know Helene better.

He’d vowed to help the Bowens, so he’d do just that, starting with the gutters and eaves. Then he’d find out what else needed doing and do it. Should the man originally hired come around, Gregory would simply send him off. If Helene needed a hand around the place, he’d offer his own. And somehow along the way, he’d find the means of making a good impression on the woman who’d long since found her way into his heart.

Chapter Two

Helene pushed the kitchen door closed and stood there a moment, attempting to catch her breath. The man whom her neighbor’s aunt’s neighbor had recommended had been described as a hard worker and a trustworthy one, a man she needn’t feel nervous to have about the place. She’d known little else about him.

This Gregory was tall. His shoulders filled out his uniform. Though his thick, unkempt whiskers and dirty, heavily worn clothes gave him the look of a drifter, his eyes were sharp, with unmistakable intelligence, and his posture was anything but threatening. And yet, there was something about him that made her just a bit jumpy, though not in a fearful way.

She looked out the curtained window, eying Gregory as he stepped from the barn with the ladder under his arm. He’d set straight to his chores, which was a good sign. He might not have looked the way she’d expected, but he was doing the work. By the look of his uniform, he’d seen a great deal of battle. Josiah’s clothes had likely been just as stained and ragged. Helene’s heart dropped at the thought of her dear brother. She hoped his passing had been quick, that he’d not suffered long.

But it wasn’t her sadness over Josiah that still had her worried most, but her mother’s. Helene pulled the curtains closed, then moved from room to room doing the same in each. After two months of supporting her mother against the weight of grief and loss, she didn’t dare risk the sight of an army uniform sending Mother right back to the pit of despair.

“Who’s that man behind the house, Miss Helene?” Bianca asked as she stepped into the kitchen. The girl fiddled with the ribbon tied in a bow on the end of her long braid. “I’ve never seen him before.”

“His name is Gregory, and he’s been hired on to do a bit of work.”

Bianca was apparently satisfied with that answer. She climbed onto the stool at the counter and began peeling carrots. In the six months since Bianca and her brother Liam had come to live with them after the death of their parents, both children had done any work asked of them without complaint. Helene was grateful for that. It was no secret that she and Mother had taken the orphans in because the house was in need of some extra hands. She despised how heartless it sounded, but she couldn’t deny the truth of the reasoning. Had the children resented the motivation behind their acceptance, her guilt would have grown tenfold.

“Is Liam still pulling weeds in the garden?” she asked Bianca.

“Yes, Miss Helene. And once he’s done, he’ll bring in the string beans from the cellar like you asked.”

She watched Bianca work, wondering for perhaps the hundredth time if there was something she might do to help the children feel a little more at home. Their parents had died only a half year earlier, and grief still hung heavy in the children’s eyes. She didn’t mean to replace their family by any means, but neither did she want them to feel like mere guests or worse yet, hired hands.

Pounding echoed from outside the house, no doubt Gregory beginning the repairs.

Bianca paused in her peeling. “What’s Mr. Gregory doing out there?”

“Cleaning gutters and securing the loose eaves.” She dropped the sliced carrots into the pot of simmering broth then fetched a few potatoes and set to peeling them. “Tomorrow we’ll find something else for him to do.”

“He’s coming back?”

Helene nodded. “We’ve hired him on for the rest of the summer.”

“I didn’t see him ’cept at a fair distance,” Bianca said. “Is he handsome?”

Helene gave the question a moment’s thought. “I couldn’t really tell, honestly. He has such thick whiskers . . .”

“And such thick dirt,” Bianca added with a dimpled grin.

“Exactly. Perhaps underneath all of that, he is quite devastatingly handsome.”

Bianca sighed. “Wouldn’t that be quite the thing? A handsome prince in disguise.”

Helene remembered all too well the tendency she’d had at Bianca’s age to dream of such things. She was grateful Bianca had retained that innocence despite the difficulties she’d already endured in her life. “Mr. Gregory may very well be handsome, but I am almost certain he isn’t a prince.”