“Know what?”
“Hold on to the little Allen wrench after you…”
“Saved your life? No,” Edi said, “I didn’t think to hold on to it. I guess I was a bit busy with the window and the water and all that.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
From outside the room came a loud voice. “Clare! You in there?”
David rolled his eyes. “I’d rather go back to the front lines than deal with that old man. I’m telling you that Austin is a sweetheart compared to him.”
“I’ll get up and see what I can do to help,” Edi said.
“I better warn you that I think he expects you to cook.”
At that Edi’s face turned pale, and she put the cover back over her. “I don’t know how to cook.”
“You don’t know how to cook?”
“Don’t give me that!” she snapped. “I grew up in a house with a cook. I don’t know anything about it. Food was served to me on a plate. I can’t even make a pot of tea.”
“Really?” David said, his smile becoming broader by the minute.
“What is so very amusing about that, Sergeant Clare?”
“Because I can cook.”
“You can cook?” she said in astonishment.
“So now who’s stereotyping? My mother is Italian. I can cook. Look, why don’t we tell him that you’re injured and have to stay in bed so I’ll do the cooking?”
“And who will milk the cow?”
“Let ol’ Hamish do it. He does it when we’re not here.”
“So you’re saying that I’m just a poor, feeble woman who can’t pull her own weight. Is that it? I’m to stay in bed and do nothing?”
“Unless you can milk a cow and clean up after horses, I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”
“As it so happens, I nearly grew up on a horse.”
“Of course,” David said. “Rich girl. The kitchen is beneath you, but you’re a stable lad in the barn.”
“You really are the most obnoxious man I have ever met in my life,” Edi said.
He stood up and looked down at her as he walked to the door. “And you, Miss Edilean Harcourt, are the most beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, courageous woman I have ever met. And, by the way, I plan to marry you.” He left the room, leaving Edi with her mouth open in astonishment.
“You’re a mess, you know that?” David said as he pried Edi’s hands open and looked at the blisters. “What got into you to do all that work?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “It felt good. I get so tired of being inside and listening to typewriters all day. I liked being outside.”
They were in the kitchen of Hamish Trumbull’s house and there was a night-and-day difference between the way it was now and how it had looked that morning. For all his complaining that Edi had worked too hard, David had spent the day scrubbing the kitchen, inside every cabinet and every pan. He’d filled the wood box and kept the old stove going all day as he cooked. The room was warm and smelled wonderful.
“You haven’t exactly sat around,” she said, wincing as he examined her hands.
“No, but I had help,” he said without a smile, and the absurdity of that made them both start to laugh, then they quietened.
“Where is he?” Edi asked, referring to Hamish.