Meet Me at the Anvil by Kate Prior

Author:Kate Prior [Prior, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Prior
Published: 2022-07-14T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 8: Field Research

Diane could still see the town from here. A piece of her mind wanted her to keep going, until it was gone from the horizon.

She had only gone a short distance, climbing a hill to where a small patch of trees met a rundown fence before a fallow field.

Diane passed an hour or two, sitting against the fence, grumbling to herself. She knew very well how to sit still with nothing else to do but think. The little goat had trouble grasping the concept, and seemed quite determined to wrap its lead around her, with how it bounded against the radius of its freedom.

“I don’t actually think you’re a fainting goat. I don’t think that sounds like a real thing,” she told it, because she had no other options for conversation.

The goat only shrieked back at her, and she decided to take its noise as agreement.

She knew as well as Liam did, she had no other options. She had neither the skills nor the constitution to find work and support herself, all she had ever been taught was how to live the life of a gently bred woman.

She held no love for Martin, but the thought of her collection being discovered, damaged even, was too much to bear. Every moment that passed was a moment she could have turned back to save her art from falling into the wrong hands.

If she’d acted rationally back at the church, if she’d been brave enough to face her friends and family with a difficult decision, perhaps she could have called off the wedding with minimal repercussions, and been able to open up other decisions. If she went back now, she would have to live out the consequences of her behavior as a spinster, confined to the whims of her guardians.

She would have to make the decision between him and going home. Those were the only fungible options, while they still felt like no choice at all. All she wanted was one more option to know which way her heart pulled truly.

Sitting in a field was likely not going to yield any such prospect, or divine some truth to her that she hadn’t already been able to see. But the time spent there would give her the space and breath to think, and some solitude would keep any more talk of proposals at bay.

If anything, this was the last bit of agency she could squeeze out of this one day of independence.

So when she spotted Liam coming up the hill after her, she sighed in exasperation.

Diane crossed her arms as he reached the top of the hill and found a spot to lean on the fence next to her.

Several breaths passed in utter silence, half because she wished to have her solitude, and half because she was trying to come up with some scathing greeting. The more she thought on it though, the more she supposed she didn’t feel particularly scathingly towards him, more a low simmer of annoyance.

“I found us a room at the inn.

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