Hannah swung her clubs into first position, skipping the beginner exercises she’d been using with Cordelia. Jericho needed a more exacting routine. He would expect it to be easy, and it would probably seem so at first, but she planned to double the number of repetitions and increase the level of difficulty without giving him the breaks she allowed Cordelia. It didn’t matter that she’d already completed most of her own routine before he arrived. She’d outlast him. Her muscles were used to the movements; his weren’t. The determined set of his jaw assured her he’d not quit, but if she could get him to sweat, even a little, that would be victory enough.
After completing all the perpendicular sets, Hannah moved on to arm presses and lunging circles. Jericho stayed right with her. The scoundrel wasn’t even breathing hard.
Her arms began to tremble slightly. She locked her elbows into place to hide the tremors and pushed harder, unwilling to let him best her.
“This next move is complicated,” Hannah told him, careful to regulate her exhalations so as not to huff at all. “Think you can handle it?”
“I can handle anything you want to throw at me, sweetheart.” He cocked a brow at her.
Hannah cocked one right back. He’d not fluster her with his swagger and mock endearments.
“You’ll like this one, Jericho,” she said. “It’s named the Moulinet, or broadsword exercise. Very manly.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Hannah couldn’t hide her grin this time. “What . . . manly?”
His scowl darkened.
“Oh, you mean Jericho.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I like it too much. Jericho—a city so sure of itself and its strength that it couldn’t acknowledge the possibility that someone else might succeed with methods that appeared foolish and wrong in its eyes. Fits you rather well.”
Before he could comment, she began the next movement. It required concentration and a loose wrist to twirl the clubs before tucking in the elbows and circling the arms around in a large arc. Jericho seemed to have a little more difficulty mastering the precision of this one, and Hannah inwardly gloated.
“It’s been thirty minutes,” Cordelia called out from her vantage point on the back porch. “Why don’t you work the rings with him before the two of you quit?”
Hannah winced. She’d been so caught up in proving her point to Jericho, she’d completely forgotten about Cordelia. Her friend didn’t seem to mind, though. She leaned forward in her chair, as if she had a front-row seat at an outdoor theatrical.
“Your brother only agreed to thirty minutes,” Hannah called back as she brought her spinning clubs to rest. “I wouldn’t want to tire him so much that he can’t perform his duties at the livery today.”
“No chance of that,” Jericho grumbled.
Hannah wasn’t sure that working the rings with him was a good idea. The apparatus required that two people grip them at the same time, often bringing the exercisers into close proximity. Being near this man tended to have an addling effect on her brain, and she needed all her wits about her to battle him successfully.
“I won’t ask you to do the rings,” she said, dropping her clubs into the box of equipment at the base of the tree. “You’ve sacrificed enough time already. I’m sure you’ll agree, though, that these instruments are not mere toys.”
He came up behind her, reached over her shoulder, and dropped his own clubs in the box. Was that faint musky odor . . . perspiration? Triumph welled in her. Then his arm brushed against hers. Triumph fled, replaced by a wobbly-kneed feeling that rattled her nerves. She stiffened and demanded that her body cease its traitorous behavior, but her pulse ignored her and continued with its giddy little dance.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet about your methods,” he said, still standing much too close. “I better try these ring things, too. I should make sure they’re safe for Delia.”
“Of course they’re safe,” she snapped. “Children use them.” She tried to move away, but his piercing eyes kept her feet planted.
“Afraid your contraption will prove ineffective?”
“No.” What she feared was that Jericho’s nearness would render
her
ineffective. But she’d never been one to back down from a challenge, so she hobbled her high-stepping pulse and looked Jericho square in the eye. “Very well, I’ll show you the rings.”
He nodded and stepped back, finally allowing her to draw a full breath. She crouched down by the box and dug out the two cherrywood rings that always found their way to the bottom. Holding one in each hand, she straightened and faced the large man in front of her.
“Those are the rings?” he scoffed. “They can’t be more than six inches across. What are you supposed to do with them? Play horseshoes?”
Hannah speared him with a look. “I prefer braining pompous livery owners with them. Should I show you the technique?”
He raised his hands in surrender and mumbled a halfhearted apology. Though his lips didn’t twitch this time, the skin around his eyes crinkled. If she could just get the two actions together, she might have the makings of a genuine Jericho Tucker smile. Discarding that thought as too distracting, she focused on the fundamentals of her lesson and thrust her arms out toward him.
“Grab hold of the rings.”
The moment he complied, an unwelcome heat surged through her. His broad hands encompassed such a large portion of each ring.
“These were designed to be used by two people of similar height and strength for maximum efficiency.” She tilted her chin up to look him in the face. “Since you are taller and stronger than I am, the exercise will not be as beneficial to you, but I think I can present enough of a challenge to give you an idea of how it works.”
“We’ll see.”
Hannah’s ire sparked. Hesitation fell away as the spirit of competition took over.
“Match my strength and keep up if you can . . . Jericho.”
They began with a series of push-and-pull exercises that mimicked the motion of a piston pumping back and forth. Their left feet stood together in the center while their right legs supported them from behind. At first, he offered her little resistance as she dragged his arm forward and back, but he soon adjusted, and her muscles strained to keep up.
Next, they stood back-to-back and did opposing side lunges with their still-connected arms overhead. Her skirts swished against his legs several times. He gave no indication that he’d noticed, so she affected the same undisturbed mien.
“You should be able to feel a stretch along the outside of your arm,” she said. “These routines are excellent for improving flexibility.”
Jericho grunted in answer.
They did the same position again, only this time they faced each other. Hannah made certain to lean back as they lunged to avoid coming into contact with Jericho’s chest. However, the effects of her extended workout combined with the fact that she was within a hairsbreadth of touching the man whose nearness invited her pulse to polka left her struggling for air.
Which had to be the reason she progressed to the next section of the ring routine without first considering the consequences.
Their right feet together, she and Jericho faced each other and leaned backward as far as possible, using one another’s weight as a counterbalance. Then, she explained, on the second count, they would press their arms forcefully outward, bringing their heads and shoulders together. Like a good student, Jericho followed her instructions not to bend his elbows. Unfortunately, she failed to take into account his much longer arms. As he pulled wide, she was helpless to stop her forward momentum and thumped directly into his chest. His well-braced leg kept them from tumbling onto the ground, but nothing could keep them from pressing so closely together that she could feel his heart beating against hers. For an endless moment, he stared down at her, surprise and something much warmer flaring in his eyes. Then common sense prevailed. He released the rings, held her about the waist, and set her on her feet.
“I think I’ve got the general idea now.” Jericho cleared his throat and backed away until he reached the back fence. “I’m heading to the livery, Delia,” he called to his sister, never once glancing back at Hannah. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
Then he left, his long-legged stride eating up the turf at a near run.
Hannah leaned into the tree for support as she watched him go, a sinking feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. She had no idea if she’d proved anything to Jericho with her exercises, but she’d proven something to herself. Something disastrous. She was falling in love with a man who could never return her affections.
J.T. took the shortcut home for lunch, through the corral and across the strip of land behind his house. As he passed the big oak, he kneaded his upper arm. He hated to admit it, but flinging around those silly clubs had made him a bit sore.
And the rings? He should have taken Hannah up on her offer to forgo the blasted things. She’d been so close to him, he could smell the mist in her hair, see the sky in her eyes. And when she moved, her skirt brushed against his legs like sandpaper scoring a match.
Until she fell and accidentally ignited the flame. It had taken a wagonload of self-control to set her away from him.
He’d spent the bulk of the morning recounting the reasons she was unsuitable for him and asking God for strength to resist her wiles. Only, deep down, he knew they weren’t wiles. Hannah Richards might try to foist her fashionable wares on the people of Coventry, but she’d never foist herself. He’d seen her efforts to maintain a discreet distance between them while they worked through the ring routine, a Herculean task considering they were connected at the fingertips. No, she was just a lovely, misguided woman who tugged at his heart and tempted his body. With God’s help, he could resist. He had to. He’d not repeat his father’s mistakes.
J.T. thought back to the day his father had taken him aside to tell him the woman they had both loved was gone for good. His face haggard, his eyes dull, he clapped J.T. on the shoulder with one hand while pulling down the wedding photograph from the mantel with his other. Color slowly drained from his knuckles as he tightened his grip on the thin metal frame until his thumb pressed the glass so hard it cracked.
“Don’t follow in my footsteps, son.”
That was all he said, but it was enough.
J.T. remembered the excuses his father had made when his mother closed herself in her room in one of her huffs, leaving him to finish dinner or soothe a crying baby Delia. He’d said that she was just high-strung, as if that explained anything. Then, more often than not, he had passed the stirring spoon or baby over to J.T. and disappeared behind the closed door to mollify his child bride. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out their history.
When his father met his mother, he must have been so taken by her fine looks and youthful exuberance that he willingly closed his eyes to her faults. She’d been fourteen years younger than he, and J.T. supposed his father had been flattered by her attentions, sure that once she matured and settled down, her pretty pouts and artful manipulations would disappear. But they didn’t. They intensified. J.T. had seen it firsthand. She birthed him two children and complained all the while about the loss of her figure. She demanded expensive clothes and trinkets until her husband’s savings were depleted, threatened to leave him if he tried to tell her no. J.T. couldn’t remember her ever sacrificing something for another person strictly out of kindness—not even for him or Delia.
The day they laid his father to rest, J.T. stood at the grave and vowed to take his father’s advice to heart. And he had. Until Hannah. Something about that woman weakened his defenses, and he needed to figure out what it was. Soon.
Reaching the house, J.T. paused on the back porch. He shoved thoughts of his parents back into their pigeonholes and threw a mental blanket over Hannah before pushing through the door. The safety of routine restored the last fragments of his control as he stepped into the kitchen and hung his hat on its hook. “What’s for lunch, sis?”
“Roasted chicken and parsnips, with apple dumplings for dessert.”
Delia opened the warming oven and a blend of savory and sweet aromas filled the kitchen. J.T.’s stomach gurgled in anticipation. He washed up at the kitchen pump and took his place at the table.
Concentrating so hard on keeping everything normal, he was halfway through his meal before he realized his sister was staring at him. Glaring at her over his chicken leg, he swallowed the hunk of meat he’d been chewing.
“What?”
Elbow propped on the table, she braced her chin on her hand. “I think she’s right.”
“Who?”
“You don’t smile. Strange that I hadn’t noticed it before.” After imparting that keen observation, she turned her attention to her plate and stabbed a roasted parsnip with her fork.
J.T. had no doubt to whom his sister referred. Not wanting to encourage conversation in that direction, he said the first thing that came to mind. “The gray’s all healed up.”
Of course, thinking of the injured gelding did nothing to stem the flow of thoughts regarding Miss Richards.
“That’s good.” Delia took a dainty bite of chicken, and only then did J.T. notice that her plate held a much smaller portion than usual.
“You feeling all right?”
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
With a shrug, he cut into his dumpling. Baked apple and cinnamon wafted up to him as he slid a healthy portion onto his fork. He lifted the bite to his mouth, already tasting the juicy goodness when he caught Delia grinning at him with a gleam in her eye. The fork clanked down onto his plate.
“Now what?”
“You and Hannah had a lively time this morning. What’d you think of those exercises?”
Swallowing a groan when he would much rather be swallowing his dumpling, J.T. leaned back in his chair. “I think I would’ve been laughed out of town if anyone had seen me swinging those ridiculous clubs. If you and Miss Richards want to embarrass yourselves with that stuff, be my guest, but don’t expect me to touch one of those things ever again.”
“But did they work?”