You know, normal stuff. But you know what never made the list? Facing my father down again with Rhys by my side, my rumpled hair and flushed cheeks both damning evidence of what we were about to do.

It goes about as well as you’d expect. Insults are hurled and threats are exchanged. At one point, Rhys tucks me behind his arm, blocking me bodily from my father’s sharp words and spitting anger.

He doesn’t send me away, though. I like that about Rhys. He’s protective, yes, but he doesn’t keep me out of things that affect me.

And by the way: if I hear one more word about the freaking Thomas boy, I will scream at the rafters. I’m sure he’s a nice enough lad but he’s nobody to me, in fact he’s wet behind both ears, and the only way they’ll get me down the aisle with him is hogtied in a wheelbarrow. Does my father listen to that, though? No, sir.

“Dad,” I call at last from behind the blacksmith’s back, my hands clenched in his shirt. Not to hold him back or anything—more like to anchor me to the earth. “What is your plan here? I’m an adult, not a child. You can’t force me to leave with you. Just like you can’t force me to marry, or to work on the farm my whole life.”

“This man has stolen you.”

“I’m not one of your livestock,” I snap, nudging Rhys aside so I can glare at my father unimpeded. “And he’s not a sheep hustler. I can’t be stolen, Dad, I’ve simply taken myself away.”

The difference between the two men is stark in the warm light spilling from the kitchen. Dad is not a small man, not by anyone’s measure, but Rhys looms over him, grim and silent in the face of the farmer’s wrath. My father’s breathing hard, his lip peeled back in a grimace and his blond hair raked up by his hands, and I can’t help adding, “You’re always saying I’m useless and a burden. Well, congratulations. You’re free of me.”

There’s an eye twitch.

A vein pulses in his temple.

Oh, god. If he has a stroke out here, I have no idea what to do.

“You think he’ll want you?” A shaking finger jabs at the blacksmith. “Don’t be a fool, Gwendoline. He’ll get sick of you in less than a week, and then what will you do? Where will you go when you’ve burned your last bridges?”

My stomach sinks down my body, all the way to the floor, but it’s nothing I haven’t wondered about myself.

I clear my throat. “I’ll figure it out.”

And so I will. I’ve got a working pair of hands, haven’t I? A decent enough brain? I can find and keep a job, I can, and once I’m taking care of myself, the only person bossing me around will be me.

And Rhys Evans, maybe. If I ask him nicely. He bristles now as Dad laughs, loud and long. “Like hell you will.”