Maggie was hastening backward and trying at the same time to smile. She hadn’t meant to go so far as to invoke the brogue. “Reeve, keep your voice down, please.”

“I won’t keep me voice down, woman!” he bellowed, still advancing. “And I sure as ’ell won’t ’ave me morals questioned every time I’m too tired to make love to you!”

Maggie turned a rich crimson color, embarrassed beyond all bearing. “Reeve, please, you’re shouting—”

He glared at her and, at last, lowered his voice. “I’ll spend tonight at the inn,” he said in a hiss, “so don’t be thinkin’ that I’m with me nurse! On the other hand, Yank, think whatever ye damned well please!”

“Reeve!”

He was turning, striding away. Maggie waited in the house, forlorn, until all the men, Reeve included, had gone back to the fields. Then she returned to the kitchen to help clear the tables.

Kala slapped her hands away. “Sit down, missus. My girls can do this.”

Goodness and Mercy took over the work and Maggie slumped into a chair. It was too near the cookstove, but she was too upset to care. She began to sob. “My husband hates me!” she wailed.

Kala chuckled. “No, missus.”

“Yes, he does!” Maggie wept noisily. “He’s going to sleep at the inn tonight!”

“No, missus,” Kala said again. She heaped copper kettles in a pile on a table beside Maggie’s chair and then handed her mistress a cloth and a tin of dark powder. “Make shine,” she added.

Sniffling, Maggie began to polish the copper, rubbing the powder against the metal until each pot glistened. The work helped to distract her from her troubles, as did the soft songs Kala and the girls sang as they went about their own labors.

Goodness and Mercy had gone off somewhere, and Kala was out dumping the dishwater, when Maggie finished her polishing. She felt much better, and she was smiling as she threw several blackened polishing cloths into the cookstove.

The stove lids jumped as a series of startling explosions went off. Kala immediately ran inside the cookhouse, caught Maggie by the hand, and dragged her out. The men, Reeve included, were running from the fields.

“What happened?” Reeve demanded just as the loud popping finally stopped. There was no visible damage to the cookhouse.

“I was only polishing the copper,” Maggie said huffily, folding her arms and looking away from Reeve. “I threw the rags in the stove when I was done, and then all hell broke loose.”

Kala started to laugh. She laughed so hard that she sank to her knees in the tall green grass, clutching her stomach and rocking back and forth. It was perfectly obvious that she wasn’t going to be any help to anybody.

Maggie stomped back into the kitchen building and grabbed up the tin of polishing salts she’d used, holding it out for Reeve’s inspection.