Chapter 13: The First Morning
The cold woke her. It had seeped through the coats, through the thin wool of her dress, and settled deep in her bones. Athena opened her eyes to the gray pre-dawn light filtering through the empty window frame Heathcliff wanted to board up. The stars were gone. The fire was dead ash.
She lay still, listening. His breathing was deep and even behind her, his arm a heavy, warm weight across her ribs. She carefully slid out from under it, the air biting her skin as she left the circle of his warmth. Every muscle protested. The floor was unforgiving.
She moved on silent feet, gathering the scattered applewood chunks they hadn’t burned. Her fingers, stiff with cold, fumbled with the tinderbox. It took three tries before the spark caught the charcloth, a tiny glowing coal she nursed with dried grass from a mouse-nest she’d found in the corner. She blew gently, her breath swirling in the cold. A flame lept, hungry, consuming the twigs. She fed it slowly, piece by piece, until the heat began to push back the room’s deep chill.
The light grew, dancing over the stone hearth, over Heathcliff’s sleeping form. He looked younger in sleep, the perpetual rage in his face smoothed into something stark and vulnerable. She saw the old scar near his hairline, a white line from a riding crop, and felt a familiar, quiet fury.
Her satchel was propped against the wall. She rummaged past her few clothes, the bundled charcoal sticks, the small wooden box of pigments, and found the battered tin at the bottom. Inside, a handful of black tea leaves, stolen from the Heights over months, a little world of scent in her palm. She filled the small pot with water from the skin they’d brought, hooked it over the fire.
While it heated, she stood at the grimy kitchen window, looking out at the shape of their land. The sky was bleeding from gray to a weak, watery blue. The outline of the fallen apple tree was a dark slump in the field. Beyond it, the land rose toward a line of distant trees. Linton’s trees? The thought was a splinter.
She heard the shift of fabric, the intake of breath that meant he was awake. She didn’t turn. She felt his gaze on her back, a physical touch.
He moved without sound. One moment she was staring at the dawn, the next his hands were on her hips, turning her from the window. His palms were cold from the floor, his body a wall of sleep-warmth. He didn’t say a word. His eyes, still soft with sleep, scanned her face, her loose hair, the way her thin chemise clung in the fire’s glow.
He backed her up until the rough edge of the solid oak table bit into the small of her back. The air left her lungs in a soft gasp. His hands slid from her hips, up under the hem of the chemise, his calloused fingers tracing the skin of her thighs. They were icy. She shivered.
“You’re cold,” she whispered.
His answer was to lower his mouth to the curve where her neck met her shoulder. His lips were hot, his tongue tracing a path that burned. He bit down, not hard, but enough to make her gasp again, to make her hands come up and clutch at his shoulders. The fabric of his shirt was threadbare.
He lifted her then, his arms rigid with strength, and set her on the table. The old wood groaned. The tin of tea leaves rattled. Dawn light streamed across the dusty surface, illuminating the whorls in the grain, the faded stains of another life. He pushed her chemise up, bunching it around her waist, and stepped between her thighs, spreading them with his hips.
He watched her face. His own was a mask of fierce concentration, the vulnerability of sleep utterly gone, replaced by something possessive and raw. He fumbled with the buttons of his trousers, his eyes never leaving hers. When he entered her, it was with a slow, deliberate push that felt less like passion and more like a statement. A claiming of this place, of this moment, of her.
She cried out, a short, sharp sound swallowed by the room. Her head fell back. The world narrowed to the press of his body, the unforgiving wood beneath her, the smell of dust and smoke and him. The pot over the fire began a frantic, rattling boil.
He moved with a grim, focused rhythm. Each thrust rocked her back against the table. A jar of rusted nails someone had left behind clattered to the floor. He didn’t seem to hear it. His breathing grew harsh in her ear, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips hard enough to leave marks. She clung to him, her face buried in the rough linen of his shirt, smelling sweat and woodsmoke and the wild, damp scent of the moors that still clung to him.
The water boiled over. A violent hiss erupted from the hearth as it hit the embers, a cloud of steam billowing up. The sound seemed to break something in him. His rhythm fractured, became desperate, his final thrusts deep and shuddering. He stifled his own groan against her throat.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the angry sputter of the drowned fire. He stayed inside her, his weight heavy on her, his forehead damp against her collarbone.
Slowly, he pulled away. The morning air was shockingly cold on her exposed skin. He turned, buttoned himself with clumsy fingers, and went to the fire. He used a stick to shift the pot away from the heat, his movements economical, closed-off.
Athena slid off the table, her legs unsteady. She pulled her chemise down, the fabric scratchy. She righted the jar of nails, her face hot.
He poured the steeped tea into two chipped cups they’d found in a cupboard. He handed her one. Their fingers brushed. His were still cold.
They drank standing by the hearth, not looking at each other. The tea was bitter, strong, lacking milk or sugar. It was the best thing she’d ever tasted. It burned all the way down, a liquid core of warmth.
“We’ll need a bed,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. He stared into his cup. “Before winter.”
“We need glass first,” she said. “Or shutters. That window’s a mouth for the wind.”
He nodded. A practical negotiation in the wreckage of intimacy. “I’ll go into Gimmerton later. See about tools. Nails. Glass if I can. We’ll board it up tight tonight.”
“I’ll clear the garden,” she said. “See what’s left that might still grow.”
The silence stretched, filled now with the mundane terror of all there was to do. The passion of minutes ago felt like a dream, or a ghost.
He set his cup down on the hearthstone. He reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, his touch surprisingly gentle. His thumb brushed the mark his teeth had left on her neck. “He’ll come,” Heathcliff said, his voice low. “Linton. Or someone he sends. To look. To measure.”
“I know.”
“They’ll see we have nothing. That we’re squatting in dust.”
“Then we’d better make it look like something,” she said, meeting his eyes.
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth, there and gone. He picked up the hatchet from where it leaned. “I’ll start on that apple tree. Proper firewood. Then fences.”
He walked out into the morning, letting the door bang shut behind him.
Athena finished her tea, the bitterness a familiar comfort. She washed the cups with a scant handful of water, setting them to dry. She could hear the first solid thwock of the hatchet from the back field, a steady, angry beat.
She took her satchel and went outside, circling to the overgrown kitchen garden. The lavender was there, tangled with weeds but stubbornly alive. She knelt, the damp earth soaking through her dress, and began to pull, her hands working on their own. Her body ached in a new way, a deep, used ache. With each weed she ripped free, she thought of cold eyes in an alley, of a gavel’s crack, of the hiss of boiling water on fire.
The sound of the hatchet was her metronome. Thwock. Thwock. Thwock. It wasn’t just cutting wood. It was drawing a line. Around them. Around this. She pulled another weed, its roots long and stubborn, and threw it onto the growing pile.
They had won the land. Now, hour by hour, they would have to win the ground under their feet.
Now, hour by hour, they would have to win the ground under their feet.
The hatchet’s rhythm from the back field was a frantic, driving pulse. Athena matched it, her fingers tearing at the bindweed choking the lavender. Each root was a tiny battle. The sun climbed, doing little to warm the cooling autumn air, but her back grew damp with sweat under her dress. She found a few straggling carrots, thin and pale, and a patch of hardy thyme that smelled of sunlight when she crushed a sprig between her fingers.
She gathered the pathetic harvest in her apron. The weeds made a soggy, defeated pile. Her knees were stained dark green and brown. When she stood, a wave of dizziness hit her, a combination of hunger and the morning’s relentless bending. She steadied herself against the rough stone of the house.
The chopping stopped. The sudden silence was louder than the noise. She heard his footsteps, heavy on the earth, coming around the side of the house. He appeared, shirt sticking to his chest, the hatchet hanging loosely in his hand. He surveyed her pile of weeds, the cleared patch of earth, her dirty apron.
“Found something,” she said, holding it open to show the carrots.
He nodded, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Water’s gone. I’ll walk to the stream, refill the skin.” He looked toward the distant line of trees. “Might see the lay of the land from there. Where his boundary is.”
“Don’t start a war over a fence line today,” she said, her voice quiet. “We need glass more than we need a feud.”
“Feud’s already here,” he said, but it was without heat. A simple statement of fact, like noting the sky was grey. “I’ll just look.”
He took the waterskin and walked off, his figure getting smaller and lonelier against the vast, rolling field. Athena went inside, her solitude feeling suddenly vast and exposed. She scrubbed the carrots in the last inch of water, their tiny hairs like whiskers. She thought of painting them, their forlorn orange against the dark earth. A portrait of scarcity.
She was sweeping the hearth, raising new clouds of the eternal, fine dust, when the sound came.
It wasn’t Heathcliff’s return. His step was familiar, even at a distance. This was a solid, deliberate thud against the front door that made the latch rattle. A heavy knock. Authoritative. Not friendly.
Her blood went still. She set the broom down slowly, its handle making no sound on the stone. She moved to the side of the doorway, pressing herself into the wall, becoming part of the shadow.
The knock came again. Three hard blows.
She heard his returning tread then, fast and angry, coming from the direction of the stream. He must have seen the visitor approach. He passed the window, a blur of motion, and yanked the door open before the third echo had faded.
A man stood there, backlit by the afternoon sun. He was broad and ruddy-faced, with thick forearms emerging from rolled sleeves. He had the open, weathered look of a man who worked soil for a living, but his eyes were shrewd, darting past Heathcliff to take in the barren room.
“Heard the hammer fall at Gimmerton,” the man said, his voice a friendly rumble that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Name’s Henshaw. I’m your nearest neighbor, over the east rise.” He offered a large, calloused hand.
Heathcliff looked at it, then slowly took it. The shake was brief, a testing of grip. “Heathcliff.”
“Earnshaw, they said.” Henshaw’s gaze was openly appraising now, taking in Heathcliff’s unkempt hair, the intensity of his stare, the worn clothes. “From up at the Heights.”
“The land is mine. That’s what matters.”
“Aye, it is.” Henshaw shifted his weight, his boots scraping on the stone step. He leaned in a little, his voice dropping to a more confidential tone. “Came to offer a hand, if you need. And a word. That Linton fellow from the Grange? He’s been asking about this place since the sale. Asking about you.”
Heathcliff didn’t move, but Athena saw the muscle in his jaw leap.
“Not just polite interest, if you catch my meaning,” Henshaw continued. “Asking who might have grievances. Who in Gimmerton holds paper on bad debts. Looking for levers.” His eyes flicked past Heathcliff again, into the dim room, and found Athena standing in the shadows. They lingered on her, on her bare feet, her dust-smudged dress. His expression didn’t change, but the air in the doorway thickened.
He looked back at Heathcliff, his voice dropping even further, becoming something gruff and grim. “Your woman best be careful alone out here. It’s remote. There’s those who’d take a maid’s presence as license. Especially if they think the master’s favor is... uncertain.” He let the implication hang, a ugly, familiar threat. “Linton’s got friends who aren’t gentlemen.”
Heathcliff’s entire body went wire-tight. The friendly pretense vanished from Henshaw’s face, replaced by a blunt neutrality. He’d delivered his message, both the offer and the warning. The market price of neighborhoodliness.
“I thank you for the word,” Heathcliff said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. The courtesy was clearly foreign, an ugly shape in his mouth.
Henshaw gave a single, slow nod. His eyes gave Athena one last, unreadable glance. “Mind your fences.” He turned and walked back toward the lane, his pace unhurried.
Heathcliff stood in the open doorway, watching him until he crested the rise and disappeared. The sunlight poured in, highlighting the dust motes swirling in the silent room. He closed the door slowly, the wood groaning against the latch. The room plunged back into dim, dusty quiet.
He didn’t look at her. He turned and rested his forehead against the door, his fists clenched at his sides. His breathing was a ragged, controlled thing in the stillness.
“He’s right,” Athena said, her own voice sounding small.
“I know he’s right.” He pushed off from the door, his eyes blazing in the half-light. “It’s the same thing. Always the same. What