The Girl from the Tanner's Yard

thought,’ Lucy apologized as she watched him juggle and peel the hot hard-boiled eggs.
‘It’s not for you to apologize. The eggs are fine as they are. Now then, you are a mine of information. You should have been working with me over in the Crimea – with your intelligence, we’d have won in the first year.’ Adam laughed.
‘I earwig what my mother and father say, and I talk to all the men in the yard; they tell me everything. Everybody, that is, except Thomas Farrington. I give him a wide berth as he frightens me, and lately he just stares at me and says nothing. I think he’s got a bit missing.’ Lucy fell quiet.
‘Who’s Thomas Farrington and where does he live?’ Adam pricked up his ears, concerned that this man was worrying his hard-working maid.
‘He’s my father’s foreman, and he lives at the other end of our row. Father says he’s a good worker, but I don’t care – I don’t like him.’ Lucy’s face clouded over.
‘If he bothers you, you let me know,’ Adam said to her.
‘No, you are better off not crossing him, he’s a nasty piece of work. He’s too handy with his fists. He’s always fighting with someone or other, especially when he’s drunk too much at The Fleece. You said you were in the Crimea – is that where you got your limp?’
‘Aye, it was. I didn’t move fast enough to get out of the way of a hussar and his sword; the bastard ran me through, and that was the end of my time serving in Her Majesty’s army. Good thing and all, too, else I’d have frozen to death, like thousands of others who were left to rot in the Balkans. Men would have fought to have eaten the eggs you’ve just fed me, we had so little food. Now, while I make a start on mending the roof, you make a list of what we need in the house and I’ll see that I buy it in the morning.’
‘I will, and I’ll make some bread, if that oven is to be trusted, once I’ve given it a good clean and worked out how to regulate it.’ Lucy motioned to the oven range, which on the first night of his arrival had burned Adam’s pie.
‘I wish you well with that. I only fell asleep for a brief minute or two and my supper was ruined. I’m more at home mending the roof, mind. I leave the women to cook for me.’ Adam grinned.
‘Are you sure you’ll be alright going up and down the ladder – won’t it cause you pain?’ Lucy looked at Adam as she cleared his breakfast table and watched as he put on a leather jerkin to keep him warm.
‘Well, there’s nobody else going to do it for me. So the sooner I make a start on it, the better. It’s a good job I brought all my tools with me from Leeds Barracks, because I’m going to need them to get this old place in order. But once it’s done, Black Moss will be back to the home it used to be. I’ll have some hens of my own, and sheep and a milking cow, once I’ve finished with the house and seen to the walls and fences.’ Adam stood in the doorway and looked back at Lucy. He found her easy to talk to – too easy, for he had to get on with his work around the house. However, he noticed the look of concern on her face.
‘But your leg, won’t you struggle with the job in hand?’ Lucy protested.
‘I’ll be fine, I can’t let a thing like that stop me. Men with a lot worse left the fields of the Crimea and they’ve still to make a living. But thank you for your concern.’ Adam smiled to himself as he closed the door behind him and left Lucy to tidy the breakfast table and go about her baking. She was proving to be a good lass, and he was glad he had stumbled across her. Despite her saying what she thought, there was no harm in talking straight; in fact it was a good trait of the Yorkshire man to say what he thought, Adam mused as he struggled with each rung of the ladder, balancing nails, slates and hammer as he gingerly made it onto the kitchen roof. She was right, he thought, when he caught his breath and stopped himself from shaking with effort as he sat upon the ridge tiles of the farmhouse. The climb had taken more out of him than he’d realized, and he looked around him as he rubbed his painful leg. How he’d missed his true home, he thought, breathing in the dank, peaty smell of the moors that lay around him. There was no smell like it, and no view like it on a good day. He was glad to be home; it was where he belonged.
Lucy organized herself in the kitchen. She had soon made the dough for the bread and then placed it next to the fire to rise, before looking around her for the next job that needed doing. She’d make a list of items required, as the bread baked in the temperamental oven. She sighed; she was going to enjoy her work here. It was no way as hard as working for her mother, and she could run the house as she saw fit. The pile of furniture that had been delivered the previous day had now found a home in each room, and she decided to give the oak furniture a polish while waiting for the bread to rise.
Black Moss was beginning to look like more of a home now, she thought, as she tried to regain a shine on the ancient Welsh dresser that had made its home in the main room of the house, rubbing it with beeswax and then buffing it up with a polishing rag. Then she unpacked