She sat down in front of him and started picking at his laces.
Enough was enough. He couldn’t let his angel touch his stinky feet. There was no telling what muck he might have stepped in.
“I’ll do it,” he groused. He tried to push her away and take off the fuzzy red mittens, but she wouldn’t let him.
“Keep those mittens on!” She glared at him so fiercely he didn’t dare argue. “I’ll not have you catching your death on my watch.”
Why was she doing this? Helping him instead of calling her father to send him away. Giving him her own clothing. Talking to him as if he were any other person. Not the piece of gutter trash he knew himself to be.
She finally got the laces undone and gently tugged his shoes off. He tried to pull his feet beneath the horse blanket before she saw the sorry state of his socks, but she wouldn’t let him. She peeled the hole-riddled stockings from his feet one at a time, tsking over how icy his toes felt. He was just happy to see they weren’t black like Old Man Tarleton’s. They were filthy, though. Ugly. He pulled them away from her clean white hands and did his best to hide them under the saddle blanket.
She made no comment, just plopped onto the dirt floor in front of him and yanked her shoes off. What was she . . . ? His angel pulled the thick wool socks she wore off her feet and went digging under the blanket for his toes. Before he could react and scramble away from her, she latched on to his right foot, dragged it out, and pushed on the sock. She captured his left just as easily. ’Course he’d stopped trying to get away by then. His brain might be half frozen, but he recognized an unwinnable battle when he saw one.
The warmth of the socks brought a tingle of awareness to his feet that quickly expanded into a searing pain so deep, he wanted to kick her away so she’d stop touching him. But he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Ever.
He’d just encountered the biggest blessing his scrawny list had ever seen. No way was he gonna do anything to hurt her. So he gritted his teeth and sat still while she flopped the horse blanket down over his stinging feet.
“Now for the inside.” She stood and pushed her bare feet back into her boots and disappeared into her stall again. When she emerged, she waddled, carrying a full pail of milk in front of her. He jumped up to help her carry it, taking it from her hands.
“It’s still warm,” she said. “I don’t have a cup, though.”
Malachi’s mouth salivated at the thought of drinking fresh milk. “I don’t need a cup.” He’d just put his mouth directly on the pail and tip it until the creamy goodness slathered his throat. But no. He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t drink like an animal in front of her. Couldn’t defile the milk by putting his mouth all over it.
He glanced around. There. On the workbench. A canning jar half full of nails and tacks and other odds and ends. Malachi rushed to the table, unscrewed the lid, and dumped the contents, careful not to let any fall onto the floor. He wiped the dust off on his still-damp pants and blew out the center. “This’ll do.”
Her nose wrinkled. “But it’s dirty.”
He grinned. “Little dirt never hurt me.”
She smiled in return, and the action almost felled him. Never had he seen anything so beautiful, so good, aimed his direction. Smiles like that were reserved for other people. Deserving people. Never for him.
Clearing his throat, he pushed past her and strode back to the milk pail. He didn’t want to dirty the rest of the milk by dipping the jar in so he set it on the floor and lifted the pail.
“I’ll hold it,” the girl chirped, still grinning as if this were some grand adventure.
Weakened from his ordeal, Mal’s arms shook with the weight of the pail. Some of the milk sloshed over the sides of the jar. His gaze flew to the girl, his chest tight.
“Keep going,” she urged, not angry in the least that he’d spilled milk on her fingers. “Fill it to the top.”
The tightness eased. He followed her instructions, then set the pail down and took the jar from her.
He lifted the glass jar to his lips. His eyes slid closed as the fresh, creamy liquid rolled over his tongue. He savored the sweetness, drinking slowly, deliberately. And when a third was all that remained, he made himself stop and set the jar aside.
“Why aren’t you finishing it? Aunt Bertie always makes me finish my milk before I leave the table.”
Wasn’t it Aunt Henry a minute ago?
Malachi shrugged it off. The aunt’s name didn’t matter. “I’m savin’ it fer later.” He’d learned never to eat everything he found all at once. He never knew how hard it would be to find something the next time. Better to squirrel some away while you had it.
“But we got plenty more.” She tipped her head toward the milk pail.
“That’s yours. Your family’s.”
The girl looked at him strangely, as if she didn’t understand what he’d just said. “The aunts won’t mind.”