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Percy buried his face in his hands, mortified. But still grateful that Albie could make light of it. “I’m so embarrassed.”
Albie laughed and got to his feet. “You’ll be a whole lot more embarrassed should Elsie come in here looking for us. Come on, let’s get dressed.” He picked up his trousers and tossed Percy’s to him. “As much as I like the view of you in your underpants,” he said with a smirk. “I don’t think the others would agree.”
Percy was embarrassed, yes. But as he dressed, he reassessed how he was feeling now and realised he no longer felt shame.
Albie had comforted him, and reassured him, and now even made him feel better by offering a joke.
As Percy fixed his shirt and buttoned his suspenders onto his waistband, Albie slid the strap over his shoulder, and it was such a caring, such an intimate thing to do.
Percy looked up in Albie’s face, seeing Albie’s eyes so soft for him it made his heart flutter. “I don’t know how I ever got so lucky,” Percy admitted in a whisper. “To find you.”
Albie smirked and tapped his finger lightly to Percy’s chin. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
With a sweet kiss, Albie went out first, and as Percy pulled his woollen cap on, he heard Albie laugh with Elsie and Clara in the kitchen. He didn’t feel facing them was appropriate—as if they knew all too well what he and Albie had done this morning to make them this late—Percy snuck out the front door, taking his coat with him as he went.
He went straight to the barn to tend to the horses, giving them fresh feed and water. Ox nipped at his knitted cap, pulling it off his head and tossing it, neighing with delight.
“Oh, you devil,” Percy said, scampering to go pick it up, just as Des laughed from the doorway.
“He’s a cheeky one,” Des said, walking in.
Percy picked up the cap, dusting the hay off it, grateful it had only landed in hay. “I think he was aiming for the dung pile.”
Des laughed even more, but then he nodded to the way he’d come. “I think the sow’s about ready to birth any day. We should get working on the new pen.”
“Excellent,” Percy said. Then he figured now was a good time to bring this up. “So, I was thinking...”
Des cut him a look. “No sentence ever ends well when it begins with that.”
Percy chuckled. “About those wild brumbies.”
“What about them?” he asked, roughly the same time he assumed the answer. “No. No, don’t even go thinking it. And don’t go putting crazy ideas into Albie’s head.”
“Too late.”
Des groaned. “It’s too risky. Too dangerous.”
“We need the money.”
“Then we work harder. Chasing brumbies through these mountains will get you nothing but killed.”
“I suggested we take ’em further south, out of the mountains and away from McAllister’s grubby hands at the saleyards,” Percy tried. “But then Albie thought maybe if we brought them back here, we could break ’em in and get more for them. Good money.”
Des cast his gaze out across the misty morning, at the clouds clinging to the mountains like a winter cloak, and sighed. “I promised his dad I’d look after him,” he said quietly. There was a sadness in his eyes as he recalled a memory only he could see, until he shook it away and refocused on Percy. “If we need more money, we work harder.”
Percy wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t even sure he could speak around the lump in his throat, the ache in his chest.
Des loved Albie like a son; Percy could see that now.
He wished he hadn’t brought it up, not with Des right now, and not with Albie last night.
He gave a nod and let it go.
* * *
They did work harder. Not that Des made any mention of it, he just pushed the men for more. He squeezed out every minute of daylight he could, and Percy did everything he could do to help.
Three days later, they had the new pig pen built. Post and rails, hand-sawed, holes dug, and a shelter with a scrap-tin roof. Another calf was born early and abandoned by the cow, so it was now in the stables with the dairy cow, and there were two new chicks in the coop, and some of Elsie’s seedlings near ready to sprout in pots of soil in the mudroom.
