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that automatically became hers from nine in the morning until two thirty in the afternoon.
    “I’d like to, anyway.” He offered her his arm, then paused. “You’re all cleaned up. You don’t wanna touch me.”
    “I…” She stared at the coat sleeve covering his forearm. He was substantial, taking up more space and air than was his fair share with those broad shoulders and thick arms. He was tall, too, nearly half a foot over her own unladylike five feet and seven inches. With sudden clarity, she knew she did want to touch him, regardless of the dirt on his clothes. Regardless of her disfigured ear.
    It was confusing. Being a nun hadn’t often put her into contact with the opposite gender. Part of why she’d so easily taken the veil was because she had never felt drawn to a man. Attraction had rarely been present in her life. The incident in April had changed that, of course, putting her needs and emotions on starkly painful display. In mere minutes, she’d been shown what she might once have been able to crave, and then had it snatched from her in the most heinous manner possible. Men were not a factor for her, past, present and future.
    Except she wanted to touch Crawford, even though he made her the tiniest bit nervous. She wanted to find out what it would be like to slide her hand through the crook of his elbow, to rest her fingers on his strong forearm and maybe, just maybe, lean into him slightly. Would she feel safe? Protected once again, as he had done in the clearing? She rather thought there could be no better sensation than that of safety in a man’s presence. Though she doubted she would ever experience it herself.
    So, taking a deep breath, she tucked her hand into his proffered arm and curled her fingers into the tangible evidence of his soldier strength.
    She heard his matching inhalation as she settled her arm on his, and they began to walk, together. “So you’re a teacher.”
    “I am.”
    “I’ll bet you’re awful strict with the children.” Was that a teasing note in his rumbling voice?
    “When I have to be,” she answered primly.
    She sensed him nodding beside her. “I had a teacher like you once.”
    “Oh?”
    “Not as pretty, or Irish, but she had this expression that could freeze you in your tracks. She knew if you’d been up to mischief, or planning some.”
    Moira tried not to care that he’d called her pretty, focusing instead on the latter part of his statement. “Then you likely kept very still under her watch.”
    He snorted lightly, as if an actual chuckle was beyond him. “Would that I had. Would’ve saved me her ruler on my knuckles more than once.”
    “I don’t strike the children.” Even the teacher nuns back in Boston had chastised her for it, her inability to mete out necessary discipline. It was why she’d quickly been assigned to the nursing hospital, where she could heal wounds instead of deal in them. Though she’d wanted to wallop Captain Crawford upside the head with John White Horse’s bow, she doubted she’d have been able to follow through. It was much easier to glare at him, after all.
    The captain seemed to hear the hurt defense in her tone. “I’m sure you don’t, ma’am.” His words were gruff but gentle. “Is this it?” He drew her to a halt in front of a whitewashed clapboard building nearly twice the size of her cabin. Its brightly painted blue front door never failed to cheer her—a sign that someone in Red Creek cared that its children had a proper place of learning.
    When she’d first arrived in Red Creek, she’d been appalled by the fact that at least half of her twenty-two students hadn’t been able to write their own names, much less read. They’d memorized the Bible verses they’d heard their parents repeat, but the level of literacy saddened Moira until she felt it her duty—if not her calling—to improve them. Their futures depended upon it.
    “Yes, this is it.” She disentangled her arm from his, not noticing