He studied my face for a long, silent moment. Then, a slow nod. “Alright. Let me set it up safely for you.”
He carefully positioned my mahogany wheelchair close to the anvil, ensuring I was protected from any stray sparks. He took a small, manageable piece of iron, heated it in the roaring coals until it was soft and workable, placed it securely on the anvil with his tongs, and then handed me a lighter, shorter hammer.
“Hit it right there,” he instructed, pointing to the glowing tip. “Do not worry about strength right now. Just feel the way the metal moves under the strike.”
I gripped the wooden handle, raised my arm, and swung. The hammer struck the hot iron with a pathetic, weak thunk, barely leaving a mark on the glowing surface.
“Again,” he encouraged, his voice steady and calm. “Put your shoulders into it.”
I gritted my teeth and swung harder. A better hit. The iron yielded marginally, bending a fraction of an inch.
“Good. Again.”
I hammered. Again, and again, and again. My arms began to burn with the unaccustomed effort. My shoulders ached fiercely. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes, ruining my hair, soaking the collar of my dress. But I did not care. For the first time in my adult life, I was doing genuine, physical labor. I was actually shaping something solid with my own two hands.
When the metal finally cooled back to a dull gray, Josiah held up the slightly crooked, bent piece of iron.
“Your very first project,” he said, a warm smile spreading across his face. “It isn’t much. But you made it.” He set the metal down and looked at me. “You are much stronger than you think you are, Eleanor. You have always been strong. You just needed the right activity to show it.”
From that remarkable day forward, I spent hours in the forge. Josiah patiently taught me the fundamentals of his trade—how to read the heat of the metal by its color, how to angle the hammer, how to draw out a point. I lacked the sheer physical power for heavy, structural work, but I was entirely capable of forging smaller items. Over the coming weeks, I crafted iron hooks, simple gardening tools, and delicate decorative leaves. For the very first time in the fourteen years since my spine had been shattered, I felt physically capable. My legs were dead weight, but my arms and my hands worked perfectly. In the heat of the forge, that was more than enough.
But alongside my physical awakening, something else was taking root. Something far more dangerous, and entirely beyond my control.
June brought a revelation that would alter the course of my life forever. We were sitting together in the library one humid evening, the windows open to catch the faint summer breeze. Josiah was reading John Keats aloud. His command of the language had reached a point where he navigated complex poetry with effortless grace. His deep, resonant voice was practically built for verse, lending a profound, emotional weight to every single syllable.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” he read slowly, the lamplight casting warm shadows across his face. “Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.“
He lowered the book, letting the words hang in the quiet air.
“Do you believe that?” I asked softly from my chair. “That beauty is truly permanent?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I think beauty that lives in memory is permanent. The physical thing itself might eventually fade or break, but the memory of how beautiful it was… that lasts forever.”
“What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He fell entirely silent. He did not look at the books, or the ornate ceiling, or out the window. He looked directly at me.
“You,” he said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “Yesterday, down at the forge. You were covered in black soot, you were sweating, and you were laughing out loud while you hammered that iron nail. That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.”
My heart gave a violent, terrifying lurch against my ribs. “Josiah…”
He immediately looked away, shame flashing across his features. “I am sorry. Forgive me. I never should have spoken so freely.”
“No,” I commanded, grabbing the wheels of my chair and rolling myself closer to where he sat. “Look at me. Say it again.”
He raised his eyes, and the raw, unmasked emotion in them took my breath away. “You were beautiful. You are beautiful. You have always been beautiful, Eleanor. That mahogany wheelchair does not change a single thing about it. The legs that do not work do not diminish it. You are intensely intelligent, and you are overwhelmingly kind, and you are the bravest person I know. And yes, you are physically beautiful, too.”
His voice began to grow fierce, vibrating with a protective anger that thrilled me. “Those twelve men who came to this house and rejected you were blind, arrogant idiots. They looked down, saw a wheelchair, and immediately stopped looking. They never actually saw you. They didn’t see the brilliant woman who taught herself Greek simply because she wanted to learn it. They didn’t see the woman who reads dense philosophy for sheer pleasure. They didn’t see the woman who learned to bend iron with her bare hands despite a broken back. They didn’t see any of that, Eleanor, because they didn’t want to.”
I reached out, my hand trembling slightly, and took his. His enormous, rough, scarred hand—the same hand that wielded a twenty-pound sledgehammer all day—enveloped mine as if my fingers were made of spun sugar.
“Do you see me, Josiah?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he answered, his grip tightening ever so slightly. “I see all of you. And you are the most beautiful person I have ever known.”
The words rushed out of me before logic, fear, or southern propriety could stop them.
“I think I am falling in love with you.”