The Last Candle

"The chimney’s draft is pulling from the west again," Gwilym said, adjusting the grate as the first flakes stuck to the parlor window.

I watched him work the iron poker, the metal scraping against the brick with a sound that vibrated in my teeth. We were in the main parlor of the farmhouse on the Welsh border, the only room warm enough to hold a conversation in November 1923. Gwilym stood by the fire, his back to me, his broad shoulders filling the frame of the window. We had been legally married for five months. It was a paper arrangement, a necessity for him to keep the tenancy of the hill farm his uncle left, which the estate would renew only to a married man, and a convenience for me to keep the roof over my head without the intrusion of a lodger. We lived in separate wings, ate in silence, and shared nothing but the deed.

He turned then, wiping soot from his hands with an old rag. He was a man built for hard labor, with forearms corded with muscle and a face that looked tired but never unkind. His eyes, a dark brown that seemed to hold the firelight, met mine. There was no hesitation in his gaze, only a quiet, steady attention that had been growing louder each week.