He didn't turn around. You don't have to be up this early, he called. I know, Viven said from the barn door. She was dressed in the coat she'd arrived in, which was not the right coat for this kind of cold. He'd been thinking about that for a week and hadn't said anything.
And she had her scarf wrapped twice and her breath came out in a long white plume. But if I'm sleeping while the work gets done, I'm not actually useful. " He turned then to look at her. She was holding a lantern which told him she'd been up long enough to light it, and her face in its light was alert in a way that wasn't performed. She was cold, and she knew she was cold, and she was there anyway. "The coat isn't warm enough," he said.
"I'm aware of that. There's one of my old ranch coats on the peg by the back door. It'll be large on you, but it'll keep you alive. She looked at him for a moment with an expression he was beginning to recognize. The slight weighing, the decision about whether to accept something offered.
"All right," she said. "Tomorrow, I'll wear that one. Wear it today. Go get it. " She went. She came back wearing a sheepkin coat that came to her knees and had sleeves that swallowed her hands.
And she looked so thoroughly unlike the woman who had stepped off the train in silklined wool that something almost unwilling moved through him. Not quite amusement, but the shadow of it. Better, he said, and handed her the feed bucket. She took it without comment and went to the nearest stall, and that was how the mornings began to change. She was a quick study, and she worked with an application that impressed him against his better judgment.
Not because she was efficient. She wasn't, not yet. And she made plenty of mistakes. But because she didn't protect herself from the work, most people new to a thing held something in reserve, some distance between themselves and the task that would let them retreat without too much lost if it proved too hard. Viven didn't do that.
She went at each new thing completely, and when it beat her, she looked at why and went at it again. Agnes the cow remained a persistent problem. The animal had a contrary nature and seemed to find Viven specifically irritating, which was not rational, but was absolutely true. Agnes would cooperate with Gideon and would even be reasonably civil to Elsie when the child came into the barn. But with Viven, she maintained a consistent campaign of lowgrade obstruction, shifting her weight at the wrong moment, turning her head at the pull of the rope, once planting a hoof deliberately on Viven's foot.
On the fourth morning of this, he watched Viven stand up from the milking stool, look Agnes directly in the face, and say quietly and without any particular heat, "We can keep doing this, or you can decide we're done with it. Either way, I'm not leaving. " Agnes swung her big head and looked at the wall. Viven sat back down and finished the milking without further incident. Gideon had to leave the barn for a moment. He stood outside in the cold with his hand over his mouth and waited until he was sure his face was back to where it needed to be before going back in.