If there was anything Luke hated more than being cold, and wet, and achy, it was being suffocated in a woman’s arms when he was cold, wet, and achy.

“Ma!” grumbled Luke, when his attempt to sidestep her embrace failed miserably. Least he had Simon to take some of the pressure off. He’d have been embarrassed by all the constant fussing if his cousin’s mother had been any better. If his sisters had sons, he hoped to God they learned to stop fussing.

It took Simon’s quick wit to get her attention off of them, and Luke wriggled out of her arms and added, “he’s been hackin’ the whole way back.”

Having an entire horde of siblings should have made it less difficult to direct attention away from him, but most times it didn’t. Why couldn’t he have been born a couple of years down the line instead, and let Matthew take the brunt of being older son? Or maybe, if the next storm favored him, Luke would drown before he had to come back to all of this.

Ugh.

He grabbed a set of dry clothes and wiped at his face, but it didn’t do much good when his hair and his hat both were still dripping wet. Gave a frown when he noticed Lory at the table by herself. Luke opened his mouth to say something, but – fortunately for Lory – his focus strayed when Simon called him to the ladder, and he followed him up to the attic instead.

“Thought we’d never make it back. My stomach’s eatin’ itself,” he complained, while he stripped his wet clothes and replaced them with the dry ones. Didn’t help much with the cold when it’d already sunk deep into his bones.