by Barbara Mack
Kathleen frowned darkly at her mother, rolled her eyes, and slapped her ivory fan against her skirts.
“Mother, please,” she said. “You act as if you are at death’s door, when we all know it is the very opposite. You will outlive us all. I beg of you, do not embarrass me. I do not even know this man.”
Lanny Donaldson’s eyes lit appreciatively on Duncan Murdoch. He had dressed all in black for the evening. His dark hair was clubbed behind his neck with a black satin ribbon, and he carried an ebony cane. He was a fine figure of a man, no doubt about it.
“You ought to make an effort to get to know this man. Even an old lady like me can tell that this one would make a fine lover . . . and some beautiful grandchildren to dandle on my knee.”
“Mother!”
Maggie choked back a laugh and turned it into a cough. Lanny Donaldson was just as Kathleen had described her. Blunt, witty, and beautiful, with the habit of saying the most outrageous things. Maggie liked her, a lot ... and she was glad that it was Kathleen who must deal with her, because she did not know if she could handle the little spitfire.
“I accepted a long time ago that you and Nick were not ever going to marry, though it was my fondest wish for a time,” Lanny said brusquely. "I could tell, once I thought about it, that you simply were not right for each other. But you have limited opportunities here, Kathleen. You have to take advantage of them."
"You stopped shoving Nick at me because I threatened to move into Geddes with Aunt Agnes," Kathleen told her bluntly. "And I sicced Da and Daniel on you, too. So do not try and tell me any fairy stories about how you gave it up because you knew that you were wrong, Mother."
“I will not give up my wish to get you settled into a home of your own, and you needn’t act as if it were unnatural for me to feel so. You need a husband, Kathleen, and I mean to find you one.” Her eyes cut around slyly to her exasperated daughter. “And you need some loving to sweeten you up, too. Do not tell me you that do not need a man. I am your mother, and I know better. And in your heart, you know that I am right.”
And with that last wicked barb, she swished over to her husband, who was now standing beside and speaking animatedly with the new Doctor. She hooked her arm through Arnold’s, smiling sweetly up at Duncan Murdoch. He looked charmed, and Kathleen hissed like a tea kettle on the boil as he raised Lanny’s hand to his mouth.
“She is probably over there regaling him with every virtue that I possess,” she said in Maggie’s ear. “And if she cannot think of any virtues, she will make some up. Before dinner is over, he will be thinking that I am pining away for him,” she finished glumly. “Do not laugh. She has done this to me before.”
Maggie laughed anyway, she could not help it. “I am sorry, Kathleen,” she said. “But your mother is like a little battering ram, is she not?”
“You do not know the half of it,” Kathleen said. “I would bet money that she has already invited him to dinner at our house, and that we will accidentally run into him a dozen times in the next week. Wait and see.”
“Did you not ever want to get married?” Maggie asked curiously. “Was there ever a time when you just longed to have a home and family of your own?”
Her eyes glued themselves to Nick lovingly as she waited for Kathleen’s answer. He, too, wore black trousers and evening coat, but the vest that peeked through was a rose brocade. His clothes fit his frame to perfection; there was not a wrinkle to be found on the long lines of his trouser legs, and the breadth of his shoulders in the well-cut jacket was breathtaking.
“Just because you are pining away for love does not mean that I am,” Kathleen said acerbically. Her gaze fell beneath Maggie’s sudden hurt look, and she sighed. “I am sorry, Maggie, I just get jittery when my mother starts up. I do think that Nick is perfect for you, but he is a dunderhead about women and always has been. You are going to have to knock him in the head and drag him to the altar, I am afraid.”
“I do not want to marry him,” Maggie said softly. “I do not want to be married ever again.
And I will not.”
“Never is a very long time,” said a deep, gentle voice from behind them, and they both started.
Kathleen looked up–way up–into crystal blue, piercing eyes, and felt a funny flutter in her stomach. Duncan smiled down at her calmly, one huge hand resting on his cane, taking his time looking her over. She felt a rush of heat when his gaze rested on her bosom for a moment longer than was polite. Kathleen bristled at his unabashed appraisal of her face and figure. She was not some horse that he was thinking of buying.
“It is quite rude to sneak up on private conversations, sir,” she said tartly. She let her eyes rake over the long length of him slowly and pointedly. He was the biggest man she had ever seen, and she admitted grudgingly to herself, one of the most attractive. This man had done some hard physical labor in his time or he was blessed with a naturally fit physique. “And staring is not so very polite, either.”
He smiled, his teeth a flash of white in his dark face, the scar on his right side crinkling up. Kathleen’s eyes were drawn to it. Absently, she noted that it took nothing away from his rugged good looks, added to it, in fact. The scar made him seem slightly wicked and dangerous. Some women might like that, but she certainly did not. She was not some flirty young thing who liked to play with fire. Fire burned, and she knew very well to keep her hands out of it.
“What happened to your face?” she asked bluntly, and heard her mother gasp as she walked up behind her. Kathleen ignored her.
“An accident when I was a child,” he said tranquilly.
“And your leg?”
Kathleen heard her mother hiss behind her and tug on her arm. She ignored the entreaty from behind of ‘Kathleen, behave yourself!’ and never took her eyes from his. Maggie watched them both, her eyes suddenly speculative.
“That is a temporary condition. I broke my leg, rather badly, in a fall from a horse. It took a long time to heal, and the muscles are weak.” His eyes laughed down into hers and invited her to share in the joke. Kathleen ignored the weakness that assailed her stomach and staunchly kept her face stony and her eyes on his.
“Did you think that it was an affectation?” he asked gently.
“No, sir,” she snorted. “You are no dandy. I saw you twitching in those fancy clothes from across the room.”
Duncan threw back his head and laughed delightedly.
“Too true,” he said. “I am sure I would suffocate if I had to wear these every day. You have sharp eyes, Miss Donaldson.”
And a sharp little tongue, he added silently to himself. I think that I would like to show you other uses for that tongue besides cutting men to pieces. He moved closer to her, until he could feel the heat from her body. A blush spread over her face, and from this distance Duncan could smell the sweet, spicy scent of her. His nostrils flared, his hand tightened on his cane, and he felt a hot rush of desire sweep through his body with the speed of lightning. Her scent owed nothing to artifice; it was not perfume, but a combination of soap and warm woman, and it was as suddenly familiar to him as his own face in a mirror. He held Kathleen’s eyes with his own, and he knew that she felt the connection between them the same as he did, for he saw her hand tremble as she raised it to touch the tendrils of hair falling from her coiffure. His eyes dropped to her lush, rosy mouth, and he contemplated sweeping her up and away with him as both his Cheyenne and Scottish ancestors would have done.
He wanted this woman. He wanted her badly.
Lanny Donaldson could stand the silence no more. She had been behind them and never saw the look the two of them shared. She would have known very well what that look meant for she shared one with her husband nearly every day of their life together. But since she had not seen anything except their stiff backs, she swept between them with a charming smile, shooting Kathleen a look that promised retribution later. Unless one were looking for it, or happened to know her well, one never would have noticed the temper line betwe
en her brows. On the surface she was all glittering beauty and helplessness as she took Duncan’s arm and bustled him off to do a little ‘fence mending’, but Kathleen knew that when they got home she was in for a long lecture. She was well acquainted with that frown line of her mother’s. She had put it there between her brows more times than she cared to count. Kathleen turned to look morosely at her friend.
“Well, I have done it now,” she said soberly. “I am going to be on the outs with Mother for a long time over that one.” She shook her head. “He just made me so mad, the way he looked at me.” She sighed, absently brushing a hand over the strands of flaxen hair that had escaped. She tapped a finger against her lower lip, looking suddenly pensive.
Kathleen’s hair looked beautiful, glistening in the lamp light, Maggie thought. Duncan had thought so, too, she could tell. And he had not been offended by Kathleen and her bluntness, quite the opposite, in fact. He was intrigued, and definitely interested in the petite blonde. Kathleen had not been indifferent, either. Maggie managed to keep her smile on the inside, because she knew that Kathleen would be offended if she smirked at her just now.
“Do not worry about it,” she said, and put an arm around Kathleen’s shoulders, giving her a warm squeeze. “I am sure that your mother will get over her mad before too long. Let’s take them in to dinner. Tommy and Ned and your father are getting fidgety.”
Nick stared hotly down the table at Maggie during the long dinner, dry-mouthed with lust. That he had managed to keep his distance and his hands off of her all night was a testament to his willpower. The dress that she was wearing was the exact color of her eyes, and it made her skin glow with the luster of a pearl. And that neckline was doing wonders for his blood pressure. He eyed her cleavage as she bent forward just slightly. Good Lord, she was practically spilling those beautiful breasts of hers out onto the table. He hoped that he was nearby to catch them when it happened.
Looking up, he caught Duncan Murdoch’s eyes on him and he scowled half-heartedly at the man. Duncan’s mouth quirked up on one side, and Nick smiled back despite himself. Dammit, he hated to admit it, but he liked the man. He was smart, and amusing . . . and Nick felt a surge of hot jealousy every time he came close to Maggie. Not that Duncan seemed to be paying very much attention to Maggie this evening, what with ogling Kathleen and fending off her persistent mother.
Nick grinned to himself. Poor bastard. Nick had spent enough time of his own trying to dodge Lanny Donaldson that he felt really sorry for the man. Once Lanny got an idea in her head,
it practically took a rockslide to bust it loose. Look how long it had taken her to quit shoving Kathleen at him, for heaven’s sake. They must have made it plain more than a hundred times over the years that all they felt for each other was friendship. And still she had tried to thrust them together, until Nick had married and Kathleen had threatened to move out. And after Mary had died, he had broken into a sweat every time Lanny came near him, for fear she might start up again with her blandishments. That woman had more than enough wiles for three women, and he was glad that he did not have to live with her. Arnold seemed to like it well enough, but she made him jittery.
“What do you think, Nicky, my boy?” boomed Arnold from the end of the table, and Nick tried to remember what they had been talking about before he had been distracted by Maggie’s charms. His face must have been blank, because Kathleen jumped smoothly to his rescue.
“Oh, Da, cannot we talk about something besides horses and farming for a change? We are guests in someone else’s house, you know. I am tired of the subject. It is all you ever think about.”
“Never have children, Nick, they are all ungrateful little wretches,” Arnold said, glaring at Kathleen from under his eyebrows. “It is grateful enough they are when that farm puts food on the table and clothes on their back, but let a man get an interesting conversation goin’, and it is ‘Oh, Da, must we discuss that at the dinner table?’ “ he finished up in a whiny, falsetto voice that sounded nothing like Kathleen.
”You know that you love me,” Kathleen grinned at her father, who grinned back.
“That I do, Katie. But you are an ungrateful wretch, just like the rest of my offspring.”
Kathleen lifted her wine glass in a salute to her father and winked at him.
“Well, Da, I have noticed that I am only an ungrateful wretch when I do not do what you want. When you want something from me, it is Katie darling, or sweet Kate, or sugar dumpling.” Kathleen wrinkled her nose. “Sugar dumpling, for heaven’s sake. Who would want to be a sugar dumpling? Puts me in mind of a fat old lady with flaky skin.”
They all laughed, and Kathleen winked covertly at Nick. She was a master at diverting attention, and with a mother like hers, she’d had to be. Lanny Donaldson had a will of stone, and if you did not want to butt heads with her all the time, you learned early how to create a distraction.
After eating dessert and praising dinner to the sky, everyone began to leave. Doctor Fell was first. He bent over Maggie’s hand gallantly and told her if she ever considered running away with an older man to let him know.
“It is the pie, you know,” he said roguishly. “I am too old for romance, but that was the best pie I have had in years.”
Maggie laughingly told him that Kathleen had made the pies and gave him one to take home with him, thereby buying his friendship for life. After they had waved him off, Duncan followed him out the door. But not before Lanny Donaldson had extracted a promise from him to have dinner at their house on the following Tuesday. Maggie choked on her laughter when Kathleen rolled her eyes behind her mother’s back and Duncan caught her at it. Kathleen blushed a fiery red when he merely raised one dark eyebrow at her. There was some bond there between the two of them, Maggie was sure of it. You could practically hear the crackling of the fire when they stood close together. If they kept at it, they were liable to send the nearby forest up in flames.
Maggie plopped down in the nearest chair when Ned and Tommy headed for their respective rooms. Kathleen had made her promise to leave some of the work for her to help with tomorrow, but she still had lots and lots of work to do before she went to bed. She jumped when a pair of hands settled over her shoulders and squeezed. A shudder ran down her spine and the hair stood up on the back of her neck when Nick leaned forward and spoke directly into her sensitive ear.
“Let me rub your shoulders for you. You have been stiff as a poker all night, and I could tell they were hurting.”
Maggie gave him no encouragement but said nothing to deter him either, for the touch of his warm hands on her sore shoulders was heavenly. He rubbed the knots out of her muscles until she was spineless in her chair, a big pile of jelly with no bones. Maggie slumped back against him, enjoying the feeling.
“Stop,” she said drowsily. “You are going to put me to sleep and I have to finish up here.”
“I will help,” Nick said. "Two hands make the work go faster, as my dear old mother used to say." They gathered up the dishes in comfortable silence, washing up what was necessary, stacking some in the sink to soak and be washed later, and storing leftover food in the cool of the storeroom.
“It was a wonderful dinner,” Nick said quietly while drying dishes with a towel.
“Thanks,” Maggie murmured, looking down at the silverware she was sorting.
“I . . . like your friend, Doctor Murdoch,” he said. “I did not think I would, but I do. I am sorry. I have been acting like a jackass.”
Maggie’s head came up in shock. It must have cost him a lot in pride to admit that to her. She never thought that it would happen. Nick had apologized, and the least she could do was be gracious.
“It is all right, Nick,” she said simply. And it was. She could forgive him anything.
“I was jealous,” he said to her now, his hands still holding the towel but no longer drying dishes. He took a step toward her and Maggie dropped the spoon she was holding with a clang onto the floor. When he put the towel on the coun
ter and tilted her chin up, she began to shake.
“I was afraid that he would want to do this to you,” he said, and brushed his mouth over hers as lightly as the kiss of a butterfly’s wing. “And this,” he whispered, and licked a trail down the vulnerable slope of her throat.
Maggie moaned deep in her throat and Nick swallowed the sound with his mouth, reveling in her passion. The sound of a throat clearing behind them had them suddenly jumping apart, Maggie’s heart nearly bursting with fright. Ned was standing in the door way to the kitchen, his face twisted in concern. Maggie could force no words past the lump that rose in her throat at the sight of him, and she stared dumbly at his figure. Nick, too, seemed to be mute.
“I forgot my waistcoat,” Ned said quietly. “Blasted thing always gets too tight after I eat. I was going to see if you needed any help with the cleaning up, Maggie. I will be going to my bed now. Goodnight.”
He turned and left, leaving Maggie and Nick staring after him, still wordless.
SEVEN
Maggie bit her lip as she hurried toward the stables. She had not realized that this was going to be so hard. It took every ounce of courage she had to go to the stables and see Ned. She had to try to explain, for she could not stand it if he thought badly of her. He was the only family that she had left, and she had not realized until last night how much his good opinion meant to her. How important it was to her.
Until it was gone, she thought gloomily. She would never, for the rest of her days, forget the look of shock in Ned’s eyes when he stood in that doorway and caught her in Nick’s illicit embrace. She was deeply ashamed. She should have known better. Nick had warned her how it would be, and she had not listened to him, she had just gone on and done what she wanted without a thought to the consequences. She had thrown herself at the man every chance she got, and she had no right . . . she was not free to love him, and she knew it.
