A flurry of excitement greeted them at the door.
“Meghan,” Betsy exclaimed upon seeing her roommate, “there’s a man here to see you.”
Meghan’s heart gave a thump. Rafferty? No, she thought. It wasn’t physically possible for Rafferty to have reached Gibbons Mill before her.
Patty’s face appeared flushed as she came out of the kitchen. “He’s asked for tea,” she said. She swung her surprised gaze on Meghan. “Meg, he asked to drink tea in my kitchen!”
Lucas. Meghan knew it instinctively, before anyone mentioned his name. Heat rushed along with the rush of her blood. “Lucas Ridgely?” she asked, her voice unusually high.
“It’s him, all right,” Priscilla said as she came up from behind Patty. “Said he’s come to see you, Meghan.”
“Go,” Susan urged. “Go and see what he wants.”
With heat in her cheeks, Meghan moved toward the kitchen on unsteady feet. She stopped in the doorway and studied him. Her heart slammed in her chest to see him sitting there in Patty’s kitchen, looking larger than life and more handsome than a man had the right to look. He sat at the table, talking with James, Patty’s eldest son, who was perched on the chair across from him
James spotted Meghan first. “Here’s Meg now.” He stood, and Meghan’s throat went dry as she watched Lucas rise, slowly unfolding his long legs.
“That didn’t take too long now, did it, Meg?” James said.
Lucas’s dark gaze gave Meghan a jolt as he studied her from across the room. “Where did you go?” he asked in his deep voice.
“She went—”
“I went to the store,” she said quickly, while she shot James a telling look.
“The store?” Lucas intoned. His look told her that he didn’t believe her.
She glanced away. “In Somerville.”
He nodded then, seeming to accept that answer easily enough. But as he continued to watch her with hawklike eyes, she saw a frown settle upon his brow. “We need to talk,” he said.
Meghan shifted uncomfortably and flashed James a glance. The boy’s gaze was alight with curiosity.
“All right,” she said, realizing that there was no way to avoid it. “James—”
“I understand,” the boy said.
“Thank ye,” Meghan whispered.
James’s scowl became a smile, and an admiring light entered his brown gaze. “For you, Meg, anything.”
And she gave a fake laugh, sensing Lucas’s displeasure at the exchange.
James left, and no one else entered the kitchen. Meghan and Lucas were alone.
Meghan stood within a few feet of the door, feeling vulnerable. She wondered if Lucas could see that she’d been crying recently, and she prayed that he couldn’t tell. Her prayers went unanswered.
“You look like hell.”
She averted her glance briefly. “Thank ye.”
His lips twitched slightly. “Sit down, Meghan, before you fall down. I’ll not bite, you know.”
“Do I?” she retorted, regaining some of her spiritas she moved to take the seat that had recently been vacated by James.
“Full of fire, Meghan McBride—it’s what I … love about you.”
The word love seemed to hover in the air between them, and the tension that followed told Meghan that Lucas had meant it figuratively, not literally.
She swallowed hard. “Why are ye here?”
“What?” he said. “No pleasant idle chitchat over a cup of tea first?” He hesitated, and Meghan was shocked to realize that whatever Lucas had to say had to be difficult.
“What?” she gasped. “What is it?” Was he here to fire her? To tell her that no one admitted to Phelps’s behavior and that he and his aunt had decided that she—and not Phelps—should be the one to leave?
“Meghan …” He seemed reluctant to continue.
“Lucas, please. You’re frightening me.”
Finally her fear penetrated through his discomfort. “Will you walk with me?” He glanced toward the door. “Your friends are nice, but I don’t want them to hear this…”
Stifling the urge to scream, Meghan nodded.
“ ’Tis cold out,” she said.
He smiled. “Get your cloak.” His eyes fell upon her old shawl. “You do still have the cloak?”
“Ah—aye,” she confessed. “But I left directly from work, ye see, and—”
His dark eyes lit with warmth, and her thought vanished with her reaction to him. “I’ll wait while you change your gown, too, if you’d like,” he said with understanding.
She nodded and left, hurrying up the stairs to her bedchamber. When she returned, he was still at the table, only he’d been rejoined by James and the women of the house.
He stood. “I explained to Patty that my aunt needs your assistance.”
“I see,” she said. Did his aunt need her assistance? She had’changed from her work gown to a clean dress and had her cloak over her right arm.
Lucas took the heavy forest green cloak and gently lifted it over her head. Meghan could feel her burning cheeks as she adjusted the garment over her shoulders. “I’ll be back soon,” she told her friends.
“I’ll have her back within the hour,” Lucas promised, and the two left the warmth of the house for the cold outside.
Twenty-four
The night air was chilly, and Meghan drew up her hood as she walked along the road beside Lucas. Stars filled the sky, and the moon was a bright crescent against the jet backdrop.
Lucas was silent as their footsteps crunched on the top frozen layer of earth, but his thoughts were anything but calm. He had something unpleasant to tell Meghan and he wasn’t sure how to start. “Meghan—”
She looked at him, her blue eyes glistening with emotion, her body poised as if she’d shatter at the littlest provocation.
He caught his breath. “I have something to tell you, and I—”
“Are ye firing me?” she interrupted in a choked voice.
Lucas jerked to a standstill. “No,” he said, and was shocked that he hadn’t understood her fear. “This isn’t about you … well, it is, but only because it concerns your fiancé.”
“Rafferty?”
He could sense some of her tension leave as he nodded. “Yes, Rafferty O’Connor. Your fiancé.”
She glanced away and started to walk again. He saw her shoulders stiffen, and he wanted to know desperately what was going on in her mind. “What about him?” she asked.
He halted and grabbed her arm, turning her gendy to face him. Because of his interest in Meghan, he’d done some checking on her fiancé and what he’d found disturbed him gready, so much so that he felt that he had to tell her.
“He’s old enough to be your father!” He’d been shocked when he’d learned that Rafferty O’Connor was a middle-aged man.
Meghan gazed up at him with luminous blue eyes, and something kicked in Lucas’s gut. “Aye,” she murmured. “I know.”
He made a sound of disgust and looked away, but he didn’t release his hold on Meghan’s arm. “Of course, you know, but what I want to know is why? Why would you tie yourself to a man over twice your age!” He was furious—damn it, but he couldn’t help it.
She reacted in kind. “I’m not tied to a man twice me age!”
“Then what are you if you’re not tied to him? You’re engaged to be married—that’s the same thing!”
Jerking from his grasp, she started back to Patty’s. “I don’t need to listen to this,” she cried.
Lucas grabbed her and spun her to face him. “Don’t you understand? I’m only thinking of you!”
Meghan stared at his taut features, at the wild light in his dark eyes; and against her better judgment, she felt herself respond to him.
“I want you to be happy, Meghan,” he rasped. “It was difficult enough when I thought your fiancé to be a young man, but …” His voice trailed off.
She gazed into his ebony eyes, and a trembling started at her nape and frissone
d outward, enveloping her limbs and midsection.
“Meghan,” he said, leaning toward her.
“I’m not tied to him,” she whispered, swaying forward. Her breath quickened.
“You’re betrothed,” he pointed out. His mouth was only a hair’s breadth from her lips as she shook her head.
“I…”
Her confession ended before it had barely begun when Lucas took her mouth in the lightest of kisses. Her head swam at the pressure. As he deepened the contact, Lucas pulled her into his embrace. His hardness met her soft curves, and heat shot up her length from wherever their bodies touched.
She heard the labored sound of Lucas’s breathing as he left her mouth to rain kisses down her throat. She arched her neck instinctively, shivering not from the frigid night temperature but with the pleasure of his touch. Lucas ignited a fire that burned hotly within her, and from his shuddering response as he lifted his head, she knew that he was caught up in passion, too.
His eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. He shifted his hands from her waist to her shoulders. “Meghan, you must listen to me. Rafferty O’Connor is not the honorable, trusted man you believed in.”
She closed her eyes briefly on a wave of pain.-”I know.”
The hands on her shoulders tightened. “You know?” he asked, sounding skeptical.
Meghan felt drawn into the depths of his glittering dark orbs. She saw first his tension reflected in his gaze … and then his surprise.
“You know?” he repeated with a narrowing of his eyes.
“I saw for meself this day,” she admitted. The pain of Rafferty’s betrayal was still raw and must have been evident in her tone, because Lucas’s look softened and he began to stroke her upper arms in a caress obviously meant to comfort her.
“What happened?”
The gentleness in his voice was nearly her undoing. Tears sprang to her eyes, blinding her. He cared, she thought. He cared whether or not she’d been hurt by her fiancé. Former fiancé. Meghan shivered.
“Come,” he said, turning her to walk beside him within the circle of his arm. “Let’s find a warm place to talk.”
They were silent as they continued over the thin layer of icy earth. Lucas brought her to the mill house, and he told her as he released her that she’d be warm soon. He inserted a key, and she heard it click as he turned the lock. Then, he urged her inside and to wait while he lit an oil lamp. Within seconds, it seemed to Meghan, Lucas had a lamp burning, and he was taking her through to Mr. Simmons’s office. And everything had gone a little too smoothly for Meghan’s peace of mind.
“Were ye planning to bring me here all along?” she asked, her stomach tightening.
Lucas, who’d gone to Simmons’s chair, glanced a t her with a dark look. “Is that what you think? That I planned to bring you here to seduce you?”
She stared at him a long moment, noting his handsome features … the hint of pride in his firm jaw, the commanding glitter in his cobalt eyes. There was a sensual curve to his masculine mouth that made her heart race each time she looked at him. Her question sounded ridiculous even to her now that she thought about it.
Did she really think he’d resort to such secretive measures to seduce her in such an unromantic place as George Simmons’s office?
“No,” she admitted softly. “I don’t believe ye’d planned to bring me here.”
His grin lit up the tiny room, brighter than the oillamp, and her body reacted with a jolt of joy. “Now the smokehouse perhaps,” he teased.
She laughed at the image. After the matter with Mathew Phelps, she was surprised that she could joke about such things. “And ruin yer clothes?”
A smile lingered about his lips as he regarded her with warmth. “You’ve a point, Meghan McBride.” His eyes gleamed. “I’ll have to think on this for a while.”
Meghan inhaled sharply at the underlying promise in his tone.
Suddenly, the amusement in his expression was gone. “Tell me what happened today,” he urged.
The flame of the oil lamp flickered, and the dancing light highlighted and softened Lucas’s rugged features. Meghan felt drawn to the man with a strength that frightened her. He was most dangerous to her like this … when he was attentive and caring, anxious to listen to what she had to say.
She was uncomfortable standing. She glanced about for somewhere to sit, and Lucas immediately came around the desk with George Simmons’s chair for her. She sat gratefully at his invitation, for her knees had weakened and begun to fail her. Lucas perched himself on the edge of the foreman’s desk, which discomfited Meghan because of having to look up at him.
This man has shown you nothing but kindness, she reminded herself. Meghan forced herself to relax.
“Meghan?” he prompted when she still hadn’t said a word. His regard was full of tenderness as he straightened away from the desk and found another chair.
Finally, she felt comfortable with their eyes level. “I told ye that I went to the store in Somerville,” she said, “but what I didn’t tell ye was why I went …”
Meghan then told him of her decision to break her engagement to Rafferty, how she’d noticed that he’d changed over the last two years.
“Changed?” Lucas asked. “In what way?”
She bit her lip and looked down. Meeting Lucas’s gaze—although she glimpsed no censure—distracted her, for Lucas filled her mind with other thoughts … forcing her from the subject at hand. “Rafferty seemed … angry all the time.”
Lucas watched the play of emotion on Meghan’s face and read more into her words than she was telling. “He seemed angry,” he said, encouraging her with his tone.
“Aye.” She inhaled deeply before releasing the breath on a ragged sigh. “He gets angry at the littlest thing.”
Her hands twisted in her lap, and he covered them with his own. “Did he hurt you?” he asked, keeping his voice light and steady, although he knew he’d blow up with anger if he learned Rafferty had done something to injure Meghan. As things stood now, he wanted to find the bastard and severely throttle him.
“No …”
He felt the tension start to leave him, but some of his anger remained.
Then, Meghan told him about her visit to the store. He listened with horror and mounting disgust for Rafferty O’Connor, while she described in detail what she’d witnessed early that evening in the back room.
“I ran outside to the carriage, and then Susan and I left in a hurry.” She paused. “I didn’t want to see or talk with him,” she said. Then, her mouth formed a wry smile as she confessed how she’d grabbed the horse’s reins and sent the vehicle barreling down the road at a dangerous speed. “Susan brought me back to me senses,” she finished.
“Thank God,” Lucas said. “You could have been killed … the both of you.”
Meghan looked ashamed. “Aye. I must apologize to Susan …” Her voice trailed off, and the room was silent.
She’s no longer betrothed, Lucas thought.
The silence continued, and he searched Meghan’s expression, needing to know her thoughts. “What will you do now?” he asked gently.
She met his gaze. “I’m not sure,” she said.
Meghan was grateful for Lucas’s question, because she felt that he wasn’t pressuring her to come to him at a time when she was most vulnerable. It was frightening to imagine a future on her own. But at least she had her employment, she realized. And the people at Patty’s.
Unless Flora Gibbons released her from her employment, she’d be content to live and work here for a long while yet.
But what if seeing Lucas—and loving him the way she did—made it too unbearable for her to stay at Gibbons Mill? What would she do then?
And then there was still the unresolved matter of Mathew Phelps. With Lucas gone, she’d been unable to discuss what had happened. It’d been weeks now. She knew from her friends that Phelps was still working at his position on the weaving floor. Why? “Lucas—”
“You lik
e working for my aunt, don’t you?” Lucas asked suddenly.
She nodded and grew wary of his motive for questioning her. He’d leaned forward in his chair time and again as she’d told her story, but now his presence in the room seemed large and threatening to her.
As if sensing this, Lucas sat back in his chair. “Then you can continue to work for her at the house,” he said. He stood and held out his hand to help her rise. “Your friends will be wondering what happened to you. I promised to get you back within the hour, and I’m afraid it’s much later.”
But Meghan, who had tensed at his suggestion, dug in her heels and refused to go. “Wait! Why would your aunt keep me on at the house?” She frowned. “It’s the matter with Phelps, isn’t it? Ye don’t believe it happened, and Simmons doesn’t want me back at the mill.” When he didn’t immediately answer, she said, “Did he question the other workers?”
Lucas nodded and started to walk back. Anxious to learn more, Meghan had no choice but to keep up with him. “And?” she asked.
“Not a single woman would corroborate your story,” he said solemnly.
Meghan halted. “No one?” she breathed.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but George Simmons had no choice but to allow Phelps to remain.”
“I see,” she said. She stood for a long moment, wondering why no one would come forward to tell the truth. Had Phelps gotten to them first with new threats? Why didn’t they stay banded together? Because of fear? And what of Mari? She’d seemed so sure that they’d all been doing the right thing. “Mari Bright,” she murmured, making a mental promise to speak to the woman to find out why everyone had kept silent.
“Excuse me?” Lucas said.
Meghan realized that she’d been mumbling. “I was just thinking,” she explained. And as a new thought took hold, she couldn’t keep it silent. “Why did the women stop production then? Did anyone say?”
Lucas frowned. “I don’t know,” he said, as if disturbed that he hadn’t thought to ask. Suddenly, he smiled. “Don’t concern yourself, Meghan. You’ve a position with my aunt’s house staff. I’ll handle things at the mill.”
She stiffened. “Suppose I don’t want to continue to work at the house?”
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