“You didn’t ask!” Annabel called back. She could feel swells of joy rising in her heart as Ginger gave a little tentative prance under her. He was stretching his legs, hoping that he wouldn’t be kept to the endless trot and walk maintained by the outriders.
So she leaned over his neck and loosed the reins. “Go!” she said, and he needed no encouragement.
She felt his great muscles bunch and leap forward as he gave a snort of satisfaction and threw up his head as if to smell the wind. And then they were whipping past the dark stands of fir trees, racing down the dirt road. Annabel sat up and laughed aloud, holding on to the reins with one hand, keeping Ginger at a gallop with a faint pressure of her knees.
From behind came a pounding of horse hooves. Annabel looked back and grinned. Apparently Ewan had managed to mount after all. He probably thought her horse was running away with her. No lady rode like this. If he leans over to grab my bridle, Annabel thought, I’ll—I’ll pull him off.
He caught up with her, of course. But he didn’t make a move toward her reins, just laughed, and even over the pounding of the horse’s hooves and the whipping of her hair around her ears, she heard the deep pleasure of it.
They rounded a curve and galloped down a shady bit of road, and around another corner and out into the brilliant sunshine again. When Ginger started to blow, Annabel pulled him up, took him to a canter and then to a walk. Ewan and his mount kept pace beside her.
Then Ewan nosed his horse over so that it was walking a hair’s breadth from Ginger and their shoulders were almost touching.
“The longer we spend together, the less I feel I know about you,” he said, shaking his head at her. “You’re so different from the woman I thought I met in London.”
“What did you think I was like?” Annabel asked, not quite sure that she really wanted to know the answer.
“A lady,” he said promptly. “A true lady.”
“I am a lady!” Annabel said, scowling at him.
“You know what I mean. I was shocked when you didn’t slap me after I kissed you in the May cart at Lady Mitford’s garden party. I finally decided you must have been suffering from the heat. There you were, all dressed in lace, and looking melting and soft—”
Annabel laughed at him. “I beat you at archery, if you remember. Was that a ladylike thing to do?”
“I forgot that,” he said. “You do have some very useful skills.”
“Nothing is more useful than looking melting, as you call it,” she said, giving him a little smile.
“Oh? Why?”
“Because if a woman looks fragile and melting, the men in her vicinity do errands. Plus, they think that she is helpless, and they defend her. They think that she is adorable, and so they want to cuddle her. Before they know it, they feel a desire to take her home and keep her safe forever.”
“I feel like taking you home, and you won’t be safe there,” he growled at her.
Annabel giggled. “Another useful skill.”
“What?”
“If I make you desire me, you’ll do my errands in the hope that I’ll pay you a favor in return. Or, to take a larger example, you’ll give me jewelry, specifically a wedding ring.”
“So make me desire you,” he said, watching her.
She looked at him over her shoulder and let her eyes drop to his lips, and her eyelids droop a little. Then a tiny smile curled her lips a smile she’d been practicing since she was fourteen years old and discovered that smiles occasionally inspired the butcher to give them free cuts of meat. That a smile would confuse the baker so that he would give them extra loaves of bread.
Ewan whistled. “I can see how that might be effective.”
“Oh? Should I take it that you’ll give me jewelry?”
“A question!” He pulled up his horse. Automatically she stopped Ginger as well. He wrapped a large hand around the nape of her neck and gently pulled her toward him. These days their kisses started as if they had never left off the last one. Their mouths met, hungry, open, seeking each other’s taste…He kept his hands to himself, though. And she kept her hands tangled in his hair and didn’t try to direct him. And they never, ever embarked on a coney’s kiss or its like.
In the back of her mind, Annabel kept trying to figure out which of Ewan’s kisses she liked the best. There were those times when she kept her mouth shut, and made him beg and plead silently for entry until he could slip past her guard. Sometimes she thought those were the best kisses, and sometimes she thought a wild tangling, in which they were both shaking within a second or two…sometimes she thought those were the best kisses. And then there were the ones that Ewan didn’t count: the little morning touch on her cheek or an eye, the sweetness of their lips just touching over the bolster at night.
“I would do your errands for a smile,” Ewan said softly a moment later. “For a kiss like that—”
Annabel looked away, suddenly shy. Kisses of that nature had no part in the schema she’d worked out for her life, in the precise trade of her body and accomplishments for a man’s ring and his fortune.
He switched his reins to his left hand. Then he curled his fingers around hers. They walked down the road sedately, letting their horses snort at each other. Annabel didn’t look at Ewan again. She had a feeling that all her preconceptions of men and women were tumbling at her feet. He had breached her defenses.
When they came to the little fork that led to the hamlet, Ewan helped Annabel from her mount and they walked beside their horses, still without saying a word.
A few moments later they met Ewan’s outriders, returning the way they’d come. Apparently there were no carts to be had, so they were headed back to the site of the accident.
The village was not merely small; it was no more than a motley collection of three houses arranged around a dusty square. There was no store, no pub and no inn, just a broad-shouldered young man with a snub nose and a cheerful grin to greet them.
“My name’s Kettle, my lord. I had no expectation of seeing gentry today, and I’m afraid we’re not prepared.” He waved his hand at the little patch of ground between the wattle-and-daub houses, scaring a few chickens who started up in protest.
“May I beg you for the courtesy of a drink of water for my wife?” Ewan asked, bowing.
Kettle beamed. “We’ve better than that. I’ll ask my wife to bring out a glass of ale for her ladyship.” He went into one of the houses, returning with a woman carefully holding a tin cup. She had fiery red hair, braided away from her face, two dimples that made her look as if she were about to laugh and a belly that arched before her as if it were defying gravity.
She managed to bob a curtsy without spilling a drop of ale. “I’m so sorry,” she said shyly. “We’ve only the one cup, but if your lordship could wait a moment, I’ll refill it in a jiffy. And I’ve some oatcakes on the fire, if you would care for one.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Kettle,” Annabel said, at the same moment that Ewan said, “We’d love one. Thank you!”
A huge smile spread over Mrs. Kettle’s face. “Mrs. Kettle! I guess that’s me!”
Kettle himself put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We don’t get many visitors, and a circuit-riding Methodist preacher came through just last month. I reckon you’re one of the first to call her that.”
“But you don’t live here alone, do you?” Annabel asked.
“Not normally,” Mrs. Kettle said, bobbing another curtsy. “There’s three houses, as you can see. But Mrs. Fernald took poorly in the last winter, and so they’ve gone to her relatives for a bit, until she feels better. And the third house belongs to Ian McGregor. He’s gone to find work in the fields for the summer. He has no wife at all.” Clearly, from Mrs. Kettle’s point of view, poor McGregor was cursed.
From Annabel’s point of view, McGregor was absolutely right not to take on the responsibility of a wife when all he could afford was a shack. She sipped her ale. It was clear, thin and cold.
They all stood tog
ether awkwardly for a moment and then Mrs. Kettle gasped. “I never thought—” Her voice disappeared into the depths of her house, and she appeared a moment later with a chair. Both her husband and Ewan started toward her immediately, but Ewan was at her side first. Then Mr. Kettle fetched a stool, and then they put the two chairs together in the middle of the dust and chickens. Annabel sat down on the chair, and Mrs. Kettle on the stool. The men drifted off to the side and began talking about hops and ale and how the wheat was sprouting.
“This is so kind of you, Mrs. Kettle,” Annabel said.
“Do you know,” she replied with her dimpled smile, “I’m not sure but what I enjoy plain Peggy better. Would you mind calling me Peggy?”
“Of course not,” Annabel said. “And you must call me Annabel.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Peggy said, dismissing the idea with utter certainty. “But I’ve been naught more than Peggy me whole life, and I expect that’s why it’s hard to get used to having two names. Two names!” She laughed. “That’s riches!”
“Of a sort,” Annabel managed. But then Peggy leaped to her feet again. “I’ve clean forgotten my oatcakes!”
Mr. Kettle said something to Ewan about his woodshed and then he disappeared as well.
One of the chickens was so desperate that it came up and pecked at the bedraggled ribbon hanging from Annabel’s slipper. She shivered.
“Are you cold?” Ewan asked.
She shook her head. “I can almost smell the poverty.”
“And you don’t like it?”
Annabel nudged the chicken with her foot. “No. No, I don’t. It would be a terrible thing to be this poor.”
“They don’t seem unhappy,” Ewan said.
“Mrs. Kettle has one tin cup,” Annabel said. “One chair, and likely one stool.”
“Almost certainly only one dress,” Ewan put in.
“And one baby on the way,” Annabel pointed out.
“Hmmm. Still, they seem happy.”
“It’s impossible to be happy under those circumstances.”
“I don’t agree.”
Annabel felt a surge of irritability at the calm conviction in his voice. “If you think that, you know nothing of it. Think of how much you enjoy bathing. That poor woman likely hasn’t had a hot bath since she was married, if then. It’s too exhausting to heat all that water. Actually, I doubt they have a bathtub at all.”
“True,” Ewan said. “It’s a rare cottager who has a tin bath, and I don’t believe these poor folk are attached to any laird.”
“She’s probably eating gruel for her main meal,” Annabel said, not quite sure why her voice was so accusing. “Even though she’s carrying a child! She should be having a nice fat chicken every night.” Annabel kicked away the scrawny hen, who was back, pecking at her shoe ribbons. “You shouldn’t have told her you’d like an oatcake. Now she’ll likely have nothing to eat for supper.”
“To refuse it would have been an insult to her,” Ewan said. “She wants to offer us something.”
Annabel frowned.
Just then Peggy came out and offered them all slightly burned cakes. “I’m still learning to cook,” she said, waving one of them in the air. “And I’m sorry there’s no honey. We’re hoping to find a honey tree. I know they’re here somewhere, because bees come into the sun. But whenever I follow a bee into the woods, I get lost!” She laughed.
“Well, I think these cakes look wonderful,” Annabel told her. “I can’t cook a bit.”
“Oh, no, of course you can’t!” Peggy said.
“I should learn.”
“I agree,” Ewan said, finishing his second cake. Annabel scowled at him as he reached for a third. “If you could make cakes like Mrs. Kettle’s, you’d never have to fear my displeasure.”
“I don’t fear your displeasure!” Annabel told him roundly, turning back to Peggy. Ewan was laughing, and Peggy looked as if she wanted to giggle but wasn’t quite certain whether that would be allowed in the presence of gentry.
“I don’t want to keep you from what you were doing; might I help you, perhaps?” Annabel asked.
Peggy looked at Annabel’s beautifully tailored traveling gown. “That’s a daft notion,” she said with a chortle of laughter. “I’m warming the cream for butter. There’s nothing for a lady to do.”
Annabel’s face cleared. “I may not know how to cook but I can churn butter! My sisters and I used to help Cook every week.”
Peggy blinked at her. “You must be jesting?”
But Annabel was already heading into the house, dragging Peggy behind her. Ewan heard her voice disappear inside the door. “Are you using carrot, or…”
“Why don’t I go see how Mr. Kettle’s woodshed is faring?” Ewan asked the air. Clearly Annabel was going to give Nana a run for her money when it came to poking about in his crofters’ business.
An hour later the carriages had still not made an appearance. Ewan wandered back to the clearing to see if he could find his almost-wife. He stopped in the door of the cottage before she saw he was there.
The house was fashioned of one room. A large bed was tucked against the wall, and a rough-hewn table stood in the center. Annabel was standing at the table, washing a large piece of butter in water. Peggy was sitting on the one chair.
“No, you just keep resting,” Annabel was saying to Peggy, for what was likely the twentieth time. “I can mold the butter.” Deftly she turned the lump of butter out of a wooden bowl and sprinkled salt on it. “Now, where do you keep your press?” she asked, looking about.
At that moment Peggy caught sight of Ewan leaning in the doorway, and jumped to her feet. “What you must think of me!” she cried. “I simply couldn’t stop your lady wife, my lord, I couldn’t!”
Ewan grinned at her. Annabel had found the mold hanging on the wall and had begun packing it with butter.
“I’ve been telling Peggy that she needs to rest,” Annabel said to him. “Here she is, a day or so from giving birth, and she’s on her feet from morn till night! Peggy, you lie down on that bed this minute. You’ve sat up long enough.”
Peggy gave Ewan a hopeless look, and he winked at her. She lay down on the bed with the helpless attitude of someone who just met a hurricane and was blown off her legs.
Annabel turned the mold upside down on a plate and pushed on the loose bottom. A pat of golden butter popped out. The top of the butter pat was marked with a P.
“That’s pretty,” he said to Peggy, watching as Annabel started to pack down more butter in the mold. He’d never paid any attention to the look of butter, but now he thought of it, the butter that appeared on his table had his coat of arms on top.
Peggy looked pleased. “The orphanage gave me the butter mold as a good-bye present,” she said.
“When you left to marry Mr. Kettle?” Annabel asked.
“Yes, exactly.”
Ewan had to admit that Peggy looked rather tired now that she was lying down. Her belly stood out from her thin body like an island rising from a stream.
“Of course, when I left the orphanage I wasn’t sure whether I would marry Mr. Kettle or Mr. McGregor.”
“What?” Annabel said, pausing in the middle of turning another butter pat onto the waiting platter.
“The peddler brought word to the orphanage that Mr. Kettle and Mr. McGregor were wanting wives,” Peggy explained. “I was the only one of age who was willing to go into the north woods. So I traveled along with the peddler. The orphanage gave me the mold, and then the peddler was nice enough to give me a cheese hoop because I helped him on the way here.” She beamed. “I’m planning on making cheese next time I have some extra milk.”
“So you arrived here with the peddler, and then you chose Mr. Kettle?” Annabel asked, obviously fascinated.
Ewan settled himself more comfortably against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. “What if you hadn’t liked either Mr. Kettle or Mr. McGregor?”
“By then the peddle
r had offered for me as well!” Peggy said, obviously delighted by her popularity. “But I knew Mr. Kettle was the one for me the moment I saw him. The peddler tried to change my mind. Course, I could have had as many pans as I wanted if I’d stayed with him. But he didn’t take it at all badly when I chose Mr. Kettle. In fact, he was good enough to give me a piece of cloth for a wedding present, and when the baby comes, I’m going to make it into a wee dress.”
Annabel didn’t say anything, just packed more butter with a little frown.
Ewan caught back a smile. “So the peddler had lots of pans, did he? But Mr. Kettle has a cow.”
“That was a consideration,” Peggy said. She was looking quite sleepy now, lying down in the bed with her head on her hand. “But the peddler had a belly.” She giggled drowsily. “Aye, and a long beard too. Mr. Kettle is a proper man.”
Annabel smiled at her, and Peggy gave her a naughty smile and added, “Every inch of him!”
Peggy giggled, and Ewan’s low rumble of laughter echoed in the little house. And then after a second Annabel joined in. Peggy’s eyes were closing, so Ewan put a finger to his lips and backed out of the house.
Outside, he caught Annabel’s hands in his and said, “So you can make butter, can you? And you shoot arrows with precision, and you ride like an angel. Is there anything you can’t do?”
Annabel looked at him with a crooked smile. “I couldn’t make the choices that Peggy’s made. I don’t want to choose between pans and livestock.”
“You needn’t,” he said, nuzzling her cheek. “I hear the peddler in these parts is looking for a wife, but I won’t let him have you, for all the pots and pans in the world.”
“I have a question,” Annabel whispered, pulling him farther away from the house.
He led her over to Kettle’s woodshed and shifted his stance so that he was leaning against the wall and he could tuck Annabel’s body against his. She gasped but let him.
“What’s proper about inches?” she whispered.
“What?”
“Mr. Kettle is a proper man,” she said, keeping her voice low although the curiosity leaked through. “Every inch of him.”