“Indeed, he loves you. And there, Miss McMann, may lie the real depths of our problem.”
“We haven’t a problem, Mr. McKenzie. I’m quite sure that the ever-lovely Mrs. Trehorn will quickly forgive you this transgression, and you will find yourself cheerfully sleeping with the widow once again. As to me, I’m rumored to be a witch, so the fact that I apparently indulge in the sins of the flesh now and then will be no greater detriment to my life than anything else I have already faced. Now, if—”
“So that’s it!” Ian murmured.
“What is what?” Alaina cried with frustration.
Those blue eyes struck her hard, seemed to impale her. “He promised to marry you. But his family didn’t deem you good enough.”
She had simply been humiliated enough.
“The next time I hear you described as a gentleman, I believe that I will… throw up!” she exclaimed vehemently. “now, if you please—”
“I do not please. You have compromised me.”
“What?” she all but shrieked. “I compromised you? Don’t be absurd—men are allowed to … to dally with …” She felt as if she were choking again. “Men are expected to seek out the company of… fallen women!”
“This is an incredibly delicate situation,” he said.
Again she felt the pressure of his gaze, eyes sweeping over her, something very hard, calculating, and still furious within them.
“There is no situation,” she assured him. But his cobalt eyes remained dark and compelling as he stared at her.
“Miss McMann, how do I put this delicately…”
“Why bother to be delicate about anything at this point?”
“Indeed,” he said, eyes flicking in a cool assessment over the length of her once again. Then they fell upon hers and sharply narrowed. He demanded bluntly, “You’re not expecting Peter O’Neill’s child, are you?”
She couldn’t have been more stunned if he’d slapped her across the face. For a moment she couldn’t reply.
Her silence seemed to convince him he had guessed correctly. “Ah, poor girl. Dear God, was that why you were trying to… kill yourself?”
She felt as if she were strangling again. The temptation to lash out at him was more than she could control. She tried, really tried, to gouge his cheeks with her nails, but he was far too fast for her, catching her wrist with a pressure that brought a cry to her lips. “No, damn you, I am not expecting Peter O’Neill’s child, and I did not attempt to kill myself. I would never attempt to kill myself, especially over a despicable man!”
“Are you quite certain?”
“Are you daft? Indeed, if I ever do try to kill myself, I’m quite certain I will know.”
Pure annoyance swiftly crossed his features. “I meant about O’Neill’s child.”
“I have never been more certain about anything in my life!” she cried out furiously. “Not that it’s any of your concern!”
He suddenly released her wrist. Arms crossed over his chest, he paced in front of the log.
A feeling of deep unease crept through her. If she tried to rise and run past him, he wouldn’t let her leave.
“I really have to go!” Alaina informed him, fighting the nervousness in her voice and attempting a strict-sounding authority. “You know, I will prosecute you if you continue to force me to stay here. Brute strength is not the way to solve anything.”
“Indeed. So it seems that cunning and treachery are best, in sword play and in life?” he asked softly.
“Oh, this is absurd,” she grated, refusing to argue with him.
Ian stared at her, and again she saw anger in his eyes and in the set tension of his face, but there was more: Something both strangely weary and knowing was there as well. When he spoke, he sounded oddly beaten. “You know that we cannot simply go back.”
“Why not?”
“By now Peter has less than subtly let everyone know that you and I were having a tryst at the pool. Your father is crushed and humiliated; mine is furious that I would so abuse the daughter of a friend, a good and decent man. My uncle, as well, will be absolutely appalled, since my acquaintance with your father came through him. Your father,” he added with a certain wry amusement, “might want to call me out as well—he may be a scientist, but when it comes to you, he is still no less the romantic.”
“You think that my father will challenge you to a duel? That’s so silly; it’s absurd, it’s—”
“You forget that we do live in the gallant South, be it the far wilds of that most honorable section of our country!” The sound of his voice was bitter; she didn’t know if he was mocking his homeland or himself. He continued, “Your father must demand some manner of satisfaction, and I would heartily hate to hurt the poor old fellow.”
“Oh, how dare you, you arrogant boor! Assuming that you’d be such a power against my father—”
“Forgive me,” he interrupted dryly.
Alaina was still for a moment, infuriated but aware that it was entirely true that Ian could kill her father with the flick of his wrist. Her father was aging, and he knew nothing but his books and science.
She struggled for a sense of dignity and told him, “There is nothing to be done; it is a mess, and that’s that.” The realization of just what a mess it was suddenly bore down upon her, along with the seriousness of it all. A Southern gentleman such as her father was definitely required to demand satisfaction if his daughter had been compromised. “Oh, my God, my poor father.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of him before stripping and plunging into a pool like a siren from the depths.”
“You are insufferable! I thought myself alone! Any decent man would have—”
“Alone? Or waiting for Peter O’Neill?”
“You are never going to get the chance to kill my poor father in a duel because I am going to kill you within the next few moments, Ian McKenzie.”
He lifted a hand. “The motive behind your indiscretion is of no importance at this moment.”
“Indiscretion? Indiscretion!”
“Miss McMann, call me rude, call me judgmental, but I am afraid in our society proper young women just don’t go around naked!”
She should have learned better by then, but after all, she did have the barrier of her clothing now. She leaped from the log, anxious to impart some kind of physical harm to him.
It was an attack he hadn’t been expecting; with his one boot angled upon the log, he fell off balance with her impetus, and they landed down hard upon the soft embankment together. For a moment she was on top of him, staring down into his surprised eyes.
Maybe she had grown up just a bit too rough. Because she was ready to give him a sound blow with her right fist to his jaw. But male pride apparently seized hold of him just in time, and she found herself lifted and slammed beneath him.
He was atop her, hands on either side of her head as he leaned against them to keep his weight from bearing down upon her. His face was just inches from her own.
“Settle down, hellion. My God, but you’ve acquired a frightful temper!” he told her angrily.
She had a temper? He was a damned madman. “You haven’t seen the half of it yet,” she assured him, eyes narrowed with warning. She could kill him. Simply kill him.
“You might have been better served to grow up under the influence of a stern matron—”
“Don’t you dare insult my father.”
“Miss McMann,” he said, quite grave then, and pushing himself to a position where he straddled over her—arms irritatingly crossed over his chest. “I would never dare insult so gentle and good a man as your father. And there lies the base of this disaster.”
“If you will just let me go—”
“You can’t go, and surely you must know it.”
“But—”
“Peter O’Neill is a vicious young braggart who will do his very best to create all the havoc he can out of this situation. Lavinia is hurt and believes herself scorned, and under such ci
rcumstances she will likely be even more vicious than Peter. By the time this story gets to the second listener, we’ll have been fornicating so passionately in the bushes that the birds were blushing and we were never aware of their arrival.”
“So what is your suggestion?”
He hesitated, his next words seeming to pain him. And still, no words could have astounded her more.
“Obviously,” he said flatly, “we have no choice but to marry.”
Alaina felt the blood draining from her face. “No,” she said softly.
He shook his head, staring down at her, and she wished again that she might have just disappeared into the cool depths of the pool. He didn’t care for her; he had no desire for her. He considered her a poorly reared, careless little wanton who had just gotten them both into a terrible situation—but he would do his duty.
Oddly enough, she felt like laughing. Peter had told her that no respectable man could ask for her hand in marriage. No family held more regard within the state than the McKenzies. It was all so sad, and so damned ludicrous.
“Apparently you didn’t hear me,” Ian said irritably. “We have no choice.”
Did he think that she was one of his military men? That he could command her to his will?
“No, there is always a choice.”
“How will your father feel, Miss McMann, when all this is thrown upon him?” he inquired with chill courtesy.
She bit fiercely into her lower lip. How would her father feel? Devastated. No matter if he understood that she had just wanted to swim in the clear pool. It might come out that she had indulged in a foolish crush on Peter O’Neill, and the very fact that his daughter had been caught naked…
She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to imagine what her father would think and feel. He would most certainly feel that he had ruined her life by not raising her properly.
“There will be scandal no matter what,” she whispered.
“Maybe. And maybe we can circumvent Lavinia and Peter.”
“How? There is no way to do that. No matter what, we must go back. No matter what we say, it will appear that you are marrying me simply because we were caught and because you have to do so, and the scandal—”
“We marry before we go back,” he interrupted impatiently.
“That’s quite impossible—”
“No, actually, it’s not. Reverend Dowd did not come to my father’s party today due to a fierce toothache; he is home with his wife and brother-in-law. It’s a half hour’s brisk walk there and a ten-minute ride back, since we can borrow a horse from him. We return to the party quite distressed that our marital status was discovered before either of us has had a chance to tell our respective parents of our decision to elope.”
“But I am not of legal age.”
“The ceremony will be legal unless your father chooses to have it annulled.”
Alaina just stared at him blankly. He had the answer: the perfect answer. Because he was right. To salvage their standing within the world—not to mention the devastated feelings of their parents—they would have to marry.
And again, he was right: It would be far better to marry, pretend that they had done so quite some time ago, and therefore deflect the efforts of Peter and Lavinia to see that they were totally mortified and humiliated and to create horrible friction—and perhaps even bloodshed—within their families.
But as she looked up at Ian, her heart seemed to falter.
Marry. Ian McKenzie.
He suddenly seemed a great deal older; distant, different. A determined man who knew his own mind and would brook no opposition to going about life as he saw fit. Waging what battles he determined he must win.
She couldn’t be his wife. She suddenly felt quite ill, well aware that she might never rid her life of the tempest she had inadvertently brought about today. She didn’t want to admit she was afraid of the demands that he would make upon a wife, afraid to cast her soul into the hands of a man who was convinced she had caused all this with her own salacious desire to seduce another man—one he seemed to heartily despise.
She didn’t know Ian at all; oh, Lord, except what she had learned today.
Not true! She had known him once. She knew that he had spent time in the hammocks and swampland down south with his uncles and cousins, he spoke both the Hitichi of the Mikasuki tribes and the Muskogee of the Seminoles. He’d learned the hard lessons of an Indian youth, and Sydney had told her once with pride that Ian could wrestle a full-grown male gator—and win. The trouble between Ian and Peter might well have begun many years ago, because she remembered now she had heard that when they were boys, Peter and Ian had come to blows because Peter had made a disparaging remark about the Indians. Ian had bloodied Peter’s nose and cost him a tooth, but controlled himself before further damage had been done.
Maybe she had known him at one time, but she’d been a little girl then, his baby cousin Sydney’s friend, trailing along after him, Jerome, Brent, and Julian as they fished and trapped the river, bay, and woods.
That was long ago. A different time and place. A different world.
Now, it was quite true: They were strangers; she really hadn’t seen him in years.
Oh, yes. She had seen him. Seen him from head to toe, in the crystal-clear water.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t answer. She still hadn’t answered when he rose, reached down, and pulled her to her feet. He took her hand, threaded his fingers through hers, and started walking.
She followed in silence for a long while. Peter and Lavinia had naturally returned by now. They wouldn’t go straight to either Jarrett McKenzie or Theodore McMann. Perhaps Peter would go to Tara McKenzie, pretending to be terribly distressed about her son’s actions. Or perhaps Peter and Lavinia would just begin a whispering campaign that would take its time getting through to the poor, side-blinded scientist Teddy McMann, and the pillar of the community, the highly respected Jarrett McKenzie.
She suddenly pulled back, tugging on the hand that held hers.
“Ian, you’re not thinking this through. This is… marriage,” she said breathlessly, seeking out his dark blue eyes with the gravity of it all in her own. “How do we live with this? We can’t just—”
“Do you see a way out?” he inquired politely.
“But, my God, this is so serious.”
“Indeed.”
“Divorce will be a greater scandal.”
His eyes lit upon her. “There won’t be a divorce. Not now. I have to return to military service. I travel frequently; you’ll seldom see me. And our pathetic little problems aren’t really going to mean much, I don’t think. In a very short while…” he shrugged. “There might well be a war on, and what has happened today really won’t mean a damned thing.”
“War?”
He didn’t reply; he was walking again.
“War?” she repeated. “Ian, there won’t be a war! If there is trouble, Florida will simply secede from the Union. Other states will do the same; they’ll form a new nation. Damn you, Ian—”
He didn’t respond to her. He was in a hurry.
Brisk was a poor description for the way that he moved. She was practically running to keep up with him, and more breathless than ever, which made argument incredibly difficult.
The next thing she knew, she was plowing into his back in front of the reverend’s pretty, picket-fenced lawn. Ian opened the gate; she followed him through. Within a few steps, they stood before the reverend’s door, waiting.
Marriage. It was binding. It would change her life, change her dreams.
“Ian.”
He didn’t hear her.
“Ian!” She was shaking again; she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing so.
He looked down at her.
She moistened her lips. “I can’t. I… can’t.”
“You have to. You rolled the dice when you decided to skinny-dip. Now we deal with the lot we’ve been cast.”
“Well, you know
, it might have helped the roll a hell of a lot if you hadn’t been naked and in the water… groping! And lusting to fornicate with the widow Trehorn!”
The door opened at just that moment. A silver-haired woman, her gentle brown eyes wide with shock, plump pink cheeks red as cherries, stared at Alaina—aghast. The word fornicate seemed to hang in the air.
“Mrs. Dowd!” Ian said cheerfully.
Once again Alaina wanted to sink into the crystal pool of water she had left behind. Apparently she had said the word fornicate really loudly. It just wouldn’t go away.
Mrs. Dowd arched a brow to Alaina, but gave no other response to what she had heard. She addressed Ian with pleasure, her voice barely faltering. “Why, Ian, what a surprise, do come in. We’re so sorry to have missed your father’s party—”
“I’m quite glad that you did, and I’ll explain why to you and the reverend, if I may.”
“Of course, of course. Do bring the, er, young lady in.”
Alaina winced. Her reputation had surely just taken another plunge.
But she quickly discovered that Mrs. Dowd was a kindly person, and Reverend Dowd was a gentle man as well, as thin as his wife was plump, with bright, mischievous blue eyes that seemed to delight in the concept of this secret elopement. Ian’s description of what went on was so earnest and close to the truth that Alaina was amazed herself at the deceptive courtesy he displayed in explaining her part in it. She had simply stumbled upon a beautiful pool and been tempted beyond all human resistance, and, well, Ian admitted, his part in it hadn’t been quite so innocent, but now…
“Now,” Reverend Dowd said quite simply, “the matter must be remedied.” His glance at Alaina was quite kind.
“I shall get my brother-in-law down. His eyes are failing, but his hearing is quite good. He’ll do quite well as a witness,” Mrs. Dowd said determinedly. “Harold, you must marry these two young people at once.”
The Reverend Harold Dowd took both Alaina’s hands and offered her a crooked half smile. “Marriage, then, young lady. It’s one thing if a man presses you to it, quite another if it’s the devil’s doing!” He winked, indicating Ian at her side.