Rebellion & In From The Cold (36 page)

When he reached the kitchen doorway, exhausted and drenched with the effort, Alanna was singing a Christmas hymn. She seemed to find no inconsistency in crooning about amply endowed women one moment and heralding angels the next.

It hardly mattered to Ian what she sang. As he stood, watching, listening, he knew as sure as he knew a MacGregor would always live in the Highlands that her voice would follow him to his grave. He would never forget it, the clear, rich notes, the faint huskiness that made him imagine her with her hair unbound and spread over a pillow.

His pillow, he realized with a quick jolt. It was there he wanted her without a doubt, and so strongly that he could all but feel the smooth, silky tresses shift through his fingers.

Most of those thick raven locks were tucked under a white cap now. It should have given her a prim and proper look. Yet some strands escaped, to trail—seductively, he thought—along the back of her neck. He could easily imagine what it would be like to trail his fingers just so. To feel her skin heat and her body move. Against his.

Would she be as agile in bed as she was at the stove?

Perhaps he wasn’t so weak after all, Ian mused, if every time he saw this woman his blood began to stir and his mind shot unerringly down one particular path. If he hadn’t been afraid he would fall on his face and mortify himself, he would have crossed the room and spun her around, against him, into him,
so that he could steal a kiss. Instead he waited, hopefully, for his legs to strengthen.

She kneaded one batch of dough while another baked. He could see her small, capable hands push and prod and mold. Patiently. Tirelessly. As he watched her, his rebellious mind filled with such gloriously lusty thoughts that he groaned.

Alanna whirled quickly, her hands still wrapped around the ball of dough. Her first thoughts shamed her, for when she saw him filling the doorway, dressed in rough trousers and a full open shirt, she wondered how she might lure him to kiss her hand again. Disgusted with herself, she slapped the dough down and hurried toward him. His face was dead white and he was beginning to teeter. From previous experience, she knew that if he hit the ground she’d have the very devil of a time getting him back into bed.

“There now, Mr. MacGregor, lean on me.” Since the kitchen chair was closer, and he was of a considerable weight, she led him to that before she rounded on him. “Idiot,” she said with relish more than real heat. “But most men are, I’ve found. You’d best not have opened your wound again, for I’ve just scrubbed this floor and wouldn’t care to have blood on it.”

“Aye, mistress.” It was a weak rejoinder, but the best he could do when her scent was clouding his mind and her face was bent so close to his. He could have counted each one of her silky black eyelashes.

“You had only to call, you know,” she said, mollified a bit when she noted his bandage was dry. As she might have for one of her brothers, Alanna began to fasten his shirt. Ian was forced to suppress another groan.

“I had to try my legs.” His blood wasn’t just stirring now but was racing hot. As a result, his voice had a roughened edge. “I can hardly get on my feet again by lying on my back.”

“You’ll get up when I say and not before.” With this she moved away and began to mix something in a pewter cup. Ian caught the scent and winced.

“I’ll not have any more of that slop.”

“You’ll drink it and be grateful—” she slapped the cup on the tabletop “—if you want anything else in your belly.”

He glared at her in a way he knew had made grown men back away or run for cover. She simply placed her fisted hands on her hips and glared back. His eyes narrowed. So did hers.

“You’re angry because I talked with young Brian last night.”

Her chin lifted, just an inch, but it was enough to give her anger an elegant haughtiness. “And if you’d been resting instead of jabbering about the glory of war, you’d not be so weak and irritable this morning.”

“I’m not irritable or weak.”

When she snorted, he wished fervently that he had the strength to stand. Aye, then he’d have kissed her to swooning and shown her what a MacGregor was made of.

“If I’m irritable,” he said between clenched teeth, “it’s because I’m near to starving.”

She smiled at him, pleased to hold the upper hand. “You’ll get your breakfast after you’ve drained that cup, and not a moment before.” With a twitch of her skirts she returned to her bread making.

While her back was turned, Ian looked around for a handy place to dump the foul-tasting liquid. Finding none, he folded his arms and scowled at her. Alanna’s lips curved. She hadn’t been raised in a house filled with men for naught. She knew exactly what was going through Ian’s mind. He was stubborn, she thought as she pushed the heels of her hands into the dough. But so was she.

She began to hum.

He no longer thought about kissing her but gave grave consideration to throttling her. Here he sat, hungry as a bear, with the enticing smell of bread baking. And all she would give him was a cup of slop.

Still humming, Alanna put the bread into a bowl for rising and covered it with a clean cloth. Easily ignoring Ian, she checked the oven and judged her loaves were done to a turn. When she set them on a rack to cool, their scent flooded the kitchen.

He had his pride, Ian thought. But what good was pride if a man expired of hunger? She’d pay for it, he promised himself as he lifted the cup and drained it.

Alanna made certain her back was to him when she grinned. Without a word, she heated a skillet. In short order she set a plate before him heaped with eggs and a thick slab of the fresh bread. To this she added a small crock of butter and a cup of steaming coffee.

While he ate, she busied herself, scrubbing out the skillet, washing the counters so that not a scrap of dough or flour remained. She was a woman who prized her mornings alone, who enjoyed her kitchen domain and the hundreds of chores it entailed. Yet she didn’t resent his presence there, though she knew he watched her with his steady, sea-colored eyes. Oddly, it seemed natural, even familiar somehow, that he sit at her table and sample her cooking.

No, she didn’t resent his presence, but neither could she relax in it. The silence that stretched between them no longer seemed colored by temper on either side. But it was tinted with something else, something that made her nerves stretch and her heart thud uncomfortably against her ribs.

Needing to break it, she turned to him. He was indeed watching her, she noted. Not with temper but with … interest. It was a weak word for what she saw in his eyes, but a safe one. Alanna had a sudden need to feel safe.

“A gentleman would thank me for the meal.”

His lips curved in such a way that let her know he was only a gentleman if and when he chose to be. “I do thank you, Mrs. Flynn, most sincerely. I wonder if I might beg another cup of coffee.”

His words were proper enough, but she didn’t quite trust the look in his eyes. She kept out of reach as she picked up his cup. “Tea would be better for you,” she said almost to herself. “But we don’t drink it in this house.”

“In protest?”

“Aye. We won’t have the cursed stuff until the king sees reason. Others make more foolish and dangerous protests.”

He watched her lift the pot from the stove. “Such as?”

She moved her shoulders. “Johnny heard word that the Sons of Liberty arranged to destroy crates of tea that were sitting in three ships in Boston Harbor. They disguised themselves as Indians and boarded the ships all but under the guns of three men-of-war. Before the night was done, they had tossed all of the East Indian Company’s property into the water.”

“And you think this foolish?”

“Daring, certainly,” she said with another restless movement. “Even heroic, especially in Brian’s eyes. But foolish because it will only cause the king to impose even harsher measures.” She set the cup before him.

“So you believe it best to do nothing when injustice is handed out with a generous hand? Simply to sit like a trained dog and accept the boot?”

Murphy blood rose to her cheeks. “No king lives forever.”

“Ah, so we wait until mad George cocks up his toes rather than stand now for what is right.”

“We’ve seen enough war and heartache in this house.”

“There will only be more, Alanna, until it’s settled.”

“Settled,” she shot back as he calmly sipped his coffee. “Settled by sticking feathers in our hair and smashing crates of tea? Settled as it was for the wives and mothers of those who fell at Lexington? And
for what? For graves and tears?”

“For liberty,” he said. “For justice.”

“Words.” She shook her head. “Words don’t die. Men do.”

“Men must, of old age or at sword’s point. Can you believe it better to bow under the English chains, over and over until our backs break? Or should we stand tall and fight for what is ours by right?”

She felt a frisson of fear as she watched his eyes glow. “You speak like a rebel, MacGregor.”

“Like an American,” he corrected. “Like a Son of Liberty.”

“I should have guessed as much,” she murmured. She snatched up his plate, set it aside, then, unable to stop herself, marched back to him. “Was the sinking of the tea worth your life?”

Absently he touched a hand to his shoulder. “A miscalculation,” he said, “and nothing that really pertains to our little tea party.”

“Tea party.” She looked up at the ceiling. “How like a man to make light of insurrection.”

“And how like a woman to wring her hands at the thought of a fight.”

Her gaze flew back down and locked with his. “I don’t wring my hands,” she said precisely. “And certainly wouldn’t shed a tear over the likes of you.”

His tone changed so swiftly she blinked. “Ah, but you’ll miss me when I’ve gone.”

“The devil,” she muttered, and fought back a grin. “Now go back to bed.”

“I doubt I’m strong enough to make it on my own.”

She heaved a sigh but walked to him to offer him a shoulder. He took the shoulder, and the rest of her. In one quick move she was in his lap. She cursed him with an expertise he was forced to admire.

“Hold now,” he told her. “Differences in politics aside, you’re a pretty package, Alanna, and I’ve discovered it’s been too long since I’ve held a warm woman in my arms.”

“Son of a toad,” she managed, and struck out.

He winced as the pain shimmered down his wounded arm. “My father would take exception to that, sweetheart.”

“I’m not your sweetheart, you posturing spawn of a weasel.”

“Keep this up and you’ll open my wound and have my blood all over your clean floor.”

“Nothing would give me more pleasure.”

Charmed, he grinned and caught her chin in his hand. “For one who talks so righteously about the evils of war, you’re a bloodthirsty wench.”

She cursed him until she ran out of breath. Her brother John had said nothing but the truth when he’d claimed that Ian was built like an oak. No matter how she squirmed—absolutely delighting him—she remained held fast.

“A pox on you,” she managed. “And on your whole clan.”

He’d intended to pay her back for making him drink the filthy medicine she’d mixed. He’d only pulled her into his lap to cause her discomfort. Then, as she’d wiggled, he’d thought it only right that he tease her a little and indulge himself. With just one kiss. One quick stolen kiss. After all, she was already fuming.

In fact, he was laughing as he covered her mouth with his. It was meant in fun, as much a joke on himself as on her. And he wanted to hear the new batch of curses she would heap on his head when he was done.

But his laughter died quickly. Her struggling body went stone still.

One quick, friendly kiss, he tried to remind himself, but his head was reeling. He found himself as dizzy and as weak as he’d been when he’d first set his watery legs on the floor.

This had nothing to do with a wound several days old. Yet there was a pain, a sweet ache that
spread and shifted through the whole of him. He wondered, dazedly, if he had been spared not only to fight again but to be given the gift of this one perfect kiss.

She didn’t fight him. In her woman’s heart she knew she should. Yet in that same heart she understood that she could not. Her body, rigid with the first shock, softened, yielded, accepted.

Gentle and rough all at once, she thought. His lips were cool and smooth against hers while the stubble of his beard scraped against her skin. She heard her own sigh as her lips parted, then tasted his on her tongue. She laid a hand on his cheek, adding sweetness. He dragged his through her hair, adding passion.

For one dazzling moment he deepened the kiss, taking her beyond what she knew and into what she had only dreamed. She tasted the richness of his mouth, felt the iron-hard breath of his chest. Then heard his sharp, quick curse as he dragged himself away.

He could only stare at her. It unnerved him that he could do little else. He had dislodged her cap so that her hair streamed like black rain over her shoulders. Her eyes were so dark, so big, so blue against the creamy flush of her skin that he was afraid he might drown in them.

This was a woman who could make him forget—about duty, about honor, about justice. This was a woman, he realized, who could make him crawl on his knees for one kind word.

He was a MacGregor. He could never forget. He could never crawl.

“I beg your pardon, mistress.” His voice was stiffly polite and so cold she felt all the warmth leach out of her body. “That was inexcusable.”

Carefully she got to her feet. With blurred vision she searched the floor for her cap. Finding it, she stood, straight as a spear, and looked over his shoulder.

“I would ask you again, MacGregor, to go back to your bed.”

She didn’t move a muscle until he was gone. Then she dashed away an annoying tear and went back to work. She would not think of it, she promised herself. She would
not
think of him.

She took out her frustrations on the newly risen dough.

Christmas had always given Alanna great joy. Preparing for it was a pleasure to her—the cooking, the baking, the sewing and cleaning. She had always made it a policy to forgive slights, both small and large, in the spirit of giving. She looked forward to putting on her best dress and riding into the village for Mass.