by Eloisa James
“I couldn’t tell Peggy that I’d lost all three of her chickens. Her neighbors gave them as a wedding present.” Annabel walked toward the woods. “Last time I saw her, she was over here. Oh, chicken! Chicken!”
Ewan grinned. Annabel looked as elegant as an etching in La Belle Assemblée. She was wearing another inappropriate traveling dress, not made of sturdy brown to withstand dirt, but fashioned in deep ruby, with rows and rows of white lace around her bosom.
“I must say, I like the current fashion in farmwife attire,” he remarked.
“It’s a promenade dress,” Annabel said, poking around the small trees at the edge of the clearing. “I don’t own anything sturdy. I know she’s very close. She’s ignoring me, that’s all.” Without a look at Ewan, she headed straight into the dusky woods.
“Annabel!” he called.
“Yes?” Her voice echoed back to him.
“Don’t get lost!” He could hear her thrashing about.
He waited about four minutes and then shouted again. “Are you lost yet?”
“Well, no…not exactly. I’m in a little clearing. Where are you?”
“Just stay where you are,” he said, and he headed toward the sound of her voice. He could hear her snapping twigs. “Stay where you are! Otherwise we might both get lost.”
“There’s an awful—” Suddenly there was a scream and Ewan’s heart jumped into his throat. He tore forward, catching Annabel in his arms as she dodged between two trees. “Ewan, Ewan! There’s a lot of bees!”
In a ray of sunshine peaking between the tall firs, Ewan saw exactly what she meant. Without a word, he swung her to the far side of a large tree and pressed her against his body, wrapping himself over her and tucking her face securely against his shoulder. “Don’t move,” he breathed.
They stayed frozen while the bees flew by, a whole swarm of them, from their angry hum.
“Oh, God,” Annabel moaned a few moments later. “Ewan…”
“I think you found the honey tree,” he said, lifting his head.
“Yes, it must be in that clearing,” Annabel said, sounding a bit more cheerful. “Peggy will be happy to hear that, won’t she? Even though she has no chickens left.”
“A few of those bees found me,” Ewan said glumly.
“Oh, no,” she cried. “You’ve been stung!”
“Only twice.” Then he added, “Perhaps three times.”
“I’m very, very grateful that you rescued me,” Annabel said. “Shall we return?” She started in the wrong direction.
“This way,” Ewan said, tucking her under his arm.
“Where did they sting you?”
“In a most tender place.” He was rewarded by her giggle. He thought fleetingly that he wouldn’t mind a whole tribe of bees attacking his ass if he had that giggle as a reward. Annabel’s giggle was just like herself: enchantingly feminine, with a husky undertone that showed both a wicked sense of humor and a sensual appetite.
“I could make some more potatoes,” Annabel said, once they were back at the cabin. “Although the fire appears to have gone out again.”
“It helps if you occasionally add a log,” Ewan pointed out.
She shot him a look. “Why don’t you sit down and rest while I heave a tree limb or two onto the fire?”
“I can’t sit down,” he said, giving her a rueful grin. “I’ll put on a log.”
“Does it hurt very much?” And, when he shook his head, “I suppose it doesn’t matter that we don’t have a horse, because you wouldn’t be comfortable riding it.”
Ewan shuddered at the thought of sitting on a saddle. He was starting to feel like an idiot. He hadn’t even thought about keeping a horse for their use. His Shakespearean idea was seeming stupider by the moment. No wonder he didn’t like the play when it was performed: clearly the whole idea was ludicrous.
“Let me guess,” Annabel said in a voice that was obviously trying to be solicitous, “your stings are annoying you.”
Indeed, Ewan was starting to feel annoyed. Uncharacteristically annoyed. Annabel looked so delectable that the only thing he wanted was to throw her onto the bed and make her happy in the best way possible. Except that his ass felt as if it had been burned by a red-hot poker, and it probably looked like the devil’s pincushion. There went all his plans to seduce his almost-wife this afternoon. Plus his conscience was bothering him about that seduction in the first place. Why on earth had he lost his control and consummated a marriage that didn’t exist? What was it about Annabel that had him throwing his principles to the winds?
He stomped outside, feeling thoroughly out of sorts. He had spent two hours trying to pry that damn rock out of Kettle’s field, all for nothing. He scowled at the surrounding woods. According to Annabel, his life was overly comfortable, but at least he didn’t break his back doing useless labor.
Then his eyes lightened. “Oh, Annabel!” he called. “My lovely wife!”
“I’m not your wife yet,” she said, appearing in the doorway. His eyes slid over her and a familiar feeling of desire gripped him so hard he almost started shaking. It was embarrassing. He was out of control. He felt another surge of irritation, so he gave her his silkiest smile.
“I know that you will be enchanted to know that our lost chicken has returned home,” he said, pointing.
Annabel’s shriek startled the hen so much that she flew into the air with a squawk. “Get off my sheet!” she shouted. “You—you idiot chicken!”
Ewan threw back his head and laughed. “If only we’d trained her to use a chamber pot. That hen—”
She turned to him, fist clenched. “Don’t you dare laugh at me! That sheet took two hours to wash! Two hours! And now—and now—she’s ruined it! I’ll have to go back to that awful stream and try again.”
To Ewan’s horror, tears welled in Annabel’s eyes.
“I never cry!” she shouted at him.
“I know that,” he said. “I mean, of course you don’t.”
“It’s just that the water was so cold.” She wiped the tears away. Ewan looked around the dusty clearing and felt like the dunce he was. Why did he bring a lady to live in a hovel? He prided himself on being thoughtful and kind to others. In his better moments, he would even have called himself intelligent.
“I’ll wash the sheet,” he said. “You make some potatoes.”
An hour later Ewan was in a mood rivaled only by a man-eating tiger faced with an elephant stampede. The river water was frigid, and he was soaking wet. He couldn’t get the spot made by the chicken to come off until he rubbed the sheet on a rock, and then the spot was replaced by a hole. Every time he bent over, the bee stings burned his ass. Water was dripping from his ears and trickling down inside his boots. He was starved, and he wanted a four-course meal, not another charred potato.
He walked into the house and realized that no potatoes, charred or otherwise, were forthcoming. The fire was out again, and Annabel was nowhere to be seen. He walked over and peered at the fireplace. It looked like she’d spilled water. Wonderful. They had freezing wet sheets, no fire and no food.
Was it too much to ask that she make a damned potato?
He stalked back out of the house to find Annabel emerging from the woodshed, a log clutched against her chest. The white lace that edged her bodice was specked with wood dust. She looked exhausted and dirty. The taste of guilt was like bitter metal in his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled, snatching the log.
She frowned at him. “The pan tipped again and I had to find a dry log.”
“You could have waited for me and I would have fetched the wood.”
Annabel put her hands on her hips. “You could have made sure that we had sufficient logs in the house!”
“I was busy washing that sheet,” Ewan said, anger rising in his chest. “I’m damn well starving to death and I get back to find that you’ve doused the fire again, and there’s not even a charred potato to eat!”
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�How dare you say such a thing!” Annabel said furiously. “This is your foolish idea, and all because you have no imagination. I told you that it would be miserable to live here! But did you listen to me? No!”
Ewan could feel the shards of his composure dissolving like ice in the sun. “It would have been perfectly easy to stay here for a few days, if you showed a bit of competence,” he growled.
“My father was unfortunate in his financial dealings, but he was never reduced to making his daughters into servants. I suppose I could apologize for being unable to cook, but, in fact, I am not sorry. I don’t like cooking, and I didn’t plan to spend my married life learning how.”
Guilt and anger were roiling in Ewan’s chest. “I apologize for asking you to do more than polish your smiles,” he barked. “I’ll buy you bales of silk when we reach my house. If I remember rightly, you judged silk the key to happiness.”
“At least I’ve been honest with you. I told you that I hoped to marry a rich man, precisely so that I wouldn’t have to agonize over the next meal. You, on the other hand, suggested that patience was your best virtue. In fact, if I remember correctly, you viewed marriage as some sort of a gift you would bestow on a poor, griefstricken woman like my sister: the magnificent gift of your cheerful, patient self!”
“You make me sound like a damned boaster,” Ewan snarled.
“I hope it doesn’t upset your image of yourself if I point out that your use of curses indicates precisely how pious you truly are?”
“Oh, I believe in God,” Ewan said bleakly. “That’s got nothing to do with my lack of control around you.”
“Don’t blame me!” Annabel cried, her hands on her hips. “If you aren’t peevish so very often, it’s likely because everyone treats you like the king of the castle. More ordinary mortals learn from their mistakes.”
Ewan’s temper abruptly flared out of control again. “I hope you’re not classing yourself with those ordinary mortals. Because most people I know can heat a pail of water without washing out the fireplace.”
“Just how many people did you know who have ever heated a bucket of water?” Annabel demanded. “Or washed a sheet in a stream, for that matter? Your grandmother, the countess? Does she heat up huge pails of water over the fire for a spot of entertainment?”
Ewan scowled at her. “Nana could do so if she put her mind to it.” In truth, he couldn’t think of any of his intimates who had done such a thing. Why should they have? None of them had ever been stranded in a cabin in the woods. “I would judge my grandmother as able to conquer any situation,” he stated.
“Well, there we differ,” Annabel snapped. “I am not a farmwife with the skills to succeed in this sort of life.”
“I can see that,” Ewan returned. He was smouldering with anger.
“And this has nothing to do with your grandmother’s supposed skills! The truth is that you’ve lived a life of such privilege that you couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not have Mac to cater to your every wish. You thought it would be easy to be poor, and now you find out it’s not so, you’ve turned disagreeable.”
“I may not have grasped how difficult it would be to live in the Kettles’ cottage with a wife who was incapable of heating a pan of water without spilling it—”
“I am not your wife,” Annabel said icily.
“That gives me two things to be thankful for,” Ewan snarled. “One that I’m not so poor that I have to live in a damned hovel, and second that—” He stopped.
Annabel was white with anger. “Too late! Never mind the scandal, after last night, you have to marry me. No matter how much we may both regret it.”
Ewan took a deep breath and moved to the side of the little house. Deliberately he leaned against the wall, folding his arms over his chest. Silence fell on the courtyard.
Annabel could actually feel her heart breaking inside her chest. She’d always thought that a broken heart sounded rather romantic. But in truth it was physical. Her whole chest ached, as if she’d been struck with a knife. With all her witless calculations about how to make a man desire her, she’d never realized that the most important thing was to make him like her. Or even love her. What a fool she was.
“So you regret making love to me?” His voice was soft, casual almost. Normally Ewan had a lovely burr that sounded pleasurable and amused. But there was something dangerous in his voice now.
She cleared her throat. “I’m sure that we both regret something that leaves us with so few choices.”
He straightened and took one step toward her. Annabel held her ground. The easygoing, amused expression that seemed Ewan’s natural expression was gone. His eyes were a wild green, smoldering with anger. Suddenly she was afraid of what he was going to say. If he told her that he didn’t like her—if he put it in words—she might not be able to bear it.
“Just because you’re angry,” she said hastily, “is no need to say something you might regret. We have no choice but marriage. We have to make the best of it.”
“True,” he said slowly, and his voice was still a growl. He took another step toward her.
There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Pain wrenched her heart. All those skills she had developed so painstakingly as a girl were apparently going to destroy a dream that she’d never had the courage to hold. “I understand how you feel toward me,” Annabel said carefully.
“Yes?” he said, breathing it. He was standing just before her, reaching out to pull her to him.
“Don’t!” Annabel cried, stepping backward.
“Why not?”
She might as well say it. “It’s only desire,” she explained, watching his eyes. “Desire is an artificial thing, created by—by—”
He reached out and curled a hand around her neck. “By what?”
“By artificial things,” Annabel said obstinately. “Smiles I practiced, Ewan.” She stepped back from him again, and the warmth of his hand fell away. She raised her chin and stared at him, willing her tears back. “You don’t understand how fabricated it all is. I wear corsets made in France: they make my breasts look twice as large, and no man can resist that. I let my hips sway when I walk, because men like it. You like it.”
His eyebrow rose. “Your hips don’t sway naturally?”
“No. Or perhaps they do by this point, but only because I consciously changed my walk when I was younger. But it’s all just a facade, put on to inspire desire.”
His eyes were inscrutable. “I’ve seen your breasts without a corset, Annabel, remember?”
“It’s all for show,” she said impatiently. “Nothing but show. Nothing but to create desire. It’s been like a game, don’t you see?”
“A game of desire?”
“No. A game to get what I wish from men.” She swallowed back more tears and met his eyes. “I—I like you, Ewan. That’s why you need to know just how good I am at this, and how artificial those feelings of desire you feel are. I’m no good at cooking. But I’m very, very good at making men do as I wish.”
He reached out again and there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. “You’re not listening—” she cried, jumping backward.
Inevitably, she tripped on her skirts. There was a ripping sound. He caught her in his arms, but he couldn’t stop their tumble, only protect her from the ground. So she fell on top of him, and he rolled her over before she could protest and crushed his lips onto hers.
“Nothing but a game, is it?” he growled.
“You can’t kiss me here,” Annabel said, pushing against his shoulders. “Let me up! I’m lying on the ground!”
“I can’t. I’ve lost my mind. Fallen victim to your feminine wiles. Besides, the sheet is sopping.”
“Don’t make fun of me!” He was pushing up her skirts, his fingers leaving a trail of fire on her legs. “Don’t even think—Ewan, please!”
Flames danced over Annabel’s body. “We’re out-of-doors!” she said desperately.
But then his hand took her and she cried
out, even though she was lying on the ground.
“A game,” he growled. She twisted against his hand, her breath burning in her chest. “I’m nothing more than a slave to your corset, if I understood you correctly.”
Some small part of Annabel was resisting the strength of his fingers. But pleasure simmered in her legs, coursing in waves that followed every move of his fingers. Still, she gasped, “It’s not so—”
His fingers stopped, leaving her on fire. “Don’t move,” he commanded.
She froze.
Then his thumb rubbed across her once, twice, deliberately slow. “You can move now,” he said softly.
Fire surged through her bones, and she involuntarily shivered, gasping. His hands stilled again.
“Now, what were you trying to tell me?” he asked conversationally.
“Let go of me,” she said. Every nerve in her body was connected and they were all dancing with fire. “This is intolerable. You must let me rise. Someone might ride down that road any moment.”
One slow movement took her voice away. “I want you to tell me why our marriage won’t work.” He was kissing her jaw, his lips brushing against her skin.
“Because—because—” But she couldn’t. She couldn’t think, not when her whole body was pulsing around his hand, silently begging him to do things she could never say aloud.
“I’ll use my male wiles on you,” he said. His voice was sinful, and filled with a mad joy that was quite unlike his customary amusement.
Annabel shut her eyes and pretended she wasn’t lying on the ground. Then his mouth came to hers again, ravenous, taking her with all the savagery of his anger and the pleasure of his possession.
Ewan almost groaned at the ragged sound of Annabel’s breath, at the cries she couldn’t stifle against his lips. His hand memorized her softness, the precise movements that made her moan with pleasure, clench around his fingers and finally—finally catch his hair in her fists and twist up against his chest with a cry that burst from her lungs, leaving her breathless with the pleasure of it.
A moment later he scooped her into his arms and carried her into the house. The need to take her, to possess her fully, was pounding through his blood. His only thought was to put her on the bed and—