With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

Smiling at her success, she took the bread out of the oven, then rushed across the room and donned the coat, anxious to get going before he thought to ask her if she knew how to milk a cow.

  They stepped outside. The snow was so high that it was past her waist. Not one to let a little snow stop her, she walked into it.

  He grabbed her arm, and she started to protest, until he swung her up into his arms—her favorite position. Her heart picked up a fanciful beat, and she clasped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder, smiling and resisting the urge to hum.

  He was so wrong. She’d never freeze to death as long as she was in his arms.

  A few dreamy minutes later, they were inside the dank stable. He set her on her feet and shook off some of the snow while she looked around. It smelled of musty, damp hay mixed with the sharp sting of cow dung and the stench of chickens. She wrinkled her nose, while her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. She could hear the mumbling cluck of several chickens. “Look! We can have eggs.”

  His gaze followed her pointing finger to a broken wagon piled with hay that made perfect nests for a few scrawny brown chickens. A plump white cow lumbered out from a dark corner to the dull tune of a clanging cow-bell.

  “Oh, look! It has a bell. I love bells, don’t you?” She sighed with a dreamy smile and thought of kirk bells and wedding bells and Canterbury bells and best of all a Belmore Duke’s warm arms.

  The cow stood there, staring at them, blinking. It bawled. Joy sighed and pushed her fantasies from her mind. She turned to Alec. He looked at her blankly. The cow blinked. No one moved to milk it.

  Finally, he shrugged out of the coat and hung it on a peg near the door, then helped her off with hers.

  “Tell me what you need,” he said, “and I’ll see if I can find it.”

  What she needed was to know how to milk a cow. She fidgeted, then reached out to stroke the cow, figuring they should get acquainted. After a few strokes, she summoned up some Scots determination. “I need a pail.”

  “Fine.” Alec began to search the stable.

  Joy leaned over to the cow. “I could use some help here,” she whispered.

  The cow cocked its head and stared at her through huge gray bovine eyes.

  “I want to impress my husband, so it would be very nice if you would cooperate for me,” she said, as she patted the cow’s wide back. The animal twitched its ears.

  There was a loud clunk and the tooth-jarring ring of tin. “I found your pail. And a stool.”

  A stool? “Oh, good,” she said, then whispered to the cow. “Please.” She gave it one last pat before Alec joined her and set down the stool and pail next to her.

  Joy tried to look confident as she sat down on the stool, then flexed her fingers, as she did just before casting an especially complicated spell, which she might have to resort to if this didn’t work. She peered under the cow’s full belly, then set the pail under the animal’s udder.

  “Mind if I watch?”

  Joy jumped at the sound of Alec’s voice over her shoulder. “No.” She reached way under the cow and grabbed hold of two of those dangling spigot-things. Her arms were so short that her cheek rested against the cow’s silky white hide.

  The cow bawled and she jumped. She pulled. Nothing happened.

  She squeezed. The cow swished its tail.

  “Nothing’s coming out,” Alec said.

  “I haven’t milked a cow in a long time.” She squeezed again and nothing happened.

  “How long?” His voice was suspiciously quiet.

  Joy turned her head away and muttered into the cow’s hide, “Twenty-one years.”

  After a moment he said, “It’s still not working.” He bent down to look under the cow. “Did you have many cows in Scotland?”

  “No.”

  “How many did you have?”

  She didn’t answer, but could sense that he was now aware of her ploy.

  “You said you could milk a cow.”

  “Not exactly.” She pulled her hands back into her lap, folded them prayerlike, and stared at them.

  “Actually, I asked you if you knew how to milk a cow.”

  “I assumed that meant you did know how to milk one.”

  She shrugged. “I thought it would be easy,” she admitted. “I could try my magic if you—”

  “No!”

  “But—”

  “No, I said!” He paced a short impatient path behind her, mumbling something about curdling the milk.

  He stopped and squatted down beside her. “It can’t possibly be that difficult.” He rubbed a finger over his lip while he thought about it. “Are you squeezing them?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Watch.” She gripped the spigots in her hands and squeezed. “See? Nothing happens.”

  “Try it again.”

  Again nothing happened.

  “Maybe they’re plugged up,” she suggested and bent her head down alongside his. She turned one of them upward so she could see the tip. “Can you see anything?”

  “No.” He leaned closer.

  “Neither can I.”

  Joy turned the other one up. “How about now?” She gave a wee tug.

  A white stream of milk spewed straight past her.

  “Oh, look!” she said, her voice filled with glee. “I did it! I did it!” She turned to Alec.

  The Duke of Belmore’s noble face dripped with milk.

  “Oh, my goodness.” She covered her mouth with a hand and watched with dread as the milk dripped from his aristocratic nose, his arrogant chin, and his jaw—which was clenched so tight his cheek had a wee tic—and drops of milk dribbled down his neck.

  She couldn’t help it. She giggled.

  He wiped the milk from his eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” She giggled some more. “I truly am. I didn’t . . . I mean, you look so . . . ”

  He scowled at her, his whole body stiff with damaged pride. “So . . . what?”

  Even his arrogance couldn’t keep her from laughing. “So silly. Oh, Alec!” She couldn’t keep it in. “It just squirted right past me and splat! And you looked so serious and all, but even a duke can’t look serious with milk dripping from his face, and I just . . . I just . . . ” She stopped laughing and looked straight into his proud eyes. She placed a hand on his and patted him. “I just like you, even with milk on your face.”

  An odd expression of surprise and curiosity shone from his face. He just watched her, the tic slowly disappearing from his cheek, the anger draining away. The pride was still there, but his look changed to one that held a breath-catching moment of naked longing.

  She was so happy to see it that she smiled. He needed her, and that fact had just hit him.

  He reached out to graze her cheek with his fingers. His eyes locked on her mouth and grew serious. He rubbed her lips, touched the mole above her upper lip.

  She knew that look, and her heart picked up its beat. Kiss me . . . kiss me . . . kiss me . . . .

  She knew he wanted to. The air almost vibrated with it. Her lips parted in anticipation, and she leaned forward just as he slid his hand behind her neck, pulling her mouth up to his.

  Sliding one arm around his neck, she placed the other where it belonged, on his heart, feeling it beat in time with hers. At that same instant their lips touched. Their mouths opened at the same time, and his arm slipped around her and pulled her flush against him.

  His other hand moved to cup the back of her head and hold her mouth against his. He tilted his head, and his tongue sank inside, filling her mouth.

  He kissed her. The monster was gone.The cow shifted, and she heard the bell ring, but little mattered in this instant because she knew this was right where she should be.

  Part II

  The Beguiling

  To bed, to bed . . . What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed.

  —Macbeth, William Shakespeare

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alec heard the bell and knew this was not where they sho
uld be. He abruptly broke off the kiss, steeling himself to ignore his wife’s little moan of surprise. Her eyes were still closed, her lips parted and moist. He felt the pull of her so deeply that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see a chain linking them together. That thought sent him into another deep breath. Then he stared into a pair of dreamy gamine-green eyes. Unable to resist, he lifted a finger to her mouth, traced the line of her lips, then touched the little mole above them. With a smile, she made him forget so much so easily.

  “Not here.” He did his best to ignore the blatant disappointment in her expression. Disappointment could not come close to describing what he felt. He would have liked nothing better than to make her his wife then and there, with the hay as their marriage bed—but they were in a bloody barn. The Duke and Duchess of Belmore would not couple in a barn.

  With a steel will bred of too many empty years, he ignored his thoughts and nodded toward the cow, which still stood nearby, chewing her cud and swishing her tail. “We have a cow to milk.”

  That made her smile. She looked up at him worshipfully. He glowered back at her. He didn’t want to be worshiped, dammit!

  She averted her eyes and began fiddling with a piece of hay.

  He was being harsh, but he had his reasons. His reaction to her galled him, because it wasn’t something he could control with a command. And he couldn’t make it go away, either. It was as if with one look she could lure him into her strange world, a world he did not understand any better than the one he lived in.

  A sick thought hit him like a fist in the belly. Had she done this to him? Had she used her magic to cast a witch’s spell? Was that why he couldn’t control this odd need for her, this lust? He watched her for a minute, still feeling that taut chain of need. “Did you cast a spell on me?”

  She cocked her head, her face registering surprise. “No.”

  “Then why is all this happening?”

  “All what?”

  “Every time I look at you I want to . . . to behave strangely. I do believe you have cast some love spell over me. I want you to remove it.” He crossed his arms and waited. “Now.”

  Her eyes brightened. “A love spell?”

  “Yes. Get rid of it.”

  “But—”

  “I command you to remove the spell.”

  She looked at him for a long time. He could see her furtive little witch’s mind working. Her eyes flickered with it. Finally she sighed, giving in, and whispered some mumbo jumbo and waved her hands around for a very long time.

  He waited for the feeling to fade. It didn’t. She walked over to him very slowly, her eyes locked on to his. She stopped in front of him, her face suddenly serious, and said, “I have to kiss you to remove it.”

  He stiffened, not knowing what to expect. “Go ahead.”

  She slid her arms around his neck and slowly rose up on tiptoe, her mouth and that damnably sexy mole closing in. Her hands moved from his neck to his cheeks just as her lips touched his. He counted in Latin, and it was working until her small curious tongue traced his lips. He groaned, and her tongue darted inside his mouth, stroking him and making him feel the magic. He tried counting in Greek, then conjugating French verbs, anything to fight the urge to wrap his arms around her and take her right there in the hay.

  She finally pulled back, slowly, took a deep, calming breath, and said, “I’m done.”

  “It’s gone?”

  She started to smile, then bit it back. “Yes.”

  He didn’t feel any different. “No more spell?”

  “No more spell,” she confirmed, then gave him one of those smiles that made him forget reason.

  He drew himself up and said, “Never again. You are to never again cast any love spell, especially on me.Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Alec.” She stood with her hands clasped meekly and her head bowed.

  “Fine. I’ll milk the cow,” he told her, expecting an argument. “You can gather some eggs.”

  She raised her bright eyes to his. “Oh, good! I’ve never gathered eggs before, have you?”

  “No.”

  She acted as if he had just given her a special gift. He expected her

  to clap her hands any minute. It amazed him that she could find delight in the least little thing. He did not understand it, or her, so he gave up trying and set about the task at hand and sat on the milking stool, scowling. Within moments the only sound in the barn was the clean ring of milk hitting the tin pail.

  “You do that very well.” She hadn’t moved.

  He glanced up, his first urge to order her to do as he’d told her, but she was smiling again, and some weak part of him told him not to spoil the blatant happiness that shone in her bright face.

  “Are you sure you removed the spell?”

  “Witch’s honor.” Her face suddenly serious, she held up a hand.

  Taking a deep breath he opened his mouth, but no words came out. He had to search for those sharp angry words that in the past could flay the skin off the person to whom they were aimed. This time those words didn’t come easily. He had to search for them, and when he looked at her pert little face, he couldn’t say them. He’d seen her happiness fade before and remembered feeling as if he’d kicked a kitten.

  “Why did you ask?” she said. “Do you still feel it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Well, perhaps it takes a while to wear off.”

  He grumbled, “It had best hurry.”

  “Well,” she said, bending back to dust the straw from her backside. “I have eggs to gather, don’t I?”

  He watched her hand sweep across her bottom, and didn’t answer because his mind was filled with the flash of an image of Joy with her hair undone, swinging down over that same area she’d dusted off, and on down to the backs of her thighs, her naked thighs.

  The ring of milk quickened. He concentrated on the task at hand with narrowed concentration and deep control—a control that had been drummed into him at a young age and that, since his marriage, had been slipping far too often.

  The Duke of Belmore worrying about wounded kittens and handfuls of hair? He took a deep breath and forced himself to think of his estates, of which fields should lay fallow, of the problems with his tenants and with poachers, of the latest Whig maneuver in the House of Lords, of anything but the happy tune his wife was humming across the barn.

  “Oh, Alec! Come see! I’ve found something!”

  “Bloody hell,” he said under his breath and stared at the pail of milk.

  “Hurry!”

  Resigned, he wiped his hands on his thighs and stood up, then walked around the cow only to have his wife run up to him, grab his arm, and tug him over to a dim corner.

  “Look there.”

  His gaze followed her pointing finger to wooden crates of books and a straw-speckled trunk.

  “What do you suppose is inside this trunk?” Her voice was as eager as if she had just found buried treasure.

  “No doubt something no one wanted.”

  “Where’s your spirit of adventure? Let’s open it.”

  The flush of rapt anticipation on her bright face was more than even he could ignore. He bent down and moved aside the crate of dusty leather-bound books and released the brass latch on the trunk. The hinges creaked like hungry cats as he lifted the lid, and his wife’s curious head suddenly popped into his line of vision.

  She gasped. “Oh, my goodness! Look!” She pulled out a huge red velvet hat, the size of a large hunting saddle, with more plumes than a herd of ostriches. He had to back up to keep from getting the feathers in his face as she turned it this way and that, inspecting the monstrosity the way a child might inspect a new toy. She plopped the hat on the back of her small head and raised her chin, tying the frayed ribbons.

  She stepped back and struck a pose. “How does it look?” She gave the hat, which was made to set atop a full pompadour, a jaunty pat. It sank down over her small nose, the feathers flopping downward over the front of the bri
m. She blew the feathers away from her mouth and said, her voice muffled by the hat, “I believe it’s a tad too big.”

  Before he could control it, let alone think about it, a bark of laughter escaped his lips. He stiffened immediately and swallowed the next one.

  She pushed the hat back, her eyes wide, green, and curious. “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “That noise.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,”

  “Well, I surely did. Sounded like the selkies on Iona Reef.”

  “Selkies?”

  “Seals.”

  He cleared his throat gruffly and tried to look suitably serious. “Impossible.”

  She pushed the hat back off her head and moved her inquisitive face closer. She searched his eyes.

  “Alec . . . is that a smile?”

  “Hardly.”

  “I think your eyes are smiling.”

  “Dukes do not smile with their eyes or with anything else.”

  “Why?”

  He turned away.

  “Why won’t you smile?”

  “Village idiots walk around grinning, not dukes. Laughter is for fools.” He heard his father’s coldness in his own voice and he tensed inside and out.

  “I believe that laughter is a gift.”

  “Don’t you want to see what else is in the trunk?”

  “I want to see you smile,” she muttered.

  “And I want to finish this nonsense so we can go back inside.”

  “Nonsense?” She was suddenly quiet, too quiet. She gazed at the trunk. All the delight had drained from her expressive face. Biting her lip, she turned away from him, her shoulders drooping a bit, her head down as if she was embarrassed or, worse yet, ashamed. She sighed. “I’ll just look at these books. You can look inside the trunk.”

  He watched her shoulders heave slightly with her deep breaths. He searched the tips of his boots for kitten fur and stood there feeling like a cloddish oaf.

  Bloody hell! He heard her deep sigh and ignored it. Finally he looked at her bowed head and the damned word slipped out: “Scottish?”

  She turned those wide, defeated green eyes up at him. He almost smiled for her, almost, but managed to stop himself. What the hell was wrong with him? After a strained minute during which he felt as if she had swallowed him, he said, “I’ll bring the trunk inside so you can go through it.”