With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  "Mindless drunkard," he cursed himself with anger that stirred him to resolute purpose. He couldn't regret the pleasure, and he had no idea of what he meant to do or say. But he knew only that he must see Meggie, he must talk to her, hold her, comfort her. He began running toward the cabin.

  Cold chills and dizziness overcame him and he stopped. Leaning against the long lean trunk of a giant white oak, he waited impatiently for the queasiness to pass. In his mind he felt the smooth, clean touch of her flesh once more. He tasted the salty spiced flavor of her skin and felt the stretch and give of her intimate body as he pressed his own inside her.

  He bent forward, willing the unholy spin of the ground to subside. As soon as it did, he hurried on toward the cabin.

  On the distant hillside, he could see Onery out working in his fields and as he hurried into the yard, he could hear the moaning complaints of Jesse who still lay in the new bed in the half-walled cabin room. Neither sight drew more than a cursory glance nor one iota of his attention and concern. He was hurrying to Meggie and in that moment, nothing, no one else, mattered at all.

  He came around the corner of the cabin, calling out her name. He felt a rush of tenderness. She was there. But the polite nod and casual morning greeting he received was not at all what he expected.

  Meggie sat in a straight-backed chair, a huge skinning knife gripped comfortably in her right hand. In the dishpan on her lap were the legs and backs she was preparing for the evening's meal. Beside her, a bucket contained the severed heads and slimy hides of the big green bullfrogs Roe had helped to catch the previous night.

  "Meggie—" he began, still not knowing what he was about to say.

  She looked over at him as casually as if he'd just strolled up from the barn for a dipper of water. "I don't suppose you're hungry," she said calmly. "But there's pone in the kettle and coffee's still hot on the fire."

  She turned back to her frog butchering with such indifference that Roe stood staring in puzzlement until she glanced up to look at him again.

  "Last night, Meggie—"

  Only the scarlet flush that stained her cheeks revealed that she even understood his words. She cleared her throat a little uncomfortably.

  "Get you some coffee and pone, Mr. Farley," she said calmly. "It'll settle your stomach and then we can talk and I'll settle your mind."

  There was nothing of the dreamy scatterbrain in the Meggie Best that sat before him. She was quiet, purposeful, and practical. Roe felt as if he had never seen her before. He hesitated only a moment before deciding that perhaps she was thinking more clearly than he. Such a momentous moment as theirs should not be faced on an empty stomach. With a nod of polite excuse, he stepped into the cabin for his breakfast, but was not even tempted to linger.

  With a full cup of thick black coffee and a chunk of the half-burnt, half-raw cornbread, he hurried back out to the porch. Meggie didn't look up from her work. Roe watched her. He didn't even pretend to try to eat or drink, but just stood beside her watching with abhorrent fascination as Meggie methodically sliced off the heads of the wiggling frogs, gutted them, and then ripped the skin back from shoulder to feet. The gentle, romantic glow that had wrapped him in a fog dissipated as the everyday reality set in. He'd never imagined himself enamored of a woman who could gut and peel her own foodstuffs. A return of the queasy feeling Roe had suffered earlier prompted him to look away from the sight and clear his throat uneasily.

  "I suppose I should speak first," he said. His voice took on a deep, responsible tone that he thought appropriate for the moment.

  Meggie looked up at him. "There is no need," she told him quietly.

  "What do you mean, there's no need?"

  She shrugged with deliberate unconcern and answered with carefree nonchalance. "I already know what you have to say, Mr. Farley."

  "Oh?"

  "You were liquored up and now you are very sorry. I wasn't liquored up, but I'm sorry, too. We agree on that, Mr. Farley. So there's no need for us to dwell upon it."

  Roe found her manner unsettling and became somewhat annoyed at her apparent reluctance to use his given name.

  "My dear Miss Best," he said with formality that bordered upon arrogance. "That was not at all what I had intended to say to you."

  Meggie turned to look at him. Her hair was unusually neat and tidy this morning and was pulled very tightly away from her face in a fashion severe enough to seem almost a punishment.

  "Then what were you going to say, Mr. Farley?" she asked.

  The question immediately deflated the smugness in Roe's stance as reality swept upon him in a rush of consequence.

  "I was going to say... I mean I am saying... or rather I'm asking..."

  Roe nervously took a deep swig of the coffee in his tin cup and scalded his mouth. The pain effectively cleared his muddled thinking and he knew, in that one moment with perfect clarity, the purpose for which he'd hurried toward the cabin and the reason that he stood next to this woman.

  He glanced down at the coffee as if the brew itself had somehow brought this moment to fruition. Cursing under his breath, he tossed the remains in the cup out onto the dusty ground, and threw the untouched pone to the yard chickens, who in a noisy cackle scrambled around it eagerly.

  Looking down at his clothes, Roe took stock of himself and realized that his shirt and trousers were grass stained and wrinkled, he smelled of corn liquor and was badly in need of a morning shave. But the time was upon him, and like a bitter elixir would not grow more pleasing for putting it off. He took one moment to smooth back his sleep-tousled black hair and then formally went down on one knee.

  The new position, bowed down in the dirt before Meggie's bare feet, gave him an even closer and more distasteful view of the frog heads' bucket. Deliberately, he focused his gaze upon the woman, determined to ignore what she was doing.

  Gracefully, he looked deeply into the blue-gray eyes of the young woman and said the words that he expected any young woman would long to hear. Words that he himself had not expected to say for several years to come.

  "My dear Miss Meggie Best, my love, my heart," he declared poetically.

  The stench of the frog bucket momentarily captured his attention and he glanced down at it in dismay. Purposely he raised his gaze once more to the young woman before him, cleared his throat, and continued his discourse. "Miss Best, as a single man of good prospects and respectable character, I would like to ask that you consider my address and declaration. It would bring life to my weary journey and purpose to my days upon this earth if you would but consent to be my helpmate, to share my destiny, bear my children, to be my bride and take my name."

  Though he had not prepared, Roe had thought that his proposal had actually come out quite prettily. He patiently awaited the lady's demure acceptance.

  Strangely enough, Meggie said nothing. And to Roe's dismay, she immediately returned to her task, as if the chore were of much more importance than the words he'd just spoken.

  Roe leaned back on his heels and stared at her. He had never proposed to a woman before, and he felt relatively certain that more reaction than this was usual. "Meggie, I just asked you to marry me," he said softly.

  "I know that you did." she answered. "Though with all those fancy words you use, a woman could get a bit confused I suppose."

  Roe lingered on his knees in front of her as she skinned the frog and cut it into parts.

  "I'm waiting for your answer, Meggie," he said.

  Without bothering to even glance in his direction, Meggie gutted another frog over the bucket. "There isn't any need to answer, 'cause there wasn't any need to ask the question," she said.

  Roe stared at her for a long moment and then nodded slowly, thoughtful. "Oh," he said quietly, "you mean that last night, although not in words, the question was really already asked and answered."

  Meggie did look up at him then and her expression turned downright cross. "No, that's not what I mean at all!"

  "Then what?"
/>   "I mean, you don't have to ask me to marry you."

  Roe felt a measure of pride swelling up inside him. Of course Meggie would never try to trap a man into marriage. He smiled at her warmly.

  "I know I don't have to ask you, but—"

  "But nothing," Meggie interrupted. "You're only asking because I did that loving thing with you."

  "That's not the only reason," he assured her.

  "I can't for the life of me think of another," she said. "You had me that way and now you think it's cause to marry."

  Roe rubbed his eyes. The pain in his temples was throbbing again and he wished he could wipe it away as easily as he did the sweat from his brow. "Well, that's certainly reason enough," he said.

  "For most, it is," Meggie agreed. "But for us there is no cause. There just isn't any need."

  Roe was clearly puzzled. He knew that his brain was still foggy, but he couldn't imagine why none of this was making any sense.

  "Meggie, I admit that I was quite drunk last night," he said. "But I was not too drunk to realize what we did. Or to realize that it was your first time."

  "That makes a difference?"

  "No, it doesn't to me, but I'm sure it will to the people here on the mountain."

  "But don't you see, it doesn't have to change a thing."

  "No, I don't see."

  "Folks already think we are married," she said. "When you go off and we say you've been killed, then that's the end of it. If I was to marry later, my man thinking me a widow would expect nothing else."

  Roe stared at her in disbelief. Rising to his feet, he shook his head and began to nervously pace back and forth in front of her. Finally, he stopped to look at her again. She'd returned to her task as if there was nothing more to be said. Roe gazed up to heaven for guidance before speaking again.

  "I guess I've gone at this all wrong," he said. "What we did last night, Meggie, has more meaning than just what other people think. There's . . . well, there is just more involved."

  Meggie looked up and gave him an impatient sigh. "I may be a green hill girl, Mr. Farley," she said. "But I know where babies come from. And I tell you it doesn't matter. If I'm a widow or a widow with a child coming, it's all the same difference."

  "Well, it's not all the same difference to me!"

  Meggie huffed slightly and shook her head. "You're letting your gallantry take the reins of your good sense," she said. "I'm the one who is supposed to be walking around with my head in the clouds all the time. Well, my feet are on the ground this morning and yours should be, too."

  "I think that they are," he snapped. "You're the one who is not making any sense."

  "Roe, last night we done something we shouldn't have. But it wouldn't make it right if we married. It would just make it more wrong. At the end of the summer you'll be going back to the Bay State and I'll be a-staying here."

  He stared at her in silence.

  "Now, I can't go there, I'd never be able to leave Pa and Jesse and the mountain. And you can't stay here, you're a scholar and have no way of making your living out in these woods. If we was to marry, you'd be leaving just the same at the end of the summer. And we'd both be caught in a marriage that would be more millstone than matrimony."

  "Meggie, what happened between us last night—"

  "Is best forgotten!" Meggie sighed heavily and bit down upon her lips. "You were donked, and I was seeing starlight, but it's morning now and we've both trotted out our better judgment. We just decide not to let such a thing happen again and go on about our business."

  "Meggie—"

  "There is not a thing left to say, Roe Farley. Now let me get to washing these frog legs. Pa was real pleased at the mess you and Jess caught. He'll be wanting them for nooning. You should get yourself cleaned up and see what you can do for Jesse."

  Using the corner of her apron for a pot holder, Meggie lifted the lid off the big cast-iron skillet that sat in the hot coals. The frog legs and backs were bubbling nicely in the grease. Meggie kept them covered. It was said that when the fat got hot the frogs would hop right out of the skillet and head back to the creek bank. She knew that to be not exactly true. But during frying the tendons in the legs of the frogs would contract, causing them to jerk and quiver as they cooked and Meggie didn't want grease splashed on her floor. She could not stop, however, the tiny, sizzling spatter that resulted from one salty tear falling into the pan of frying frog legs.

  Covering the skillet once more, she wiped away the glistening tears that stained her cheeks. He had actually asked her to marry him. What a princely thing to do. She had wanted him to, wanted him to so badly. But she hadn't really thought that he would.

  Rising to her feet, she checked the bread in the fireplace oven. It was a perfect brown, risen high and just right with a rich yeasty smell. She hefted it out on the board to cool.

  Maybe Roe Farley was a prince. But she had been right to refuse to wed him. The man should not be punished for what she did. Marriage to a backwoods nobody like her would be a punishment. She was nothing at all like the Bay State princess that he had in mind. Roe Farley shouldn't be forced to marry her for something that wasn't his fault.

  And there was no question in her mind whose fault it was. Roe had been half dazed and besotted with drink. But Meggie had had no liquor in her veins. She'd merely had stars in her eyes. That was crime enough.

  All her life she'd thought her dreaminess to be an innocent pastime. While most folks had left their pretend games in childhood, she'd carried hers with her and relished those moments of make-believe that took her away from the worry and work that was her life. Ignoring the occasional scold, she'd seen no harm in her pleasant flights of fancy. Now she knew that seeing the world as you hoped it might be could be as dangerous as a deliberate lie.

  Last night, in the sweet rowdy warmth of Roe's arms, she'd pretended that their marriage was real. She'd pretended that she was truly loved, and that she had a right to accept the worship of his body. A blush stained her cheeks as she recalled the passionate, intimate things that they had done. Things that were meant only for two who are one.

  She remembered Granny Piggott's words and her own little lie. The old woman was right. Kind and gentle were not the words that came to mind with her man's lovemaking.

  Her man. The designation caught her unawares and jolted her sense of reality. The little quiver of desire that fluttered through her sputtered sadly and fell like ash. She would never do those things again, not with Roe. Never would she feel the intensity of his desire and hear him cry out her name. Another tear stole down her cheek and she pushed it away.

  She tried to imagine the touch of another man. It was difficult. No other man she knew seemed worthy to take Roe's place and the thought of having any other man touch her intimately was an idea that sickened her. Deliberately, she attempted to conjure up her dream prince once more. He could love her and share sweet passion with her. But every image that came to her mind was of Roe Farley.

  A shadow darkened the cabin door and Meggie looked up to see her father standing there. She was grateful that the dim light of the cabin masked her reddened eyes and tearstained cheeks.

  "The meal's almost ready," she told him briskly with what she hoped was a welcoming smile.

  He nodded and tossed his hat on the peg beside the door. "Corn's looking good," he said calmly. "The weeds are sure getting to your vegetables though."

  Meggie nodded. "Maybe with Jesse laid up for real work he can help me get the garden cleaned out."

  Onery grunted his approval. "How is yer brother?" he asked.

  "Oh, I think his ankle's going to be fine," Meggie replied. "He just needs to stay off that foot for a few days and he'll be back working in the fields in no time at all."

  Onery sat down in one of the chairs and leaned way back to observe his daughter. "I wasn't asking about his leg, I was asking about his head."

  Meggie glanced up with surprise.

  "That devil-brewed donk won't kill ye, but
it will sure make a man wish himself dead."

  Meggie was stunned. "He told you?"

  The old man shook his head. "He didn't need to, Meggie-gal. My head may be covered in gray hair, but my mind works as well as it ever did."

  She nodded slowly. "Are you going to punish him?" she asked in a soft whisper.

  "Seems kind of purposeless, don't it? Nothing could make him any sorrier than he is already." Onery chuckled lightly. "Besides, I'm not exactly on the side of the angels here. I've drunk enough of that vile corn liquor to float a bear oil log all the way to New Orleans."

  Meggie pulled the frying skillet away from the fire. She knew of her father's past, but respected him for all the things he'd done right in his life. She set the pan on a towel on top of the table and began removing the frog legs from the hot grease.

  "Of course, I wouldn't want Jesse to make a habit of this," she said honestly.

  Her father waved away her concern. "Jesse's mind ain't a wonder, but the boy's got a good bit of sense about him."

  Meggie knew her father was right about that. Using the towel once more, she removed the skillet's cast-iron lid. A cloud of steam and appetizing scent filled the room and her father sighed with pleasure.

  "Ooooh, don't they look wonderful?" Onery said, smacking his lips eagerly.

  “Thank you," Meggie answered modestly. She looked down at her achievement with some pride. The frog legs were a perfect golden brown, evenly fried on all sides and not a burnt edge or a raw strip in sight. "They do look mighty good," she admitted.

  Her father chuckled. "I knew you'd be fixin' the best-tasting frog legs in the country today."

  Meggie looked up at him curiously. From a man whose opinion of her cooking was far from high, this was extravagant praise.

  "I'm glad you had such faith in me, Pa."

  "It was more than faith, Meggie-gal. It was knowing you. Knowing you since you were a little girl and knowing how you are."

  Her expression was puzzled. He continued.

  "When you are worried, somehow your mind don't wander so much as regular. If your mind don't wander, you don't make such mistakes. Yes, Meggie-gal, I've known you all your life and the more worried you are, the better you cook."