by Barbara Mack
Duncan studied Kathleen hungrily as she was served a small slice of cake, his eyes intent upon her as she forked up a bite of the fluffy confection. His own tasted like ashes in his mouth as he watched her lips close around the tines.
“Mmmm,” she said, closing her eyes in sensual approval. “This is wonderful.”
A bit of icing clung to the side of her mouth, and before he could even think about it, Duncan rubbed his index finger over the soft contours of her lips. Then he brought it to his own mouth and watched her as he suckled the bit of sweet off his skin. He smiled when a flush lit her features.
“Sweet,” he murmured, and her mouth went dry.
She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of his lips. His lips parted in a seductive smile, showing flashes of his white teeth, and Kathleen went weak in the knees.
I don’t know what’s happening to me, she thought wildly. I can’t breathe. I want to feel his mouth on mine again, hot and quick, searing me down to the bone.
“Some people just have no sense of propriety. That cheap dress, and now she is practically drooling over that man.” Martha spoke in a hoarse, carrying whisper. The lowered tone was only to pretend some semblance of tact, for she wanted Kathleen and Duncan to hear her words. Nearly everyone else heard them, too, and Kathleen felt a bubble of rage burst inside her as she saw heads start to turn. Lanny glared hotly from across the room and started to come to her feet, then subsided when Kathleen warned her off with a subtle shake of her head.
A smile creased Lanny’s face. Oh, this was going to be good. She gave a surreptitious nudge to the plump woman next to her and nodded discreetly in Kathleen’s direction. The nudges went around the room until everyone was staring avidly at the two women. Many a woman’s face held a bright smile, for Martha Fawcett was universally disliked by her own sex and this was much, much better than eating cake.
“My dear, that dreadful scar! Whatever is she thinking of?” Martha faux-whispered again to the clearly uncomfortable farmer sitting next to her.
Kathleen smiled up into Duncan’s eyes. His expression was tranquil, though she knew that Martha’s poison had touched him. She could see it in the depths of his eyes. Her own eyes narrowed, and then her mobile mouth twisted into a genuine smile of amusement. She picked up her wine glass once again, taking a small sip.
“I am quite thirsty,” she said, and ran her tongue along the rim of the glass.
Duncan could see the mischief glinting in her eyes. Kathleen turned in her chair to face Martha.
“Do try some of this wine, Martha. It is very good.”
Somehow, in the turning, Kathleen’s glass arced forward and a stream of wine went flying out. Kathleen gasped as a huge splotch appeared on the front of Martha’s pink silk gown.
“Oh my lord, I am so clumsy!” Kathleen cried, and grabbed for the white linen napkin in front of Martha. In the process, she proceeded to turn over Martha’s glass of wine, and it, too, dripped right into the unfortunate woman’s lap. The uneaten cake in front of her dropped next, and when Martha jumped to her feet Kathleen went with her and rubbed frantically with the napkin. The stain now covered about two feet of the geranium-colored dress, and it was never going to come out. Martha slapped Kathleen’s hands away.
“Get away from me!”
Duncan noticed people around them covering smiles with their hands. Some didn’t bother hiding their laughter as Martha bolted for the door, steam practically coming out of her ears. She stormed out, her features contorted with temper, and outright laughter broke out among the guests. Kathleen sat down and reached sedately for Duncan’s wine glass, arching an eyebrow.
“Did you want that? I’m still thirsty, and mine is all gone.”
The amusement started at the bottom of his stomach and worked its way up, and while Kathleen sat calmly sipping from his wine glass, he threw back his head and roared with laughter. Every time he thought himself over his mirth, she would quirk an eyebrow at him and set him off all over again. His hard belly shaking, he mopped up the helpless tears of laughter, and all the while Kathleen sat primly drinking from his glass of wine.
Chapter Four
Kathleen popped an apple piece into her mouth. The crisp fruit burst into a riot of flavor on her tongue, and she nudged Lanny, who stood shoulder to shoulder with her.
“I thought I would take a pie to Granny Thompson,” Kathleen said casually. She felt her cheeks flush and hoped that her mother would lay the blame on the warm kitchen. “And maybe one or two over to the doctor’s office. Isaac Fell is awful partial to my pies.”
“That’s a good idea. Isaac has a terrible sweet tooth.”
Kathleen could hear the smile in Lanny’s voice. She threw down the cloth she’d been wiping flour up with and whirled to face her, hands plumped down on her hips.
“I am not taking this pie over just because Duncan Murdoch is there! I’ve been taking baked goods over to the doctor’s office for years, and I am not going to stop now. Just because Duncan is handsome, don’t go making something else out of it!”
“So you think he’s handsome, do you?”
Kathleen made a frustrated noise. “Of course I do,” she said grudgingly. “I’d have to be blind as a bat not to notice. And even if I were blind, I would still notice him. That voice of his could call the birds down out of the trees. I am a woman, you know. It doesn’t mean anything. Women have been noticing men since the dawn of time.”
Lanny pulled up a chair and sat down, putting her elbows on the table. She shook her head sadly. She looked at Kathleen searchingly, her eyes almost pitying.
“I never suspected you were a coward, Kathleen.”
Kathleen sat heavily in the opposite chair, dropping her head. She traced a seam in the old, scarred table, not speaking. Lanny waited patiently for a while, then she put a warm hand on top of Kathleen’s own.
“You are scared, aren’t you?” she persisted. “You find Duncan attractive, and you know that he finds you attractive, and it frightens you. Why?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“I know,” Lanny whispered. “I know exactly why. You don’t want to trust anyone else since Geoffrey died. It hurts too much to love someone and then have them go away. You don’t want to give anyone else that power over you.”
Kathleen threw her head up with the words of denial trembling on her lips but could not bring herself to say them. Lanny’s eyes stared into hers, warm and caring, and Kathleen couldn’t lie. Not even to herself.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “Duncan doesn’t love me,” she said quietly. “He just wants me.” She laughed, but the sound had no humor in it.
“How do you know?” Lanny asked. “Maybe he does and he just hasn’t said it. Or maybe he doesn’t know it yet.” She inched close enough to Kathleen to smooth a hand down her bright gold locks.
Kathleen leaned into Lanny and the comforting touch. “I’ve been in love before,” she said glumly. “And I’ve had a man love me back. I know how they act, and this isn’t it. It is just lust.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a little lust.” She grinned at Kathleen, eyes twinkling wickedly. “Trust me, I know. And it can turn to love. Do you want him, too?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then . . . “
“I don’t even like him, Mama. How can I be feeling this way about someone I don’t even like? I can’t see spending my life with a man that makes me so mad I could happily take a knife to him – when I’m not rolling around naked on a bed with him, that is. That’s how I feel when I’m with him. I either want to tear his clothes off, or kill him. Sometimes both at once.”
A giggle spilled from Lanny’s mouth, and she clapped a hand over it. It spilled out anyway, and Kathleen glared at her.
“I’m just picturing you with a gun, making Duncan take his clothes off.”
Kathleen burst into peals of laughter. They laughed until they were clutching their sides and puffing for breath.
“What are yo
u going to do?” Lanny asked, turning serious again. Kathleen shook her head.
“I don’t know. I . . . Geoffrey and I were lovers, so it isn’t that I’m fearful of that. I enjoyed it, that part of expressing our love for one another, and I never thought it wrong. I’ve never felt this way before, never felt this strong desire to . . . “ She grinned impishly at Lanny. “You know.”
“If you decide to . . . you know . . .” She dodged, laughing, the fist that Kathleen swung at her. “You can trust Duncan. He would never hurt you.” She grasped Kathleen’s hand. “I can look in his eyes and see what a good person he is. It’s why I want him for you, darling.”
Kathleen knew that Lanny truly believed her own words, but she wasn’t so sure. Oh, he would never hurt her physically, she was sure of that. But if she went to him, how would she feel when he decided he didn’t want her anymore? How would she feel if she made him the gift of her body and found that this wild feeling he stirred up inside her really was love, and it was only one-sided? She would hurt then, whether he wanted her to or not, and Kathleen was not going to risk it. Far better to be lonely than to die a little every time she saw him. And if she longed in the depths of her heart for a home of her own, for the laughter of children that came from her own loins, and the love of a man she could welcome home every night, that was just a fantasy. She’d had her shot at love, and it had ended.
Duncan looked up at the sound of the footsteps climbing the stairs. It was growing late in the day, but people didn’t get sick on a schedule. He sighed. It had been a long, hard day, and he was ready for a nap. He’d been up since three am, when the first of his patients had come knocking on his door. The man had an arm he’d broken the day before, but he’d ignored the pain until it forced him to seek medical help. Why was it that pain became worse in the night? Duncan didn’t know, but he wished he did. Maybe then he could get a good night’s sleep once in a while.
He loved his work here. Isaac was getting too old to be getting up and down in the middle of the night, and Duncan didn’t mind, not usually. It was just that he hadn’t been sleeping all that well.
He gritted his teeth and tried not to remember why his sleep had been disturbed, but the images came into his mind anyway. He couldn’t stop them from coming, though he’d tried. He’d tried hard to keep from seeing the pictures in his mind’s eye. He saw them at all hours of the day – and night, especially at night.
Kathleen, naked and rosy, spread out across his bed like some pagan sacrifice, her golden hair shining with little glints of red in the lamplight. Kathleen, her generous, erotic mouth stroking him all over, as she whispered dark, exciting words about the things she wanted to do with him, to him, for him. He cursed fluently and closed his eyes but that just made the images clearer. He could not get her out of his mind. God, he could even smell her here, that clean smell mixed with something sharper, muskier, something that made him want to jerk her up against him and run his hands all over her body. He could feel himself growing hard, and he cursed himself again.
“Something wrong?” asked a husky voice, and his eyes popped open to see the object of his obsession standing before him. Duncan wondered for a moment if he’d conjured her up with the power of his thoughts, but then she spoke again, and the illusion was broken. This was no spirit. She was flesh and blood, and she was standing right in front of him. He fought back a grin.
“Just resting,” he said smoothly, noticing the flush of warmth on Kathleen’s cheeks and the spray of freckles across her nose. He wanted to touch them with his calloused fingers and see if they felt as smooth as they looked, but he kept his hands on the desk in front of him.
She handed him the dish she was carrying, and Duncan peeked under the cloth it was
covered in. A smile split his features, drawing the scar on his cheek tight.
“Pie,” he said almost reverently. “I’ve been hoping that someone would bring me something.”
“I thought you might like a sample of my cooking, seeing as how my mother keeps inundating you with things she swears I’ve cooked.”
She spoke dryly, but Duncan imagined he could see shyness in her eyes, and his hands stilled. Kathleen, shy? He’d seen her run the gamut of emotions, but shy had yet to make an appearance. He studied her in silence, until she began to squirm under his gaze and feel the way she imagined a rabbit felt when studied by a hawk. He smiled, and Kathleen relaxed.
“I think I’ve got a couple of forks here. Care to join me?”
“Lord, no,” she laughed. She perched in a chair, spreading her skirts around her. “I’ve eaten more than my share of pie today. If I eat any more, I’ll start to look like a dumpling.”
His eyes swept up and down her figure with such devastating slowness that Kathleen felt dizzy. His eyes came up to hers and held her gaze for so long that she began to feel as if he held her in some sort of thrall. He’d cast some spell, and she was held captive because she could not wrench her eyes from his, and her pulse thundered in her veins. She took a deep breath, relieved, when he turned and rummaged in a file cabinet.
“Nothing wrong with your shape, Kathleen,” he said quietly when his back was to her. “Ah, I knew it was here. Now if I could just find that . . . there it is.” He pulled a saucer out from under the paperwork on his desk, and scooped up a large piece of pie.
“Why don’t you just eat it from the tin?” she asked. “That is nearly half the pie gone as it is.”
“Mmm. I need to save a bite or two for Isaac, you know. Wouldn’t want him to feel left out.”
“I dropped one off at his apartments before I came upstairs, so go ahead.”
Duncan and Dr. Fell shared the downstairs of the building. It was conveniently split into two apartments, with separate entrances for each one. Until Duncan came, Isaac Fell had used it for storage, but he’d confessed to Duncan that it was mostly junk in there, so that he’d thrown out most of the things he’d cleared out before his arrival. A little cleaning and it was as good as new. Duncan was fond of his little living quarters, with its small bedroom and kitchen. He also had a sitting room which went largely unused. It was not much, but he’d lived in much worse places.
“In that case,” he said as he scraped the last bit of apples and fragrant cinnamon up off the saucer, “I think I will.” He pulled the pie dish towards himself and dug in with enthusiasm. He smiled at her with his eyes and made little humming noises as he ate, and Kathleen wondered if there was a sight in the world half so wonderful as watching someone eat with gusto and appreciation. She said nothing, just watched him, and her heart melted, just a little.
“Ah, that was good.” He crossed his hands over his stomach and leaned back into his chair. “I am glad to find out that your food is just as delicious as Henri’s is.”
“I can’t believe you ate the whole pie,” Kathleen said, bemused.
“I’m a big man. I need a lot of food to keep me going.”
Duncan stood up and stretched with a yawn, his arms nearly touching the ceiling. His shoulder joints popped and crackled and he winced at a particularly painful spot. His brown fingers massaged the white linen over his shoulder. Kathleen studied him unabashedly, her eyes going to that vee of brown skin exposed by a button left undone at the top of his shirt. Whorls of fine dark hair showed there, and she wondered what the hair would feel like, if it was as silky as the hair on his head or if it was coarser. Her face went red as she remembered how she knew his black hair was warm and silky. When he stepped out from behind the desk, Kathleen’s eyes widened as he came closer and he was sure he could see a shudder attack her small frame, but she held it in check.
“Why are you here, Kathleen?” he asked in a voice made huskier than normal by desire. “Besides the pie. We both knew that was just an excuse to come up here.” He saw her pupils dilate as he came closer and closer, and he felt a savage exultation at the evidence that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He watched the gray cotton of her dress begin to tremble somewhere in the vicin
ity of her knees, and he sank down in the chair beside hers.
He loomed over her like some villain in the penny dreadfuls that her cousins sent her from Boston, Kathleen thought. Only it was not revulsion or dread that she was feeling right now. Surely dread was not this warmth running through her body and turning her bones to warm honey. She could barely keep herself upright; all she wanted to do was fall forward to his chest, and put her hand on his dark flesh. He was a craving that she could not deny, and so she didn’t even try.
Duncan gave a gasp of triumph as her body touched his, and his arms came around her, nearly crushing her in his grip. Kathleen made some small sound of protest and wriggled against his hold, and they loosened immediately. She needed to be free, for she was determined to explore his body.
The hair on his chest was springier than the hair on his head, she discovered, but it was still soft, and it tickled the palm of her hand when she lay it flat against him. Her face absorbed, she undid another button, then another. She had to see the rest of him, had to see if the hair went all the way down his lean body. Her fingers nimble, she undid the whole row of buttons in a trice, impatiently pushing his clothing aside, then staring at him in awe.