Maggie had reached the limit of her endurance. She hurled her hairbrush at Reeve and it went wide of him, crashing against the woodwork that framed the door. “I despise you,” she said.
“I’ve asked for a priest,” he answered, unmoved.
“Good! He can perform your last rites!”
Reeve laughed. “Oh, Yank, you are full of fire. I’m looking forward to the warmth in my bed.”
Maggie picked up the pitcher from her bureau top and hurled it with a mighty effort. Unfortunately, she missed again, and the crockery shattered on the floor at Reeve’s feet.
“You must have been smashing as the shrew,” Reeve said, leaning one shoulder against the door-jamb. “I suppose the part came quite naturally to you.”
Maggie reached for the basin and held it high above her head, ready to throw. “Get out!” she screamed.
Grinning, Reeve scuffled through the shards of glass on the floor, his cane making that familiar thump-thump sound. With one hand he pulled the basin from Maggie’s grasp and purposefully dropped it. “I can afford a few bits of crockery, love,” he said, catching his hand under her chin and lifting her face for his kiss. “And,” he added when he’d stolen Maggie’s breath from her lungs and set her heart to hammering, “I can tame you.”
“You’ll spend the rest of your life trying!” Maggie sputtered.
“Open your nightgown, Maggie. I want you.” Maggie trembled, so great was the need to do as he said, even though it would mean utter defeat for her pride. “No.”
Reeve let the cane clatter to the floor, and his fingers were remarkably deft as he unfastened the tiny buttons. Maggie’s camisole was underneath, and he chuckled at this flimsy barrier.
Maggie drew in her breath and closed her eyes, the battle lost before it had even begun. She felt the camisole being lowered, and then the touch of Reeve’s tongue on the peak of her breast. He sucked freely for a while, and then, as easily as he had before his illness, he lifted Maggie up into his arms and carried her to the bed.
She landed hard on the mattress, knocking the wind from her. It was several moments before she managed to say, “You charlatan! You didn’t need that cane at all—”
Reeve grinned, kneeling beside her on the edge of the bed and rolling her nightgown up until nothing of her was left to his imagination. “I think it makes me look distinguished,” he said, caressing her.
Maggie was writhing now, helpless with passion. “And it—occurs to me—that you’re speaking—very easily—for a man—who was silent for so—long.”
Reeve chuckled. “You’ve caught me out, Yank,” he answered smoothly. “I’ve been practicing.”
“Oh!” Maggie gasped, and from that moment on, she was the one who could not speak coherently.
Father Shaunassey wore a priest’s cassock and a crucifix; otherwise, Maggie would have asked to see his credentials. As it was, she simply stood beside Reeve in the hotel dining room, her face still flushed from the prenuptial episode upstairs, while the holy words were recited.
Cora served as a witness, Eleanor as a grudging wedding guest, and Elisabeth as a delighted one.
The priest pronounced Maggie and Reeve to be man and wife, and Reeve availed himself of the groom’s prerogative: a kiss.
Lips still moist from that, Maggie shook her dazed head in an effort to clear it and marched over to Eleanor.
“We won’t be requiring your services after today,” she said bluntly. “Your passage home to Sydney will be paid and, of course, you’ll be given any wages due you.”
“But I’ve another month!” Eleanor sputtered. Maggie smiled broadly. “Then you shall have leisure time. How wonderful for you!”
Eleanor turned in a sweep of skirts and outrage and left the room, nearly colliding with Duncan in the doorway.
“My heartiest congratulations,” he said, kissing Maggie on the cheek before she could fully take in the fact that he’d had the gall to show up.
“I knew you’d be happy for us,” Reeve said dryly, standing behind Maggie and slipping his arms around her waist. She felt his hard length and sighed, resigned to the wonders of the night to come.
“You’ll be traveling to the property tomorrow, I presume?” Duncan asked.
Reeve’s breath was warm on the nape of Maggie’s neck. It set her tingling. “Maybe,” he answered gruffly.
Even though Duncan’s face was gray with suppressed rage, he smiled. “You’ll want to look out for the bushrangers, of course. Lots of lonely stretches along that road.”
Maggie gulped. “Bushrangers?” she echoed.
“At home we call them outlaws,” Duncan was helpful enough to point out. His eyes, fiery in his pale face, slipped to Reeve. “I hope you’re strong enough to protect your womenfolk, McKenna.”
“I expect I’ll manage.”
Duncan shrugged, though the expression on his face was anything but nonchalant. “I have quite a company of men with me. If you’d like, we can escort you as far as your place.”
“Thanks,” Reeve answered tightly, “but no thanks.”
Duncan turned and walked away and Maggie remembered the maps the Kirk boys had drawn when she was still their governess. The place they’d marked as being their father’s land couldn’t be far from Reeve’s.
“He lives near you?” Maggie asked, inexplicably frightened.
“On the plantation next to mine,” Reeve replied. And then, as unconcerned as a child, he began cutting the small cake provided by the hotel’s kitchen staff.
He gave a piece to Maggie and then to Elisabeth, setting his own aside. Though it couldn’t have been later than four o’clock in the afternoon, he gave an exaggerated yawn.
Maggie turned bright pink. “Don’t you dare suggest it!” she warned him.
Reeve touched an index finger to her upper lip, coming away with a speck of icing, which he touched to his tongue. The subtle sensuality of the motion made Maggie lower her eyes, suddenly as shy as if she’d never been touched by this man. To her utter mortification, she yawned.
Reeve laughed and kissed her on the forehead, then turned and lifted Elisabeth up into his arms. She pointed to Maggie and chirped triumphantly, “My mama!”
Forgetting her serious doubts about Reeve’s love in particular and their marriage in general, she kissed the little girl soundly on the cheek. Maggie knew she would always cherish that moment.
After making slow, sweet love, Reeve and Maggie lay still on their marriage bed, their bodies damp with exertion. Reeve’s hand caressed Maggie’s slightly rounded abdomen.
“When will this child of mine be born, Yank?” he asked quietly.
Maggie was full of happiness and faith in the future. “November.”
“Summer.” Reeve seemed to dream the word rather than say it.
Maggie smiled. “I can’t get used to November being summer. Australia is such a strange place.”
“Aye,” Reeve agreed. Then the dreamy expression left his face and he frowned. “Maggie—”
Maggie braced herself for more questions about Jamie.
“I think you should let Eleanor stay on awhile. Half the time there aren’t any servants at the property—”
“Eleanor?” Maggie interrupted pointedly. “Just when did ’Miss Kilgore’ become Eleanor?”
Reeve chuckled. “The first time she bathed me,” he teased.
Maggie stiffened. “I’d rather slave from dawn till dusk than have that woman under my roof for another day!” she spouted.
Reeve traced the pouting lines of her lower lip with a fingertip. “And I’d rather you carried our child to full term, Yank, instead of working yourself into an early birth.”
“Eleanor would never condescend to be a servant,” Maggie bristled. “She’s a nurse.”
“All the same, I’m going to ask her.”
Maggie could imagine her own humiliation if that should happen. “Reeve, you can’t. I gave her the sack, showed her the road—”
“All right. We’ll see
if we can’t find someone in Brisbane.”
“Thank you.” Maggie sighed.
“Of course, I’ll have to go and take care of the matter tonight, since the coach leaves first thing tomorrow morning.”
Maggie didn’t want to give up her groom even for a few hours, but she found the prospect far more palatable than that of having Eleanor Kilgore traipsing along with them when they left. She made a face.
Reeve chuckled. “Naturally, I’ll make sure you’ve been thoroughly loved before I go.” He bent to give the peak of Maggie’s right breast a gentle lashing with his tongue, and she groaned. His hand strayed down ward to caress her most vulnerable part. “How shall I love you, Maggie?”
Trembling, her hands entwined at the nape of his neck, Maggie told him. Soon Reeve was inside her, entering with one smooth, powerful thrust, and they were moving together in the first throes of rapture.
Maggie’s hands moved from Reeve’s neck to the broad, muscular expanse of his back, her nails digging into his flesh as her passion grew to intolerable levels. “Oh—Reeve—please,” she begged. “Please!”
He withdrew until he was barely inside her, silently taunting her for long moments. Then, in a long stroke, he moved inside her again.
Maggie grasped at his buttocks, frantic, but he pulled back once more, lingering there, at the very brink of leaving her. “Why?” she whispered wildly. “W-why are you d-doing this?”
He favored her with a long, sweet stroke of friction. “It’s all—part of your taming—little shrew.”
Maggie’s head was thrust back, her eyes closed. She felt the roughness of Reeve’s chest chafing her sensitive nipples as he sheathed and unsheathed himself in her aching warmth. She raised her fingers to touch his flat male breasts and began caressing them, and the teasing stopped.
With a rumbling groan Reeve slid his hands under her bottom and lifted so that he could possess her fully. Again and again he plunged inside her, and Maggie made a whimpering sound in her throat as each stroke set another, hotter blaze inside her.
Finally, she erupted with a lusty gasp, flinging her hips up to meet his as her back arched. A cascade of sensation pounded within her, and then Reeve cried out as he, too, reached the limits of his self-control. Shuddering, he sank to Maggie’s soft and pliant body.
She wound a finger in the hair at the nape of his neck. “Who’s taming whom?” she teased.
Reeve made a growling sound and slipped downward to kneel between Maggie’s legs. Grasping her by the ankles, he forced her to bend her knees, then kissed the tender flesh on the inside of one thigh. “We’ll see,” he said.
“I’d like to withdraw my challenge,” Maggie straggled to say.
“Too late,” Reeve replied, and he didn’t sound at all regretful.
Chapter 21
THE OVERLAND COACH WAS DRAWN BY A TEAM OF EIGHT bay horses. Maggie watched, holding Elisabeth’s hand, as trunks and valises were loaded atop the vehicle and strapped into place. Eleanor was in evidence, but there was no sign of the woman Reeve had promised to hire as housekeeper.
When he would have handed Maggie inside the coach, she hung back until Cora and Eleanor had both been seated. Reeve lifted Elisabeth through the open door, and then turned to his bride, a somewhat sheepish look on his face.
Maggie glared at him.
“She said she doesn’t mind being the housekeeper,” he whispered, irritated. “Great scot, Maggie—it’s only for a month!”
“You promised!”
“I had no chance to find anyone else, now, did I?” Maggie folded her arms stubbornly. “I’m your wife. I’ll look after your house!”
“You’re my wife, all right. And you’ll get your backside into that coach before I blister it, with all Brisbane looking on!”
She got into the coach, disdaining her husband’s offer of help, and met Eleanor’s gaze evenly. Eleanor smiled and inclined her head—Tansy would have called her expression “cheeky”—and if Cora and Elisabeth hadn’t been present, Maggie would have reached out and slapped the woman right across the face.
Reeve, no more a fool than Maggie, rode up top with the driver.
The weather, so mild the day before, was rapidly turning nasty. An eerie wind howled in the trees and great gray clouds fretted and rumbled in the sky. Remembering her first experience with an Australian rainstorm during the camp meeting at Parramatta, Maggie felt warm color rise in her cheeks.
After a time her throat began to feel a bit raw and her head ached, but she would have died before complaining.
The coach hadn’t traveled far when the angry clouds burst and a driving torrent began, striking the ground so hard that it sounded as if a great fire were burning all around them. A cool mist filled the coach.
“I hope we don’t get bogged down in the mud,” fretted Cora, fiddling with her gloves and then straightening her hat. She glanced down at Elisabeth, who had fallen asleep in her lap, her head resting against Cora’s sizable bosom. “We’d be sitting ducks if any bushrangers happened along.”
Eleanor smiled indulgently. “The driver carries a rifle,” she said.
“Piffle,” said Cora. “What good would that be against a dozen or more men?”
“I’m sure we’re quite safe,” Maggie put in.
Of course, it was exactly then that the coach lurched violently to one side and, with a sickening sliding motion, settled into a deep rut. Even Eleanor blushed at the words the driver bellowed at his team, trying to spur them onward.
The coach didn’t move, except to settle deeper into the mud.
Men in broad-brimmed hats and long canvas raincoats appeared on every side then, mounted on horseback and carrying guns. Maggie held out her arms to a confused, just-awakened Elisabeth, and the child scrambled from Cora’s lap to hers.
Cora’s chin was quivering, though she was obviously trying to maintain a brave front for Elisabeth’s sake. “Bushrangers,” she whispered.
“Nonsense,” said Eleanor with a cool smile. “It’s only Mr. Kirk and his party, stopping to offer assistance.”
Maggie wondered how Eleanor had come to know Duncan so well that she could pick him out of a dozen men in raingear in the middle of a rousing storm. Given the animosity between Duncan and Reeve, she’d almost rather the horsemen had been bushrangers.
The door of the coach opened and Reeve was there. Maggie was very glad to see him, in spite of the fact that he’d brought Eleanor Kilgore along as housekeeper after she had expressly asked him not to. He was wearing a canvas raincoat, Maggie was relieved to note, though his hat was sodden and dripping.
“There’s an inn just up the road!” he shouted over the thunderous rain. “Duncan’s men will take you there on horseback, and we’ll catch up once we’ve got the coach out of the mud!”
Maggie’s mouth dropped open. He meant to send the women into the bush with strange men, in this weather? “I’ll stay here, thank you very much!” she shouted back. “And so will Elisabeth!”
Reeve answered with a scowl and reached for the child, who went to him before Maggie had a chance to restrain her. “I’ll deal with you later, Mrs. McKenna, when I don’t ’ave water runnin’ down me back!”
So the brogue was back, was it? Not quite daring to challenge Reeve when he was annoyed enough to slip back into the Irish, Maggie allowed herself to be lifted out of the coach and hauled onto the heaving, rain-slickened back of a horse. She felt the rider’s canvas coat open to enfold her and ducked her head as close to the man’s chest as she could, the rain having lashed the very breath from her lungs.
She could feel Duncan’s heart beating against her cheek. Because he was warm and relatively dry, Maggie wrapped both arms around him and held on as the horse began picking its way through the deep mud.
It seemed a hundred miles to the inn, but finally they arrived. Maggie was set on her feet, and she dashed toward the shelter of the roof overhanging the porch, close behind Elisabeth, who had been carried by another rider. Eleanor and Cora f
ollowed.
Pausing in the doorway, Maggie looked at Duncan, sending a grudging thank-you with her eyes. He grinned and touched the battered-down brim of his hat, and then turned and rode away, his men following.
The innkeeper’s wife was bustling about, building up the fire and shouting to her husband to brew fresh tea. Cora, wet to the skin herself, was kneeling on the hearth, hastily peeling away Elisabeth’s drenched clothes and wrapping her in a blanket brought by a little girl wearing a mobcap and an apron.
Maggie wasn’t about to undress in the middle of a public tavern, but Cora and Eleanor showed no such qualms. Soon they were shivering before the fire, stripped to their underthings and wrapped in blankets, just like Elisabeth. They were sipping tea while Maggie huddled close to the fire, hugging herself, her skirts dripping water on the polished wooden floor.
“Not that I care,” Eleanor said in an tone that carried to Maggie’s ears alone, “but if you don’t get out of those clothes, you’ll die of pneumonia.”
Maggie was damned if she’d die of pneumonia or anything else and leave Eleanor a clear path to Reeve’s affections. She snatched up a blanket of her own and stormed over to the innkeeper’s wife, who directed her into the kitchen. It was too busy a place for Maggie’s liking, so she found a pantry and slipped inside to take off her clothes and wrap herself in the blanket. Soon, standing as far as she could from Eleanor without leaving the warmth of the fire, she was sipping tea with the others.
“Mrs. McKenna is expecting a child,” Eleanor told the mistress of the small inn forthrightly. “Is there a place where she could lie down?”
“I don’t want to lie down,” Maggie protested, but the fact of the matter was that she felt a bit dizzy, on top of having a sore throat and a pounding headache. A sneeze loud enough to shake the rafters escaped her.
“There, you see,” clucked Eleanor, grasping Maggie officiously by the arm. “She’s already falling ill.”
“Two and six for the room,” said the innkeeper’s wife, leading the way upstairs to a little chamber under the slant of the roof. Maggie was dragged along after her by Eleanor, who was stronger than she might have suspected.
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