“What happened?” Reeve demanded just as the loud popping finally stopped. There was no visible damage to the cookhouse.
“I was only polishing the copper,” Maggie said huffily, folding her arms and looking away from Reeve. “I threw the rags in the stove when I was done, and then all hell broke loose.”
Kala started to laugh. She laughed so hard that she sank to her knees in the tall green grass, clutching her stomach and rocking back and forth. It was perfectly obvious that she wasn’t going to be any help to anybody.
Maggie stomped back into the kitchen building and grabbed up the tin of polishing salts she’d used, holding it out for Reeve’s inspection.
He shook his head. “Can you read, Yank?”
Maggie bridled. “You know very well that I can!”
“Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind reading this,” he said, tapping the front of the colorfully painted tin with a forefinger.
Maggie’s eyes widened as she read the single, ornately written word: Gunpowder.
“Oh,” she said lamely.
Reeve grinned and ruffled her hair with one dirty hand, and it began to fall in lush curls of silvery-gold all around her shoulders. For a moment there was a familiar heat in his eyes, but it faded away with his grin. “Try to stay out of trouble, woman. Just for a few hours.”
Maggie was insulted and hurt. “I’ll make things easier for you, Reeve. You have our bed, and I’ll sleep at the inn!”
“Set a foot off this property,” Reeve warned in response, “and I’ll forget me convictions and take a switch to you! And you needn’t think, love, that I’m joking, because I’m not!”
Maggie had no doubt that he wasn’t, and she sighed. Having nothing more to say, she turned and walked into the main house.
It wasn’t the prospect of a bed that took Reeve McKenna to the inn that night, but the need for a few drinks and a barkeep to listen to his woes. “I married a Yank, you know,” he told the innkeeper.
The man nodded sympathetically. “Aye, mate, I know you did. You’ll be wanting a room tonight?”
Reeve shook his head and lifted his second mug of ale to his lips. He was just about to take a sip when Eleanor appeared at his side. She was standing right there at the bar, bold as brass.
“Hello, Mr. McKenna,” she said.
Reeve could only gape.
“I suppose your next question, should you manage to utter one, will be ’What the devil are you doing here?’”
“Aye,” Reeve managed to say, “that would be the question.”
She lifted her chin and Reeve thought to himself that if it hadn’t been for Maggie, he might have wanted this woman very badly. As it was, he felt only numbness toward her. “I’m here with Mr. Kirk,” Eleanor explained. “We came to fetch the post—one does look forward to getting letters, doesn’t one—and poor Duncan fell quite sick.”
“Sick? Where is he?” Reeve still didn’t like or trust Duncan Kirk, but if the man had fallen ill, he couldn’t just turn his back on him. Kirk was his neighbor, if not his friend.
A flicker of triumph showed in Eleanor’s dark blue eyes, and Reeve wondered at it. “Upstairs,” she said. “We’ve put him to bed—he’s out of his head with fever, you know.”
Reeve glanced at the barkeeper, who was studiously polishing a glass and would not meet his gaze.
Eleanor led the way up the stairs, with Reeve following. She opened a door at the end of the hallway with a brass key and went in. The moment Reeve was inside, too, she closed the door again and leaned back against it.
He was looking at the bed. Fatigue and two stout ales notwithstanding, he knew an empty mattress when he saw one. Reeve turned to look at Eleanor, more in puzzlement than anger.
She spread her hands. “Duncan’s not really sick, Reeve,” she confessed in a very small voice. “He’s downstairs somewhere, playing cards.”
“Then why the hell—?”
Eleanor took the mug from Reeve’s hand and splayed her fingers over the front of his sooty, sweat-dampened shirt. “I want to be your mistress, not his.”
Reeve felt pity, though he tried to hide it. “Step away from the door, woman. I’ve got serious drinking to do.”
“I could make you forget Maggie.”
“Nobody,” Reeve replied soberly, “could do that. And for all that I’d like to wring the Yank’s stubborn little neck a lot of the time, I love her.”
For Reeve that closed the subject, but Eleanor’s midnight-blue eyes pleaded with him. “Don’t go, please,” she whispered.
Reeve removed her hands from his chest and set her gently aside. As he opened the door, she said, “I know your brother.”
He turned, disbelieving and a little angry now. “What?”
Eleanor lifted her chin. “That’s all I’m going to tell you, Reeve McKenna. If you want to know more, you’ll have to come to me on your knees.”
“Don’t balance a stick on your nose while you wait,” Reeve replied, though he wanted to grab the woman and shake some word of Jamie out of her. He closed the door, hurried down the stairs, and rode home. The fresh air cleared his mind.
Whether or not Eleanor really knew anything about Jamie’s whereabouts was a question he would consider later. For now he just wanted to be near Maggie.
She flung a basin at him when he opened the bedroom door, and it shattered against the wood-work.
Reeve chuckled, using the door as a shield of sorts. “Still angry, love?” he called sweetly. “Or are you hinting that you’d like to relive our wedding night?”
Something hard struck the door, and Reeve flinched.
“Now, there’s no sense in being difficult, Yank. I’ve come to tell you that I’m sorry.”
Silence. Was the little scoundrel appeased, or just preparing another volley?
“Maggie?”
Nothing.
“The moment I got to the inn,” Reeve went on, grinning, “Eleanor Kilgore tried to get me into bed.”
There were footsteps and then the door opened. Maggie was standing there, glaring up at him, her bare feet surrounded by shards from the broken basin. “Did she really?”
Reeve nodded somberly and lifted Maggie into his arms. “You’ll cut your feet,” he scolded, laying her gently on the bed and then turning away to pick up the pieces of broken crockery littering the floor. “We’re going to have to do something about your temper, Yank. It’s more than a hardworking man should have to bear up under.”
He could feel her curiosity, her impatience, and her fury. Since Maggie couldn’t see his face, he grinned.
“Never mind my temper. What did that trollop say to you?”
Reeve went right on picking up glass. “Spirited me off to a room, she did, saying that Duncan was sick and all. When we got there, no Duncan. She threw herself at me.”
Maggie made a growling sound. “I’ll strip off a layer of her skin, that vixen!”
Reeve set the pieces of crockery carefully on the bureau top and started toward the door. “I’m going downstairs for a broom. Stay in that bed, Maggie, unless you plan to put some shoes on. There might still be glass on the floor.”
Maggie was kneeling in the middle of the bed, looking winsome and flushed in her pink cotton nightgown. “I want you to take me to the inn so that I can tear that woman’s hair out. Right this minute!”
Reeve shook his head and laughed, and when he came back, minutes later, with the broom, Maggie was lying placidly in bed, staring up at the ceiling. “You made that whole story up, Reeve McKenna, just to get me jealous.”
Reeve shrugged. Maybe it was better for her to believe that. He didn’t want Maggie getting into a rough-and-tumble with Eleanor and hurting herself. “Whatever you say,” he answered.
“I suppose you’re too tired to make love to me,” Maggie ventured as Reeve swept up the tiny bits of glass. He carried them to the hearth in the corner of the room and disposed of them in a dustbin.
“Tonight, Yank, I’d sooner turn you across my
knee than make love to you.”
Her lip jutted out. “Then tell me the legend of the Seven Sisters. You promised to the day we came here, but you never did.”
“I need a bath, Maggie. And Kala’s prepared one for me out in the kitchen.”
She was stubbornly silent.
Reeve sat down on the edge of the bed in his filthy clothes, and sighed. “Once there were seven emu sisters—”
“Emu?”
“Those big birds,” Reeve reminded Maggie patiently. “You probably saw them at the menagerie.”
“Oh,” nodded Maggie, waiting.
“Anyway,” Reeve went dutifully on, “the Dingo-men wanted them for wives. The sisters hid under the outcropping of a giant pile of boulders, but their suitors were clever and they built a fire, planning to drive the sisters out into the open. The emus grew long legs so that they could run very fast, but they couldn’t escape the Dingo-men, who pursued them. Finally, they rose into the sky and made themselves into a constellation of stars still called by the name of Seven Sisters.”
Maggie yawned. “What about the Dingo-men? Did they give up?”
Reeve smiled and kissed her forehead. “And shame their gender? Of course not. They took to the sky, too, and became Orion.”
“My goodness,” said Maggie, closing her eyes.
“I love you,” Reeve told her, his own eyes strangely misted over, his throat thick. There were times when his feelings for this troublesome woman-child nearly overwhelmed him.
“Ummm,” Maggie replied, snuggling down into her feather pillow.
Reeve kissed her cheek and went quietly downstairs and across the yard to the kitchen, where his bath was waiting. He chased Goodness and Mercy away, then stripped off his clothes and climbed into the tub. As he washed, he considered the events of the day and wondered if Eleanor Kilgore had been telling the truth when she’d claimed to know Jamie.
There would be time to find that out later; Reeve wasn’t as obsessed with locating his brother now that his life was so full. He remembered the basin shattering against the bedroom door and grinned. Aye, his life was full.
Chapter 24
THE SCENT OF SUGAR SMOKE FILLED MAGGIE’S NOSTRILS from morning till night during the days and weeks to come, as the cane fields were systematically burned off in preparation for harvest. The soil in Queensland was so fertile that two crops could be brought in if the rainfall had been adequate and the Aboriginals were moved to work. That year luck was on the planters’ side.
While Reeve would have preferred his wife to sit back and embroider as she awaited the birth of their child, Maggie worked long hours in the kitchen every day, helping Kala prepare food for the workers. Goodness and Mercy labored alongside the women, getting in the way more than anything, but Maggie tolerated them easily. Eleanor Kilgore was another matter.
She arrived early one morning when the cane was still being burned off, with Duncan and the workers he’d been able to garner. Marching into the kitchen just as if she belonged there, Eleanor took up an apron and tied it around her slender waist.
Maggie, who was peeling potatoes and already suffering from the heat, though it was only half past five, stopped her work to ask pointedly, “What are you doing here?”
Eleanor—true to her word, she had become Duncan’s housekeeper immediately after leaving Seven Sisters—smiled and replied, “I’m part of the agreement between Mr. Kirk and Mr. McKenna. They’re sharing their workers until both their crops have been harvested, and I’m a worker.”
“We don’t need you,” Maggie said in somewhat haughty tones. She was already growing thick around the middle, and Reeve usually collapsed into bed at night, too exhausted to make love to her. Constant exposure to Eleanor, who was, of course, still as shapely as ever, was the last thing she wanted for him.
“Maybe you don’t,” Eleanor replied blithely, and then she began scraping carrots and there was nothing Maggie could do short of throwing the woman out bodily.
Maggie turned back to the mountain of potatoes before her, seething. She’d known that Reeve and Duncan had made some sort of gentleman’s agreement, but she’d never dreamed that it included Eleanor.
At noon Reeve appeared unexpectedly in the sweltering kitchen, something he had never done in all the time Maggie had been at Seven Sisters, and he was furious to find his wife there. Blackened from head to toe by the sugary-scented soot of burning cane, he caught Maggie by the elbow and dragged her out into the dooryard. Eleanor’s indulgent little smile added to her umbrage.
“Let me go!” she hissed, wrenching free of Reeve’s grasp. Somewhere nearby Goodness and Mercy giggled.
“Do I have to send you back to Sydney?” Reeve demanded in a rasp caused by the constant inhalation of smoke. “Is that what I have to do, woman, to keep you out of trouble?”
“I’m not in trouble!” Maggie cried. If Reeve sent her away, or even confined her to the house, she was going to die of boredom and frustration. “I’m only helping with the work!”
“Damn it, you’re carrying my child and I won’t have you lose it because of your stupid Yankee pride!”
“Reeve—”
“If I catch you out here again, Maggie, I’ll take you to Sydney myself, I swear it.”
Maggie’s eyes filled with tears. Surmounting this man’s towering will would be an impossible task, but she had to try. “Reeve, I feel just fine, I really do—”
Ominously silent, he raised one smoke-blackened arm and pointed toward the house just as he might have had he been dealing with Elisabeth. Maggie was furious.
Rooted to the spot, she crossed her arms over her chest and jutted out her chin. “I’m tired of being ordered around, Reeve McKenna. I’m a grown woman and if I want to peel potatoes, I’ll peel potatoes!”
He took a step toward her, glowering, and Maggie’s courage flagged slightly. She retreated a step, but insisted, “I won’t go in there and sit bandying a needle about while everyone else is doing real work!”
In one lightning-swift movement Reeve swept her up into his arms, then began striding toward the house. “Thank your lucky stars you’re pregnant, Yank,” he raged under his breath, “because if you weren’t, I’d paddle you within an inch of your life!”
Reaching the parlor at the front of the house, he set a kicking and wriggling Maggie in a chair and held her there, one hand on her shoulder. Her good dress was stained with soot from his trousers and shirt.
“Brute!” she spat out, helpless against his strength and his formidable resolve.
“Defy me again and you’ll find out the extent of it!” he retorted, glaring down at her.
“I’ll defy you, all right!” Maggie hissed. “The moment you’re out of sight I’ll do what I want to do!”
Reeve gave a long, ragged sigh. “There’s only one way to manage you, isn’t there, Yank?” he reflected with a shake of his sooty head, and then he pulled her out of the chair and once again hoisted her into his arms.
“What are you doing?” Maggie demanded. This time she didn’t struggle; she knew it was a waste of energy.
“Guess,” Reeve replied, and he carried her, bold as brass, up the front stairway and into their bedroom. There, he tossed her onto the bed and began unbuttoning his shirt.
Maggie was wide-eyed with an untenable combination of fury, surprise, and plain, ordinary desire. “Don’t you dare try to make love to me,” she ordered without real conviction.
Reeve’s flesh, she soon saw, was as sweaty and dirty as his shirt. Apparently unconcerned with such things as personal cleanliness, he unbuckled his belt and opened his trousers.
Sitting up now, Maggie squeezed her eyes shut. “Leave this room right now, Reeve,” she said magnanimously, “and I won’t take you to account for this.”
Reeve chuckled. “That, Yank, is a profound relief.” She heard the belt buckle jingle and then the clunk of boots being kicked aside. “However, I think I’ll risk your terrible revenge. Just this once.”
Maggie
opened her eyes and swallowed at the sight of him. He was magnificent, and even her anger at being put in her place in this age-old way wasn’t enough to nullify her wanting of him. “D-do you honestly think, for one minute, that this is g-going to make me pay any m-mind at all to your arbitrary—rules?”
Kneeling on the bed beside her, Reeve tossed up Maggie’s skirts with an arrogance that would have made her scratch his eyes out if she hadn’t needed him so badly. It had, after all, been more than a week since he’d touched her, except to kiss her good night. “Yes,” he answered flatly.
Maggie batted her skirts away from her face, sputtering, as he deftly undid the ties of her drawers. “I’m warning you, Mr. McKenna—”
The drawers slid down and Maggie shivered involuntarily as she felt Reeve’s hands on her bare thighs.
“Open your dress, Maggie,” he said, beginning to caress her in the most intimate way possible. “I want to see your breasts.”
Maggie swallowed a moan as her hips began to writhe in response to his touch, and her hands went obediently to the buttons of her dress, even though she willed them not to. She bared herself, except for her thin camisole, and clutched at the bedclothes with frantic hands as Reeve laid his tongue to the shadow of one nipple, then gently scraped it with his teeth. The fabric of her camisole clung moistly to the tender peak as it hardened and strained toward Reeve’s mouth.
And still he fondled her.
Completely lost, Maggie whimpered his name and arched her back so that he had ready access to her muslin-covered breasts. He undid the tiny ribbon ties and she sighed as the camisole was thrust aside by the swell of her bosom.
Greedily, Reeve took one pulsing peak into the warm moistness of his mouth to cosset it there, and with a cry Maggie flung her arms up over her head and grasped at the headboard of the bed in order to anchor herself. When she would have lowered them again to tangle her fingers in Reeve’s hair, he held them in place, her wrists imprisoned in one of his hands.
He spoke against her nipple, his every breath making it tighten into a keener sensitivity. “I’ll leave you too exhausted to rebel again, little Yank,” he promised in a husky whisper.
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