“Are you looking for something in particular?”
“No, but under the circumstances, I think it wise that every person in residence becomes familiar with each of the rooms in the house.”
Evie ran her tongue over her teeth. “Are you afraid someone might be hiding in the larder?”
As the larder no longer held space enough to hide so much as a small dog, Mrs. Summers merely raised an eyebrow and peered down the length of her nose. She’d long ago learned that look was effective in silencing saucy children. “The situation does not warrant sarcasm, Evie Cole.”
As Mrs. Summers expected, Evie became instantly contrite. “You’re right. I apologize.”
Mrs. Summers nodded primly and let the matter drop. It seemed only fair since the whole business with the cupboards had been for show. “Well, you seem to have everything quite in hand here. I shall let you return to your work.”
She took another glance at the stove before making her exit. There might not be smoke coming from it now, but that could change in a quarter hour’s time. Perhaps she’d send Christian down for a more informed opinion of the situation. The man was a dreadful cook, but he had managed to avoid burning down the house, and that accomplishment was not to be understated.
Christian didn’t hesitate outside the kitchen. Heartily sick of being anywhere near the kitchen, he meant to get the bothersome business of checking on Evie over and done with. He wouldn’t have agreed to it at all—surely the girl could manage a simple meal without injuring herself—but Mrs. Summers had insisted. And it was an easier thing to agree than to argue with such a formidable woman.
He found Evie occupied with chopping carrots and adding them to a fine pile of sliced potatoes. “Evening, Christian.”
“Evening, lass.” With less sensitivity than Mrs. Summers would have appreciated, he walked straight to the stove. “You’ve a fine flame started.”
“Oh, good.” She spared him a brief glance and smile. “I suppose I’ll need more wood soon, if I’m to c-cook an entire ham.”
“Plenty in the back. I’ll bring it in for you.”
“You needn’t—”
“I’ve nothing else to do at present,” he assured her. He couldn’t have the lass hauling wood, for pity’s sake.
“Oh, well, thank you.” She gave him another smile, and returned to her carrots.
As he moved to leave, Christian’s eyes fell on the ham. He frowned at it a moment, then at Evie’s back, then at the ham again. Women were forever underseasoning meat, he thought, and Evie looked to be no exception. There wasn’t a clove in sight, and Lord knew she’d skimp on the pepper. Bad enough they should cook his eggs without the proper amount of butter, but a man had a right to meat with a bit of flavor to it. With another glance to be certain Evie wasn’t looking, he made a quick trip to the larder for pepper, cloves…and a nice dusting of ground mustard wouldn’t go amiss either.
Twenty
Dear, sweet heaven, what had she done?
Swearing, Evie grabbed a pair of rags and retrieved the ham from the stove. It wasn’t done yet. It couldn’t possibly be. She’d only put it on an hour ago.
Why, then, did it smell so pungent? She set the ham on a platter and went to throw open the back door and all of the windows. The whole of the kitchen reeked quite badly of—she walked to the ham and bent down to sniff—of cloves, for starters.
Had she put too many in? She looked over the small black sticks poking out from the meat and thought it looked to be very near the same amount that one generally saw in a ham.
Was it the pepper she’d added, or the mustard?
Maybe it was just the meat. It had seemed rather grainy when she’d put the cloves in, but she’d assumed that was a normal variant of the ham.
Wary, she cut a small piece from the top, where the meat was thoroughly cooked, and sampled.
And promptly spat it out into a rag.
“Euhhhh.” She scrubbed at her tongue with her fingers, rinsed her mouth out with water, ate a large piece of bread, and otherwise tried everything she could think of to rid herself of the overwhelming bite of…of whatever horrible biting thing was on the ham. It took a considerable amount of doing, but eventually she was able to swallow again without fear of retching.
While her tongue continued to tingle and burn, she stood in the center of the kitchen with her hands on her hips and glowered at the atrocity that was dinner. “Well, damn.”
“Trouble?”
She didn’t bother wincing at the sound of McAlistair’s voice in the doorway, or pointing out that he had once again snuck up on her. Instead, she gestured angrily at the ham. “It’s ruined. I’ve ruined it.”
“The ham?” He moved to stand next to her. “Smells a bit strong, but I’m sure it’s fine.”
She blew out a long, annoyed breath and let her arms fall. “No, it’s not. It’s ghastly. Completely inedible.”
“You’re overreacting.”
There it was again, that infuriatingly gentle, placating tone.
“Do you think so? Really?” Eyes narrowed and determined, she sawed off a piece of meat, stabbed it with a fork, and held it out to him. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
One eyebrow winged up. “Another dare, Evie?”
“If you like.”
“And what if I should meet the challenge?”
“I promise to arrange for you a very tasteful funeral. No man can eat that and live.”
“I want you to admit that I was right, and you were overreacting.”
She shrugged. “Very well.”
“And I want you to inform Mrs. Summers of your suspicions.”
“About the matchmaking scheme, do you mean?” She shrugged again and leaned a hip against the table. “Certainly, but two prizes require two challenges.” She smiled wickedly. “You have to chew a minimum of four times before swallowing.”
The smallest hint of unease clouded his dark eyes. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I am.”
“So am I. What is your boon should I fail?”
She spoke without thinking and asked for the one thing she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind. “A kiss. On my terms.”
His face darkened. “No. Choose something else.”
“Why?” The sting of his quick rejection added a cool edge to her voice. “What difference could it possibly make what I choose? I’m overreacting, remember?”
There was a pause before he spoke. “And so you are.” He took the fork and gave her a hard look. “Are you certain you want to do this? I’ll hold you to the bargain.”
“I do not require threats to keep my word,” she reminded him. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Summers, directly after sending for the undertaker.”
His retort was to pop the ham into his mouth.
The previous day, Evie had been certain, absolutely certain, that nothing could ever surpass the sight of McAlistair drenched in pond water.
Never before had being wrong been quite so satisfying.
The very second the ham hit his tongue his expression went from smug and confident to comically horrified. His jaw hardened. His eyes watered. He made an unpleasant noise in the back of his throat.
He failed to manage even one chew of the meat before he rushed to a basin and spit it out.
Evie watched, delighted, as he searched out fresh water to rinse his mouth.
“It’s a bloody spice rack,” he rasped after the third rinse.
She barely heard him over the sound of her own laughter. “It’s worse,” she managed to sputter. “It’s infinitely worse.”
He straightened and grabbed a strip of cloth to wipe his mouth. “What the devil did you do to it?”
She wiped her own watering eyes. “I’ve no idea. But words cannot express what a gratifying spectacle that was.”
He sent her a scowl, then sent one to the ham.
Evie took pity and poured him a glass of watered beer from a nearby carafe. “This should help.”
She watched as he downed the glass in greedy swallows and waited until he was almost—but not quite—done before adding, “And I should hate to have a second taste of that ham when I kiss you.”
She had no idea what possessed her say it—probably the same inexplicable impulse that had compelled her to dump him into the pond two days ago or the itch that had demanded she chose a kiss for her boon. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t the least bit sorry she had. It was always rewarding to obtain unguarded reactions from the stoic McAlistair.
And his reaction to her statement was most decidedly unguarded. He made some sort of choking noise and though he managed not to spray the liquid at her—which was, in hindsight, a possibility she should have taken into consideration—he did do quite a lot of coughing.
She made sympathetic noises, the sincerity of which were no doubt thrown into question by her expression of glee. “Oh dear, would more beer help?”
He set the glass down with a satisfying amount of force. “No. Thank you.” He gave her one very hard look and then, to her complete astonishment, said, “Let’s have done with this.”
“Did…” She blinked rapidly for a moment while she struggled to add sound to the workings of her mouth. “Did you just say, ‘have done with this’?”
He gave a curt nod.
And she gave serious consideration to feeding him the remainder of the ham. It was very tempting, but aside from the fact that she wasn’t physically capable of force-feeding a grown man, she was still clinging to the small, fragile hope that she had misunderstood him in some way. She must have misunderstood him, because…well, honestly—
Have done with this?
“For the purpose of clarification,” she said carefully, “are you referring to our bargain?”
“Yes.”
So much for misunderstanding. Temper, disbelief, and hurt battled inside her. Alarmed by a sudden press of hot tears at the backs of her eyes, she reached for her temper and latched on. “Need I remind you that you made an identical bargain only days ago?”
“I remember.”
Swamped by her own emotions, she failed to see the way his jaw tightened and his hands curled into fists at his side.
“But why?” she demanded. “If you find the experience so disagreeable—”
“I don’t find it disagreeable.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and fought the urge to pull her hair, or his. “I don’t understand you.”
* * *
McAlistair frowned at the flushed woman before him.
He wasn’t handling this well.
But what did she expect of him? To be overjoyed at the prospect of further torment? For pity’s sake, he couldn’t stand within ten feet of her without imagining what it would be like to drag her to the nearest flat surface—he’d eyed the center table twice already—and ease the ache he’d lived with for eight bloody years.
Couldn’t she see what she did to him? Didn’t she know how much harder it was to resist temptation once he had his hands on her?
He took in her baffled and hurt expression. Apparently, she did not.
“It’s not me,” he said. “It’s men.”
Unsurprisingly, that statement did not clear things up. “I…what?”
“You don’t understand men.”
She spluttered a bit before responding. “I’ve no trouble at all understanding Whit and Alex.”
“They’re family.”
“And a familial connection alters gender?”
“No, it’s different.”
“Not so very different.” She crossed her arms over her chest, a defensive posture that pressed the soft mounds of her breasts up another tantalizing inch. He dragged his eyes to her face and watched as she caught her plump bottom lip with her small, white teeth.
It was too much. The need that had been clawing painfully under his skin like a wild animal tore free.
He took a step toward her and gained a wicked satisfaction at the way her eyes widened and her breath hitched. “They don’t want to kiss you,” he growled.
Her arms fell to her sides. “Well, no, not—”
He took another step and had her retreating.
Oh, he liked that. He liked the unfamiliar power in having the upper hand. For once, for once, she could be the one to back away. “They don’t think about it, every bloody second of the day.”
“I…I should hope not.”
He stalked her mercilessly. “They don’t imagine what it would be like to have you alone, like this. Like the night in the woods. At the inn.”
She stopped backing away and swallowed hard. “Why should you only imagine it?” she whispered unsteadily. “You know I want to kiss you.”
He swallowed a groan and reached up slowly to rub the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. “A man’s imagination extends beyond kissing.”
“You don’t want to kiss me because you’d rather do…something else?”
He nearly laughed. “Something else” was certainly one way of putting it. “Everything” would be his way.
“It’s not an either-or proposition. The first is a step to the rest. Beginning makes it difficult to stop.”
Finally, finally, the light of comprehension dawned. “Oh, do you—”
He didn’t give her the opportunity to ask any more questions. “But since you began it—”
He took that last step to close the space between them and hauled her into his arms. He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t.
He simply couldn’t stop himself.
Evie’s hands flew up to his chest. “It’s to be my way. You agreed—”
He lowered his head slowly. “I lied.”
“But—”
“I’m not a Cole, Evie. I never said my word was good.”
Her mouth dropped open, just in time for him to cover it with his own.
Thoughts of what he should and should not do evaporated the very second their lips touched. In all honesty, those thoughts had begun a rapid disintegration the moment she’d offered the bargain and had disappeared almost entirely when she’d crossed her arms over her chest, but now—Now he could feel the warmth of her, the hard hammer of her heart, the delicate flutter of her hands.
He gave in to the fantasy he’d had since he’d seen her toying with the pen in the library and nipped at her bottom lip. She gasped, trembled, and reached up to twine her arms around his neck. The soft weight of her breasts pushed deliciously against his chest.
He speared his fingers into her hair and with a tug forced her head back farther, deepening the kiss, demanding she give over control.
Later, he would think it a pity he had lost his own.
He didn’t take her mouth in gentle seduction. There were no careful tastes or lingering sighs. Driven by the need he’d kept chained for too long, he simply held her still, and feasted. His lips moved over hers in hungry demand, his tongue sweeping inside the warm haven of her mouth, seeking out the flavor he craved. She was delicious, addictive, intoxicating.
He turned to trap her between the table and his body. The hand at her back slid over and up, molding her waist, her rib cage, and finally reaching her breasts.
He rubbed his thumb across a fabric-covered nipple and swallowed her soft whimper.
He heard his own growl. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
He was dimly aware of hiking her up to sit on the table, of roughly spreading her legs so he could stand between them. He was almost conscious of his fingers seeking out the buttons at the back of her dress.
He’d just found them when the floorboards creaked loudly overhead—a stark reminder of where they were.
He broke away, panting, hurting.
“Bloody hell.” Struggling to regain control, he braced his hands against the table on either side of her. “Bloody, buggering hell.”
He’d almost done it. He’d almost taken her on the kitchen table.
He hooked his hands under her arms to pluck her from the tabl
e and set her on her feet.
“No more dares, Evie,” he snarled, and turned to stride from the room.
With the exception of the hand that reached out to grip the table, Evie didn’t move for several long minutes. She wanted to. She had the almost irresistible urge to chase after McAlistair, but aside from knowing it would do her no good (not while there were others in the house), she also found it impossible to put one foot in front of the other. Her legs, along with her heart, mind, and almost every other part of her, had turned to mush. She rather wondered how she managed to stand at all.
She blew out a long, long breath. So that was what kissing McAlistair—really kissing McAlistair—was like. It wasn’t the soft meeting of lips they’d shared in the past. He hadn’t held her at arm’s length, hadn’t been gentle or careful. She wasn’t entirely certain he’d even been in control.
And wasn’t that just lovely?
Her lips spread into a slow smile. Mr. James McAlistair had lost control. Not completely, she admitted, and apparently not quite so thoroughly as she—he obviously had the full use of his legs—but just enough for her to know that it could happen. And that she wanted it to happen again. And again. There was no reason it shouldn’t, she thought as her smile grew into a grin. After all, he’d said, “no more dares,” not “no more kissing.”
It was only a matter of maneuvering him into an interlude without the use of wagers or challenges. She gave a passing thought to trying her hand at seduction before deciding that, like fainting on cue, it was probably best left to those with a bit of practice. Perhaps on the boat tomorrow, she could—
“Have everything you need, Miss Cole?”
She started at the sound of Mr. Hunter’s voice. Heavens, she’d been so lost in her woolgathering, she hadn’t even heard him enter the room. “I…yes. Yes, I’m fine.”
“Excellent.”
She expected him to leave, content with that reassurance, but he continued to stare at her with an odd look on his face. Suddenly uncomfortable, she lifted a hand to her hair…and found great sections it falling out of her pins.
Oh, dear.
“I…er…” Her lips felt strange as she tried to form an explanation, and she realized they would be red and swollen. Bloody hell, she must look a mess. “I…I was…”
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