by Nora Roberts
Despite her criticism, and her tendency to jump whenever he got too close, he was having the best day of his life. Perhaps he didn’t want to make a habit out of peeling apples, but it was a simple way to be near her, to absorb that soft lavender scent that seemed to cling to her skin. It melded seductively with the aromas of cinnamon, ginger and cloves.
And in truth, though he was more at home in political meetings or with a sword in his hand than in the kitchen, he had wanted to ease what he saw as an unfair burden of responsibility.
She didn’t appear to deem it so, he mused. Indeed, she seemed content to toil away, hour by hour. He wanted—needed, he admitted—to show her there was more. He imagined riding with her through the fields of his aunt’s plantation. In the summer, he thought, when the rich green might remind her of an Ireland she’d never seen. He wanted to take her to Scotland, to the glory of the Highlands. To lie with her in the purple heather by a loch and listen to the wind in the pine.
He wanted to give her a silk dress, and jewels to match her eyes. They were sentimental, romantic notions, he knew. Surely he would have choked on the words if he had tried to express them.
But he wanted to give, that much he knew. If he could find a way to make her take.
Alanna felt his stare on her back as though it were tickling fingers. She’d have preferred the fingers, she thought. Those she could have batted away. Struggling to ignore him, she covered the first pie, fluted and trimmed the crust and set it aside.
“You’ll slice a finger off if you keep staring at me instead of watching what you’re about.”
“Your hair’s falling out of your cap again, Mrs. Flynn.”
She took a hand and shoved at it, only succeeding in loosening more curls. “And I don’t think I care for the tone you use when you call me Mrs. Flynn.”
Merely grinning, Ian set aside a pared apple. “What should I call you then? You object to sweetheart, though it suits so nicely. Your nose goes in the air when I call you Alanna—without your permission. Now you’re ready to spout into temper when I, very respectfully, call you Mrs. Flynn.”
“Respectfully, hah! You’ll go to hell for lying, Ian MacGregor.” She waved the rolling pin at him as she turned. “There’s not a dab of respect in your tone when you use it—not with that smug smile on your mouth and that gleam in your eye. If you don’t think I know just what that gleam means, you’re mistaken. Other men have tried it and gotten a good coshing for their pains.”
“It gratifies me to hear it … Mrs. Flynn.”
She made a sound he could only describe as hot steam puffing out of a kettle. “You’ll call me nothing at all. Why I took Brian’s part and asked you to stay for Christmas will always be a mystery to me. The good Lord knows I don’t want you here, cluttering up my kitchen, giving me another mouth to cook for, grabbing me and forcing your unwelcome attentions on me at every turn.”
He leaned against the counter. “You’ll go to hell for lying, sweetheart.”
It was the reflex of the moment that had the rolling pin flying out of her hand and toward his head. She regretted it immediately. But she regretted it even more when he snagged the flying round of wood the instant before it cracked into his forehead.
If she had hit him, she would have apologized profusely and tended his bruise. The fact that she’d been foiled changed the matter altogether.
“You cursed Scotsman,” she began, lathering up. “You spawn of the devil. A plague on you and every MacGregor from now till the Last Reckoning.” Since she’d missed with the rolling pin, she grabbed the closest thing at hand. Fortunately, the heavy metal pie plate was empty. Ian managed to bat it away from his head with the rolling pin.
“Alanna—”
“Don’t call me that.” She hefted a pewter mug and tried her aim with that. This time Ian wasn’t so quick and it bounced off his chest.
“Sweetheart—”
The sound she made at that would have caused even a battle-tried Scotsman to shudder. The plate she hurtled struck Ian’s shin. He was hopping on one leg and laughing when she reached for the next weapon.
“Enough!” Roaring with laughter, he grabbed her and swung her around twice, even when she bashed him over the head with the plate.
“Damned hardheaded Scot.”
“Aye, and thank God for it or you’ll have me in my grave yet.” He tossed her up and caught her nimbly at the waist. “Marry me, Mrs. Flynn, for your name was meant to be MacGregor.”
Chapter 6
It was a close thing as to whom was the most shocked. Ian hadn’t realized he’d meant to ask her. He’d known he was in love, was both amused and dazzled by it. But until that moment his heart hadn’t communicated to his brain that marriage was desired. Marriage to Alanna, he thought, and let loose another laugh. It was a fine joke, he decided, on the pair of them.
His words were still echoing in Alanna’s head, bouncing from one end of her brain to the other like balls in a wheel. Marry me. Surely she hadn’t mistaken what he’d asked her. It was impossible, of course. It was madness. They had known each other only days. Even that was long enough for her to be certain Ian MacGregor would never be the life companion of her dreams. With him, there would never be peaceful nights by the fire but another fight, another cause, another movement.
And yet … Yet she loved him in a way she had never thought to love. Wildly, recklessly, dangerously. Life with him would be … would be … She couldn’t imagine it. She put a hand to her head to still her whirling brain. She needed a moment to think and compose herself. After all, when a man asked a woman to marry him, the very least she could do was …
Then it occurred to her that he was still holding her a foot off the floor and laughing like a loon.
Laughing. Her eyes narrowed to sharp blue slits. So it was a great joke he was having at her expense, tossing her in the air like a sack of potatoes and chortling. Marry him. Marry him indeed. The jackass.
She braced a hand on his broad shoulder for balance, rolled the other into a fist and struck him full on the nose.
He yelped and set her down so abruptly she had to shift to keep upright. But she recovered quickly and, feet planted, stuck her hands on her hips and glared at him.
Tentatively, he touched his fingers to his nose. Aye, it was bleeding, he noted. The woman had a wicked right. Watching her warily for any sudden moves, he reached for his handkerchief.
“Is that a yes?”
“Out!” So deep was her rage her voice shook even as it boomed. “Out of my house, you pox-ridden son of Satan.” The tears that sprang to her eyes were tears of righteous fury, she assured herself. “If I were a man I’d murder you where you stand and dance a jig on your bleeding body.”
“Ah.” After an understanding nod, he replaced his handkerchief. “You need a bit of time to think it over. Perfectly understandable.”
Speechless, she could only make incoherent growls and hisses.
“I’ll speak with your father,” he offered politely. She shrieked like a banshee and grabbed for the paring knife.
“I will kill you. On my mother’s grave, I swear it.”
“My dear Mrs. Flynn,” he began as he cautiously clamped a hand on her wrist. “I realize a woman is sometimes overcome with the proposal of marriage, but this …” He trailed off when he saw that tears had welled from her eyes and run down her cheeks. “What is this?” Uncomfortable, he brushed a thumb over her damp cheek. “Alanna, my love, don’t. I’d rather have you stab me than cry.” But when he gallantly released her hand, she tossed the knife aside.
“Oh, leave me be, won’t you? Go away. How dare you insult me this way? I curse the day I saved your miserable life.”
He took heart that she was cursing him again and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Insult you? How?”
“How?” Behind the veil of tears her eyes burned like blue suns. “Laughing at me. Speaking of marriage as if it were a great joke. I suppose you think because I don’t have fine clothes or fancy hats
that I have no feelings.”
“What do hats have to do with it?”
“I suppose all the elegant ladies in Boston just smile indulgently and rap your hand with their fans when you play the flirt, but I take talk of marriage more seriously and won’t stand by while you speak of it and laugh in my face at the same time.”
“Oh, sweet God.” Who would have thought that he, a man reputed to be smooth and clever with the ladies, could muck things up so badly when it mattered? “I was a fool, Alanna. Please listen.”
“Was and are a fool. Now take your paws off me.”
He gathered her closer. “I only want to explain.”
Before he could, Cyrus Murphy pushed open the door. He took one look at the wreckage of the kitchen, at his daughter struggling against Ian, and reached calmly for the hunting knife in his belt.
“Let go of my girl, MacGregor, and prepare to die.”
“Da.” Eyes widened at the sight of her father, pale as ice with a knife in his hands, Alanna threw herself in front of Ian. “Don’t.”
“Move aside, lass. Murphys protect their own.”
“It isn’t the way it looks,” she began.
“Leave us, Alanna,” Ian said quietly. “I’ll have a word with your father.”
“The hell you will.” She planted her feet. Perhaps she would have shed his blood herself—and had, if one counted his nose—but she wouldn’t have her father kill him after she’d worked for two days and nights to keep him alive. “We had an argument, Da. I can handle it myself. He was—”
“He was proposing marriage to your daughter,” Ian finished, only to have Alanna round on him again.
“You lying polecat. You didn’t mean a word of it. Laughing like a loon while you said it, you were. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be belittled—”
“But you will be quiet,” he roared at her, and had Cyrus raising a brow in approval when she did indeed subside. “I meant every word,” he continued, his voice still pitched to raise the roof. “If I was laughing it was at myself, for being so big a fool as to fall in love with a stubborn, sharp-tongued shrew who’d as soon stab me as smile at me.”
“Shrew?” Her voice ended on a squeak. “Shrew?”
“Aye, a shrew,” Ian said with a vicious nod. “That’s what I said, and that’s what you are. And a—”
“Enough.” Cyrus shook the snow from his hair. “Sweet Jesus, what a pair.” With some reluctance, he replaced his knife. “Get on your coat, MacGregor, and come with me. Alanna, finish your baking.”
“But, Da, I—”
“Do as I say, lass.” He gestured Ian out the door. “With all the shouting and the wailing it’s hard for a body to remember it’s Christmas Eve.” He stopped just outside and planted his hands on his hips in a gesture his daughter had inherited. “I’ve a job to do, MacGregor. You’ll come with me and explain yourself.”
“Aye.” He cast a last furious look at the window where Alanna had her nose pressed. “I’ll come with you.”
Ian trudged across the snow and through the billowy curtain that was still falling. He hadn’t bothered to fasten his coat and stuck his ungloved hands in its pockets.
“Wait here,” Cyrus said. He went inside a small shed and came out with an ax. Noting Ian’s cautious stare, he hefted it onto his shoulder. “I won’t be using it on you. Yet.” He moved off toward the forest with Ian beside him. “Alanna’s partial to Christmas. As was her mother.” There was a pang, as there always was when he thought of his wife. “She’ll be wanting a tree—and time for her temper to cool.”
“Does it ever?”
As a matter of habit, Cyrus studied the forest floor for signs of game. They’d want fresh venison soon. “You’re the one who’s thinking of shackling his leg to hers. Why is that?”
“If I could think of one good reason, I’d give it to you.” He hissed his breath out between his teeth. “I ask the woman to marry me, and she hits me in the nose.” He touched the still sore appendage, then grinned. “By God, Murphy, I’m half-mad and in love with the woman—which amounts to the same thing. I’ll have her to wife.”
Cyrus stopped in front of a pine, studied it, rejected it, then moved on. “That remains to be seen.”
“I’m not a poor man,” Ian began. “The bloody British didn’t get everything in the Forty-five, and I’ve done well enough with investments. I’ll provide well for her.”
“Mayhap you will, mayhap you won’t. She took Michael Flynn and he had no more than a few acres of rocky land and two cows.”
“She won’t have to work from dawn to dust.”
“Alanna doesn’t mind work. She takes pride in it.” Cyrus stopped in front of another tree, nodded, then handed me ax to Ian. “This’ll do. When a man’s frustrated, there’s nothing like swinging an ax to sweat it out of him.”
Ian spread his legs, planted his feet and put his back into it. Wood chips flew. “She cares for me. I know it.”
“Might,” Cyrus agreed, then decided to treat himself to a pipe. “’Tis her habit to shout and slap at those she cares for most.”
“Then she must love me to distraction.” The ax bit into the meat of the pine’s trunk. Ian’s expression was grim. “I’ll have her, Murphy, with or without your blessing.”
“That goes without saying.” Cyrus patiently filled his pipe. “She’s a woman grown and can make up her own mind. Tell me, MacGregor, will you fight the British with as much passion as you’ll woo my daughter?”
Ian swung the ax again. The blade whistled through the air. The sound of metal on wood thudded through the forest. “Aye.”
“Then I’ll tell you now, it may be hard for you to win both.” Satisfied the pipe was well packed, he struck a match against a boulder. “Alanna refuses to believe there will be war.”
Ian paused. “And you?”
“I’ve no love for the British or their king.” Cyrus puffed on his pipe and sent smoke drifting through the snow. “And even if I did, my vision’s sharp enough yet to see what will come. It may take a year, or two, or more, but the fight will come. And it will be long, and it will be bloody. When it comes I’ll have two more sons to risk. Two more sons to lose.” He sighed, long and heavy. “I don’t want your war, Ian MacGregor, but there will come a point when a man will have to stand for what is his.”
“It’s already begun, Murphy, and neither wanting it nor fearing it will change history.”
Cyrus studied Ian as the tree fell to the cushioning snow. A strong man, he thought, one of those damned Scot giants, with a face and form a woman would find pleasing enough. A good mind and a good name. But it was Ian’s restless and rebellious spirit that concerned him.
“I’ll ask you this, will you be content to sit and wait for what comes to come, or will you go out in search of it?”
“MacGregors don’t wait to stand for what they believe in. Nor do they wait to fight for it.”
With a nod, Cyrus helped Ian heft the fallen tree. “I won’t stand in your way where Alanna is concerned. You may do that for yourself.”
* * *
Alanna rushed into the front of the cabin the moment she heard Ian’s voice. “Da, I want to … Oh.” She stopped short at the sight of her father and Ian with a pine tree held between them. “You’ve cut a Christmas tree.”
“Did you think I’d be forgetting?” Cyrus took off his cap and stuffed it in his pocket. “How could I with you nagging me day and night?”
“Thank you.” It was with both pleasure and relief that she crossed the room to kiss him. “It’s beautiful.”
“And I suppose you’ll want to be hanging ribbons and God knows what else on it.” But he gave her a quick squeeze as he spoke.
“I have Mama’s box of ornaments in my room.” Because she understood him so well, she kissed him again. “I’ll fetch it after supper.”
“I’ve other chores to see to. You can devil MacGregor about where you want the thing.” He gave her hand a quick pat before he went out again.
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Alanna cleared her throat. “By the front window, if you please.”
Ian dragged it over, balancing it on the flat wooden boards Cyrus had hammered to the trunk. The only sound was the rustling of needles and the crackle of the fire.
“Thank you,” she said primly. “You can go about your business now.”
Before she could escape to the kitchen again, he took her hand. “Your father has given me permission to wed you, Alanna.”
She tugged once on her hand, then wisely gave up. “I’m my own woman, MacGregor.”
“You’ll be mine, Mrs. Flynn.”
Though he stood a foot over her head, she managed to convey the impression of looking down her nose at him. “I’d sooner mate a rabid skunk.”
Determined to do it right this time, he brought her rigid hand to his lips. “I love you, Alanna.”
“Don’t.” She pressed her free hand to her nervous heart. “Don’t say that.”
“I say it with every breath I take. And will until I breathe no more.”
Undone, she stared at him, into those blue-green eyes that had already haunted her nights. His arrogance she could resist. His outrageousness she could fight. But this, this simple, almost humble declaration of devotion left her defenseless.
“Ian, please …”
He took heart because she had, at long last, called him by his given name. And the look in her eyes as the word left her lips could not be mistaken. “You will not tell me you’re indifferent to me.”
Unable to resist, she touched a hand to his face. “No, I won’t tell you that. You must see how I feel every time I look at you.”
“We were meant to be together.” With his eyes on hers, he pressed the palm of her hand to his lips. “From the moment I saw you bending over me in the barn I felt it.”
“It’s all so soon,” she said, fighting both panic and longing. “All so quick.”
“And right. I’ll make you happy, Alanna. You can choose whatever house you want in Boston.”
“Boston?”
“For a time, at least, we would live there. I have work to do. Later we could go to Scotland, and you could visit your homeland.”