"I would ask you for something." She eased quickly out of his arms. Another moment in them and she might have forgotten everything—family and all her secret hopes for her own future. "You could consider it your Christmas gift to me."
He wondered if she knew that at that moment he would have pledged her all that was his, even his life.
"What is it you want?"
"That you'll stay until Christmas is passed. It's important to Brian. And," she added before he could speak, "that you will not speak of war or revolts until the holy day is over."
"It's very little to ask."
"Not to me. To me it is a very great deal."
"Then you have it." She took a step back, but with a lift of his brow he took her hand firmly in his, raised it to his lips and kissed it.
"Thank you." She regained her hand quickly and hid it behind her back. "I have work to do." His voice stopped her as she hurried toward the door.
"Alanna… it is right."
She pulled the hood over her head and hurried out.
Chapter Five
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1 he snow that fell on Christmas Eve delighted Alanna. In her heart she held the hope that the storm would rage for days and prevent Ian from traveling, as she knew he planned to do in two days' time. She knew the hope was both selfish and foolish, but she hugged it to her as she bundled into scarf and cloak to walk to the barn for the morning milking.
If he stayed, she would be miserable. If he left, she would be brokenhearted. She allowed herself the luxury of a sigh as she watched the flakes whirl white around her. It was best if she thought not of him at all, but of her responsibilities.
Her footsteps were the only sound in the barnyard as her boots broke through the new dusting to the thin crust beneath. Then, in the thick hush, the door creaked as she lifted the latch and pulled it open.
Inside, she reached for the buckets and had taken her first step when a hand fell on her shoulder. With a yelp, she jumped, sending the buckets clattering to the floor.
"Your pardon, Mrs. Flynn." Ian grinned as Alanna held both hands to her heart. "It seems I've startled you."
She would have cursed him if there had been any breath remaining in her lungs. Not for a moment could she have held her head up if he'd known she'd just been sighing over him. Instead, she shook her head and drew air in deeply. "What are you doing, sneaking about?"
"I came out of the house moments behind you," he explained. He had decided, after a long night of thought, to be patient with her. "The snow must have masked my approach."
Her own daydreaming had prevented her from hearing him, she thought, irritated, and bent down to snatch the buckets just as he did the same. When their heads bumped, she did swear.
"Just what the devil would you be wanting, MacGregor? Other than to scare the life from me?"
He would be patient, he promised himself as he rubbed his own head. If it killed him. "To help you with the milking."
Her narrowed eyes widened in bafflement. "Why?"
Ian blew out a long breath. Patience was going to be difficult if every word she spoke to him was a question or an accusation. "Because, as I have observed over the past days, you've too many chores for one woman."
Pride was stiff in her voice. "I can care for my family."
"No doubt." His voice was equally cool. Again, they reached down for the buckets together. Ian scowled. Alanna straightened to stand like a poker as he retrieved them.
"I appreciate your offer, but—"
"I'm only going to milk a damn cow, Alanna." So much for patience. "Can't you take the help in good grace?"
"Of course." Spinning on her heel, she stalked to the first stall.
She didn't need his help, she thought as she tugged off her mittens and slapped them into her lap. She was perfectly capable of doing her duty. The very idea of his saying she had too much to do. Why, in the spring there was twice as much, with planting and tending the kitchen garden, harvesting herbs. She was a strong, capable woman, not some weak, whimpering girl.
He was probably used to ladies, she thought with a sneer. Polished sugar faces that simpered and fluttered behind fans. Well, she was no lady with silk dresses and kid slippers, and she wasn't a bit ashamed of it. She sent a glare in Ian's direction. And if he thought she pined for drawing rooms, he was very much mistaken.
She tossed her head back as she began the tug and squeeze that squirted the brindled cow's milk into the bucket.
Ungrateful wench, Ian mused as he, with less ease and finesse, milked the second cow. He'd only
wanted to help. Any fool could see that her duties ran from sunup to sundown. If she wasn't milking she was baking. If she wasn't baking she was spinning. If she wasn't spinning, she was scrubbing.
The women in his family had never been ladies of leisure, but they had always had daughters or sisters or cousins to help. All Alanna had were three men who obviously didn't realize the burdens that fell on her.
Well, he was going to help her if he had to throttle her into accepting.
She finished her bucket long before Ian and stood impatiently tapping her foot. When he was done, Alanna reached for the bucket, but he held it away from her.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm carrying the milk in for you." He took up the other bucket.
"Now why would you be doing that?"
"Because it's heavy," he all but bellowed, then muttering about stubborn, empty-headed women, he marched to the door.
"Keep swinging those buckets like that, MacGregor, and you'll have more milk on the ground than in your belly." She couldn't quite catch what he muttered at her, but it wasn't complimentary. Suspicious, she brushed snow from her face. "Since you insist on carrying the milk, I'll just go gather the eggs."
They stalked off in different directions.
When Alanna returned to her kitchen, Ian was still there, feeding the fire.
"If you're waiting for breakfast, you'll wait a while longer."
"I'll help you," he said between gritted teeth.
"Help me what?"
"With breakfast."
That did it. With little regard for how many eggs cracked, she slammed down the bucket. "You find fault with my cooking, MacGregor?"
His hands itched to grab her shoulders and give her a brisk shake. "No."
"Hmm." She moved to the stove to make coffee. Turning, she all but plowed into him. "If you're going to be standing in my kitchen, MacGregor, then move aside. You're not so big I can't push you out of my way."
"Are you always so pleasant in the morning, Mrs. Flynn?"
Rather than dignify the question with an answer, she took the slab of ham she'd gotten from the smokehouse and began to slice. Ignoring him as best she could, she began to mix the batter for the pancakes she considered her specialty. She'd show Ian MacGregor a thing or two about cooking before she was done.
He said nothing but clattered the pewter dishes he set on the table to make his point. By the time her family joined them, the kitchen was filled with appetizing smells and a tension thick enough to hack with an ax.
"Pancakes," Johnny said with relish. "Sure and it's a fine way to start Christmas Eve."
"You look a bit flushed, girl." Cyrus studied his daughter as he took his seat. "You're not coming down sick, are you?"
"It's the heat from the stove," she snapped, then bit her tongue as her father narrowed his eyes. "I've applesauce made just yesterday for the pancakes." She set the bowl she was carrying on the table, then went back for the coffee. Flustered because Ian had yet to take his eyes from her, she reached for the pot without remembering to wrap a cloth around the handle. As she singed the tips of two fingers, she let out a cry and followed it with an oath.
"No use bringing the Lord into it when you've been careless," Cyrus said mildly, but he rose to smear cooling butter on the burns. "You've been jumpy as a frog with the hiccups these past days, Alanna."
"It's nothing." She waved him back to
the table with her good hand. "Sit, the lot of you, and eat. I want you out of my kitchen so I can finish my baking."
"I hope there's a fresh raisin cake on the list." Johnny grinned as he heaped applesauce on his plate. "No one makes a better one than you, Alanna. Even when you burn it."
She managed to laugh, and nearly mean it, but she had little appetite for the meal as she joined the table.
It was just as well, she decided some time later. Though the men in her life had chattered like magpies through breakfast, they hadn't left a scrap for the rest of the birds. With relief she watched them bundle up for the rest of the day's work. She'd have the kitchen, and the rest of the house, to herself in short order. Alone, she should be able to think about what and how she felt about Ian MacGregor.
But he had been gone only minutes when he returned with a pail of water.
"What are you up to now?" she demanded, and tried in vain to tuck some of her loosened tresses into her cap.
"Water for the dishes." Before she could do so herself, he poured the water into a pot on the stove to heat.
"I could have fetched it myself," she said, then felt nasty. "But thank you."
"You're welcome." He shrugged out of his outer clothes and hung them on a hook by the door.
"Aren't you going to go with the others, then?"
"There are three of them and one of you."
She tilted her head. "That's true enough. And so?"
"So today I'm helping you."
Because she knew her patience was thin, she waited a moment before speaking. "I'm perfectly capable—"
"More than, from what I've seen." He began to stack the dishes she'd yet to clear. "You work like a pack mule."
"That is a ridiculous and a very uncomplimentary description, boy-o." Her chin jutted forward. "Now get out of my kitchen."
"I will if you will."
"I've work to do."
"Fine. Then let's be at it."
"You'll be in my way."
"You'll work around me." When she drew her next breath he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, hard and long. "I'm staying with you, Alanna," he said when she managed to focus on him again.
"And that's that."
"Is it?" To her mortification, her voice was only a squeak.
"Aye."
"Well, then." She cleared her throat, stepped back and smoothed her skirts. "You can fetch me apples from the storage cellar. I've got pies to bake."
She used the time it took him to return to try to compose herself. What was becoming of her when she lost her brains and every other faculty over a kiss? But it wasn't an ordinary kiss, not when they were Ian's lips doing the work. Something strange was happening when one moment she was pinning her heart on the hope that he would stay a while longer—the next she was resenting him so that she wished him a thousand miles away. And a moment later, she was letting him kiss her, and hoping he'd do so again at the first opportunity.
She'd been born in the Colonies, a child of a new world. But her blood was Irish—Irish enough that words like fate and destiny loomed large.
As she began to scrub dishes, she thought that if her destiny was in the shape of one Ian MacGregor, she was in trouble deep.
"It's simple enough to peel an apple," she insisted later, fuming over Ian's clumsy, hacking attempts. "You put the knife under the skin."
"I did."
"And took most of the meat with it. A little time and care works wonders."
He smiled at her, all too strangely for her comfort. "So I'm thinking, Mrs. Flynn. So I'm thinking."
"Try again," she told him as she went back to her pie-crusts and rolling pin. "And you'll be cleaning up all those peelings you're scattering on my floor."
"Aye, Mrs. Flynn."
Holding the rolling pin aloft, she glared at him. "Are you trying to rouse my temper, MacGregor?"
He eyed the kitchen weaponry. "Not while you're holding that, sweetheart."
"I've told you not to call me that."
"So you have."
He watched her go back to her pies. She was a pleasure to watch, he thought. Quick hands, limber fingers. Even when she moved from counter to stove and back again, there was a nimbleness in her movements that sent his heart thudding.
Who would have thought he'd have had to be shot, all but bleed to death and end up unconscious in a cow stall to fall in love?
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 luffing out of a kettle. "You'll call me nothing at all. Why 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 lying out of her hand and toward his head. She regretted it immediately. But she regretted it even more when he nagged 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 ma
naged 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 Six
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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.