“Oh? Should I take it that you’ll give me jewelry?”
“A question!” He pulled up his horse. Automatically she stopped Ginger as well. He wrapped a large hand around the nape of her neck and gently pulled her toward him. These days their kisses started as if they had never left off the last one. Their mouths met, hungry, open, seeking each other’s taste…He kept his hands to himself, though. And she kept her hands tangled in his hair and didn’t try to direct him. And they never, ever embarked on a coney’s kiss or its like.
In the back of her mind, Annabel kept trying to figure out which of Ewan’s kisses she liked the best. There were those times when she kept her mouth shut, and made him beg and plead silently for entry until he could slip past her guard. Sometimes she thought those were the best kisses, and sometimes she thought a wild tangling, in which they were both shaking within a second or two…sometimes she thought those were the best kisses. And then there were the ones that Ewan didn’t count: the little morning touch on her cheek or an eye, the sweetness of their lips just touching over the bolster at night.
“I would do your errands for a smile,” Ewan said softly a moment later. “For a kiss like that—”
Annabel looked away, suddenly shy. Kisses of that nature had no part in the schema she’d worked out for her life, in the precise trade of her body and accomplishments for a man’s ring and his fortune.
He switched his reins to his left hand. Then he curled his fingers around hers. They walked down the road sedately, letting their horses snort at each other. Annabel didn’t look at Ewan again. She had a feeling that all her preconceptions of men and women were tumbling at her feet. He had breached her defenses.
When they came to the little fork that led to the hamlet, Ewan helped Annabel from her mount and they walked beside their horses, still without saying a word.
A few moments later they met Ewan’s outriders, returning the way they’d come. Apparently there were no carts to be had, so they were headed back to the site of the accident.
The village was not merely small; it was no more than a motley collection of three houses arranged around a dusty square. There was no store, no pub and no inn, just a broad-shouldered young man with a snub nose and a cheerful grin to greet them.“My name’s Kettle, my lord. I had no expectation of seeing gentry today, and I’m afraid we’re not prepared.” He waved his hand at the little patch of ground between the wattle-and-daub houses, scaring a few chickens who started up in protest.
“May I beg you for the courtesy of a drink of water for my wife?” Ewan asked, bowing.
Kettle beamed. “We’ve better than that. I’ll ask my wife to bring out a glass of ale for her ladyship.” He went into one of the houses, returning with a woman carefully holding a tin cup. She had fiery red hair, braided away from her face, two dimples that made her look as if she were about to laugh and a belly that arched before her as if it were defying gravity.
She managed to bob a curtsy without spilling a drop of ale. “I’m so sorry,” she said shyly. “We’ve only the one cup, but if your lordship could wait a moment, I’ll refill it in a jiffy. And I’ve some oatcakes on the fire, if you would care for one.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Kettle,” Annabel said, at the same moment that Ewan said, “We’d love one. Thank you!”
A huge smile spread over Mrs. Kettle’s face. “Mrs. Kettle! I guess that’s me!”
Kettle himself put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We don’t get many visitors, and a circuit-riding Methodist preacher came through just last month. I reckon you’re one of the first to call her that.”
“But you don’t live here alone, do you?” Annabel asked.
“Not normally,” Mrs. Kettle said, bobbing another curtsy. “There’s three houses, as you can see. But Mrs. Fernald took poorly in the last winter, and so they’ve gone to her relatives for a bit, until she feels better. And the third house belongs to Ian McGregor. He’s gone to find work in the fields for the summer. He has no wife at all.” Clearly, from Mrs. Kettle’s point of view, poor McGregor was cursed.
From Annabel’s point of view, McGregor was absolutely right not to take on the responsibility of a wife when all he could afford was a shack. She sipped her ale. It was clear, thin and cold.
They all stood together awkwardly for a moment and then Mrs. Kettle gasped. “I never thought—” Her voice disappeared into the depths of her house, and she appeared a moment later with a chair. Both her husband and Ewan started toward her immediately, but Ewan was at her side first. Then Mr. Kettle fetched a stool, and then they put the two chairs together in the middle of the dust and chickens. Annabel sat down on the chair, and Mrs. Kettle on the stool. The men drifted off to the side and began talking about hops and ale and how the wheat was sprouting.
“This is so kind of you, Mrs. Kettle,” Annabel said.
“Do you know,” she replied with her dimpled smile, “I’m not sure but what I enjoy plain Peggy better. Would you mind calling me Peggy?”
“Of course not,” Annabel said. “And you must call me Annabel.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Peggy said, dismissing the idea with utter certainty. “But I’ve been naught more than Peggy me whole life, and I expect that’s why it’s hard to get used to having two names. Two names!” She laughed. “That’s riches!”
“Of a sort,” Annabel managed. But then Peggy leaped to her feet again. “I’ve clean forgotten my oatcakes!”
Mr. Kettle said something to Ewan about his woodshed and then he disappeared as well.
One of the chickens was so desperate that it came up and pecked at the bedraggled ribbon hanging from Annabel’s slipper. She shivered.
“Are you cold?” Ewan asked.
She shook her head. “I can almost smell the poverty.”
“And you don’t like it?”
Annabel nudged the chicken with her foot. “No. No, I don’t. It would be a terrible thing to be this poor.”
“They don’t seem unhappy,” Ewan said.
“Mrs. Kettle has one tin cup,” Annabel said. “One chair, and likely one stool.”
“Almost certainly only one dress,” Ewan put in.
“And one baby on the way,” Annabel pointed out.
“Hmmm. Still, they seem happy.”
“It’s impossible to be happy under those circumstances.”
“I don’t agree.”
Annabel felt a surge of irritability at the calm conviction in his voice. “If you think that, you know nothing of it. Think of how much you enjoy bathing. That poor woman likely hasn’t had a hot bath since she was married, if then. It’s too exhausting to heat all that water. Actually, I doubt they have a bathtub at all.”
“True,” Ewan said. “It’s a rare cottager who has a tin bath, and I don’t believe these poor folk are attached to any laird.”
“She’s probably eating gruel for her main meal,” Annabel said, not quite sure why her voice was so accusing. “Even though she’s carrying a child! She should be having a nice fat chicken every night.” Annabel kicked away the scrawny hen, who was back, pecking at her shoe ribbons. “You shouldn’t have told her you’d like an oatcake. Now she’ll likely have nothing to eat for supper.”