“Mr. Kettle is a proper man,” she said, keeping her voice low although the curiosity leaked through. “Every inch of him.”
To Ewan’s disappointment, he didn’t get to explain the jest, because saying it aloud seemed to bring the meaning home. She gasped, and a tiny giggle escaped. “Lucky Mr. Kettle,” she said.
“Yes, I expect the poor peddler just couldn’t measure up,” Ewan whispered back.
“That’s wicked!”
Ewan kissed her neck. “So how do you like churning?”
“It’s fierce work,” Annabel said, leaning against him in a boneless fashion that he entirely approved. “Poor Peggy. It’s too hard, all this work and the baby on top of it. Do you know that the baby might come along any moment, Ewan? And what will she do, with no woman for miles about?”
“I expect Kettle will help her,” Ewan said. An idea was beginning to sprout in his mind. A wicked one, for sure.
“It’s a disgrace,” she grumbled, as if she didn’t even realize that he was kissing her ear. But she did; he could feel the little tremor through her body when he nipped her. “Kettle should take her somewhere where she can be properly tended.”
“He’ll take care of her,” Ewan said.
“A woman needs another woman at times like this! And she shouldn’t be lifting a heavy butter churn either.”
Ewan threw caution to the wind. “You owe me a kiss,” he said.
She met his eyes and tilted up her strawberry-red mouth, as tempting a mouth as had any self-respecting siren in the Mediterranean Sea.
But he held back, just touching her with a whisper kiss, as light as silk and fine as down.
“You owe me a forfeit,” he stated.
A little flush of pink rose in her cheeks. “Yes.”
“I think I shall claim my forfeit here,” he said thoughtfully.
She looked around the dusty, sunlit clearing, alarmed. “Here?”
But he didn’t feel like talking. Their tongues touched and for a moment Ewan heard her breathing, all shallow and fast. The blood surged to his groin. Slowly he pushed his knee between her skirts and then pulled her up and against him. She was like molten wax in his hands, soft and hot. She had her eyes closed, of course, and she had that luscious dazed look that he was starting to get addicted to.
“Annabel,” he said, and his voice came out so raw and low that it surprised him.
“Yes?” She didn’t open her eyes, though, just leaned against him.
“My forfeit. May I take it now?”
“Do you want to take my clothing off?”
The question hung in the lazy afternoon air. They were surrounded by the sound of bees, and a faint clopping as Kettle’s cow moved uneasily around its stall. “Of course I do,” he growled into her ear. “But I won’t ask for that.”
“Are you going to take your clothes off?” There was a thread of hopefulness in her voice that set his heart to pounding again.
But he shook his head. “No. It’s nothing to do with clothes.”
She turned her cheek and rested against his chest. “Then of course you may have your forfeit. You won it fair and square, after all.”
Ewan grinned against her hair. It was like that play by Shakespeare, the one a company of traveling players had put on in the castle courtyard. He hadn’t liked it all that much at the time, but now he saw it differently—now that he had a wife of his own.
“Have you read Mr. Shakespeare’s plays?” he asked.
“What?” And then: “Yes, most of them.”
“There was a play in which a man marries a woman whom no one else will have,” he said, tightening his arms around her. “She has a beautiful younger sister, I remember that.”
“She’s a shrew,” Annabel said, leaning against him. “It’s called The Taming of the Shrew, and I certainly hope that you don’t think I’m akin to the shrew in question.”
“Nay, you’re no shrew,” he said.
“What’s the play got to do with anything?” she asked. “I haven’t thought about it for a few years…Isn’t he quite unpleasant to his wife?” And then: “Don’t you think the coaches have been a long time coming?”
But Ewan had decided it would be better if he didn’t remind Annabel of the details of that particular Shakespearean plot. Not when he had in mind to use the same stratagem himself. The husband in The Taming of the Shrew took his wife off into the country and cured her of being shrewish. Likely the same stratagem would work to cure Annabel of her fear of being poor. Anyone could see that the Kettles were as sweetly set up as any couple in Christendom. If he and Annabel stopped a day or two here, she would learn what it was like to be poor but not prey to the whims of a gambling man. They could rely on each other. A slow smile curled his lips. Because there wouldn’t be anyone else there to rely on.
As if in answer to Annabel’s question, he heard a rumbling sound in the distance that sounded like one of his heavy, slow luggage carriages coming to bring them to the next village. So he didn’t hesitate.
“I’d like to put Kettle and Peggy into that carriage,” he said.
She opened her eyes. “Oh, Ewan, that’s a lovely idea!”
“Mac can settle Peggy at the inn, or with the midwife, and stay with them until the baby is born. You said it was a matter of a day or two.”
“That’s what Peggy thinks,” Annabel said. “I haven’t the faintest notion about babies myself.”
“Well, as long as it takes,” Ewan said.
Annabel beamed at him. “That is a wonderful thing to do!”
“But…” Ewan said.
She frowned. “But?”
“Someone has to stay here and take care of the cow, the chickens and the house,” Ewan pointed out.
“One of the footmen? Surely one of them came from the country,” Annabel said promptly.
“I claim my forfeit,” Ewan said. “We stay.”
“We what?”
“We stay and take care of Peggy’s butter and Kettle’s cow.” His lovely, luscious girl was looking utterly confused. “It’ll only be a day or two,” he told her. Then he gave her a butterfly kiss, one of the ones that didn’t count. “It’s not as if we’re in any particular hurry. Think of us as Good Samaritans.”
“Good what?”
“Never mind. We’re in no hurry. We have a week or more of traveling left before we reach my lands, you know. A break would be enjoyable.”
“Enjoyable!” She seemed stunned.
He shrugged, loving the way her breasts jiggled against him.
Unfortunately, she drew away and stood up straight, staring at him as if he’d grown another head. “You think it would be fun to live here, in this place—in that house? Are you cracked?”
He bit back a grin. “No. ’Twould be a good thing to do.”
“Ewan Poley, if you think I’m some sort of self-sacrificing hymn-singer who’s going to follow you all over creation while you tend to savages, you should think again! I’m no missionary. I’ve no wish to travel to India!”
At that Ewan had to laugh. Anyone farther from a missionary than his silk-adorned, luxury-loving fiancée couldn’t be imagined. “I’m no missionary either,” he said finally. The coach was rumbling into the clearing. He caught her hands. “To help Peggy,” he said. “And because…”