She gasped. "Oh, my goodness! Look!" She pulled out a huge red velvet hat, the size of a large hunting saddle, with more plumes than a herd of ostriches. He had to back up to keep from getting the feathers in his face as she turned it this way and that, inspecting the monstrosity the way a child might inspect a new toy. She plopped the hat on the back of her small head and raised her chin, tying the frayed ribbons.
She stepped back and struck a pose. "How does it look?" She gave the hat, which was made to set atop a full pompadour, a jaunty pat. It sank down over her small nose, the feathers flopping downward over the front of the brim. She blew the feathers away from her mouth and said, her voice muffled by the hat, "I believe it's a tad too big."
Before he could control it, let alone think about it, a bark of laughter escaped his lips. He stiffened immediately and swallowed the next one.
She pushed the hat back, her eyes wide, green, and curious. "What was that?"
"What?"
"That noise."
"I didn't hear anything,"
"Well, I surely did. Sounded like the selkies on Iona Reef."
"Selkies?"
"Seals."
He cleared his throat gruffly and tried to look suitably serious. "Impossible."
She pushed the hat back off her head and moved her inquisitive face closer. She searched his eyes.
"Alec . . . is that a smile?"
"Hardly."
"I think your eyes are smiling."
"Dukes do not smile with their eyes or with anything else."
"Why?"
He turned away.
"Why won't you smile?"
"Village idiots walk around grinning, not dukes. Laughter is for fools." He heard his father's coldness in his own voice and he tensed inside and out.
"I believe that laughter is a gift."
"Don't you want to see what else is in the trunk?"
"I want to see you smile," she muttered.
"And I want to finish this nonsense so we can go back inside."
"Nonsense?" She was suddenly quiet, too quiet. She gazed at the trunk. All the delight had drained from her expressive face. Biting her lip, she turned away from him, her shoulders drooping a bit, her head down as if she was embarrassed or, worse yet, ashamed. She sighed. "I'll just look at these books. You can look inside the trunk."
He watched her shoulders heave slightly with her deep breaths. He searched the tips of his boots for kitten fur and stood there feeling like a cloddish oaf.
Bloody hell! He heard her deep sigh and ignored it. Finally he looked at her bowed head and the damned word slipped out: "Scottish?"
She turned those wide, defeated green eyes up at him. He almost smiled for her, almost, but managed to stop himself. What the hell was wrong with him? After a strained minute during which he felt as if she had swallowed him, he said, "I'll bring the trunk inside so you can go through it."
"You will?" She grinned up at him. "Thank you."
He released a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding. "Are you sure you removed that spell?"
"Cross my heart. There is no love spell on you."
He saw no deception there, which frustrated him even more.
"Do you think we could borrow a few of these books, too?"
"Fine." He took his cape from the peg and shrugged into it. "Just put aside the ones you want while I take the trunk in."
"And the tub?"
"What tub?" He turned back, fastening the cape.
"That one." She pointed to another corner where an old tin hip bath was filled with hay.
"And the tub," he said, walking over to close the lid on the trunk.
He lifted the trunk and had to stifle a groan. The bloody thing weighed a ton. He moved toward the barn door, his thighs and arms feeling every pound. He felt a small hand on his arm. He stopped, taking a breath in the hope that he wouldn't drop the damned thing.
Joy stared up at him. "You do that well too."
"Do what?"
"Carry things," she said with pride in her voice. She gave his arm a pat and ran back to the corner.
Alec stood there for a moment, the muscles in his arms taut and straining from the weight of the trunk and his shoulders and back quivering with the strain. He took another deep breath, searching for extra strength, and found it from some miraculous place. Head high, shoulders back, and face unchanged, he strode through the doors, bloody well determined to haul the damned trunk to the inn.
***
"The dark and dangerous Duke of Dryden reined in his huge frothing stallion and searched the foggy marsh for a sign of the Gypsy girl. He spotted a flash of red and slowly edged his mount toward a misty pile of rocks. He intended to find her, by God! The wench was destined to be his! The shadowy mist suited his black mood, for she had pricked his pride, and he would exact revenge by taking her to his bed …."
"Oh, my goodness." Joy slammed the book shut and stared at the title:
The Dastardly Duke.
"I think I need this one, too," she muttered and placed it on the stack of books that seemed to grow with each volume she touched. She looked at the other titles—
Tom Jones, Moll
Flanders
, Fanny Hill, Robinson Crusoe
—novels she had never read.
Then she turned to her discard stack—Shakespeare. The MacLean had forbidden her to read his plays, calling him an upstart Sassenach who didn't know the first thing about Scottish witches.
Joy shrugged and walked over to the tin tub. She tipped it over, emptying the hay, then dragged it over to her stack of books. She stood back and dusted off her hands.
Alec came back inside and looked at the smaller stack of books. "I see you like Shakespeare." He began to put the wrong books in the hip bath.
"Oh, no. Those are the ones I don't want. The other stack is what I want."
He scanned the spines, frowning. He picked up the top book.
"Tom Jones?
I think not." He tossed the book into the corner.
"But I looked through it. It's about a poor foundling."
He ignored her and picked up another.
"Moll
Flanders
?"
"Her mother was imprisoned for stealing food, before she was even born. Poor wee thing. She was sold to the Gypsies. It was her first recollection." That too went the way of the others.
His voice grew louder.
"Fanny Hill?"
She blushed. "That one looked . . . very intriguing."
And louder.
"The Dastardly Duke?"
He all but choked on the title.
She winced, but wisely remained silent.
"You will not read these." He picked up the last book and read the title. "You may read this one." He handed her
Robinson Crusoe.
"And the plays of Shakespeare." He picked up the books from her discard pile and put them in the tub. He straightened, then said something about retrieving the milk and crossed over to the cow.
Joy stared at the one book in her hand. She glanced at him, seeing he was behind the cow. Quickly she picked up
The Dastardly Duke,
rammed it under the stack of Shakespeare, and placed the sanctioned book on top. Just for good measure she put the small basket of eggs atop that, then scooted away and stood there, hands behind her back, waiting and humming and trying to look innocent.
He came around the cow and set the milk pail in front of her. "Do you think you can carry this?"
She tested the weight of the pail. "Aye."
He helped her on with her coat, then lifted the tub of books in his brawny arms, and they left the barn.
Joy halted the moment they stepped outside. The wind had ceased and all was silent—that utter stillness that seeps often settled in after a snowstorm. It was as if the world had stopped and there was nothing but silence within silence. Icicles dripped like white crystal beards from the steep roof of the inn, where snow lay in a thick puffy icing atop the thatch. Standing between the inn yard and the frozen silver river were tall trees that the storm had powdered with clean white snow. It was almost as if they'd been dipped in sugar.
A rabbit hopped across the snow, its footprints the first sign of life in a white and silver world. It paused to look at them, its whiskered nose sniffing the air for a sign of danger, then twitched its long ears and darted off behind the trees in a trail of scattering white.
"Oh . . . isn't it lovely?" Joy said in a whisper of awe.
"What?" Alec shifted the tub and searched the area.
"The snow." She couldn't believe he didn't see it "It's winter's gift."
"Hardly a gift. More like a coffin. We almost died in it."
She set the milk pail down. "But look around. Can't you see the beauty of it? It's almost as if we're in a silent fairyland, all white and silver and sparkling. Do you suppose heaven could look like this?" She lifted a handful of fresh white snow and held it up. "If you hold it up and look through it—see?—the light shines through and the snow glitters like diamond dust."
Alec frowned.
"Look," she insisted.
"All I see is water running down your arm." He walked past her without a glance.
She looked at the melting snow in her hand, tossed it away, and watched his back as he carried the tub down the path. "Hardheaded Englishman," she muttered. "Thinks I cast a love spell over him." Frustrated at his inability to be anything but rigid, she grabbed a handful of snow, packed it, and flung it right at his hard head. It felt so good.
He stopped walking, set the tub down, and slowly turned around, brushing the snow from the back of his neck. He stared at her as if she were daft.
She hurled another snowball. It hit him smack dab in his scowling face.
She giggled.
"Bloody hell! What do you think you are doing?"
"Hitting you with snowballs." She nailed him with another.
"I do not find this amusing."
"I do."
"Stop. Now."
Her answer was to take aim and throw another, hoping he'd loosen up and throw one back.
"Stop it." He wiped the snow from his face.
She remembered the cocky way he'd tossed her books aside. Her patience waning, she packed the snowball tighter, then wound back her arm, and got him right in the chest. Her magic should be so accurate.
"I said cease, at once!"
Then she remembered the arrogant way he'd told her to remove her love spell. She packed the snow in her hand. There hadn't been any love spell. She wadded the snow as tight as she could. If she could have cast such a spell on him, she would have done so. That would have been a whole lot easier than trying to teach this man about love. She heaved the snowball, hard.
He ducked. "I command you to stop this."
"Haven't you ever played in the snow?" She tossed another well-packed snowball from one hand to the other, deciding which body quadrant she should aim for.