Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WayWard Wind (8 page)

Peyton couldn’t keep a smile from tugging at her lips. Though she’d never known her own grandparents, she had often been around her childhood friends’. It seemed offering money to a grandchild was something all grandmothers did.

“I’ve got enough,” he replied.

“You sure?”

“Aye, I’m sure!” he barked.

Snake made a rude sound with her lips. “If’n he was back in Scotland, he’d have all the ....”

“Didn’t I tell you you talk too much?” Harper growled, slanting the old woman a warning look.

“Screw you, boy,” Snake groused. “If the girl is to be your wife and bear you a child, least you can do is share some of who you are with her!”

“She’s not interested in who I am,” Harper grated.

“Yes, I am,” Peyton said, but when he turned that fierce glare on her, she shrank back in her chair.

“Leave--it--be--wench,” he said slowly and distinctly.

Peyton shoved a forkful of egg into her mouth and chewed quickly.

When the meal was finished, Snake shooed them off, informing them she’d clean up. Harper went outside to saddle his horse, replying to his grandmother that they wouldn’t need her horse she’d offered for Peyton wasn’t much of a rider.

“Better teach her, then,” Snake grumbled.

The ride into the bustling village took less than an hour and by the time Harper found a store with clothing he considered fit for his bride-to-be, the sun was high overhead and the inhabitants scurrying for their afternoon siesta. There would be a few hours wait for the priest to perform the ceremony so Harper and Peyton sat under the shade of a cantina roof and looked out across the pretty town square with its bubbling fountain.

“So how rich are you?” she asked after awhile, giving him a saucy grin that said she expected at answer.

Harper growled low in his throat. “That old woman’s mouth is going to get her in deep shit one of these days.”

“I take it the money is in Scotland?”

He nodded. “Along with the land my grandfather left me.” He glanced down at his right hand and wiggled his thumb. “I can’t touch any of it unless I go back there.”

Peyton took a sip of the cool lemonade the cantina owner had poured for them before heading for his nap. “Have you ever thought about doing that?” she asked over the rim of the glass.

She didn’t think he’d answer as he gently massaged his thumb. “I thought about it this morning while I was bathing,” he answered in a soft voice.

“Is your thumb hurting very badly today?” she asked.

He looked up at her. “Did she tell you about that, too?” he asked, his brogue thick. He stopped rubbing his thumb.

Peyton smiled gently at him. “There’s no shame in me knowing, is there?”

A mutinous look shifted over his face for a moment then moved on. “I suppose not,” he said in a grudging voice.

They were quiet for awhile then he turned to give her a steady look. “If I were to ask you to go with me to Scotland, would you be inclined to think on it?”

Peyton’s brows drew together. “How would we get there?”

“By clipper,” he said. “Out of Tampico.” He frowned. “We’d have to take the old woman with us. I couldn’t leave her here.”

“Of course, you couldn’t,” she agreed. “She loves you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he grumbled.

“She does,” Peyton stated.

“The law will always be after me here,” he said.

“I’m sure they would.”

“Over there, I’d be a free man, not having to look over my shoulder all the time.”

Peyton thought of her father, worrying the situation over in her mind.

Harper was silent a long time then asked her again if she’d consider going with him.

Peyton met his gaze. “I’ve been doing just that for the last ten minutes.”

“And?”

“And yes,” she said. “I would go with you.”

“You’d leave all you own behind to do that, wench?” he asked, his generous lips working as though trying to smile and he kept them from doing so.

“Yes,” she said and took another sip of the wonderful lemonade. “I would leave everything behind to be with you.”

Harper gave up his struggle not to smile. “Then I’ll arrange it,” he said.

“The sooner, the better,” she said, a picture of her father’s scowling face flashing across her mind.

“Aye,” he said. “That would be best. It’ll take me a few days, maybe even a week, to get my things in order then we can head for Tampico.” He looked about them as though eager for the sun to lower so he could get on with his life.

“What kind of things?” she asked.

“I have money in a bank on the other side of the border. I’ll ride up and get it. We’ll need money to travel on.”

“Can I go with…?” she started to ask, but he was already shaking his head.

“I can make better time alone, wench, and you know how much you like horseback riding,” he said with a rueful grin. “When we get home to Scotland, you’ll have time to become an expert with a horse. There are acres of beautiful land where we’re going.”

“So you have land in Scotland, then,” she said.

“Hearthridge, the hunting lodge where I grew up,” he said. “There’s the lodge and about a fifty acres of land surrounding it. It belonged to my grandfather’s side of the family and since his wife wouldn’t allow me at the mansion ....”

“Your father’s mother kept you from your ancestral home?” she asked.

“She hated me,” he said. “She couldn’t have bairns of her own and knowing another woman gave her husband an heir provoked her something fierce. She never let me forget I was born on the wrong side of the blankets.”

“But you didn’t inherit the family estate?”

He shook his head. “She kept me from it, but she had no care for the hunting lodge and at the advice of her solicitor agreed not to fight me on that. There was nothing she could do about the yearly allowance my grandfather left me and it’s just been sitting in the bank accumulating interest while I was rotting in that damned prison.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” he said and his brogue was so thick she had a hard time understanding his answer. It finally occurred to her that she was hearing more and more of that accent as time went on and wondered why he had been deliberately tamping it down. “There wasn’t no love lost between us. If she’s alive, I’ll venture to say I never cross her mind.”

“So she wouldn’t have heard of your arrest.”

“I doubt it. Who’d have told her?” He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets, began pacing. “Never have understood this sleeping in the middle of the day. Seems counterproductive to me.”

Peyton smiled. He was nervous, anxious to get the wedding over with. His spurs jangled against the wooden planking as he paced. Every minute or so he’d looked to the church at the end of the square, waiting for the priest to open the heavy carved portals and motion them over.

By the time the church doors opened, Sloan Harper had worked himself into a sweat, the front and underarms of his shirt stained dark. His hat was laying on the table and his dark hair ruffled from the constant raking of his fingers through it.

In contrast, Peyton Dalton was unruffled, having finished her lemonade and the rest of his. She was fanning herself leisurely with an old newspaper she hadn’t been able to read since it was printed in Spanish.

“Let’s go!” he said and stomped over to take her arm and lever her from the chair, striding purposefully toward the church so quickly she was stumbling in his wake.

“What is your hurry?” she asked, grinning.

“I want to get you back to the cabin so I can head north. I’ll leave after supper,” he said. “There’s no sense in waiting around.”

“What about the cabin?” she asked. “And the animals? You can’t just leave them ....”

“I’ll give them to the priest,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll know someone who needs a home.”

Father Roberta Escobar did, indeed, know someone and once he had performed the ceremony and the two witnesses had put their names to the document, he had shaken Harper’s hand, thanking him for his generosity.

“The family can take it over next week, Father,” Harper said. “We’ll be gone by Friday next, looking to take a ship out of Tampico. I’ll feed the chickens and the animals before we leave.”

“God bless you. This is so generous. The Villareals will be so happy.”

“Aye, well thank you for saying the words over us. We’ll be leaving now,” Harper said, embarrassed.

“Vaya con Dios, my children,” Father Roberta bestowed his blessing as Harper swung her up onto the horse behind him.

* * * *

They rode for half an hour then Harper stopped for Peyton to rid herself of all the lemonade she’d consumed. He waited for her as she made her way into the bushes, cautioning her to be on the lookout for snakes or tarantulas.

A small waterfall rippled into a stream nearby so he led his horse over to take a drink. Sitting down on a rock, he took off his hat, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and shook his head in disgust, cursing under his breath.

“What’s wrong?” Peyton asked as she joined him.

He sighed deeply then looked up at her, turning the hat around and around in his hands. “I forgot the goddamned ring, wench,” he said. “When the priest asked us about a ring, I could have kicked myself then and there.”

“You couldn’t remember everything, Sloan,” she said.

“Snake reminded me about the ring before we left,” he said. “I
should
have remembered it. I was going to look for one but it slipped my mind.”

“You can buy me one in Scotland,” she said.

“You’ll have one before we set sail, wench,” he stated firmly. “I’ll not have anyone wondering if you belong to me.”

She put a hand on his rough cheek where his heavy beard was already starting to grow back even after shaving so closely that morning. She liked the feel of it against her palm. “Who cares what other people think? All they need do is take one look at me while I’m looking at you and they’ll know I belong to you, Sloan Harper.”

He laid his hat on the ground then turned his face so his lips grazed her palm to kiss her there briefly, drawing the sweet scent of her flesh deep into his lungs. “All the same, I want you to wear my ring.”

Peyton smiled. “I will be honored to do so.” She slipped her hand behind his neck and pulled his face toward hers, parting her lips to him, inviting his tongue to slide into her mouth.

Sloan growled low in his throat and his arms went around her. He crushed to him as his cock leapt, pressing hard against the fabric of his jeans. He deepened their kiss and in one assertive move put one arm under her knees and lifted her into his arms--high against his chest as he stood up and carried her over to a soft patch of grass under a spreading tree.

Her heart was thudding strongly in her chest as he knelt down to place her on the ground. Her gaze followed him as he stood up to untie the leather strap holding his holster to his thigh before unbuckling the rig and draping it carefully on a low-hanging branch, keeping the firearm easily within his reach should he need it. She watched him as he quickly unbuttoned the cuffs of his gingham shirt then dragged the tail of it from his jeans. A slow smile formed on her expressive mouth as his fingers ran through the shirt’s buttons and he peeled it from his body, tossing it aside before he flipped the button of his jeans open and ran the zipper down over the taut bulge showing at the juncture of his muscled thighs. With a manly grace that made her heart swell with pride, he dropped to the ground to tug off his boots and socks before leaning back to shuck off his jeans, pushing them impatiently from his lean flanks. As the garment left his body, his heavy erection sprang up with a mind of its own.

“He looks to be an eager little man,” she commented.

Harper grunted. “Ain’t nothing little about him, wench,” he said as he held a hand out to help her up.

There had been a time when Peyton would have protested him dragging her gown over her head and pushing her chemise down over her arms, pulling it from her, easing off her half-boots and rolling her stockings down, tugging her bloomers from her legs.

“I didn’t even know Snake had these fripperies,” he complained as he laid the clothing aside.

“They belonged to your mother,” Peyton said. “They were in Miss Coronella’s trunk.”

“I’ll get you some decent clothes when we get to Tampico,” he said. “Pretty clothes fitting for a lady to wear.” He grinned. “Clothes I can strip off you when the mood hits.”

“Umm,” Peyton replied with the elevation of one brow.

Naked before him, she knelt there in the grass as he snaked his arms around her, molding her to him and once more claimed her lips. She could feel the heat of his firm body pressed all the way down the front of her, the jut of his ripe erection stabbing along her belly. He ground against her, his hips rocking as he thrust his tongue deep into her mouth. Her hands lifted between them to slide into his dark hair, reveling in the feel of her body imprisoned by his. When he pressed her toward the ground--lowering one strong hand to the grass to cushion their fall while the other held firmly to her back--she arched her head, sliding her lips from his, feeling his mouth trailing down her neck and onto her swollen nipple.

Once more her fingers entwined in his dark curls and she held him to her, her heart thundering beneath the point of his chin.

He fed from her, suckling her, licking that engorged peak, nibbling it until she was squirming mindlessly beneath him. She heard him chuckle, then felt his hand slipping over her thighs and between them, his fingers delving into the moist heat between her legs.

“God, wench,” he growled against her breast. “You drive me crazy with wanting you.”

His calloused fingers drove deep as he captured her nipple once more and drew hard upon it, grazing it with his teeth, stabbing at it with his hot tongue. He thrust rhythmically inside her--withdrawing, pushing deep, gently twisting his fingers before turning them upward to search for that mysterious protrusion he knew would drive her insane with desire. Finding the sponging elevation, he pressed it firmly and almost instantly felt the quiver of her vaginal muscles rippling around him.