Chasing the Sunset(28)

“Mother picked this out. I was in the library reading and I lost track of time. It looked much more respectable until I actually put it on. I should have known better, with her penchant for flamboyance, but I did not have time to change.”

“No sense in hiding your light under a bushel,” said her mother serenely. “If you have a good figure, you should show it off.”

"Well, I am certainly showing it off in this dress," Kathleen said sharply to her mother. "And just who do you think that I am going to impress here, Mother? Tommy?"

Lanny Donaldson’s gaze rested speculatively upon Duncan Murdoch, who was talking horses with young Tommy now. Tommy was eating up the attention, his bright young face making Maggie smile. Tommy had slicked himself up and combed his hair, but one strand had already escaped to stick straight up on the top of his head. Ned sat nearby, chatting with Arnold Donaldson. Both of them were already tugging at the neck of their stiff shirts, and Maggie smiled when she saw Uncle Ned absentmindedly begin to undo the top button.

“You never know who is going to be around to notice.”

Kathleen noticed the direction of her mother’s stare and a look of sheer panic came into her own eyes.

“Stop it, Mother,” she hissed. “Do not start matchmaking for me. I am perfectly happy the way that I am.”

“Well, I am not, and you should not be,” said her mother. “You are twenty-six years old, and it is well past time you started a family. Your father and I will not be around forever. Most women your age have been married for years and have a houseful of children. I want to hold your children before I die.”

Kathleen frowned darkly at her mother, rolled her eyes, and slapped her ivory fan against her skirts.

“Mother, please,” she said. “You act as if you are at death’s door, when we all know it is the very opposite. You will outlive us all. I beg of you, do not embarrass me. I do not even know this man.”

Lanny Donaldson’s eyes lit appreciatively on Duncan Murdoch. He had dressed all in black for the evening. His dark hair was clubbed behind his neck with a black satin ribbon, and he carried an ebony cane. He was a fine figure of a man, no doubt about it.

“You ought to make an effort to get to know this man. Even an old lady like me can tell that this one would make a fine lover . . . and some beautiful grandchildren to dandle on my knee.”

“Mother!”

Maggie choked back a laugh and turned it into a cough. Lanny Donaldson was just as Kathleen had described her. Blunt, witty, and beautiful, with the habit of saying the most outrageous things. Maggie liked her, a lot ... and she was glad that it was Kathleen who must deal with her, because she did not know if she could handle the little spitfire.

“I accepted a long time ago that you and Nick were not ever going to marry, though it was my fondest wish for a time,” Lanny said brusquely. "I could tell, once I thought about it, that you simply were not right for each other. But you have limited opportunities here, Kathleen. You have to take advantage of them."

"You stopped shoving Nick at me because I threatened to move into Geddes with Aunt Agnes," Kathleen told her bluntly. "And I sicced Da and Daniel on you, too. So do not try and tell me any fairy stories about how you gave it up because you knew that you were wrong, Mother."

“I will not give up my wish to get you settled into a home of your own, and you needn’t act as if it were unnatural for me to feel so. You need a husband, Kathleen, and I mean to find you one.” Her eyes cut around slyly to her exasperated daughter. “And you need some loving to sweeten you up, too. Do not tell me you that do not need a man. I am your mother, and I know better. And in your heart, you know that I am right.”

And with that last wicked barb, she swished over to her husband, who was now standing beside and speaking animatedly with the new Doctor. She hooked her arm through Arnold’s, smiling sweetly up at Duncan Murdoch. He looked charmed, and Kathleen hissed like a tea kettle on the boil as he raised Lanny’s hand to his mouth.

“She is probably over there regaling him with every virtue that I possess,” she said in Maggie’s ear. “And if she cannot think of any virtues, she will make some up. Before dinner is over, he will be thinking that I am pining away for him,” she finished glumly. “Do not laugh. She has done this to me before.”

Maggie laughed anyway, she could not help it. “I am sorry, Kathleen,” she said. “But your mother is like a little battering ram, is she not?”

“You do not know the half of it,” Kathleen said. “I would bet money that she has already invited him to dinner at our house, and that we will accidentally run into him a dozen times in the next week. Wait and see.”

“Did you not ever want to get married?” Maggie asked curiously. “Was there ever a time when you just longed to have a home and family of your own?”

Her eyes glued themselves to Nick lovingly as she waited for Kathleen’s answer. He, too, wore black trousers and evening coat, but the vest that peeked through was a rose brocade. His clothes fit his frame to perfection; there was not a wrinkle to be found on the long lines of his trouser legs, and the breadth of his shoulders in the well-cut jacket was breathtaking.

“Just because you are pining away for love does not mean that I am,” Kathleen said acerbically. Her gaze fell beneath Maggie’s sudden hurt look, and she sighed. “I am sorry, Maggie, I just get jittery when my mother starts up. I do think that Nick is perfect for you, but he is a dunderhead about women and always has been. You are going to have to knock him in the head and drag him to the altar, I am afraid.”

“I do not want to marry him,” Maggie said softly. “I do not want to be married ever again.

And I will not.”

“Never is a very long time,” said a deep, gentle voice from behind them, and they both started.

Kathleen looked up–way up–into crystal blue, piercing eyes, and felt a funny flutter in her stomach. Duncan smiled down at her calmly, one huge hand resting on his cane, taking his time looking her over. She felt a rush of heat when his gaze rested on her bosom for a moment longer than was polite. Kathleen bristled at his unabashed appraisal of her face and figure. She was not some horse that he was thinking of buying.

“It is quite rude to sneak up on private conversations, sir,” she said tartly. She let her eyes rake over the long length of him slowly and pointedly. He was the biggest man she had ever seen, and she admitted grudgingly to herself, one of the most attractive. This man had done some hard physical labor in his time or he was blessed with a naturally fit physique. “And staring is not so very polite, either.”

He smiled, his teeth a flash of white in his dark face, the scar on his right side crinkling up. Kathleen’s eyes were drawn to it. Absently, she noted that it took nothing away from his rugged good looks, added to it, in fact. The scar made him seem slightly wicked and dangerous. Some women might like that, but she certainly did not. She was not some flirty young thing who liked to play with fire. Fire burned, and she knew very well to keep her hands out of it.

“What happened to your face?” she asked bluntly, and heard her mother gasp as she walked up behind her. Kathleen ignored her.

“An accident when I was a child,” he said tranquilly.

“And your leg?”

Kathleen heard her mother hiss behind her and tug on her arm. She ignored the entreaty from behind of ‘Kathleen, behave yourself!’ and never took her eyes from his. Maggie watched them both, her eyes suddenly speculative.

“That is a temporary condition. I broke my leg, rather badly, in a fall from a horse. It took a long time to heal, and the muscles are weak.” His eyes laughed down into hers and invited her to share in the joke. Kathleen ignored the weakness that assailed her stomach and staunchly kept her face stony and her eyes on his.

“Did you think that it was an affectation?” he asked gently.

“No, sir,” she snorted. “You are no dandy. I saw you twitching in those fancy clothes from across the room.”

Duncan threw back his head and laughed delightedly.

“Too true,” he said. “I am sure I would suffocate if I had to wear these every day. You have sharp eyes, Miss Donaldson.”

And a sharp little tongue, he added silently to himself. I think that I would like to show you other uses for that tongue besides cutting men to pieces. He moved closer to her, until he could feel the heat from her body. A blush spread over her face, and from this distance Duncan could smell the sweet, spicy scent of her. His nostrils flared, his hand tightened on his cane, and he felt a hot rush of desire sweep through his body with the speed of lightning. Her scent owed nothing to artifice; it was not perfume, but a combination of soap and warm woman, and it was as suddenly familiar to him as his own face in a mirror. He held Kathleen’s eyes with his own, and he knew that she felt the connection between them the same as he did, for he saw her hand tremble as she raised it to touch the tendrils of hair falling from her coiffure. His eyes dropped to her lush, rosy mouth, and he contemplated sweeping her up and away with him as both his Cheyenne and Scottish ancestors would have done.