Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04] (13 page)

“I’m not through talking to you.”

“Then we have a problem, for I’m no in the habit of being
dismissed.”

“You’re my wife,” he said, as if that one fact should make
her submissive.

She paused, turning. “Aye, I am your wife, but I came with a
marriage certificate,
not
a bill of sale.”

Maggie knew when there was a storm brewing, and the idea of
crossing broadswords with this accomplished man was both terrifying and
exhilarating. But something told her that jumping into a fight with him now
wasn’t the wisest way to go about things. He was cynical and a bit of a
hothead. If she gave in to her temper, she would be a hothead as well. Two
hotheads never resolved anything, as far as she knew. One of them must be calm
and levelheaded. Thanks be to God that He had seen fit to give her a liberal
dose of both. Patience and understanding would serve her far better than a
temper and hostile words.

When her thoughts gradually wandered back to him, she
noticed he was looking at her strangely. She also noticed some of the bluster
had gone from him. When he spoke, his tone was almost cordial. “My brother
wrote that you’re a titled lady, and educated.”

“Aye, I willna disappoint you there, I ken.”

“And your father is a duke.”

“My father isna quite that high on the peerage charts. He is
an earl.”

“You don’t seem to be the sort of woman who would marry a
man by proxy and sail around the globe to live in a wild, savage land with a
man you’ve never met.”

“And you dinna seem to be the kind of man to order a wife
through the mail.”

“How did my brother find you?”

“He didna find me. I’ve known Annabella and Ross for several
years. After reading your letter and the list of things you were looking
for—quite a
long
list, I must say—they decided I was the perfect choice.
They came together, to my father’s home, and made the offer to me.”

“And you accepted.”

She dipped low in a curtsy. “Aye, as you can see, for I am
here.”

She turned toward the house and began walking. He took the
easel and the paint box from her and walked at her side, leading his horse.

“I didna accept right away,” she went on to say. “That isna
the sort of thing a lady would accept right off, you ken.”

“I wouldn’t think it was the sort of thing a lady of your
breeding would accept at all. What softened you to the idea? My brother’s
convincing persuasion, or the fact that I’m a very wealthy man?”

“Neither. It was your letters, some twenty or thirty of them
written over the past ten years. After reading them, I felt I knew more about
you, knew you as a person, understood you.”

He stopped, not looking at her, but staring out over the
rippling expanse of water. “If you understood me, madam, you would have chosen
not to come.”

“If you understood me, you would know that is precisely why
I did.”

His eyes returned to her, probing her face, the depths of
her eyes. “Something isn’t right here,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is, but
something isn’t right.”

“Is that to be your excuse then, your reason for sending me
back?”

“I won’t have to send you. Sooner or later, you’ll choose to
leave of your own accord.”

Maggie locked eyes with him for a moment. There were so many
thoughts of him running through her mind. Her heart began to hammer.

“Are you so certain?”

“I am.” He turned away, walking briskly.

Her heart went out to this man, and she suddenly understood
that she would be good for him. She would be something constant and permanent
in his life, someone he could depend upon. Although she shuddered at the
comparison, Adrian did remind her of a little dog she had found and brought
home with her as a child. It was a small terrier that had been so abused that
it growled and snarled whenever anyone came near. For weeks Maggie had fed the
dog, sitting on the stoop, watching him eat, speaking to him in soft tones.
Gradually the dog had allowed her near him without baring his teeth at her.
Over a period of weeks, her persistence, her gentle care and loving hand, had
proven stronger than the memory of pain and abuse. From the moment he had first
licked her hand, he had been a devoted friend, loyal and protective of her for
sixteen years until his death.

With a flood of tender understanding, she followed him,
keeping the pace. “I’m no a quitter, Adrian.” Her hand came out to touch his
sleeve. He stopped abruptly, turning only his head to stare at her. She dropped
her hand. “I willna leave unless you ask me to. I dinna go back on my word, and
I willna break my vow.”

He watched the way she regarded him, the dying light from
the sun fanned around her like an aura, her eyes searching his questioningly,
as if she had been mistress of the big, sprawling house on the bluff for years,
and he was being considered for hire. He remained quiet.

That didn’t seem to bother her, for she smiled, her teeth
even and white. “It’s a pity you dinna have the same privilege I did, that you
couldna have a bundle of my letters by which to know me.”

“My brother wrote me all I need to know of you.”

Her face changed, but she maintained her composure. “Aye,
Ross said he would post a letter to you. What did he say? That I fulfilled your
requirements for a wife?”

“He said you would be able to give me children. I have built
an empire here. I want someone to leave it to.
That
was the reason I
sought a wife. I put that in the list Ross showed you, so it should come as no
surprise. You would do well to remember that and refrain from trying to
embellish it.”

“There is nothing wrong with wanting children, Adrian.”

Her voice was low. He felt a stab of desire. “Perhaps you
misunderstood,” he said after a pause. “That was my
sole
purpose for
wanting a wife.” He didn’t know why he was persisting as he was, why he wanted
to jar her composure. Unless it was to ruin the sense of peace that surrounded
her.

He needn’t have concerned himself. She wasn’t jarred. “It’s
an honest reason, I ken, and a valid one. I love children and I greatly admire
honesty.”

“Then if it’s honesty you want, I’ll tell you now not to
expect any of the ordinary things from me that go along with marriage. I have
no intention of felling in love. Ever.”

“Why?”

His eyes narrowed and his voice was cold, hurtful. “Because
I’m still in love with my brother’s wife.”

She flinched from his mention of his brother’s wife. It
suddenly occurred to her how happy she should be that he was being completely
honest with her. A visible foe was much easier to defeat than an invisible one.
Besides, she had known all about Katherine before she agreed to marry Adrian.

“Does that shock you?” he asked, feeling the urge to choke
her when she smiled up at him.

“No, it doesna,” she said. “Is it supposed to?”

He shrugged. “You take it the way you take it.”

“Then I canna say I’m shocked. Ross told me about
Katherine,” she said softly, “before I came.”

The look of incredulity on his face made her heart leap with
joy. “And still you married me?”

“Aye.”

“Then you are a fool.”

“Perhaps.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why would you marry a man you knew to be
in love with someone else?”

“I had my reasons.”

“I’m sure you did,” he said, “but I can’t help being curious
to know what they were.”

“They were basically the same as yours.”

“Children?”

“Loneliness.”

About that time, Israel, winded from his chase, came loping
over the hill toward them, running and barking.

Maggie drew up short, her hand resting on Israel’s warm,
golden head as she watched Adrian lengthen his stride and pull ahead of her. He
was a strange one, all right, with more layers than an onion.

Hout! Onions could be dealt with. An onion made you cry
when you cut it, but there were no tears when you peeled it, layer by layer.
She almost laughed outright at the thought that she was comparing her husband
to an onion.

Yet, there were worse comparisons.

Aye, there are, at that.
Her eyes rested on the hind
end of Adrian’s horse.

Clapping her hands over her mouth, she stood and watched him
walk away, unable to find anything but humor in his sudden display of almost
childlike anger.

It wasn’t anger that spurred Adrian on, but the shock of
reality. For over ten years he had been his own man, organizing his life in
such a way that no one would ever be instrumental in guiding the course of his
life as Alex and Katherine had once done. By the time they had returned to
Texas, Adrian had come to realize that being in control of his own life was of
utmost importance. The sudden shock of reality had come just moments before,
when he realized abruptly that by his marriage to this determined yet soft
spoken woman, he had enlarged the sphere of his life to include another person,
that now he had to consider another being when making the decisions that
affected his life.

Once he reached the steps of the house, he turned to find
she was no longer following him, but had propped her canvas against a boulder,
so she could give her attention to Israel, throwing a stick, then laughing as
he bounded after it, only to come loping back to her, dropping the stick at her
feet, barking and jumping his encouragement to throw it again, which she did.

She was an accommodating creature, one who could be riled,
but not easily so, with, it seemed, infinite patience and a forgiving nature.
He could have done worse, he supposed.

Again and again, he watched her throw the stick, laughing at
Israel’s antics.

She will be good with children.

His eyes blazed a deep cobalt blue, dark and brooding with
the shadows of pain and regret. He sought Maggie, taking in the fiery blonde of
her hair against the red-gold tones of evening sun that streaked the sky.

He hated reddish blonde hair.

As far as Adrian was concerned, hair should be blonde or it
should be red, and not just red, but the rich, coppery red that was Katherine’s
hair. This woman’s hair was neither.

He watched Maggie pick up her easel and run toward the
house, Israel barking at her side. Breathless, she stopped beside Adrian, just
as he turned to open the door.

“Will you be coming down to dinner?” he asked, knowing,
after the way their first meeting had gone, that she would plead a headache, or
exhaustion, and request a tray to be sent to her room.

She laughed. “Aye, of course I am.” She wanted to say,
You
foolish, foolish man. You are no going to scare me away with such outbursts.
She
didn’t say that, of course. But she did marvel a bit at the weakness of the
stronger sex. For such a spirited, masculine man, he was using tactics that a
child wouldn’t fall for. She wanted to laugh.

If he wanted to keep her at arm’s length, he was going to
have to do a lot better than this. Too bad for him that he had stayed away
these past two weeks, for it had given her enough time to dig in, to become
familiar with her surroundings, and to learn a great deal about the man she had
married, enough to begin to feel a part of his life.

In other words, if Adrian Mackinnon wanted to drive her
away, he should have been here from the beginning, when she was new and less
certain of herself. Like an animal preparing for winter, she had had enough
time to stock up her supplies. She was prepared, and because of this, winter,
when it arrived, wasn’t much threat.

She looked at his dark scowl and felt a gush of delight. She
knew him. She knew this man, and her heart flooded with the joy of it. He was
like Scotland to her—hard, harsh, shrewd, skeptical, inhospitable to outsiders,
prejudiced, proud, resistant to change, and oh, so touching.

Once this man loved, he would be loyal, fiercely protective,
cherishing—a love for all time. His harsh exterior, his hard looks, the cynical
twist to his mouth, no longer disturbed her. His rages, when they came—and they
would come—would not be against her, but what she stood for, yet they would be
no more ruthless than a lashing by fierce winds that would soon blow over. Love
would not come easily to him, but when it came, it would be sweet and well
worth the wait. She was willing to wait for the rarely seen pleasure of loving
and being loved by a strong, uncompromising, and very difficult man.

Taking her paint box from his hand, she smiled up at him as
she passed, stepping inside the house, her image fading to a blur of paints,
easel, petticoats, and big yellow dog.

Eli and Big John Polly were waiting in the office when
Adrian arrived the next morning. “Pope and Talbot are building another mill at
Teekalet,” Big John said.

Eli looked at Big John. He looked at Adrian. “We just got
word from Captain Kline when he dropped anchor this morning,” he said.

“Damn,” Adrian swore, throwing his gloves on his desk. “Then
the talk in San Francisco wasn’t all hearsay after all.” He braced his hands
flat against the desk, leaning forward and staring down at the scattered
papers. That bastard Pope was going to be the death of him, or at least the
ruination. Ever since he and Talbot followed Adrian’s lead and ventured into
the northern timberland, they had been nothing but trouble. Not content to make
their own fortune, they were dead set upon stripping Adrian of his.

“Damn,” he swore again, moving to the window and looking out
at the mill yard, “that’s what I was afraid of.”

“I don’t understand why he waits until you build a mill, and
then he wants to build one close enough that he could spit on us if he tried,”
Eli said.

“Oh, I understand it, all right,” Adrian said. “Pope is the
culprit here. Talbot just goes along with whatever Pope decides.”

“What can he hope to gain?” Eli asked. “There’s enough
timber in these parts to keep us all in lumber for years. Why does he have to
set up right in our back door?”

Adrian turned away from the window. “He isn’t just after the
timber. He wants to drive us out of business.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Big John said. “There’s
room for all of us.”

“We’ve spent years setting up our foreign markets. Our
contacts and agents are the best to be had. It wasn’t something that just
happened overnight. Their Puget Mill Company needs foreign markets. Pope wants
to drive us out of business and take over ours. It’s as simple as that.” Adrian
was silent a moment. “I had word over two months ago that Pope had someone sniffing
around Valparaiso, then I heard the same thing from Sydney.” He picked up a
letter lying on his desk. “Three weeks ago I received this letter from Hong
Kong.”

“Same thing?” asked Eli.

“Same thing,” said Adrian, tossing the paper back on the
desk.

Big John moved to the map on the wall, studying it for a
minute or two. “Then we’ll probably get the same report from Manila and
Shanghai,” he said, pointing to each place in turn.

“And don’t forget Honolulu,” Eli said, moving to the map and
poking a finger in the general vicinity of the Hawaiian islands. “They won’t
overlook that one either.”

“No, they won’t overlook a thing,” said Adrian. “You can
count on it.”

After another half hour, they carried their discussion
outside to stand on the porch for a spell, so Adrian could have himself a chew
without having to worry about where he spit.

After the two men left, Adrian went back to his desk, his
forehead resting in his hand, thinking about Talbot and Pope—at least he
tried
to think about Talbot and Pope, but after a few minutes, thoughts of the Puget
Mill Company were superseded by thoughts of another nature entirely.

There was no way around it. He had taken a wife, and his
life had changed. He hadn’t expected this to happen, but it had. The question
now was, what could he do about it?

This whole marriage business wasn’t going according to plan.
He wanted a wife to give him legitimate heirs, not to fill his head with
thoughts like a swarm of gnats. Of course, it wasn’t his wife’s fault he was
spending too much time thinking about her, time he needed to attend to more
important things like his business.

In his earlier years, Adrian thought women were people you
tipped your hat to, or gave your seat to, or stood up for when they entered the
room. As the years had passed, Adrian learned that a certain part of his
anatomy did just that: it stood up whenever a woman entered the room. And that
was when his penis, heretofore used for the sole purpose of relieving himself,
became the source of another kind of stress, one that he couldn’t as easily
relieve himself of—at least not in certain places, say, church, for instance.
He also noticed that this particular kind of stress came whether he was around
women, or when he lay in bed at night, thinking about them.

He had been around men all his life and had never spent more
than five minutes talking to any woman other than Katherine Simon or her sister
Karin. Whores, he decided, did not count, most especially since he wasn’t given
much to talking to whores anyway.

All this thinking reminded him of his first meeting with his
wife yesterday. It was then that Adrian decided he would have been a whole lot
better off if Alex had been there to do the talking for him. He had to admit he
was awkward as hell around women, and he had never before been near a real,
honest-to-God lady before. Each time he remembered talking to her down by the
cliffs, he cringed. It didn’t take a wise man to realize he had not only put
both feet in his mouth more times than he would like to remember, but that he
had managed to wedge his boots in there as well. It was amazing to him that
this strange-talking woman was speaking to him at all.

He thought about the way she had seated herself across from
him at dinner last night, her body outlined in perfectly exquisite detail by a
dark blue dress trimmed with rose, her waist so small, everything above and
below seemed to blossom. Fighting the desire to drag her across the table and
make love to her on the spot, he was feeling a little put out because of the
discomfort he was feeling.

She, apparently, was feeling no such discomfort, for she
went on smoothly ladling her soup, asking him first one question and then
another about life around a lumber mill. He was finding it distracting to talk
about business when his mind seemed bent on reminding him of the way she
smelled, all clean and sweet like, when he had leaned close to her to push in
her chair. Katherine had always smelled clean, like soap. Whores suffered the
opposite affliction, bathing themselves in toilet water and steering clear of
soap and water. Maggie was the first woman he had ever known to smell like
both.

By the time their salmon steaks arrived, he had begun to
think about what he wanted to do with her. If he was going to have those heirs
he wanted, then he was going to have to do something about getting her out of
the bed she had been sleeping in and into his.

Running a lumber mill was never this hard.

It was apparent to him during the length of the meal that he
had not given the matter much thought before taking a wife. This woman was
going to be here night after night, sharing the same house. He might be randy,
but even he couldn’t spend all his time for the next thirty or forty years in
bed, making love. What would they do in the meantime? And what in the hell
could they find to talk about, day in and day out, over the course of three
meals and for the duration of the evening? There were just so many things about
his business he could tell her, so many sights he could take her to see. And
then what? He tried to remember what Alex and Katherine had done during the
short period of time she had lived here, but the memory of anything except his
feelings for her escaped him.

Over and over, all evening long, he couldn’t help wondering
if it would shock her if he simply rose to his feet and asked,
matter-of-factly, “Just what kind of things do you expect of me?”

The thought was there, but he never told her about it.

It was half past six when Adrian wound things up at the mill
and returned home. Nothing but a profound silence greeted him, a silence that
seemed to expand his feeling of restlessness. He strolled through the
downstairs rooms, seeing nothing out of the ordinary—and that was odd, since he
considered a certain Scotswoman to be something out of the ordinary.

He went to the salon and stood in front of the fireplace,
staring blankly at the picture of Katherine, his thoughts on Maggie. During all
those months since he had written that letter asking Ross to find him a wife,
he had envisioned a sweet-faced woman doing her stitchery by the window who put
it quickly aside and rose to greet him the moment he came home. Never, not
once, had he imagined walking into a dark, silent house. Turning abruptly away
from the portrait, he walked briskly down the hall.

As he was about to put his foot on the first step of the
stairway, a voice behind him said, “She takes a walk with Israel every day
about this time. You’ll probably find her down near the rocks that run along
the shore.”

Adrian turned. At least Molly was still here. “What makes
you think I’m looking for her?”

Molly was stone-faced, but her eyes held a peculiar light.
“What makes you take me for a fool?”

“What indeed,” he said, and left.

Just as Molly said, he found her wandering along the edge of
the rocky shoreline, not far from the place he had seen her the day before. She
was alone.

As he had done yesterday, he paused to watch her, seeing her
standing among the reds, pinks, and yellows of a Pacific sunset, on the brink
of a place where earth and sea seemed to collide. She had stopped to look out
over the water. It was a study of contrasts: she, standing immobile against the
brilliant rainbow colors brought to life in a shower of misty surf breaking
around sharp rocks. Here, the very earth seemed alive with color and energy,
the sunset a perfect backdrop for a dark blue ocean of frothy breakers capped
with white. She was a solitary creature, all alone in a wilderness of sea
stacks and rocky inlets, where a dense forest maintained a foothold, however
tenuous, along a steep, rock-edged coast.

He wondered if she had ever painted this particular scene,
if she had ever captured these colors, this energy, on canvas. He wondered why
he was even concerned with the fact. He urged his horse forward and rode
directly toward her, pulling even with her and noticing the far-off look in her
eyes, the almost pensive air about her.

“Hello,” he said, thinking it sounded stupid.

“I dinna hear you come,” she said, as she looked up at him
and smiled.

She was hatless, her hair braided and twisted low on the
nape. Her dress was a soft yellow, edged with white and rose. She blended with
the red and yellow sunset, and he found it difficult to see where the red-gold
tones of her hair stopped and the vivid colors of late evening began.

Adrian looked at her, wondering what she was thinking about,
his hand twisting tightly in the reins. The sun was setting, but the warmth of
it seemed to surround him. Dryness sucked at his breath. He could feel the
irregular pounding of his heart. The collar of his shirt flapped in the wind.
She was watching him now, still, silent, no show of emotion upon her face.

“Were you looking for me?” she asked.

“No,” he said, dismounting. He tried to make his tone
believable, but the word sounded contrived even to him.

“I thought you came from the direction of the house?”

“I did. I often take a ride out here after I get home.”

He looked into the huge pools of yellow-green that were her
eyes, not missing the way they widened at his lie. How smoothly she mocked him,
how effortlessly she let him know she knew he never walked among these rocks.
Yet she said nothing to contradict him, but turned away, gazing out at the
profound color. He felt anger swell in his throat, choking back his words. She,
however, seemed perfectly at ease. “I should like to paint this,” she said.

“Why don’t you?”

“Oh, I could never get the colors right. I’m far too much
the novice for that.”

“Is that why you left your paints at home?”

“No. I didn’t feel like painting today. I just felt like
walking.”

“I thought perhaps you had come down here looking for your
pot of paint.”

She turned toward him and smiled. “I’m afraid it’s halfway
to China by now. The current is very strong.”

Yes it is,
he thought, feeling his heart pound. He
didn’t say a word, for the warmth of her smile had disturbed and distracted
him. He was unable to think past the fact that she was his wife, and anything…
anything
he wanted to do with her was his right.

Come to bed with me. What in the hell is the matter with
you, Mackinnon? If you want to make love to your wife, go to her room and do
it.

“Shall we walk together?” she asked. “Do you have a certain
route you prefer to take?”

“No. I don’t really pay much attention to where I’m going.”

“Oh, that’s a pity,” she said, “for it’s so lovely here, and
there are many beautiful things you are sure to miss.”

He had expected her to be angry, or at least withdrawn,
considering his obvious rudeness the day before, and the way he had left before
dawn without bothering to tell her. But if his early departure disturbed her,
she didn’t let on.

She turned away from him, looking out over the rocks to the
endless stretch of water beyond.

“You’re thinking about Scotland.”

She turned those unbelievable eyes upon him. Today they were
like cat’s eyes, almost yellow, tinged with green. “Yes, I was.”

“Homesick?”

“I dinna ken if that’s what I feel. I’m no too sure of my
feelings just now.” She looked around her. “There are so many things about this
place that remind me of home.”

“Surely not the redwoods.”

She laughed. “No, not the redwoods—we dinna have anything so
magnificent—but the coastline is quite the same, and the fury of the sea
battering the rocks.” She closed her eyes and inhaled. “I love the smell of the
ocean. I grew up with it.” She was looking over the water now. “Sometimes I
feel such a kinship to this place…as if I had no left Scotland at all, but had
simply stepped back in time. I ken there is a newness here, an untamed wildness
that was the Scotland of old.” She turned toward the trees that ran like fringe
along the coastline. “Sometimes, when I’m sitting here, I can hear the thunder
of running horses, the clang of broadswords, and for the briefest moment, I can
see a band of kilt-clad warriors ride out of the forest, as if they were
tramping over the moor and down the burnsides.”