Spring Blossom (22 page)

She groaned and turned her head away,
mortified by this discussion. Her rosy complexion turned to a
deeper hue as he spoke, and now she could not face him.

Seeing her embarrassment, Hunter decided to
end the lesson. He silently pulled her against his chest and
wrapped his arms gently around her, amazed that she would permit
such an action. “Do you understand?” he asked softly. “Do you
realize the power you have gained with that bit of knowledge?”

She slowly nodded her head against his
chest.

“Remember, you have the skills to gain
control of the situation.” He ran his palm lightly down her arm and
then he released her.

Margaret had collected herself somewhat by
this time, although she felt foolish on many levels. And, talking
about a man’s anatomy was not something she did every day. Still,
she was glad to have the knowledge he had shared with her. If only
she had known these things a year ago, perhaps she might have
escaped before she’d been struck unconscious.

CHAPTER 15

During the few remaining hours before they
reached Hunter’s home, Maggie had ample opportunity to mull over
his morning games of kissing. It was true she had noticed something
she’d never before experienced when she had kissed him, when he had
lightly caressed her. And it caused her considerable concern. She
was confused and somewhat anxious now because, quite simply, she
wanted to experience more. The control he had granted her, the
nearness of their bodies and their lips and the sensations that had
stunned her, made her wonder just how much more he would allow
before he became the typical male and took malicious charge of the
situation between them. It was true that the touch of his hand had
produced in her a yearning that stemmed from her imagination; from
a girl’s dreams of what it would be like to be touched in other
places by a man of her choosing; to be touched gently, tenderly, as
he had touched her face. She realized these thoughts were futile
and tried to shrug them off. After all, they were just dreams and,
as she now knew, had no basis in reality. Besides, he probably
hadn’t liked her kisses. How could he? She was completely lacking
in experience and, added to that flaw, she was no longer
pretty.

She stared at his hands as they capably held
the reins of the matched bays. She had watched those hands quiet a
nervous animal and knew them to be gentle, but she had also watched
those hands lift and work, and she knew them to be extremely
strong. Margaret also knew that the day would come when he would
put those hands on her with more in mind that a silly game of
kissing, and she could not help but shudder at the thought.

Hunter’s attention was drawn to her as the
quiver that ran through her body brought their shoulders into brief
contact. “What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly breaking the long
silence.

“Nothing.”

His frown deepened when she would not look
at him. “’Nothing’ would not set you to trembling. Are you
ill?”

“I’m not ill.”

“Why does genuine concern make you
snappish?” he prodded.

Still feeling peevish, she countered his
question with one of her own. “Why did you marry me?”

He was startled by her question and pulled
back on the reins to halt the bays even as he turned on the wagon
seat to face her. “Where did that come from?”

Margaret’s right hand rose and fell in
agitation as she continued to stare straight ahead. “I’ve asked
myself since morning why you really married me and I can’t come up
with a logical answer.”

Hunter softened his demeanor in the face of
her anxiety; he realized her mind must have been working
frantically for the past hour or two. He placed both sets of reins
in his right hand and attempted to turn her face in his direction.
“Look at me,” he said softly when she stubbornly refused to look at
him. He dropped his hand to his lap then, not wanting to use
physical pressure to make her turn. “I thought we had settled this.
What has brought this on, Maggie?”

And, she exploded before his eyes. “I’m
going to a place I don’t know, to live with people I do not know.
And I am going there with a man I don’t know…and do not wish to
know. Does that explain it to you?” she cried.

He thought that was fairly clear.

Hunter returned his gaze to the backs of the
bays for a moment, sorting through his thoughts and struggling for
a means to diffuse her unease. Of course she was afraid. Everything
would be new to her, and she would not even have the luxury of
turning to a husband she loved when she needed comfort. Most brides
had that much, at least.

“I’m not a cruel man, Maggie. You must know
that. It was not, nor will it ever be my intention to hurt you in
any way. I know that you must be anxious about your new home. But
the people you will be meeting are good people. They’re looking
forward to your arrival.”

Startled by that bit of information, she
glared at him. “You told them about me?”

“Of course. I returned to your father’s
house for you. Why would I not tell my closest friends about the
woman I was going to marry?”

“But you knew a girl,” she raged.

“That’s correct,” he said quietly. “I knew a
girl who had great potential and who has now blossomed into a
beautiful young woman.”

“Don’t try to flatter me.”

“A woman who happens to have a bad temper,”
he muttered. And then he turned to face her more fully. “Do you
think I would tell you that just to hear myself talk?”

“I think you have other motives,” she threw
back.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed,” he
murmured. “And what might those be?”

“I think all you want is…” Unable to
complete the sentence, she turned away from the heated look in his
eyes.

“You do me an injustice,” he said angrily,
fully understanding the implication behind her unfinished
statement. “And I can find ‘that’ anywhere.” On that note he
slapped the reins against the horses’ rumps and the wagon lurched
forward.

She recoiled from his anger, knowing she had
gone too far. Knowing, too, this was a very different kind of anger
than she had ever experienced from him before. And now she wondered
about the repercussions of this blunder on her part. She couldn’t
hope that he was angry enough to send her back to her father. She
knew instinctively that that was not going to happen. She also felt
that, as she was alone in the middle of nowhere with him, she
should try and bring about a truce, at least temporarily. “I’m
sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to anger you.”

He laughed caustically. “Really?”

“Hunter, I’m trying to…” What? She didn’t
know anymore.

He sighed. Hunter was beginning to think
he’d been wrong in giving her time to adjust to her new home and to
him. Obviously, instead of becoming more comfortable with him, she
was building additional mental barriers against him. Perhaps it was
time to discuss their relationship, and their future, in more blunt
terms than he had used in the past. “You are my wife, and I will
make love with you, Maggie, but it will not be rape,” he added
quietly but firmly as he studied the road ahead. In his peripheral
vision he noted that she was now looking at him, and he spoke again
before she could interrupt and further complicate the discussion.
“What I said is true. I could satisfy my lust anywhere and with any
woman, if that were my desire and my ‘motive’ as you so kindly put
it.”

“Hunter, I…”

“Please allow me to finish,” he put in, and
Margaret fell silent, studying her hands in her lap. “Therefore, we
might deduce that my interest in you is not driven solely by
passion. Would that be fair to say?” He turned his head long enough
to see her reluctantly agree by a single nod of her head. “Don’t
take that to mean I don’t want you that way,” he added bluntly. “I
desperately want to make love you, and there other things I want,
Maggie. I want us to build a relationship that will grow stronger
with the years, I want us to raise a family and grow old watching
the sunsets together.” He looked at her boldly as she rubbed the
palms of her hands up and down the legs of her britches. “Would you
consider those reasonable hopes for the future?”

Her eyes darted to his and away again. “Yes,
reasonable.”

"And could you desire such things for
yourself, and with me?”

Margaret hesitated but eventually nodded her
head, feeling very small for what she had been thinking about
him.

“Then how do we go about attaining our
dreams, my dear?”

When she did not speak, he prompted, “Would
a little mutual trust be a good jumping-off point?”

After a moment, she agreed with a softly
spoken, “Yes.”

Hunter sighed. “If you only learn two things
about me, little one,” he breathed, “know this; I will always
protect you and I will never willingly hurt you.”

But she knew that last statement was a lie;
eventually he would hurt her.

*

Hunter stopped the team a short distance
from his farm, allowing Margaret time to change into the traveling
suit she had worn the first day of their trip. When she returned to
the wagon, she looked fresh and dignified, and she hid her
nervousness well, he thought. It was obvious that she was nervous
about meeting his friends, for she had brushed her hair and left it
down so that it fell forward over her shoulders and acted as a
shield for the scar on her face. This surprised him, since she had
flaunted the scar at their first reunion. Then he remembered that
her intent at that time had been to drive him away. It seemed she
did not have the same desire toward his friends. How was he ever
going to convince her that the scar did not detract from her beauty
or her desirability?

Margaret’s interest was piqued when they
turned off the main road and entered a long narrow lane. The
weathered two-storey house was set on an incline somewhat higher
than the road, and a huge oak tree seemed to bow over the place. To
the left, and set still farther back, she saw a barn, a few smaller
outbuildings, and what looked like an apple orchard beyond. While
the place could not be termed pretty, it did have a certain
serenity and charm about it.

“We’re not far from Danville,” Hunter
explained as Margaret looked around at fields of tobacco and corn
and, to her right, another orchard of fruit-laden trees. “We take
our tobacco to auction there and sell most of our fruit and
produce; some to local merchants but the majority is shipped from
Danville north by rail. Some fruits and vegetables, of course, we
preserve for ourselves. It won’t be long before I’ll have to round
up picking crews,” he added. “You can come with me if you like and
see what the town is all about.”

Margaret smiled; she would like that. Just
knowing civilization of some sort was nearby was a comfort.

“Well, here we are,” he said, feeling
slightly apprehensive; it was more important to him than he
realized that she like his home and his friends. He very much
wanted her, eventually, to be happy here, and even though his farm
was not so large or grand as Treemont, he could provide for her
well with what he had.

He drove the team around the house and
followed the lane that ambled off toward the large barn. Near a
side door of the house, he pulled the team up, wrapped the reins
securely around the brake handle, and jumped to the ground. But
before he could walk around to Margaret’s side of the wagon and
help her down, the outer door flew open and a feminine voice
demanded his attention.

“About time you got her here!” Marie-Louise
called, running down the steps from the porch that circled the
house on three sides. She was a plain young woman of eighteen years
whose auburn hair had frizzed in the southern Virginia humidity,
but her smile could light up anyone’s day. “What took you so long?”
she admonished, cuffing Hunter’s shoulder much to Margaret
amazement.

Marie-Louise took one look at the two
stallions tied to the sides of the wagon and frowned, keeping her
distance as she muttered, “More of those dang creatures.”

“Watch your mouth,” Hunter said firmly.

She ignored him, turning a radiant smile up
to Maggie. “Hi!” She extended her hand upward. “I’m Marie-Louise
Winter, in case his nibs forgot to tell you.” She noticed
Margaret’s gloves and pulled her hand back, wiping it on her apron
before extending it once again. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said as
she shook Margaret’s hand. “I’m sick of my own company, and these
men don’t talk about nothin’ but crops.” She whirled on Hunter who
was leaning against the side of the wagon grinning. “Mr. Maguire,
you help her down here now.” Then she flashed another smile at
Margaret. “I’ll make you some cool lemonade, if he ever gets you
down here.”

Hunter laughed. “Slow down, for Maggie’s
sake,” he teased, having given up trying to tame Marie-Louise
months ago. “And come here and give me a property greeting.”

Marie-Louise flew at him then, her arms
going around his neck with no hesitation, while Hunter squeezed her
waist. “I missed you,” she said before stepping back, dropping her
arms to her sides as he grinned down at her.

“I won’t tell Jeffrey you said that,” he
teased, and she laughed.

“Jeffrey won’t care,” she returned proudly.
“I love him enough so he won’t ever feel threatened.”

Margaret was stunned and a little bit hurt
that this girl could speak and act so casually with Hunter when
she, his wife, continuously tripped over her tongue or made him
angry. She would have to think about all of this once she was
alone. And, there seemed to be something naughty in Marie-Louise’s
statement about loving Jeffrey!

“Besides, you have your own wife,”
Marie-Louise continued, turning back to Margaret. “You’ve got to
have patience with him, Miss Maggie. He’s like the other men around
here…slow.”