LITMIR.BIZ

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until her legs touched the cot against the far wall.

      “Miss Hampton?”

      Her derriere sank onto the blanket. With a supreme effort she closed her eyes to blot out the bronzed skin of his bare chest, his sinewy shoulders and arms. Mary Margaret, you are hallucinating!

      Voices came up the hill. Someone—it must be Colonel Randall—stepped across the porch and pulled her front door shut.

      “Tomorrow…”

      She heard his words as clearly as if they were spoken at her bedside.

      “Tomorrow, Mick, I want a lock put on this door.”

      Oh, yes, Meggy thought with relief. A lock was exactly what she needed. A lock would surely keep her safe.

      By the time Meggy woke, the sun was high overhead in a sky so blue and clear it looked like a cerulean-painted china bowl. She breathed in the warm, pine-scented air and bolted upright. Mercy, she’d overslept!

      With hurried motions she washed her face and arms, pulled on her blue sateen skirt, a white waist and a plain cotton apron, and bound up her hair in a neat black net.

      Cautiously she cracked open the front door. No sign of men. No sign of the deer, save for a mashed-down patch of dry grass. Skirting the area, she gathered small sticks and an apronful of pinecones, then started a fire in the wood stove. When it caught, she fed it pine chips apparently left over from construction of her cabin and small sections of a tree stump that had been chopped up and left in chunks. Then she rolled up her sleeves and set to work.

      Using a smooth glass bottle of Molly More Rosewater as a rolling pin, she pressed the lump of dough into a round flat circle, laid it in the skillet she’d borrowed from the cookhouse, and crimped the edges with her thumb and forefinger. With the pocketknife she always carried in her reticule, she peeled the apples she’d taken from Fong’s pantry, sliced them into the pie shell and sprinkled her pocketful of sugar over the top. A dollop of molasses would have been nice, but she could manage without it. It was one thing to carry a tea towel full of flour and butter, but a handful of sticky syrup?

      When the oven was hot, she shoved the skillet in, rinsed off her hands and busied herself gathering more wood to replenish the fire while the pie baked.

      Oh, it did smell heavenly, even without the cinnamon she usually sprinkled over the apples. The sweet-tart scent made her mouth water. Papa used to say she could make a pie so tender and delicious it was like an angel’s breath melting in his mouth.

      To her sister Charlotte the good Lord gave the gift of words. To Hope and Charity, keen eyesight and skill with a crochet hook. To Addie, a singing voice that could reduce a congregation to tears.

      But to me, Mary Margaret, God gave the ability to cook.

      When the pie was golden-brown, she wrapped her apron around her hand, slid the bubbling confection out of the oven and set the skillet on the windowsill to cool.

      Unable to stop herself, she twirled about the room until she was giddy. It was a silly thing to do, but at this moment she didn’t care one bit. Her daring venture would be a success, she just knew it!

      Off in the distance she heard the crash and thump of a falling tree. Somewhere in the woods beyond were twelve hungry loggers. All she needed was a bit of patience and the Lord’s own luck.

      She eyed the cooling pie and smiled.

      Meggy dipped her bare toe in the slow-moving river and shivered. She didn’t care what Colonel Randall said, she desperately wanted a bath and a chance to wash her clothes and her hair. Her scalp tingled at the thought of soapsuds. With the men out cutting trees, she couldn’t see the sense in advising the colonel of her plans, as he had requested. What could he possibly care about her personal habits?

      Despite the bright sun beating down on it, the water was ice cold. She pulled her arms in close to her body. Rivers at home in Chester County were generally tepid by late summer. Out here in the West, everything was colder, bigger, steeper, rougher. And more frightening.

      She waded in until the clear water covered her knees, then submerged the bundle of clothes she carried and tossed a bar of rose-scented soap on top of them. Standing naked in the shallows, she scrubbed her black traveling dress, two petticoats, her underdrawers, even her shimmy. Soft, warm air brushed against her skin, and she sighed with satisfaction. Her apple pie was cooling in the window, and now her laundry was done.

      She wrung out the sopping garments, waded to shore and draped them over a sun-drenched chokecherry bush. By the time she’d washed her hair and dunked her hot, sticky body in the cool river water, her clothes would be dry enough to put on.

      Bending at the waist, she unpinned her hair and sloshed water over the heavy chestnut waves, then worked up a lather with her fingers. Oh, how blessed it was to feel clean again! She took a deep breath, leaned forward to dive into the blue-green water, and froze.

      Voices floated from the woods behind her. Men’s voices.

      Good heavens, the logging crew! Meggy clapped one hand over her mouth to suppress a squeal. She plunged in neck deep just in time to see Colonel Randall stride into view at the head of a straggly line of slow-footed workers. Two loggers, the Swede and the plump, sweet-faced man called Orrin, carried a two-man crosscut saw across their shoulders.

      Dear God, the colonel was heading straight for the chokecherry bush! He would see her garments and know in an instant she had disobeyed his orders. Worse, she was stuck out here in this freezing water with her hair piled up under a tower of soapsuds.

      She sank into the water up to her chin, and her teeth began to chatter.

      She watched him approach, saw him hesitate as the chokecherry came into his view. Her bent knees began to ache.

      Suddenly the colonel quickened his pace. Meggy groaned. He had spied her dress, her petticoats, her…Oh, how perfectly mortifying!

      Barely breaking stride, he gathered up the items, rolling them into a wet ball as he walked, and tucked them under one arm. Without a backward glance he kept moving, staying well ahead of the men lagging behind him.

      When their voices died away, Meggy dunked her head under the surface and swam to shore. Her skin sprouted goose bumps as big as June bugs as she waded out of the river. Heaven help her, she had not one single scrap to clothe herself in except for her shoes! How was she to get back to her cabin?

      In disbelief, she circled the chokecherry bush. How could he have left her in such a fix? He was a mean, no-count lowlife if ever she’d met one. Imagine, taking advantage of a helpless…

      Something caught her eye, and she jerked to a halt. There, in the crotch of that young maple tree—what was that dark roll poking out?

      Her clothes! Wadded up in a ball and wet as rainwater.

      She snatched them up and with shaking hands pulled on the dripping garments, starting with her underdrawers. Her skin shrank at the feel of the damp, clingy muslin.

      That dreadful man!

      Every step of the way back to the cabin she rehearsed the stinging words she would level at the colonel when she confronted him.

      Tom leaned back on the plank porch, supporting his weight on one elbow. He’d sent the crew on ahead with the promise of venison steaks for dinner, and now he waited for Mary Margaret Hampton. He worked his thumbnail into the wood, outlining a curved half-moon that looked like the letter C.

      C for cantankerous. C for crazy. Chuckle-headed. Calico-hungry. All that and more. His crew was an obstreperous bunch of misfits, and it had taken half the season to turn them into a team. He’d almost lost another man today when that idiot bullwhacker Sam Turner got to showing off and one of the young Claymore boys slipped under the mule team.

      On top of that, he was saddled with a cotton-headed female. By damn, he was in no mood for any nonsense, especially not from a little slip of a woman whose sense of independence outweighed her brain power.

      When

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