Chapter Ten #4
“I’ll walk you home,” Ian said.
“You can stay as long as you like,” Lyssa said coolly.
“I’m ready to go home,” Ian answered. She could feel him stare at her although she refused to even glance at him.
No one wanted them to leave. The women all called for Ian to stay and the men begged Lyssa to stay. Mr. Anderson shouted that another dance was forming and no one should leave now, but the time had come. Lyssa was exhausted and needed her rest for the next day.
They took off in the dark, she and Ian holding the children and Maggie and Jean supporting each other.
Ian fell into step beside her. “You’re angry.”
“Over what?” Lyssa asked breezily while inside she seethed.
“You know what.”
“That you were kissing two women?” Lyssa managed a tolerably good shrug even with the boy’s head on her shoulder. “What you do is none of my concern, Mr. Campion.”
“Liar.”
Lyssa whipped her head around to confront him. “I beg your pardon?” she demanded in a voice that could have frozen water.
“Oh, stop that upper-class cold shoulder. You’re in a great pout and for what? Because I was kissing someone?” He snorted. “We have a full moon, a bit of whiskey, good music, and a willing lass. There is nothing wrong with kissing. At least not where I come from.”
“Willing lasses,” she corrected. “Don’t you believe you were being a bit greedy?” She didn’t wait for an answer but informed him, “This is really none of my concern. You are paid to protect me and if you think grabbing women in the bushes is giving my father his money’s worth—”
“You weren’t in any danger. And you were having as good a time as I was.”
That was true, but Lyssa didn’t want to admit it.
In fact, for some perverse reason, she relished picking this argument with him.
It was good to keep him at a distance, even comforting.
“Mr. Campion, this conversation between us is finished. Believe me when I say I don’t care what you were doing with those women.
You could have been fornicating,” she said dramatically, using the boldest, worst word she could think of in her vocabulary, a word she’d never been brave enough to use before, “and I would not care.”
His reaction was swift. “You are being damned silly.”
That was not the response she had anticipated. Her temper was ready to go up in flames except he moved away, the set of his mouth grim, placing Jean and Maggie between them, both women too tired to care about an argument between “brother and sister.”
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the Andersons’ farm. They helped Maggie put the boys to bed. Her two older sons were going to stay with friends in the village.
Lyssa didn’t wait to say good night to Ian but marched off to her little room, shut the door, and hooked the latch.
Moonlight lit the barn but her room was darker than pitch.
She had to feel her way to the shabby cot.
Removing her shoes and her belt, she wrapped herself in her plaid, expecting to fall asleep instantly.
She didn’t…or perhaps she dozed. She wasn’t certain.
All she knew is that she heard a scratching on the closed door. “Ian! Ian, let me in,” a woman’s whispered voice said.
Lyssa lay still, immediately recognizing the Widow Potter.
“Ian?”
Then there was silence. Lyssa strained her hearing. Had the widow found him? She heard voices whispering beyond the door.
She sat up, pushing aside her plaid.
This was not her business.
Ian was his own man. As he’d said earlier, he didn’t answer to her.
However, he was being paid to protect her, not flirt with women, and Lyssa came face to face with a hard truth.
She was jealous.
For a second, she sat quiet, uncomfortable with this new emotion.
Or was it an old one?
For the first time, she recognized how jealous she was of the Duchess, the wife her father had chosen to replace her mother, a jealousy she’d denied. Nor did she like confronting how childishly she’d behaved to her stepmother over the past three years.
She pushed unwelcome thoughts aside, but having these feelings now over Ian…?
Knowing she shouldn’t, Lyssa rose and tiptoed to the door. She leaned her ear against it. There was no more whispering, but there were sounds—soft sighs and a feminine laugh that was quickly squelched and turned into a gasp of surprise.
Lyssa stared at the door, wishing she could see right though it.
She couldn’t. And she could not stand here any longer pretending nothing was happening. She had to see for herself. Maybe then she’d rid herself of this silly infatuation over Ian. She pulled on her shoes, lacing them quickly, flicked up the latch and threw open the door.
The moonlight gave the barn a silvery glow, but she didn’t see anyone.
Listening, she heard a strange, rhythmic noise in the stall nearest the tack room.
Curiosity propelled her forward. Quietly, she took one step after another until the stall came into view and Lyssa caught sight of a naked Widow Potter bouncing up and down on a man lying in the hay whose breeches were around his ankles.