"Yes," she answered. "Watch." She gripped the spigots in her hands and squeezed. "See? Nothinghappens.""Try it again."

Again nothing happened."Maybe they're plugged up," she suggested and bent her head down alongside his. She turned one ofthem upward so she could see the tip. "Can you see anything?"

"No." He leaned closer."Neither can I."Joy turned the other one up. "How about now?" She gave a wee tug.A white stream of milk spewed straight past her."Oh, look!" she said, her voice filled with glee. "I did it! I did it!" She turned to Alec.The duke of Belmore's noble face dripped with milk."Oh, my goodness." She covered her mouth with a hand and watched with dread as the milk dripped from his aristocratic nose, his arrogant chin, and his jaw-which was clenched so tight his cheek had awee tic-and drops of milk dribbled down his neck.She couldn't help it. She giggled.He wiped the milk from his eyes."I'm sorry." She giggled some more. "I truly am. I didn't... I mean, you look so..."

He scowled at her, his whole body stiff with damaged pride. "So... what?"Even his arrogance couldn't keep her from laughing. "So silly. Oh, Alec!" She couldn't keep it in. "It justsquirted right past me and splat! And you looked so serious and all, but even a duke can't look seriouswith milk dripping from his face, and I just... I just..." She stopped laughing and looked straight into hisproud eyes. She placed a hand on his and patted him. "I just like you, even with milk on your face."

An odd expression of surprise and curiosity shone from his face. He just watched her, the tic slowlydisappearing from his cheek, the anger draining away. The pride was still there, but his look changed toone that held a breath-catching moment of naked longing.

She was so happy to see it that she smiled. He needed her, and that fact had just hit him.

He reached out to graze her cheek with his fingers. His eyes locked on her mouth and grew serious. Herubbed her lips, touched the mole above her upper lip.She knew that look, and her heart picked up its beat. Kiss me... kiss me... kiss me....

She knew he wanted to. The air almost vibrated with it. Her lips parted in anticipation, and she leaned forward just as he slid his hand behind her neck, pulling her mouth up to his.

Sliding one arm around his neck, she placed the other where it belonged, on his heart, feeling it beat in time with hers. At that same instant their lips touched. Their mouths opened at the same time, and his arm slipped around her and pulled her flush against him.

His other hand moved to cup the back of her head and hold her mouth against his. He tilted his head and his tongue sank inside, filling her mouth.

He kissed her. The monster was gone.

The cow shifted, and she heard the bell ring, but little mattered in this instant because she knew this was right where she should be.

The Beguiling.

To bed, to bed... What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed. Macbeth, William Shakespeare.

Chapter 15.

Alec heard the bell and knew this was not where they should be. He abruptly broke off the kiss, steeling himself to ignore his wife's little moan of surprise. Her eyes were still closed, her lips parted and moist. He felt the pull of her so deeply that he wouldn't have been surprised to see a chain linking them together. That thought sent him into another deep breath. Then he stared into a pair of dreamy gamine-green eyes. Unable to resist, he lifted a finger to her mouth, traced the line of her lips, then touched the little mole above them. With a smile she made him forget so much so easily.

"Not here." He did his best to ignore the blatant disappointment in her expression. Disappointment could not come close to describing what he felt. He would have liked nothing better than to make her his wife then and there, with the hay as their marriage bed-but they were in a bloody barn. The duke and duchess of Belmore would not couple in a barn.

With a steel will bred of too many empty years, he ignored his thoughts and nodded toward the cow, who still stood nearby, chewing her cud and swishing her tail. "We have a cow to milk."

That made her smile. She looked up at him worshipfully. He glowered back at her. He didn't want to be worshiped, dammit!

She averted her eyes and began fiddling with a piece of hay.

He was being harsh, but he had his reasons. His reaction to her galled him, because it wasn't something he could control with a command. And he couldn't make it go away, either. It was as if with one look she could lure him into her strange world, a world he did not understand any better than the one he lived in.

A sick thought hit him like a fist in the belly. Had she done this to him? Had she used her magic to cast a witch's spell? Was that why he couldn't control this odd need for her, this lust? He watched her for a minute, still feeling that taut chain of need. "Did you cast a spell on me?"

She cocked her head, her face registering surprise. "No."

"Then why is all this happening?"

"All what?"

"Every time I look at you I want to... to behave strangely. I do believe you have cast some love spell over me. I want you to remove it." He crossed his arms and waited. "Now."

Her eyes brightened. "A love spell?"

"Yes. Get rid of it."

"But-""I command you to remove the spell."She looked at him for a long time. He could see her furtive little witch's mind working. Her eyes flickered with it. Finally she sighed, giving in, and whispered some mumbo jumbo and waved her hands around for

a very long time.He waited for the feeling to fade. It didn't. She walked over to him very slowly, her eyes locked on tohis. She stopped in front of him, her face suddenly serious, and said, "I have to kiss you to remove it."

He stiffened, not knowing what to expect. "Go ahead."She slid her arms around his neck and slowly rose up on tiptoe, her mouth and that damnably sexy moleclosing in. Her hands moved from his neck to his cheeks just as her lips touched his. He counted in Latin,and it was working until her small curious tongue traced his lips. He groaned, and her tongue dartedinside his mouth, stroking him and making him feel the magic. He tried counting in Greek, then conjugating French verbs, anything to fight the urge to wrap his arms around her and take her right therein the hay.She finally pulled back, slowly, took a deep, calming breath, and said, "I'm done.""It's gone?"She started to smile, then bit it back. "Yes."He didn't feel any different. "No more spell?""No more spell," she confirmed, then gave him one of those smiles that made him forget reason.He drew himself up and said, "Never again. You are to never again cast any love spell, especially on me.

Do you understand?""Yes, Alec." She stood with her hands clasped meekly and her head bowed."Fine. I'll milk the cow," he told her, expecting an argument. "You can gather some eggs."She raised her bright eyes to his. "Oh, good! I've never gathered eggs before, have you?""No."She acted as if he had just given her a special gift. He expected her to clap her hands any minute. It amazed him that she could find delight in the least little thing. He did not understand it, or her, so he gaveup trying and set about the task at hand and sat on the milking stool, scowling. Within moments the onlysound in the barn was the clean ring of milk hitting the tin pail.

"You do that very well." She hadn't moved.

He glanced up, his first urge to order her to do as he'd told her, but she was smiling again, and someweak part of him told him not to spoil the blatant happiness that shone in her bright face."Are you sure you removed the spell?"

"Witch's honor." Her face suddenly serious, she held up a hand.Taking a deep breath he opened his mouth, but no words came out. He had to search for those sharpangry words that in the past could flay the skin off the person to whom they were aimed. This time thosewords didn't come easily. He had to search for them, and when he looked at her pert little face, he couldn't say them. He'd seen her happiness fade before and remembered feeling as if he'd kicked akitten."Why did you ask?" she said. "Do you still feel it?""Yes.""Oh. Well, perhaps it takes a while to wear off."He grumbled, "It had best hurry.""Well," she said, bending back to dust the straw from her backside. "I have eggs to gather, don't I?"He watched her hand sweep across her bottom, and didn't answer because his mind was filled with the flash of an image of Joy with her hair undone, swinging down over that same area she'd dusted off, and

on down to the backs of her thighs, her naked thighs.The ring of milk quickened. He concentrated on the task at hand with narrowed concentration and deepcontrol-a control that had been drummed into him at a young age and that, since his marriage, had beenslipping far too often.

The duke of Belmore worrying about wounded kittens and handfuls of hair? He took a deep breath and forced himself to think of his estates, of which fields should lay fallow, of the problems with his tenants and with poachers, of the latest Whig maneuver in the House of Lords, of anything but the happy tune his wife was humming across the barn.

"Oh, Alec! Come see! I've found something!""Bloody hell," he said under his breath and stared at the pail of milk."Hurry!"Resigned, he wiped his hands on his thighs and stood up, then walked around the cow only to have his wife run up to him, grab his arm, and tug him over to a dim corner."Look there."His gaze followed her pointing finger to wooden crates of books and a straw-speckled trunk."What do you suppose is inside this trunk?" Her voice was as eager as if she had just found buried treasure."No doubt something no one wanted.""Where's your spirit of adventure? Let's open it."The flush of rapt anticipation on her bright face was more than even he could ignore. He bent down and moved aside the crate of dusty leather-bound books and released the brass latch on the trunk. The

hinges creaked like hungry cats as he lifted the lid, and his wife's curious head suddenly popped into his line of vision. She gasped. "Oh, my goodness! Look!" She pulled out a huge red velvet hat, the size of a large hunting saddle, with more plumes than a herd of ostriches. He had to back up to keep from getting the feathers in his face as she turned it this way and that, inspecting the monstrosity the way a child might inspect a new toy. She plopped the hat on the back of her small head and raised her chin, tying the frayed ribbons.

She stepped back and struck a pose. "How does it look?" She gave the hat, which was made to set atop a full pompadour, a jaunty pat. It sank down over her small nose, the feathers flopping downward over the front of the brim. She blew the feathers away from her mouth and said, her voice muffled by the hat, "I believe it's a tad too big."

Before he could control it, let alone think about it, a bark of laughter escaped his lips. He stiffenedimmediately and swallowed the next one.She pushed the hat back, her eyes wide, green, and curious. "What was that?""What?""That noise.""I didn't hear anything,""Well, I surely did. Sounded like the selkies on Iona Reef.""Selkies?""Seals."

He cleared his throat gruffly and tried to look suitably serious. "Impossible."She pushed the hat back off her head and moved her inquisitive face closer. She searched his eyes."Alec... is that a smile?"

"Hardly.""I think your eyes are smiling.""Dukes do not smile with their eyes or with anything else.""Why?"He turned away."Why won't you smile?""Village idiots walk around grinning, not dukes. Laughter is for fools." He heard his father's coldness in his own voice and he tensed inside and out."I believe that laughter is a gift.""Don't you want to see what else is in the trunk?"

"I want to see you smile," she muttered."And I want to finish this nonsense so we can go back inside.""Nonsense?" She was suddenly quiet, too quiet. She gazed at the trunk. All the delight had drained from her expressive face. Biting her lip, she turned away from him, her shoulders drooping a bit, her headdown as if she was embarrassed or, worst yet, ashamed. She sighed. "I'll just look at these books. Youcan look inside the trunk."

He watched her shoulders heave slightly with her deep breaths. He searched the tips of his boots for

kitten fur and stood there feeling like a cloddish oaf.Bloody hell! He heard her deep sigh and ignored it. Finally he looked at her bowed head and thedamned word slipped out: "Scottish?"

She turned those wide, defeated green eyes up at him. He almost smiled for her, almost, but managed tostop himself. What the hell was wrong with him? After a strained minute during which he felt as if she hadswallowed him, he said, "I'll bring the trunk inside so you can go through it."

"You will?" She grinned up at him. "Thank you."He released a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding. "Are you sure you removed that spell?""Cross my heart. There is no love spell on you."He saw no deception there, which frustrated him even more."Do you think we could borrow a few of these books, too?""Fine." He took his cape from the peg and shrugged into it. "Just put aside the ones you want while I take the trunk in.""And the tub?""What tub?" He turned back, fastening the cape."That one." She pointed to another corner where an old tin hip bath was filled with hay."And the tub," he said, walking over to close the lid on the trunk.He lifted the trunk and had to stifle a groan. The bloody thing weighed a ton. He moved toward the barn door, his thighs and arms feeling every pound. He felt a small hand on his arm. He stopped, taking abreath in the hope that he wouldn't drop the damned thing.Joy stared up at him. "You do that well too.""Do what?"

"Carry things," she said with pride in her voice. She gave his arm a pat and ran back to the corner.Alec stood there for a moment, the muscles in his arms taut and straining from the weight of the trunkand his shoulders and back quivering with the strain. He took another deep breath, searching for extrastrength, and found it from some miraculous place. Head high, shoulders back, and face unchanged, he strode through the doors, bloody well determined to haul the damned trunk to the inn.

"The dark and dangerous duke of Dryden reined in his huge frothing stallion and searched the foggy marsh for a sign of the Gypsy girl. He spotted a flash of red and slowly edged his mount toward a misty pile of rocks. He intended to find her, by God! The wench was destined to be his! The shadowy mist suited his black mood, for she had pricked his pride, and he would exact revenge by taking her to his bed____"

"Oh, my goodness." Joy slammed the book shut and stared at the title: The Dastardly Duke. "I think I need this one, too," she muttered and placed it on the stack of books that seemed to grow with each volume she touched. She looked at the other titles- Tom Jones, Moll Flanders, Fanny Hill, Robinson Crusoe-novels she had never read.

Then she turned to her discard stack-Shakespeare. The MacLean had forbidden her to read his plays, calling him an upstart Sassenach who didn't know the first thing about Scottish witches.

Joy shrugged and walked over to the tin tub. She tipped it over, emptying the hay, then dragged it over to her stack of books. She stood back and dusted off her hands.

Alec came back inside and looked at the smaller stack of books. "I see you like Shakespeare." He began to put the wrong books in the hip bath.

"Oh, no. Those are the ones I don't want. The other stack is what I want."

He scanned the spines, frowning. He picked up the top book. "Tom Jones? I think not." He tossed the book into the corner.

"But I looked through it. It's about a poor foundling."

He ignored her and picked up another. "Moll Flanders?"

"Her mother was imprisoned for stealing food, before she was even born. Poor wee thing. She was sold to the Gypsies. It was her first recollection." That too went the way of the others.

His voice grew louder. "Fanny Hill?"

She blushed. "That one looked... very intriguing."

And louder. "The Dastardly Duke?" He all but choked on the title.

She winced, but wisely remained silent.

"You will not read these." He picked up the last book and read the title. "You may read this one." He handed her Robinson Crusoe. "And the plays of Shakespeare." He picked up the books from her discard pile and put them in the tub. He straightened, then said something about retrieving the milk and crossed over to the cow.

Joy stared at the one book in her hand. She glanced at him, seeing he was behind the cow. Quickly she picked up The Dastardly Duke, rammed it under the stack of Shakespeare, and placed the sanctioned book on top. Just for good measure she put the small basket of eggs atop that, then scooted away and stood there, hands behind her back, waiting and humming and trying to look innocent.He came around the cow and set the milk pail in front of her. "Do you think you can carry this?"She tested the weight of the pail. "Aye."He helped her on with her coat, then lifted the tub of books in his brawny arms, and they left the barn.Joy halted the moment they stepped outside. The wind had ceased and all was silent-that utter stillness that seeps often settled in after a snowstorm. It was as if the world had stopped and there was nothing but silence within silence. Icicles dripped like white crystal beards from the steep roof of the inn, where snow lay in a thick puffy icing atop the thatch. Standing between the innyard and the frozen silver river were tall trees that the storm had powdered with clean white snow. It was almost as if they'd been dipped in sugar.

A rabbit hopped across the snow, its footprints the first sign of life in a white and silver world. It paused to look at them, its whiskered nose sniffing the air for a sign of danger, then twitched its long ears and darted off behind the trees in a trail of scattering white.

"Oh... isn't it lovely?" Joy said in a whisper of awe."What?" Alec shifted the tub and searched the area."The snow." She couldn't believe he didn't see it "It's winter's gift.""Hardly a gift. More like a coffin. We almost died in it."She set the milk pail down. "But look around. Can't you see the beauty of it? It's almost as if we're in a silent fairyland, all white and silver and sparkling. Do you suppose heaven could look like this?" She lifted a handful of fresh white snow and held it up. "If you hold it up and look through it-see?-the light shines through and the snow glitters like diamond dust."

Alec frowned."Look," she insisted."All I see is water running down your arm." He walked past her without a glance.She looked at the melting snow in her hand, tossed it away, and watched his back as he carried the tub down the path. "Hardheaded Englishman," she muttered. "Thinks I cast a love spell over him." Frustrated at his inability to be anything but rigid, she grabbed a handful of snow, packed it, and flung it right at his hard head. It felt so good.

He stopped walking, set the tub down, and slowly turned around, brushing the snow from the back ofhis neck. He stared at her as if she were daft.She hurled another snowball. It hit him smack dab in his scowling face.She giggled."Bloody hell! What do you think you are doing?""Hitting you with snowballs." She nailed him with another.

"I do not find this amusing.""I do.""Stop. Now."Her answer was to take aim and throw another, hoping he'd loosen up and throw one back."Stop it." He wiped the snow from his face.She remembered the cocky way he'd tossed her books aside. Her patience waning, she packed the snowball tighter, then wound back her arm, and got him right in the chest. Her magic should be so accurate.

"I said cease, at once!"Then she remembered the arrogant way he'd told her to remove her love spell. She packed the snow inher hand. There hadn't been any love spell. She wadded the snow as tight as she could. If she couldhave cast such a spell on him, she would have done so. That would have been a whole lot easier thantrying to teach this man about love. She heaved the snowball, hard.

He ducked. "I command you to stop this."

"Haven't you ever played in the snow?" She tossed another well-packed snowball from one hand to theother, deciding which body quadrant she should aim for."Dukes don't play.""I meant when you were a wee lad.""I was never a wee lad. I was the Belmore heir." His voice was hard, and his stance became stiffen. She could see the tension in him, but couldn't see the child in him because he had never been one.She stared at his unyielding expression, knowing he had never sneaked down to the kitchens to raid thepie shelf in the pantry, never skipped stones across a lake, never played hide-and-seek or blindman'sbuff or any other child's game. The air grew quiet and a little sad. She looked at the snow splattered on his coat, then at the snowball melting in her hand. Something told her that snow would melt a great dealsooner than her husband would.With a sigh of defeat, she gave up for now, dropping the snowball into the snow. She could tell by his look that he would become angrier if she continued. She picked up the milk and carried it toward the

inn.As she walked past him, his voice became ice and he said, "You are not some child. You are theduchess of Belmore."

"Not really." The words flew out of her mouth before she could blink. She walked by and opened the inn door.

He followed her inside and dropped the tub with a loud thud. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" "I am not truly your wife." She set the milk down in the kitchen and turned around, hands on her hips. She was fed up enough to challenge him. "I think you are afraid of me."

It worked. She caught a quick flash of pricked pride in his face, and a second later he pulled her, none too gently, into his arms.

He looked down at her, still angry. "What can you possibly do to me that you haven't already done? I am not afraid of you."

"There was no love spell, Alec. I cannot control my magic well enough to cast one."

"You made me out the fool?" Suddenly something more primal than anger shone in his eyes, and his mouth closed over hers. There was fierceness in his kiss, and passion. He met her challenge, rose to the bait. But passion rose faster, and their lips did not break apart until he had carried her upstairs. He kicked open the bedroom door, and it crashed against the wall.

"Alec," she whispered against his stubbly jaw.

His answer was to kick the door shut, hard.

"Alec," she repeated softly, and placed her hand on his heart as she looked up at him.

He turned furious eyes on her.

"See?" she said, patting his chest. "You do carry things well."

He was so quiet, didn't move, except to close his eyes. He took deep, calming breaths. He opened his eyes and said nothing. His face was that of a man who was fighting to keep some demon down. His jaw tightened, his hands were tense, his mouth thinned.

Don't fight it, love, please, she prayed, please.. ..