He was up to something, she realized with a start. She could see it in the firm set of his jaw, in the sharpness of his gaze. There was an unmasked determination about him. He had a goal.
And in an instant she knew what he was about.
“Och, balgaire le sùilibh mear!” she said beneath her breath.
“What dog with lustful eyes?” Pegeen asked from her right.
“The one headed our way!” Maggie was furious over the fact that his walk did affect her.
And even worse, she wasn’t keeping him at arm’s length!
Pegeen stood on her tiptoes to look out the window. “Oh bother me,” she whispered. “There be four of them for sure. Handsome all.”
Maggie glared at the approaching group. “They say the devil himself is a handsome man, and I’d sooner meet with him than Braden MacAllister.”
Pegeen shook her head. “The devil ne’er saw a day he could rival a MacAllister for looks. My, my, that Braden be the one for sure.” A dreamy smile curved her lips.
Only a year older than Maggie, the attractive, raven-haired Pegeen had married four winters past, but she still had a roving eye that drifted toward any bonny man. Right now both of Pegeen’s eyes were fastened on Braden, and they were larger than platters.
“Oh, to have my Ross look like that one.” Pegeen sighed dreamily. “You can rest assured if he did, I’d not be hiding in here with you right now. But rather, I’d be in my home giving him the?—”
“Pegeen!” Maggie chided. “You’re inside a kirk.”
Pegeen waved her words aside with her hand. “The good Lord knows I mean no harm with my thoughts. I’m merely speaking the truth, and well He knows it.”
Maggie barely heard Pegeen’s words, for her attention had now shifted to the other women who were coming out of various buildings to peer over the walls at the men. Even from her distance, she could hear the breathless sighs and giggles of the women as they admired various parts of the men coming toward them.
“Braden’s home!” several of them shouted.
“Mary, how’s my hair look? Think you Braden will notice it?”
“Saints, that man gets bonnier with every year!”
“That man’s got the finest backside the good Lord ever saw fit to put on a man. Now if we could just get a good, strong wind to blow, we could be in for quite a wondrous sight!”
Maggie ground her teeth in anger as a plethora of such comments filled her ears.
Leave it to the laird to summon the one man home who could spoil her plan. She should have expected this. Indeed, she should have planned for it. But the idea had seemed so flawless, and with Braden gone she hadn’t thought about it.
Until now.
Her vision turning dark, Maggie gathered her skirts and headed out of the kirk to confront the devil before he came too close.
She reached the gate at about the same moment Braden did. She snatched open the door to see him standing there with his arm uplifted as if to knock.
“Maggie, my love,” he said, his face breaking into one of those wonderful, charming, dimpled smiles that could make any woman weak in the knees.
Or worse, weak in the head.
His eyes shone with his confidence. Aye, the man knew he was irresistible.
But worse was the fact that she knew it as well.
“You’re just the woman I was coming to see.”
“I can imagine that,” she said, her voice icy even though there was a treacherous part of her that thrilled at his words.
His gaze became daring, probing as he boldly assessed her body from the top of her head which reached right to his shoulders, all the way down to the bottom of her skirt.
