Chapter Eleven
FORa moment, Lyssa could only gape like some village fool until she realized what they were doing—and then, she was shocked to the core of her soul.
The man’s naked thighs were pasty white and his hands gripped the Widow’s breasts as if they were plow handles. They were both so occupied in their moans and groans and mutual sweaty activity, they didn’t notice her.
Finally, Lyssa found her voice. “When I said fornicating, I didn’t expect you to do it!”
Nor did she expect his voice to come from behind where she stood. “I’m not. But I do think you should mind your own business, Lyssa.”
Turning, she saw Ian standing—fully clothed in shirt sleeves, breeches, and stockings—at the entrance of another stall.
“Then who—?” she started before turning in horror to see both the Widow and Mr. Anderson looking up at her.
Lyssa thought she would die from the embarrassment. Instead, she turned and ran out of the barn.
Outside in the yard, she stopped. What should she do now? Knock on the door and inform Mrs. Anderson of her husband’s activities? Or sit out here until they’d finished and left?
She certainly couldn’t pretendnothinghad happened.
Ian came up behind her. Taking her arm in a grip as tight as a vise, he said, “Not one word, not until we are beyond the house.” He’d pulled on his boots and practically carried her away from the house and the barn.
“But Maggie…she needs to know,” Lyssa protested, trying to turn back.
“No, she doesn’t,” came his terse reply and he half carried her forward.
As Ian had anticipated, Anderson came out of the barn buttoning his breeches. He could almost hear the farmer’s sigh of relief that his guests were heading off toward his pastures instead of knocking on the door to inform his wife.
He led Lyssa toward a pond on the far side of the field. Beneath the overhanging branches of a willow tree, he let her sit on the cool ground. She buried her face in her hands. He sat beside her, not saying a word, preferring instead to study the way the moonlight shone off the smooth surface of the pond.
“I didn’t think it was done like that,” she said at last, her voice completely serious. “That didn’t appear pleasurable at all.”
Her reaction startled a laugh out of him.
She turned to him. “This is not funny,” she said. “Catching them was so humiliating.” And yet, in spite of the stain of embarrassment on her cheeks, even she started to laugh, and covered her mouth as if to stifle the sound.
“Think how I felt with them going at it in the stall next to mine,” Ian confessed. “I was hoping they wouldn’t wake you up.”
“How could they not? They were making so much noise.”
Suddenly, the two of them were laughing so hard, Ian feared the sound would carry and Anderson would hear them. He put his arm around Lyssa’s shoulder and shushed her. “We’ll wake up everyone.”
“I’d like to wake up Maggie,” she said, sobering. She turned to him, sitting so close that her bouncing red curls spilled over his shoulder. “She should know.”
“Shedoesknow. Anderson certainly doesn’t hide his tomcatting.”
Lyssa looked out over the pond. “What a life she must live.”
“It may be the one she chooses,” he observed quietly. “You can’t convince me he is any different now than he was before he married.”
“But why would she look the other way? If he was my husband, I’d take a whip to him. I certainly wouldn’t let him into my bed.”
Ian had no doubt she wouldn’t. But then Lyssa had a strong sense of self and more pride than was prudent—two things he admired about her. Two things they had in common.
“Look at the house she now lives in,” he told her. “Back when he courted her, he was probably a jovial fellow with a wandering eye and a good piece of property.”
“She told me his family had once been quite grand.”
“So now you know why she married him and with four children and another on the way, no, she wouldn’t appreciate your telling her about her husband and Mary Potter.”
