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She cocked her head to one side. “Would it matter if you alienated me?”
Asher gave her a big grin. He really was quite pleasant-looking, not anything like Tynan, of course, but very handsome. “I’m alone in the woods with a beautiful woman and you ask if it would make any difference if she’s angry with me? Why, Miss Mathison, this time and place is a dream come true and I would as soon die as ruin it.”
She laughed at his pretty speech as he picked a tiny purple flower from a bank of moss and gave it to her with a little bow. Chris stuck the flower behind her ear and smiled at him.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I guess we’d better get back.” He picked up an enormous pile of wood. “Put the rest on top of this.”
“No, I’ll carry my share.”
“Miss Mathison, while I am around, no woman shall ever carry firewood. Now do as I say and put the rest of that on this pile.”
“You sound just like my father,” she said with a sigh.
“Thank you very much. I admire and respect your father and I take it as a high compliment that you consider me like him in any respect. Now, lead the way because I can’t see a thing.”
Laughing, pleased that he’d said that he liked her father and didn’t complain about him as most people did, Chris led him back to camp. Asher said that not only could he not see but he couldn’t understand her directions, so Chris “had” to hold two fingers of his left hand to guide him back to camp.
When they entered the camp, Tynan was bending over the fire frying fish dipped in cornmeal. He looked up when a laughing Chris and a laden Asher arrived, but put his head down again quickly.
Chris suddenly felt ridiculously happy. Holding the divided skirt of her habit out, she began to hum.
“I don’t guess you’d care to dance, Mr. Prescott,” she said, holding out her arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Tynan but he didn’t even look up.
With obvious happiness, Asher took Chris’s extended hands and began a quick dance about the little clearing. It was a cross between the Virginia Reel and a square dance that was exuberant and happy. Chris followed his lead and no matter how fast he led her in the dance, even when her feet barely touched the ground, she stayed with him.
“Watch out!” she heard Tynan shout just before she and Asher tumbled into a foot-deep depression filled with ferns.
They lay there together, Asher’s arms around her protectively, Chris’s skirts around his legs, while Tynan stood looming over them. “Are you two all right?” he asked, his brows drawn together in a scowl.
“Never been better in my life,” Asher said, then planted a hearty kiss on Chris’s cheek.
Still grinning, she turned to see Tynan looking at her oddly.
“I think we can eat now,” Tynan said before turning away to return to the campfire. “That is, Miss Mathison, if you are finished with your dancing.”
“For the moment,” Chris said and went to take a place by the fire.
Chapter Six
Asher was in rollicking good spirits after their impromptu dance and he did his best to entertain Chris, even singing to her. She joined in and they made an enthusiastic duo.
Tynan sat to one side of them, head down, whittling on a stick, not participating but not leaving them either. Once, as she was singing with her cheek close to Asher’s, it occurred to her that maybe Tynan didn’t know how to participate.
It was midafternoon before anyone thought of leaving and then it was Chris who stopped the laughter and suggested that they clear up and go.
Tynan tossed his stick away, put his knife in his pocket and slowly started toward the horses. As Chris was tightening the straps on her bedroll, he stopped beside her.
“That was nice,” he said. “Real nice.”
“Where did you grow up?” she asked quickly.
“Not where people sang,” he answered just as fast. “You like the man?”
“Of course. You’ve pointed out what a fine man he is, haven’t you? And you’ve told me to stay away from you so I should be pleasing you now.”
He looked at her in a way no man had ever looked at her before. His eyes seemed as if they could burn her. “You do please me.” Abruptly, he turned on his heel and walked away, almost crashing into Asher.
“What was that about? He looked angry. Is something going on that I don’t know about?”
