Madcap Miss

“Damn him!” Scott continued to rage.

“Well, it wasn’t all his fault. It was the mistletoe and me … encouraging him.”

“Well, don’t do that. Don’t be encouraging men to kiss you under the mistletoe. Not the thing,” he snapped.

“Oh?” She dimpled saucily. “Where should I let them kiss me then?”

“Flip!” he reprimanded her in severe tones. “Don’t sass me.”

She sighed loudly. “I suppose there must be other places one should allow handsome gentlemen to kiss them?” She was in full banter mode and laughed at his expression before adding, “Don’t be such an old fidget. One must accumulate some experiences, after all. Men do.”

“Men do? Well, yes, but that is very different.”

“How, Scott? How is it different?”

“It just is,” he answered roughly.

“Well, I don’t think so, and that is why I moved on to Thomas Brookes and let him kiss me last month.”

“Flip!” Scott appeared genuinely shocked. “Flip, how could you? He is nearly thirty-nine! And how dare he take advantage of a young innocent!”

She laughed. “I was the one who took advantage of him, Scott. I am very curious, you see, about the art of dalliance, about kissing and such things, and Thomas is sophisticated and intriguing. Yes, I enjoyed his kiss very much, but I found I didn’t love him … so that was that.”

Scott blustered out some incoherent sentences and then fell silent. She waited because she knew it was coming, and it did. He said, “Flip, you can’t go about the country kissing men. If your dear stepmama were alive, she would put you in the right of it.”

“My dear mama was wise and brilliant, and she told me she kissed any number of men before she kissed and fell in love with my father.”

He had nothing to say to this, and once again his mouth remained open for a time.

She broke the silence purposely by telling him, “Funny thing …”

“What is a funny thing?”

“I never wanted to kiss you, Scott. Thought about it, but immediately knew … no … didn’t want to.”

He pulled himself up straight, and his tone indicated relief as he said, “Well, I should hope not.” He looked away from her and then turned back to add, “Why the devil not? Many girls have wanted to kiss me!”

She gurgled enthusiastically, as her remark had been designed to this end. “Ha! Who?”

“Mary Wiggens for one. She wants to kiss me all the time,” he answered pugnaciously.

Felicia, instead of laughing to this, however, put up her hand to silence him when a shot rang out forcefully through the atmosphere.

They brought their horses to an immediate halt and regarded one another with only the moon to light up their expressions.

“What the devil?” Scott said on a hushed note.

Instinct moved Felicia, and she whispered, “Gunshot. That was a gunshot, Scotty. Let’s get off the road.”

“We can barely see our footing now. In the woods, we won’t get enough moonlight.”

“And still, that is where we should go,” Felicia insisted.

Instead, dumbfounded she watched him urge his horse forward as he told her, “Damn, if someone isn’t in trouble!”

Felicia was as stout-hearted a female as he was a male, but she was also made of practical stuff. Running one’s horse and oneself willy-nilly to the rescue without a plan was not exactly how she would have handled the situation had she been consulted.

Thus, with an unladylike oath under her breath, she too urged her horse off at a much too heady pace, if only to prevent Scott from getting himself killed.