“Damn!” Ian breathed. “I ain’t never seen no lady punch like that.”
Steve groaned, sat up, rubbed his jaw and looked at Houston in wonder. In fact, all five of the boys were gaping at her.
She stood. “I don’t appreciate such behavior on my wedding day,” she said regally.
“No, ma’am,” four of the boys mumbled.
“We didn’t mean nothin’, Miss Blair-Houston. He—.”
“I want no excuses. Now, you four go back to your parents and, Steven, put some ice on your jaw.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he called over his shoulder, all of them getting away as quickly as possible.
She held her hand out to Ian to help him up. “You may come with me.”
He ignored her hand. “I ain’t goin’ into his house if that’s what you mean,” he said angrily.
“Perhaps you’re right. For this fracas, I’m using a rose trellis as a staircase. Any boy who’d lose a fight probably couldn’t climb a trellis.”
“Lose a fight!” He was as tall as she was and, at sixteen, already big, showing promise of reaching Kane’s size. He almost put his nose to hers. “In case you cain’t count, there was four of ’em on me and I woulda, won if you hadn’t come along and interrupted.”
“But you’re afraid to enter your own cousin’s house,” she said, as if it were an observation. “How odd. Good day to you.” She started briskly toward the house.
Ian began walking beside her. “I ain’t afraid. I just don’t wanta go inside.”
“Of course.”
“What’s that mean?”
She stopped. “I agree with you. You aren’t afraid of your cousin, you just don’t want to see him or to eat his food. I understand perfectly.”
She watched emotions play across his face.
“Where’s this damned rose trellis of yours?”
She stood rooted to where she was and looked at him.
He stopped glaring. “All right then, where’s the rose trellis you’re usin’ as a staircase?”
“This way.”
Kane was just returning to the house when he was halted by the extraordinary sight of his wife-to-be, wearing only a garment he knew no lady wore outside her own house, climbing down the rose trellis.
More than a little curious, he stepped behind a tree to watch her and saw her fling herself into the midst of a pile of wrestling boys who were as big as she was. He was halfway there to help her when he saw her flatten a boy with a championship right.
The next minute, she was arguing in her own cool way with a big, sullen-looking boy. “Might as well give up,” Kane
said aloud, laughter in his voice. He’d already learned that when Houston looked like that, a man might as well give in because that delicate little lady was going to get her own way.
He laughed again when he saw the boy start up the rose trellis ahead of Houston. But as Kane watched, he saw Houston’s gown snag and saw her struggle to free herself. Around the corner three men and a woman were walking and, in another minute, they’d see her.
Quickly, he ran across the lawn and put his hand on her ankle.
When Houston looked down and saw Kane, she nearly fainted. What in the world would he think of the woman he was going to marry? She knew quite well what Leander or Mr. Gates would say if they saw her now, in public, wearing her bedroom clothes, and climbing a rose trellis.
As Houston looked down at Kane, she said the only thing she could think of. “My hat isn’t on straight.”
She hoped that the sound he made was a chuckle.