The Angel Of Devil's Camp. Lynna Banning
She stopped short and pressed her lips together. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. Thought you might be along pretty soon. I see you found your dress and…things.”
“Found and donned, no thanks to you. Whatever possessed you to take them in the first place?”
“Had to,” he said quietly. “Behind me were eleven men who haven’t seen a woman in six months, let alone one standing in the woods buck naked. What do you think they’d do if they stumbled across some damn fool’s frilly underwear hangin’ on a bush?”
“Avert their eyes and walk on, of course. As any gentleman would.”
Tom rose. “My men aren’t gentlemen, Miss Hampton. They’re rough and they’re rowdy and they’re all male. I wouldn’t go poking at this particular hornet’s nest if I were you.”
“I was most certainly not poking—”
“You were taking a bath in the river. Against my orders.”
She dropped the folds of her skirt clenched in her fingers and propped her fists on her hips. “You saw me!”
“Couldn’t miss you. Hair all sudsed up with white foam, you looked like a frosted cake floating out there in the middle of the river. I gathered up your clothes so the men wouldn’t get interested in finding the owner.”
“Frosted cake! Well, I never!”
“That water’s crystal clear,” he said with a grin. “The rest of you looked like a shriveled up corn doll.”
“The rest of me?”
“Miss Hampton, don’t take another bath without telling me. Like I said before, I’ll post a guard.”
Speechless, Meggy stared into the man’s face for a full minute. A muscle under his eye jerked. “A guard,” she echoed.
“A guard.”
All at once she became aware of how cold and wet she was. Her clammy underdrawers stuck to her thighs and calves; her damp shimmy clung to her back and chest like a coating of cold syrup. Her petticoats dripped water down her ankles and into her shoes. And her dress…well, it felt for all the world like a heavy, cold shroud.
“Go inside,” he ordered. “You’re shivering. Get out of those wet things.”
“I am n-not s-shivering.” She had to work hard to keep her voice steady.
He rolled his eyes toward the treetops. “Go!”
Without thinking, Meggy snapped her heels together and saluted. “Am I dismissed, then, Colonel?”
Without waiting for a reply, she hoisted her skirt up a few inches and planted one foot on the porch. With a little lift she attempted to heave herself upward, but the weight of her wet clothes was more than she’d bargained for. She stumbled against the edge.
Tom watched her struggle for a moment, then moved behind her, placed his hands about her waist and lifted her onto the porch. The feel of her body under his hands, the whiff of roses that came from her hair sent a red-hot arrow straight to his groin.
With an exaggerated sniff, she stomped across the planks to the front door, yanked it open and banged it shut behind her.
“Headstrong and excitable,” he muttered as he clomped down off the porch. “She sure gets an arch in her back over the damnedest things.”
On the other hand, she might have been raised on prunes and proverbs, but when she closed her mouth, she was all woman.
“That being the case…” He laughed out loud as he strode down the hill toward the safety of his tent.
“The next time she flames up over something, I guess I’ll have to set a backfire.”
Chapter Five
Meggy listened to the colonel’s boots clump across the porch and fade as he tramped down the path. As fast as her chilled fingers could move, she unbuttoned her wet dress, stepped out of her petticoats and peeled off the cold, clingy underdrawers and shimmy. The late-afternoon air was still warm, but her naked skin pebbled just the same. Hurriedly she laid the wet garments out on the counter beneath the windowsill to dry.
And stopped short.
Her pie! Her beautiful apple pie had disappeared. The black iron skillet sat on the sill right where she’d left it, but it was empty.
Clutching a damp petticoat to her body, she tiptoed forward for a closer look. Gone. Not a single crumb remained in the pan. Something, or someone, had stolen her pie.
She snatched up the skillet and gasped. A shiny round coin lay underneath it. “Merciful heaven, a five-dollar gold piece! But who—”
The colonel, of course. That scoundrel! Why, he’d just lounged there on her porch, waiting for her to return from the river. Plain as buttermilk he’d helped himself to her creation, without even a by-your-leave.
Seething inside, Meggy struggled to think clearly. At least it was decent of him to pay for his prize. She could use the money to pay for the flour and sugar she’d used, and then…
Absently she hung the damp petticoat on a nail by the door and drew on clean, dry undergarments, her brain turning over the spark of an idea.
Yes! And it would serve him right, too. The very idea of eating her pie…
By suppertime she had made up her mind. Slipping the gold piece into her pocket, she snatched up the iron skillet and sped down the path to the cookhouse.
Fong glanced up from the cookstove as she entered the kitchen. “Ah, missy find fry pan. Have good luck now. Fry steaks for supper.” He lifted the pan from her hands and banged it down on the stove top.
Meggy blinked. “Don’t you want to ask me about the skillet?”
Fong grinned at her. “Nope. More better you not explain.” He turned away, dropped a teacup-size ball of suet into each of the four pans. When it sizzled, he slapped down inch-thick slabs of meat and turned to her.
“You need more flour?”
Her heart nearly stopped beating. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But this time I can pay.” She drew out the gold piece and laid it on the warming shelf.
The cook scooped it into his palm. “Too much, missy. You take what you need for two, three days.”
“And…and a skillet?” Meggy held her breath. Without the heavy iron utensil she had nothing to bake a pie in.
“Oh, yes. Take big pan this time.” He banged a two-pronged fork against the handle of the largest skillet. “This one good. I hear about pie,” he added in an undertone.
Meggy swallowed. “Who told you?”
Fong’s black eyes sparkled. “Cannot say. But—” he beckoned her closer “—he say needs maybe more sugar.”
“Oh! The pie thief is criticizing his booty?”
“I not steal,” Fong protested. He pointed to the side pocket of his black tunic. “Someone pay. In gold. Good business, missy.”
Meggy exchanged a long, significant look with the cook. Was she dreaming, or was he encouraging her in her enterprise?
Whistling idly between his teeth, Fong surveyed his skillet-crowded stove top, jabbed one sputtering steak with the fork and expertly flipped it over. “Next time,” he said, “use big pan. Make more dollar.”
Was it possible Fong was in cahoots with the colonel? She baked a pie, the colonel stole—well, bought it—and Fong got rich when she paid him for the supplies she’d used? It made sense of a sort.
Except that she needed