Yankee Wife by Linda Lael Miller Page B

“And that makes her unsuitable?” he asked, setting the poles aside, stretching out on the grass with a sigh and cupping his hands behind his head.
    Charlotte looked over at him with soft brown eyes. “Of course it does, Papa,” she said, enunciating the words carefully, as though he'd lost either his hearing or his good sense since breakfast. “No proper lady has ever seen a man without his clothes!”
    He raised himself onto one elbow. “In a way, Charlotte, I'm glad you hold that particular opinion. But there are exceptions, and tending the sick and injured is one of them. Miss McQuire could hardly be expected to treat only wounds that weren't hidden under clothing.”
    Charlotte's high, finely sculpted cheekbones flushed with color, and she averted her eyes. Once again Brigham was quietly angry with Isabel for leaving their daughters the way she had. There were certain things he simply didn't know how to discuss with them.
    â€œYou like Miss McQuire, don't you?”
    Brigham sighed, recalling the way he'd reacted when Lydia had stepped past him on her way into the kitchen earlier. “I think she's a bullheaded little tyrant with a high regard for her own opinions,” he answered honestly. Then, sadly, he smiled. “Yes, Charlotte. I like her.”
    Charlotte had finished twining the honeysuckle into a floral wreath, and she laid it on top of her head like a crown. “Well, I've decided to keep my distance,” she said, making a face as Millie came running back with a handful of squirming pink and brown earthworms. “You can just bet Miss McQuire will decide she misses her naked men and go right back to the war.”
    â€œThe war is over, Charlotte,” Brigham said, grinning as his younger daughter thrust the bounty of the soil into his face. He took a fat worm and baited one of the hooks. “And all the naked men have put on their clothes and gone home.”
    Millie's gray eyes went wide. “What naked men?”
    Brigham laughed, rolled to his feet, and cast a line into the calm waters of the spring-fed pond. “Never mind,” he said.
    Charlotte flung herself backward with a dramatic sigh and cried, “Oh, life, oh, life, thou art agony of the keenest sort!”
    Millie looked askance at her sister, after tossing her own fishing line in after Brigham's. “Oh, Charlotte, oh, Charlotte,” she countered, in a high, prissy voice, “thou art stupid as a stump!”
    â€œEnough,” Brigham said sternly, when Charlotte jumped up, prepared to defend her honor, and Millie let out a shriek of delighted terror. “You'll scare away the fish.”
    As it happened, they returned to the house an hour and a half later with enough fresh trout for a fine supper. Millie was wild with excitement, her cheeks sunburned, her hair all a-tangle, and Charlotte was absorbed in one of the parts she was constantly playing. Brigham's bruised heart felt as though it had been dipped in light.
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    There was a feast of fish that night, even though Jake Feeny had fixed a pork roast, and everyone ate their share—except for Polly, who was pale and distracted. Lydia saw Devon toss a worried glance in his mate's direction every so often, and she hurt for them both. Mrs. Chilcote remained in her room, claiming a case of the vapors, and Millie chattered incessantly. Charlotte was pining over something, but she seemed to have a good appetite, and there was a quietness about Brigham, an ease she hadn't seen in him before.
    He was wearing a shirt now, of course, but in her mind's eye Lydia still saw him half naked in the dooryard, splashing his powerfully muscled torso with water. She had seen plenty of bare, hairy male chests in her time, of course, but the sight had never quite affected her in the same way. She'd wanted to lay her hands to those graceful, corded muscles, to feel them move beneath her palms and fingers.…
    A surge of embarrassment