The horse responded in that manner for only one person. Ruark! Clinging to Attila’s mane, Shanna glanced about in search of him and saw him waiting beside a partially raised wall of the structure. Once again he was clad in the brief breeches, his lean, brown torso contrasting sharply against the bleached whiteness of the garment. At the sight of those pants, Shanna could have screamed her ire at him.
Ruark gathered the reins to tie them to a hitching rail. His own anger sounded in his voice. “If you must ride this damned beast, madam, you might do so with more care for your safety. If you ride out to dawdle and daydream, then find yourself a gentle gelding.”
The rebuke did not sit well with Shanna and was even more rankling because she knew he spoke the truth. Attila was not what most young ladies would have chosen for a genteel mount. The animal was spirited and eager and needed a firm, attentive hand on the reins.
“Is my father such a harsh taskmaster that he must set you to laboring on the Sabbath?” Shanna snapped. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to look over a few things without the workmen here.” Ruark took hold of her, his long fingers slipping about her narrow waist, and as he stood close beside the horse, he let her slide down against his nearly naked frame until his eyes gleamed devilishly into hers. “Until you appeared, my love, I was certain my day was lost.”
He set her feet to the ground and bent to kiss her. But casually, as if oblivious to his nearness, Shanna swept off her hat, placing it between them.
“And pray, sir, how have I saved it for you?” There was a coolness in her voice that she struggled hard to maintain. She stepped away from him, tossing her hat on the horn of the saddle. Where his body had touched, her own burned, and she could still feel the pressure of his fingers on her waist. “I came only to see the progress of the mill. Had I known you were about, I would have sought a different pleasure.”
Ruark grinned and stretched out a hand to smooth her hair. “Ah, love, do you still fear me?”
Shanna straightened indignantly and pushed his hand away. “ ‘Tis only that I prefer not to be mauled and ogled as you seem to have a penchant for doing. The completion of the bargain has hardly cooled your lusts.”
“Aye, love, not very,” Ruark confided lightly as he drew her to him. “Indeed, it has done much to stir them.”
Shanna placed her riding crop pointedly between them, but Ruark’s strong, possessive fingers clasped her tightly, and she could not still the tremor that passed through her body.
“Try to restrain yourself, Ruark,” she cautioned. “I did not come to lie with you, only to view the mill. Now I wonder if ‘tis safe to stay. You seem never appeased.”
Ruark’s eyes burned like golden embers behind his dark lashes. “Aye, you tempt me sorely, Shanna.”
His gaze touched a quickness within her, and Shanna quickly averted her eyes. No one before Ruark had ever set her to trembling for any reason, much less with a look or mere words. What was there about this colonial that aroused her so? There had been other handsome men, some most dashing and daring who had gallantly begged for her hand. They had bored her. There had been those whom she considered intelligent, but she had admired their minds and little else. There were young men she had thought much in need of maturing, yet the idea of having an old man as her husband and bedding him repulsed her immensely. Ruark had both youth and an agile mind, and just the memory of his lovemaking filled her with a delicious excitement, leaving her breasts almost aching for his caresses and her loins hungering for the consuming heat of his passion.
Greatly disturbed by the path of her mind, Shanna drew away. Was she some hussy that she must crave his amorous attentions all the time?
“Will you show me the mill?” She glanced away then peered up at him. “And will you behave?”
“I’ll show you the mill,” Ruark lightly replied but made no vow to the latter question.
Slowly they strolled along as he pointed out and explained the construction. Shanna was familiar with the operation wherein the cane was fed into the wheels of a small mill mounted on the bed of a wagon and then taken to the fields where it was needed. But she stared with some awe and amazement at the structure that was being raised in the sheltered vale.
The three huge rollers had been set in place to await whole wagonloads of cane, and there was a mammoth vat to catch the juices. Two wings extended outward from the crushing mill, one being fitted with large copper boilers to cook the thin syrup into treacle, while the other was to house fermentation vats and a brass distillery which would turn out the various rums—the black to replenish His Majesty’s ships with grog and the light brews which would grace any table.