My Savage Heart (The MacQuaid Brothers) by Christine Dorsey

wing.
    “The Flannerys are good people who come from Ireland by way of Pennsylvania,” he’d explained. “They have an Irishman’s inborn distrust of the gentry.”
    So Caroline dropped her title, which wasn’t difficult. She rarely thought of herself as anything other than Caroline Simmons. It was only knowing that her title was what Robert MacQuaid was after, or when his son sarcastically called her “Your Ladyship” that she remembered it at all.
    The eight families living in the settlement decided that the arrival of Raff and Caroline was reason enough for celebration. Mistress Flannery—Jane, as she insisted Caroline call her—spread the word among the women that tonight they would eat a communal meal beneath the large sycamore that served as the village green.
    Caroline snapped beans with the other women as the men built a large fire. She turned her stool toward Jane to keep herself from watching Raff. They chatted mostly of the children that ran about the area, and of Mistress Dabney’s impending confinement.
    “Third babe in as many years,” Jane chided gently. And from the smile and blush that colored Betsy Dabney’s cheeks Caroline guessed this was a frequent refrain.
    Betsy leaned forward awkwardly over her rounded stomach to pull a fussing baby onto her nearly nonexistent lap. She handed him a bean which he immediately began to gum. “Sam and I like children,” she said in a soft Irish brogue.
    “If you be asking me, both of you are too fond of what it takes to make babies,” Jane retorted. This brought a deeper shade of pink to Betsy’s apple-round cheeks. But she didn’t deny the allegation even when the other women, laughing, took up the refrain.
    “Aye, and you have to say no every now and again to that brawny husband of yours.”
    “And who says ’tis Sam doing the persuin’? I’ve seen the two ’a them when they thought no one was about,” Mistress Andrews, the oldest of the women said. “Betsy here cannot keep her eyes nor her hands off him.”
    This brought a fresh burst of laughter from the group as Betsy sat her now-content child back on a small patch of grass at her feet. Caroline assumed the woman was embarrassed; but when she looked up, there was a smile on her pretty face. “I do believe ’tis jealous you are, Mistress Andrews.”
    “Jealous?” The older woman seemed genuinely amazed. “I’m through with rollin’ about in the bedstead and glad of it. I wager the rest ’a you feel the same if truth be known.”
    “I wouldn’t be sayin’ that.” This from a redheaded woman with more sunspots than fair skin on her face. “There be times when Jacob and I have a fair to decent time ‘rolling about in the bedstead.’”
    This statement brought such laughter that Sam, the tall, brawny husband of Betsy, called over, “What’s so funny over there?”
    None of the women answered, but his wife made a shooing motion with her hand, and he went back to carrying benches from their cabin.
    “Now that’s what you need, Mistress Andrews,” the redhead whispered with a nod of her curls. “That one would make anyone eager for the sun to set.”
    The other women, except for Mistress Andrews, readily agreed, and Caroline didn’t need to look up to know whom they were talking about. But she did anyway, and followed their collective gaze to where Raff chopped wood. The ax lifted and the muscles in his arms glistened. The buckskin shirt stretched taut across his powerful back as the blade bit into the log, cleaving it. Caroline’s mouth went dry.
    “Listen to us talking like a passel of randy men. And with a maiden among us.”
    Jane’s words filtered through to Caroline, and she turned back toward the women realizing they all stared at her. She smiled tentatively and resumed snapping beans, even when Mistress Andrew’s eyes narrowed.
    “Where’d you say you was off to?”
    “Seven Pines.”
    “She’s to marry Robert MacQuaid,” Jane said in a flat tone that seemed