“Ellis will want to go too fast. I should—”
“Let them be children,” he finished firmly, holding her by his side before she could set off. “Let them have fun. If they get a few bumps and bruises along the way, it’s all a part of being a child.”
“Is this part of allowing me to prove how capable I am?” she asked, throwing his words back at him.
“Capable and overly protective are two different things.”
“Mr. MacKintosh…,” she began, once again brimming with the exasperation he was becoming so familiar with.
“James, please. Or Jamie, if you like,” he said. “If I’m going to court you, you might as well call me by my name.”
Clearly, she’d doubted he would come around to accepting her proposal. Relief and happiness shown in her eyes as they glazed with moisture. She blinked it away and offered a dramatic eye roll.
“I’m beginning to think if you were to court me, you’d drive me mad.”
Still, it pleased him to please her. Besides, her lips puckered just so, and as he’d been the previous night, James was struck by the urge to kiss her. Would she be as icy as the snow around them? As prudish as she played at being? He might have thought so not long ago but now he rather doubted it.
Her mouth softened, her already pink cheeks growing rosier under his slow perusal. “Why do you look at me like that?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up at the naiveté of her question. “Why do you think?”
She gaped like a fish for a moment, though with far more charm. Squeals of delight spared her the need to answer, and they turned back to watch the children take their first run down the hill. The older boy was at the front of the sled with the toddler sandwiched between him and another girl, both holding tight to his waist. Beside him, Prim tensed and gasped as they hit a rut and bounced off the ground, but the boy righted them and they drifted to a halt at the bottom of the hill.
Immediately, they bounded to their feet and started to climb up again.
“They’ll be at it for a while,” he said. “Would you care to walk?”
Prim shook her head but then nodded. “Not out of view though.”
“Of course not.”
Taking his out-held arm, she frowned up at him. “I assume you’re mocking me again.”
“Would it be because you’re imagining things or because your overprotective behavior deserves a little mocking?”
She only gawped at him. “Why I…?”
“You’re doing exactly what you’ve accused your brothers of,” he said, for no other reason than to rile her up. “Mollycoddling them.”
“But Iamtheir mother,” she pointed out, obliging him with the show of bluster he was hoping for. Her bright eyes snapped with indignation as she tossed her head.
Her regal posture might have cowed a lesser man, if it were not for the fact that her pert nose and the tips of her ears were bright red with the cold.
“Children, even small ones, need some rough play now and then,” he said.
“Yes, I’d heard that before…”
Smugly, he nodded.
“…then promptly dismissed such nonsense as asinine,” she added, but he could sense a hint of banter in her tone. “You know nothing of childrearing, Mr. MacKintosh.”
“I know more than you might imagine.”
James guided her along the shoveled pathway at the top of the hill. They paused to watch the children as they reached the top of the hill and piled on the toboggan once more. Without any squabbling this time. Their faces bright with the thrill to race down the hill again.
“Speaking of childrearing, if you’ve shown your brothers even a small dose of the what for I’m now certain you’re well-practiced at, I’m surprised you haven’t yet brought them to heel.”
Prim shook her head. “For several months now, I’ve made a concerted effort to express my displeasure with them.”
