‘Fortunately for you, my son, I am far too relieved you survived to give you the beating you deserve for putting your life at risk to stroke a dog who probably would have bitten you if you’d rushed up and frightened it,’ she said wearily.
True, but Magnus couldn’t help liking the lad, despite his strong physical resemblance to his dead father, and Brandon Champion had kept his young wife close, hadn’t he? Magnus imagined her wary gaze wide with innocence and that slender body of hers rather angular and more gently curved than it was now and knew why the man kept her shut away from the wolves of the ton while he was busy at sea. And Sir Hadrian Porter would have looked like the perfect father-in-law to Brandon Champion, wouldn’t he? The man had connections to some of the most powerful men in the land and a title and, to crown it all, one day his estate would pass to his only child if he didn’t remarry and beget a male heir. Yet Sir Hadrian had refused to advance his new son-in-law’s career. Magnus’s fist tightened in his lap at the thought of Champion taking his disappointment out on his wife. No wonder she was so wary and skittish now. For some wayward reason he wished he could be the man to teach the guarded and intriguing Mrs Champion not all his sex were selfish and unfaithful. He wanted to be the man who unwrapped the woman she could be, if loved and appreciated as she deserved, except he’d sworn off love and fidelity only days ago. It was too soon to go back on a promise never to hurt as Delphi hurt him again and for Hailes love and hurt nearly always walked hand in hand.
‘I thought the man might sell it to us,’ Toby muttered as if he knew he had been in the wrong that day, but wasn’t ready to admit it.
‘First, I would have to want to buy it, for whatever inflated figure his master would demand after seeing your enthusiasm for the deal. You know we have no room in our lives for a dog if we are to carry on travelling with your grandfather, Toby. I would miss him if we let him go without us, even if you think it a fair trade for me to be stuck in the country so you can have a pet to come home to.’
‘Nasty smelly creatures, messing up my kitchen with fur and dribble,’ Cook put in stalwartly.
Magnus hid a smile while Cook did her best to divert attention from the boy’s misdeeds. ‘Wulf and Isabella’s dogs wouldn’t dribble if you didn’t feed them titbits,’ he pointed out and all three women glared as if he was being no help at all.
‘Lady Porter said Grandpapa should settle down, Mama. If he did, we could live in a house like this one and the dogs could run about on the Heath. We wouldn’t trouble anyone until we were hungry and ready for bed.’
‘Now that really is a fairy story, my son. Your grandfather has had itchy feet all my life. Even when I was little he hated to stay in one place too long and my mama used to say he must have been stolen from the gypsies as a baby, since he clearly had travelling blood in his veins. She loved new places and people almost as much as he does and you would soon be bored with the ideal life you paint such a nice picture of.’
‘I wish I could have met her and my papa,’ Toby said with a sigh.
‘So do I, my son, so do I,’ his mother said with an ever deeper one.
‘If you have taken in enough food to last until your next meal, young man, perhaps you would consider taking me for a walk to work up an appetite,’ Magnus said to give her a few moments’ rest and ignored a sharp jag of jealousy in his gut if she missed Champion as a lover more than Magnus wanted her to. ‘Cook will never forgive me if I am not hungry tonight, and if you don’t take me outside and walk me about a bit, I shall fail her.’
‘Can we go down to the mill? I want to see how the gears work and if the wheel is undershot or overshot and what they have been milling today.’
‘If you promise not to put your hand in the works or dash off to pet dogs at peril of your life,’ Magnus agreed warily, realising he had to cover all risks he could think of with this boy before he took responsibility for him.
‘I promise.’
‘But what are you promising, young man? I am wise to you.’
‘I promise to be sensible and not give in to impulse,’ the boy said parrot-like, so nobody could accuse his mother of not trying. Magnus doubted anyone could tame the boy’s thirst for knowledge, so he would have to hope that promise would hold him for now.
‘Mr Magnus will keep the lad safe, ma’am. You sit a while and have another cup of tea while the boys play without you,’ Peg urged as if Magnus was much the same age as his new friend. He muttered something dark and grumpy under his breath to make it clear she was wrong and followed Toby before he could scamper off alone.
* * *
‘Aye, and he’s a handful as well,’ Cook said when their steps echoed back to them on the stone yard, then went out of earshot.
Hetta wasn’t sure if she meant Toby or Mr Magnus Haile. ‘Indeed,’ she said since they both were in very different ways.
‘Cook’s right, ma’am, and we always has tea now, so you’re not in the way. You looks as if you could do with some quiet, if you don’t mind me saying so?’
Deciding it was an offer too tempting to refuse, Hetta sat back down again. ‘No, of course not, and you are right—I could,’ she replied. The kitchen table was scrubbed spotlessly clean and there were enough doors and windows open to catch a breeze and be almost cool before Cook stoked the range for serious cooking. ‘Ah, that’s lovely,’ Hetta said after sipping her tea and relaxing to the sound of birdsong and the distant countryside instead of the restless roar of a vast city. She shivered at the thought of how close she had come to losing Toby that day at Dover and thanked God and Magnus Haile’s quick thinking and magnificent horsemanship for saving her boy to be a nuisance again as they set out to explore the Heath together.
‘Should I shut the door, ma’am?’ Cook asked.
‘What for? Oh, the shiver. No, then, it was a goose walking over my grave. It’s bliss to sit quiet after the dust and traffic and arguing on the way here.’
‘I dare say that boy of yours was as fidgety as a flea.’
‘Yes, he was,’ Hetta agreed. How could she argue Toby never caused her a moment of anxiety when it was obviously untrue?
‘Mr Magnus and Mr Wulf were the same as boys,’ Peg said, ‘or they was whenever his lordship wasn’t about. Master Gresley, or Lord Meon I suppose I should say since the new Earl was called so back then, used to look down his nose at their mischief, then go and tell his pa, but full of life and fun they were. Not a wicked bone in their bodies, not even after beatings and his lordship shouting at them fit to bust. They’re good, sweet-tempered boys for all those bad-lad looks.’
No doubt about the looks, but neither gentleman was exactly a boy, so Hetta said nothing and hoped her new friend would tell her more about Magnus Haile before life, and Lady Drace, made him the gruff and grumpy man she had seen at Dover. She would be a fool to fall for his dark and to hell with you looks now, but she was human enough to want to know more about him. It couldn’t do any harm to listen to a woman who doted on him for a bit longer.
‘Master Gresley was jealous of his younger brothers and her ladyship never quite took to her eldest boy like she did to the rest somehow.’
‘Now then, Peg, that’s none of our business.’
‘Not that his father didn’t favour Master Gresley, so that made up for some of it, I suppose,’ Peg went on as if her friend hadn’t spoken. ‘Cook will say I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but there wasn’t much good to say about the old master. A good thing Master Gresley wed and moved to Haile Carr, if you ask me. Better off out of his father’s pocket.’
‘The present Lord Carrowe seems pleasant enough, from what little I saw of him,’ Hetta lied. The Haile family intrigued her and it stopped her worrying what Toby was up to with the most intriguing one of all.
‘Aye, he works hard and they do say Master Gresley don’t even like cards. The old Earl gambled on things you wouldn’t believe a body could worry himsel
f over. Raindrops on a window or which old lady would cross the street first, or how many spots on a ladybird and such childish nonsense you wouldn’t think a grown man would bother with if you didn’t know how simple even the best of them are at times. Bet on anything that moved, the old lord did—aye, and lost nine times out of ten.’
‘Mrs Champion don’t want to know, Peg,’ Cook said, and Hetta had to pretend she didn’t by getting up and losing an argument about who would wash her teacup.
She decided to go for a stroll around the pleasure gardens as she knew more about the kitchen garden than she wanted to. The Dowager Lady Carrowe must have begun reordering them before she left for the seaside from the look of raw earth and stacked branches here and there among lushly flowering plants now thriving in the light. Intrigued by the notion of who planted it all and maybe even designing one of her own, with a lot of help from someone who knew what they were talking about, kept her busy for all of five minutes. Her parents had never settled long enough for her to learn much about plants as a child and she was horrified to realise that the fellow owner of her fantasy pleasure garden looked darkly familiar. That proved she was far too interested in Mr Magnus Haile. She scolded herself for being a deluded idiot and tried to think of something else.
And even if he was remotely interested in a quiz with an active and impulsive boy in tow to make her impossible, Magnus Haile was far too busy yearning for the love of his life to pursue her. It wasn’t as if he’d given her any encouragement to yearn for him that day at Dover. On the contrary, he’d stared rudely at her as if he couldn’t imagine what they were doing on the same planet, let alone the dock he was striding down as if he owned it. His dark brown eyes had been hard with temper and stony dislike, and she flinched at the memory of staring at him like a codfish while he put Toby down like a piece of luggage and set his mind to more important things.
Somehow no garden could divert her from him being far too close by for comfort, so she went back into his mother’s house to find something else to do. After being shooed out of the kitchen again, she was soon nodding over the pile of mending her father and son always created as the muted noises from the kitchen through so many open windows soothed her like a lullaby. Tiredness washed over her in waves now she had finally relaxed her guard a little and her busy fingers stilled. Days of anxiety and too many sleepless nights took their toll before she could shake herself awake one more time and she slept.
Chapter Nine
‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Haile. You should have woken me,’ Hetta said drowsily.
Wondering why his intent gaze hadn’t roused her and how long he had been standing watching her as if he was trying to work out what made her who she was, she hoped her mouth hadn’t been open or, worse still, she wasn’t snoring when he came to find out why she hadn’t reclaimed her son. He was probably wondering what a gentleman was to do when he found a lady nodding over her sewing basket in his mother’s private sitting room as if she had a right to be there. A guilty flush heated her cheeks and she wished he hadn’t caught her dozing. Toby needed her awake and fully aware, so she could get him fed and into bed without too much of a song and dance. Instead she was sitting here sleepily ravenous not for food but for Magnus Haile, who went on staring back at her as if he was hungry, too.
‘Don’t worry, your son is quite safe. Jem has him helping to hammer in fence posts down in the paddock,’ he said rather huskily.
Hetta smiled rather too openly and a hot and very intriguing light glinted back at her from his darkly fascinating eyes. She stretched lazily before her sensible self woke up and told her not to draw his attention to her body with such a masculine man watching her as if he was already fascinated by it. ‘His poor thumbs,’ she said ruefully, as if they were having a normal conversation while their eyes met and they both knew she was lying.
‘We had best hurry, then, had we not?’ he whispered as he bent so close she had to look up at him with a question she didn’t really want answered in her eyes.
Too late to ask it when he lifted her out of her seat in one smooth move, so the mending dropped on the floor and she was breathing in heat and summer and warm man even as she raised her lips for his kiss. Until now Bran was the only man who had ever kissed her full on the lips like this. She had made sure nobody else had a chance to after Bran’s kisses grew rough and careless and all his hopes for their marriage fell into dust. Bran was left with a naive and squeamish bedmate and no advantage he couldn’t have got elsewhere with a lot less trouble, according to his theory. Wrong, she exulted as Magnus Haile’s mouth taught her to want, and want, then want some more. He showed her how to be ravenous and meet every challenge he set her with one of her own. The lover she always wanted to be was off and running, and she threw herself into discovering her own secrets in the arms of a master. Bran had been a selfish lover and now he seemed so small from where she was standing that she forgot him.
‘More,’ she muttered greedily against this man’s mouth and opened hers to let him find her inner woman.
His tongue quested gently, as if he was asking for all she had instead of demanding. He would linger over every inch of his lover’s pleasure, stoke her to burning curiosity, slake the relentless need tempting her to scissor her legs together to stop her moaning for it out loud. Windows are open, her inner wanton reminded her, so she kept it to a frustrated squirm against his mighty, unmistakably roused body to let him know she felt like that, too. His hands on her back shaped her even closer; his kiss whispered down the tender cord of her extended neck and settled on the pulse at the base of it to nestle and lick and relish the fast beat of her racing heart. The strong, long-fingered hands she had fantasised over earlier moved to cup one of her breasts with reverent sensuality. Oh, how right she had been to secretly picture bliss flowering wherever he touched her. No, it was better than that. Fire and an aching need made her fit her mouth back on his to mute the demand she felt rising in her like hot lava about to blow out of her in a mighty roar if he didn’t cover it up for her, keep them close. He soothed, seemed ready to slick butterfly kisses across her swollen lips, to gentle the passions she had been damming up ever since she dreamed of a lover like this at seventeen and got Bran instead.
Distant noises as Cook clattered pans and Peg bustled about the newly polished dining room warned her she had stirred up far too much to class this as an easily stolen kiss and an unwary moment. One last stretch of her aching nipples against his muscular torso to feel the fierce joy of wanting and being wanted fully for the first time in her life and she would let go. Except it was his turn to bury a moan of need against her. She felt it against the tumble of her half-unwound curls on her neck and who would have thought hair could feel so sensuous between her and a lover like this? He whispered something husky and unsteady and she opened her eyes to stare up at his with too many questions in her eyes as they finally took in where they were and what they had done.
‘Now I can see why you wear those ridiculous spectacles,’ he told her as he tried to soothe down the chaos he had created and she could hardly lie and say she needed them now, could she?
‘To keep my inner wanton hidden?’
‘No, to protect your secret self,’ he argued with a frown as if she was demeaning what they had just done together.
‘I never needed them more than I do right now, then,’ she whispered and meant it.
‘Don’t,’ he protested even as he held her a little way away and tried to steady the shake in his own hands as well as the trembling of her body as all that wasn’t going to happen now made her feel forsaken and vulnerable.
‘Why not? You don’t even like me,’ she said in a hard little voice she wished would be quiet and let them fall into that heady delusion again.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he argued with a stray-cat smile that turned tender when she felt tears sheen in her eyes and determinedly blinked them back. ‘I think I do. I think we could be important,’ he
told her very soberly indeed and as if he really meant it.
‘I have a son,’ she said dully.
‘I have a daughter. It doesn’t stop me wanting you,’ he told her as if he had more faith in this bone-deep attraction to each other than she could allow herself.
‘Maybe not, but it probably stops you getting what you want,’ she said sadly and met his eyes full on for the first time. ‘I can never up and leave my life behind like Lady Drace has done for the sake of her child. There is no way out for me because of Toby. I would never leave him or take what I want from you, so it might be best if you went to your brother’s house as soon as dinner is over, Mr Haile. I am none too sure I can resist temptation now I know what it is, but I must learn to somehow.’
‘There’s no need to say no to me twice, madam.’
‘Ah, now I have offended you. Well, I am very sorry for that. Thank you for showing me what I have been missing all these years, Mr Haile, but I would like you to leave me alone to compose myself again now,’ she told him rather bitterly, the thought of all the years of self-denial and frustrated need ahead of her making her sound harder than she intended.
* * *
Dinner was a strange meal after those kisses in the long midsummer twilight. Hetta felt as if everything had changed, but Magnus Haile was probably the same as always. And what was he? A gentleman, she decided because she needed to be fair. She had longed to be kissed every bit as much as he had wanted to kiss her, maybe even more. So, she could not accuse him of doing things she didn’t want so she could let herself off any responsibility for what had happened between them.
A Rake to the Rescue Page 9