A Belated Bride
Page 11
“He is not much older than that; he is only twenty.”
“He has seen a war, Bella. He will never be young again.”
Her eyes filled with tears, before she regained control and glared at him. “I know you, Lucien. You will be a charming companion until you tire of his presence. And then you will disappear.”
The words stung. That was how he had failed Sabrina—by not being there when she needed him most. And he’d committed the same crime against Arabella. He hadn’t freed her from a life of financial ruin by walking away all those years ago. He had, instead, left her to deal with the harshness of life, alone and unprotected.
His heart ached anew. “Perhaps I have changed.”
Her mouth thinned, showing her disbelief more plainly than words. “Robert has been hurt enough. Leave, Lucien. Before it is too late.”
She had so much reason to question his motives, but he was sworn to stay. Sworn to help her, whether she wished it or not.
Lucien reached out and ran a finger down the curve of her cheek. “I am staying, Bella mia.” At least until I can find a way to help you through this mess. Afterward…he didn’t know about afterward. Somehow, his thoughts would not go that far.
Arabella turned her face away, her eyes dark. “Then there is nothing more to say.”
He shoved his hand into his pocket and curled it into a fist. “Very well.” He bowed and went to the door. “Good evening, my dear. I will see you at breakfast.”
She stood, arms crossed, staring at the fire. His heart heavy, Lucien left.
Chapter 10
Lucien stepped onto the terrace and lifted his face to the pale winter rays. For December, the air was tinged with a surprising hint of warmth. And that was a good thing, considering his chilly reception in Rosemont since Robert had invited him to become an official guest of the house. Between Aunt Emma’s open hostility and Arabella’s frigid demeanor, it was a wonder he hadn’t frozen to death. Thank God for Robert and Aunt Jane.
The scent of warm bread drifted from the kitchen as Lucien headed for the stables. He would take a quick ride to the Red Rooster, just to get a feel for the place, and then return and get to work. He lifted his arm and moved it in slow circles. Aunt Jane had meticulously plucked the stitches from his shoulder just this morning and he felt as if he were back to full strength, ready to attack the most difficult repair project Rosemont had to offer. Just today, he’d straightened the hinges on several doors, fixed the stuck damper in the kitchen, and replaced three loose steps on the main stairway.
Lucien rounded the corner of the house, whistling silently to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the ungainly shed that sat beside the stable. Last night, after Arabella had retired, pleading a headache, Lucien had slipped outside and found enough of Aunt Emma’s prime cognac resting in the back of the shed to furnish eighteen houses the size of Rosemont. The barrels, missing the requisite excise stamp and still damp from being hauled indoors, had been stacked neatly, a tarp hiding them from sight. Someone at Rosemont was purchasing goods from a free trader. But who?
The only one with enough business sense was Arabella. Without her expert guidance and commonsense management, Rosemont would be in a far greater state of ruin. Yet he could not see Miss Outraged Virtue involved with such an under-the-table effort. Perhaps one of the servants was responsible.
Lost in thought, he opened the gate—and froze. Across the small yard, Arabella strode toward the stables. Reaching the wide wooden door, she glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure no one followed, then slipped inside.
Lucien blinked once, twice. It wasn’t just that she was slinking about like a sneak thief intent on mischief. It was more than that: Arabella Hadley was wearing breeches.
Soft, woolen breeches and black leather boots that clung to her rounded legs and calves in the most damnably alluring fashion. Lucien tugged at his cravat and wondered how defined her derriere would be, encased in what must be her brother’s cast-off clothing. A pity she’d worn such a long coat. Fortunately, he could easily verify his fevered imagination.
With a careful glance around, Lucien continued toward the stables. He’d never met such an infuriatingly independent woman. Someone should take Rosemont’s mistress in hand—from what he could see, Arabella was long overdue.
But what was she doing dressed in men’s clothing? Lucien scowled and increased his pace. Bloody hell. Perhaps she was indeed a link to the smugglers.
The thought clenched his jaw. It was implausible. Still, as soon as the barn door was opened enough to let him slip through, he dropped low and crept into the shadowed interior until he could just see over the stall door. Arabella stood before a pile of hay, sunlight trickling through the slats in the walls and dappling her hair with red-gold beams.
Behind her, an old worn farm horse stretched his neck over his stall door as far as he possibly could, his yellow teeth bared as he tried to reach her pocket. Arabella laughed, her voice rich with delight as she turned to pat the horse’s nose.
Lucien closed his eyes at the sound of her laughter. He remembered another time when she’d laughed like that, her mouth still swollen from his kisses, her luxurious hair tangled beneath them both. She had been an amazingly sensual lover, giving herself in every aspect of their passion with an unbridled eagerness that had amazed and delighted him.
He had been the experienced one, having sampled the bountiful avenues of pleasure available to a young London blade. But Arabella, although an innocent, had drowned his senses with her unrestrained reactions.
He opened his eyes and banished the flood of memories. He was not used to chasing insufferably independent women into the stables, regardless of how appealing they looked dressed in their brother’s cast-off clothing.
Lucien slumped against the stall door, suddenly realizing the ridiculousness of his situation. What was he doing, spying on her like a lovesick twelve-year-old? Arabella murmured to the horse and Lucien lifted his head again. She patted the animal for a moment, crooning to him in a low, soft voice. Then, with a heavy sigh, she turned and picked up a shovel.
A shovel? Lucien frowned as she set to work. She wasn’t just shoveling—she was mucking out the stables, lifting steaming piles of soiled straw into a small handcart. He straightened, forgetting to conceal himself. How had things gotten to such a pass that a gently bred woman had to muck out her own stables? A twinge of guilt struck him. Without his thoughtless interference in her life all those years ago, she might have wed someone in her own station—someone who would have taken care of her and kept her from such labors.
The thought pained him. He clenched his hands into fists and took a hasty step forward, instantly regretting it when the old farm horse swung his large, bony head in his direction. The horse snorted loudly and pawed the floor, whinnying a distinct challenge that caused Hastings’s gentle bay to retreat to the back of his stall in alarm.
Cursing silently, Lucien stooped back behind the door, but not before Satan’s large black head appeared over the stall door beside him, roused from a doze by his companion’s complaints. His ears flicked forward when he saw Lucien, and he whinnied a loud welcome.
“What you complaining about?” Arabella said over her shoulder to the horse. “You have the easy part.”
Where was Wilson? Or Ned? Patting Satan’s nose to keep him quiet, Lucien peered back over the stall door.
Arabella leaned on the shovel, shoving a wisp of hair from her forehead with a gloved hand. Her face was flushed from her exertion, her brow damp, a tendril of hair curled about her cheek.
Dissatisfied at being so summarily ignored, Satan tossed his head and knocked Lucien’s hat to the floor. The horse snorted with laughter when Lucien scrambled to catch it.
“What are you doing here?”
Lucien froze. It would be a long time before he brought Satan another lump of sugar. He flicked a hot glare at the horse before straightening and meeting Arabella’s accusing gaze. “Ah! There you are! I
saw you slip in here, and for an instant I thought…” He stopped. Somehow he didn’t think she would be amused that for one horrible minute he’d assumed she was involved in smuggling cognac for her hazy Aunt Emma.
Arabella’s gaze narrowed. “Well?”
It was infuriating, the way she could look at him as if she could hear what he wasn’t saying just as plainly as what he was. He barely managed to keep his smile intact. “I was looking for…” His desperate gaze found the hat clutched in his hand and he held it aloft. “This.”
She arched a brow, her dark eyes shadowed. “And how did that get into the stables?”
“I lost it when I came to visit the horses last night.” He patted Satan’s velvet nose, then reached a hand toward the farm horse. The horse jerked his head away, then bared his teeth and lunged.
Lucien snatched his hand back just in time. “Vicious, conniving bag of bones,” he growled. “I ought to—”
“Sebastian doesn’t recognize you,” Arabella said bluntly. “And I did not notice your hat when I came in.”
“No? Perhaps it was hidden in all this hay.” He made a great show of cleaning the beaver brim. “Damnable thing. Can’t keep my hands on it.”
Her lips quivered for an instant before she severely repressed them into a straight line. “Now that you have found your errant hat, you may leave.” Then she glowered. “I don’t know how you tricked Robert into giving you an invitation, but it doesn’t give you leave to sneak up on me when I am alone.”
“I will leave when I finish.”
“When you finish what?”
“Helping you.” He shrugged out of his coat, untied his neckcloth, and tossed them both over the railing, then closed the distance between them. He boldly placed his hands over hers on the shovel. Her chin jutted out and her eyes sparkled, the color deepened by her long lashes.
She tried to pull the shovel free. “I do not need your help.”
“Yes, you do.” And she was going to get it, whether she wanted it or not.
Arabella stopped yanking on the shovel to glare up at him. “Why are you here, Lucien? What do you hope to gain?”
She was the most ungracious, most stubborn woman he’d ever known. And she knew him far too well. “Perhaps I am being chivalrous.”
She raised her brows in disbelief. He couldn’t even plead common decency without facing her incredulity. It was galling. Galling and just the tiniest bit reassuring.
He sighed. “Very well, then; maybe I am bored. Your aunts won’t even let me step outside without making Hastings wrap me from head to foot in wool.”
Arabella stared at him an interminable length of time. Finally some of the tension left her body. Her gaze flickered to his shoulder where his shirt opened at the neck, revealing the edge of his bandage. “Perhaps if you had acted less like an invalid, my aunts would not have coddled you so.”
“We’ll never know, will we?” He enjoyed the spark of irritation that shone in her eyes. “Fortunately for us both, this little chore will afford me some much-needed amusement.” His gaze drifted over her, dwelling longer than necessary on the gentle flare of her hips. “Unless you have a better idea of how we could amuse ourselves. Here. Alone. In the stables.”
Her jaw firmed. “No. Now let go.”
She was not going to give an inch. Though he had managed to assuage some of her suspicion, it would take something stronger to get her to relax her hold on the shovel. He glanced at her hand, her slender fingers so tightly wrapped around the thick handle that he couldn’t help but wish she had her hands wrapped around him, her strong fingers stroking, tightening. The idea lifted his manhood to painful readiness.
Damn it, if he didn’t get away from her soon, he would lose what little control he had over his traitorous body. Fortunately, he knew exactly how to make Miss Arabella Hadley release the shovel. Without giving her time to say another word, Lucien leaned over and brushed his cheek across hers, igniting a jolt of raw passion. Heat spiraled to his stomach and he had to grit his teeth to keep from tossing the shovel aside and yanking her to him.
But his abrupt move accomplished its purpose—with a muffled curse, Arabella spun away and stumbled backward. In her haste to get away from him, she left the shovel in his hands.
She stood, a hand on her cheek as if he’d struck her. “That was uncalled for.”
“So is your resistance to a polite offer of help.” He hefted the shovel in his hand to begin, but Arabella stepped between him and the pile of soiled hay.
“I cannot let you do this,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because you will mar your clothing.”
He should not have allowed her words to goad him further, but they did; she seemed to think him the most frivolous, empty-headed, selfish man to walk the earth. Perversely, he decided to prove her right. Smiling faintly, he leaned the shovel in the crook of his arm and began to undo the remaining buttons of his shirt.
Her eyes widened.
“What are you doing?”
“As you said, I can hardly clean out the stables while wearing white linen. Hastings would have an apoplexy.”
“You don’t have to remove your shirt.” Her voice had an edge of desperation that urged him on.
“Oh, but I do.” He pulled his shirt over his head, the cold air sending a welcome chill across his skin, cooling his ardor and allowing him to think clearly for the first time since he’d seen her in those damnable breeches.
“There.” He gestured with the shovel. “Now move.”
Arabella stared at his chest as if fascinated and horrified at the same time. With apparent difficulty, she raised her gaze to his. “But you’ve never mucked out the stables in your life!”
“Then I am due, wouldn’t you say?”
She glanced from him to the muck, a reluctant smile tugging the corner of her mouth. Lucien would have given his entire fortune to taste that smile, to plunder those soft lips and join the heat inside her mouth. The thought swirled straight to his loins and engulfed him in a wave of hot lust. To keep his thoughts away from his errant manhood, he stepped around her and went to work.
Arabella watched him, clearly struggling with herself before bursting out, “I am quite capable of doing this myself.”
No one took their responsibilities as seriously as Arabella Hadley. Lucien supposed some sober and virtuous men would find that an attractive trait in a woman, but he found it damnably irritating. She possessed more pride than any ten women he knew.
Lucien rested the shovel on the floor and leaned over it until his mouth was inches from hers. “Arabella, I am going to muck out the stables. I am here, I am willing, and I can get it done in half the time it would take you.”
“I doubt it,” she snapped, not backing off an inch.
“Dukes are notoriously poor at mucking out stables.”
He grinned. Apparently she had regained her wits along with her temper. “Watch me,” he said, and went back to work.
She raised her brows and looked away, her nails curled into her palms.
He shoveled steadily, flicking a glance her way now and again. Her back was rigid, her face a sea of conflicting emotions. In her brother’s clothing, her hair a mass of wild curls across her shoulders, she looked all of eighteen and furious enough to slit his throat. It was not a propitious beginning. If she fought him every step of the way, he’d never get anything done. Hell, he’d almost had to undress to keep her from wrangling the shovel from him.
The thought unexpectedly amused him. Here he was, bare-chested and almost blue with cold, all from fighting for the right to muck out the stables. He chuckled.
“Put your shirt back on; it is freezing.”
“Nonsense. It is warmer in here than it is in most of Rosemont.”
Arabella forced herself to look away from that broad, muscular expanse of chest. Though it galled her to admit it, the old house did have the tendency to soak in the first chill of the season and hold it long into summer.
But try as she might, she could not dismiss the memory of Robert’s face when he asked her if she did not believe him to be the master of Rosemont. Had Robert demanded that she leave off running the estate, she would have done so with a light heart. But since his return from the war, he had shown no interest in anything. Arabella could not refuse him the one and only request he’d made since his return—to allow Lucien to stay as his guest.
Unaware of her regard, Lucien bent to thrust the shovel deeper into the soiled hay. She scowled. Damn it. How was she supposed to argue with him when he stood before her half naked, the sunlight dappling his broad shoulders with gold, his muscles rippling beneath smooth skin she knew would be deliciously warm to the touch? Despite her vow otherwise, she found herself watching him.
He worked surely and smoothly. There was an innate grace to him that was as masculine as it was primal. It made her want to watch him whether he was on horseback, dancing in a crowded ballroom, or working like a common laborer.
He slanted a green gaze her way. “Do you always muck out the stables yourself?”
Arabella could only hope her voice sounded normal. “Ned usually does it, but he’s helping one of his sisters today. He has three of them and they all seem to believe he is theirs to command.”
“And Wilson?”
Sebastian stole this opportune moment to nudge her. Arabella patted the horse, glad for the distraction. “He should be back this afternoon. He is helping one of the tenants patch a hole in their roof.”
Lucien shoveled a mass of matted straw into the wagon. “How many tenants do you have?”
“Five families; they raise the sheep for us. We get twenty percent of their lambs and fleece.”
“Only twenty?”
“I don’t want them to starve,” she replied defensively. It was an argument she and Mr. Francot had had many times.