When the Scoundrel Sins

by Anna Harrington

  God’s mercy, she’d made his blood boil. So hot, in fact, that he’d very nearly carried her from the pond in his arms, placed her on the grassy bank, and taken her right there. Cold water be damned.

  He grabbed up another stone and slammed it into position. What had stopped him from doing exactly that—the only thing—was that he would be obligated to marry her if he took her innocence. That’s what well-bred gentlemen did when they ruined ladies like Belle. Even a scoundrel like himself couldn’t escape that. And the last thing he wanted was marriage, knowing the grief that would eventually accompany it.

  Nor was he willing to turn his back on the promises he’d made to his father and Asa Jeffers, which was exactly what he would have to do then. Because there would be no marriage of convenience, as Belle had proposed. No separation. Certainly no divorce. He was a Carlisle. The Carlisle men never abandoned the women who needed them, and she would never leave the borderlands. His future wasn’t here among rocky sheep pastures and patches of heather. It was waiting for him in America, where he could be free to make a name for himself. Where nothing would hold him back.

  But for one breathtaking moment in the pond, when he’d been watching her beautiful face as the pleasure overtook her, he hadn’t been thinking about America or his promise to his father. He’d wanted nothing more than to remain right here. With her.

  Growling angrily, he shoved the rock onto the wall and ground it into place with his shoulder.

  “Ye tryin’ to mend that wall,” Burns piped up, “or smash them rocks t’ bits?”

  Christ. His shoulders sagged as he realized what he was doing and stepped back from the wall. “Apologies.” He took a moment to catch his breath and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I was distracted.”

  Distracted? A damned lie. He was a helluva lot more bothered than that.

  Quinn tugged off his gloves and leaned back against the wall, more to gather his thoughts than to take a rest. Never before had an innocent captured his attention the way Annabelle had. Not only the way she looked, with that soft caramel-colored hair and those graceful movements, but also her sharp mind that kept him tantalizingly on his toes. He liked the way he felt when he was with her, a feeling no other woman had ever given him—not as the youngest son of a duke or a rake, but a man in his own right. Strong and competent. One deserving of her smiles. One capable of protecting her the way she deserved.

  “We’ll be done ’fore long,” Burns assured him, popping the cork from a water jug and taking a long swig. “Only a few more of the big ones t’ place, an’ the others’ll fill in fast.”

  Quinn glanced at the remaining gap and wasn’t so certain. “I know about the incidents of vandalism on the estate.” Quinn waved away Burns’s offer of a drink and jerked a thumb at the wall. “Was this another?”

  Burns shook his head, took one last swallow of water, and corked the jug. “This here wall’s needed t’ be repaired fer a while now.” He laughed good-naturedly and slapped Quinn on the back. “Yer just the first Englishman we’ve had a-visitin’ who wasn’t smart ’nough t’ stay inside when there was work t’ be done!”

  Quinn grimaced. Not smart enough, indeed. Apparently not about anything these days. Especially bluestockings.

  “Tell me the truth about Glenarvon.” He stripped off his sweat-soaked work shirt and tossed it across the stones to dry in the sun. “Man to man.” He fixed the foreman with a look. “How’s Miss Greene doing running the estate?”

  “The lassie’s doing fair, fer a woman.”

  Quinn bit back a grin at that. Belle would have flayed the man if she’d heard that qualifier.

  “She’s got the accounts in order, the repairs bein’ made, all the flocks an’ livestock tended to as they should be. It’ll ne’er make her rich, but she makes good work o’ it.”

  He breathed a silent sigh of relief. It would have been unbearable to think she might choose marriage only to save a home she would end up losing anyway.

  “She’s even managed t’ hold on through th’ lot of them incidents lately.” Burns wiped his forearm across his forehead to swipe off the sweat gathered there beneath the brim of his tweed cap. “But I’m right glad yer here now. I know th’ lass appreciates havin’ ye here, all the help an’ advice ye’ve given her. An’ ’specially as Sir Harold’s been pesterin’ her to turn over the runnin’ of Glenarvon to him even now, not wantin’ to wait ’til she inherits—fer that matter, since the bad luck began last year.”

  Cold warning prickled at the back of Quinn’s neck. “You think Bletchley’s involved?”

  Burns spat on the ground and shook his head. “At least attemptin’ to take a’vantage. After e’ery incident that man hurries o’er here, offerin’ to do just that—take it off her hands fer her, let him manage the property.” A sour expression darkened Burns’s weathered face. “I don’t trust him none, certainly not wi’ Glenarvon, an’ not ’round the lass.”

  Quinn’s chest warmed with private vindication. If Angus Burns didn’t like Bletchley, then his own dislike of the man was justified. “She might very well end up having to marry—”

  Alarm bells peeled across the fields. Shouts split the quiet afternoon.

  Quinn shoved himself away from the wall and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he looked across the pasture at the small collection of buildings housing the shearing shed and the dairy, the barns, and other outbuildings where most of the estate’s day-to-day work was carried out. Men scrambled from the buildings and ran toward the last barn, while footmen poured from the house—

  “The hay barn’s afire!” Burns shouted.

  Christ! Quinn raced toward the barn, with Burns at his heels.

  By the time they reached the barnyard, the men had organized themselves into a bucket brigade between the water troughs and the barn, with bucket after bucket passed hand to hand along the line and back. But the small amount of water they managed to pour onto the flames wasn’t nearly enough.

  “Shovels!” Quinn yelled at the last men to arrive from the fields and gestured toward the equipment shed. They did as he ordered and grabbed up shovels, hoes, pitchforks—anything they could use against the flames—then braved the heat to get close enough to toss dirt onto the flames and to smack at the fire to try to control it. But the barn was full to the roof with that summer’s cuttings of hay, all of it dry and ready to catch flame from even the smallest spark.

  Knowing the barn was lost, Quinn yelled for the men to turn the buckets on the surrounding buildings to keep the fire from spreading and for the men with the shovels to beat out any sparks which drifted from the hay barn. Grain sacks were dunked into the troughs and used to beat at the flames to keep the fire contained.

  Quinn raced to the barn doors and threw them open wide, and he, Angus Burns, and two other men rushed inside to save whatever equipment could be salvaged before the flames completely engulfed the building. A small wagon sat in the middle of the barn, while above it the loft blazed with the heat of an inferno.

  He ran forward and grabbed up the tongue, then began to push the wagon forward and out of the barn. Each step was agony, his lungs breathing in smoke and heat, burning as if they, too, were on fire, and all his muscles strained painfully to slowly roll the wagon from the barn. But he wouldn’t give up. As he rolled the wagon forward, his forearm brushed against the metal ring on the tongue. It burned his skin like a branding iron. He growled out a curse at the sharp pain, but he didn’t slow in his steps.

  Finally, the wagon rolled out of the barn and into the fresh, cool air, which slammed into him like a wall. He gasped, filling his burning lungs with air and panting to catch his breath. Tossing the tongue down, he turned to head back to the barn, to rescue whatever else was still inside.

  Someone grabbed his arm. He stopped—

  Belle stood beside him, her fingers pressing hard onto his bicep and refusing to let him go. Tears left streaks down her soot-dirtied cheeks; the hem of her dress hung torn and singed. “
You’re not going back in there!”

  “There’s another wagon—”

  “No!” She fiercely clung to him, putting herself directly between him and the barn. “I won’t lose you, Quinton. I won’t!”

  He glanced at the barn and all the frantic movement around them as the others fought to keep the fire contained.

  “It’s gone!” she choked out through her tears. “There’s nothing more you can do.”

  “The hell there’s not!” he snarled. He hadn’t yet been able to find a way to save her from marrying, but he refused to simply stand there while this new destruction rained down upon her.

  He yanked his arm away from her and ran across the barnyard to grab up a stack of wet grain sacks. Fighting back his exhaustion and the aching strain of his already sore muscles, he beat furiously at the pieces of flaming hay that drifted from the barn, then covered his face from the shower of sparks that flew high into the air when the roof caved in. He felt the heat of Belle’s eyes on him, as hot as the flames themselves, but he refused to look at her, refused to let her think him incapable of protecting her. She needed him, damn it, and he wouldn’t let her down.

  After several minutes of fighting the fire with the other men, still giving orders even as he worked himself into exhaustion, he finally turned back—

  His breath caught at the sight of Annabelle, dangerously standing in the middle of the chaos with the men, shoveling dirt onto whatever flames she could reach. Her face was filthy with soot, her hair hanging half-loose down her back, and every few minutes she had to stop to beat at the hem of her skirt to keep it from catching on fire from the smoldering ashes and charred wood at her feet. Every shovelful of dirt was a futile gesture, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her. He might as well have asked her to stop breathing as to give up this fight.

  Together, all the men and household staff fought the fire until it was contained, although the hay and wooden barn beams would burn on for hours, most likely through the evening and night, no matter how much water and dirt they poured onto it. They were all exhausted and filthy, each man going through the motions in stunned shock and silence.

  When his arms finally burned with a strain that grew too painful to slap the sack against the flames even one more time, Quinn tossed the wet burlap to the ground and bent over, hands on knees, to cough away the last of the smoke in his lungs and regain his breath. He was covered with sweat, hay, and black ash, and still scandalously bare-chested from when he’d pulled off his shirt in the field, which now seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Angus Burns limped across the barnyard to him, the weathered Scot just as exhausted and filthy as Quinn. The collar of his coat was singed.

  Quinn jabbed a soot-blackened finger at the charred remains of the barn and the flames still biting into the last of the wooden beams. “I want to know how this happened.” Blinding fear for Belle squeezed his chest like a vise. This wasn’t petty vandalism by a couple of boys from the village. This was deliberate, with all intents to harm Belle and the estate.

  Across the barnyard, he saw Belle giving orders to the men, assigning shifts to watch the fire until it completely burned out, and asking others to keep on with the buckets of water and shoveling of dirt to quench the coals.

  She paused to draw a deep breath. In that moment, she looked up and met his gaze across the barnyard. He saw the fear in her, the surrender…the utter hopelessness. No one could have stopped that fire after it started; the dry hay and wooden barn served as kindling to the biting flames and spread the fire so fast that extinguishing it had been impossible. Yet Quinn ached with self-recrimination that he’d failed to protect her when she’d needed him. Just as he’d yet been unable to find a way to save her from marriage.

  He wiped his forearm over his lips and spat onto the ground, in an attempt to wipe the taste of the fire from his mouth. He promised Angus Burns in a low growl, “I will find the son of a bitch who did this.”

  And when he did, the man would pay dearly.

  * * *

  “You had no business running into that burning barn,” Belle scolded Quinn, trying to keep the trembling worry from her voice as she gently applied Cook’s salve to the burn on his forearm. The basement was empty. All the servants had gone to help with the barn, which meant she was free to give him a piece of her mind without anyone eavesdropping. “You could have been seriously hurt.” Or worse.

  Sitting next to her at the long worktable in the kitchen, letting her both tend his arm and duly chastise him for his foolish heroism, Quinn said nothing. And oh, if he knew what was good for him, he’d keep his silence!

  Even as she slowly rubbed the salve over the blistering wound with her fingertips, careful not to hurt him, Belle was just furious enough to throttle him for risking his life. His charming grin was missing, for once replaced by a grim expression born of exhaustion and the same emotional drain she felt herself at losing the barn.

  “Worried about me, Bluebell?” he asked gently.

  “Of course I was,” she snapped angrily, refusing to let him see that she was more upset than she wanted to admit. She reached for the bandage on the table beside them, and her fingers shook as she silently rolled the long, white cloth snugly around his forearm. “You could have been killed. How would I have explained that to your mother?” She pulled on the two ends of the bandage, drawing it down tight around his arm. “And now, I’ve got to spend my time mending you because of your foolishness.”

  He glanced down at the bandage, which was drawn so tight that it pressed a deep indention into the muscle of his forearm, and mumbled dryly, “Or saving my death for your own hands?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t think I haven’t been considering the best place to hide your body.”

  She grimaced inwardly with guilt at the overly tight bandage and reached to loosen it. He’d terrified the daylights out of her when she saw him go running into the flames, risking his life to help her. Her heart had stopped with terror, and it hadn’t started beating again until he emerged from the flame-engulfed barn an eternity later. He would have run back inside again to his death if she hadn’t stopped him. Even now her stomach sickened at the thought of it.

  That wasn’t at all the Quinton she’d known from before. That scapegrace was gone, replaced by a mature and responsible man whom she’d come to depend upon.

  What would she have done if anything had happened to him? Dear God, how could she have borne it?

  She blinked back the stinging in her eyes as she loosened the bandage, her fingers shaking so hard at the thought of losing him that she could barely retie the ends. He watched her closely, which only made her shake harder and the tears burn stronger.

  He leaned forward and turned his arm so that his hand slid warmly into hers, his fingertips caressing across her palm and sending a shiver up her arm. His blue eyes stared solemnly at her.

  “It’s nothing, only a little burn.” He cupped her cheek in his free hand and made her look at him. “I’m fine, Belle.”

  She couldn’t find her voice to reply without sobbing. Or cursing.

  “Besides, you know I wouldn’t have died in that barn.” He grinned at her. “I’d never let you get rid of me that easily.”

  With a scowl, she shoved his hand away from her face. Only Quinn would tease her at a time like this! “Knowing you, you’d come back as a ghost and haunt me,” she grumbled, “and then I’d be stuck with you forever.”

  His grin widened. “Would I be able to walk through walls? Because it would make haunting so much more fun if—”

  “Quinton James Carlisle!” The aggravation inside her boiled over. “I swear, if you don’t—”

  He grabbed the front of her dirty dress and yanked her toward him, his mouth capturing hers in an unexpected kiss that stunned her into silence. At first greedy, as if he craved her taste like a starving man, his mouth moved hungrily against hers until she responded just as eagerly.

  Then the kiss softened, until his lips lingered
against hers in a series of tender little kisses. Until she sighed against his mouth, all the anger and frustration draining from her.

  Releasing her dress, he leaned back in the chair. She opened her eyes to find his heated gaze on her. As if contemplating grabbing her for a second kiss.

  God help her, she wanted exactly that. Since he’d arrived at Glenarvon, he’d given her such heated kisses and wanton touches that he’d kept her awake at night imaging all kinds of wicked fantasies—those were a trouble all their own.

  So was the arrogant confidence on his face at so thoroughly kissing her.

  She rolled her eyes. “You can’t keep kissing me every time you want to silence me,” she warned, reaching across the table for his arm to finish what she was doing before he kissed her, although for one disconcerting moment she couldn’t remember what that was.

  “Seems like a damned fine way to me,” he murmured rakishly.

  Her insides melted as a blush heated her cheeks. It seemed like a damned fine way to her, too.

  But it couldn’t continue. “Quinn, I don’t think—”

  “The barn was deliberately set on fire,” he said quietly, suddenly serious.

  Her fingers froze on the bandage as her eyes snapped up to his, not needing a kiss to surprise her into silence this time.

  “Arson,” he clarified, keeping his voice low in case someone entered the basement. “That’s why it went up so fast, not just because of the hay. Like the flooding of the pasture and all the other troubles you’ve had for the past year, someone set that fire to cause problems for you.”

  Her stomach plummeted. He’d given voice to her worst fears, yet she argued, “You don’t know that for certain.”

  “I do.” He placed his hand reassuringly over hers, and her fingers trembled beneath his. “Whoever is doing this meant to cause serious harm this time. But I won’t let them get away with it.”

  Her heart stuttered at the sudden sobriety of his words. “Why would someone do that?”