And Barbara? He suspected she was as shrewd as she was lovely. And she was protective of Hugh. Perhaps, together, they might have planned the attack at the wharf.
And Lisbeth Hamilton? He read her with more difficulty than the others. Her face gave little away, but she was obviously passionate about the horses she raised. Passionate enough to set villains on a stranger and child? But then, what would she gain by that? Hugh would inherit.
Hell, it was all a puzzle.
Ben pushed the troubling thoughts away as he entered the suite. Gratefully, he set Sarah Ann down and she made for Annabelle’s basket, took the cat and cuddled it possessively. She murmured to Annabelle, then headed for the feather bed. Her mother’s scarf was wound around her neck, and Ben knew she would sleep in it again. He had to think of a way to get it washed. Its sky-blue color had turned a smoky-gray.
Good girls clean their plates. Sarah Ann had tried so hard to be good. It was time for her to be a child again. And that meant the coveted pony.
The elderly butler paused at the open door of the room, then entered. Duncan carried a tray with two glasses, a pitcher of warm milk, and a bottle of golden whisky. Even a cigar was included. He blessed Lisbeth Hamilton, though he suspected ulterior motives behind such largess.
Ben sat next to Sarah Ann as she drank her milk, then helped her into a long nightgown. He fingered the scarf. “Maybe we could ask someone to launder this,” he suggested.
She grabbed the end of the filthy cloth. “No,” she said stubbornly.
“Someday, then?”
“Someday,” she agreed in a sleepy voice.
It was obvious to him, though, that that someday might never come. He thought about slipping the scarf off after she went to sleep, but then considered the repercussions if she woke and found it missing.
Not yet. The time wasn’t right to risk her trust only for the sake of washing a piece of cloth that represented security to her.
Annabelle eyed him suspiciously, as if she knew is every thought, then collapsed next to her mistress. The bed was meant to be his, but the young intruders would enjoy it much more than he.
With the slightest of sighs, Ben leaned down and covered Sarah Ann and Annabelle. The child’s eyes flickered open for a moment. “I think I like it here. If I can have a pony.”
“You will have your pony, I promise.”
“Will you tell me a story?”
He thought of the glass of whisky … the cigar … and decided there was nothing he would rather do than tell her a story.
His supply of stories was limited, however. His father had never told him even one. But he’d found a book of fairy tales in Boston and had memorized a dozen. He’d tried to put a different twist on several, but Sarah Ann rejected that. She liked the same ones over and over again.
“Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a beautiful princess who lived in a castle.”
“Like this one?”
“Just like this one,” he assured her.
“And she had a cat named Annabelle?” Sarah Ann asked.
“A naughty cat named Annabelle,” he replied.
Annabelle took offense. She stood, raising her back and stalking about the feather bed several times before returning to the spot she deemed softest.
Sarah Ann giggled. “She understood you.”
If he hadn’t known better, he might have agreed. The damned beast was uncanny sometimes. The dangerous life in the Boston alleys seemed to have imbued Annabelle with extraordinary abilities.
“She doesn’t think she’s naughty at all,” Sarah Ann said. “You don’t either, do you?”
“Of course not,” he lied, crossing his fingers in front of her. She had told him herself that it was all right to tell tiny lies if you crossed your fingers.
“And she’s beautiful,” Sarah Ann added.
Not for all the crossed fingers in the world could he tell that big a lie. The half-grown feline was too skinny despite a voracious appetite, her head was misshapen, her left ear half gone, and her eyes of different colors.
“Annabelle is … distinctive,” he hedged.
Sarah Ann smiled happily. “What’s ‘tinctive’?”
“Different, Sugarplum.”
“Pretty, too,” she insisted.
She wasn’t going to give up, so he nodded.
Satisfied, Sarah Ann returned to the story. “Go on,” she demanded.
So he did for the next few minutes, until her thick lashes fluttered and her eyes closed. He leaned over and tucked the comforter around her, then just watched for several minutes, feeling contentment flowing through him. Both Sarah Ann and Annabelle looked lost in the big feather bed. Finally, he put out all but one kerosene lamp, which he lowered to a small glow, and left the room for his own smaller chamber.
He regarded the whisky and cigar with appreciation. He would have one glass, a smoke, and then retire.
He found the whisky excellent and the cigar superb. Yet he would have preferred being back in Colorado. He had come to love the mountains, and the freedom they inspired in him to be what he wanted to be. The idea of practicing law again had become increasingly attractive in the past few months.
He didn’t belong here. He would try, for Sarah Ann’s sake, but …
He recalled Hugh’s bitter comment. “You want the money.”
But Hugh was wrong. He didn’t want the money. He didn’t want Calholm. He didn’t think he wanted anything to do with a family that traded barbs across the dinner table. He would give it two months for Sarah Ann’s sake, but he wasn’t going to leave her here alone, not the way things stood.
Ben finished his drink and cigar and, as was his habit, took his gun from his valise and tucked it under his pillow. He doubted the presence of danger, and yet the accident in Glasgow nagged at him. It probably was an accident; still, years as a lawman made him wary.
Ben quenched the light, looking forward to tomorrow, particularly to visiting the stables. He’d always loved good horseflesh, and he longed to be in a saddle again.
With that thought, he closed his eyes and willed sleep to come, halfway wishing he had an outlaw to hunt. That was easy. Black and white.
Calholm was something else altogether.
Lisbeth couldn’t sleep. And the big man who had entered their household was responsible. She kept trying to remember Jamie, his sensitive face and kind hands. But the rough-hewn, plainspoken American pushed those memories aside.
She’d never met anyone like Ben Masters. He obviously didn’t care what they thought of him; not even Barbara’s opinion seemed to matter. And he had been so gentle with Sarah Ann. Her niece. Sugarplum, he’d called her.
She’d thought, like the others, that the American had latched onto the child because of the inheritance. Now she wondered. No one could feign the caring she’d heard in his voice.
At dinner, Lisbeth had felt Sarah Ann’s bewilderment, though the little girl had tried hard to hide it. She’d felt it because she’d known the same kind of uncertainty at that age. But Ben Masters had a deft touch for comforting, a touch her own father hadn’t possessed.
Rising from her bed, Lisbeth pulled on her dressing gown. The thought of Sarah Ann in a strange, frightening place made her ache inside. She would look in on her, see that she was comfortable.
Lisbeth lit a candle and left her room. The hall was dark, and the flickering flame cast dancing shadows against the walls. Calholm had never really been her home. Nonetheless, she had been safe here, and that had been enough.
Her slippers made no noise on the carpeted floor. She passed the door to the large room Ben Masters was occupying and went to the next one where Sarah Ann would be sleeping. Keeping the candle to the side, shading its light so it wouldn’t wake the child, Lisbeth approached the single bed. The faint smell of cigar smoke drifted to her nose, and she stiffened. In the next instant, the bed seemed to explode.
Something grabbed her hand, and she went tumbling down to land on a hard object. The candl
e dropped from her hand, and something cold and round pressed against her side. Metal. Like a gun. An exclamation escaped her lips.
“What the hell?” a man’s voice roared.
She couldn’t answer. She’d been rendered speechless by the sudden awareness that she was lying atop Ben Masters, who held a gun to her side—and that he was stark naked.
Chapter Five
“What the hell?”
The words thundered from Ben’s mouth before he realized that the soft body lying on top of his was female—a scantily clad, unarmed female of the grown-up variety.
She wriggled in his tight grasp, and the consequent stroking between them brought instant awareness to every nerve ending in his body, as if they’d been jolted awake from a long sleep. Ben cursed again, silently this time. He’d lived on the edge of danger so long that he didn’t know how to react like an ordinary human being. When had he become an animal, like those he’d hunted?
The woman on top of him had gone very still. Ben tried to force himself to relax, but it was a losing battle. The feel of her, her warmth and softness, seeped through his skin and into his blood. His body responded, and he knew she felt the response. The smallest whimper escaped her.
Though he couldn’t see her, he knew who she was. Perhaps it was the light scent she wore, or the slenderness of her form. Lisbeth Hamilton was lying full-length on top of him with damned little between them. And the blood pooling in his loins thickened at the thought.
He expected a scream, but all he heard was a sharp intake of breath. She wriggled again and, this time, he let her go. But when she slid across him, trying to rise, she increased the friction between their bodies. Ben had to stifle a groan. Fire ran through him like a wildfire racing through the Indian Territory prairie.
He rolled to his side and saw a flare of light on the floor. A flame. The candle that had fallen from her hand.
He shoved Lisbeth aside, reaching for the candle, grabbing it, clapping his other hand down onto the carpet to extinguish the fire. Then he sank back onto the bed with a sigh, and blew out the candle, plunging the room into total darkness.
Lisbeth lay, stunned, against the wall where she’d been tossed like a rag doll. She didn’t know whether to be outraged or grateful. Ben Masters had prevented a fire from spreading—but then, she wouldn’t have dropped the candle if he hadn’t attacked her.
Bloody hell. She had expected a sleeping child, and she’d encountered a volcano.
She pulled herself up to lean weakly against the wall, shoving the hair out of her eyes with a hand that trembled. In the next instant, she was attacked again—suddenly, inexplicably—by something flying out of the darkness. Something with claws. The claws dug through the light fabric of her nightdress and dressing gown, and she screamed.
“Dammit!” Masters erupted only inches away. “You want to wake the whole household?” he hissed.
A furry body walked over her, then disappeared in the blackness. She uttered an epithet that would have made a stableboy proud, and she heard Masters chuckle.
That chuckle brought her anger to a boiling point. Bloody man. This was still her house. Until Sarah Ann was officially acknowledged, she was still mistress of Calholm.
Then Masters said quietly, “I don’t think we want any visitors, do we?”
God’s toothache! The implications chilled her. Though she’d never been one for convention, there were certainly some situations that were beyond the pale—and this was one of them. She was in a man’s bedroom, wearing only a nightdress, and he was naked. Thoroughly naked. Not only that, but he was also in the throes of arousal, if what she felt just seconds ago was what she thought it was.
“I would suggest you put some clothes on,” she said, trying frantically to imbue her voice with authority. It came out more prim than anything else, and she shuddered at the ridiculous sound of it.
“You would suggest?” he repeated.
She wanted to slap the amusement out of his voice. He should be as appalled as she at the circumstances. He was obviously no gentleman, for he was making no haste at all to remedy the situation. He even seemed to be enjoying it.
She reached out a hand and was even more dismayed when she encountered a muscular human leg. She jerked back, hitting the wall again.
Mortified, she sought a way to restore some dignity to the absurd situation. Impossible. It was black as pitch—now that the candle was out—but in her mind’s eye she saw him. Naked. Close. Very close. Too close.
“The cat …” she managed weakly.
Another chuckle drifted across the space between them. But the chuckle turned suddenly to a curse, and she could only guess that he’d become the cat’s next target.
“Annabelle,” he warned in a deadly tone that Lisbeth knew she never wanted to hear directed toward her.
“Papa?” The terrified voice came from the next room.
“It’s all right, Sarah Ann,” he said. “It’s just Annabelle.”
Lisbeth sensed movement. Then a bulky form hovered over her.
“You stay here,” he ordered.
As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw Ben Masters lean down and pull on something. There was the sound of a match being struck, then the flickering flame of a kerosene lamp.
The cat fled back to the other room, and when her eyes returned to the American, he was standing in front of her, partially covered by a pair of trousers. The rest of him, however, was quite bare … and impressive. For a moment, she wanted to flee, too, like the cat, but something held her back.
It wasn’t his order that kept her there. She had never taken to orders very well. It was curiosity. The kind of curiosity that killed the cat, she reminded herself.
Still, she had to admit, the sight of the half-naked Ben Masters was not unpleasant. A tingle started in her spine and spread rapidly throughout the rest of her. Ben Masters’s body was lean and very, very hard. His chest looked as if it had been sculpted from marble, the scar that ran along his side a mere slip of the sculptor’s chisel. His hair was tousled, a lock falling onto his forehead, and his cheeks were covered with bristle. Never had she seen such stark masculinity. He dominated the small room like some giant, and his scowl would have frightened a host of angels. He muttered something she couldn’t quite hear, turned around, and disappeared into the other room, taking the lamp with him.
Paralyzed by indecision, Lisbeth stayed exactly where she was, uncertain whether or not her legs would carry her from the spot. She looked around. By the lamplight coming from the other room, she saw Ben Masters’s clothes neatly folded over the one chair in the room. There was no sense of the man other than the lingering power of his physical presence. But that was enough. More than enough.
Her gaze fell to the pistol on the bed. Another surprise. Far different from the antique dueling pistols she’d seen before, this one had a short barrel and plain handle. It looked businesslike. And well used.
She thought about the man who owned it—the speed of his reactions, the deceptive casualness of his manner, the strength and scarred condition of his bronze-toned body—and she came to one swift conclusion: Ben Masters was no mere solicitor. Not unless American solicitors were a great deal different from their Scottish counterparts.
So the question was, who and what was he?
Lisbeth took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Cautiously, she moved toward the door and unashamedly spied.
Masters was sitting on the big feather bed. His head was bent over, and he was whispering something she couldn’t hear. Then he tucked a comforter around Sarah Ann, whose small form hardly made a ripple in the huge bed. He waited a moment, then rose with a kind of grace that belied his limp, which she’d noticed had grown more pronounced throughout the day.
He moved swiftly toward her, carrying the lamp with him, and very quietly closed the door.
“She’s asleep,” he said curtly. “Now perhaps you will explain your intrusion.”
Lisbeth was very aware of his
bare chest, his mussed hair, the expectant look in his eyes.
“I thought you would be … in the other room,” she said, her voice shaking slightly.
His eyes turned very hard, as if her stumbling explanation was even worse than her invasion of his quarters.
“I thought Sarah Ann would be sleeping here,” she continued. “I only wanted to look in and make sure she was warm enough … and that she wasn’t frightened.”
His eyes held disbelief, and Lisbeth felt a chill. Suddenly, a horrifying idea flashed into her mind. “You don’t think I intended to hurt her?”
“I don’t think anything,” Masters replied harshly. “I just don’t like people sneaking around in the night.”
Lisbeth was outraged.
“This is my house, and I don’t sneak,” she said through clenched teeth. “Neither do I have animals so ill-bred they bite their hostess—and their bloody owner to boot.”
He was silent for a moment, then, amazingly, he began to laugh.
“You’re right on one count,” he said. “Annabelle is obviously ill-bred. We found her on the streets of Boston and she’s so used to fending off villains, I guess her instinct is to attack first and ask questions later.”
“Not unlike her owner,” Lisbeth observed bitingly.
He unexpectedly winced. “Only with intruders in the night. Now, let me see that hand.” He took hold of her arm, which was bleeding slightly from cat scratches, and, with one finger, pulled up the sleeve of her nightclothes.
Lisbeth’s first reaction was surprise at his gentleness. How could such large hands be that sensitive? His thumb ran over the newest scratches, and the ones created earlier in the morning. “They’re not bad, but I’ll have to apologize for Annabelle,” he said. “She won’t do it for herself. She believes herself quite above the law. She pays attention only to Sarah Ann, and that rarely.” His voice held a wry note of admiration, as if he thoroughly approved of the cat’s unruliness.
Lisbeth frowned. Henry the Eighth was no paragon of virtue, but he didn’t run around chasing cats or biting everyone in sight, not even Barbara, though, once or twice, Lisbeth had secretly wished he would. Sometimes Henry was too good-natured for his own good. The same certainly couldn’t be said of Annabelle.
Marshal and the Heiress Page 6