A Notorious Love

by Sabrina Jeffries

  It took some effort for them both to mount the horse. They had to walk until they found a stile, since Daniel had to mount first and couldn’t lift her into the saddle. He set her on the stile, climbed onto the horse, then pulled her up behind him. Moments later they were back on the road.

  Riding astride was sheer agony after yesterday, but she choked down her moans. For safety’s sake, she ought to wrap her arms about Daniel’s waist instead of hanging on to his frock coat, but touching him so intimately was impossible when she felt like strangling him. Nor did she want to be reminded of all they’d shared the night before, when she’d foolishly thought she’d begun to understand him.

  She didn’t even know him.

  Her brother-in-law’s man of affairs figured investments and advised dukes. Danny Boy Brennan, Crouch’s lieutenant, threatened to slit men’s throats. Danny Brennan lied whenever it suited him.

  Oh, why must she have the instincts of a ninnyhammer when it came to men? How could she have been so foolish as to be taken in by him yet again?

  They’d ridden only a few miles before Daniel suddenly turned the horse off the road onto a smaller one nearly hidden by overhanging willows. “Daniel? Where are we going?” she demanded above the thundering of the hooves. Daniel had kept the horse at a steady gallop, which, along with their positions, made conversation difficult.

  “We need to find somewhere to lie low,” he called back. “I’ll explain when we stop.”

  You certainly will. She would not let him shut her out any longer. She’d make him tell her everything, if she had to beat him over the head with her makeshift cane to do it.

  Soon they emerged from a grove of autumn-red sycamores to gallop past a wide expanse of marsh humming with grasshoppers and blue dragonflies. The narrow road ended abruptly before a small farmhouse and barn. Daniel stopped the horse in front of the wattle-and-daub house and dismounted, then turned and lifted her down. Her legs were sore, but thankfully the ride had been short enough not to tax them beyond her strength.

  But even after her demi-boots were firmly on the ground, he stood there with his hands on her waist, his gaze trailing over her with a dark need that sent her blood racing in anticipation of more.

  Lord, what was wrong with her? All he had to do was touch her and everything she’d learned today was blotted out by the memory of him lying atop her last night, kissing her and caressing her and…

  With a groan, she twisted out of his arms and reached for her makeshift cane. She moved a few feet away to face the tiny farmhouse. “Why are we stopping here?”

  He came to stand beside her. “Wallace’s men are sure to come upon us if we continue on the main road. If they see us riding his mare, they’ll guess what happened and then there’ll be hell to pay. At least this way they may assume he was successful and that he went on without them.”

  “So they might not look for him at all?” she said hopefully.

  “Or they might be headed here now. Either way, we can’t go on so openly with him and his men around. We need to hide for a bit and find better transport.”

  “But if they do find Wallace while we’re hiding, he might convince them to go to Crouch.”

  “P’raps. P’raps not. They don’t seem as foolish as him, and God knows I tried to put the fear of God into him.” He sighed. “It’s not as if we have a choice, lass. At least if we lie low for the night, we might continue in the morning without trouble. But if we go anywhere near Sedlescombe tonight, we’re sure to be seen by some of them—and the only road to Hastings from here goes right through Sedlescombe.”

  She glanced around. The timber-framed house was small. The barn looked ancient and scarcely capable of housing more than a few horses. In a nearby enclosure four pigs lolled about in the mud, and some Jersey cows grazed on marsh grass beyond. All in all, a struggling farm.

  “So this is where you plan to ‘lie low’? Do you know the owner?”

  “No, I took a turn at random.” He started toward the house. “But farmers hereabouts are friendly, especially if you cross their hands with silver. They probably won’t see anything wrong with letting us sleep in the barn, and that’s all we need—a night off the road.”

  She followed him to the door, watching as he knocked on it loudly. There was no answer. He knocked again and they waited, but no one came. Finally, he tried the door. Just as the knob turned and the door opened, a youthful voice sounded behind them.

  “Best get away from that door, mister, unless you wish to die.”

  Chapter 14

  Instead of his stomach he feasted his eyes

  On the charms of her beauty, which did him suffice.

  “Love in the Tub,”

  anonymous ballad

  So much for friendly farmers, Daniel thought as he turned around.

  Then he caught sight of their challenger, and relief curled through him. It was a lad of no more than fifteen, clad in a dirty laborer’s smock and nankeen breeches. A lock of ginger-brown hair drooped into the wary blue eyes that darted from him to Helena. The stripling brandished a pitchfork at them, but the sweat dripping down his freckled cheeks made it clear he wasn’t as brave as he pretended.

  “Here now, boy, we mean you no harm.” Daniel took a step toward him. “Why don’t you just put that thing down and—”

  “Stay back!” The stripling swung his pitchfork out toward Daniel. “And I ain’t no ‘boy’! I’m man enough to put this through your heart if I have to!”

  Daniel stifled a laugh. What would the boy say if he knew of the pistol in Daniel’s pocket? “No doubt you can, but I’m not sure why you’d want to. We’ve done nothing to warrant it.”

  “You were breaking into my house!”

  “My husband merely wanted to see if anyone was home,” Helena put in. “When no one answered his knock, we thought perhaps it had not been heard.”

  Helena’s cultured tones seemed to give the boy pause. He shifted his attention to her, his eyes flicking over her muddy gown and the makeshift cane she leaned upon. He lowered the pitchfork a fraction. “What happened to you? Y’look as if you’ve been rollin’ about with the pigs.”

  She winced. “I certainly feel like it. I’m afraid we had an accident while on our way to the seaside. It quite destroyed our gig and tossed us both in the mud. As you can see, it ruined my best frock. It broke my cane, too, which is why I’m having to use this pathetic tree branch to walk.” She held out a hand with a cordial smile. “My name is Helena Brennan, and this is my husband Daniel. We’re very sorry to intrude, but we thought perhaps you could help us.”

  The lad hesitated, glancing from her to Daniel with wary eyes. At last he set the pitchfork on end and took her hand. “I’m Seth Atkins. I live here.”

  When the lad held Helena’s hand longer than necessary, Daniel said gruffly, “P’raps if we could speak to your father…”

  Seth dropped Helena’s hand and shot Daniel a sullen look. “Father ain’t here just now.” The boy thrust out his chest. “So you’d best be talkin’ to me about what it is you want.”

  “Of course.” Helena cast a warning glance at Daniel as if to say, Let me handle this. Then she gave Seth a bright smile. “Your father will undoubtedly be pleased to hear how well you are protecting the farm. But I assure you, we are not beggars or thieves. We merely need a place to stay this evening. We were hoping you might oblige us by letting us stay in your barn.”

  Seth shifted from one foot to the other. “Why d’you want to stay in a cold barn? Sedlescombe’s only a few miles south, and you c’n get a nice room at the inn there.”

  “With my poor leg, a few miles might as well be a few hundred. I can’t ride more than a short distance, and since the accident with our gig forced us to rely on only the one horse…” She trailed off with a pitiful look of supplication. “Please, you won’t make me get back on it, will you? We’ll be no trouble, I assure you.”

  Christ, Daniel thought, and she said he was smooth-tongued.

  Seth rela
xed his stance and scratched his chest. “Well, I don’t know…” he began, but it was clear he was softening.

  Daniel shook his head. The poor lad hadn’t had a chance once Helena turned her powers of persuasion on him. She’d done the same thing to Daniel in London, convincing him to bring her along against his better judgment. And now he was suffering for it.

  “We can pay you very well,” she said.

  “Yes,” Daniel put in, figuring that was his cue. He withdrew his purse and opened it. “We don’t mind paying. And once your parents return, they can decide whether we stay or no.”

  Seth glanced from Helena’s leg to the horse and then back to the purse in Daniel’s hand. “They ain’t comin’ back till tomorrow evening. They left me in charge. But I suppose it won’t hurt none. Long as you pay.”

  “Thank you,” Helena said softly. “That’s most generous.”

  The lad gave her a crooked grin. “You’re welcome. I’d let you stay in the house, but Father would tan my hide for it.”

  “The barn will be fine, I’m sure,” Helena said. “It’s very kind of you to take pity on us.”

  Helena flashed Seth a smile and the fool thrust out his chest, a bantam rooster crowing to a hen.

  Daniel rolled his eyes. And to think that the lass believed she couldn’t attract a man. Was she bloody blind? Already the boy looked as if he’d pitchfork his way through hell to save her.

  Daniel cleared his throat. “We’d like something to eat, too, if it’s all right.” Daniel drew out a handful of silver and waited until Seth’s gaze shifted to it. “It needn’t be anything fancy, you understand. Just bread and whatever else you can spare.”

  “Mum left me some supper I’ll be happy to share.” Seth jerked his thumb toward the barn. “You can stable your horse in there. My parents took our only two, so there be plenty of room. I’ll bring the food to you in a bit, soon’s I dress.” He paused to scan the two of them, “If you want to wash the mud off, you c’n use that.” He indicated a pump with a jerk of his head. “There’s soap in the pail next to it if you like.”

  “We’re much obliged,” Daniel said, handing the coins to Seth, who took them, then stood staring down at the silver as if waiting for it to evaporate in his hand. Poor lad had probably never seen that much money in his whole life, judging from the appearance of his family’s farm. Indeed, Daniel wondered what the boy had thought he was protecting.

  At last Seth shoved the coins into his trouser pocket. “Be right back,” he mumbled, then strode toward the farmhouse.

  As the lad set his pitchfork by the door, then disappeared inside, Daniel strode back to Wallace’s horse. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Helena limp toward the pump and felt his gut twist into a knot. He hated this, forcing her to wash in the icy water of a pump and bed down in hay when she deserved hot baths and fine linen on feather beds. He hated dragging her from pillar to post, not knowing what trouble they might find in the next town.

  But most of all, he hated the look of hurt betrayal in her eyes. He wished he’d shot that scoundrel Wallace before the man had told her about him and Crouch.

  Daniel drew himself up with a scowl. She had him acting as if he ought to be ashamed of it. It wasn’t his fault that she’d leapt to certain conclusions about his past. Nor did it change anything between them, not as far as he was concerned.

  Yet the memory of how disappointed she’d looked when Wallace was gleefully exposing Daniel’s old connection…

  Damn the man! Now she knew for certain what a scoundrel Daniel had been. She’d already thought him a whoremonger, but now she thought him a villain, too. He could tell from her frosty manner, her angry glances. His only consolation was that she still seemed willing to let him guide their actions—though she probably felt she had little choice.

  He led Wallace’s horse into the barn and set about unsaddling it. When Helena entered a while later, she had her bonnet in one hand and a now-dirty handkerchief in the other. She hung both on nails in a nearby post. She’d scrubbed her face clean and had rinsed out her hair, for the chestnut weight of it clung damply to her shoulders, crisscrossing the back of her bodice with dark, wet swaths as translucent as paper.

  His blood quickened at the sight. Jerking his gaze away, he concentrated on rubbing down the horse. He was nearly finished when Helena spoke.

  “Daniel?”

  “What?” he growled.

  “When you said this morning that you could rescue Juliet from Crouch unless something went wrong, were you talking about Crouch’s men finding out that you were coming? And them knowing who you are?”

  He flinched. “Yes.”

  “And I suppose with Wallace around that’s still a possibility.”

  “Damn it, yes.” He couldn’t stand the way she danced around the issue. “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice held a hauteur he hadn’t heard in it since London.

  “I mean the reason you stiffen when I touch you, the reason you can hardly bear to look at me. You’ve gone back to thinking you can’t trust me.”

  “Now why should I do that, I wonder?” she said sarcastically.

  He turned from the horse to throw down the curry brush. “Goddamn it, Helena, I couldn’t tell you about me and Crouch.”

  Her gaze burned steadily into his. “Oh? Why not? Because it was ‘nothing to worry’ me?”

  Her blatant echo of his lie sliced right through him. “That’s it exactly. I didn’t figure your knowing would make any difference, seeing as how I’d already promised to help your sister escape her captors.”

  “If it made no difference, then why not tell me?”

  “Because I knew you’d react like you are now—assuming the worst, deciding I’m as bad as the ones that took her.”

  She gaped at him. “I’m not doing that!”

  “I saw how you looked at me after Wallace spewed out his poison: like I was a bloody insect you wanted to squash. Like I’d betrayed you. Here you’d been thinking I was some poor lad forced to live among smugglers and do a bit of their dirty work, and apparently that was all right by you. You didn’t mind so much having me touch you, then.”

  “You don’t understa—”

  “But it’s not quite the same to learn I was Crouch’s right-hand man in my youth, is it? That I was as much a criminal back then as Wallace and his gang, if not more. Well, you listen to me, lass. I’m the same man who kissed you last night, the same man you claimed to trust while you sat before all those free traders. And if you think I—”

  He broke off as he heard the door to the farmhouse slam. The boy was coming.

  Daniel dropped his voice. “We’ll finish this later, d’you hear? In the meantime, you’d best decide what you want from me. Because like it or not, we’ll be enduring each other’s company for the next few days, and I don’t plan to spend it as your whipping boy.”

  He regretted his harsh words the instant she recoiled from him, shock and pain in her features. Filled with self-loathing, he wheeled away to lead the horse into a stall. He shouldn’t have said that last bit, but Christ, she made him insane when she looked at him like he was the worst devil hell had ever spawned. It made him want to roar and stamp about the barn.

  She hadn’t looked at him like that last night, oh, no. Last night, she’d been all soft and eager to have him in her bed. And it hadn’t just been the liquor talking, either. After this afternoon in the gig, he was sure of it. But now she thought to blot all that out of her head, just because of a few matters in his past. How dare she?

  He wanted to go back and drag her into his arms, remind her of what had passed between them, the heat and the need and the sweetness. He wanted to make her see it made no difference what he’d been in his youth.

  But their young host’s footsteps could be heard rounding the barn. The stripling had chosen a devil of a time to bring them supper. Schooling his features into some semblance of calm, Daniel left the horse, closed and lat
ched the stall door, and returned to where Helena was still standing, mute and stricken. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t bear to see the sure contempt in her eyes.

  “There was more food than I thought,” Seth announced cheerily as he walked into the barn carrying a tray heaped high. Dressed in the simple garb of a farmer, he seemed oblivious to the tension that clouded the air in the barn.

  Helena seemed to shake herself. “Oh…thank you. We much appreciate it.”

  “Mum even left a cake,” he went on. “I’ll get it after you’re done with all this.”

  “We wouldn’t want to take your cake,” she said softly. “You keep that for yourself.”

  Though the smile she then offered looked wooden, it further enraged Daniel. How easily she could turn pleasant when some unlicked cub cozied up to her. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of cake,” Daniel grumbled. “God knows I paid for it.” He strode up to the boy and surveyed the tray, then grudgingly conceded, “Although it does look as if you gave us our money’s worth, lad.”

  “Mum makes right fine bread and butter,” Seth boasted. “And there’s pickles and ham and even some cold boiled potatoes if you like.”

  “It sounds delicious,” Helena whispered, “though I confess I’m…not as hungry as I thought.”

  When Daniel’s gaze shot to her, he saw naught but bleak pain, so palpable it was like a blow to his groin. He knew why she’d lost her appetite—who’d made her lose it. And with a savage twist of guilt, he remembered that she’d barely eaten any breakfast.

  “Why don’t the two of you set up a place for us to eat while I go wash up?” he muttered. Maybe if he left her alone for a bit, she could find her appetite. Besides, it was too bloody hard to be near her at the moment.

  He strode outside to the pump. He shed his clothes to the waist, being careful to remove his pistol and hide it beneath the pile. Then he gave himself as good a scrubbing as he could manage in the rapidly fading light. He didn’t mind the icy water or the chill autumn air; at least it helped to cool his anger. After he’d finished and put his shirt and waistcoat on, he gathered up his muddy coat and the pistol and returned to the barn.