Jamie gaped at the lady. Where were the slaps the child had earned for her misbehavior? Or the pinches that would make certain she'd not repeat her mistake?
He watched in surprise as her mother’s gentle scold drove Mistress Lucy's cockiness from her. The child’s lower lip trembled. Wrapping her arms around her mother's neck, she buried her head into the lady’s shoulder.
“Pardon, Mama,” she muttered into the curve of her dam's throat.
Jamie’s surprise turned to astonishment. Mama? Peasant children used that name but Lady Purfoy's title required the more formal my lady mother.
Jamie’s gaze shifted to the lady, certain that no matter how unconventional she might be in her parenting, she wouldn’t tolerate such a slur to her rank. Lady Purfoy didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she stroked a hand down her daughter's back as if to soothe, then pressed a kiss to the dirt-streaked curve of her child’s neck.
“I am only glad you're safe,” she whispered, her face softening with the love she bore for her daughter.
Jamie drew a sharp breath. Never had he seen anything more beautiful. Deep within him, something stirred. This, not beating and pain, nor the hatred and rejection he'd known, was the way it should be between mother and child.
Lifting her head, the lady turned her gaze on Jamie. “My apologies, Master Wyatt. She slipped away from us while we were distracted.”
Jamie could only stare at her. After spending a month at court trying to pry the truth out of the sly faces of those around him, it took him a moment to recognize the sincerity that filled her gray eyes. He was wrong. She was not her mother. This was an open and honest woman.
Struggling to make sense of his world’s sudden shift, Jamie cleared his throat and managed to say, “My lady, your daughter has mistaken me for her stepfather. You must tell her that I am only Squire Hollier’s proxy.”
“Ah,” the lady breathed, understanding filling her sweet eyes.
As she looked at her daughter, her sultry lips parted in an amused smile. “I wondered what set you to wandering up here,” she said. “Sweetling, this is Master Wyatt. He is steward to the man I'm to wed. We won’t meet your stepfather until we arrive at our new home.”
Disappointment clouded the child's pretty eyes. Her mouth twisted downward. “But I wanted to ride my stepfather's horse!” She buried her face into her mother's neck to sob as if her heart had broken.
Lady Purfoy gently stroked the child. “Pardon my sweet, I thought you understood.”
With a quick bob to Graceton’s party, the lady carried her crying child back down to the table's end. “Peg, call to Brigit and tell her Lucy is well.”
As the coarse woman did as she was bid, Jamie watched her mistress. An odd sense of connection woke in him, as if there were some invisible silken cord stretching between them.
Shock brought him upright on his bench. May God damn him, but she belonged to Nick. Only the basest man, the earth-wallowing, shit-eating sort, would pine for the woman married to his dearest friend.
Then he was a base, earth-wallowing, shit-eating sort of man, because want this woman he did.
Anger woke, cleansing in its heat. This obsession of his would end now. He came to his feet, his hands clenched into fists.
With a cry, Tom rose beside him. “Master James, what is it?” he asked, his voice pinched with worry.
Jamie shot a narrow-eyed look at his man. “You take the room. I'll sleep in the stable to guard the horses,” he snarled. Aye, sleeping with beasts was a good place for one as low as he.
Without another word, he strode toward the room’s exit, passing the lady as he went. She didn’t notice, busy as she was settling her daughter on a bench. Ah, but he noticed her. He noticed the gentle turn of her back and that without her farthingale her skirts clung to the roundness of her hips. He noticed the sweet look upon her face as she stroked her child’s cheek.
Throwing open the inn door, he entered the darkened courtyard and followed his nose to the stables. Sir Edward and the governess stood near the wall. The rising moon was just bright enough to show him they watched him.
A courteous man would have stopped and told the woman her charge had been found. There’s the rub. Courtesy belonged to true men, not the sort that pined after his employer's wife. He passed them without a word.
Lady Purfoy’s ugly servant had barely called out her warning that the child had been found when the inn’s door flew wide, then crashed back into its frame. Although they’d been doing no wrong, Ned took a quick step back from the governess only to laugh at himself. No doubt it was guilt over his own improper thoughts about the woman beside him that made him do it.
Master Wyatt strode out into the yard. Rather than stop and acknowledge his better, the northerner’s gaze barely flickered in their direction as he continued on toward the stable. Anger lifted in Ned. “That man is insufferable.”
“And a Papist,” the governess said, a tremble in her voice.
Only as Ned recognized her fear of Catholics did he see the opportunity that stood beside him. Mistress Atwater might well serve where Lady Purfoy refused. His stomach twisted. Honor protested. He ignored them both. This time he’d be very, very careful.
The governess shifted toward him. Although the movement was subtle, Ned recognized it. Despite his depression, desire flared in him. On this night above all others it was nice to know she found him as attractive as he did her.
She lifted her head, gentle concern marking her face. “I apologize for my lady's brusqueness toward you.”
The urge to pretend insult about Lady Purfoy’s rejection rose. He bit it back against the possibility that the lady had confided in her employee. “She is justified in her reaction. I was unpardonably rude to her.”
As he spoke she pressed a hand to her bodice. Ned's gaze followed her movement. She wore her shirt open, to signal her unmarried state. Moonlight gleamed on her bared skin. She drew a deep breath. It was a man’s appreciation that sparked in him at the way her breasts lifted above her bodice top. The thought of forgetting his troubles by touching his lips to their crests was pleasant indeed.
He killed his lust. Governess though she was, Mistress Atwater was still a gentlewoman, thus undeserving of such base expression. More to the point, there'd be no hope of forgiveness if he used one of the females under Lady Purfoy’s protection.
“Peg will come for me if I don’t return soon,” she said.
“Nay.” The denial shot from his mouth, sounding more like a command than a request. “Nay,” he repeated more softly this time. “Please stay, Mistress Atwater. It has been a difficult day and I could use a friendly ear.”
Her smile gleamed in the night. “What makes you think my ear will be friendly when my lady has been so harsh toward you?”
It was an innocent tease as befitted a chaste and unsophisticated woman. Ah, but lurking in its depth was a coquette's taunt. Despite himself Ned smiled. So, she would try her wiles on him, would she? This was just the sort of sport he needed tonight.
Lady Purfoy's cart so slowed their pace it took them a full ten days to reach the edges of Nick’s lands. Long before the sun had risen on the eleventh day, Jamie forsook his stable bed and rode the remaining distance to Graceton Castle. It was Nick’s paramour, not Nick he had to see before the lady’s arrival.
To meet Cecily Elwyn Jamie needed to arrive with the sun. Her path to and from Graceton was a constant; she came with night's falling and left with day’s dawning. Now, striding along Graceton’s gallery Jamie stopped before his employer's apartment door.
Ten years as Nick's steward meant he didn’t pause to consider that he yet wore garments befouled by travel. It also meant he reached for the latch without knocking. But for the first time in his memory Nick's door was barred.
Approval warmed him as he tapped. Until Sir Edward Mallory departed Nick would be wise to keep what few secrets he did harbor behind a locked door. Cecily answered his knock.
Narrow of face and plump of figure, Nick's paramo
ur was dressed for departure, wearing her customary plain red bodice, a skirt of chestnut brown and a simple kerchief atop her dark hair. Her eyes widened in surprise as she recognized him.
A strange sense of irony crept through Jamie. Save for the unusual yellow color of her irises, Nick's lover was no prettier than the lady his queen was forcing him to wed.
Jamie!” she cried.
Jamie buried his wince. It was at Nick’s behest that he and the cottager spoke to each other as equals. Nick had even teased Jamie into allowing Cecily to use his name's diminutive. To her credit Jamie suspected Cecily was no more comfortable with this level of intimacy than he.
“Good morrow, Cecily,” he said, stepping inside the forward chamber.
All Graceton’s apartments were the same, made up of three chambers. The back two were bedchambers, one large for the occupant, one small for a servant. Fronting the sleeping rooms was an antechamber meant to be used as a sitting room. Not Nick’s. This was his closet and work room. His desk stood near the hearth, with two thick tables extending out into the room from either end.
During the nearly six weeks of Jamie’s absence, Nick's usual clutter had become an avalanche of debris. On both desk and tabletops, branches of candles rose from a sea of papers, quills and inkpots. Jamie's carefully kept account books were strewn haphazardly on the floor.
Cecily closed and barred the door behind them. “Nick didn’t expect you until later in the day.”
“It's you I needed to see before they arrive,” Jamie said. “So, how is he?” It was always his first question to Cecily when he’d been away from Graceton for any length of time.
“More fragile than I would like,” she replied, her voice low and her expression tight.
“I am not, Jamie.” Nick’s voice floated out from his bedchamber. “I'm as hale and hearty as ever.” A spate of coughing followed, brought on by the strain of raising his voice.
Her hands set on her generous hips, Cecily turned toward the squire's bedchamber. “If that’s so, then why are you coughing now?” she called back, sounding every inch the wife she could never be.
She started for the bedchamber. “Did I not warn you your lungs would worsen if you kept fretting yourself into knots over your visitors?”
Visitors. Jamie strove to keep any reaction from his face as he stepped into the bedchamber at Cecily's heels. Now there was a euphemistic way to refer to the woman who would marry the man Cecily loved.
Graceton's master stood at the open window beside his hearth, his back to the room. There was enough daylight to make his golden hair gleam, the color as rich as the great silver crucifix that hung on the wall beside him. Since Nick kept no servant, he relied on either Jamie or Cecily to dress him. Thus, although it was early, he already wore a sleeveless green doublet over a pair of brown breeches. The thick floor-length black robe he always wore atop his attire waited for him at the end of his bed.
Jamie frowned. There was something odd about the way Nick's doublet hung on him. As Jamie realized what it was his feet froze to the floor. He swore that a month ago the doublet had been a snug fit. Now, it hung from Nick's shoulders as if made for a far larger man.
With vision sharpened by absence, Jamie saw what he'd never have noticed had he remained at home. The castle's squire was fading away before his eyes. Premature grief, a harbinger of an ache sure to come, washed over Jamie. As if to echo his pain, the mournful low of cattle rose above the steady tumble of the river, entering the room through the open window. A breeze sighed in. Too soon, it seemed to say as it stirred the brocade curtains on the massive bed and made the illegal prayer candles on Nick's private altar flicker, too soon.
Cecily touched his hand. Jamie glanced down at her. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes.
Last winter had been the coldest they’d ever known. The severe weather had taken its toll on Nick, eating at lungs weakened by his boyhood spill into a fire. In Cecily's gaze lived the knowledge that if the coming winter were as harsh, Nick wouldn’t survive it.
Jamie closed his fingers around hers ever so briefly, to tell her he shared her fear. At his touch, something flitted over her face, the emotion disappearing too quickly for him to identify. She left him, slipping around the two chairs that sat before the hearth to join Nick at the window.
As she wound her arm around him, Graceton’s master turned to look at his steward. Scarring webbed Nick's face from brow to chin, this unnatural layer of skin so stiff it wreaked havoc with his enunciation and made smiling out of the question. His eyelashes and eyebrows had never returned after their scorching. Only patches of fair hair remained at the front of his head to frame his brow and ears.
“Well now,” Nick said, as he eyed his prodigal steward, “I send you off to court to do a simple task, one that should have taken no longer than a week, and you're gone for over a month. Sluggard! Any more of this sort of behavior and I'll have to get me another steward.” What Nick’s mouth couldn’t do, his eyes did. His affection for Jamie glowed from his green gaze.
Although Jamie knew Nick meant nothing more than to tease, his words cut sharper than any knife. “Would that I’d never gone,” he retorted. “The queen’s court is a filthy place, full of self-servers and ambitious parasites. Unfortunately, I'm forced to bring two of those same carrion eaters back with me.”
His scars too stiff to allow the expression, a grimace shot through Nick's gaze. “I can’t say you didn’t warn me against using Graceton's title as a marker in that game of mine. See how I have again tried to play where I shouldn't only to once more burn my fingers because of it.” Alluding to the mock battle with his younger brother that resulted in his fiery tumble, Nick held up the scarred and bony remains of one hand, rendered so by immersion into the hottest of coals.
“I think you have beautiful hands,” Cecily murmured, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek.
At her caress, Nick’s gaze softened. Reaching up, he stroked the relatively unscarred back of his maligned hand against his lover’s cheek.
Feeling like an intruder, Jamie aimed his gaze out the window behind them. To keep from hearing the murmur of Nick’s affectionate response, he concentrated on the distant calls of the villagers as they made their way into the fields. So intense was his effort he almost didn’t notice that he’d imagined himself in Nick's place, Lady Purfoy’s gray eyes aglow with the same love for him that filled Cecily's for Nick.
The fruit of a week's worth of self-imposed punishment withered on the vine. God save him, but what if Nick looked into his eyes and saw his new wife's reflection there?
“Jamie, what is it?” Nick asked as he placed a hand on his steward's shoulder.
“Nothing,” he managed, sidling away to collide with one of the chairs. He let himself drop into its seat as if he’d always intended to sit, then crossed his legs and smiled up at Nick.
“That is, nothing a week's worth of sleep and the death of the queen’s proxy wouldn’t cure,” he amended. “We need to talk.”
Nick sighed and sat in the other chair. “Aye, I expect we've much to discuss. Will you share a sip with me?” His words were more than an offer for drink; they were Cecily's cue to leave so the two men might speak in private.
“Aye, that I will, but Cecily cannot leave,” Jamie replied, catching the healer’s gaze as she moved to the bed stand where the wine was kept. “At least not yet.”
Her brows lifted in question as she filled two cups with water sweetened with the wine she used for her lover's possets.
“We need to talk about how you'll come and go from now on,” Jamie told her.
“Oh, really?” Sharp amusement filled Cecily's gaze as she offered Nick his cup. She waited until he balanced the container between his scarred palms before handing Jamie his, then retreated to stand beside Nick’s chair. “I hope you don’t expect Mistress Miller to let me use the hall door.”
Jamie almost smiled. Despite Nick's command that his housekeeper accept Cecily, Mistress Miller persisted in myriad
subtle and underhanded ways to keep the woman she considered beneath contempt away from her beloved lord's grandson.
“Nay, you’ll still be entering through the postern gate and coming up through the corner tower,” he replied. “But rather than using Nick's door, you’ll come in through my chambers and enter by yon portal.” Jamie pointed to the wall on which hung the silver crucifix. The intricately carved paneling hid a door that connected this room to the neighboring apartment. Nick's chambers had once belonged to his lady mother while the apartment Jamie used was intended for Graceton's lord.
“I knew it!” Nick's laugh was a raspy cough. Amusement glowed in his gaze. He leaned to the side until his head rested against Cecily's hip. “I knew one day jealousy would overcome you, Jamie. Be warned, my love. He plans to steal you from me by waylaying you when you pass through his bedchamber. Although I daresay you’ll not want him if he doesn’t bathe. Faugh, Jamie, but you stink. It’s the first time I’ve had reason to regret my scarring didn’t affect my sense of smell.”
Knowing full well that he reeked, Jamie laughed. “My apologies. I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”
The teasing in Nick’s eyes softened into a gentle smile. “If your intent is to hide my liaison with Cecily, you’re a tad late. After so many years, there's no one in this house or village who doesn’t know.”
Something more than his thinness was different about Nick. As Jamie again studied his employer, he found it in the new contentment that clung to every line and plane of Nick's scarred face. Contentment, when the thought of meeting strangers usually set Nick to pacing the room? Yet here he was, not anywhere near as nervous as Cecily claimed when he’d not only meet strangers, he'd wed one of them.
Apprehension prickled up Jamie's spine. If Nick wasn't nervous, it was because he didn’t believe he had to marry Lady Purfoy. Well, the sooner he disabused his employer of this crack-brained notion, the safer Nick would be.
“It's not our folk from whom I’d shield Cecily, it's the queen’s proxy, Sir Edward Mallory,” Jamie said.
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