Over her womb. The heat from his hand alone threatened to buckle her knees.
“I just want…” He paused, and more pins went silently sailing to the quilt on his bed. Her braid came down and down, and then he unraveled it, slowly drawing his fingers through each skein until it fell to her waist in wild, curling locks.
“You hide your light,” he accused softly, and Sara felt him nuzzling her nape.
This was wrong; she knew it was wrong, but in his world she was a widow and fair game. Nominally, she was out of reach because she was under his extended family’s protection, but he was in truth just a visitor—and even according to the rules of his kind, she could stop him.
She would stop him, she vowed, just as he gently brushed aside the hair at her nape and settled his lips against her skin.
“Merciful God…” As heat ricocheted from his kiss through her body, Sara hung her head, knowing his arm was now supporting her, knowing the bed was right before them.
The bed…
She marshaled her considerable resolve and lifted a hand to cover the one spread over her belly.
“Mr. Haddonfield.” She couldn’t manage much more than a whisper, not when he was working his way to the side of her neck, the brush of his mouth so devastatingly tender she wanted… “Beckman, you have to stop.”
He went still, and she felt his sigh against her collarbone. He turned her in his arms and folded her against him, resting his chin on her crown. She slipped her arms around his lean waist and silently thanked him—both for ceasing and for not expecting her to stand unaided.
“You should still slap me,” he rumbled, his tone sad. “I would apologize, but that would imply remorse, and after this day, after listening to North’s litany of economies and inconveniences, after tramping through mud for hours and missing… all I feel is frustration.”
No, that was not all he felt. Plastered against his body, Sara could feel the contour of a nascent erection pressing against her belly. God above, he’d be… splendid. She wanted to push that thought away and push the man away as well, but he sounded so bleak, almost as bleak as she felt.
“No more damned caps, Sara.” He rubbed his chin over her unbound hair. “They’re a damned lie, and you’re fooling no one.”
He wasn’t being charming and gracious now. Perhaps she was the one who’d been fooled earlier.
“I do not countenance untruths.”
“Yes, you do.” His tone was amused, but Sara didn’t dare steal a glance at him. “We all do, myself included, if only to lie to ourselves. But you are not to wear those ridiculous caps.”
“And you are not to go kissing me in your bedroom.” She tried to pull away, but forgot the bed was immediately behind her and found herself unceremoniously sitting on it. She gazed up at his great height, trying to read his expression by the firelight.
“I haven’t kissed you.” He sank to his knees, utterly befuddling her. “Yet.”
He remedied the oversight, brushing his lips over hers while he knelt between her legs. He wasn’t an arrogant or clumsy kisser, thank God, because as long as it had been since her last kiss, Sara needed to be coaxed. He’d been clever by going to his knees, putting her a few inches above him, a position that suggested she had more control than he. His hand cupped the back of her head, gently burying itself in her hair as if he were hungry for even that simple touch.
But his mouth… he tasted of the cinnamon in Polly’s apple cake, and his lips were cool while his tongue was hot and knowing, and full of delicate, dangerous invitation. Sara’s insides fluttered, but she couldn’t resist the temptation to touch his hair, to part her lips just a little.
Still, he didn’t plunder but rolled his head back against her hand, rubbing his scalp against her fingers, then settling his mouth over hers again. Sara’s other hand found his shoulders and went skimming over his arm and his chest, then joined its mate tangled in his hair. Such silky, thick hair he had, and such a silky, skillful tongue.
She sighed into his mouth, and the wistfulness of it surprised her. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers.
The fire roared softly, while Sara sat on the bed, her hands in his hair, her mind as empty as the moors in winter, while her body… her body knew exactly what it wanted, with whom, where, and when.
“I’d just use you,” Beck whispered. Sara didn’t push him away. He sank down, his arms around her waist, and laid his cheek against her thigh.
“That would hardly be novel.”
Nor tragic, and yet, she approved of him for regaining his senses. She did not like him for it—she positively resented him, in fact—but he was striving for honor, something Reynard would have found laughable.
When Beckman made no move to rise—to let her off the bed—she indulged the urge to pet him. His hair was corn-silk fine, and his jaw slightly raspy with beard. The scar near his temple barely registered beneath her fingertips, but she did feel it.
For long moments, he didn’t stop her, so maybe her touch was soothing to them both.
“You deserve better, Sarabande Adagio,” he said, loudly enough she knew he intended her to hear him.
“Maybe you do too, Beckman Sylvanus.”
They stayed like that until Beck shoved to standing and drew Sara to her feet.
He frowned down at her, looking not at all like a man intent on dallying with the housekeeper. “I’m still not apologizing.”
Sara frowned right back. “And I’ll wear my caps if I blessed well please to.”
Brave talk. He stroked a hand over the scandal of her unbound hair and smiled.
“Of course you will.” He kissed her cheek and stepped back. “But it will be a lie, and we will both know the truth.”
She was not going to allow him the last word. Sara brushed a hand through his hair, kissed his cheek, and swished past him.
“Go to sleep, Beckman,” she called over her shoulder. “You are more tired than you realize, and tomorrow is a busy day.”
Four
Like a good housekeeper, Sara—no plain “Mrs. Hunt” kissed like that—closed the door to Beck’s bedroom to keep in the heat. The agreeable result for Beck was that her various homey scents lingered as well. He sat on the bed, canvassing his emotions, trying to find the shame and failing wonderfully.
What he felt was horny.
He also felt relieved—not quite proud—because he had stopped. When she’d asked it of him, he’d stopped. He hadn’t even gotten a hand on one of those magnificent breasts of hers; he’d merely kissed her—and she’d kissed him back.
The wonder of that had him opening the falls of his breeches and extracting his cock from his clothing. He wasn’t given to frequent masturbation, but the erection in his hand didn’t deserve to be ignored. Typically, he refrained from onanism because his imagination wasn’t up to the task of adequately inspiring his body. Recalling images of Sara’s unbound hair glinting in the firelight and indulging in the fantasy of it brushing over his naked body, Beck let himself have his pleasure. When he was thoroughly spent, he stripped, washed, and climbed between the covers, his last thought a bet with himself that Sara wouldn’t wear her cap tomorrow.
* * *
Beck took himself down to the kitchen in the morning expecting to find only North, because the womenfolk made a religion out of rising early. To his surprise, he found Sara and Polly both, and the room redolent with the scents of bacon and fresh bread.
“Sleeping Beauty arises,” Polly chirped from where she was taking bread out of the oven.
“It’s getting light earlier and earlier,” Beck improvised, stealing a glance at Sara only to find her stealing a glance at him.
No cap.
Her smile when he caught her eye was like a spring sunrise on a cold morning, slow, sweet, and powerful for pushing back the cold and the darkness both. She winked at him, and his pleasure in the day defied description.
He winked back nonetheless, thinking Nick would have winked first.
“I’ll bring in some wood,” Beck said, for that smile and that wink had parts of his body in need of the cold air.
“Don’t bother.” Polly took another fragrant, golden loaf from the oven. “North has seen to it, and Allie’s helping him.”
“Then I can help Maudie milk the cows.” Beck was off to the back hall before Polly had a rejoinder for that too. He stood on the back porch, hearing the baritone of North’s voice from the woodshed across the backyard and the higher-pitched tones of Allie’s voice in reply.
North emerged, carrying a large armload of wood. “If it isn’t the man responsible for the clearances.”
“Good morning, Mr. Haddonfield,” Allie piped. Her load was much smaller, but her posture copied North’s exactly.
“What clearances? And good morning to you too, princess.”
“The twins are gone.” North paused to let Allie dump her wood into the wood box first. “Must have left after you reminded them of their options. Thank you, Miss Allie.”
She curtsied and grinned. “I’m going to help Maudie.”
“We’ll tell your mama,” North assured her, “and stay out of the stalls until we’ve mucked. You don’t have your boots on.”
She waved that admonition aside and took off for the barn.
Beck frowned at her retreating form. “Cheerful little soul.”
“The women are all in good spirits this morning.” North dumped his load on top of Allie’s smaller offering. “Even Hildy seems to be smiling, which is unnerving from a lady uniformly out of sorts unless there’s a slop bucket in the offing.”
“Maybe there’s a promise of spring in the air.” Beck did not comment on a man who was confessing to reading the moods of a breeding sow.
“Maybe.” North straightened slowly and braced his hands low on his back. “And maybe the ladies were more uncomfortable with a pair of drunken wastrels on the property than I perceived, and for this I feel remiss.”
Remiss was probably North’s term for wanting to beat himself silly. Beck savored that notion in the privacy of his thoughts. “Do you think it’s dry enough to risk a trip into the village today?”
North glanced around, likely seeing a thousand chores that would not complete themselves. “For what purpose?”
“To bring back a load of hay from the livery, to pick up the post, to ask about the twins, and to leave their severance at the posting inn. To lay in a few staples to tide us over until we can make it in to Portsmouth, to get the hell off this muddy patch of earth.”
“Ah, youth.” North loaded a wealth of amused condescension in two syllables.
“You’re at best a few years my senior,” Beck said. “Recall I’ve yet to see this thriving metropolis of a village.”
“There’s a whorehouse, if that’s what you’re not asking.” North stopped on the back porch. “I’m told the ladies are clean and friendly, though it’s not at all what you’re used to.”
“North…” Beck paused, because privacy was one thing, and North’s opinion of him was something else entirely. “You do not know what I’m used to, and I did not ask you for particulars on the vices available close at hand. I am not, nor have I ever been, plagued with the tendencies that make my brother nigh infamous.”
“Your brother?”
“Nicholas, Viscount Reston.” Beck walked over to the porch railing and leaned a hip on it. “He is rather a favorite with a certain stripe of female, with any stripe of female for that matter. For those of questionable virtue and reasonable discretion, he returns their appreciation… or he did. He’s bride hunting now, and one suspects this has curbed his enthusiasm for certain activities.”
“He bride hunts while you rusticate. London’s loss is Three Springs’s gain. Shall we see to our breakfast?”
From North, that amounted to a ringing endorsement of Beck’s chosen task, which North would, of course, serve up as casually as scrambled eggs on toast.
* * *
“This is beautiful, Mr. St. Michael. Absolutely… I saw one like it in the villa of a Russian archduke near Sebastopol. It’s likely Persian and worth a great deal.”
Tremaine St. Michael did not let his impatience show by gesture or expression, because commerce was commerce, whether one peddled wool—which he did in great quantity and very profitably—or wanted to know what a very old and ornate amber-and-ivory chess set was worth.
Of course, it was worth “a great deal.”
“Can you appraise it?”
Mr. Danvers, a thin, blond exponent of genteel English breeding, studied the set for a moment, kneeling down to peer at it from eye level. “Only approximately. The surest indicator of value is to hold a discreet auction for those with the means to indulge their aesthetic sophistication.”
Aesthetic sophistication. This was English for greed. Tremaine’s Scottish antecedents would have called it stupidity when it meant significant coin was spent on a game. His French forbearers would likely have called it English vulgarity.
Though it was a pretty game. Where Reynard had found it remained a mystery. Danvers was the English expert on antique chess sets; if he didn’t know its provenance, then nobody would.
Which might be very convenient.
“I have some other pieces I’d like you to look at.”
Danvers rose to his modest height like a hound catching a scent. “More chess sets?”
“Two, one of which might be older than this one.”
The man bounced on the balls of his feet, and though he wasn’t overly short for an Englishman, his enthusiasm made Tremaine feel like a mastiff in the company of some overbred puppy.
“This way, and then I’m going to need a recommendation for somebody who can appraise some paintings for me—somebody very discreet.”
“Of course, sir. I will put my mind to it as soon as we’ve seen the chess sets.”
Even Danvers, though, couldn’t stifle a gasp when Tremaine took him to the storage room at the back of the house. For a man obsessed with chess sets, he spent a long time gazing about at the plunder Reynard had begged, bartered, or stolen from courts all over the Continent.
“You will need more than an appraiser of paintings, won’t you, Mr. Tremaine?”
Tremaine sighed, because Danvers had spoken not with the eagerness of a hound scenting prey, but with something approaching awe. Reynard’s taste had always been exquisite, ruinously exquisite.
So much for discretion. “For now, let’s start with the chess sets, shall we?”
* * *
The weather held fair, and Beck’s mood improved for being away from the house and having some time to assess the land itself while the roads dried and the ladies packed a substantial lunch.
The field before them was fallow, but from the looks of the dead bracken, the crop had been thin and the weeds thick.
“What about marling now, before planting, and letting it fallow over the summer, then planting a hard winter wheat in the fall?” Beck was thinking out loud as he slouched in Ulysses’s saddle.
“What is a winter wheat?” North asked.
Beck was learning to read North’s varied scowls, and this scowl connoted skepticism and veiled curiosity.
“When I was in Budapest, the mills were grinding wheat in mid-summer. I asked how that could be, and it was explained to me that on the slopes of the Urals there are strains of wheat you plant in the early fall. They ripen in June or so, and you have two months to harvest and fertilize before you put in another crop. We have plenty enough at Belle Maison to seed this field and several more.”
North’s scowl became more heavily laced with curiosity. “So if we’re not planting until fall, how do you keep the cover from going all to weeds, and is there any corner of the semi-civilized world to which you haven’t wandered?”
“Pen the sheep here,” Beck said, ignoring the second question. “Same as you normally would over winter. Let them eat down the weeds and fertilize while they do.”
“You’ve seen this done?�
� North’s face conveyed the resignation of the typical man of the land, such fellows being inured to facing multiple variables and having little solid information.
“I’ve seen it done in Hungary. They’re more partial to goats there.”
“I am not raising goats at Three Springs.”
Lest there be a species underfoot more stubborn than North himself? “I’m not asking you to, though they make a respectable poor man’s cow.”
“So if we don’t plant here, where do we plant? The place can’t go a whole year without a crop to sell.”
“We break sod, North.” Beck raised an arm. “There, where the drainage is equally good and the land looks like it’s gone halfway back to heath. It’s fallowed plenty long enough, and the field lies low enough we could irrigate it from that corner if we had to.”
“We could, if we’re to bloody well break our backs digging ditches and serving as plowboys.”
Our backs, because Gabriel North would not permit others to work while he sat on his horse and supervised—any more than Beck would.
“You can’t keep farming the one patch forever without letting it fallow,” Beck argued. “And a better use of the place might be to farm produce and sell it in Brighton.”
“Brighton is a damned long day’s haul, usually two days. Just how many teams and wagons do you think Three Springs owns?”
This was North’s version of taking time to think something over, so Beck did not raise his voice. “Three teams. My four can be worked in pairs, and two wagons, because I’ll not be returning the one to Belle Maison. We can use your old team to haul produce.”
“Why in God’s name are we hauling produce to bloody Brighton?”
Beck grinned, because this was North’s version of enthusiasm for an idea with promise. “Stop whining. Our bloody Regent has nominally finished his bloody Pavilion and must show it off to all his gluttonous, bibulous friends. Your little patch of coast has become frightfully fashionable.”
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