Thomas

by Grace Burrowes

  Based on the quantity of spirits that went into the stable master’s glass, this bothered him exceedingly.

  “Shall we play cards?” Fairly asked, though he was exhausted. “I’m not quite ready for sleep myself.”

  The night was blessedly cool, but also damp with the day’s rain. Fairly would dream of Letty, of course, and also dream of the moment in the stable when only Loris Tanner’s voice had stood between three fit, mostly hale men and an awful death.

  “You’ve recognized me,” Nick said, returning the stopper to its perch atop the decanter. “When did you figure it out?”

  They were to indulge in some wagering then, though not with cards. Fairly threw another log onto the fire, mostly to give himself a moment to think.

  “Unlike Thomas,” Fairly said, “who lurked on the periphery of polite society, I am related by marriage to an earl, a marquis, and a viscount. I must do the pretty, though with Letty, I’ll live very quietly indeed. You, however, are an earl’s heir, and the tallest titled man in the realm. We’ve been in several of the same ballrooms.”

  Nick took a delicate sip of brandy, a man who knew how to savor luxuries. “A Scot by the name of MacHugh might be as tall as I am, and he’s in line for an earldom too. Where does Sutcliffe get this stuff?”

  “From my brother-in-law, the marquis. So what are you doing here, Reston? It is Reston, isn’t it? Viscount Reston?”

  By the firelight, Nick abruptly looked like the most disgusted titled man in the realm.

  “Reston it is, for my sins. Beckman is our spare, and there’s half a regiment of siblings that come after him. Will you tell Sutcliffe?”

  “I consider Thomas Jennings a friend, Reston.” Fairly began a circuit of the library, having sat for half the evening over dinner and the other half over plans to rebuild the stable. “I was shipwrecked in India, barely made it to shore. The locals were not dealing with me kindly—my peculiar eyes, you know—and out of the sea crawls Thomas, nothing but a knife and a facility for languages to his credit. Within minutes, I became an honored guest of the nearest raja.”

  The more suspicious had decided Thomas was a spirit from the depths, with his glittering blue eyes and sun-darkened complexion.

  Nicholas stood with an elbow braced on the mantel, his posture the epitome of the elegant lord. For dinner, he’d worn a country gentleman’s finery, and Fairly’s suspicions as to his identity had coalesced into certain recognition.

  To the manor—and an earldom’s courtesy title—born. Nick knew down to the last decorative item of cutlery what each piece of silverware was for. His table manners bordered on dainty, and his conversation was witty without straying into the ribald.

  “Sutcliffe was your bodyguard?” Nick asked.

  “Bodyguard, general factor, man of business, conscience. He saved my Letty, too, would not allow me to ignore her situation when others would have turned a blind eye. Sutcliffe is protective as hell of those he cares for, and I cannot support a dishonest silence where he’s concerned, Reston.”

  “Haddonfield, please. At least for now.”

  The library was elegantly appointed, in keeping with the taste and Continental connections of the previous owner. Fairly took up an intricately carved ivory letter opener that would have sufficed to cut out a man’s heart.

  “Why?” Fairly asked, balancing the letter opener point down on the tip of his finger. “Why hide? Why muck stalls and wallow in the stink of horses and hard work when you might be chasing chambermaids about at any house party?”

  “I am the Bellefonte earldom’s heir,” Nick said, in the same tones a man might admit to suffering a wasting disease. “Heirs marry appropriately, they beget progeny, they are… dutiful.”

  A well-trained physician learned to diagnose all parts of a patient, not merely the sore knee or persistent megrims that clamored most loudly for attention.

  “I recognized you,” Fairly said, putting the letter opener on the desk, “and Thomas could too. I don’t get the sense you prefer men, so what is the difficulty with fulfilling your duty?”

  Nick stared out at the damp evening. Not a star shone in the sky, not a single pale glimmer betrayed the location of the moon above the clouds.

  “I’m doing penance,” he said. “Also keeping an eye on Beckman, who’s had some difficult years, and has found peace ruralizing as stable help. My father agreed to allow me time to rusticate because somebody needed to look after Beckman.”

  Why would Haddonfield have turned his back to deliver that part of his confession?

  “Beckman appears to enjoy excellent health, but for having breathed too much smoke and having been stomped on a time or two by a panicked horse.”

  “Beckman was prone to… over-imbibing and other vices,” Nick said, his tone flat. “He seems better now, but he’s seemed better before, though never for this long. Polite society would ridicule him for it, but the hard work, the horses, the care of the livestock agree with him.”

  Or perhaps his older brother’s company steadied Beckman.

  Fairly wanted to see Nick Haddonfield’s face, wanted to assess what was being admitted against what was being kept secret, so he crossed the room to stand beside a man who’d soon outrank him.

  “The life of a stable master agrees with you, too,” Fairly said.

  “Sutcliffe isn’t the only person with a protective streak, my lord. I’m not hiding here. My brother’s situation calls for discretion, thus I’m not bruiting about a courtesy title for which I have no use.”

  Nick loathed that title, he was hiding, and he was looking after the man who’d guarantee the earldom’s succession if Nick could not—or would not.

  “I recognized you when you joined us earlier today,” Fairly said. “Your hair was damp and therefore appeared darker. You’ve also trimmed off your curls and had combed every hair into place.”

  Nick finished his drink and set the glass on the mantel. “I will inform Sutcliffe of my circumstances soon. I promise you that. The time allotted by my father for this repairing lease is coming to a close. I’ll be gone after harvest.”

  Misery rolled off Nick in waves, also resignation.

  “And Beckman?”

  “He’ll likely depart with me, but I will not leave Miss Tanner without a stable master before the harvest is safely in.”

  Miss Tanner, not the baron, not Linden. Interesting.

  “I can give you time to unburden yourself to the baron,” Fairly said, “but you’d better tell him the rest of it, too, Haddonfield. You chose to rusticate on this estate for reasons you’re not admitting, and I dislike secrets.”

  Thomas positively loathed secrets and intrigue of any sort.

  Nick rested his forehead on the panes of the French doors. He put Fairly in mind of Penny, the great draft mare, whose every sigh and fly kick was of monumental proportions. Such a man could never truly hide, and that must be wearying.

  “I mean Sutcliffe no harm,” Nick said, “but I will deal harshly with anybody who seeks to harm Miss Tanner, as will Beckman. She’s been more than fair to us, and life has been unfair to her.”

  More half-truths, but probably as much as Nick could admit.

  “My earliest years were spent in Scotland,” Fairly mused. “For centuries, Englishmen have been popping up all over the world, claiming to mean no harm, to come in peace, and yet, great harm often ensues, though not to the Englishmen. Find a time to clear the air with Sutcliffe soon, or I will take the matter into my own hands.”

  Nick nodded. Fairly gently squeezed a meaty shoulder and took himself from the library. He’d warn Thomas, of course, but first he’d discuss the entire situation, in detail, with his darling Letty.

  * * *

  “You needn’t worry that I’ve come to ravish you.”

  That reassurance, a rumbling baritone from Loris’s balcony, put her in mind of thunder, rumbling off in the darkness.

  “Thomas, get in here,” she said, rising off her vanity stool. “You’ll catch y
our death standing about in the damp night air.” Much less leaping from one wet balcony to the next.

  He sidled through her French doors, the night sky made animate, complete with moisture clinging to the ends of his hair. No coat, no cravat, his waistcoat half-unbuttoned.

  And he was all the more attractive for his dishabille.

  “You should be asleep, madam. Does your shoulder pain you?”

  Loris’s shoulder was a temple to misery, the discomfort radiating across her back, down her arm, and even into her hand and head.

  “I’m fine. How did you—?”

  Thomas kissed her, cool lips, hot man, cherishing embrace. Loris leaned on him, unable to be brisk and pragmatic after the day they’d had.

  “You still smell like smoke,” she said. “Faint, but tangible.”

  “I took a walk after Belmont left, went down to the stable to make sure the fire is out. Live coals yet lurk beneath the ashes, despite the rain, despite the passing of time. Belmont said those coals might smolder for days, even with more rain.”

  Some fires could never be completely extinguished. Loris wondered if her father’s need for drink was such a fire.

  Or if her desire for Thomas Jennings was another.

  “You were quiet at dinner, sir.” Thomas had been quiet all day, though the menfolk—Fairly, Nicholas, Belmont, Giles Pettigrew—probably hadn’t noticed.

  “Let’s get you in bed,” Thomas said, drawing back. “Today became a day for reflection and planning, though I’ve never had much use for idle chatter. How well do you know Nicholas Haddonfield?”

  “He’s been on the property nearly two years,” Loris said. “What prompts your question?”

  Thomas led her back to the vanity and indicated that she should sit. “You might have rung for a maid. Trying to bring order to your hair one-handed was doomed.”

  Also painful, in Loris’s present condition. “Nicholas could not have started the fire. He was with us.”

  “Beckman?” Thomas asked, untying the ribbon from the bottom of the braid Loris had barely managed to fashion.

  “Beckman risked his life getting out horses trapped by the fire. I have no reason to believe he’d be that devious, Thomas.”

  “And Beckman was with Jamie, cleaning the coach harness in the shade by the carriage house when he went into the saddle room to get some rags. Beck’s the one who discovered the fire. He might have set it, then pretended to discover it, but I agree. He’d have to have worked very quickly, and he went to great lengths and dangerous lengths to cover his tracks if he did.”

  Thomas was going over and over the facts, as Loris had been, trying to discover some new insight or glimmer of information that hadn’t appeared in the previous four dozen examinations.

  He was also putting her to sleep.

  “You are very good at brushing a woman’s hair,” Loris murmured, eyes closing.

  “I used to brush my sister’s hair, long, long ago. She’s my elder, and made it seem a great privilege to wield the brush.”

  As a boy, Thomas would have been serious and too big for his age, not a frivolous child.

  “I saw the letter, Thomas. You should answer her.” Today’s letter had come to Linden, suggesting somebody had provided this sister Thomas’s current direction.

  Of all days for Thomas to be hounded with familial correspondence…

  For a few minutes, he worked in silence, rebraiding Loris’s hair. As far back as she could recall, her father had never dealt with her hair. She’d learned to braid by working on her pony’s tail, braids being a safety measure in the hunt field.

  “I’m considering answering Theresa’s letter,” Thomas said, tying off the end of the braid. “There’s much to say, and nothing to say.” He scooped Loris up and carried her to the bed. He’d carried other women, for he knew how to settle her on the bed gently, without jostling her shoulder.

  “Why wouldn’t you write to your sister, Thomas?” Loris asked, scooting to the edge of the bed to unbelt her robe.

  This closeness at the end of the day, Thomas’s assistance at the vanity, his relative state of undress, should have been awkward, but instead, his presence comforted. Couples spoke this way, of everything and nothing. Couples ended the day together.

  Loris doubted she and Thomas would ever be such a couple, and that made her want even more whatever memories she could purloin now.

  “Let me do that,” Thomas growled, coming around the bed. He knelt before Loris and untied the belt to her robe, then paused with his forehead pressed to her knee. “I expect I’ll have nightmares tonight.”

  Loris ran a hand through his damp hair. “We all will, though we’re all safe and mostly sound. Tell me about your sister.”

  Thomas rose on a sigh and just like that, finished unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Theresa reminds me of you in many ways. She even looks a little like you—tall, dark-haired, though her eyes are brown rather than gray. As a boy, I thought she was the font of all wisdom, nearly an adult, but much more full of mischief.”

  His waistcoat ended up draped over the low back of the vanity stool. Next he sat on a cedar chest to pull off his boots and stockings. He tugged his shirt over his head, the voluminous linen billowing in the candlelight.

  Loris wanted to tell Thomas to slow down so she could savor the gradual revealing of his nudity, but she feared to interrupt his recitation.

  “This appetite for mischief you speak of, Thomas. It did not follow you into adulthood.”

  He paused, his hands on his falls, lashes lowered. “I beg to differ.”

  Loris balled up her robe and fired it at him one-handed. “That’s pleasure. Pleasure and mischief are related, but not always the same. Those boys frolicking in your pond where up to mischief. What do you suppose they were doing on your property today?”

  Two sets of buttons came undone while Loris waited for Thomas’s answer. In all her rounds of the property, checking gates, measuring water levels, monitoring the corn crops, assessing how long to leave livestock in this pasture, or let that pasture fallow, she hadn’t seen the boys at the pond again.

  Though they’d apparently been near the manor this morning.

  “I do not like that frown,” Thomas said, stepping out of his breeches as if he’d disrobed before Loris a thousand other times. “You are not a great admirer of little boys, I fear. This does not bode well for our sons.”

  More casual nudity, this time of the heart. Thomas was not teasing, and Loris’s reaction was as much pain as pleasure, for she was unlikely to be the mother of Thomas’s children.

  “Those boys hadn’t been swimming, Thomas. None of them had wet hair or wet anything.”

  He folded the last of his clothes over the vanity stool. “Then the boys hadn’t been swimming yet. The heat and humidity earlier today were awful.”

  Thomas turned to bank the fire and blow out the lamp on the vanity, but in his great self-possession, he paused for a moment first, scratching his chest and yawning.

  “Are you certain you won’t ravish me?” Loris asked. “Not even one small ravishment?” Not even if she begged?

  Thomas set aside the fireplace poker, pushed the screen against the stones of the hearth, and crossed to the bed. His stride was fluid and relaxed, as if a state of thorough arousal was of no moment whatsoever.

  “I’m not the ravishing kind,” he said. “I might make slow, sweet, tender love on occasion, or pleasure a lady witless, or devote my every attention to her most secret longings, but never ravish.”

  “Then I suppose I’ll just have to ravish you.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched, a glimmer of a hint of a ghost of a shadow of a smile.

  “With one good arm, you’d ravish me?” he asked, climbing onto the bed.

  “I’m the inventive sort,” Loris said, gritting her teeth against the bounce and jostle of a large man making himself comfortable beside her. She pivoted, swinging a leg over Thomas’s hips.

  “Miss Tanner, you shock me.�
��

  “Hold me,” Loris said, curling down against Thomas’s chest. “I’ll have a few nightmares of my own, you know. All three of you disappeared into that inferno, Beckman was ready to plant me a facer rather than let me go in after you, and I was ready to do the same to him.”

  “A bad moment for all,” Thomas said, wrapping his arms around her. “You kept your head and called us to safety. I had lost my way, you know.”

  What little calm Loris had assembled as the day had gone along deserted her. “Lost your way?”

  “I was using the last of my strength to drag Nicholas into the saddle room, and I was certain I was taking him to safety. We would have died in there, while I figured out the error I’d made. I could not see a thing, and Fairly was weakening with each step.”

  Tears were useless, Loris had learned that as a child, but she cried anyway. The thought of losing Thomas was worth tears, especially when he might have perished with Nicholas and Fairly too.

  She was still likely to lose Thomas, and that was also worth crying over.

  “I could not have borne for today to be the end of you,” Loris said, when she’d wet his chest and thoroughly wrinkled a handkerchief. “I would have gone after you, and Beckman and Jamie would have been on my heels.”

  Thomas’s hand on her hair was as gentle as a nightingale’s song. “With your injured shoulder, Beckman unable to take a single deep breath, and Jamie three times your age and no bigger than a minute, you would have come after three men, each of whom outweighs you by five stone. What of your responsibility to Linden, Loris Tanner? Who would have tended my acres and looked after my farms if you’d perished today?”

  Loris tossed the handkerchief in the direction of the nightstand. Thomas was still quite aroused, but seemed in no hurry to do anything about it.

  While Loris was frantic to make love with him. “Your tenants are all experienced farmers. They’d manage without me.”

  But Loris would not have managed without Thomas. She’d chosen an awful time to develop a sentimental attachment, and yet reason, prudence, self-restraint, all of her old friends had deserted her.