“I’ve a mind to marry ye, mistress,” Mr. Doyle’s voice rasped over Victoria’s cheek.
Easing him onto the bed, Victoria smiled, if only to acknowledge she’d heard him. He still suffered from hypothermia. She had found him in the burned-out rectory hiding beneath the desk, clutching a chicken for dear life and shivering beneath a heavy woolen blanket. “In a few years I may consider your offer.” She adjusted the pillows behind his back. “Mr. Rockwell has started a fire in the front room. I’ll fix tea. But I want you to stay warm beneath those blankets. You’ve suffered exposure.”
Thin hands grasped hers. “She’s been gone a year, my lady.”
“I know.” Victoria tucked his hands inside hers.
Spidery purplish veins marred his cheeks and nose, and he squinted up at her, his left eye coated with an opaque film. He had been blind in that eye for five years. “I remember when she had hair the color of yours,” he said, half asleep.
“You miss your wife. Is that why you were at the church?”
Victoria knew he spent a lot of time in the burned-out structure. Sometimes she would find him sitting on the floor in front of the crumbling pulpit.
“Ye tell Sir Henry that Doyle says he best be findin’ ye a husband soon. ’Tis a shame to see sturdy stock go to waste.”
Victoria sat back on the bed and gave Mr. Doyle a stern look. “Since you’re so spry, maybe I should send you to Widow Gibson’s place to spend the winter.”
“You wouldn’t send me away, would ye, my lady?”
Victoria had to send him somewhere for his own safety. Mrs. Gibson was the former Rose Briar cook. Last year she’d moved in with her son, who still managed to farm a spot of land on the estate. “She can cook a good meal, and it’s safer for you. She could use help around the farm. You’ll have a place to keep your chickens.”
“Then ye be knowing the truth of it.” Thoughtfully rubbing his chin, he peered at her through his one good eye. “It isn’t safe these days.” He lowered his voice. “Ol’ Doyle can tell ye a thing or two about what I seen some nights that would stiffen the hairs on your neck, mum. There be ghosts in the belfry. Not even the hounds went in there last night.”
Victoria bent over the nightstand and dimmed the lamp. She would have to go over to the church and find out what had frightened Mr. Doyle. Looking out the window, toward the church, she suspected the ghostly specters were lantern-carrying humans and part of Stillings’s group of smugglers.
Closing the curtain to curtail the icy draft, Victoria looked over her shoulder at the man in the bed. He might have died had she not found him this afternoon. “Don’t leave me, mistress,” his voice carried to her as she blew out the lamp on the dresser.
“I’m only going in the other room.” She stood at the end of the bed. “But tomorrow I am going to take you to Widow Gibson’s place. All right?”
Mr. Doyle’s one eye focused on her in the dark. His voice came to her softly. “Will ye tell Bess? She’ll expect to see me and won’t know where I’m off to.”
Victoria moved to the end of the bed. “I’ll tell your wife, Mr. Doyle.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“We were happy together, my lady,” he murmured.
Her heart pounding for some illogical reason she couldn’t explain, Victoria stepped out of the room and, closing the door, leaned her head against the jamb. She never wanted to know that kind of love. The kind that made a person do foolish things like stand on a grave and talk to a headstone.
Or conceive a child.
Drawing her shoulders back, Victoria turned into the room and nearly leaped from her socks.
David was half leaning on the back of the settee, his coat draped beside him. Instinctively, her hand went to her pocket, where she now hesitated, waiting for her pulse to return to normal. “Mary and Joseph! Where’s Mr. Rockwell?” she asked, alarmed as he unfurled his long body and came to his feet.
David had seen the movement and, by the hard look on his face, guessed that she carried a weapon. “I sent him back to your family. I told you never to leave without him.”
Despite the fact that she refused on principle to retreat before any man, she found her feet had taken a step backward. She bumped the wall, but he kept coming. Beads of water glistened on his hair, and she could feel the chill on his clothes as if he hadn’t been long out of the storm. “What are you doing?”
Without a word, he retrieved her derringer from her pocket before she had a chance to stop him. “Not that I don’t trust you with a loaded gun.” His eyes on hers, he checked the load—as if she’d carry an unloaded gun. “But I don’t.”
Folding her arms, she didn’t argue his wisdom. She wouldn’t trust Meg Faraday either when it was so tempting to shoot him and be done with it. Her eyes traveled down the length of him. The light caught the silver threads in his waistcoat and made him look expensive. “Why are you so angry?” she asked.
“Do you have a death wish?” His rasp came out sounding proprietary as if he had some claim on her or right to be worried. “You’re not supposed to leave the cottage alone.”
“I can take care of myself. Rockwell stays with my family at all times, not with me.”
“That wasn’t our agreement. Unless you are expecting a pleasant father-daughter reunion.” One finely arched brow shot up as he considered that possibility. “Come to think of it, you still haven’t told me why you don’t want him to find you.”
“What is wrong with you?” She pushed against his chest, knowing the instant she yanked her hand back, it was a mistake to touch him. Especially when he was standing so close, and the chill on his clothes had turned to heat.
They stood, neither moving, except to breathe. Barely. He was close enough to kiss her. Close enough to dig his hands in her hair and open his mouth over hers as he had last night. She wanted her anger back. Not this stark terror that she might do something stupid and step into his arms.
His jaw clamped tight. Then he shifted his gaze to the bedroom door and stuffed the derringer in his vest pocket. “Is Mr. Doyle all right?”
“He’s suffering from hypothermia. I can’t leave him tonight. I was on my way to make tea.”
Stepping a wide arc around her husband, she walked past the small maple dining table with its two spindle-back chairs and into the tiny kitchen.
She’d lit the stove earlier and set a kettle of water atop the fire to boil. She dragged three cups from the cupboard and set them on the counter next to the wicker basket that she’d brought earlier. She pulled out a wooden tray.
From her peripheral vision, she could see David settling a shoulder against the wall. Hovering with eyes that burned, watching her pour steaming water into a china pot. Somehow, she kept her attention on the tea in an attempt to quell the flutter of her pulse. The cottage was too small and cluttered for them both to spend a peaceful night beneath this roof. An uncomfortable silence settled between them as she rummaged through her thoughts for something relevant to say.
“Who owns the hounds that came through here last night?” he asked.
“Most of them are wild dogs. I can’t prove it, but I believe Nellis is responsible for their presence. When I find out…”
David just looked at her, and some of her righteous anger faded. She was surprised that he’d even asked. Or maybe she was tired of fighting alone and appreciated that he seemed concerned. “The sleet will change over to snow tonight. If they come again, they’ll be easy to track,” she said.
“I don’t need snow to track them.”
She blinked away the urge to tell him tracking those hounds was not his responsibility. “They’re dangerous, David.”
“As is your father. I prefer only one canine at my back.” He moved into the kitchen and leaned his backside against the counter. “How many tenants do you have left?”
“Seven families.” She arranged the sugar bowl on a tray but her movements slowed. Her knuckles still bore the scabs from her flight
off the horse. “A few years ago, there were thirty families. Mr. Doyle takes care of the church grounds. We used to have four groundskeepers who cared for the parkland surrounding the bluff house.”
“Is there only one road leading up here?”
“No,” she said, knowing he asked purely for professional reasons, not because he was interested in Rose Briar. And a sadness came over her. For up on this bluff was everything that she loved. “One road comes up from the valley to the manor house. There is a more traveled road north over the ravine that comes in from Halisham and Salehurst and goes on to the coast. Then, of course, there are all the secret trails in and out of the woods.” She glanced his way. “I know them all.”
“In case you’ve thought about it,” he said, looking at her with absolute promise in his eyes, “there isn’t anywhere you can go that I won’t find you, Meg.”
She placed the lid on the teapot. “Because you hate me so much?”
“Hate was never the problem between us.” He turned his hip against the countertop. “Now I’ve somehow found myself owning land, a house, and a family that you love. Can you explain that?”
Her hand fell away from the pot to linger on the tray as she remembered the shooting star that first night he had returned to her, and the wish she had made for a miracle that would help her save Rose Briar. The adage that God worked in mysterious ways had never hit her so hard. “Perhaps something once so alive doesn’t deserve to die,” she said, looking up at David when he didn’t reply. “Rose Briar really is worth saving.”
“Is that all worth saving, Meg?”
“There are the fields and orchards as well. The tenants have spent their lives up here. They consider this land their home.” The thought turned her away from the topic, and she studied a hairline crack on the sugar bowl. “Have you eaten supper yet?”
“Are you offering to cook for me?”
“There is a jar of boysenberry jam in the basket.” This time she spared him a coy glance. “I was planning to share my spoon with you.”
The corner of his mouth tilted. In the dim firelight, the smile caught Victoria.
“Maybe I should cook for us then,” he said.
“Can you?”
“Give me a potato. I’ll make you a pie. Do I look underfed?”
Her gaze encompassed his shoulders and briefly touched the rest of him. For all of his shortcomings, David still had the kind of hard body that forced women to carry smelling salts. Again, her mind flashed memories of that kiss he’d given her last night—the same kiss that had kept her up all night.
As the silence stretched between them like a taut violin string, she suddenly had an urge to pluck out an entire symphony.
He’d awakened that wicked part of her she’d thought lay dormant beneath the prim Victoria. He was the only man she’d ever known who Meg Faraday could not control with her sexuality. That had always been part of the attraction. The challenge.
But only part.
“You should do that more often,” she said, placing one hand on the lid of the teapot and pouring.
“What exactly should I do more often?”
“Smile as if you mean it.” She slanted him a saucy glance. “You have nice teeth.” Like a wolf, she didn’t add.
He shifted his body, and one hand went into his pocket. “I told Rockwell you wouldn’t return to the cottage tonight. I was worried about the weather.”
“Then why didn’t he stay and you return to the cottage?”
It was an impulsive schoolgirl question to ask. “On second thought,” she said, “maybe neither of us should evaluate that answer too much.”
His eyes told her he was thinking about that kiss, too.
And she realized this wasn’t a battle she’d prepared herself to wage. Not ever again. But she couldn’t breathe the same air David breathed without remembering what it had once felt like to know the heat of him against her naked flesh—to know all of him—as if she’d forgotten he was a first-rate charlatan.
As if she’d forgotten he was exactly like her.
“I need to stable my horse.” He shoved off the counter. “I’ll make a round over the grounds before I lock up for the night. Shut the curtain behind you and lock the door.”
Of course, he would not let down his guard. He still had her derringer tucked away in his pocket. She looked over her shoulder out the window at the layer of ice caked on the glass, only to startle as he tipped a finger beneath her chin and turned her face into the light. He was standing so close, she could feel his warmth all over. It was suddenly obvious to her—as it must have been to him—that she was going to sleep with him again.
“Patience, love.” He rubbed the rough pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, before he cloaked the hot, possessive glitter in those eyes behind a wall of stone. Blunt. Predatory. “When I kiss you again, it won’t be while you’re playing Florence Nightingale in an old man’s cottage.”
Victoria refused to respond. It was not concern about what he might do to her but worry about what she would allow if she followed the promise in his eyes. When he left the kitchen, she placed her palms on the smooth wooden counter and listened to the whisper of cloth as he slid his arms into the sleeves of his coat. She didn’t breathe again until he shut the front door behind him.
Chapter 8
“He’s been out there most of the evening, mistress,” Doyle murmured from the bed behind Victoria.
Not realizing he’d awakened, she turned from the window. Doyle clutched the blankets to his chin. The only light in the room came from the woodstove in the corner. “His Lordship fixed a mighty fine soup,” he added, his one good eye brilliant in the faded orange light. “He ain’t like other no-account lordships, mum.”
“No, he isn’t,” she agreed. Because he was no true lord.
But he was an excellent cook. David had managed to make a delicious meal out of old potatoes, carrots, and the ham remaining in the smoke shed in back. But it was when he’d helped Doyle out of bed to perform his evening ablutions that something inside her shifted. He’d managed the task with the elderly man’s dignity intact, as if he’d performed such tasks a hundred times before, his compassion contrary to everything she remembered about him. She had looked away from him when he’d come out of the room, afraid of her confusion.
“I feel he’ll be the one to bring back Rose Briar, mistress.” Mr. Doyle’s eyes drifted shut as Victoria pulled the covers to his chin. “I feel it in my gut.”
“Why?” she asked, struggling to delve through her own conflicting emotions about David’s character.
“He’s out there chopping wood so we don’t freeze tonight.” Mr. Doyle chuckled. “And I’ve seen the way he watches you when you’re not looking. That young man has feelings for you.”
“Lord Chadwick?” she laughed at the notion.
David didn’t watch her any differently than he would any other criminal who’d been handed over to his keeping.
Doyle peered at her from beneath bushy brows. “I’m not as blind as I look, my lady.”
No, he only sees spirits in an old burned-out church. Victoria stood next to the bed. “Are you warm enough?”
“Aye, mistress. I’ve not been so warm in a long time.”
After a moment, Victoria left the room. She walked to the hearth and put another log onto the fire before returning to the kitchen.
David had told her to keep the curtains closed, but she lifted aside one edge and looked toward the stable. The wind had slowed to an occasional gust, and earlier the sleet had turned to snow. Huge flakes fell and coated the ground in a layer of white. Light from the stable seeped out of the crevices between the slats, making the ground glisten gold. She could hear the muffled but steady thwack of an axe chopping wood. David had been outside almost two hours.
Grabbing a ragged mitten, she lifted the kettle from the fire. She poured coffee into a chipped mug. At the back door, she wrapped David’s heavy cloak around her shoulders and headed for the stable. H
er boots squeaked in the snow. Once there, she gripped the wooden latch and edged open the wide door. The movement lifted David’s head, and, despite her will and all the lies she told herself, her heart skipped a beat. Even without benefit of the shadows playing around his face, he was tall, handsome, and looked extremely capable with his hands wrapped around the long axe handle. Her estranged husband had enormous presence and the ability to become a part of his surroundings, even in a dilapidated old barn and wearing attire suited to a lord. She had to force her attention back to the coffee in her hand as she turned and shut the door.
“It’s freezing out here.” Holding out the hot steaming cup, she offered a tentative smile. “No weapons. Promise.”
“Scalding liquid against this axe?” He smiled, but his wasn’t nearly as tentative as hers. “I’d rather be holding the axe.”
“What a fine domestic couple we make,” she said. “Talking murder as easily as we talk about the weather.”
Straw littered the ground. Mr. Doyle’s chicken had found a place to nest near the stall where the stallion mulled over a trough of hay. David wrapped his palms around the mug she offered and captured her hand. He wore his woolen coat unbuttoned, and it opened as he bent to inhale the steam. “Then you are reassuring me that I needn’t have you take the first drink?”
Victoria edged the mug to her lips, aware that his eyes were on her mouth. She drank, not because he’d bullied her into doing so, but because the coffee was the only warm thing in the stable. “I make great coffee, if I say so myself.” She stepped away, confident that she had at last made him uncomfortable. “I’ll be taking Mr. Doyle to Widow Gibson’s in the morning. They are good folk.”
David drank the coffee. Peering at her over the ceramic rim, he looked at the cloak she wore, but did not ask why she should be wearing something belonging to him. She could have told him because the cloak was warmer than anything she had.
“Is this weather common for this time of year?” he asked.
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