by Jenna Jaxon
“Oh, but I think he is,” Elizabeth said softly before pulling Sarah inside the ballroom and rendering any further talk on the subject impossible.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Hattie, please be careful.”
Sarah rushed over to her little cousin, concerned she would injure herself.
Taking the children to hunt for evergreens to decorate the house had seemed like a wonderful idea yesterday.
Now, with the snow that had been threatening for the last couple of days starting to fall and the temperature at an all-time low, Sarah was regretting it.
Still, the children were happy. And even better, distracted.
Sarah was afraid she wasn’t much good to them today.
She hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep after the disastrous ball the night prior. In fact, they’d ended up leaving early due to the overwhelming amount of questions that had been flung at her. So, Sarah had been guilt-ridden all night, not only because of Daniel, but because she knew Elizabeth loved the annual Winter Dance.
Then when they’d arrived back at the house, she’d made her excuses and fled to her room before Elizabeth could question her further about the devastating duke.
Of course, as soon as she was alone, there were no more distractions, and she’d spent the night wide awake and thinking over her unexpected reunion with Daniel.
That kiss!
Even now, as Sarah traipsed through the ever-thickening snow in the wake of her honorary niece and nephew, her lips tingled from the memory, and that wicked something that he’d awoken in her last night unfurled in her belly.
Gracious! This was no way for a lady to behave. She was a veritable wanton.
Shaking her head slightly, Sarah was determined not to think of the handsome duke any longer that day.
In such a small community it would be impossible to avoid seeing him again. And of course, now that news of his arrival and her own reaction to said arrival would have spread like wildfire amongst the village folk, she would need to think on how she was going to react to their next meeting, and what on earth she was going to say to him.
She wondered if Elizabeth had been right last night.
Had Daniel made assumptions about her and George? Had it made him jealous?
She was wicked for being a little pleased at the idea of his being jealous, she knew. But she couldn’t help it. In fact, she couldn’t help a lot of things when it came to that man.
“Aunt Sarah, look at me!”
Sarah looked up at the sound of Hattie’s voice and gasped.
The little termagant was hanging from a bough just below her brother, about ten feet from the ground.
“Hattie!” Sarah screeched.
Her distracted thoughts had caused her to lose focus, and now her niece was swinging from a branch.
If she fell, it would be Sarah’s fault.
“Oh my goodness, Hattie do not move. John, can you come down here and help?” she called desperately.
John peered down at her from the branch above Hattie’s, looking far more secure.
“I can’t get down until Hattie does, but look,” he called triumphantly. “Pine cones.”
“Good find, John,” she called, determined not to let her panic show.
Hattie crawled further along the branch carelessly, and it was all Sarah could do to keep from screaming.
If she frightened either of the children, they could fall.
But what was she to do? She couldn’t go back to the house for help and leave them here.
She’d have to climb up and get the fearless girl.
John, she knew, was like a little monkey and could climb up and down trees with ease. But then he had the benefit of experience. And trousers. Neither she nor Hattie had either of those advantages.
A sudden screech from Hattie drew an echoing one from Sarah, and she watched as the small girl slipped a little before regaining purchase.
Right, that was it.
Throwing off her cumbersome velvet winter cloak, Sarah hitched her skirts up to her knees and tramped through the deepening snow.
If anyone were to see her now!
All thoughts of Daniel, and the gossips, and her past would need to wait until the children were safe. It was as simple as that.
It took only seconds for Sarah to realise that she had no more chance of climbing that tree than she had of forgetting Daniel’s kisses last evening.
How her niece and nephew had managed to scramble up in mere seconds was beyond her.
She tried valiantly to jump up and grab one of the lower hanging branches. But being five foot, four inches was quite the hindrance when the branch was well over six feet above her.
Then she attempted to wrap her legs and arms around the trunk and heft herself up, but all that earned her was a fall back onto the icy ground and some damage to her pride and her derriere.
Sarah scrambled to get upright again, then because nobody was around to witness it, she stomped her foot in frustration.
“Good morning, Sarah.”
Sarah froze, her eyes still on the tree, as her heart picked up speed.
No. No, no, no, no!
She looked up to see the children smiling happily down at their unwanted companion. Well, unwanted in her opinion. Apparently, John and Hattie didn’t share her sentiment.
Daniel didn’t even appear to have noticed the children hanging above him, since he didn’t include them in his greeting.
Taking a steadying breath, Sarah turned to face him.
Once again, she was struck dumb by how incredibly handsome he was. It had always been thus. He would only have to look at her with those glittering emerald eyes, smile that smile, and she lost her wits completely.
And now that she was facing him again, memories from last night flooded her mind once again, meaning that scalding heat flooded her cheeks.
His eyes roved over her face, taking in the blush, and his polite smile became positively wolfish.
Oh, he knew the effect he had on her. The cad!
“Good morning,” she muttered because good manners dictated that she couldn’t just ignore him. And the safety of her charges dictated that she couldn’t run away again, which was what she wanted to do.
“Did I just see you fall from a tree?”
Oh, Lord. Wasn’t this just marvellous?
“No, I did not fall from the tree. I –“
“My arms are getting tired.”
Hattie’s voice interrupted whatever ridiculous excuse she would have come up with, and Sarah whipped her head back up to see her niece dangle even more precariously from the branch.
“Just hold on, dearest,” she called, feeling guilty that she’d allowed the giant beside her to distract from the situation.
And though she was loathe to continue any sort of conversation with him, at least until she sorted out her reactions to him, Sarah had to admit to a sense of relief that he was here.
She turned back to face him and grudgingly request his assistance. But he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was riveted to the little girl in the tree.
His face looked stricken.
“I’m getting cold,” John called, just to complicate things, and Sarah watched Daniel’s eyes move to the other child and widen slightly.
Sarah frowned in confusion at his reaction to the children, but now wasn’t the time to be worrying about that.
“Your grace, m-might you be able to assist? Hattie is stuck, and I’m too small to –“
Daniel’s gaze snapped to her at her words, and Sarah stumbled back a little at the blazing anger in their green depths.
But in an instant, it was gone, his face becoming a mask of impassivity.
Without another word, he walked the few short steps to the tree and reached up, easily plucking Hattie’s little body from the branch and setting her down on the ground.
Sarah felt weak with relief as Hattie flew to her and threw her little arms around her waist.
She hugged the little girl’
s body close.
“You mustn’t ever do that again, Hattie,” she chided gently, even as she stroked the blonde curls, so like her own and Elizabeth’s.
“But John does it,” Hattie answered mutinously.
“John is older and bigger,” Sarah reminded Hattie, earning a scowl.
“Do you need help, young man?” Daniel called to John, who was already jumping lithely onto the lower branches.
“I can do it,” John answered proudly as he swung himself from the final branch and dropped to the ground. “Thank you, your grace.”
He grinned up at Daniel, and Sarah watched with relief as Daniel smiled back.
His initial reaction to the children had been so oddly angry that she was worried he’d be rude.
“That was impressive,” he said, patting John on the shoulder.
Sarah bit back a grin as John tried valiantly to puff out his little chest.
“I must get the children back to the house. Hattie is freezing.” Sarah spoke to Daniel’s cravat, afraid to meet his green gaze. “Thank you for your assistance, your grace.”
Daniel frowned, no doubt annoyed by her stiff formalness.
“Sarah –“ He took a step toward her but stopped when she shook her head briefly, her eyes going to the children.
“Children, be sure to thank his grace for his assistance,” she said brightly, smiling proudly as John executed a perfect little bow and Hattie dipped into a clumsy but serviceable curtsy.
“Thank you, your grace,” they said in sync. Then without another word, they turned and ran off in the direction of the house.
The silence they left behind was uncomfortable in the extreme.
“Well, I’d better go. Goodness knows what they’ll get up to if I’m not there to stop them.”
“Don’t they have a governess?”
Sarah frowned slightly at his sharp tone.
“No, they do not,” she answered mildly. “I take care of them.”
Her answer earned a short shake of his head.
“You couldn’t have been much more than a child when the boy was born,” Daniel said, still in that abrupt tone.
Well, what did that have to do with anything?
“I was a child when John was born,” Sarah answered, still frowning, still confused.
Elizabeth was ten years her senior, though she had always been good to Sarah and tolerated her hanging around.
“How old is he?” Daniel asked. Demanded really.
The audacity of the man.
But Sarah knew there was little point in telling him to mind his own business.
“He is eight,” she said evenly with exaggerated patience.
Daniel flinched before his expression became thunderous.
“What? Then you were – “ He came to an abrupt halt before muttering a string of expletives.
“I was thirteen,” she supplied. “Wh—“
“And that Sir George. He is his father?”
Perhaps he’d gone mad, Sarah thought. After all, it had been three years. A lot could happen in three years. His brain could have been addled by an accident or a trauma or something.
“Right.” Daniel’s clipped word barely sounded before he took off in the direction the children had gone, his eyes blazing with a fury that scared the wits out of her.
Now what was going on?
Sarah stood still and gawped after his retreating figure before common sense kicked in.
She bent down and snatched her now-sodden cloak from the ground before scrambling after Daniel and the children.
She had no idea what he was about. But she had a feeling it wasn’t anything good.
CHAPTER FIVE
A rage unlike anything he’d ever felt before coursed through Daniel’s veins, igniting a bloodlust that wouldn’t be quelled.
He would kill the bastard. Kill him with his bare hands.
Last night, when the diminutive baron had stomped toward him and Sarah, Daniel had thought that was the worst he’d feel.
She hadn’t left him for a footman. But this reed of a man wasn’t much better.
The viciousness of his jealousy had somewhat taken Daniel aback and for the first time in his life, he’d arrogantly thrown his title in someone’s face, wanting to make the smaller man feel, well, smaller.
He had barely slept a wink last night, either driven mad by desire for Sarah, or jealousy at the thought of some other man getting to hold her and kiss her like he had.
And why had she allowed Daniel to kiss her like that when she was married? Why had she responded as she had?
When he’d stomped off to the hunting lodge the night before, Daniel had been determined to leave the area and never see or speak to Sarah Starling again.
But the memory of that kiss and her response to him kept him here. Damned fool that he was.
So, he’d decided to get his answers before he went anywhere, which is why he’d found himself on the baron’s grounds far earlier than was socially acceptable this morning.
The sight of Sarah falling from a tree had brought him to a shocked stop, and his heart swelled with a mixture of humour, desire, and something far more dangerous as he watched her scramble to her feet and then stomp about like a toddler.
His anger and confusion had melted away, and he suddenly felt as he had all those years ago when it was just he and Sarah, getting to know each other with no complications, no disappearing acts.
No husbands.
And then, he’d heard that voice.
Daniel would be hard pressed to describe the pain that had lanced through him as his eyes took in the image of a slip of a girl, with Sarah’s curls and aqua-blue eyes, dangling from the tree.
Even as he’d moved to help her, even as he’d watched the sincere affection between the two, his mind still wouldn’t allow him to believe what he was seeing.
It had only been three years since he’d seen Sarah.
The little girl gazing up at her was at least five.
Which meant that she’d been a wife and a mother when he’d known her. Yet nobody had seemed to be aware of that fact. She had attended debutante balls, had worn the pastels of a single young woman. Her mother had been relentless in her pursuit of a match for Sarah. Or so he’d thought.
How could he have gotten it so wrong?
Surely she was far too young for a daughter of five.
And the boy –
Daniel’s fury swelled anew as his legs ate up the distance to the baron’s house.
Eight. Eight years old.
And she’d confirmed that she’d been thirteen when he’d been born.
Daniel felt ill.
No wonder it had been kept quiet.
No doubt Sarah was protecting her sick, monster of a husband.
Well, never mind, he thought murderously. In about five minutes she’d be a widow.
“Daniel!”
Her voice sounded behind him, but he ignored it. All of his focus was on beating to a pulp the bastard who’d put his hands on her when she’d been an innocent child.
His stomach roiled, his gut clenched, his blood pounded.
Daniel had been twenty-four when he’d first met eighteen-year-old Sarah, and he’d worried that he might be too old for her then.
And the baron was certainly older than he.
Daniel crested a small hill, and the house came into view.
As he hurried forward, he caught sight of the children.
They ran toward the man, who opened his arms to them, patting the two blonde heads affectionately.
Daniel felt the growl rumble in his chest before it spilled from his mouth. He had reached the courtyard now and did not slow.
Some part of him knew he shouldn’t kill a man in front of his innocent children.
But before the thought could slow him, another figure appeared in the yard. Another woman. Another blonde.
The children dashed over to her, and she hugged them even as she watched his approaching form. He wasn’t cl
ose enough to see her face properly, but he saw the stiffening of her shoulders and mercifully, she bent to speak to the children for a moment.
They nodded their heads and scurried off into the house, and Daniel felt a surge of triumph.
He would have free rein now.
“Daniel!”
Sarah’s screech sounded closer now, but she was tiny. She’d never catch up to him.
Sir George was watching his approach warily, but the dim-wit didn’t even have the sense to run.
Daniel skidded to a halt in front of the smaller man.
“Darthford, what are you about?”
The man looked over Daniel’s shoulder.
“Sarah – what –“
Daniel didn’t even give him a chance to finish whatever he’d been about to say.
With a growl of anger that was borne of so many things, and all to do with the woman screaming his name, Daniel slammed his fist into the face of the man before him.
There was the satisfying sound of bone crunching before Sir George crumpled to the ground with a hard thump.
“You’ve broken my nose,” the baron yelled, the sound muffled by the hands he was holding to his face.
“I’ll break more than that,” Daniel promised through gritted teeth.
But before he could make good on the threat, Sarah and the other lady were upon them.
“George!” The lady from the house threw herself on the ground and began to fuss over the prone man.
At the same time, Sarah grabbed a hold of Daniel’s sleeve, trying desperately to halt his actions
“Daniel, what on earth are you doing?”
“I’m giving that monster what he deserves,” he snarled, his temper still hot as hell and even more so in the face of Sarah’s concern for the blackguard.
“You’ve run mad,” she yelled, and he realised that she was furious with him.
“Sarah –“
She didn’t give him a chance to finish what he was going to say, turning, not to Sir George, but to the woman who was kneeling by his side.
“Elizabeth,” Sarah cried, and Daniel felt a surge of guilt at causing her obvious distress. “I am so, so sorry. I don’t know what got into him.”
Daniel took in the scene, his breathing laboured as his anger cooled a little.