Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  “Will you geld him?” Hana asked, trying to show off the little bit of knowledge she had gleaned.

  Logan shook his head and laughed, “Not today. That wouldn’t be very welcoming would it?”

  Hana felt irritated and turned over onto her back and Logan saw immediately he had humiliated her. He endeavoured to make it better. He snuggled up behind her and ran his fingers lightly down her spine. “I might not actually. He looks a feisty little thing. I might keep him intact and breed from him. I could start a whole new line. He looks more show-jumper than stock although he’s going to be quite heavy.”

  Hana nodded with disinterest. She had already moved on in her head to all the things she needed to do back at Culver’s Cottage ready for the week ahead; including a mountain of ironing.

  “Would you come see him before we go?” Logan asked. It was like an invitation to do something special, something reverend and Hana turned back towards him. She nodded and he looked pleased. “I wondered if you’d name him,” he said and at her look of surprise, carried on. “He needs something showy that will be good as a bloodline name and carry on through any offspring.”

  Hana’s green eyes sparkled with the honour. It was a big deal. “What if I can’t think of anything good?” she asked, suddenly worried, but Logan smiled. He placed soft kisses on the nape of her neck and reached his arm around to cup her breast.

  “You will,” he said, with absolute confidence. “But right now, I need your attention fixed on me. I’ve got this really bad itch I can’t seem to get rid of.”

  “Oh, that itch,” Hana replied with a snigger. “You’ve always got that.”

  “Help me get rid of it, then,” Logan snuffled into her neck.

  “Ok,” Hana giggled, pushing herself out of bed and dashing for the bathroom. “I’ll get Effie to come on up.”

  “Oh, no!” Logan groaned, rolling onto his back. “Not another one with no teeth!” He shook his head as Hana sniggered from the bathroom. “What happens if I only want you?” he complained. “Come here woman!”

  Hana appeared in the bathroom doorway. She was naked and her breasts rested gently on her swollen abdomen. Logan leaned up on his elbows and observed her with a look of awe in his eyes, feasting on a sight he dreamed of often in his past but never believed he’d see. Hana and this baby represented his grandmother’s prophecy. They were the start of his new house. Hana looked unsure of herself. “Do you really only want me?” she asked and her voice sounded sad and laden with old hurt.

  “I’ve only ever wanted you,” Logan said softly. “Come here and I’ll show you how much.”

  Tama was noticeably kind with Hana at breakfast, fetching tea for her and sitting next to her at the big table. Logan’s brows knitted and he looked non-plussed at the difference between them, plonking himself down on the other side of Hana like a body guard. Miriam appeared back at the helm, getting up and coming down to resume her duties as mysteriously as she resigned them. Everyone pretended not to notice. She dished up scrambled eggs and bacon rashers with a normal-service-is-resumed air about her and nobody dared comment. Logan filled his fork and spoke to Tama across Hana. “Give me that work and I’ll take it back with me. It’s great stuff, you did good. I’ll send it off to the Correspondence School this week, then you should be accredited the marks on your logon for NZQA. Just keep checking and stay on top of it all. The other booklets will be here by the end of this week. Get them done and I’ll check them next weekend.”

  Tama nodded vigorously and Logan swallowed his mouthful and continued, “Angus will let you do the exams at Waikato Pressy Boys’ so you’ll have to drive down there.” Logan glanced sideways at his nephew. “You need to behave though. He took some persuading, Tama. Any trouble and you’ll be out.”

  Tama nodded again. “Thanks Uncle Logan. I won’t let you down.”

  The conversation turned to the farm and hotel. Logan pulled a long list from his jeans back pocket and flipped it over the top of Hana’s plate, where it landed by her hand. “Sorry babe. That was rude.”

  “It’s fine,” she sighed. Hana finished her toast and leaned back in her seat so they could talk over her.

  “If you get that list done, there’s always the spring at the top of the mountain to check. It’s running a bit slow so it might be blocked at the top or just suffering with the heat. If you don’t get that far, I’ll check it next weekend.”

  Tama nodded at his uncle and pocketed the list. The Du Rose mannerisms screamed through them both but up close, Hana could see subtle differences. As the men’s conversation continued, Hana watched them and decided Tama had a lot of Alfred in him; a much younger and more vigorous version but cut from the same mould. He had Alfred’s smile - well the smile that Alfred used to give - before something settled on his shoulders and bent him over tight as though gravity attempted to fold him in half like an envelope.

  Hana observed her father-in-law across the table. All the fight seemed have gone out of the old man as he sat and stared at his plate. It hadn’t been a gradual process but a robbing action. Hana wondered if he was sick. The Alfred who visited them a few months ago was cheeky, full of fun with that familiar sense of command the Du Rose men exuded. He made Hana feel safe and yet now she doubted if he could protect her from a bunny rabbit on a carrot mission. He sat at the breakfast table in his socks and hardly ate. She offered him more tea, but he waved her away, distracted. Even talk of the baby didn’t seem to enthuse him and Hana cast her mind back to their announcement. Perhaps it never really did.

  Maybe it was Miriam’s mysterious sickness that sapped his energy. He looked much older than his years, age creeping over him like a cancerous shroud. He watched Hana sideways when he thought she couldn’t see him, warily, sadly as though ready to protect himself from something dreadful which only she could unleash.

  Logan leaned back in his chair and put his arm across the back of Hana’s. “That should keep me going until dinner at home tonight,” he joked. He took a strand of Hana’s hair and twirled it in his fingers, making it spin like bronze, winding and unwinding it. Tama watched him, turned sideways, chatting about a loose fence up in the bush part of the property but studying Logan’s twirling fingers with almost passing interest. Then unexpectedly, he reached out towards Hana’s rounded stomach and retrieved a large toast crumb from her baby shelf. “Messy woman,” he chided good naturedly.

  It was a nothing-kind-of-movement with no forethought to it, just meant to remove something nasty from her jumper. But Logan was sharp and missed nothing. Hana knew instantly her confidences of the night before with Tama had given them a new intimacy, which must have looked odd to anyone used to their habitual avoidance of each other.

  She felt Logan tense and his fingers stopped twirling her hair and dropped it as though it was distasteful. His jaw flexed as he ground his teeth and he looked at his nephew strangely, as though trying to work out what he saw there. Tama seemed oblivious.

  Hana decided it was time to leave the room and start packing up. She lurched up the back stairs marked ‘Private’ one step at a time, hoping to miss Vik’s mistress at any cost.

  When she heard someone jogging up behind her, she panicked and tried to turn. The area was too small and Hana could only go up the spiralled staircase at tortoise speed. Getting away from the woman here would not be an option. “Leave me alone!” she said, trying not to fall down the stairs as she crushed herself into the wall.

  Logan came bounding up, taking the stairs three at a time. “Hana?” He passed her but only enough to tower above her on the same tread, leaning close into her and pushing her further backwards against the wall. “What’s going on?” He wasn’t rough, but there was something vaguely threatening about him. Hana put both hands against his chest to keep her from feeling pinned. His body felt taught under his sweatshirt.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Just let me go.”

  Logan shook his head in warning, daring her to take him for a fool. “What’s going on? And I’m warnin
g you - don’t lie to me.”

  Hana wondered if she could bear to tell the story again, but knew she would have to. It wouldn’t do for Tama to know something about her history that wasn’t accessible to her husband. Logan stood over her expectantly. Plainly he wasn’t going anywhere. Hana couldn’t push past him, he was too strong but her legs ached. “I need to sit down!” she whined.

  Logan raised his eyebrows and shrugged, his stubbornness easily outweighing Hana’s.

  “Please?” she begged.

  “Fine!” he conceded crossly. He dipped his muscular body and swung her up into his arms in the tiny space, valiantly carrying her up to the top and down the corridor to their bedroom.

  Inside, Hana haltingly told her husband about the woman she met downstairs the night before and how the stink of their combined past had washed over her, unwelcome and un-dealt–with. “Vik had an affair. I think on reflection, he had many of them. I always felt grateful he didn’t leave me alone with a baby, but I didn’t deserve his infidelity. It crushed something in my soul and I pitched between loving him and hating him after his death, robbed of the chance to ask him the truth. It’s partly why I don’t trust you, I suppose.” Hana’s hands twisted on her lap, knotting her fingers and mirroring the internal wrestling.

  “So Tama knows?” Logan asked, hurt leaching into his voice.

  Hana nodded. “Last night, by accident. Vik’s mistress sought me out and had me boxed into a corner. Tama stepped in between us and shielded me from whatever onslaught the woman has spent the last nine years saving up for me. Then we sat on the bench in the rose garden and talked, about that and about Anka.”

  Logan’s grey eyes never moved off Hana’s face and even his blinking seemed to have slowed down. His gaze fixed on her, as though running her every word through a lie-detector-test in his brain somewhere. “So he didn’t try it on with you? He didn’t touch you?”

  “Oh, Logan!” Hana resisted the urge to shed tears again. Telling it a second time didn’t seem as tumultuous as the effort of holding it all in for so long, but Logan’s suspicion seemed as insurmountable as hers. “How can we succeed at this?” she groaned. “We’re both so damaged and suspicious. How can we not end up destroying each other?”

  She looked at Logan’s face and saw his eyes lose the intense greyness of their scrutiny and knew he had tasted the flavour of truth in her. “It’s ok,” he said simply. “We’ll work it out somehow.”

  Logan backed off slightly and reached out for her hand. Hana put her delicate fingers into his rough palm and felt him give a gentle squeeze. He smiled quizzically at her through his lashes and his too-long-fringe and pulled her down onto the bed.

  “I love you, Hana Du Rose,” he whispered. “Never forget that.” He undressed her with precision and care, laying her on the bare mattress and making love to her. He left her in no doubt that Vik’s influence over her life was truly over. If it was his intention to overwrite the lovemaking of a faithless man long since dead, then his efforts were rewarded by Hana’s soft moans and their combined ecstasy.

  As they packed to leave, Logan helped Hana shut the shared suitcase they brought with them. He seemed edgy and nervous. Logan pushed down on the top in an attempt to persuade the contents to squish down and Hana tried to move the reluctant zip around the outside. Their faces were close together. “Hana,” he said quietly, “watch Tama.”

  She looked up in surprise, not just because it was an odd thing to say, but it was at that moment, completely unexpected. She shook her head, visibly not understanding. “Watch him do what?” she asked.

  “Just don’t let him too close. He’s like his father,” Logan said, his voice a whisper. “He’s like all of them. There’s no such thing as ‘out of bounds’ for Reuben’s boys. You have to know that.” He looked intently at her, so hard his eyes seemed to bore holes in her face and Hana visibly winced.

  Her eyes widened as she realised what he meant. “Oh, what you mean...he might want to...oh that’s disgusting! He’s a little boy!”

  “Anka didn’t think so!” Logan’s voice sounded harsh.

  Hana’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I’m seven months pregnant, move like a small barge and feel about as sexy as a Rubik’s Cube! Nobody his age would think me sexy!”

  “I think you’re sexy and I’m not running the risk, Hana. If I think he’s even showing an interest, he’s on his own. I’ll throw him out and that will be the last he ever sees of me or this hotel. His father screwed me over once before and his son doesn’t get the chance to repeat the exercise!”

  “Ok, ok. I promise, I’ll watch out for him.” Hana stroked Logan’s cheek, trying to dispel the hard expression, but the intensity of his warning forced her to respect it, drink it in and do as he asked. She nodded and treasured what it cost her husband to reveal so much of himself to her.

  Before they left, Hana clambered onto the quad bike awkwardly and Logan got in next to her. “Ready?” he said, with excitement in his face and voice.

  “Yep,” Hana answered, clutching hold of his arm to steady herself. “How far are we going?”

  “Just up to the bunkhouse. Sacha’s being kept away from the other horses so she can get used to her baby. There’s stuff she needs to teach him quickly. She’s in a fold attached to a covered stable where she can graze and teach her boy in private. He needs to know the do’s and don’ts of being a well-bred horse.”

  “Cool!” Hana called to him as the bike revved and took off. She’d never been up to the bunkhouse and clutched her stomach, hoping it wasn’t too far.

  “The guys will check on her whenever they’re around, before and after work mainly,” Logan shouted over the sound of the bike. Hana nodded and pursed her lips as native flora whipped past the old machine. She gripped the side of the seat and tried to relax.

  Sacha snorted and shook her head wildly when she saw Logan, undoubtedly showing off for his benefit. Glued to her side, was the tiny foal. Its legs looked far too long for its body and its gait was stuttered and clumsy as it fought to stay with its mother.

  Sacha came to the fence and nosed at Logan’s fingers until he put his hand in his jacket and produced the apple, which she knew he would have. He smoothed the fuzzy fringe away from her brow and rubbed at the short tight hair on her forehead, while she nibbled away at the fruit in his hand. She took delighted bites out of it and the juice dribbled down his fingers. “Clever girl,” Logan murmured to her. “You did good, baby.”

  The foal stared wide-eyed at the adults, too afraid to come to the fence but curious about what was going on. Hana offered her hand over the rail and it skipped backwards, cautious. Sacha watched out of one calm brown eye, savouring the apple but constantly aware of her baby. She lifted her face and put her mouth gently on Logan’s shoulder, making a great deal of snuffling noise. He whispered quietly to her and her ears flicked backwards and forwards in answer. Hana felt quite jealous of their relationship. Logan talked often about his kinship with this land and the tangata whenua which held him there. It was like he melted into the earth and became part of it. He fitted perfectly into the scene and it filled Hana with hopelessness. Next to Logan, she felt like a city-girl-kind-of-blot-on-the-landscape, making the best of it for his sake. Inwardly she feared she couldn’t be what he wanted.

  Logan kissed the white mare tenderly on the velvety skin above her nostril and spoke to Hana, “So what’s the verdict?”

  Hana stared at the small creature in front of her, all legs and flicking, stumpy tail. She tried to imagine him as a fearsome white, flecked stallion, commanding a herd out in the seclusion of the bush, nipping their heels and rounding them up at will. Something about his haughtiness reminded her of Logan; the stubborn way the colt refused to shift his tiny hooves when Sacha moved and her bum almost pushed him over. Hana looked at Logan sideways as she pondered and thought about his command of everything his eye could see and his plans for it all. This foal-baby seemed like the beginning of it - as their child would be th
e cementing of their life together.

  Hana had decided on the foal’s name but worried Logan would dislike it, veto or change it. In her world, she had become used to men asking for her opinion and then finding fault with it. Vik did it all the time and she learned to keep her thoughts to herself. Hana turned to face her husband, trying to read his expression. He looked expectant, patiently waiting. “Don’t you trust me?” he asked, with incredible perception and Hana bit down hard on her bottom lip.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So try me. Give me a chance to be trustworthy.” Logan smiled at her and Hana felt her heart melt.

  She stood up straighter, bracing herself for disappointment when he laughed or rejected it. “Du Rose le Prochain,” she announced shyly.

  Logan’s expression didn’t change for a heartbeat while he considered the name. Then he smiled and nodded and Hana saw his approval in his eyes. She released her breath slowly and allowed the tenseness to dissipate out through her limbs. “That’s a good, strong name,” Logan said and held out his hand to the little spider-like creation. It stepped tentatively forward, snuffing and sniffing his hand and then pulling back behind his mother. “Du Rose Future,” Logan translated and Hana smiled and nodded. “I never expected that,” he snickered softly, wrapping his arms tightly around her neck and pulling her in close. “You keep surprising me.” He stroked back the hair that blew around her face and kissed her forehead.

  “Why?” Hana asked, her face becoming anxious.

  “Because you’re an Englishwoman and you just named my horse in French, despite always telling me how much the English hate the French.”

  Hana looked at the ground. “I wanted to please you.”

  Logan pulled her chin up with his finger and kissed her. “You did,” he whispered. “Everything about you pleases me.”

  Hana let him kiss her, running her hands underneath his shirt and caressing his soft back. She put out of her mind the fifty other things she knew she did which didn’t please him and tried not to worry about things she couldn’t change.