If I Loved You (Regency Rogues: Redemption Book 2)

by Rebecca Ruger

  Callum’s gray-blue eyes crinkled a bit at the corners. “You’re not much used to asking people for help, are you, miss?” He watched her shake her head. “I can pick you up in the evening. It’s no problem at all.”

  “You are very kind, Callum. It’s only two nights a week, and I think I’d not be later than nine o’clock or so—your wife or family won’t mind?”

  “No, Miss. I’m a loner over there. No wife to speak of,” he told her with a lowering of his head and a shuffling of his feet. Emma could almost swear at that moment a blush crept up into his sun-tanned cheeks.

  “I can pay you for the transport.“ She thought she might be able to, anyhow.

  “I’d not take your money, Miss Emma. That’d not be very neighborly.”

  A scream from Bethany turned both their heads towards the rear of the yard, just in time to see the little girl fall from the hedges she’d been trying to climb. Emma ran immediately to her, picking up the now crying child, checking for scrapes or cuts. “She’s all right, I think,” Emma told Callum, who hovered at their side. “Just scared herself, that’s all. Didn’t you, darling?” And she snuggled Bethany to her chest and stood again, while Bethany settled her head on Emma’s shoulder.

  “She’s a nice girl, your daughter,” Callum said. “She’s got your eyes.”

  Emma blushed at this. It was always, she guessed, going to be difficult to explain Bethany’s parentage to people she met. Michael had insisted that she needn’t have bothered, and Emma began to think he’d been right. Bethany was her daughter, in her heart, and in her mind.

  “Yes, she does,” she agreed after a thoughtful moment, her voice quiet. Then, with more candor, “But I’ve yet to figure out where she gets her daring from.”

  Callum laughed at this and they began walking toward the cottage. “Well, I’ll be off now, Miss Emma. And remember, I’m happy to help you and will see you next week.”

  “Thank you, Callum,” Emma replied. “Thank you for everything.”

  She watched Callum let himself out of the gate and went toward the back door. It was time for Bethany’s nap, and truth be told, she was very excited as she planned to make her first meal—today, she was going to attempt a stew. All thoughts and enthusiasm about this endeavor fled as she lifted her eyes to the back door.

  The Earl of Lindsey was here.

  Zachary Benedict stood in the open doorway. He looked, while not quite angry, at least cross about something. There was definitely a storminess about him now.

  Emma, for just a moment when she saw him, felt her stomach flip a little at the very picture he made. He was entirely too handsome for her peace of mind, and she recalled—immediately and thoroughly, while she wished to the heavens that she did not—the feel of his mouth on hers. “Good day, my lord.” She greeted him and he stepped aside to let her enter the back hall to the kitchen.

  “Who was that man?” He asked pointedly, not bothering with a greeting.

  Ah, she thought with an irritated grimace, therein lie the crux of today’s agitation. “That was Callum MacKenzie. He is my neighbor. Will you excuse me while I put Bethany down for her nap?”

  He nodded curtly, and Emma left the kitchen, aware that he had begun to remove his riding jacket, wondering how long he planned to stay.

  She returned fifteen minutes later, the fresh air having aided her efforts to get Bethany to sleep. In the kitchen, she found Zachary seated on the lone stool at the cutting table and grinned nervously at him as he watched her. She washed her hands in a basin full of now tepid water and used a cloth to dry her hands and quickly wipe her face.

  Finally, she turned to face the earl. “What brings you out to the Daisies today, my lord?” He looked so casual, in his fawn colored breeches with his tall riding boots, his lawn shirt open at the neck, one booted foot propped on a lower rung of the stool. He was smiling at her as she neared the table and her heart turned over yet again. Without warning, he reached across the narrow table and took the towel she twisted now in her hands from her. He beckoned her nearer with a wave of his hand. Bemused, Emma leaned a bit over the table, wondering what he was about, until he wiped at her cheek, where possibly there remained smudges of dirt from her work in the yard.

  She staunchly refused to be affected by the touch of his other hand holding her chin, while he used the cloth much as she might to Bethany probably thirty times a day. From so close a distance, their eyes met, the cloth lowered now, though he still held her chin. He stared intently at her, his eyes seeming to bore into her very soul. Finally, just as her cheeks began to redden under his mesmerizing perusal, he released her.

  “And what has this MacKenzie fellow promised to help you with next week?” He now wanted to know, his voice just slightly less than disagreeable.

  Emma shrugged, having not the slightest clue why she should be nervous to tell him of the position she’d taken at Madam Carriere’s.

  “I’ve a job which begins next week,” she rushed out then, turning away from his probing eyes to pretend great interest in the vegetables she’d planned to use for dinner. She faced the window which overlooked the back yard. “The hours are in the evening—just a few days a week—and so Callum has agreed to come and fetch me so Bethany and I haven’t to walk home in the dark.” She didn’t need to turn around to gauge his reaction. She could just feel his disapproval, shooting off him like sparks from a fire.

  It was almost a full minute before he spoke, in which time Emma was able to do nothing more than nervously rearrange the carrots and potatoes and onions in front of her.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” he said from behind her, his voice now edged with disbelief and anger. “Number one, you will not take a job. Number two, you certainly will not take a position that keeps you out late at night. Number three, you don’t even know this man—you’ve only been here a short time—and you’ll not trust him to drive you or Bethany anywhere.” As he continued, his voice grew louder and angrier still. “And number four, are you going to actually do something with those vegetables or are you content to have your dinner be nothing more than a finely displayed picture of what you might have cooked?”

  Infuriated at his high-handedness—once again—Emma turned to confront him, startled to find that he’d moved from the stool and now was directly in front of her. She jumped in reaction to his closeness, and words she’d intended to throw at him scrambled in her head. “I’ll have you —you have no right.... who do you think...? If I want to have a job, you are not anyone who can—“

  “Emma, think.” This, given sharply, his brow showing a matching annoyance. “You are provided with enough moneys to see you comfortably through each month—why on earth would you think you need to take a job? And if you had need of a job, why would you accept one that offers such dreadful hours for you?”

  “But I have the Daisies now,” she stammered. “There mustn’t be very much left. And I am still uncomfortable taking money from your father, which is now essentially yours.”

  He sighed in frustration. “We’ve been over this. Why not take what is available to you?”

  She fumed at his frustration, angered that he thought her a simpleton—his tone said as much. “I balk at accepting the money for just this reason,” she spat out. “Because you think you have rights—or that you have some say over my life and my decisions.”

  “I am just trying to help—“

  “You are not trying to help me! You are trying to control me!”

  It appeared to Emma at that moment that the earl made a visible effort to lessen his anger. Coolly, he said, “You’ve never had to completely take care of yourself before now, have you?” When she hesitantly shook her head, he went on, “I just don’t want you to make mistakes or get into a situation that might cause you harm.”

  Emma said sadly, “It’s just... I feel I haven’t earned it. I’ve no right to it.”

  The earl nodded. In agreement? She wondered.

  “My father obviously thought you had
,” he finally said. “Listen, Emma, what’s done is done. It’s already yours. That is what I am trying to tell you. You’ve an account in Perry Green. That is another reason for my visit today, I wanted to give you the records for that and tell you how to go about getting pin money and such.”

  Emma rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “How can I possibly have pin money left when this place surely took more than what your father wanted me to have?”

  He laughed briefly. “You obviously have no idea how great the amount was that my father put aside for you, Emma. There is plenty, trust me. So you needn’t work to have spending money, it’s all waiting there for you. You also have an account at the general merchant shop in town. You can set up more if you like.”

  Emma slumped against the counter behind her. “I–I’m just so uncomfortable with this entire arrangement. Why did he do this for me? I told him repeatedly that I...” she let it trail off, hating then that a lone tear spilled onto her cheek.

  Zachary shrugged, a flash of displeasure in his dark eyes. “It’s done.” When Emma said nothing else just then, Zachary said, “Let’s talk no more of money and jobs you’ll not have to procure. And you can tell this MacKenzie fellow that he needn’t be sniffing around, that his help won’t be required.”

  “That is unnecessarily rude,” Emma accused. “Callum has been nothing but kind to me and you make it sound as if... as if he’s a dog, looking for a meal!”

  “Exactly!” Zachary hissed at her.

  Emma moved away from him, stalking around the prep table, until she faced him again from the other side. “And what does that make you, my lord?”

  “Touché, my dear. But your argument is unsound,” he said in an oily, unattractive voice. “I believe that was you, responding so agreeably to my kiss for quite a few moments.”

  Her bottom lip sagged in mortification at this reminder. She lied pitifully, “I did not...want you to kiss me.”

  “I beg to differ,” he countered evenly.

  All right, so she was not going to win this argument, she determined with a huff. “I think you should leave now.” And she took up the well-arranged bowl of vegetables and began chopping them ferociously upon the cutting table, pretending—hopelessly—that he was, indeed, already gone.

  And in the next minute, he truly was. Emma heard the quiet closing of the kitchen door and she breathed again, dropping both hands upon the table in front of her to steady herself.

  On a good day, having a clue what she was about making a stew, she might have been successful in this endeavor. Today, with that ugly scene playing in her head over and over—and still being without a true knowledge of what she was about in regard to stew-making—Emma was quite sure she was doing nothing more than wasting fine vegetables and a good cut of meat in an effort to keep her mind off what truly troubled her. She didn’t think they had successfully settled any matter between them and was not so naïve to think that these issues would not arise again.

  Within a half hour, however, she did have what she guessed was a good beginning to her dinner coming to a boil in the huge pot hung over the open hearth. She wiped her hands upon the apron she’d donned—when she’d remembered to do so after he had left—and happened to glance out the window into the back yard.

  She blinked twice, shock rooting her to the spot in the kitchen while she watched the Earl of Lindsey work in her barely tilled garden. Unmoving, she saw that he had found a larger shovel than the small handheld one she’d struggled with earlier, and that he was turning the earth over with much greater ease and speed than she had. As ever, Emma was captivated by the sheer beauty of the man and his form. He struck the hardened dirt with the shovel and then used great force to push it further into the ground before turning it over, and all the while the muscles of his upper body were clearly visible through the white lawn of his shirt. He withdrew the tool from the earth and repeated the process time and again, until the entire plot of land, perhaps being a ten by twelve piece, had been worked to reveal dark, fresh dirt, ready for planting.

  When he was done, he leaned one forearm upon the top of the shovel, now struck firmly into the ground, and used the other forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. His head then lifted, his eyes squinting into the late afternoon sun, charting the flight of a blackbird across the sky above.

  Many thoughts flitted through Emma’s mind as she stared at Zachary Benedict, and she was surprised that at this moment not one of these ponderings were of a censorious nature. But there was, however, one troubling thought that crept into her mind. She wouldn’t let it complete itself, but the foundation of it was there. If only....

  Zachary returned the shovel to where he’d found it on the side of the house, where Henry obviously stored many of the yard’s necessities. It was then that he noticed, over the top of the hedgerows, that many of the trees within the pear and apple orchard outside the hedges seemed to be in need of some attention. He considered the stack of tools and such at the side of the cottage and selected several different pruners and a saw and ventured out into the orchard to see what might be done for the poorly maintained grove.

  Counting fourteen trees, two of which he could not identify, Zachary began trimming away at the closest pear tree, thinning the canopy as efficiently as he could without causing too much loss to the healthy branches and late spring flowers. Menial, physical tasks such as this were exactly what he needed to keep his mind off the fact that he wanted—indeed, had thought of little else for most of this day—to kiss Emma again. His mind and body seemed not to care that mostly they just annoyed each other, that often they were at odds. She spoke and railed and fumed, and while he did hear her words, he focused much of his energy upon her lips. Their softness was already met and well-proven, and likely there wasn’t a man who’d tasted those lips and then was able to think of much else when in her presence, and even when not, he imagined.

  Naturally, this thought—another man kissing her—darkened his already unsettled mood. Here was an avenue he thought best not to travel. He recognized, although unhappily, that she had a past just as he did. Swiftly, shaking his head while his jaw tightened, he put an end to these unruly thoughts just as he spied Emma walking toward him.

  She approached, if not stiffly, at least shyly, sticking out her hand, offering him a glass of cool lemonade. Zach ducked out from under the branches, watching her eyes, which watched anything but his eyes, and took the proffered glass with a low, “Thank you.”

  “You needn’t do this, you know,” she said, arms once again crossed over her chest—her protective or defensive stance—as she glanced around her orchard. “I’ll tackle these chores... day by day, I suppose.”

  “I needed to work off some steam,” he said, only half-teasing.

  At this, she turned her enchanting eyes upon him, gauging his seriousness. A half-smile teased her lips. Zachary, as ever, was instantly captivated. She could ask that the proverbial back forty be tilled and he’d likely trudge out that way. Never, in all his life, amidst all the women he’d known, had he ever been led so easily—yet by one who remained so unknowing. Inside, he cursed himself a fool but heard himself say, “I’m guessing you finally did something with all those vegetables. I hope it had something to do with a big black pot and some fine cut of meat, and—as you say—a ‘boiling of things’.”

  She rewarded his small humor with a full smile now. Actually, she responded rather pertly, in good fun, “I’ll have you know that I have successfully put together a beautiful looking stew.”

  “Congratulations.”

  Hesitantly then, so endearing to Zach, she added, “Would...would you care to stay for supper?” She seemed then to hold her breath.

  “Are you asking me because you would like my company? Or,” he said, unable to resist coaxing her into a smile again, “are you inviting me merely as your back-up plan, should dinner go awry?”

  She responded as he’d hoped, grinning beautifully as she pronounced saucily, “I said dinner looked beautifu
l; I haven’t a clue how it might actually taste. It might be necessary to have you around should the need arise for a late trip into Perry Green.”

  That’s my girl, he wanted to say. He liked that so much about her. She truly was often angry and riled by him, some of it deserved, he allowed, but she was never of an unchangeable nature, and her mood seemed genuinely to be rather blessed by easiness. “I’ll be in shortly to clean up.”

  She nodded, shy again and turned to retreat into the cottage.

  It was easy then to imagine that she was his and that this was theirs. So satisfyingly easy.

  Zach wrenched his gaze away from her and gave his attention to the suckers growing out near the base of the tree, not reading anything into her willingness to have him here.

  Dinner was then, for obvious reasons, a very informal affair, with the earl even helping to set the table, while Bethany, done with her nap, trailed after him wherever he went. Emma had changed from her working frock into a simple gown of pale blue. She’d cleaned herself up, and even dabbed a bit of vanilla from the pantry at her wrists and neck, not even bothering to dissect why she might want to do this. She hadn’t time to fuss overly with her hair and so only clipped up the sides at the back of her head and left the mass of it to fall down across her back.

  All within the sturdy black pot looked good, and Emma only hoped it tasted as good at its appearance promised. She thought the earl might like a glass of wine with dinner but hadn’t any to offer, and then felt embarrassed for this lack, saying as much to him. He was polite and insisted that he was more interested in her stew. Emma laughed and told him that was exactly what she was afraid of.

  Carefully, she ladled two large plates full of the stew, having thickened the broth just as the butcher had instructed her earlier in the week. She spooned out a smaller portion onto a tiny plate for Bethany and carried these three dishes into the dining room, while the earl held the door for her. Emma set the plates down, putting the earl at the head of the table, though she didn’t know why, but guessed years of servitude had dictated this move.