Beckman: Lord of Sins (15 page)

“You are a delight.” He closed his arms around her in sheer affection. “An absolute, utter, unequivocal delight.” A dangerous delight. A shaft of misgiving went through him, because leaving this delight behind when it came time to return to Kent would be difficult.

“But a housekeeper too,” Sara reminded him, “and delighting is not on my list of duties, though when you hold me like this, you make me want to rethink my list.”

“Delight belongs on your list, Sara,” Beck said in all seriousness. “I am not your lover yet, but I would dearly like to be.”

“You can be my lover, but only if I can discern a means of becoming invisible thereafter, Beckman. I cannot hold in my mind at the same time the way we are together now, the way I behaved with you earlier, and the need to ask you to please pass the cream at the breakfast table tomorrow.”

For a widow who’d just found her pleasure, she was peculiarly reluctant to experience it again. “So skip breakfast. Have me instead.”

Sara tongued him again for his insolence. “I can’t help but feel everybody will know. They’ll be able to see by looking that I’ve cast my morals to the wind and embarked on a life of dissolution.”

“Oh, indeed.” Beck drew his hand down her braid, which had gotten satisfactorily messy. “You spend one hour a week in my bed, and now you’re a flaming strumpet. How much time does Allie spend drawing and painting?”

“Hours and hours.”

“And in the past week,” Beck went on, “how much time has Polly spent in North’s exclusive company?”

“Several hours at least. They walk out. She takes him his lunch. I think he reads to her some evenings.”

Good work, North, Beck wanted to retort, but he had a point to make.

“And how many hours in a week do you spend in housework?”

She was silent a moment. “Seventy, at least.”

“But you think this one hour with me will define you to the exclusion of those seventy? I’d say you’re entitled to one hour a week, Sara, at least one, to be pleasured, held, and talked to like an adult. Surely you don’t begrudge yourself that little respite?”

Surely
he
didn’t begrudge it to himself?

When she didn’t answer but went back to playing with his nipple, he knew she was considering his argument. He could tell this, he assured himself, by the
thoughtful
manner
in which she was driving him beyond reason with her mouth.

She fell asleep on his chest, much to his relief. He indulged in a long, long hour of holding her and letting his hands travel at will over the soft planes and hollows of her skin before wrapping her in his dressing gown and carrying her through a silent house to her bed. When he was convinced she wouldn’t wake, he returned to her room with her clothing and slippers, kissed her as she slumbered on, and sought his own bed.

Not until he was almost asleep did it occur to him that a married woman, of all women, ought to have a nodding acquaintance with a piss hard, particularly if she’d traveled with her husband in close quarters.

But to Sara, the whole idea had been terra incognito—as had the idea of sexual pleasure.

Interesting.

Nick Haddonfield rode along beside his half brother Ethan Grey as their horses trotted the perimeter of one of Nick’s farms in Kent. Long ago, as boys, Nick had not needed to speak with his brother, so thoroughly familiar had they been with each other’s hearts and minds. And now… the silence had taken on a taut, unhappy quality that made Nick want to gallop off in any other direction.

They
could
not discuss the earl’s failing health—what would be the point?

They
would
not discuss the weather, Ethan having no tolerance for idle talk.

They
should
not discuss Nick’s attempts to find a bride before the earl passed away, lest Nick end up babbling to his brother about impossible things best kept silent.

Ethan rubbed a gloved hand down his horse’s golden neck. “I ran into Beckman down near Portsmouth.”

Beck was a fine topic for discussion, a safe topic.

“I gather from his correspondence that Three Springs was much in need of attention?”

Ethan shot Nick a look that suggested the topic was perhaps not so safe. “Beck is plowing and planting like a yeoman, Nicholas. His muscles rival your own. I begin to think his sense exceeds yours or mine too.”

Nick steered Buttercup around a mud puddle, while Ethan’s gelding shied at the comparable hazard in the parallel rut. “Beckman is very sensible, except when he’s not.”

The next look from Ethan was easier to read: Nick was spouting nonsense. “Beckman will see Three Springs put to rights, provided you or the earl don’t banish him to some foreign shore once again.”

Nick silently scolded his grandmother for carrying tales to all corners of the family, even corners estranged from one another—banish, indeed. “Better that dear Becky take a repairing lease overseas from time to time than be the object of unkind talk.”

“Hmm.”

Nick was an older brother many times over. He knew older brothers took special delight in finding the most aggravating delivery possible of even a single syllable. In future, he noted to himself, he would not “hmm” quite so often at his younger siblings.

“What, Ethan?”

“God forbid a Haddonfield should engender talk, particularly talk more interesting than that caused by the Berserker of the Bedroom.”

As broadsides went, that quiet observation would do nicely. “You aren’t in possession of all the facts. The death of his wife rather knocked Beck off his pins. He’s done better lately, but one worries for him.”

“For him, or for the consequences to his family? From what little I know, Beckman has been widowed nigh eight years. For the last three of those years, I haven’t heard a single word regarding him when there’s a Haddonfield to be gossiped about.”

The retort Nick was prepared to deliver never made it past his lips.

Three years? Had it been
three
years
since he’d dragged Beckman out of that cesspit in Paris?

No, closer to four…

“You’re silent, Nicholas. When you might be describing some fool’s errand in the far north for our younger brother or a repairing lease in, say, St. Petersburg, you’re silent. I beg you not to spoil such a boon. One thanks God for the occasional small favor.”

Ethan nudged his gelding into a canter, and Nick—rather than offer a reply—let his mare speed up to keep pace.

***

“What has you in such a good mood?” Polly drizzled brown sugar icing over the sweet buns she’d taken from the oven, interrupting Sara’s humming with her question.

“I slept well,” Sara replied, which was not a lie.

“I looked in on you before I came out to start the bread dough,” Polly said. “You were sleeping
well
in a very large blue dressing gown, and your clothes were draped across the bottom of your bed.”

Sara wished a blight on concerned sisters the world over, even if they did bake up delicious sweet buns. “Why would you look in on me?”

“I often do. It’s an old habit, from when you performed and were never there when I went to bed. I’d check on you first thing when I woke up, and last night, Sister dearest, you were not there when I went to bed.”

Sara felt her lovely mood wafting away. “Are you going to be difficult?”

“I am not.” Polly considered the buns, which were dripping with sweet icing. “I am going to be concerned for you. Just…”

Her thought was interrupted by a cold breeze from the back hall, followed by the sound of North’s voice sporting its customary irritable edge.

“The ladies will have to decide where to put them,” North was arguing. “I am not an arborist. Good morning, ladies. Are those sweet buns I spy on yon counter?”

Allie crowded in behind the men. “Wash your paws. Aunt will smack your fingers if you don’t, and she’s got good aim.”

Sara smiled at her daughter, glad for the interruption. “Good morning to you, too. Gentlemen, when you’ve seen to your hands, you can tell us what you’re arguing about.”

“I’ll tell you now,” North volunteered as he approached the sink and worked the pump. “Haddonfield’s esteemed brother has sent him a half-dozen peach trees, for pity’s sake, and now we must find them a sheltered, well-drained but fertile location, as if we’ve that to spare.”

Beck joined him at the sink. “It’s the first remotely civil gesture my brother Ethan has made in years—many years—and the gift isn’t to you, it’s to Lady Warne. It isn’t as if you’re expected to plant the deuced things yourself.”

“Deuced.” North shook his wet hands out, spattering Beck liberally. “That’s precious. I say the ladies can find a place for your
deuced
trees.”

“We can,” Sara interjected, as clearly, North was a bear with a sore paw—or back—about something. “And the walled garden strikes me as one possible location. Polly, do you need help with that? There are at least two healthy, full-grown men here capable of carrying food to the table.”

Or possibly, a pair of oversized, hungry little boys.

“And me!” Allie reminded her indignantly.

“Well, of course there’s you,” Beck piped up. “Though your paws have yet to be washed.”

Breakfast was noisy, and Sara was grateful for the hubbub, for she was, as predicted, having trouble meeting Beckman’s gaze. He left her in peace, for which she was also grateful, and moment by moment, the meal progressed.

“See?” Beck whispered as he held her chair for her to rise. “No thunderbolts, no cataclysms, and you look lovely this morning.”

“I slept well.”

“Mama…” Allie’s tone approached whiny. “You said we could try my dress on right after breakfast, and it’s after breakfast.”

“I did say that, and the last of the alterations are done, so let’s be off. I’ll bring it to our apartment, while you get your boots off.”

Allie was off like a shot, so Sara hurried up the steps to the small parlor she’d used as her sewing room. She gathered up the dress then draped her sewing apron over her head, reaching behind her to tie the sash. A crackling in the pocket had her frowning then reaching down.

“Oh, dear…” Her fingers closed on the letter she’d received almost a week past, the one she’d forgotten about entirely. She put it back in the pocket—nothing would be permitted to delay Allie’s final fitting—and hurried from the room, only to run smack into Beckman Haddonfield loitering in the hallway.

“And now”—he settled his hands on her upper arms—“for the other greeting, the one I’ve looked forward to since I woke from my dreams of you.” He lowered his mouth to hers while she was still blinking at him in consternation. When he’d thoroughly greeted her—scattered her wits to the compass points—he drew back and smiled down at her.

“Now, it is truly a good morning.”

He sauntered off, leaving Sara nigh panting with… well, not indignation, which would have been a proper response, but maybe surprise and a bit of appreciation as well.

It
was
a good morning. She smiled to herself and hurried back down to her apartment, finding Allie prancing around in her new finery.

“May I wear my new dress today, Mama?” She twirled dramatically. “Can we put my hair up? Just to see?”

“We can try a few things with your hair, but your new dress should be saved for a special occasion.”

“This material makes my eyes really green,” Allie said, swishing her hips to make the fabric swirl around her calves. “Mr. North would look nice in this color.”

“Mr. North would look a lot nicer in any material if he’d just smile,” Sara said as she undid Allie’s long coppery braid.

“His back still hurts,” Allie said. “I think he’s homesick, too. He went to London last year just after planting. Maybe he should go again, particularly when Mr. Haddonfield, Jeffrey, and Angus are here. Ouch. And the Odious Boys, too.”

“Sorry.” Sara freed a skein of Allie’s hair from a hook. Allie had a point: North hadn’t gone up to Town for at least a year, though he’d darted into Brighton and Portsmouth. “You have such pretty hair.”

“Mr. Haddonfield said so too.” Allie preened, sliding her hands over her dress. “He also said what’s under my hair is just as impressive and likely of greater value.”

“He paid you a compliment. Now, pay attention. You’ve a decision to make. Do you prefer it twisted up like this, bound in a coronet like this, or swept back to your nape like this?”

“Do them all,” Allie crowed. “I have to see them to choose, but this is fun!”

It was fun and sweet, and soon Polly came in to offer advice and commentary and suggest accessories. Allie eventually settled on a double coronet, which was simple to do and very secure “for painting.”

When the new dress was hung lovingly on a hook in Allie’s alcove and Allie had bounced out to visit with Amicus and Hermione, Sara sat down beside her sister.

“Thus ends the short and illustrious childhood of Allemande Adagio Hunt.”

“There, there.” Polly patted her hand. “She still doesn’t like boys, unless they’re Beckman or North.”

“And who wouldn’t like that pair? She likes Soldier as well.”

“We’re getting old,” Polly observed. “Our little Allie is dreaming of putting her hair up.”

“At least she liked her dress,” Sara said, rising and hearing again the crackling in her pocket. “My heavens, I’ve never neglected a piece of mail quite so consistently.” She sat back down and slit the little epistle open with her thumbnail.

“Oh, dear saints…”

“Sara? What is it?”

“Polly, he’s found us.” Sara put the letter down only partly read. “He’s found us, and he’s asking after Allie.”

***

April passed into May, and the trip to Portsmouth grew closer, but matters between Beckman and Sara did not move forward. She hadn’t reneged on their trip, and she hadn’t been exactly chilly, but neither was she quite as… warm as Beck had anticipated, based on their encounter in his bed.

And perhaps this was for the best, because daily, the probability grew that he’d receive a summons from Belle Maison.

So he stayed busy ripping the bracken from what should have been drainage ditches, trimming the trees whose limbs encroached over the gutters and sheds, and mending wall. North groused and griped but heeded Beck’s admonition to stay away from the heaviest work, and occupied himself supervising the four other men when Beck was otherwise engaged.

As the days went along, Beck began to feel as if the next task to be supervised was a sound beating of one Gabriel North. North argued, resisted, and grumbled at every turn, to the point where Beck was increasingly willing to let the man tend to the stone walls single-handedly, bad back be damned.

When Beck suggested that barley straw sunk in the pond would reduce the algae growing on the surface, North came back with a lecture about straw floating and lordlings who would be best advised to limit themselves to making muffins.

When Beck wanted to investigate certain crosses for the sheep that would result in more twins and two lambings a year, North informed him that they were not in Dorset, where such sheep thrived, though perhaps Beck might enjoy a visit there.

As they took their noon meal beneath the hedgerow of oaks, Beck mentioned planting some American sycamore trees to dry out a boggy patch of one field. Around bites of ham and buttered bread, North lapsed into a sermon about leaves creating shade, which contributed to the bogginess.

“We’re planting the bloody trees,” Beck bit out and found North looking at him in sharp consternation.

“I do believe,” North replied slowly, “this is the first time you’ve actually given me an order. Of course we’ll plant the trees if you feel that strongly about it.”

Beck scowled at a cinnamon bun. “A steward on this estate willing to take direction is a frighteningly humble thing.”

North rubbed his chin, surveying Beck speculatively.

“The truce,” North said quietly, “the one I’m negotiating with Polly—was negotiating? It isn’t going well.”

“Sara’s got the female complaint,” Beck said, still studying his bun. “Maybe they’re synchronized, like a harem or a brothel.”

“The naughty little things you know, child… Polly is not having her menses.”

Interesting that North should know such a thing, and volunteer it.

“Are they arguing over Allie’s painting?”

“Polly defers to Sara in all matters pertaining to the child. Allie said something the other day, suggesting she’s noticed her elders are in a taking about something.”

“What did she say?”

“Something to the effect of ‘what’s the fun of putting up your hair and having a new dress if everybody’s in a bad mood all the time anyway?’”

“You don’t suppose Polly is objecting to Sara coming into Portsmouth with me?”

“Who can fathom the mind of the female?” North sighed the sigh of Every Man. “I have some reason to believe Polly encourages the outing, and not entirely out of sororal selflessness.”

“Does this have to do with that truce you mentioned?”

“A man can dream.” North studied the clouds beyond the filmy new leaves on the oak.

“Maybe the argument goes the other way,” Beck suggested. “Maybe Sara is getting cold feet, and Polly is being obdurate.”

“Polonaise Hunt could write the book on being obdurate.”