Beckman: Lord of Sins (21 page)

“There was your first mistake.” Sara surveyed the kitchen tiredly. “No hoping, Polly, you’re less likely to be disappointed that way.”

“What a cheerful lady you’ve become. Since your little visit to Portsmouth, you’ve been distracted, Sara.”

“Since getting Tremaine’s first letter.”

Polly studied the pots that hung from the rafters like so many weapons in an armory. “So answer the man. Don’t give him an excuse to come calling and start charming Allie away from all good sense.”

“God in heaven.” Sara’s expression blanked with dismay. “You don’t think he’d follow in Reynard’s footsteps?”

“If he follows in any of Reynard’s footsteps,” Polly rejoined darkly, “I’ll cook him a meal he won’t live to digest.”

Polly took herself off to bed on that note, leaving Sara to deliver the various piles of clean laundry around the house. But Sara considered the prospect of trundling up and down several sets of steps, several times, and possibly running into Beckman—polite, friendly Beckman, whose eyes in the days since they’d been to Portsmouth always held a hint of a question—and decided Allie could handle that chore in the morning.

Allie could not, however, write a reply letter to Tremaine St. Michael.

Directing her steps to the library, Sara tried to draft the letter in her mind. She got out pen, paper, sand, and ink, and stared at the blank page, then managed, “Dear Tremaine.”

Dear Tremaine?
Dear?

“I thought you’d be in bed by now.” Beckman stood at the door, looking tired, damp from his nightly soak, and wary.

Sara gave him a tentative smile. “Trying to see to some correspondence. Do you need the desk?”

“Just some ink.” Beck sidled into the room and propped a hip on the desk, surveying her. “So how fare you, Sara Hunt?”

The question was there in his eyes, and a hint of concern too. Sara stared at the inkwell rather than look on either. “I’m tired. You?”

“Tired as well. May I ask you a question?”

She braced herself for some scathing inquiry, though his manner was not belligerent. “Of course.”

“It’s been nearly two weeks since we returned from Portsmouth.” He picked up the inkwell, a once-elegant little silver bottle dented with age and use. “Was that single weekend to be the extent of your frolic with me, Sara?”

Sara felt the civility of that question, the dispassion of it, start minute fractures in the region of her heart. “I told you we weren’t to attach significance to our dealings, Beckman. You knew that.”

He set the inkwell down just out of her reach on the desk. “Sara, I’ve missed you.”

The fractures cracked so abruptly Sara was surprised her pain wasn’t audible. “You see me at every meal. I see you.”

“You look through me at every meal,” Beck said. “If you are not interested in continuing our liaison, then you have only to tell me. I will leave you in peace, if that’s what you want.”

“What I want…” What she wanted was impossible, particularly with Tremaine’s threat hanging ever closer. She rose, that being necessary if she was to leave the room—and the man sharing it with her.

“What do you want?” Beck prompted, closing the distance between them. “Tell me what you want, Sara, and I’ll do what I can to see you have it. I’ll leave if you like, though I’d as soon not abandon Three Springs yet.”

“I don’t want you to leave.” She was positive—
certain—
of that much, but only that much.

“Let me hold you.” Beck didn’t wait for her permission but took the last step between them and enfolded her in his arms. He urged her against his body, and Sara slipped her arms around him.

God in heaven,
she
had
missed
him
. More than she knew, more than was rational.

“Better,” Beck murmured, his hands moving over her back. “Talk to me, Sara. Put your arms around me and talk to me.”

Her tired brain started making a list: His bergamot scent, his heat, his strength, and the way he pitched his voice. His blue, blue eyes, the way firelight caught red highlights in his golden hair.

“I’ve missed you too.”

“What else? You missed me, but you’ve not wanted to let me know it, Sara. What else is going on in that busy mind of yours?”

She shook her head and held him more tightly.

“I have a few things for you.” Beck slid his fingers around her wrist. “Things I meant to give you in Portsmouth, but the moment never presented itself. Nothing of great value, but they aren’t items I can use or give to another.”

She wavered, and he waited. He didn’t tug on her wrist, wheedle, or start in kissing, any one of which would have given her something to brace her resistance against. Instead, he held her with silent patience.

Sara’s objections—she had them, surely she did—tossed down their weapons and limped off the field of common sense.

He held her hand as they passed through the house.

“This place is positively sparkling,” he said, “and the gardens and lawns have come along as well.”

This was the cunning flattery of a man who knew that a woman kept house so that others might enjoy the results.

She returned fire as best she could. “To say nothing of the acreage. You and North have been working miracles, but I never noticed North’s tendency to be contrary before you arrived. He delights in it.”

“He’s not used to taking orders or having anybody to discuss his ideas with. We’re reaching accommodations, but it’s an education for us both.”

Sara glanced around his sitting room and moved to light some more candles. “Because you are used to being listened to?”

“Leave them.” Beck took the taper from her hand. “And yes, Sara Hunt, I am used to being listened to, at least when I’m on the earldom’s business. But you are my business now, and the silence between us is not comfortable. Come.”

Beck led her by the wrist into his bedroom, then rummaged in his wardrobe to retrieve some packages. He put them on the bed, sat on the mattress himself and patted the place beside him.

Such an innocent gesture, his big hand patting the quilt.

When Sara sat, Beck passed her a paper-wrapped parcel. “These, I made myself. My brother calls them house Hessians, and they’re based on his design, with some improvements. Three weeks ago, the mornings were chilly, and… well. Open them, see what you think.”

“I’ve never seen the like…” She withdrew a cross between a boot and a slipper, fleecy on the inside, suede on the outside, with a sturdy sole. “These are lovely and practical, and I wish I’d had them last winter.”

“They do keep the feet warm, and though they get worn, they’ll last. This one next.” Beck passed her another parcel.

A set of new brushes and combs, followed by a green velvet dressing gown and a flannel nightgown that would wrap her from nose to toes. The last package, though, contained a summer nightgown of soft, soft cotton. Flowers were embroidered along the neck and bodice in an intricate, colorful pattern of gold, green, and red that repeated around the hem.

“This is too fine, Beckman.” Sara traced the exquisite needlework with a single fingertip. “You cannot give me something so costly.”

So intimate.

“I can’t exactly wear it myself, and you need new ones, Sara. You need a new wardrobe, in fact, and should let me take the lot of you up to Town to see to it once the hay comes off.”

“Hush.” Sara leaned into him, gathering the nightgown to her nose and bringing his bergamot scent with it. When a man spoke for a woman’s wardrobe, that woman had better be his wife if she wanted to preserve her reputation—or her sanity.

And Sara would not be Beckman’s wife. She’d made a joke of his proposal, and he’d let her. Bless him and confound him for letting that sorry moment remain unremarked.

“Thank you, Beckman.”

“You like them?”

She nodded, her nose buried in the nightgown. His arms came around her, and she snuggled into him.

“I almost bought you a violin,” he admitted. “I can leave mine here instead, and you’ll play it when you have some privacy, if you’ve a mind to.”

“I won’t play it.” Sara sat up, feeling a queer hitch in her chest. She
should
not
play Beckman’s violin. “But it’s a generous thought.”

“I’d like to hear you play.” Beck smoothed her hair back. “Let’s put those brushes to some use, shall we?”

He never issued her orders—he never had to. Sara set the nightgown aside. “I should tell you no.”

“You’d be telling yourself no. Will you put the nightgown on for me?” Beck’s lips descended to the side of her neck, a brush of tenderness, heat, and bergamot. Sara cast around for the reasons why she should deny him—deny them both—and came up empty-handed.

When she said nothing, Beck turned her by the shoulders. She felt his hands moving on the back of her dress, slowly exposing her skin, her laces, and her shift to him.

“Let me.” He knelt before her and drew off her half boots, then untied her garters and rolled down her stockings. Sara’s hands of their own accord winnowed through his hair then slipped over his jaw before he sat back.

He had shaved recently—for her?

Her mind started adding to that earlier list: the feel of his hair in her fingers, the rhythm of his breathing as he grew aroused, the skim of his hands anywhere on her person.

“Now up.” Beck drew her to her feet, slid her dress up, her shift and stays off, and just like that, Sara was naked before him in the candlelight. His gaze traveled over her slowly, his expression starkly reverent. He dropped the pretty nightgown over her head and stepped back.

When Sara met his gaze, he spun one finger in a slow twirl, and Sara obediently turned in a circle. The nightgown made her feel feminine and graceful, billowing softly with her movement then settling against her skin. When she met Beck’s gaze again, his hands were on his falls, one eyebrow arched in question.

The kind thing to do, the decent, appropriate, honorable thing to do, would be to kiss his cheek, thank him sincerely, and get the devil back to the safety of her bed.

The lonely, cold, empty safety of her bed.

“My turn, sir.” Sara saw approval, anticipation, and all manner of lusty things in Beck’s eyes. Her fingers shook slightly as she slid his sleeve buttons from his cuffs, and shook even more as she undid his falls. When she knelt to take off his slipper boots, his hand glanced over her hair, and she had to concentrate, focus her mind, and think to draw her next breath.

She rose and leaned in, pressing her forehead to Beck’s sternum. “I shouldn’t let myself do this.”

“You shouldn’t deny yourself this,” he countered, stroking his hand down her braid. “Not tonight. With me, not ever.”

Ever
with Beckman could end any day, given how his father was failing. On the strength of that thought, Sara started on his shirt buttons. When she’d worked her way up from the bottom button, she parted the linen and pushed it to the side so she could lay her cheek over his heart. His hands settled on her shoulders, kneading gently, and she felt the tension of the day ebbing.

Beck kissed her cheek. “Enough thinking. I believe you were in the process of undressing me.”

She pressed a kiss to his bare chest and slipped the shirt off, then ran a fingertip down his sternum. “In just the few weeks you’ve been here, you’ve put on muscle, and you were in fine condition when you arrived.”

Beck drew in a breath at her touch. “As long as you like what you see, I won’t complain about resembling a stevedore.”

Sara wanted to linger, to inspect and tease and play at sophisticated games having to do with pleasure and anticipation.

More than any of that, though, she wanted to kiss him. She stepped in close, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and stretched up on her toes to touch her lips to his. His arms closed around her in earnest, and he sealed his mouth to hers with a growl.

“Breeches,” Sara whispered against his neck a moment later. “Have to get you out of them.”

He took her hands and set them on his waist, but didn’t stop the progress of his lips over her eyes, cheeks, chin, and brow. Rather than look down, Sara found his waistband and pushed his clothes off him. He stepped back only long enough to free himself from them altogether then swooped in to resume kissing her.

“Bed,” Sara reminded him.

Beck scooped her up, tossed her onto the bed, then climbed in behind her. “God above, how I’ve missed you.”

Sara did not want to talk with him, or rather, she wanted to talk too badly, to lay her burdens across his muscular shoulders. Beckman would accept those burdens—he was a man in the habit of accepting burdens—but he’d want answers first.

Sara lay back and lifted her knees, feet spread on the bed.

“Don’t make me wait, Beckman.”

***

A man who’d traveled to many a foreign port developed both an ability to observe his environs and an instinct for when something, some small detail was out of place. Beck had learned to listen to that instinct.

A nervous horse could signal that ambush lay around the bend of a sleepy provincial road. A serving girl a little too friendly might be a hint that the fancy English gentleman’s wine had been drugged.

Sara’s responses, hesitant, then eager, and now nearly desperate, were setting off an indistinct alarm in Beck’s mind. She hadn’t explained two weeks of apparent indifference, hadn’t apologized for it, hadn’t assured him there would be no more of the same. She hadn’t made any reference whatsoever to his failed proposal either—though he knew damn well she hadn’t taken it as a jest.

Those silences on her part should matter, though Beck’s body wanted them to matter
later
. Sara brushed her fingers up his erection, sending a cannonade of pleasure over the deck of Beck’s thinking brain. She took him in her hand, then, a broadside to his reason, and tried to tug him closer to her body.

He resisted. “Tell me you missed me.”

“I’ve missed you, Beckman Sylvanus Haddonfield,” Sara whispered near his ear. “I missed the feel of you.” She tugged on him again. “In my hands, in my body. I missed the scent of you, the taste of you. I missed the feel of your hands on me, missed the sound of your voice in the dark.”

He needed desperately to ask her why, if she’d missed him, she’d held herself at such a distance and not even considered his proposal.

He needed
more
desperately to join with her again. She undulated against him, a bodily plea for consummation that echoed his own dearest desire. Her hands ran over his back, hips, and buttocks while her teeth scraped up his neck.

“Please.” Sara arched up and hugged him to her.

“Easy,” Beck cautioned. “No rush.”

“Want you.”

Love
now, talk later.
“I’m right here, love.” He gave her the first increment of penetration, then stilled and waited for her body to accommodate him. When her breathing slowed and he felt her sigh softly against his neck, he let himself glide another half inch deeper into the glory of her heat.

“You.” Sara kissed the side of his neck, and her body relaxed further, her trust in him manifest in her willingness to give him unilateral control of this most precious intimacy. He gave a slow hitch of his hips and gained another half inch, then another.

He advanced and waited, advanced and waited, his arousal a steady burning in his whole body. Even so, he could spend an eternity just joining his body to Sara’s and know no frustration; it felt that right to be making love with her.

When he was hilted inside her, he went completely still and gathered her against him. To have this closeness with Sara was sweet, dear, and more overwhelmingly precious than anything Beck could recall. He tried to find a name for what he felt, for the sense of being in the one place, with the one person, he was supposed to be.

Homecoming.

The term settled in his mind, and he began to move in her. Slow, steady thrusts that had Sara groaning softly beneath him and undulating in counterpoint to him. He plied her with monumental patience and self-restraint, bringing her to orgasm easily then letting her recover while he barely moved. When she’d found her balance, he eased her up again, then let her recover once more.

“I’m being greedy.” Sara brushed his hair back from his forehead and stretched beneath him. “We both need our rest.”

Beck nuzzled her shoulder. “Are you
complaining
? Are you suggesting I’ve kept you awake, Sara Hunt?” Though he had, and she needed her rest.

“I’ve kept you awake, but I feel boneless now, Beck. Light and warm and…”

“And…?”

“Happy,” Sara conceded. “It makes no sense, but I feel happy.”

He kissed her cheek and wondered why happiness in the arms of a lover should make no sense. “I will endeavor to make you happier still.”

The tenor of his lovemaking shifted, became more… serious.

“Beck…” In her breathless whisper, Beck felt Sara’s body gathering for yet another bout of pleasuring. “I’m content, beyond content. More would be too much… Beckman?”

“Hush.” He levered up on his arms and gazed down, frankly staring at the place where their bodies joined. “I say when it’s too much, Sara. Trust me.”

He picked up the tempo by increments, watching her face in the glow of the candles, then watching the thick, glistening length of his cock sinking into her heat.

“Beck…” She arched up and wrapped her arms around his neck. He capitulated this time, folding down over her, thrusting into her with banked force.

“Too much…”

Never too much, not with her. Beck drove himself into her, even when her body seized around him, even when she dug her nails into his back and moaned against his shoulder. Her contractions became deeper and stronger; then she fisted around him in one interminable spasm that sent him over the edge.

Beck felt his orgasm start in that drawing-up sensation at the base of his spine; then pleasure swamped him, running right up his center and off into the infinite reaches of his body. He heard someone groan—him?—and bucked and throbbed as his seed left him, heard another groan as he tried to draw in air to sustain him while the pleasure built and built.

It didn’t end, it just… diffused, becoming more and more softly focused until every particle of him was light and warm and… happy.

God, yes, he was happy.

“Don’t move.” Sara patted his buttocks, and that made him happy too, a little stroking caress Beck felt all over.

“Can’t move,” he murmured against her shoulder. “Not yet.”

“Good.”

The infernal woman found other ways to touch him. Ran her tongue along his neck, drew her toe up his calf, and nuzzled his ear, but they were little touches, the gestures a woman thoroughly wrung out by passion could offer.

“I’m crushing you.”

“I love the weight of you. It’s comforting, when my body feels so overcome it might float away.”

He didn’t believe that, not when there was fifteen stone of him comforting her like so much filleted mackerel. Sending up a sincere prayer for strength first, Beck levered up on his forearms. “You all right?”

Sara brushed his hair back. “You ask me that when you’ve pleasured me witless. I am fine. Witless, but fine.”

“Good.” He kissed her nose and carefully extricated himself from her body. “I’m fine too. Don’t move.”

“As if I could.” Sara lay on her back, knees bent, gaze on him as he crossed to the hearth.

He scrubbed himself off briskly, taking in the sight of her sprawled without a lick of modesty—or worry—then did a much more careful job with her.

Sara watched him as he hung the cloth over the edge of the basin. “Next time, I will tend to this washing-up business.”

So
there
was
to
be
a
next
time?

Beck blew out all but one candle and crawled over the mattress to cover her again with his body. “Next time, I will pleasure you so witless you won’t be able to speak, much less move when we’re through.”

He braced over her, tucking her face against his collarbone and laying his cheek on her crown. “You’re truly fine? I become enthusiastic at times.”

“You become…” Sara kissed his throat. “Breathtaking, spectacular, unbelievable. You truly ought to be the subject of a royal proclamation.”

He rolled them so Sara was atop him.

“Maybe I won’t pleasure you out of your speech.” Beck buried his fingers in a fistful of her hair. “You spout such flatteries, and a man needs to hear them sometimes. Particularly when the woman in his arms is so very breathtaking herself when she’s about her pleasuring.”

And when she’s not.

“Ah, Beck…” Sara tucked herself against his chest. “You are the sweetest man, the most dear, and the most dangerous.”

Sweet and dear were flattering. When he’d unplaited her braid and indulged himself with a long session of stroking her hair, Beck fell asleep wondering if being dangerous in Sara’s mind was really a good thing.

He came awake slowly, convinced Heifer had found his way to the bed and was flicking his tail over Beck’s cheek. When his eyes opened, though, the single guttering candle revealed North’s saturnine features as he used a lock of Sara’s hair to brush against Beck’s nose.

North looked diabolically dark and unhappy—darker and unhappier than usual. He gestured silently with his thumb toward the sitting room, waiting until Beck nodded before he turned to go. Beck shrugged into his dressing gown and mentally catalogued the list of emergencies that could merit this unprecedented intrusion—Allie falling ill, Ulysses coming down with colic, Polly going missing?—then paused by the bed and tucked the covers up over Sara’s shoulders.

Beck closed the door between the bedroom and the sitting room, ready to offer North a whispered tongue-lashing, but the expression on North’s face stopped him.

“Allie? Polly?”

“No, lad.” North’s eyes, usually so guarded and mocking, held regret. “Your dear papa has gone to his reward, and I fear it is my sad duty to be the first to address you as Reston.”

“Papa?”

“I am so sorry, Beckman.”

“It isn’t… unexpected.” But Beck’s lungs were fighting to draw breath, and his hands had a sudden sensation of emptiness. His guts felt empty; his life felt empty.

“The rider from Linden is in the kitchen,” North went on, gaze on a carrying candle flickering on the low table. “He said your brother Ethan and your sister Nita were with the earl, but the old fellow just slipped away quietly in his sleep. The funeral will be on Friday.”

“I want…”

“Anything you need,” North replied. “Name it.”

He wanted his papa. Wanted another acerbic lecture assuring him his father loved him, forgave him his many shortcomings, would be there to forgive him again when he stumbled, because Beck always, eventually, stumbled. And the earl always found some way for him to redeem himself, to allow them both the fiction that someday, the stumbling would be over.

“Beck.” North laid a hand on Beck’s arm, and it was enough—one simple gesture of caring from a man who lived a study of indifference was enough—to make the earl’s death more real.

Beck shook his head at nothing in particular, but when he felt North draw him closer, he leaned on his friend.

“I’m having Soldier and Ulysses saddled,” North said. “You can be at Linden before dawn, and the baron’s stables will provide remounts. You can make that funeral if you leave now and the clouds don’t obscure the moon.”

Beck pulled away, though he wanted to cling, curse, or possibly put out North’s lights. “Gabriel, I don’t want to go.”

North nodded, a world of sympathy in his expression. “You don’t want to, but you need to. I’ll pack your clothes. Polly is putting you together some food. You might want to say something to Sara.”

Beck glanced at his bedroom door. What would he say?

“Let’s get you dressed,” North suggested. North did most of the dressing, while Beck stood there, silent and passive. “You know the roads between here and Kent?”

“I do.”

“You going to wake Sara up?” North tied a simple knot in Beck’s neckcloth. “I can wake her, if you’d rather.”