Linda Needham (2 page)

More than one light. And motion.

“Bloody hell!” Jared loped his horse along the winding lane, every switchback revealing more activity. Men and horses and then the sound of voices, until he reached the edge of the shadowy forest.

The instinctive habits of survival kept him from riding into the melee without knowing the facts.

The forecourt of the lodge was teeming with men, a half dozen just coming up the path from the river, bristling with fish and fishing paraphernalia.

His
fish, of course! His lodge!

Bloody hell, and there was another group lounging at a long table under a tree, drinking
his
ale, from
his
tankards.

“Can I take yer horse, sir?” A boy was coming toward him, doffing his cap, an eager little hop in his gangly step.

“My horse?”

“Shall I stable ’im for ya?”

His stables, too? His hay and his horses? Damnation, his private hunting lodge looked like a bloody country inn!

“You do that, boy.” Jared threw the groom the reins, grabbed his saddlebag, and started toward the courtyard, prepared to do battle with whoever the hell had taken over his lodge.

Which seemed to be doing a hopping business. Jared tried to brush past a trio of poachers, but the stoutest of them stepped in his way.

“I say, sir! Are you a course man or game?”

Bloody nonsense.

The lean one gave Jared a close look as he scratched at his thickly bearded chin. “No, Fitchett, he’s got the look of the course about him.”

“Nah, he’s game, Gilmott.” The younger man pointed at Jared with the tip of his fishing rod, not knowing how close he was to being tossed to the ground. “A grayling, I’d wager. At home on the Tay as well as the Tweed.”

“Well then, what is it, man?” the first one asked, with a broad laugh, venturing a jabbing knuckle against Jared’s upper arm, then wisely retracting the offense. “Breame here thinks he can tell a man’s sport just by looking at him.”

Seething with anger, Jared merely touched the brim of his hat and left them with a nodded, “Gentlemen.”

Jared pressed his way through the blustering crowd, past the tippling squires and their tall tales—a seventeen-pound barbel, a dozen woodcock, bagging a hill hare with his bare hands….

Bloody hell, someone had turned his lodge into a sportsman’s retreat. And he was bloody well going to throttle whoever had done it.

Jared stalked through the front doorway and the entry passage, then into the brightness of the great room with its clerestory windows and it massive hearth ablaze with wood—from
his
forest, of course.

Last he’d seen the lodge, everything had been draped in dustsheets, from the furniture to the paintings and sconces and even the mounted game on the walls.

Now the place looked like a bloody hotel for country gentlemen, and smelled of roasted boar and woodsmoke, of brandy and leather…

And something else…

A haunting sweetness. Subtle. Familiar, somehow, blending with the other scents.

He stood in the center of the room, amidst the trespassers who were lounging in his plush chairs, their muddied heels grinding into the inlaid tops of his tables, into the thick carpets.

Drinking his whisky, by God!

Stolen from his cellar!

And served up by a tall, gray-haired barman, who was struggling with a keg behind a brand-new counter tucked inside one of the archways beneath the east balcony.

The man would damn well serve Jared the truth, else he’d find himself on his way to Newgate in the next breath.

“You there,” Jared said across the top of the counter, startling the man into straightening.

“That fashed for a pint, are ya, sir?” His brogue was far thicker than the groom’s. “So what can I do for ya.”

You can get the hell out of my lodge
, he wanted to say.

Instead, Jared leaned toward the man, wanting to take him by the collar and throttle the truth out of him. “You can tell me who’s in charge here.”

“Here?” The man frowned, scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, I am, I suppose. Curtis McHugh’s the name, sir,” he said, sticking out his hand for Jared to shake, retracting it when Jared didn’t reciprocate. “In charge of the bar and the spirit cellar here at Badger’s Run. And proud of the honor, I am.”

“Badger’s Run?” Like hell it was Badger’s anything. This was plainly his hunting lodge on the Hawkesly estate. There was no mistaking where he was. “I’ll ask you one more time, who is in charge here?”

“Here at Badger’s Run, you mean?” McHugh smiled, sighed, nodded almost fondly. “Well, then, you should have said.”

“I’m saying now, McHugh, as plainly as I know. Tell me who runs this place.”

“Ah, now that would be…”

An odd expression drifted over McHugh’s features, softened them, pinked his cheeks like a schoolboy’s. He canted his head, then nodded over Jared’s shoulder.

“That would be herself, sir. Comin’ down the stairs.” He sighed again, his smile gone wistful. “Our Lady Kathryn.”

Miss Trafford?

Kathryn.

God, he hadn’t thought for a moment that…never, ever imagined that she…that his wife was the…

A white-hot thrill ran through him, a remembered scent of flowers, anticipation. So powerful that it turned him on his heel toward the stairway that landed just below the balcony.

Holy hell. His wife.

Moving down the stairs like a cloud, the picture of
breathless grace, her hair cascading down her back like a curtain of silvery blond silk.

And she was coming toward him.

Or he was moving toward her in a room that suddenly seemed to be slanting and swirling.

Hell and damnation, he’d planned to meet her at Hawkesly Hall, to present himself with a proper greeting and the clock, fully in control of everything.

“Good evening, sir, may I help you?”

God, yes, wife,
he tried to say.

But he only stood there blinking at her beauty, stunned to his soul, his mouth working like a fish into an utterly silent,

I’m home.

“M
ay I help you, sir?” she asked again, her silky words bewitching his tongue.

Maybe it was the soft lilt of her voice that scrambled his thoughts and mislaid his intentions. Or perhaps it was the familiar scent of her nearness that paralyzed him, that kept him from dragging her into his arms and claiming his marital rights on the spot.

But she was looking up at him patiently, as though he were simple, a frown of concern creasing her pale brows, winging them above her blue, blue eyes.

“Are you all right, sir? Perhaps you ought to sit down and rest.” Now the enchanting woman had him by the elbow, her hot little fingers slipping into private folds, his own warm places, the woody scent of her propelling him wherever it was she was leading him.

“Sit.”

He felt the backs of his calves against something low and cushy, watched as she spread her palm against his chest and then gave a little push. It wasn’t until his backside hit a cushion that he realized he was sitting.

“Good God, woman!” Jared stood, fully in control again, except for his breathing, and a tight gripping in his belly, a callow erection that had him fully roused and wanting.

Wanting his wife and that moist, rosy mouth that pouted in thought as she peered up at him.

“Sir, you don’t look at all well.” Her eyes were enormous, fringed in sable. So blue. The clear blue of the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Sandwiches.

Then he realized with a sudden, unbalancing twinge that she was calling him
sir
.

Not Hawkesly.

Or Jared.

Or husband.

But sir.

Sir!

As though he were an utter stranger to her, a lunatic besides. A threat that kept McHugh hovering over them.

“Did he speak to you at all, McHugh?” She lifted the hair at Jared’s forehead with her fingertips, stunning him with her gentle touch, stealing the words that he’d been about to speak.

Don’t mock me, woman, I’m your husband.
But the words didn’t make it off his tongue.

“Sure he spoke well enough, my lady. Spoke like regular toff, he did.”

“I
am
a regular toff,” Jared said, with a blustering sputter.

Bloody hell, he’d meant to say a regular
husband
.
Her
regular husband, but his mouth still wasn’t working right and he was feeling like a regular fool.

A grin played at his wife’s mouth, the slightest dimples winking from her cheeks, teasing him, he was sure. “Are you expected at Badger’s Run, sir?”

“Expected?” He’d bellowed the question, felt it burn its way down his throat and into his gut.

Was this another game of hers? Like the lodge itself? Punishment because he’d been gone too long. This dodge and parry instead of a proper, grateful greeting. Surely she was expecting him—her husband—home.

Sometime.

After all, he’d written to her months ago that he would be arriving sometime this year.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that if you haven’t booked your lodging ahead of time, then I’m afraid you won’t be able to stay with us.”

“Won’t—” He choked on the rest of his words. On the very idea that his bride was turning him away from their bed on their wedding night.

Booked his lodging?

His
lodging
?

“We’re full up for the entire weekend.”

He was watching her lips instead of listening fully, consumed by the way they glistened as she spoke her riddles. “Full up?”

“The fishing tournament, you see.”

“Tournament?”

“The second annual, I’m glad to say.” She crooked an index finger his way, and then strode off toward the small office, just off the main room. “Very popular.
Now, if you’ll simply tell me your name, I’ll check my books for your reservation.”

His name? A coldness settled across his shoulders. The specter of a topsy world, where day was night and strangers invaded his home.

Where his wife was pretending not to know him.

Or truly didn’t.

Confused and slowed by this puzzle, Jared followed her into the little room. “Do you mean, madam, that you don’t know who I am?”

She stopped behind a tidy desk and studied him earnestly for a short moment and then shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t say that I do.”

“You’re certain?”

He felt her studying him, the hitch in her brow—a memory of some part of him that she must have dismissed—and then her cutting question,

“Why, sir? Should I?”

Of course she shouldn’t. Five minutes in his company as she was rushed about in the hot, glaring sun on the deck of a ship in the faraway port of Alexandria, her foolish father dead only a day.

And a marriage thrust upon her from out of nowhere.

Why the devil should she remember him? Or care in the least? A reasonable possibility. And yet what would make her turn his hunting lodge into a bloody sportsman’s retreat?

Something wasn’t right here. Not right at all.

“Then if you’ll give me your name, sir…”

For no other reason than a lifetime of perilous intrigue and a deep need to think through this very
murky problem before taking another step, Jared looked his ravishing wife straight in the eye and gave her the name of his factor in Montreal.

“My name is Huddleswell, madam. Colonel Leland P. Huddleswell.”

She blinked at him, then turned away to the large book spread out across her desk blotter. She ran her finger along the page, then looked up at him and said, just as plainly, but with a sigh, “As I feared, Colonel Huddleswell, your name is not on our books anywhere. So, if you plan to fish the tournament, you’ll have to find a bed elsewhere.”

Elsewhere but beside her? He nearly laughed at her wayward notion, but held his reaction close. If his beautiful, provoking bride thinks that he would willingly spend another night under a different roof than hers, she would soon learn otherwise.

But all in his own time.

Meanwhile, he would investigate her plans and uncover her strategies, her motives. Though revenge was the most obvious. To repay his high-handedness with her father’s shipping business.

“Your pardon, Lady Hawkesly, but I don’t think you understand me.” Jared took a few slow steps toward her across the small office, stopping a foot from her, the rose of her lips reminding him that he’d forgotten to kiss her after their wedding ceremony. Not even a peck. “You’ll find a suitable bed for me this weekend at Badger’s Run, else I’ll see you closed down for good.”

“And how do you plan to do that, Colonel?” Her perfectly shaped breasts rose and fell sharply in her sudden anger, the points of movement and shadow
against the linen of her shirtwaist sapping his concentration. The flick of her brow as riling to his will as her fragrance.

“I have my ways, madam. And more means than you could ever imagine. Now you’ll give me a room, or you’ll soon know the reason why.”

Kate could easily imagine a great deal of mischief from this beastly tempered colonel who’d come marching into her lodge as if he owned her.

She’d never seen such a handsome man, certainly never at this close range. Close enough to savor his minty breath breaking across her forehead and the warm eddies riffling her lashes, her hairline. Muscles flexing beneath the skin of his smooth bronze jaw, the slight sheen of beard.

Ohhh, and all that bay-and leather-scented, steamy heat pouring off his finely tailored coat, seeping through her bodice, lifting the hair at her nape.

Distractingly handsome and imperious and rude and far, far too close at the moment.

So, for the second time in the same evening, Kate pressed the heel of her hand against his chest and gave a shove.

This time the man didn’t budge an inch, beyond the taut bundle of muscles rippling beneath the wool and linen.

So, he thought he could frighten her, did he? Well, just let him try!

“Listen here, Colonel Huddleswell,” she said, grabbing up a fistful of waistcoat and elegant, gold-crested buttons, and pulling him even closer, “I’ve survived the steaming jungles of Burma, three hurricanes, tigers,
bears, pythons, a month icebound on an Arctic whaler, and a two-hundred-mile march through the Persian desert while being held prisoner of an angry warlord. So if you’re thinking to frighten me, you have a long, long way to go.”

The huge man had straightened from her with every item on her list, his mouth drawing into a fury, his dark eyes narrowing to dangerous slits.

“Say that again.”

Taking the advantage of his sudden distance, Kate slipped away from him to the opposite side of the desk. “I’m only trying to explain to you, Colonel, that you can’t frighten me with your bullying. And even if you could, I wouldn’t be able to give you a room at Badger’s Run.”

The colonel had followed her around the desk. “What were you doing in Persia?”

“That’s really none of your business—”

“You were taken prisoner?” The intensity of his question startled her.

“Years ago, if you must know. I was eleven and my father’s ship had been captured in port and, well, it’s really only a cautionary tale. Which changes nothing, Colonel.” Befuddled by the man’s scent, by the possessive fire in his eyes, Kate sidled away from him and again jabbed her finger into the registration book. “Here. You can see for yourself that I have absolutely no vacancies. Every room is filled for the next three days.”

His smile turned sly and ominous as he came toward her, as though he were testing her and the air around her. “Then I’ll take yours.”

“That’s quite enough, sir!” It wasn’t his audacious suggestion that made her heart stumble over itself, it was the sullen darkness of his voice, the undermining rumble. She pointed to the fiddleback in the corner. “You’ll sit there and behave yourself, Colonel, else I’ll call McHugh in here.”

Of course, he didn’t sit, he only steadied his pace toward her as she backed away, around to the front of the desk. “You’re a very beautiful woman.”

The impertinent lout! She blushed instantly, like a silly debutante confronting her first rogue. “Thank you, Colonel, but I’m married.”

That stopped the colonel midstride. He raised a bemused brow, then smiled ever so slightly, as though he were somehow pleased and trying to hide it.

“You don’t look married.” He leaned back against the desk, folding his arms across his broad chest, as though he had learned whatever he’d been after.

“Well, I am quite married. Quite.”

The colonel pretended to look around her, as though he knew her sorry secret. “Where is he then? Your husband?”

“I…” She hated more than anything to admit that she was never quite sure where her husband was, hated even more that she wouldn’t recognize him even if she saw him. “My husband is at sea, Colonel.”

“He must be, to leave you here to manage all alone. That doesn’t seem wise.”

“I’m perfectly capable, sir.” Capable of clouting the man on the head if need be. “But I can assure you that if he were here, he would tell you the same thing. We are full up and were not expecting you.”

His face went stern and he tugged on the front points of his elegant dove-gray silk waistcoat. “But I wrote to you, madam.”

“You did? When?” She certainly didn’t recall the name Huddleswell. Or any kind of colonel at all.

“Months ago. I’m a man of careful planning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” Thoroughly flummoxed, Kate went to her filing drawer and opened it wide, hoping that she wouldn’t find a lost correspondence.

“You gave me no chance.” She could feel him watching her as she leafed through the drawer, a slow, searing heat from her nape all the way down her spine, jangling her nerves.

Must be all that talk about her husband—wherever the blighter was.

“No use dancing about the bush, Colonel Huddleswell.” She turned to him, preferring to meet trouble with her chin forward. “I’m sorry, but I found no correspondence here with your name on it.”

He shook his head dramatically. “I wrote to you in good faith, months in advance. You should have been expecting me.”

Kate took a deep breath. “Then there’s obviously been a mix-up between here and your home.”

“There sure as hell has been.”

“But to show my own good faith, I’ll be happy to arrange a room for you in Mereglass—”

“I’ll be staying here, madam, at Badger’s Run.”

“But the Cloak and Gander has rooms that—”

“Here.” His surly frown loosened suddenly. “Be
cause this is where you are holding your fishing tournament. And I want to be close to the fishing.”

Kate couldn’t help but laugh, though the man was being a right royal pain. “That’s hard to imagine, sir. You’re not the type.”

He lifted a dark, defiant eyebrow. “Oh, and what type am I?”

“A regular toff. You said so yourself. Doubtless from a grand part of London. A paid-up member of at least three gentlemen’s clubs—”

“Yes, madam, and with enough influence among powerful people to make sure that the Badger’s Run closes tomorrow, on rumor alone.”

Powerful people like her husband, if he were ever to hear of such a rumor. Hawkesly would never understand what she was doing here. But money was tighter than ever and she had so many expenses these days. And there was next month’s shooting parties already scheduled, the money already spent on—

“Your decision, Lady Hawkesly?”

The blackguard looked ready and was doubtless able to do most anything in order to have his way. Not a man to cross. And, truth be told, she did have a spare room…of sorts.

Kate sighed, weary of the fight and seeing no other option. “Very well, Colonel Huddleswell, you can stay.”

Now the blighter seemed surprised. “In your room?”

“Any more talk like that, Colonel, and I’ll dust your backside with buckshot.”

That too seemed to soothe him, brought on that
smug smile again. “So you do have a room, then? You were holding out on me.”

“You’ll understand the reason I didn’t offer this particular room when you see it.”

“It’ll do.”

“It’ll have to, Colonel. In the meantime, you must excuse me. I’ve got an early dinner to serve to two dozen hungry fishermen, who retire before ten and rise at four in the morning.”