Linda Needham (4 page)

W
hat a prickly pest you are, Colonel Huddleswell!

And too handsome by far.

Kate hurried down the staircase, quickly dispatching the twinge of guilt at slipping away from the man when his back was turned; but the last thing she needed at the moment was a bull-tempered, contrary guest who promised nothing but a weekend of time-frittering trouble.

And she had so little time to spare.

“M’lady, there ya are!” Janie met her just outside the kitchen door with a large, painted tin, her face aglow with a grin. “Mrs. Driscoll said to give ya these marzipan biscuits ta take up ta the hall.”

“Perfect timing, Janie. I’m off there right now.” Kate was so glad to see the hollows in the girl’s cheeks soft
ening more every day, her green eyes growing brighter. “I hope you took a few for yourself.”

“Tasted ’em for Mrs. Driscoll, m’lady. She said it was one of my new duties.” Janie giggled. “So I took one for m’self and one out ta Corey in the stables.”

“Now there’s a young man with an appetite.” Another miracle. Kate took the biscuit tin, then remembered her promise to Colonel Huddleswell. “By the way, Janie, one of our guests missed dinner; I told him that if he came to the kitchen, he might be able to get something out of Mrs. Driscoll.”

“Oh, the pur man if he tries such a thing, my lady! But I’ll give a watch out for him. Will ya be comin’ back sometime tonight?”

“That depends on what I find up at the hall.”

Janie’s eyes puddled quickly. “How is the little girl faring?”

Kate smiled. “Much better, I’m glad to say.” But Kate wanted to see for herself.

And to check on all the others.

And Elden had sent word in the afternoon that he was ready to move the next shipment to the Hawkesly warehouse on the Mereglass wharf.

With a wave to Janie, Kate grabbed her tweed cloak off the peg as she went out through the delivery door. She hitched her pony to the tilbury and was clattering down the lane toward Hawkesly Hall a few minutes later, the fear that she would arrive too late wedged firmly between her shoulder blades.

Though she really shouldn’t worry. She’d left little Margaret in excellent care this morning, and much improved from the night before. Two days of proper
nourishment and careful tending seemed to be working, though the lass was still weak and ghostly and as thin as a stick.

And sometimes they just came too late to be helped.

Elden was just closing his office door when Kate slowed and rolled past him toward the barn.

“Did you get my message, my lady?” he called, following with his lantern in his gangling gait.

“I did, Elden! Thank you!” she shouted back as she halted the pony just inside the stable yard. Elden reached her as she dropped from the tilbury.

“We’ve got a lot more to ship out this time than we had the last, my lady.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned, his large ears flexing from beneath his cap.

“Father Sebastian will be delighted. Let’s get it out of here as soon as we can.” Before her husband could arrive to stop her.

Before the year was out, he’d said. Christmastide seemed too much to hope for.

Kate handed off the reins to the stable lad with the hope that she would head back to the lodge later, then followed Elden and his bobbing lantern down the corridor of horse stalls and through the double doors into the barn.

“The cribs are full, my lady,” Elden said, holding his lantern above the nearest crib and thumping his fist on a lumpy sack of fresh cabbage grown in the gardens of Hawkesly Hall. “We’ve got carrots and turnips packed away in those empty wine and ale casks. So, come morning, I can start moving all this to the warehouse in Mereglass.”

“Just in time for Captain Waring to arrive here from Liverpool with the
Katie Claire
.” With a hold nearly full of grain. At least she hoped everything was going as well as it usually did. Because every moment’s delay meant lives lost. “Thanks for all you’ve done, Elden.”

“Mine was the simple part, my lady. You’re the one who went and stole us a ship.”

“I did no such thing.” She smiled at the man.

“Took it right out from under your husband’s own flag.” Elden laughed and held open the barn door.

“The
Katie Claire
is mine.” At least it used to belong to her—to her father’s shipping company before Hawkesly stole it all away under the guise of marriage. “Besides, Hawkesly never uses the ship. Keeps it docked in Liverpool, like an old maiden aunt.”

Or an unsuitable bride.

Damn the man!

“We’ll all be thrown in jail if we’re caught.”

“In the brig, to be exact, Elden.” Kate continued out of the barn and through the stables, anxious to see how Margaret was doing. “Especially if anyone ever looks too deeply into the activities of the Ladies’ Charitable League.”

But how else could she fill all those hungry bellies? The English Parliament had chosen to ignore the cries of starving children and she had chosen to avenge them.

“No word from Lord Hawkesly?” Elden followed her toward the porch at the side entrance of the hall, lighting the way with his lantern.

“None.” Doubtless there would be hell to pay when he returned.

Not that her husband’s opinions mattered at this point. By all measures of wedding rituals, she and his lordship weren’t truly married. So the course of the future—
their
future together—was entirely dependent upon the man’s character.

He was either a worthy man or an unworthy one. Only time and his choices would tell.

“I’ll cross that bridge when he comes home. If he ever does.”

“He will eventually, my lady—”

“And I’ll be ready for him.” Ready to spit in his eye.

Or confess, or ignore him—

Or run for her life.

“Pardon me for saying it, my lady, but I pity the man,” Elden said, laughing lightly as he lifted his cap and scratched at the back of his ear. “Won’t know what hit ’im.”

“Yes, well, my husband should have nothing to complain about. It’s been nearly two years and I have increased the output from his fields—”

“And you’re giving away the profits.”

“Not the profits—the harvest. Which I’d have done anyway, so I’m saving the blighter his own cash. Hawkesly Hall is my house as much as it is his—at least while I’m mistress here.” However long that would be after the man returns.

“And Badger’s Run? His lordship might have already heard of the place himself. You’ve made it quite the retreat in sporting circles. And with that I’ll say good-night to you, my lady.” Ever the rascally Irish gallant, Elden held open the door for her then tipped his cap as she passed by him through the side entrance.

“Good night, Elden Carmichael.”
God be with you, dear, sweet man.

She could always count on Elden to keep her thinking beyond the moment. Like the fact that Badger’s Run had gained a reputation that might bring on unwanted guests.

One in particular whom she wished had never heard of Badger’s Run.

Demanding and rude.

Probing and wary.

A compelling scent.

A nameless danger.

With any luck the colonel had forgotten about her and was carousing with the other guests. He’d better be, for all the trouble she went through to satisfy his complaining.

“I’m sorry, Colonel, but I can’t say where the lady is just now.”

Jared was full up with the load of muck they’d been shoveling at him in his own home. He leaned on the counter at the bar. “You
can’t
, McHugh? Or you won’t?”

McHugh snorted and fisted a towel into a pint glass. “She’s a busy woman, is our Lady Hawkesly. What with Badger’s Run, and the hunting park and this tournament and all the other…well…you can imagine, sir. A woman all alone in the world.” McHugh gave a vague nod toward the foyer.

He could imagine far too much of a woman alone and independent; especially this woman, with her un
orthodox persuasions. “No, McHugh, I cannot imagine the lady’s whereabouts. Not after nine o’clock at night.”

Not with two dozen “sportsmen” sniffing round the corridors of his hunting lodge, leering at her like a pack of jackals.

McHugh shelved the pint glass with others. “Our lady does her best work after nine.”

“Meaning what?”

McHugh glared at him. “Take yer mind outta the bog, sir! I mean that the lady’s much too busy before then with supper and the staff and meeting the demands of her guests to get any real work done.”

Bloody guests and their bloody demands. “I don’t much care about the others, McHugh, I want to speak with her ladyship. Now.”

McHugh leaned his elbows on the counter. “Look here. I don’t know what your interest in Lady Hawkesly is, or what you think you’re planning, but you’d best be warned that she’s a married woman.”

“So I understand.” To his marrow, he understood.

McHugh leveled a corkscrew at him, a plainspoken, unequivocal threat. “Then you’d best understand that the lady’s off limits to you, sir. And to every other man jack hereabouts. Or they’ll know the reason why.”

Hell, now he was being taken for a skirt-sniffing scoundrel. “I’ve no plans to overstep the bounds of propriety, McHugh.” At least not in public.

“You’d best heed what you say. Lord Hawkesly isn’t the sort to share.”

He bloody well wasn’t! Especially not his bride.

“So this Hawkesly fellow—what’s he like?”

“Dunno, Colonel.” McHugh dried another pint glass. “Never met the man.”

Yes, and that was another troublesome matter; he hadn’t recognized a single member of the staff, and yet there seemed to be dozens of them, each and every one of them with a treacle-thick Irish brogue.

“And yet Hawkesly pays you your salary?”

“Well, no, sir, her ladyship does.”

With his lordship’s money!

“And what a dear lady she is to work for. The finest this side of heaven.” McHugh had grown wispy-eyed again as he dried another pint glass. “Has the courage of a bear, stubborn like a badger, smarter than any dozen of them lords.” He stopped and squinted suddenly at Jared. “Here I am, goin’ on an’ on.”

“Please do, McHugh.” The man was a font of information about his wife, more clues in his little investigation.

“I shouldn’t really. The lady won’t stand for any gossip, can’t abide a liar for a minute, and admires nothing more than a genuine sportsman.”

Especially one with a full purse. “Does she?”

“Believes it a sure sign of patience and honesty and nobility of spirit.”

He’d been wise not to give himself away when he first arrived. The woman was one mystery after another.

He’d just have to acquaint himself with the fine art of fishing. A good cover story had saved many a mission from detection and disaster. And if he was to play the expert fisherman come morning, he was going to need a bit of private practice tonight.

“My thanks, McHugh.” Jared placed his empty glass on the counter. “Oh, and since my baggage never arrived at Badger’s Run, I’d better round up some suitable fishing gear for the morning. Any ideas?”

“Well, then, you’d be looking for Magnus. He’s our ghillie.”

That again. Good God, what the hell was a ghillie? Sounded like some sort of fish ailment. “Where would I find Magnus this time of night?”

“Fast asleep, to be sure, in a cabin just down the path from the game house. But he won’t be likin’ you wakin’ him, tomorrow comin’ as early as it does for him.”

He’d not be likin’ losin’ his job either.
“Where’s this game house?”

McHugh drew in a long breath. “Out the east gallery there, past the kitchen building, over the bridge along the road to Hawkesly Hall. Keep to the lane on the left. You’ll see the game house on the side of the hill.”

He knew the building—an enormous old haybarn.

“Good evening then, McHugh.” Figuring that he needed his cloak for this walk in the woods, Jared started toward the stairs and his pillbox-sized room, but then realized that he hadn’t any idea at all about what kind of fishing gear he would need from this Magnus fellow.

Doubtless the man would then take his suspicions right to her ladyship. But where the devil would he find enough information to cover his story?

The library. Of course. With any luck, the woman hadn’t leased out the room for a paper mill.

But the library was just as he’d remembered it,
though the high-back chairs were now occupied by a half dozen card players at two tables. The books and bookshelves reached halfway up the walls and above that, more trophy-mounted boar heads and grizzly bear and many-pointed bucks.

Hoping to find a book on the fine art of fishing, Jared worked his way around the perimeter of the shelves, avoiding the gaming table and finally finding what he was looking for just to the right of the fireplace.

But hell and damnation, there wasn’t just one book on fishing, but a few hundred.

From
The Flyfisher’s Way to Chalk Streams and Their Flora
to a ragged copy of something called
The Compleat Angler
, and a stack of well-thumbed
Hearth & Heath
magazines.

He took a chance and yanked a very small book off the shelf,
Hook, Line and Spinner
.

All he wanted to know as he thumbed quickly through the book was what the hell kind of rigging to use. No, it seemed the word for all the gear was “tackle.” And the bloody pole was a called a rod. And it came in sections. And the best were made of bamboo…

Bloody hell, what a waste of time! He ought to be seducing his wife, but here he was studying up on flyfishing!

Drew’s challenge hit him hard in the belly.
You’ll be at least a week getting your wife into your bed.

“Do come join us, Huddleswell! Give your luck a bit of exercise with the cards before the tournament tomorrow.”

Jared had been so occupied with his search, he
hadn’t noticed Fitchett at one of the card tables, and now the man was waving eagerly at him from across the library.

“No cards for me tonight, Fitchett,” Jared said, purposefully scanning the shelves for helpful titles, for one or two that made a least a little sense. “An early morning, you know. I’m off to bed with a few good books.”