Linda Needham (9 page)

He didn’t like the sound of that. “Meaning?”

“I’m weary of this.” She dropped her shoulders and sighed hugely. “I’ve already confessed to Colonel Huddleswell how I’ve been dreading the return of my husband. I was right about everything. Now I suggest you go ask him.”

Kate wanted to toss the man into the privet hedge, but she turned away from him and started toward the front door instead, fearing most of all that he would see the tears of outrage welling in her eyes. He’d surely measure them as a weakness instead of the overwhelming fury she felt, the humiliation, the sense of gross injustice that she’d been hiding even from herself.

How dare he—

“Come back here!” He caught her by the apron strings before she’d gotten two steps from him and pulled her back against his sizzling chest. “So you truly were dreading my return, wife?”

“With all my heart, Hawkesly.”

“Not just playing a role for the colonel?”

Kate pulled out of his grip and whirled to face him. “You are the most arrogant man I’ve ever met. And
don’t call me ‘wife.’ You haven’t earned the right. You’ve been no kind of a husband in all this time. And as far as I’m concerned, I have none now.”

“I don’t know where you’ve come by your wayward ideas, wife.” He looked suddenly taller, his shoulders broader, his eyes grown utterly feral as he advanced on her. “But I’m giving you fair warning that everything around here is about to change.”

“Lady Kaaaaaate!” Mera came running up the steps, with Grady and Lucas on her heels and a happily yapping Mr. McNair lumping along behind them all.

They piled up around Kate, a noisy jumble of excitement wedged between her and the frowning Hawkesly. “Look what we found!”

Grady threw open a sack and raised it up to her. “Mushrooms!”

Kate peered inside. “Morels! Why, Grady, that’s wonderful.”

“I got a sackful, too!” Lucas shoved his sack in front of Grady’s.

The children knew that the morels were not only expensive and rare, but that they would fetch a pretty purse from her contacts in London.

“Did you bring your big fish, sir?” Mera asked Hawkesly, who stared down at the girl as though she were a gnome come from the woods. Mr. McNair took a firm place beside the man, leaned his bulk against his leg.

“The fish? I, uh…no. It’s back at the lodge.”

“Did you win?” Mera asked, slipping her little hand into Kate’s.

Hawkesly paused, glaring, as if considering whether
or not to answer. “I won’t know until later.”

Kate said nothing during the exchange, the simplest test of a man’s heart.

He wouldn’t pass.

“I hope you do, sir. So does Mr. McNair!”

Hawkesly looked up at Kate, his eyes narrowed, his mouth unsmiling, his nostrils flaring.

Foul-tempered beast! All was lost. She’d never be able to trust him. She turned the children from him. “Run along into the kitchen with those morels, Grady. The Miss Darbys will know what to do with them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The children and the dog took off into the house with their usual speed and brawling, Hawkesly staring after them.

“Who are they?” he asked, his gaze still following the children as they tumbled into the house.

“The oldest boy is Grady Connett, the younger is Lucas Howell, and the girl’s name is Mera.”

He focused on her again, her mouth and then her eyes. “And who, by chance, is Mr. McNair?”

“The dog.”

A muscle squared in his jaw and then he asked carefully, “Where do they live?”

Kate sighed right out loud. Caught. No use dodging the truth about the children any longer. He’d find out on his own as soon as he entered the house and saw the rest of the evidence. Besides, she had no intention of making excuses for the children.

But Kate was saved an immediate answer as the door opened and Rosemary popped her head out. “Apple pudding, Lady Hawkesly, or just plain applesauce?”

“Pudding, please.”

“It’ll mean the last of the cinnamon.”

“I’ll have some brought in the next time the—” Dear God, she nearly said the
Katie Claire
. “Next time I make a marketing trip to Preston.”

“You’re a kind woman, my lady.” Rosemary’s smile flattened suddenly and she wagged her wooden spoon at Hawkesly. “Is he stayin’ for dinner, then?”

No. “We’ll see.”

“Fine then,” Rosemary said with a sniff toward the man as she closed the door.

Hawkesly was fuming as he turned her sharply to face him, pointing over her shoulder, his nose nearly meeting hers. “And who was that?”

“Miss Rosemary Darby.” Kate pulled away and rescued a wooden spindle that one of the children must have misplaced from their bowling game and decided that it was time to face the consequences, the full force of his anger, and take him into the hall.

“I asked who that woman is.”

“She’s a cook here at the hall.”

“What happened to Mrs. Archer?”

She couldn’t very well tell him that the very capable Mrs. Archer was the first to volunteer to work at Father Sebastian’s soup kitchen.

“Mrs. Archer needed a holiday from all the work here, so I sent her to…Italy.”

“Italy?”

Kate opened the door, hoping for at least some sense of order inside the house. But there was nothing that could soften this kind of blow; might as well have been a clack against the head with a cricket bat.

Hawkesly stepped into the foyer then stopped abruptly to stare at the telltale row of little coats and hats hanging on hooks along either wall of the foyer, the little boots standing below each and the benches.

A nice, neat line of children’s belongings, looking very much at home in his castle.

“What are all these?” He grabbed a coat by the neck, inspected it at arm’s length. “The place looks like a poor school.”

As though on cue, the children came running toward them from the direction of the kitchen, Rosemary close behind, calling them back. Then Tansy and Myrtle joined their sister until the gang of them were clumped around Kate.

“I’m so sorry, my lady,” Rosemary said, “but the children got a sudden notion that—”

“No, they’re all right here, Rosemary. I actually have a very important announcement to make. And I want you all to hear it.”

“You’re going to read to us?”

“No, children. Please listen.” She stopped them before they could begin shouting their usual list of fairy tale requests. “I would very much like you all to meet Lord Hawkesly.”

There was a long silence as everyone took in her information.

“Hawkesly? You mean like you, my lady?” Glenna asked, puzzling it out before the other children had. “The one that’s your husband?”

For the moment.

“Yes, Glenna. Lord Hawkesly has finally returned from sea.”

“In a boat?”

“Does he like hedgehogs?”

“Where will he sleep, Lady Kate?”

But in all the stunned confusion that followed, the three Miss Darbys said it best in one single voice:

“Have mercy on us all.”

“W
hat the devil? What’s happened here?” Hawkesly stared down at the children, then up at the walls, surely taking an inventory, obviously ready to explode with anger.

But Kate certainly wasn’t going to let it happen here in front of the children and the staff; they were wide-eyed enough already.

“Come with me, Lord Hawkesly.” Kate swished past him, knowing that he’d follow her like a beast stalking its prey. “This way and I’ll try to explain.”

He caught up with her as she entered the library she’d turned into a schoolroom. “You’ll do more than try, madam. I’ll have the whole of your deceit this instant. To begin with, I had six suits of very expensive armor standing along those walls! What have you done with them?”

He hadn’t even noticed the library itself. Wait till he saw the parlors! Kate stepped back to close the door but found the three Miss Darbys peering past her into the library, muttering to each other, their worried glares fixed on her husband.

“Will ya be all right in there, my lady?”

“I’ll be fine, Myrtle.” Kate pushed her shoulder against the door, but Myrtle pushed back.

“But he’s so…big.”

“I can handle him.” It took Kate’s fiercest scowl, but she finally got the door closed.

Even before Kate turned, she knew that Hawkesly was looking daggers at her, following her every move, speculating. Yet she wasn’t prepared for the heart-stopping sight of him when she did meet his gaze, standing there against the shelves of books and the massive marble fireplace, staring at her with those dark, incising eyes.

So ruggedly elegant, with his arms crossed against his chest, his hair half wild, his shoulders as broad as the mantel, his temper barely tethered. A pirate once more.

But rather than explode, Hawkesly said quietly, intensely, “What the hell are you running here? A school for local ruffians?”

“Hardly.”

“What then? An orphanage?”

Kate had been ready to explain just that, but he’d stolen her momentum along with her words. “Not an orphanage, a home for orphaned children.”

Jared was sure that he hadn’t heard her right—sometimes outrage became such a roar in his ears it drowned out the sense of things around him. “A what?”

“I’m sure you understand the meaning, my lord: children who have no parents, no home, nothing to eat, to wear—”

“Damn it, woman, I know what an orphanage is.” He’d goddamned lived in one long enough, before the workhouse and the streets of London. “What you haven’t told me is why the hell my wife is running one in my home.”

“And
mine
. Funny, but I didn’t notice that you were here to have an opinion one way or the other. I was the only one living in this huge house, and so I did what I thought was right.”

“And what was that? Place an advertisement in the county newspaper offering Hawkesly Hall to the local Poor Relief Committee?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Absurd is that my library is now littered with these benches and little trestle tables. That instead of tapestries and expensive, historically significant Spanish armor, my hallway is now hung with tiny coats and hats. I can only assume that the upper floors look like a dormitory.”

She raised a self-righteous brow. “Well, they have to sleep somewhere.”

“Not in my house.”

She tsked at him, then shook her head. “It’s amazing that all the time you’ve been gone, I’ve been imagining that you would say that very thing, in that very way, when you found out what I’m doing. ‘Not in my house,’” she said in a low voice, shaking her head. “Just like that. I’m only sorry that you’ve proved me right.”

Then the woman turned and made it all the way to the door. “Where are you going? We’re not finished here.”

She turned back to him, lifting her hand off the door latch. “Oh, but we’re quite finished, as I knew in my heart that we would be the moment you came home. We obviously have nothing more to say to each other on this or any other subject. So good afternoon.”

“We’ve plenty more to say.”

“No, we’re as far apart now as we were when you were halfway around the world. Now that you’ve returned, it’s time for me to leave. And don’t worry, I’ll be taking my…orphans with me.” She turned to go.

“Stop right there.” Jared felt his feet glued to the floor by the absurdity of this discussion. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“The sooner done, the better. I’ll start packing them up immediately, but I would appreciate you allowing us to stay the night. It’s hard enough to move nine children in the daylight, let alone—”

“Nine children? Living here? Where the devil did they all come from?”

She faced him full on, her hands clasped placidly in the folds of her apron. “Ireland.”

“Ireland?” Bloody hell. The telltale brogues on every tongue.

She took a deep breath, one that seemed to infuse her with a reckless kind of courage. “The children are from Wicklow, mostly, south of Dublin. Oh, and we’ve one from the Scottish Highlands. Margaret. She just arrived.”

“Good God!” She’d gotten her orphans from Ire
land, of all places. A teeming mass of hunger, too many mouths, not enough to go around.

“I hadn’t really planned on this when I arrived here. It all happened quite by accident.”

“You accidently invited nine Irish orphans to live in my house?”

She arched that fawn-light brow at him, a powerful condemnation. “
Our
house. And there were only five at first.”

His head aching with the woman’s prevaricating, Jared took her by the upper arm, led her to a fiddleback chair. “Sit right here and tell me everything.”

She sat, crossing her arms and jutting out her chin, looking very much like a belligerent captive. “There’s nothing much to tell.”

“I want every word.” And then, damn it all, he wanted
her
. Tonight.

She rolled the words around inside her stubborn mouth, then finally sighed impatiently. “It was just a few weeks after I arrived here after our wedding. I thought I’d make a visit to Mereglass—down to the village, so that I could become familiar with the villagers and the shopkeepers.” She stopped for a moment and studied him, as though mulling over the next part of her story.

“Go on,” he said, prepared to sort through her falsehoods.

“When I arrived, there was a great commotion coming from the headlands, along the cliffs. Apparently a small boat had run aground and broken up on the rocks with ten refugees from the famine in Ireland on
board. Only eight were still alive. Two men, five children, and a priest, all of them nearly dead of starvation, let alone their journey.”

“So you brought them to Hawkesly Hall.”

“How could I not? There wasn’t enough room in the village for all of them. And they needed such a lot of care.”

Bloody hell. “Like putting out a dish of cream for a kitten. You let them stay.”

Her face went cold, a look of disgust that made him glance away, to the mezzanine above and its shelves and shelves of books. “When the men recovered, they wanted to work for me. So I let them.”

“Who?” Though he already knew the answer to one man. “McHugh?”

“And Ian. He works the stables here at the hall. As to the children, they were orphans when they arrived. A family of children whose parents were dead of the famine and who were now without anyone to take care of them.”

“And you believed that person should be you? A woman alone—”

“What a blathering thing to say. I might have been alone, but I was not without resources.”

That was a certainty. She seemed to be capable of making gold out of straw, no matter the risk.

“You’ve explained five of the children. Where did the others come from? All of them shipwrecked and plucked out of the sea?”

“We’ve only had the one disaster. Mostly the children were…um…” She stopped and chewed for an
instant on her lower lip and then flipped him an impatient frown. “Most have been brought here by Father Sebastian himself.”

Jared didn’t like the turn of this tale. “Father Sebastian? The priest that you rescued.”

“He was nearly dead when we found him, but he lived to continue his original mission—”

“Which is?”

She looked him straight in the eye, challenging and defiant. “Which is aiding the wretched poor in Ireland who’ve been tossed aside by the fat, sightless criminals in Whitehall and Westminster.”

Hell and damnation, a wife with a rebel’s political leanings. His fault entirely. If he’d only come home sooner, he could have headed off her wrong-headed opinions.

He held back his temper. “And just what is your association with this renegade priest?”

“He’s not a renegade.” She stood, fisting her hands against her hips, fire blazing deep in her eyes. “He’s a devoted man who is willing to sacrifice everything for the well-being of others. And I’m doing my level best to help any way I can.”

“By sacrificing yourself to every wide-eyed child with a heart-cracking story?”

“How dare you!” Her cheeks went hot, her mouth hard. “There are thousands of starving, orphaned children in Father Sebastian’s parish.”

“None of whom is your responsibility,” he said with as much equanimity as he could muster.

“Starving children are everybody’s responsibility, no matter where they are. If you’d seen what I’ve seen—”

“You’ll stay out of it.” He damn well couldn’t have his wife crossing the Home Office with her inciting opinions. Embarrassing the queen. He was a peer. An influential member of the House of Lords. An agent of the Crown. “The Irish troubles are not yours.”

“They are not
troubles
. They are children. Innocent, helpless children. They come to me like lifeless bags of bones, dressed in rags, with hollow eyes and hopeless hearts. They need food and clothing and someone to care about them. It’s the very least that I can give.”

“Don’t be a fool.” False hopes and grand plans. He’d learned long ago never to involve himself too personally. “You can’t take on an entire famine by yourself.”

“Unfortunately, no, but I can take on a small portion of it, and I can win. I am winning, in my way. With a little creative enterprise—”

“Ah! Like Badger’s Run.” He understood now. She needed to raise money for her little cause.

“Yes, Badger’s Run. I had to feed the children somehow. It was important to be self-sufficient and portable, just in case things went badly.” Her laughter was dry as dust. “I suppose I needn’t ask again about the children? Whether or not they can stay here tonight…”

One night would only mean a dozen more and he couldn’t have that. “I want no part of your little famine-relief scheme. I thought I made that clear.”

“You’ve made it terribly clear.” She nodded, her disappointment a powerful indictment against his character. “I should have made better plans. Now if you’re finished with me here, I’ve got to get the children ready.”

He caught her arm as she reached the door, stopping
her because letting her out of his sight seemed a dangerous move. “Oh, I’m not anywhere near finished with you.”

“I’m afraid that whatever it is, it’ll have to wait.” She jabbed a practiced and pointy knuckle between his ribs, startling him off balance, then escaped through the door.

“Come back here.” He missed her by an inch, then threw himself into the corridor.

But she was already in the main hall, surrounded by swarms of children, each of them looking up at her in rapt adoration. “Dori, I need you to help put the spoons on the tables.”

“Oh, goody! Come help me, Grady!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Jared asked from the edge of the mob. “We have unfinished business.”

“You and I are completely finished. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have many things to do while the children eat their dinners.”

“To the devil with the children—”

“Somehow I knew you’d say that.” She scooped up the little red-haired boy and started toward the kitchen. “Come, Lucas, you can help me pack up the pantry.”

Jared stopped her, midstep. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, madam?”

Two pair of eyes stared back at him. “I’ll thank you not to curse in front of the children,” she said, as though he were a child. “We’ll be out of here soon enough. Then you can curse all you like, till the air is a lovely shade of blue.” She pulled away.

“Damnation!” he said out of habit, but well under his breath.

She spun around and scowled at him, then continued on her way down the stairs, trailing children in her wake.

By the time he swam through the little mob she was inside the pantry and he was standing just outside, where he couldn’t quite see her.

“Now don’t crowd, children,” she was saying to all the out-stretched hands. “There’s plenty for everyone to do.”

“Hand it all to me,” the elder girl said. “I’ll stack it all on the table!”

“Thank you, Glenna.”

“I insist on speaking with you now, madam.” Jared tried to shove forward, feeling as though he were bobbing on a troughy sea, making no headway as the children jostled him and each other.

“I’m sure it’ll keep.” A stream of bottled carrots started flowing out of the pantry, traveling on a current of thin arms and little fingers, landing in the care of the efficient little Glenna.

“What are we doing, Lady Kate?”

“Packing, Mera.”

“Are we going on a holiday?”

“That’s exactly right, Healy. The apples are coming next,” his wife called from the pantry, and there followed still another stream of apple jars flowing past him.

Jared finally made his way through the children into the pantry, grabbing hold of the next jar, interrupting her efficient flow.

“What are you doing, wife?”

“I’m packing food for the children. We have a long
way to travel tonight and many mouths to feed in the morning.”

“You?”
Bloody hell, she was talking about leaving herself. “You’re not leaving here.”

She raised her brows. “Are they staying?”

“No.”

“Then neither am I. We’ll be out of here tonight, if you’ll get out of the way.”

“Tonight?” Talking to her was like standing in the midst of a typhoon. Nothing but wind and motion.

“You’re obviously in no mood to let us sleep at the hall tonight.”