Malia Martin (4 page)

“What died in his bed?” Tuck asked.

Ignoring Tuck, Pru followed her butler, but veered off toward the front door when Clifton went through the garden. She took several deep breaths as she went, girding herself for another meeting with the captain. Only this time she was going to be calm. This time she was going to act like any unsuspicious widowed lady might act. This time she would be normal.

There was something very strange about Lady Farnsworth, James thought, as he watched the woman come up her own front walk. He had already noted that she was talking to herself as she walked. And then just before she reached the door, Lady Farnsworth stopped. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and ran her hands down the front of her dress.

James squinted at the sight. His gaze snagged on the woman’s hands as they pressed against her lower stomach, then smoothed down to her thighs. He was rather sure Lady Farnsworth had no idea he watched, and he was almost positive that she had no idea how provocative her actions were.

With a shake of his head, James moved away from the sitting-room window. “Provocative my ass,” he whispered to himself as he heard the front door open. “You have quite a problem if you think a woman drying her hands on her dress is provocative.”

“Captain?”

James turned quickly to see the petite Lady Farnsworth framed in the doorway. She glanced around quickly, obviously looking for the person to whom he was speaking. Wonderful, now
he
was talking to himself.

“Lady Farnsworth,” he said with a smart bow.

“Did you need something, Captain?” She took an audible breath and stood a bit taller. “I meant to ask if you wished tea before …” Her words tumbled to a halt, and she fluttered her fingers in the air.

Before her butler acted like a threatening father, James thought?

“Are you hungry, Captain?” Lady Farnsworth asked, an almost desperate look in her soft brown eyes.

“Actually, I’ve asked that my horse be brought around. I’d like to see the town, check on the officers at the excise station.”

“Oh, well, then you must allow me to drive you. Your horse is probably overtired from your journey, and I had just meant to go into town.” She smiled sweetly, but then ruined the effect by yelling rather loudly, “Clifton!”

The man was at the sitting-room door within seconds suggesting, perhaps, that he had never been very far away. Or had even been listening from the hallway?

“Yes, milady?” he asked, eyes downcast. It was much too demure a pose for the huge man James had seen shove Lady Farnsworth from a room.

“My baskets for the poor are ready, are they not?”

The butler said nothing.

“Good. Have Tuck load them into the cart. I shall be escorting our good captain into town.”

This announcement earned James a sharp glance of disapproval from the one-eyed butler. James straightened his spine and returned the butler’s look with a hard stare.

When the butler had finally given him one more piercing glare and left the room, James said, “Really, Lady Farnsworth, I do not wish to inconvenience you.”

“Not at all, Captain!” the woman returned merrily. He followed her out into the hall, where a maid handed the lady her bonnet and a cloak. “I had planned on delivering my baskets before supper.” She tied her cloak around her shoulders. “And I can show you around much better than you could show yourself, I daresay.”

“Of course,” James agreed, not at all sure he wished to deliver baskets to the poor. He must show the town of Gravesly his ruthless, military self. Being this woman’s fetch and delivery lad would certainly undercut that image. “But, really, Lady Farnsworth, I could not …”

“Nonsense!” the woman said with a command that rivaled that of any admiral to whom James had been privileged to answer. “I shall show you around Gravesly and take you to see our valiant excise officers.”

James took a deep breath. He was accustomed to ordering hardened seamen around, but he had never learned how to manipulate women. That was certainly obvious from the reputation he had in London. James actually winced at the thought. “Thank you,” he said finally, with a small inclination of his head.

A cart clattered up the drive then, and Lady Farnsworth’s maid opened the door. The boy, Tuck, jumped from the driver’s seat of the rather sturdy-looking wagon.

James automatically went to take the reins from the young groom, but Lady Farnsworth got there before him. “I can drive, Captain.” She smiled.

I do not like this one little bit, James thought, as he glanced from the top of Lady Farnsworth’s pert little bonnet to the baskets sitting in the back of the decidedly large cart. This would be a very bad image to present to the citizens of Gravesly, rolling into town on the passenger’s side of a wagon filled with doily-covered baskets. The least he could do was drive.

“I insist,” he said with a tight smile, and held out his hand.

Lady Farnsworth looked ready to argue, but stopped when Clifton came barging onto the steps of the house. “My lady,” he said, his tone implying that he would once again try to prevent the whole exercise. James was actually glad to see the man. Perhaps he would be given a reprieve on his basket-delivering duties.

“Fine then,” Lady Farnsworth said smartly. She handed over the reins and hiked herself up into the wagon.

It all happened so quickly that James stood staring in shock at the woman as she pulled herself up. When he finally realized that he should help her, she was already halfway to her seat. Still, being the gentleman, James stepped forward and raised his hands. Unfortunately, Lady Farnsworth was much more spry than any woman James had ever helped into a wagon, and by the time he put his hands to where her elbow had once been, he encountered the curve of her bottom instead.

He pulled away quickly, his head a bit fuzzy as his fingers tingled and his mind concluded that Lady Farnsworth had a very lovely derriere. Plunking herself upon the seat, Lady Farnsworth stared down at him with rounded eyes, a red blush creeping up her neck.

From behind him, James heard what sounded like muted laughter and turned to see Tuck striding quickly for the stable. And then,
bang
, a noise like the retort of a gun had James twirling around and jumping up to cover Lady Farnsworth. It was only as his arms went around the woman that James realized that the sound he had heard had been Clifton slamming the front door as if the hounds of hell had come knocking.

That man did like to slam doors. Odd behavior for a butler.

“Captain?”

James looked down to find the source of the small voice huddled in his arms. He should have pulled away immediately, of course, and if he had been in his right mind, he would have. But, still feeling as if he inhabited a dream, James held Lady Farnsworth for a fraction of a second longer. He registered the fragility of her frame, the loveliness of the soft eyes looking up at him and, again, the faint scent of lavender that clung to her.

“Excuse me,” he said finally, and dropped his arms from around her. “I thought …” He stopped, for he did not know what he thought.

They stared at each other for a moment.

She turned to look forward and surreptitiously scooted about an inch away from him on the bench. “Shall we go?”

His fingers curled around the reins, which were still in his hands, but he stared at Lady Farnsworth’s profile a second longer. She was a beautiful woman, but this type of tension would never do. He needed his wits about him, and he certainly did not need anything happening between himself and a widowed wife of a baron. Above anything, James steered himself very clear of scandals and bad behavior.

He had spent his life with the specter of scandal shadowing his name, and he had no wish to darken it further.

“Lady Farnsworth,” he said finally. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I think, perhaps, that I shall seek shelter at an inn in town. I had no idea that Chesley House was so …”

“It is not grand enough for you, Captain?” she asked, her back stiffening, her head turning so that she looked, once again, fully into his eyes.

“No, my lady, not at all! It is just that I do not wish to inconvenience you in any way.”

“And the only way that will happen, Captain, would be if you force me to have one of my servants remove your things to Harker’s Inn.”

James took a deep breath. He glanced behind them at the baskets, wondering how he would explain to this woman that he must concentrate on his work, and having her around would interfere with that goal in ways he was only starting to realize.

He looked back at her, his gaze drifting to her full pink lips before he forced himself to look into her eyes. A man could surely swim in such large dark pools of innocence.

God, he was turning into a jelly-spined poet, of all things. “I have a very important job to do here in Gravesly, Lady Farnsworth, and I can’t be …”
What? What couldn’t he be? Pining after Lady Farnsworth like a lovestruck schoolboy?

“Yes, Captain?”

“I must focus on my job,” he said, his concentration evaporating completely as the tip of Lady Farnsworth’s tongue slid out and wet the bottom corner of her mouth. For such a prim and proper woman, Lady Farnsworth had the lips of a well-used courtesan.

The moment that thought crystallized, James nearly groaned. Surely this situation had gotten out of control if he had such thoughts in his head.

“… It would seem to me.”

James caught the last of Lady Farnsworth’s sentence and realized that she had been speaking to him about something. And now she gazed at him expectantly as if she awaited a response.

Of course, he also realized that he had just spent the last few moments staring heatedly at the lady’s mouth. He would most definitely have to remove himself from Lady Farnsworth’s home, and hopefully her company.

“Don’t you agree, Captain?” she prompted him.

“I agree?” he said, thinking that such an answer could never get him in trouble.

“Good, then, it is settled. Now, Captain, shall we go? We’ll be delivering baskets in full dark if we do not start soon.” She nodded toward the reins in his hand.

What was settled? he wondered, as he turned his gaze deliberately away from Lady Farnsworth and urged the horses forward.

“I am sure you will find Chesley House much more conducive to concentrating than Harker’s Inn, Captain. The fellows that frequent that establishment are terribly loud.”

Ah,
that
was settled. If his men could see him now, they would surely laugh him right out of England. The great Captain Ashley befuddled by a woman who did not even reach his shoulder.

The horses seemed to know their way, as they turned toward town at the main road with no direction from him. Trying desperately to focus his own thoughts on his duties, James asked, “What do you know of the smuggling hereabouts, Lady Farnsworth?”

“Nothing at all!”

A rather strident answer.

“What I mean to say is, I really am not the one to give you that sort of information, Captain. I am woefully ignorant of the trafficking of untaxed goods.”

“Ah.”

“Turn here, please. We shall visit the Widow Leland.”

James obliged his passenger and turned the horses down a rutted lane that ended at the front door of a small cottage.

“Surely you know a bit about the smuggling, Lady Farnsworth?” James tried again to get any information he could. “It is quite prevalent in the area.”

Lady Farnsworth fluttered her fingers in a gesture that James found strangely un-Lady-Farnsworth-like. In the little time he had been in her presence, he at least realized she was not at all the fluttering type.

“Really, Captain, I know very little. In fact, I only know what everyone else in the country knows. The smugglers send out our wool on French vessels without putting them through customs, and receive goods like tea and whiskey in the same manner.” She shrugged prettily. “I am sure I have never seen any untaxed goods. Since the incoming tea and alcohol usually go straight to London, you have probably seen more of the end product than I.” She batted her lashes and then pointed. “There is the dear Widow Leland now.”

James pulled the wagon to a halt as the Widow Leland came out to greet them, and all James could think was that the poor of Gravesly were rather better fed than the poor he had seen in other parts of the country.

James jumped down and bowed to the round Widow Leland when Lady Farnsworth introduced them. The woman looked as if she had just seen the devil himself come creeping from the wagon.

“I brought you a basket, Mrs. Leland,” Lady Farnsworth said quickly. She shoved the article into the woman’s hands.

The Widow Leland looked completely flummoxed. Her beady dark eyes peered from Lady Farnsworth to him, then down to the basket. She reached for the edge of the lace-edged covering.

“No!” Lady Farnsworth grabbed Mrs. Leland’s hand and they stood there for a moment. “My dear, Mrs. Leland.” Lady Farnsworth kissed the woman’s fingers. “It would embarrass me so to watch you open my gift. We will just be on our way now.”

As a young boy, James had accompanied his mother as she gave baskets to the poor. She most certainly hadn’t kissed anyone’s hand. And she had usually chatted a while, taken tea.