Patricia Rice (29 page)

“Don’t be silly. I don’t ride. Dinner will be a
picnic, and a walking gown will suffice. Be certain to pack enough
lingerie, and a few gowns will do.”

“But madam, if I do not come with you, who will brush and press them? And who will polish your shoes? And fix your hair? And—”

“Perhaps there will be a skeleton staff there. We
can’t worry about it now. Mr. MacTavish wishes us to leave immediately,
and we cannot disappoint him.”

Letty looked at her shrewdly. “Aye, and it’s Mr.
MacTavish who will be the death or the saving of us all. You’ve never
left this place before.”

Bea mustn’t think about that. The safety of Mac and the children must come first.

Mac looked grim as he returned and found Bea up to
her ankles in petticoats and linen, with Pamela clinging to her neck.
“They’re the viscount’s minions, all right,” he said. “Digby’s giving
them his bland butler’s face, but I don’t know how long he can hold them
off. Are you ready yet?”

Was she ready yet? The children were in a state of
hysteria, the servants were rapidly reaching that condition, and he
wanted to know if they were ready yet.

“If we take only the barouche, we cannot take Cook
or staff,” she warned. “Unless the hunting box has servants, we will be
all but living like gypsies.”

He shrugged that off without any notion of the calamity facing him. “We’ll manage. Is this the trunk? I’ll take it down.”

Bea gaped as he shouldered the heavy trunk and
proceeded out the door as if he hadn’t thrown an entire household into
complete turmoil and terrified her into a shivering ninny.
We’ll manage?
Was the man insane?

Or was she insane for following him?

By now, it seemed a moot point. She’d married a
total stranger, an American accustomed to roaming vast open spaces, and
she might as well accept her fate. From here on out, she must give up
any notion of peace or tranquility and allow the rapids to carry her
where they would.

She only wished she knew if hunting boxes had separate bedrooms.

A leather trace broke before they were two miles
down the road. Bea bounced Pamela in her arms and tried to ignore Mac
muttering unpleasantries about untrained stable boys as he patched the
leather to hold until they reached the next town.

She eyed the field of unfamiliar crops in the valley
spreading below the road. What did they grow there? If she thought
about things like that, she wouldn’t spend all her time looking over her
shoulder for the viscount’s men or worrying about leaving the safety of
the home she knew and loved.

Pamela threw her small silver cup out of the
carriage, and no one noticed until Bea tried to find it when the child
whined for her milk. She had to unpack one of the stoneware mugs in the
picnic basket and persuade Pamela she could sip from a big cup just as
easily.

“Giyyap,” Buddy yelled, bouncing up and down on the
seat. “Are we there? I want my pony.” His biscuit dropped on the floor,
and he dived under Bea’s skirts to locate it.

“I swear, I shall be rich again and I’ll own two broughams, hire a driver, and burn this rackety barouche,” Bea vowed.

Mac threw an exasperated glance over his shoulder as
Buddy crawled under the seat. “Can’t you make them behave?” He hauled
the boy up by the back of his coat while hanging on to the reins with
one hand.

“Animal training and child rearing are not among my accomplishments,” Bea muttered in a fit of temper.

“Piano playing and ornamenting your castle are, I
know.” Disgruntled, Mac returned to the reins in time to avoid hitting a
large rock in the stream they crossed.

Figuring she had the choice of dumping the picnic
basket over her husband’s head, ordering the carriage to halt and
walking home, or finding some diversion for Buddy, she remembered the
wooden pull toy she’d packed in another basket. If these were the
adventures of world travel, she’d rather stay home, thank you very much.

As the shadows of evening grew longer, they reached
the rutted path Mac thought might lead to the hunting box, and Bea was
reduced to praying for a skeleton staff. She wouldn’t worry about
viscounts in the woods or bogeymen around any corner, if only she could
have a maid or a cook.

She and the children remained in the carriage as Mac
grimly stalked up to the front door of the square stone cottage at the
end of the drive. She could see a light in a window toward the rear, so
someone had to be home. She prayed they were patient, kindly people.

If they had to stay at a public inn this night, the
viscount would hear of them of a certainty. No one could hide two
children like Buddy and Pamela. And she and Mac weren’t exactly
invisible.

The front door opened. Through the dusk of fading
day, Bea could discern a stooped old man dressed in black. Surely this
was the right place.
Please, let there be a cook.
She couldn’t boil water if her life depended on it.

Mac returned, his expression unreadable as he helped
her down. “It’s the right place, but they only have a retired couple
here as caretakers. Dav brought the damned dogs here, so they know who
we are. I believe we’re expected to admire their new abode come
morning.”

“I shall fawn all over the dogs if I might just have
a moment’s peace.” Bea lifted a sniveling Pamela to her shoulder and
waited for Mac to fish Buddy from the floor.

A smidgen of pride lodged in her heart as Mac looked
down at her with something akin to admiration instead of the grim
expression he’d been wearing all day.

“You’ve been a saint,” he murmured, settling Buddy
in one arm and wrapping the other around Bea’s shoulders. “I had
considered giving them to the gypsies the first day I dealt with them.”

Before she knew what he intended, he brushed a
heated kiss across her lips that scorched straight down her spine and
all the way to her toes. As if he had done nothing unusual, not to
mention totally unnerving, he proceeded up the walk to the house.

Wearily, Bea allowed an elderly woman to escort her
and the children up the stairs to a dark-paneled bedchamber while Mac
unloaded baskets and trunks. The candle the woman carried did nothing to
illuminate the room filled with old walnut furniture, but Bea was
interested only in feeding the children and tucking them into bed. At
her request, the woman showed her a small dressing room where Buddy
could use a servant’s cot and Pamela could be settled into a makeshift
cradle fashioned from a huge dresser drawer.

By now, the children were hungry, irritable, and
anxious about their new surroundings. Bea spread a cloth on the rug,
settled the children onto it, and handed them bits of bread and cheese
while she set out the rest of the food. Their hostess offered to bring
up fresh ale and milk, promising to do better in the morning.

By the time Mac unhooked the traces, fed and groomed
the horses, and carried the trunk up the stairs, Bea was singing
nursery rhymes to a contented Pamela. Buddy pushed his new toy horse
around the carpet. Candlelight illumined the golden locks of the
children, but it was the serenity of Bea’s expression that caught Mac’s
breath and nearly brought him to his knees. He’d married an angel.

It wasn’t lust collapsing his lungs at her beatific
smile. She’d had a horrific day. She’d been driven from her home,
trapped for hours with hysterical children, with no idea of where she
was going or what they’d find when they got there. She had to be as
exhausted, mentally and physically, as he was. And despite the storm
clouds hovering over them, she smiled at him as if he had just delivered
the world’s treasures to her feet.

“They really are good children,” she said, innocent of the path of his thoughts.

“Just like Napoleon was a good little soldier,” he
agreed, hauling Buddy off the dresser drawer he was using as the first
step in his mountain-climbing expedition to the top.

She chuckled at his comparison, then took Buddy and
carried him off to a side room. The children had their own room. Mac
grasped that fact swiftly and with appreciation. He would have his wife
to himself, in one bed.

Elation and terror followed that thought. With
Marie’s children as a forceful reminder of what childbirth wrought, he
could no longer go back to thinking of a lusty romp in the hay without
considering the consequences.

As Pamela woke and held her chubby arms out to him,
Mac succumbed to the emotion he’d avoided since the first day he’d seen
his sister’s babes. Wrapping his niece in his arms, nuzzling her neck
until she cooed in delight, he vowed to defend her against all harm,
whatever it took. These children—and his wife—came before all else.

His whole world shifted, and the ground seemed to
crumble under him at this revelation. He really did want a family of his
own. It was no longer a notion, but a need.

A need that brought its own problems. Along with all
else, he had to consider the endless costs of hiring a houseful of
servants to raise and teach children in his absence.

The news that Bea’s estate was mortgaged worried
him. He knew he could make the estate profitable. He didn’t know if he
could pay for Bea’s servants, the improvements he wanted to make, still
pay a mortgage, and keep his shipping investment.

He didn’t think selling her home would be an acceptable alternative.

Bea returned to take Pamela off to bed, interrupting
his thoughts. Stripping off his coat and throwing it over a chair back,
Mac watched horror etch her features when she returned to catch him
stripped to his shirtsleeves.

He threw his waistcoat to join his coat and bent to
help her with the dishes. “There’s a dressing screen, and I brought up
hot water. You can wash while I finish here.”

She glanced frantically to the huge curtained bed,
to him, and to the door. Mac figured she was calculating the likelihood
of escape. Folding the blanket, he shook his head. “Don’t, Bea. I’m
sorry I’ve brought you into this mess, but running won’t help. We have a
lifetime to live together, so we might as well work out some way of
doing it.”

Her mouth opened and shut in that helpless manner he remembered from the first day they’d met.

“I...” She threw a nervous glance to the bed again. “Isn’t there another room?”

“They’re not prepared for guests, Bea. We can
manage.” He wasn’t at all certain of that. He’d not been with a woman in
a very long time, and to have the woman he desired above all others
beside him...

Muttering imprecations at his lofty sentiments about
family, Mac left her to undress while he hauled the basket down to the
kitchen. How the hell did he persuade his recalcitrant wife that the
marriage bed was the best part of living together?

He couldn’t. He’d have to rely on the attraction
between them, the one that nice big bed would enhance. Hope rising, he
hurried back to the bedchamber where Bea waited—

Asleep, curled in a cocoon of exhaustion and enveloping nightclothes.

Resigned, Mac undressed and climbed in beside her.
Crossing his arms behind his head, he stared at the darkness of the
ceiling. All he needed to do now was convince himself that this baby
stuff wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle, that he could defend three
innocents and a village, and maybe bring down a few temples with his
bare hands, all in the space of a few weeks, and he’d be just fine.

Bea scrambled from the bed at dawn at the first
sound from the children’s room. She tried to pretend she didn’t see the
large man denting the pillow on the other side of the bed, but he was a
little too spectacular to ignore. In the early light, Mac’s unshaven jaw
looked so male she thought her knees would melt into jelly. She didn’t
remember him coming to bed. She grabbed a dressing robe and ran to
Pamela.

She’d spent a night in her husband’s bed, and
nothing had happened. Marveling, she changed Pamela’s cloths and lifted
the burbling infant from her crib. Buddy slept as soundly as his uncle.

Or as soundly as she thought his uncle slept. When
she returned to the bedroom, Mac was up and looking like a surly bear as
he sleepily fastened trousers over his nightshirt.

He smiled at the sight of Pamela waving her chubby
fists, demanding to be lifted into his arms. It was so simple at that
age, Bea thought wistfully as Mac picked up his niece and tossed her.
Hugs and kisses meant love and affection to a child. Hugs and kisses
between adults seemed to mean carnal lust and pain and childbirth.

Mac leaned over and kissed Bea’s cheek, and heat flooded through her. Well, maybe kisses weren’t all bad.

“I bet you would look lovely with a baby at your breast,” he whispered wickedly in her ear as Pamela pulled at his hair.

Bea’s breasts jutted against her robe, and she
became uncomfortably aware of the way the peaks pearled into aching
knobs at the image he inspired.
She
might not want a baby, but her breasts did. So much for her theory of the innocence of kisses. Even words could be carnal.

“You’re unseemly,” she retorted, before grabbing a
dress and fleeing for the screen. Seizing her corset, she hooked it
defiantly, not bothering to relace it.

“And you’re a virgin angel with eyes of flashing
passion,” Mac murmured as Bea emerged from behind the screen. He dropped
Pamela into her arms.

She’d have to remember not to give him time to think up outrageous comments like that.
Eyes of flashing passion, indeed.
Setting Pamela down on the rug, Bea tried to brush her thick hair into
some semblance of neatness, but she couldn’t help checking her eyes to
see if they were any different from the ones she remembered.

All she could see were the black circles under them from lack of sleep.

Wearing a clean shirt and still fumbling with his
rumpled neckcloth, Mac ambled from behind the screen and leaned over to
press a kiss to the top of Bea’s head. “I think I shall insist that we
share a chamber when we return. I like watching you brush your hair.” He
checked her mirror to straighten the knot in his tie and grinned at her
reflection. “And I like being behind closed doors with you so I can
kiss you whenever I like.” This time he tilted her face to his and
kissed her more thoroughly.