Patricia Rice (30 page)

Gasping in surprise and outrage, then heating
beneath the fire of his kiss, Bea could no more fight him than she could
fight herself. She grabbed his arm to steady her balance as he pressed
her backward, and the surge of muscle beneath his shirt at her touch
nearly shocked her into releasing him. He was so warm and hard and...
Oh, my.

He looked nearly as stunned as she felt when he
stepped away. His eyes lit with satisfaction as he noted the way her
breasts heaved. Her hand flew to her waist in hopes of catching her
breath beneath her tight corset.

“I’m going down to tell the caretakers I’ll pay for
more staff,” Mac announced. “Since we’re here with no other demands on
our time, I want you to myself for a while.”

He strode out, pulling on his coat and waistcoat.
He’d sizzled any working part of her brain, and the only parts of her
left functioning didn’t seem to recognize the danger he represented. She
had the terrifying notion he’d just burned the last bridge between
them.

Not waiting for Mac to return, Bea dragged Buddy
from bed, and wrestled both children into clothes. She re-straightened
her own clothing, then steered Buddy and carried Pamela downstairs. She
still had fruit and bread and assorted foods in the baskets, but the
children needed milk for their breakfasts. She’d have to see what the
kitchen could produce.

The housekeeper bustled out at the sound of them
coming down the stairs. Chirping excitedly, she showed them the dining
room and proclaimed “Mr. Warwick” to be an exceptional man. In minutes,
she was loading the table with plates of eggs and pitchers of milk and
pots of tea.

Mac arrived just as Pamela slapped a spoon in her
oatmeal and splattered it all over Bea and herself. “Heathen Indians
behave better than that,” he scolded, removing the spoon from her sticky
hand.

“Nurse hit her for that,” Buddy said pragmatically,
scooping up eggs on his toast as if he’d never been taught table
manners. “She’s a bad girl.”

“You’re both inveterate brats, but you aren’t bad,”
Mac corrected, holding Pamela’s hands until Bea could remove the bowl
and wipe them both clean. “And if you’d listen to Miss Bea once in a
while, you would learn some manners.”

“Pammy calls her Mama,” Buddy said through a mouthful of toast, watching them with suspicious eyes.

“Well, she’s really your aunt, but Pamela doesn’t
know better. What would you like to call her?” Freeing his niece once
she was clean again, Mac tousled his nephew’s hair. “She’s not Miss C
anymore, so we can’t call her that.”

Bea held her breath as the little boy turned his
gaze in her direction. She was desperately trying not to become too
attached, but she feared that if Mac didn’t take them away soon, she’d
cry her heart out once they were gone.

“She doesn’t look like Mama,” Buddy answered with a slight quiver of his lips.

Mac sat down beside him and smeared some jam on
another piece of toast. “Nope. Your mama had hair like mine, and she was
small and smiled all the time. I can remember her laughing and singing
up and down the halls at home.”

Tears gathered in Bea’s eyes at his recitation of a
precious memory. It had to pain him, but the boy needed these memories
to replace the bad ones.

Buddy nodded solemnly. “She sang me to sleep. And called me baby doll.” He grimaced at the recollection.

“She loved you very much, and I know she was sorry
she had to go away, but sometimes God needs more angels,” Mac said.
“Your mama would make a lovely angel, don’t you think?”

Bea pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped
her eyes. How could a man so thickheaded and sure of himself also be so
gentle and understanding?

Pamela reached over to tug the lacy hankie from
Bea’s hands and, laughing, flung it at her oatmeal bowl. Bea rescued it
with a watery smile and blew the babe a kiss.

“Won’t I ever see Mama again?” Buddy asked, fighting a sob.

Bea had never thought to ask the child what he
thought of events; she’d been too busy trying to stay ahead of them
herself. Perhaps they’d all needed this time away to sort things out
instead of letting the river of life carry them mindlessly on its
current.

“She’s watching you from heaven,” Mac told Buddy,
“and you’ll be with her someday. But there are a lot of things to do
down here first. Do you think she’d like to watch you go fishing today?”

That successfully ended the tears. Shouting with
excitement, Buddy tore out of the room to fetch his new toy horse. When
he was gone, Mac met Bea’s eyes. “I should have spoken to him sooner,
shouldn’t I?”

“He might not have been ready sooner,” she
suggested. “He’s been uprooted and transplanted and needed time to
settle in a little.”

“There will be more uprooting and transplanting ahead,” Mac said worriedly, reaching for the coffeepot.

“Not if you’re with them. You’re their security
now.” She wanted to sound reassuring, but she knew nothing of children.
She simply recognized his concern. And admired it.

The children weren’t the only ones she’d miss when he was gone.

That was a terribly unsettling thought. Life without Mac’s shouting and blustering didn’t bear consideration.

“That’s a problem,” Mac replied
gloomily to her earlier comment. “I’ll have to go back to desk duty in
my father’s business if I want to be around when they need me.”

“They’ll adjust to your mother and father,” she
suggested. When he didn’t reply, she cast a glance in his direction. He
didn’t seem to be happy with the thought. “You have to make your own
life,” she said gingerly. “If you’re not happy, how can they be?”

He saluted her with his cup and a wry smile. “That’s
a good argument. I’ll remember it.” He quickly sobered. “What about
you, Bea? Are you happy?”

“I always thought so.” She helped herself to toast.
“I have everything a woman could want. My only disappointment is not
having any real education. I’ve always wondered what books have been
written besides the musty tomes in my father’s study.”

“I thought women wanted balls and society and men to flirt with.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never had balls and society, so
I’ve never missed them. And I’ve seen men, and they’ve not impressed me
greatly.” She swept him a quick glance. “Present company excluded, of
course.”

He grinned and poured a fresh cup of coffee. “Of course. Are you still afraid of me?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said indignantly.
Not anymore, at least.

But she was afraid of what he could do to her, afraid of what would happen when he left her, afraid of... living.

“Good, because I won’t do anything you don’t want,” he said with deliberation. “I’ll simply have to make you want what I want.”

Buddy rattled in then, and it was a good thing, Bea
thought, because she had no idea how to reply to that outrageous
pronouncement.

***

“The cavalry arrived in the nick of time.” Mac
dropped down on the blanket beside Bea. A small stream flowed lazily at
their feet—fortunately a shallow stream. “A maid is stripping Buddy from
his wet clothes, and Pamela is sound asleep in the nursery. The
housekeeper assures me the maid has a dozen siblings and that she’s
perfectly qualified to keep the urchins where they belong. We shall
see.”

Bea reluctantly lifted her gaze from the pages of
the novel he’d found for her, and Mac decided he loved her eyes. They
were so gentle and understanding, and sometimes wickedly mischievous.
He’d found the book moldering on a shelf in the parlor. Maybe he should
have read it before he gave it to her.

“I think children belong in streams,” she said with a
smile. “I think they should stay naked and happy and splash in streams
and roll in cowpies all they want.”

He grinned, pushed her book aside, and leaned over
her until she rolled flat on her back to escape him. He liked having her
under him. He’d like it even more if she’d smile seductively, curve her
hand around his neck, and kiss him. “I think novels are already turning
you into a revolutionary, and I’d better never give you another one.”

“Then I shall take up stealing books as a profession,” she declared.

“Kiss me, and I’ll let you read another page.” He nuzzled her neck.

“You don’t want to just kiss,” she said accusingly.
“And we’re in broad daylight. After a hectic morning like the one we’ve
just had, I should think you would want a nap.”

“I didn’t sleep a wink last night knowing I had only
to reach over, and you’d be there, all soft and warm and tempting.” He
curled a straying strand of her hair around his finger and kissed her
temple. She wriggled beneath him, but didn’t push him away. “Do you have
any idea what just the thought of you does to me?”

“Something bestial, no doubt,” she answered tartly.
“Shouldn’t you be worrying that the viscount’s men will come riding up
the lane at any moment?”

“No. Overton promised to stop in at the tavern and
let slip that an American with two children in tow was last seen at the
train station in Evesham. The housekeeper here has a grandson who will
go into Broadbury tomorrow and check to see if the men have gone.”

“You act as if you have had some practice eluding
the law.” She didn’t lift a hand to touch him, but her gaze never left
his face.

Mac liked having her full feminine attention. It made him feel...
masculine
.
“I’ve dodged a few scrapes, got caught in others. Sometimes a man just
asks to have his block knocked off, and I’ve obliged on an occasion or
two.”

She regarded his jaw thoughtfully. “Pity no one is big enough to knock yours off.”

“Wicked woman.” He couldn’t resist any longer.

Bending down, he pressed his mouth to hers,
shuddered when she responded with alacrity, and settled in to take the
kiss as far as it would go.

A plop of cold rain splashed against the back of his neck.

Mac ignored it. It had been cloudy all morning, but
England was always cloudy. Bea parted her lips and slanted her head so
he could more comfortably take advantage of her welcoming tongue. Heat
shot straight through him, and he didn’t notice the next few drops of
rain. Or if they hit, they turned to steam.

The deluge that opened a moment later was a little
harder to ignore. Bea screamed and pushed at his chest. Mac grabbed a
corner of the blanket and tried to yank it over her without twisting
them both into knots. Glancing up at the heavy sky and hearing the roll
of thunder, he decided a blanket would never suffice.

“Come on. There’s a barn just over the hill.”
Tugging her to her feet, cursing England and its clammy weather, Mac
half carried, half pushed Bea over the stile and toward the barn before
her skirts accumulated too much water for her to move.

He never did have any luck seducing proper ladies.

Skirts soaked and dripping, Bea gasped as Mac pushed
her through the barn doors into the filtered light of the interior.
Rain beat upon the thatched roof, shaking loose bits of dust and hay,
but it was mercifully dry inside.

“I was so absorbed in that book, I didn’t see this
coming,” she confessed, shaking off the wet blanket and looking for a
place to hang it.

“Here’s a length of rope. Let me string it up so you
can hang the blanket and your petticoats. You’ll catch your death like
that.”

Yards of cambric and flannel petticoats clung wetly
to Bea’s stockings. Removing her petticoats would leave her
uncomfortably exposed to the damp of her skirt, unless she took that off
as well.

“I don’t think anything short of a fire will help,” she said hesitantly. “Perhaps the storm will let up soon.”

“What are the chances?” Mac asked, stringing the rope from timber to timber. “If we can find something to burn, I have a flint.”

He looked so competent as he knotted rope and tested
the line and checked the dirt floor for a likely hearth that Bea didn’t
have the heart to argue. And no matter how much she was enjoying
learning to rebel and think for herself, she had to agree that her
petticoats were hideously uncomfortable.

While Mac looked for debris to burn, she stepped behind the blanket to untie the knots at her waist.

“There’s a broken barrow here, and some straw. It
won’t make much of a fire, but we can give it a try,” Mac called as Bea
wriggled out of one layer after another. The sodden cloth fell in
puddles at her feet, and she shed her wet shoes and stockings as well.

As she threw the first of the flannel petticoats
over the line, she felt a tug on the other side of the ruffles, and heat
stained her cheeks as she realized that Mac was helping her. If she’d
known she would be showing her underthings to her husband, she would
have worn her finest embroidered ones.

She was suddenly very aware of her near nakedness.
Thank goodness for drawers.

“How many of these things do you wear?” he asked in
disbelief as she tried to settle the third petticoat over the line.
“It’s a wonder you don’t collapse under the weight.”

Bea held up a dainty cambric and lace petticoat and
dryly contemplated where she might hang it now that she’d literally run
out of rope. “I’ve heard in France they have something called a
crinoline that holds the skirts better.”

“I can take you to Paris, you know.” He peered over the impromptu clothesline and held out his hand for the last petticoat.

“Paris?” She lifted the lacy cambric within his
reach, and watched as it disappeared on the other side of the line. “I
don’t speak French. They would think me an utter ninny.”

She didn’t speak French, didn’t eat French, and had
no notion of how one traveled such a distance, but she was certain it
involved a great many strange people and places and was well beyond her
ability to attempt. Still, Mac and Aunt Constance had stirred her
curiosity about what lay beyond her small world.