Sweet Bargain (10 page)

"Did you tell my father you suspected my brothers of the attacks on your property?" she asked.

She could see she had taken him by surprise. "No," he replied, "but your father's investigation will be quite thorough. If your brothers are the least guilty, they will be found out."

"If they are named, will you insist that they be brought up before the law?" Again she saw in his eyes that her questions had surprised him.

"Is there some reason I should not?"

"My mother has sent me to apologize to you."

"Ah," he said. "You wish to trade an apology for a promise from me to forget the injuries your family has done me?"

"No, I do not. I do not wish to make any apology to you." She took a deep breath. "But I am willing to make amends for any trespassing my brothers might have done."

"Amends?" He turned from her, a speculative note in his voice, and stepped to a large desk in front of the windows. He stood with his back to her, straightening some papers on the gleaming surface. Next to his hand lay an old green cap of Auggie's.

Oh, Auggie
, Bel thought,
what have you done?
"Yes, amends," she continued. With the evidence he had against the Shaws he would certainly not make this easy for her. "Perhaps I can render you some service. I could tie flies for you. I know all the hatches on the Ashe. I could put your kitchen garden in order or your books. I ..."

He turned to her then, leaning his hips against the desk and crossing one booted foot over the other. "No," he said, "thank you. I am quite competent to do the things you suggest, and each is less a labor than a pleasure."

"Is there nothing ..." she began, looking down, dismayed at his refusal. She twisted the ends of her shawl around her fist.

"There is something." His voice, low and intense, alerted her to a change in him, and she looked up. "You could kiss me," he said. "A kiss for every trout your brothers have cost me." Her eyes met his, and she felt her cheeks heat.

"You can't be serious."

"But I am."

"A lady can hardly agree to such an arrangement, and you are no gentleman to suggest it." She pulled the twisted ends of her shawl tighter around her hands.

"I know. Nevertheless, it's kisses I want from you."

"You think because I've been kissed before that I will kiss anyone, that I am light-behaved and have no honor to be lost?"

"No, I think you'll kiss me because you love your brothers." His gaze, level and steady, held hers.

"You are no better than Darlington."

He winced at her words. "I suspect I am worse, but if you kiss me, I won't tell. Our bargain will be just between us."

"And if I refuse?"

"You will have to depend on my good nature and generosity in dealing with trespassers."

"To offer me such a bargain, you can have none."

"Exactly," he said.

"How many fish do you imagine my brothers have cost you?"

"Would you believe a thousand?"

She gasped. "A thousand!" He wasn't serious. Then the implication of the words hit her. He wanted a thousand kisses from her. Her cheeks burned. She shook her head.

"No?" he said hoarsely. "Would you believe a score?"

She shook her head again, not trusting her voice.

"A dozen?"

It was impossible to look at him, impossible to look away. She nodded.

"We have a bargain then? In exchange for a dozen kisses from you, I will bring no action against your brothers for any damage they might have done to Courtland or my stretch of the Ashe."

Again she nodded. His dark eyes on her were their deepest, blackest.

"I want one now."

She took a step back. How had she agreed to such a bargain?

"Just one," he said.

She didn't move.

He pushed himself up from the desk, crossed the short space to her, and pulled her hands out of the tangled fringe of her shawl. He backed to the desk, keeping their gazes locked, and pulled her gently along. He lifted her hands then and placed the palms against his chest. A tremor went up her arms as she felt the firm muscle under the thin shirt. His heart was racing; she could feel its mad tempo with the heel of her palm.

"I haven't much cared for kissing before," she told him. He was undoing the ribbons of her bonnet, pushing it off her head to dangle down her back. Then his hands went to her waist, and he nestled her lightly between his legs.

He swallowed as if his throat were dry, and reached up and covered her hands with his own. 'Push against me if I don't stop," he whispered. "I do mean to keep this bargain." He lifted his hands to her face, gently framing her cheeks. "Close your eyes," he suggested.

She let her lids close and felt him pull her face toward his.

His lips touched hers lightly, and she heard his breath catch in his throat. Then the warm firm mouth pressed against hers more strongly, breathing wonder and passion into her, so that her knees gave as if there were no strength in them, and she leaned into the hard chest under her fingertips.

Almost at once he lifted his mouth from hers. His hands dropped to her waist and clung, and he lowered his forehead to her shoulders. She felt his breath warm and ragged against her breast. When he had steadied his breathing, he raised his head and set her aside. He turned away and strode to the door, then stopped, his hand on the knob. Over his shoulder, he said, "I will find Auggie and have him bring the cart round for you." He paused. "Your brothers will have little to fear from me, Miss Shaw, if you can keep this ... sweet bargain."

Monday evening

Dear Tom,

I know you must have reverses and losses from time to time, and yet you have spared us the most painful aspects of these encounters. So I shall spare you my defeats. Indeed I hardly know how I can explain what has happened today. Pride and folly have led your sister to a most foolish bargain with Haverly. He now has both your brothers and your sister in his power and can quite embarrass the Shaws should he wish to.

I know you would counsel me to appeal to Papa, but I cannot. Surely I am of an age to extricate myself from difficulties that are the consequence of my own actions. Besides, with the coming trial of the Hilcombe villagers, Papa and Mother are depending on me to manage matters at home. What a mull I've made of it!

Did you know how much the hanging of John Cashman affected Papa? He was in London then, and your ship was in action, your letters full of the valor of common men. Since then the thought of any that have served the country being so unjustly treated as Cashman was has haunted him. In this Hilcombe case are some three men who were in the army and discharged without pay or credit. You can imagine, then, how Papa is determined to save them, how necessary Mother is to all his ruminations and notes.

A sober letter, is it not? You will not want another if I continue in this vein. So I must tell you that Fanny and Louisa have arrived. They have more beaux than bandboxes. It is true; we have been given a most complete accounting. A gentleman with five thousand a year has called upon Louisa, and Fanny has received particular attentions from an "honorable." How am I to bear such conceit when you are not here to share a moment's wicked amusement at their expense?

But what is London. It is so still and sweet a night in Ashecombe that I would be the Ashe itself and wind my way in secret through the wood to hear the faeries at their play and steal perfume from the sleeping flowers. Dearest Tom, trust me, I will come about, though Fanny and Louisa smirk and sneer and the earl demands his pound of flesh.

As ever,

Isabel

Chapter 11

NICK LAY ON the pebbled bank at the edge of the wide shallow pool where he had first encountered the Shaws, and considered whether in making his bargain with Bel he had won or lost. The Ashe, like some sleek, black night creature, slid past his outstretched legs. The air thrummed with insect harmonies, and hovered over him, a fragrant balm of clover and meadow grass, honeysuckle and musk rose, without so much of a stir as might be dignified by the term "breeze." But this was not the wood of Athens where the fairy queen slept in a flowery bed, her eyes enchanted by a magic flower, and woke to fall in love. No amount of wishing would bring Bel Shaw to share this fragrant bank with him. He stretched and shook off the fancy.

Bel would be in some bright room of her family's stone house, the voices and laughter of a crowd of relatives rising about her in a loud jumble of sound. He would be wise to imagine her at this moment, despising him. She had said he was no better than Darlington. She had implied that he had neither generosity nor honor. He supposed she was right. The moment in his library when she saw and recognized the evidence he had against her brothers—that had been the moment to be generous, but he had not been thinking then of her good opinion, only of her beauty. He could call upon her and release her from their bargain. His conscience prompted it. But the voice of conscience could not check the elation that swelled inside him as he let himself recall the kiss he had bargained for.

Here, with only the stars to witness his folly, he could safely remember the press of her hands against his chest, the softness of her cheeks under his fingers, her lips yielding to his. None of the kisses he had shared with the widow in his fifteenth summer had prepared him for Bel's kiss. Those other kisses had been calculated to rouse him to mindless sensation-seeking. Bel's kiss had been aware of him, not playing upon him, but attending to him, as if she had been alert in every sense, as if she had been waiting to hear just what he had to say, as if she had been holding her breath, watching for some eagerly awaited sign in the heavens. No doubt the gentleness and wonder of it all would be transmuted in his dreams into something as base and carnal as he was. He should release her.

But he would have just one more kiss before he did.

Bel had long since learned that taking Fanny and Louisa to the village was a cross between amusement and penance. The carriage must be brought out, of course, for such gowns and slippers as her cousins had brought from London could not stand the injuries of walking the lanes of Ashecombe. And the effort of examining and condemning the village's few shops would be so fatiguing as to require some refreshment in the inn's one private parlor. Then they would have to call upon Aunt Margaret at the vicarage to relate the shortcomings of the inn's bill of fare. The whole adventure would end in Fanny and Louisa retiring for a nap, though each would readily claim that she could dance all night in a close ballroom in London without feeling the least weary.

They were approaching the inn, and Bel was comforting herself with the thought of two or three of the choicest comments of the morning that she might share with Tom, when the earl emerged from the inn door. He was the shepherd again in a loose white shirt and buckskin breeches, a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned country hat low on his brow. He strode into the sunlight and stopped abruptly when he saw her. Her cousins, full of their complaints, strolled on, as if unaware of the young rustic beyond the tips of their elegant noses, but Bel could not take a single step. Whatever the earl's business had been in the inn, whatever had occupied his mind and made his stride so purposeful a moment before, appeared to be forgotten as he looked at her. In his dark eyes was the memory of their kiss.

She could not doubt it, for in the same instant, her senses awoke. Her lips, her skin, her very blood remembered that brief touch. The comfortable certainty with which she had assured Tom she could defy Haverly dissolved. The heat of betraying color rose in her cheeks, and she felt again the unreasonable pull of his person.

"Bel, are you coming?" demanded Fanny, looking first at Bel, then at the earl.

Conscious of Fanny's scrutiny, Bel pleaded with her eyes,
Don't let her see what 1 see,
and the earl, seeming to understand the warning, turned to look over his shoulder at the inn.

The door opened again and Haverly's servant stepped out, laughing at some sally from within. "Nick, lad," the man called out, "Pratt says he's a lass will do ..." Catching sight of Bel and her companions, he stopped speaking, nodded to them, and turned back to catch and hold the door.

Fanny and Louisa moved forward, accepting the man's courtesy as their due, but Bel looked down and drew a steadying breath. Haverly's gaze would follow her cousins. Their smart spencers, jaunty chip-straw bonnets, and delicate sprigged muslins came from the fashionable world he had left behind. It had been madness the day before that had led him to ask for a thousand kisses, to bargain for a dozen, to take one. She could breathe easily. She had no reason to think he would hold her to their bargain now. She had only to lift her eyes to see whether he would prefer Louisa's sweet, plump prettiness, high coloring, and heavy copper-gold curls or Fanny's elegant oval face, creamy skin, and regal features.

But when she looked up, she found Haverly's eyes on her, telling her as plainly as if he had spoken that he would claim another of the bargain kisses. Bel pulled at the ends of her shawl, twisting them about her hands, then halted the motion, conscious that just the day before she had betrayed herself with the same gesture until his hands had stopped hers. He moved toward her.

"Bel." It was Louisa who called this time. "Oh, dear, am I interrupting?" she asked, glancing at the earl with a puzzled air. At that Bel whirled and hurried up the few steps to the inn door.

Mr. Pratt, the landlord, accustomed to the airs of the Misses Shaw of London, greeted them with undaunted cheer and ushered them into the private parlor. In a very few minutes they were settled at a table with a clean, well-mended cloth and a clear view of the earl and his companion riding up the street.

"That man meant to speak to you, Bel, I'm sure," said Louisa, her eyes wide at the impropriety of it.

"I don't think so," said Bel. Her cousins had already heard of their new neighbor, his rumored wealth, and his elegant good looks, but Bel was sure they could not see the arrogant Haverly in the shepherd who had stared at her in passing.