To Kiss a Thief (12 page)

Clarissa dissolved in a fit of giggles as St. John tickled her—but gently, as if he knew the bruises the fall had inflicted.

Sarah took a resolute step in the direction of the kitchen. St. John had proved he could be trusted with her daughter's life.

That certainly did not mean it was safe to trust him with her own heart.

H
e had nearly run out of adventures for Jasper, so when Sarah returned with his tea, he stood gratefully and strode toward her, leaving Clarissa absorbed with the book's rich illustrations.

Lifting the cup from her hands, he took a sip of the sweet, hot drink. “Mmm. Thank you.”

Sarah nodded absently, still watching Clarissa on the floor. “Have you spent much time with children, my lord?”

“A little,” he said, recalling the eager, innocent black faces that had surrounded him on his every visit to the slaves' quarters on Harper's Hill Plantation.

“You are amazingly good with her.”

St. John rested the cup in its saucer. “It is not difficult to like a child, Sarah
.
”

“Your child?”

He could not miss the note of hope in her voice, although she was unable—or unwilling—to meet his eyes.

Dear God, but he wanted to believe that this child was his. The intensity of his longing surprised him. Years of practiced indifference had built a shell of ice around his heart. How could one little girl have melted it so easily?

Clarissa might be his daughter, of course. That could not be denied. Nothing about what had happened three years ago seemed clear to him anymore. Certainly he could no longer trust his stepmother's version of events—she who had been encouraging him to marry Eliza Harrington, all the while knowing his wife still lived!

But his stepmother's lies did not necessarily make Sarah honest.

“Anyone's child,” he murmured at last, lifting the cup to his lips again.

Mrs. Potts bustled past them toward the fireplace, a welcome interruption. “Now's the time for wee ones to be in bed,” she announced to Clarissa. “Come along.”

“Mama!” Clarissa protested, clutching the book to her chest.

But Sarah shook her head and pried the treasure from her grasp. “Mrs. Potts is right. Come, give me a kiss. And say thank you and good night to—to our friend.”

He had half-expected her to say “your papa.” Would he have been sorry if she had?

“Good night, Miss Clarissa. And good night, Dolly,” he added, touching their pink cheeks in turn.

“You shouldn't have,” Sarah said again when their footsteps had retreated on the stairs. She began to gather up Clarissa's playthings and restore them to their basket on the hearth, pausing to run her fingertips across the cover of the picture book. “Such lavish gifts,” she said with a shake of her head. “How could you—?”

The catch in her throat undermined the accusation in her words. When he laid one hand on her shoulder, she reluctantly turned to face him. One teardrop slid down her cheek, and she blinked furiously to keep others from following it.

“Sarah,” he murmured reprovingly. Cupping her cheek in his palm, he brushed the pad of his thumb along her cheekbone, whisking away the wetness there. Dark, spiky lashes fanned across her pale skin as her eyes dropped closed. Threading his fingertips into her hair, he tilted her face and lowered his mouth to hers, brushing her lips with his own, feeling her softness and heat.

Two nights past, he had been determined to seduce her, mislead her, persuade her to bare her very soul to him. He had held her in his arms and contemplated the sort of controlled, calculating kiss that would make her confess all her crimes.

One night was as good as another.

But this was not that kiss.

With one hand at her back, he pulled her closer, exploring her deeply, tenderly, slowly, before dragging his mouth across hers and along her cheek, tasting the salt of her dried tears, trying to capture the scent of her hair and her skin, that delicate note that drew him like no rich perfume ever had.

“I did not think my buying the child a few trinkets would distress you,” he whispered against her scalp. It was not a lie, exactly, although, of course, his motives when he had first purchased the presents had been far from pure. He certainly
had
intended to provoke an emotional reaction in her.

He just had not expected to feel anything in response.

“Hardly trinkets, my lord,” she insisted, pulling free of his embrace and dashing away the remains of her tears with the back of one hand. “And hardly necessary. Her life was gift enough—especially when you might have let me drown trying to rescue her and solved all your problems thereby.”

And then, on a choked sob, she ran from the room.

Almost before the scuffle of her steps had faded from the room, he heard the back door of the cottage slam. Without thinking, he followed her. Then, two steps into the cramped, windowless kitchen, he ran into the sharp corner of a deal table pushed up against a wall.

With a muttered oath, he groped his way into one of the high-backed wooden chairs that surrounded the table on three sides, rubbing the heel of his hand against his bruised thigh, welcoming the pain that brought him to his senses. What the hell was he doing, running after her? He should be running in the opposite direction—away from temptation, away from emotions he had no business feeling.

Behind him, the door swung open once more, narrowly missing his chair, and Mrs. Potts shuffled into the room, carrying the stub of a candle in a shallow dish. He made as if to rise, but she motioned him back down. “Sit,” she ordered. Despite the breach of etiquette involved, St. John did as he'd been bid. Beneath the shadow of her cap, the widow's dark eyes appraised him sharply. “I've got summat for you.”

Taking the meager light with her, she disappeared through a doorway just beyond the table, its lintel angled sharply where it ran beneath the staircase—a storage room pressed into service as a private chamber, he realized with a start. Why had the woman given up her cottage's only two bedrooms to Sarah and her daughter?

In another moment, she reemerged holding the candle, a bottle, and two mismatched tumblers, all of which she thumped onto the table without ceremony before taking a seat herself. St. John watched as the widow poured a dram into each of the glasses and pushed one in his direction.

What sort of salacious brew was she offering? Whatever it was, he could hardly refuse. “To your very good health, Mrs. Potts,” he murmured, raising the glass to his lips.

With a sound halfway between a snort and a snicker, Mrs. Potts drained her own glass and returned it to the table. Somewhat hesitantly, St. John followed suit. But contrary to his expectations, the liquor that rolled across his tongue was smooth and mellow, of the sort his father would have welcomed into the cellars at Sutliffe House.

How on earth had Mad Martha Potts come into possession of a bottle of fine French cognac?

“Smugglers,” she said, as if she had read his mind. “One day, my man come upon their hideout. No one about, so he pinches a bottle and brings it back to show me. A fortune, says he, just lying there for the takin'. So that night, he goes out again, plannin' to fetch back what he can. But his little skiff weren't built for booty the likes o' that. He was ridin' low in the water when the storm come up. Mighta saved himself if he'd tossed the lot into the sea. But he couldn't bear to see it slip away, I guess.”

St. John remembered hearing that Mrs. Potts had watched her husband's boat go under. But why was she telling him this now? “I'm sorry, ma'am. Knowing it was such a senseless tragedy must make your loss even greater.”

He watched as she squeezed the cork into the carefully husbanded brandy bottle. Few people of his acquaintance could have watched a loved one drown and not drained it on the spot. “My man never tasted a drop o' what he worked so hard to get,” she mused, tilting the bottle in the candlelight to study its amber glow. “If he coulda been satisfied with what he had in front o' himself, he'd a had no call to go after the rest.”

For a long moment, she said nothing else. Her eyes were fixed on the bottle, lost in her memories. The widow's story confirmed his suspicion that this part of the coast was no stranger to trade in illicit goods, an excellent place to be rid of famous gems that would have proved difficult to fence in town—at least, without the necessary connections. His own eyes wandered over the items that made up the room's scant remaining furniture: a battered washtub, a three-legged stool, and a cupboard with peeling green paint.

It seemed hard to imagine Sarah had succeeded.

If he could have looked at her life in Haverhythe and seen only emptiness—the separation from her family, the run-down cottage, the sparse contents of her trunk—he would have said simply that her plan had failed. But in truth, her life here was full. The Fishermen's Relief Fund. The festival. The respect and concern of the people of the village, everyone from the baker to the vicar. The sturdy affection of a woman like Martha Potts, who had cause to trust no one.

And, of course, a happy, healthy child.

Perhaps Sarah had succeeded, after all. And perhaps her successes had nothing to do with a dark-haired rogue or a missing sapphire necklace, and everything to do with the true character of a woman he had sworn he could never love.

Wishing he had not already drained his glass, St. John scraped his chair across the floor and stood.

“And I don't know why Mrs. Fairfax seen fit to up and leave you,” Mrs. Potts continued, roused by his movement. “All I know is that she—unlike John Potts, God rest his soul—was smart enough to cut loose of something that was pullin' her under.”

He met Mrs. Potts's steady gaze. He understood, finally, what the old woman meant to suggest with these cryptic phrases. She was implying that
he
bore the responsibility for Sarah's decision to run away. If he could have brought himself to care for the woman his father had demanded he marry, “been satisfied with what he had in front o' himself,” Sarah would have had no cause to “cut loose.”

The widow's accusation meshed quite nicely with Sarah's words on the quay about her determination to stay in Haverhythe, rather than going to Bristol and risk being forced to return to him.

And all of it fit with his growing doubt about what had really happened the night of the nuptial ball.

“I believe we understand one another,” he said.

“I hope so, young man.” The widow, too, rose to her feet and jerked her chin sharply in the direction of the kitchen door. “Follow the path up the hill and you'll find her.”

St. John reached the door in two steps, but hesitated when his hand touched the latch. What did he mean to do with Sarah when he caught up with her?

As the widow retreated into her room beneath the stairs, cradling the brandy bottle along one arm, she looked back over her shoulder. “Like to be rough waters tonight. Take care, young man.”

He nodded. “Thank you, ma'am. I intend to.”

* * *

It was not difficult to see where Sarah had gone, despite the growing dusk.

The rain had stopped, but raindrops still clung to every branch and blade of grass—all but those that had been brushed by her skirts in passing. He found her at the crest of the hill, where the path ended at a ramshackle stone cottage. The door—wide, rough-hewn planks held together by rusted nails—stood open, and he could see into the single room, where Sarah stood at an unglazed window looking down on the sea, her fingers working the fringe of the shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

St. John stopped on the threshold. “Am I intruding?”

“There are no hiding places in Haverhythe,” she murmured, turning luminous eyes on him.

She motioned for him to enter, and he ducked through the low doorway, glancing about at the abandoned cottage. The room was surprisingly dry; the thatched roof might have been the last solid part of the place, however. Whatever furnishings there had once been were gone. All that remained was a low shelf built into the wall, which might have served the place of table, chair, or even bed, and the stone ring of a fire pit long cold. His eyes followed the smudge of smoke up the wall to the window opening that had been its only escape.

Sarah was watching him.

“What is this place?”

She shrugged. “No one seems to remember. A watch post of some sort, I suppose.” She gestured out to the sea. “Even on a gray day, the view is quite spectacular.”

He stepped beside her and looked down on the village, the quay, and the fishing boats drawing into the harbor, mere specks of light against the darkening water. The familiar peace of the spot called to something deep within him, something he believed had been destroyed long years ago.

“Whatever you think of me, I am not a monster, Sarah,” he said at last. “To suggest that I would endanger a child for my own selfish ends, would stand aside and do nothing, while—”

He stopped, unable even to utter such a flawed defense. After all, had he not been guilty of precisely that crime once before: failing to act while a child's life hung in the balance?

“Forgive me.” She broke into his thoughts before he could give them voice. “I spoke in haste. I am . . . overwhelmed. Please do not think me anything but grateful to you for saving her life. I am glad you were here,” she insisted, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. “You even knew how to revive her.”

“I did not know for certain,” he admitted. “I had only seen it done. But what I saw was not something I was likely to forget . . .” He hesitated, pushing back against the memories that threatened to break free of the shackles in which he had long contained them. A wrinkle of curiosity sketched across her brow, but he shook his head. “It is not a story fit for a lady's ears.”

Sarah's eyes darted away. “You forget, perhaps, that I'm no lady.”