A Baron for Becky (15 page)

“You are fond
of me, Aldridge, and I am fond of you. But we do not love one
another. Which is a very good thing, no doubt.”

For a moment,
he let his mood slip. Serious and intent, he said, “I will leave it
as long as I can, but one day, I will choose a wife for her lineage
and the advantage she offers the duchy. The poor lady. I will be a
dreadful husband, I expect, though better than His Grace, I
hope.”

“You do
yourself an injustice, my dear,” Becky said. “You will be kind to
your wife, I know, and will treat her with respect. And I hope and
pray you find a woman you can love, and who will love you as you
deserve. That is my dream for you, Aldridge—marriage to a woman who
will absorb, and complete, and fulfil you.”

Aldridge’s
short laugh rejected the notion, though his eyes were wistful.

“And what is
your dream for yourself, Becky?” he asked.

“Oh, I shall be
satisfied with a little cottage, somewhere in a country town, where
I can be a widow, and no one will know my past.”

Aldridge pulled
back to look into her eyes. “Satisfied, perhaps, but what is your
dream? Come; pretend I am a magical creature with the power to
grant wishes. What are your three wishes, Becky?”

She decided to
play along. “Three wishes. Let me see. Marriage of the sort I wish
for you. That is my first wish: to be married to a man I love and
who loves me.”

“Marriage and
love. What is your second wish?”

“This is silly,
Aldridge. No one will marry a woman with my history.”

“Tell me
anyway,” he coaxed. “Wish two.”

“A husband who
will be a true father to my children, who will care for them as I
do, and treat them as his own. It isn’t going to happen, Aldridge.
I’ve been a whore since I was fifteen.”

“You are a
unique and special woman, and any man would be lucky to win you as
his wife. Wish number three.”

She flapped her
hands in a gesture of dismissal. “Might as well wish for him to be
a peer, then. A commoner is no more likely to marry me than a lord
of the realm. Find me a peer to marry, oh, granter of wishes.”

He tucked her
back under his chin again. “Marriage, love for you and your
children, and social position. That’s what you’re really asking
for, is it not?”

“It is just a
dream, my dear. Best to focus on what we can achieve, do you not
think? Will you help me find my little cottage, Aldridge?”

“I will help
you find a place, my Becky. Somewhere you and Sarah and my child
can be safe.” His hands were roaming again, exploring her curves.
“I cannot believe I didn’t notice. You are fuller here and here,
and more rounded down here. Lie back, Becky. I want to kiss my
child.” He tipped her backwards, followed her down, and spent
several minutes murmuring to her belly. Then kisses became licks
and nips, and tended lower.

Becky shifted
to accommodate him, content to let the conversation drop. Aldridge
had given his word, and he never broke a promise.

Chapter Eleven

It was worse this time.
Twice before, Hugh had run away to London to escape the anniversary
of his wife’s suicide, and spent the time drinking and raking with
Aldridge. This time, the sour taste of three weeks of excess
lingered, even after five weeks under his own roof.

Physical
exercise—productive, necessary work—helped. He’d thrown himself
into the harvest. This was the last farm, and they’d scythed and
cocked more than half the tenant’s grain today.

Hugh stopped at
the end of the row. How much progress had they made? The sun would
be down soon; they had perhaps another hour of light.

“Reckon we’ll
finish this field tonight, my lord,” said Beckham, whose barley
crop they were getting in. Hugh nodded as he took a tankard of ale
from the man’s wife. “I reckon we will, Beckham,” he agreed.

He downed half
the tankard in a huge swallow, relishing the sensation of the
liquid seeping into his parched flesh. They’d done well. They’d
finish scything tomorrow, and then they’d join the teams who’d
already begun collecting and stacking sheaves from previous days,
dried enough for the next stage in the harvest.

The weather
looked like it would hold dry for another week. They could count it
a good year.

With another
couple of swallows, he finished the tankard and returned it to Mrs
Beckham with his thanks.

“Come on then,
men,” he said, picking up his scythe again. “Let’s finish this
field.”

On the first
anniversary, he and Aldridge had met by chance at an inn a day
outside Town, and Aldridge’s flirtation with a servant girl had led
to an invitation for her to bring a friend and join them. Hugh had
bedded a scant handful of women since the shrapnel burst that
scarred him, and none but his reluctant wife in four years. He
enjoyed himself thoroughly.

But on the ride
to London, when Aldridge laughingly teased him about the girl’s
admiration of his performance, he attributed her compliments to his
lavish payment. “Look at me, Aldridge. Who would want this monster
in her bed if she had a choice?” That was a direct quote from
Polyphemia—one of the many things she’d screamed at him that last,
awful day.

Aldridge
laughed. “A few scars is nothing, Hugh. You’re just as pretty as
you once were on the other side and, in any case, it is men that
are shallow about good looks. Women’ll look past that, if you
pleasure them well.” Then he proposed proving his case by
introducing Hugh to some of the women he knew in London. “You
haven’t lost the skill you had when we were lads, Hugh. That girl
had the glow. You gave her a night she’ll never forget. Get a
reputation for that in London, and your bed need never be
empty.”

He was right.
Hugh went home the first year sated and satisfied. He rode up to
London the second year looking forward to his holiday rather than
backward to his guilt and grief, eager to renew his acquaintance
with at least some of the widows he had enjoyed the year
before.

The second year
was even wilder. In certain circles, the story of the scarred
baron’s three weeks had made the rounds, and Hugh found himself
propositioned endlessly. Though three of the five widows he’d known
the previous year were now married again, and one was out of town,
he had no difficulty finding a bed partner.

His conscience
troubled him when he discovered some of the ladies who approached
him had living, if neglectful, husbands. He couldn’t understand
being so casual about a solemn vow, made before God. He consoled
himself that he wasn’t party to the vows strangers made. And he
only tupped women whose husbands were unfaithful. He wasn’t doing
to another man what the unknown John had done to him.

Still, he was
saddened by it, and besmirched, too. Riding home that second year,
he decided he’d show more discretion in future, avoid the worst of
the debauchery.

This year had
started like the second, but halfway through the second week, in an
idle conversation about the morals of the ladies of the
ton
,
Aldridge claimed he’d known whores with fewer lovers. They were at
White’s, and already well down the brandy decanter, or perhaps they
would not have accepted Hackenburg’s now-infamous bet: two ladies
each in every 24-hour period, in two different sexual positions,
with no repeats for a week.

At the time,
drunk as they all were, the bet had seemed like fun. When they left
to plan their approach, Aldridge’s suggestion—swapping partners
partway through the day would make winning easier—sounded logical.
They’d swapped partners before, especially in their youth when, it
sometimes seemed, they’d sampled half the female population of
England, Wales, and lower Scotland.

But the
execution of their plan left him feeling dirty and despicable.

Was it the
cold-blooded plotting? The fast succession? The feeling the ladies
they’d played clicket with were interchangeable body parts instead
of real people? The undeniable fact, emphasised by that damnable
queue on the last night, that the
ton
was riddled with
ladies who were little more than whores? No, worse than whores, for
at least a girl selling her body up against the wall in Covent
Garden knew no better, and did it so she could eat.

The
Ballingcrofts broke his heart. An adultery virgin, Aldridge had
called Lady Ballingcroft, and laughed. Hugh had looked into Lord
Ballingcroft’s wounded eyes and seen himself. Stupid bastard. He’d
promised before God to honour Lady Ballingcroft and protect her,
not to drive her into the arms of other men. Hugh’s self-hatred had
fuelled the punch that broke the idiot’s jaw.

Word was, on
that last day in London, Lady Ballingcroft was hovering over her
wounded lord and smothering him in kindness, so perhaps some good
would come from it.

In all three
weeks, he’d met only one woman who epitomised the qualities he
thought of as ladylike: demure, graceful, dignified, discreet. What
an upside-down world, when Aldridge’s kept woman was more of a lady
than the peeresses and their friends who trooped through Aldridge’s
disgusting tupping palace.

The exquisite
Mrs Winstanley had haunted him since he’d returned home. He could
barely remember the faces and forms of the women he’d actually
bedded. But Mrs Winstanley, who had given him no cause for his
fevered longings, welcomed him in his dreams, capturing him between
the soft thighs of the Astley rider; offering her soft curves,
porcelain skin, and silken hair; leaving him awake, hard, and
lonely, night after night.

She was not for
sharing. He’d hinted to Aldridge before he was sober enough to
think better of it. Aldridge had donned the ducal mantle he never
wore with his friends, and frozen the thought in its tracks with a
terse, “No.”

Hugh scythed
two rows of barley and was back where he started, half a row ahead
of the other workers. Stretching a kink out of his back, he watched
them approach. They would soon be done for the day. It would be a
good harvest.

A familiar
voice echoed his thought. “It looks a good harvest.”

Aldridge? What
on earth was he doing here? Looking, from the top of his exquisite
beaver to the toes of his highly polished boots, as if quietly
hacking in Hyde Park, not a speck of dust or a thread out of
place.

“They said up
at the house you were down here. Can I help?”

“Dressed like
that?” Hugh laughed, and Aldridge examined his coated arms with a
smile.

“I would, of
course, take my jacket off.”

He could do it,
too. They had worked side by side before, on holiday from school
and rejoicing in their youth and strength. And they’d basked in the
appreciation of the village girls at the harvest dance
afterwards.

“Thank you,
Aldridge, but we’re nearly done.”

The tenant had
finished his row and was stretching at the end of it, keeping one
eye on his lord. “Beckham, I’m going to take my guest up to the
house. It’s been a good day’s work.”

“That it has,
m’lord,” the tenant agreed. “And we’ll have her finished this half
hour, never you mind.”

Aldridge hadn’t
visited Overton Park since those long-ago school days. Still Hugh
asked no questions. He sluiced his head with water from one of the
buckets under a tree by the fence, shook it to disperse the worst
of the water and pulled on his coat. His horse had been saddled and
bridled for him while he’d been washing.

Mounting, Hugh
called to Aldridge, “Race?”

The Park was
twenty minutes away across country, and Hugh’s horse had been
resting all day. Aldridge’s horse was one of Hugh’s, too; clearly
the Park’s stable had mounted him for the short ride to Beckham’s
field.

Aldridge’s only
reply was to nudge his mount into full flight and, with a whoop,
Hugh was after him. With evenly matched riders and horses, they
thundered neck and neck into the courtyard and pulled to a stop in
front of the stables.