An Unforgettable Rogue (14 page)

At the moment when he had left her aching with need, she thought she might wither and die where she lay, and yet there had been such a ridiculous amount of relief as well. But why?

Because Hawk’s father believed she was not good enough for his son, and she believed it as well?

What was wrong with her when she did not even know what she feared?

Sabrina would understand about her fears. She would know how she should go about seducing Hawk,
if
she should.

Simply telling Hawksworth that she loved him, after pretending to love Chesterfield, would make him think she pitied him for his scars, especially since he thought the world saw nothing but the scars.

How could she make Hawk understand that she wanted and cared only for him? That he was worthy of love?

How could she undo a lifetime of harsh persuasion?

How could she keep from losing him forever?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

During the night, Bryceson the rogue inevitably returned. Always, when Alex got near him as he slept, he clasped her close, as if she were his long lost love, precious and adored, and spoke her name before drifting back to sleep.

No matter how many times she approached him in the night over the next weeks, every time she did, she was taken aback with joy. Sometimes tears slipped down her cheeks unheeded as she drifted off in his strengthening arms.

If only he wanted her when he was awake in the same way he seemed to want her in sleep.

Blast it; she must spare no stratagem when it came to her seductive vengeance. Her goal was selfish, Alex knew, but she wanted everything marriage entailed, including a lesson in love for her husband.

A week before they left for London, Hawk threw his cane out a second floor window in a fit of frustrated rage.

Beatrix had slipped on a wet stair and landed on her bruised little bottom.

Because of it, Alexandra had climbed atop an old barn ladder in the second floor hall to replace the upper molding of a window, where rain had been driven in during another of the season’s torrential rains. The rising stream had floated down the hall and ultimately down the stairs.

While Bea had laughed at her flying antics, Alex had worried aloud that Hildy or Giff might be seriously hurt. And Beatrix made the mistake of adding that Hawk, with his cane, might also be, which bruised his fragile ego to begin with.

“Of course I would not,” he said. “It is for us to worry about the elderly, not the young.”

“But Alex says you are in pain sometimes and your leg is weak and we should be careful, Uncle Bryce.”

He raged all the while she and Beatrix dragged the ladder up to the landing. “Stop, I tell you and go away. I will tend to it, myself,” he charged them, but neither of them stopped to listen or do his bidding.

“Alex, do not climb that ladder, I tell you. Do not,” he shouted as he made his way up the stairs. But by the time he arrived at the base of the ladder, Alex was prying the rotted slat away and preparing to affix a fresh piece of wood to the spot. She was so preoccupied with her task, however, that when he spoke her name, she jumped and nearly fell from her perch.

That was when he swore, pushed up the sash and tossed his cane out the window. Then he slammed it shut, climbed the ladder, cursing all the way, grasped Alex by her waist and, with surprising strength, lifted her down to replace her, himself.

After that, without the use of his cane, Hawk walked with more discomfort and less grace, but he refused to take it up again from that day on, performing every single task anyone mentioned needed doing, no matter how difficult.

As good as his word to secure tenants and improve the estate, Hawk advertised locally and interviewed dozens of prospects. ‘Twas not difficult to find applicants, given the soldiers and sailors seeking employment now that the war was over. There were, also, mill-workers displaced by factory closings across the breadth of England, and farmers who lost their land because the summer rains and endless hailstones had ruined their crops, the wheat suffering worst of all.

Within two weeks, a dozen hard-working military men and their families moved onto Huntington tenant property. Some would work the home farm, completing the harvest, however sodden the crops. Two were ships’ carpenters, one a millwright and two others, bricklayers. They would make immediate repairs to the buildings, working in exchange for rent, and no monetary compensation, as there was no money, though Hawk gave each family a goodly-sized portion of land for their own use. Wives and children could work that for themselves and raise enough produce to feed their families and sell the excess at market for a respectable profit. St. Albans was a famous enough market town to make that effort more than worthwhile.

Hawk set himself up as Huntington’s estate manager. But in preparation for the time when he would take the family to London for Claude’s season, he taught one of their long-standing tenants to take over temporary management, for a lower rent and a larger cottage.

When Hawk found a widow offering two dozen black-faced Suffolk sheep for a pittance, he bought the animals to raise for wool. He secured several cows and a bull for similarly low prices, as more farmers were daily giving up and heading for the city. These he would raise for milk and beef.

Hawk’s diamond stickpin bought them a mare rumored to be in foal by Mercury, a prize-winning racehorse. The mare alone was worth more than the stickpin, for she was a prime breeder in her own right, and would produce fast, healthy, hard-working carriage horses. But if Mercury had sired her offspring that infamous day he broke loose and covered half the mares in Hertfordshire, then she was worth a dozen diamond pins for her foal alone. He named her Quicksilver.

If he was skilled at one thing—other than that for which he had become quite famous with the ladies—Hawk told Alex later, it was horses. And if he could not turn a profit with good horseflesh, then no one could.

Alex thought that if she could not get him to demonstrate his other famous skill, she was going to crown her gentleman farmer with his own pitchfork.

Several days before they were to leave for London, Claudia said that perhaps she did not need a season after all. Not this year, at least, and Alex laughed. “Do not even try to pretend with me, Missy,” she said. “You do not wish to go, because you have failed to talk Chesterfield into following us to town. Is that not right, or as near right as might be?”

Claude huffed and flapped a sheet to lay flat against Bea’s small bed. “Just because you are content to live without love, Alex, does not mean that I am.”

The words felt like a slap, and Alex gasped, looked into Claude’s stricken eyes, and exited the room at a hurried pace, only to plow into Hawksworth.

“Ho, steady, there.” Still unstable on his feet, he latched onto her for balance, and Alex pretended the same need, allowing him to hold her, treasuring the embrace. Between Claude’s harsh words and Hawk’s arms about her in the light of day, Alex began to weep. And, once the flood gates opened, she could not seem to close them.

Then Claude stood beside her apologizing, except that Alex could not focus on the girl, because of the wondrous look of concern in her husband’s eyes, which only made her weep the more.

Claude attempted to pull her aside, but Alex did not wish to be disengaged from Hawksworth’s embrace, and fortunately, he fought to keep her there.

Alex did squeeze Claude’s hand, however, giving her a look begging understanding, hoping the girl would realize that she could not miss this God-given opportunity with her husband.

Grateful for Claude’s dawn of understanding, Alex stepped with Hawk into the privacy of their bedchamber.

When he closed the door, shutting them alone inside, Alex fairly floated in the fixedness of his attention.

He urged her onto their bed and lay beside her, pulling her close. “Alex, Sweetheart.” He wiped a tear with a fingertip. “Tell me what is wrong.”

“Hold me, Hawk. Please hold me.”

His gentleness was almost too wonderful to bear. Perhaps he did not love her, but Claudia had been wrong about one thing—Alex was not content to continue that way. Oh, she was not.

Because Hawk shushed and rocked her in his arms, she cried the more. She wept for all the years without his arms around her, and for Claudia’s words, because they sliced too close to the bone to be borne.

Alex felt more alive than she had since the night they nearly made love beside the fire. She wanted more such experiences. But almost as much, she wanted to know why her husband had not come home to her. “Why, Hawk? Why did you not find us as soon as you returned from Belgium?”

He kissed her brow, her lips. He sighed and resettled them, pulling the corner of the counterpane over them, like a pair of Egyptian mummies.

Alex experienced heaven in his arms, but hell loomed in the weight of his silence. Her fear that he could not have borne to come home to her was so great, she wanted to weep the more for his hesitancy.

“If I could understand, myself,” Hawk said, several, long minutes later. “I could explain it, though my staying away had nothing to do with my father, I promise you.”

Silence held sway, until Alex initiated a second kiss, which at length came to its inevitable, breath-seeking conclusion. They looked into each other’s eyes, then, almost into each other’s souls, and she remembered how, over the years, he had a difficult time overcoming his natural reticence. And Alex understood, with sudden clarity and great relief, that his current silence might have nothing to do with her, but with the man he had become, at heart—as perhaps did his previous silence. “Just talk and I will listen,” she said.

Reluctantly, Hawk nodded, understanding somehow, that this might be the most important conversation of his life, though he was not certain why. “You might have noticed,” he said, closing his eyes against a hoard of painful memories, “that I was badly wounded in Belgium.” He looked to see if she would wince or pale.

She did not. “I had noticed.”

“I thought as much.” He sighed. “Blast it, this is impossible.”

“Just talk.”

He gave her a half nod, wishing himself anywhere but here, compelled to speak of things he’d as lief forget. “For months after Waterloo, I thought I would die at any moment. Then for a while, after I began to recover, I was sorry that I had not died.”

“Oh, Hawk, no.”

He crossed her lips with a finger. “Shh. You promised you would listen.”

She kissed the finger, humbling him. “I apologize. Go on.”

Hawk pulled her closer, settled her head upon his shoulder, and allowed himself the luxury of burying his face in her hair for a moment. Her violet scent soothed him. “I was ashamed, for one thing. Better men than I had died, you see. Braver men, smarter, stronger, worthier men, who had made something of their lives. What right had I to live, with them gone?”

Alex shook her head.

“I did not promise, Lexy, that you would approve, I simply promised that I would talk, and frankly it is deuced uncomfortable without your disapproval.”

“Forgive me.”

He nodded. “When I suspected I wanted to live again, I was, frankly, afraid.”

Alex bristled and Hawk regarded her. “I am admitting, here, that Sabrina might have been right. Never tell her so.”

“Never,” Alex promised solemnly. “Go on.”

“I
might
have used Sabrina and the boys as an excuse to linger in London. She is also family, never as strong as you, and they
were
in trouble. Ultimately, I was glad I stayed, because I helped them with a situation plaguing them.”

“Then I am glad you stayed, as well,” Alex said. “Perhaps she will tell me about it one day. Sabrina is another stubborn one, like you, who keeps her problems to herself.”

“And you do not?”

“Of course n— No. Perhaps. Sometimes.”

Hawk hugged her tight for a second.

Alex was uplifted by the beat of his heart at her ear and the strength and need in his crushing, almost desperate embrace. “After you helped Sabrina and the children, why then did you remain in town?” she asked, prodding him to continue.

“I think—I know—that I did not want to force my wretched presence upon you all, for then you would see how damaged I was.”

Hawk shook his head, for he could not even understand. “Inside, Lexy, I still feel, sometimes, as if I was broken in so many ways that I was not put back together properly, as if I … live now in someone else’s skin— I know it sounds fanciful, but I cannot explain any better. I am sorry.”

With the same tenacity required to ignore the abiding ache in her heart when she first believed him dead, Alexandra ignored the fact that Hawk did not mention missing any of them, not even Claudia and Beatrix. That he never seemed to have worried about them.

“Even on the day Sabrina came to tell me of your wedding,” Hawk continued. “I was not yet ready to face any of you.”

Alex felt him shudder inwardly. “Then, without knowing how I got there, I found myself standing at the mouth of hell, inside a church, and I saw you, a bride beside your bridegroom. A woman. Beautiful. About to be joined to another.” He kissed her brow and held her fiercely for several long, delicious moments.

“My first inkling that I wanted to live again slipped into my conscious mind as I began that everlasting trek up the aisle. I could not for the life of me imagine why I had been so eager to go marching off to war, in the first place, or why I stayed away so long after my return. I knew only that you were mine and I must stop you from going to another.”

Though they were not quite the words Alex wanted—that he had missed her, needed her, cared for her—they were a great deal more than she expected and she whooped in happiness, and tightened her arms around him, kissing him wherever she could reach.

Hawk wanted to tell Alex, then, how much he had missed her. He wanted to tell her so badly that to keep from admitting it, he kissed her. Otherwise, he would commit himself to becoming her husband in every way, and that, he could not do.

He kissed her slender fingers, her wrist, the pulse at her temple, her invitingly parted lips. And just when her eyes darkened and his body came to life, a hedgehog ran across the blankets.

Alex screamed in surprise.

“What the?”

They heard a familiar giggle.

“Beatrix Ann Jamieson,” Alex said. “You come out this instant.”

Bea rose from the floor on the opposite side of the bed and came around to their side.

Hawk held Alex close, while little Miss Mischief, behind her, placed her elbows on the bed and rested her chin in her small hands. “What’r’you and Alex doing up here in the middle of the day?”

Alex’s giggle was muffled against his chest, and as sanity returned, Hawk became more and more grateful to his Bumble Bea by the moment.

“We were, ah, taking a nap.”

“Oh, good.” Beatrix scrambled up onto the bed and climbed over Alex to squeeze herself into the tight place between them, crossing her shod feet and tucking her fists, as if to warm them, beneath her chin.