Linda Needham (10 page)

“Don’t be absurd. You’re not going anywhere.” Hell, he’d just gotten here.

“I have no choice. It’s actually the best for both of us.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re still not completely married, if you recall.”

“Oh, yes we are.” Or would be tonight.

“But not really. Not without accomplishing that wedding-night ritual. If you know what I mean.”

He knew exactly what she meant. Understood it quite deeply, especially here in this close pantry with its clouds of cinnamon and pepper. “A detail only.”

“A stroke of luck for both of us in the long run.”

“Stroke of luck?” He wasn’t feeling at all lucky at the moment.

“Are there any more apple jars, Lady Kate?”

“In just a minute, Jacob.” She frowned up into Jared’s face. “That way, you’ll find our marriage-that-never-was uncomplicated and quite easily annulled.
Best of all, I’ll require no maintenance from you. It’ll be as though we were never married.”

He caught her by the shoulders and made her look at him. “Are you mad?”

“I’m finally quite sane. Sad, but definitely sane.” She bent around him and, smiling fondly, she handed an apple jar into Jacob’s small, dirty hands. “There you are, dear. Now, Lord Hawkesly, if you’ll excuse me, I have more jars to move and a wagon to fill. If we can borrow such a thing—”

“Stop—”

“It’ll be full dark in three hours; I have to get the children fed, dressed, and to the parish church by then.” She fixed a withering scowled on him. “Now move, please. You’re in the way.”

Jared had faced down lethal assassins, powerful politicians, pirates, prelates, and the queen herself, but he’d never been so hard-pressed between a rock the raging sea.

She spread her fingers against his chest and gave a slight shove. “Now, go, please.”

He took hold of her wrist and held her hand against his chest. She must have felt his heart slamming around inside there—whacking against his ribs in frustration and blazing anger and a roaring lust.

“Truce,” he said, finally, breathing like a buck in rut and needing to think this out, because the lunatic woman seemed bent on following through with her threats.

“Truce?” She shrugged, sniffed at him. “What could that possibly mean?”

Damnable woman! “It means…” Hell, he didn’t know what it meant. “Peace. For the moment.”

“But it doesn’t mean that the children can stay.”

He sighed out the breath he’d been holding. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“A stay of execution?”

“In the morning, I said.”

He couldn’t believe that the woman was even thinking about turning him down. Dragging this clot of children through the dark countryside to God knew where, when he’d just offered her exactly what she’d asked for. But he could see the clockwork of her thoughts, the glistening intelligence behind her eyes.

“And now I have a personal question for you, sir.”

Doubtless another impossible one—will you let me keep the orphanage? “What is it?”

Hot little spots of pink bloomed high on her cheeks. She took a long breath and then whispered with an aching tenderness, “Where have you been for the last eighteen months?”

A simple question, but its softness stopped his heart, tanged his mouth with the taste of dry metal. He tried his best to say the right thing.

“Busy,” sounded good.

“Bastard.” She spun on her heel and would have started toward the door but he caught her arm and held her close.

“My business keeps me occupied.”

“Too occupied for your wife, I know. Even now. You haven’t the decency to offer me a simple explanation. That’s all right. I understand.”

“I’m in shipping.”

“Ballocks, my lord,” she whispered. “My father was in shipping and when we weren’t traveling with him my mother always knew where he was and that he was thinking about her. He was a good husband and a good father.”

But a lousy merchant and a damn fool who couldn’t even take care of his daughter.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m home now.”

“How disappointed you must be to find it full of orphans and refugees and a wife like me.” She went on before he could respond. “I’ll take your stay for tonight, my lord. But we’ll be gone from Hawkesly Hall by tomorrow evening. You can count on it.”

“A
ll right, children, go wash up. It’s time for supper.” Kate clapped her hands, knowing that her face must be flaming red as she brushed past Hawkesly and into the kitchen workroom.

Between the fragrant closeness of the pantry and Hawkesly’s overwhelming presence, and the blackguard’s insulting dismissal of her simple question, she could hardly breathe.

He was too
busy
to come home to her.

Good then, Hawkesly, you’ll not miss me when I’m gone.

She shooed the lagging children toward the wash-up room, sweltering from her simmering anger and the blatant heat of her husband’s stare.

Feeling exposed and oddly off-center, she ventured a glance at him and managed to say blithely, “You’re
welcome to stay here and eat with us tonight.”

He frowned. “You’re eating here?”

“I nearly always do. I promised them.” She carried a flour sack full of bread out of the kitchen and up the stairs into the dining room, not knowing what to make of Hawkesly trailing her so closely. “But you needn’t stay for our pot of chicken stew. Badger’s Run is serving not only trout and salmon but our best venison.”

He stopped at the dining room archway and Kate felt every moment of his watching her as she put a small loaf of bread to share between every two bowls.

“I’ll stay,” he said, clearly a challenge to her, though he looked thoroughly disgusted by the prospect and angered by the practical changes she’d had to make in the dining room. A shorter table, equally sized benches, completely stripped of breakables and delicate brocades.

Vagabond children, an invisible wife, and a plain-faced stew. Not exactly the sort of fare that her husband would be used to in his social circles.

A pity that he hadn’t departed in a huff; the last thing she needed was to have the man following her around, noticing things. Bumping into Elden, because Elden would be hard to explain. Not so much because he was hauling off the Hawkesly harvest to the warehouse at Mereglass for shipment elsewhere, but that she’d commandeered the
Katie Claire
for the purpose, without Hawkesly’s permission.

“Suit yourself, my lord—”

“
Jared
, blast it all! My name is Jared.”

Jared. She’d almost forgotten it, had never spoken it
aloud. And yet try as she might, she couldn’t get her tongue around it. It seemed far too intimate.

And intimacy of any kind was the last boundary she wanted to cross with him. An annulment was the answer to both of their separate problems.

“I’m sorry about your name…Jared, but we were never formally introduced. Not even that day we were married.”

“But we were indeed married. Bloody formal enough for anyone.”

Kate was saved from answering by a thundering rush of footsteps clumping up the stairs from the kitchen level and rolling toward them down the corridor.

“I must warn you that supper with the children can be deafening.”

With her next breath, the children came pouring past him through the doorway to stand at their places at the long table with its sawn-off legs.

Kate took her own place. “Jacob, if you’ll lead us in tonight’s grace.”

“Dear, kind Lord. Thanks for the apples. And our new blankets. And for making Margaret better. Your friend, Jacob Kilfinnan.”

Supper began with its usual chaos, the three older children running off to the kitchen to help bring up the serving bowls, the others sitting down in the rumble of scraping benches.

Hawkesly was still watching from the doorway. She was about to motion him in her direction, to squeeze him in beside her, but she heard a familiar voice.

“You c’n sit beside me, sir!”

Hawkesly’s puzzled gaze moved twice up and down
the table until it finally landed on Lucas, sitting just below him.

“There’s room right here, sir,” Lucas said, through his indomitable smile, patting the small space on the bench beside him.

Hawkesly met her gaze, his eyes dark with irritated impatience, his chest rising and falling with frustration. Maybe he’d turn and leave right then and there. Instead he squared his jaw, took two strides to Lucas’s side, and then lowered himself onto the bench.

And lowered and lowered, until his long, powerful legs bent sharply to accommodate the short table and the even shorter bench. The poor man was nearly folded in half.

And Lucas was beaming with pride.

The soup came like a much-heralded parade and the children ate every drop of it, then every crumb of bread and bite of apple pudding.

Hawkesly had taken but a spoonful, and a corner of the bread that Lucas forced upon him. He said little as the children chattered all around him, telling wild tales of sea serpents, and trying to best each other for his benefit. But his eyes followed each one carefully, his face a mask of disinterest.

Or something else, unreadably buried. Perhaps worth trying to uncover had she the time, or the inclination.

Supper ended as it always did, with the three Miss Darbys marching into the hall:

“Bowls to the right, children,” Myrtle announced in her singsong chortle.

“And spoons to the left.” Rosemary always, pur
posely, pointed to the right, and the children always called out her error and pointed to the left, laughing.

“Helpers follow me to the kitchen!” Tansy trilled, holding up her wooden spoon like a general’s baton.

They all looked toward Kate as she stood. “And all the rest of you have a few hours left to play inside before bedtime.”

And baths and a half-dozen stories. The routine had become dear to her, security for the children.

“Hooraayyyyyyy!” The room cleared a noisy moment later, leaving her eyes burning and her throat tight with tears that she couldn’t allow herself to shed. Not in front of her husband.

Things would be fine. She had started over once before, she could do it again.

“They eat like a pack of wolves,” Hawkesly said, studying the room as though suddenly assessing the full magnitude of his losses.

“We scavenge where we can.” Kate stooped to straighten the bench. “But I assure you, the children are grateful for anything at all. It pleases me that they finally have enough.”

He only grunted and stared at her.

“You didn’t eat much tonight. The three Miss Darbys would be injured to the quick to know that you didn’t like their stew.”

“I wasn’t hungry.” He set his mouth in a line. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see to something in my chamber.”

His chamber? Oh, no! Kate’s heart took an unbalancing spin as he left the dining room and started down the hall toward the massive main stairs in the foyer.

“No! Wait!
Jared
!”

He turned sharply, his eyes brightening, stirring a little storm in her chest. “Yes, Kathryn?”

“You can’t…ummm…” Kate made her way toward him, feeling a bit like a fox approaching a hound, prepared to leap out of his reach. “What I mean is that—”

“I can’t what? Can’t go to my own chamber?” He narrowed his eyes.

“Well, um, it’s just that it’s been more than two years since you’ve lived here.”

He raised a challenging brow. “But I do still live here. Don’t I?”

“Of course. You’re the master of Hawkesly Hall. And you’re home now.”

“And I have a bedchamber, don’t I? A large, comfortable suite of rooms, if I recall.”

Kate wanted to close her eyes and spend a wish that his room was just as he’d left it. Just
poof
and everything would change. But life didn’t work that way. “Yes, the master’s chamber is very comfortable. Attractively furnished.”

“Good. Then it hasn’t changed a whit, has it? Again, if you’ll excuse me.” He started down the hallway again, bound for the entry and the grand staircase.

“Let me do it for you…husband.” The word got his attention as she hoped it would.

He stopped in his tracks and then turned so quickly that Kate came within an inch of colliding with his broad chest. He was looking down that long, slightly skewed nose at her. “Will you then, wife?”

Will I what?
nearly came flying out of her mouth,
but she remembered just in time: She was going upstairs to get something for him, to keep him safely out of the upper level until she and the children were long gone.

“Certainly…husband. I’ll be right down.” Kate managed to walk around and then past him and all the way to the foot of the grand staircase before he stopped her with the darkness of his question.

“What is it you’re getting for me, exactly?”

“Ah…um…” Kate caught her hand around the thick, claw-footed newel and just stood there, looking at the man, dumbstruck to her knees. “I’ve forgotten.”

“Actually, I never said what I wanted from my bedchamber.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.” He strode toward her across the wide entry. “So I’ll just go myself. I won’t burden you.”

“But—” She tried to catch his elbow as he passed her on the stairs, but his muscles were as thick and as unpliable as the branch of an oak.

“Do come along, if you’d like.”

She would dearly love to stay behind and hide somewhere, but there were innocents to protect from his temper once he reached his chamber and she was the only one who could do it.

“Yes, I think I will come.” Knowing how guilty she must look, Kate took two steps at a time and passed Hawkesly just as they reached the upper floor railing.

“What the hell…” He stopped again to scan the two-storied stairwell, frowning at the wallpaper and the empty walls. “Where are my Joseph Wrights? And my Turners?”

Sold at auction in New York to pay for Indian corn
probably wasn’t exactly what the man needed to hear after agreeing to their little truce and letting the children stay the night.

“Your what?”

“My paintings.”

“Oh, taken down and stored away from the children.” A bald-faced lie, but with any luck he wouldn’t discover the truth until long after she and the children were out of his long and doubtless vengeful reach.

“And the porcelain case clock?” He nodded toward the corner where the clock once stood.

“Especially the porcelain case clock. Grady and the older boys learned cricket last spring from a party of young men from King’s College who were staying at Badger’s Run. And well, you know how boys are.”

Feeling that she was chattering her way toward blurting out the truth before he was ready to hear it, Kate smiled with a confidence she didn’t feel and started toward the master’s chamber.

And the trouble he would find there.

But the trouble was standing in front of the chamber door in her nightdress, holding tightly to the latch as though she’d fall over.

“Margaret!” Terrified for the girl, Kate scooped her into her arms and carried her through the doorway into the anteroom. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I’m feeling lots better.” Though the little waif was still just a bag of sticks.

“Tomorrow you’ll be better still, as long as you get your rest.”

“And eat lots of apple pudding.” Margaret grinned
broadly, then slipped her thin arms around Kate’s neck.

“Always the very best medicine.” Kate kissed her temple, wanting to believe that there was a little more flesh there tonight than the night before.

“Who’s that man over there?”

Kate had almost forgotten Hawkesly—as much as one could forget a thundercloud, or the threat of a typhoon. Ready to brave anything for the sake of the little girl in her arms, she turned slightly and found the huge man standing just inside the doorway.

“That’s Lord Hawkesly, Margaret. He’s…well, this house belongs to him.”

“So goes the rumor,” he said in a voice far more distant than the space between them.

“Lord Hawkesly, this is Margaret O’Banyan. She just arrived three days ago.”

“’Lo, sir.” Margaret had turned her head toward Hawkesly, though she stayed snuggled under Kate’s neck.

Hawkesly said nothing.

“If you’ll wait here, my lord, I’ll see that Margaret gets back into her bed, and then you and I can…discuss the matter.” Kate carried the feather-weighted girl into the next room.

But Hawkesly hadn’t waited in the anteroom: now he was standing in the doorway to the sickroom, his cold, dark expression speaking volumes. Condemnation and the end of any chance at a further reprieve. They might even have to leave tonight.

“The big dog came to see me today.” Margaret’s eyes were already drooping as Kate lowered her into the bed and pulled up the covers.

“Mr. McNair is a fine friend and protector, isn’t he?”

“He give me a kiss on my hand.”

Jared tried desperately to look away from his wife’s gentle touch, from the child and those hollow, beseeching eyes.

He’d seen enough of hunger, had felt it deeply enough to know that he didn’t want it in his house. Ravaged limbs, unseeing eyes, the stubborn dead who ought to know when to lie down.

And yet here his wife had been secretly crowding his home with the leavings of a famine. Caring too much for her own good, when there was nothing of substance that she could do.

Now pressing her lips to the girl’s forehead and whispering softly, “Miss Rosemary will be in with your milk in just a little while. Sleep well, sweet.”

“’Night, my lady.”

“I’ll leave the door open.”

She blew a kiss at the girl as she backed away from the bed, watching all the way, nearly bumping into him. But she turned at the last moment and caught his arm.

“This way, so we don’t wake Margaret again. She needs her sleep.”

He stopped her in the middle of the room, right where his marble-topped writing table had once stood. “Damn it, woman,” he whispered, “you’ve turned my bedchamber into a sickroom.”

“Because it happened to be the best choice of all the rooms in the house. Quiet, isolated from the other children, with a separate room for a nurse.”

“It’s the master’s suite. Sacrosanct. A man’s retreat. Mine.”

“Then I apologize,” she whispered, bewitching him with the scent of lilac as she wrapped her warm fingers around his wrist and led him out into the main corridor. “I had misunderstood your intentions completely.”