Linda Needham (20 page)

His eyes were huge and followed Kate’s every move. “No, ma’am,” he whispered.

“And as for today,” Kate said, running her fingers through Rachel’s thin hair. “I think a little rest is in order. I know that I’m tired out after last night.”

“I told them how good you are at reading us stories, Lady Kate.” Glenna nodded expectantly at Kate. “Could you?”

“If you’ll help me.”

“I will!”

“All right then,” Kate said, slipping an apron over her neck and tying it at the back, “shall we all meet in the library in a half hour for the exciting tale of
The Ugly Duckling
? Time enough, ladies?”

The three Miss Darbys all nodded, as always anticipating her needs. There would be no schoolwork today, the other children would be outside helping Ian and Elden clean up after the storm. Not making noise in the hallways.

But just as she thought Ian’s name, he came down the kitchen stairs and through the door. “Your pardon, my lady, but I just saw two gentlemen in the lane, ’bout a
quarter mile from the gate. Coming from the village way on a couple of hired horses.”

“Guests?” They weren’t expecting anyone. “Thank you, Ian.”

“Dressed like a couple of toffs, my lady. Like his lordship.” Ian grinned as he accepted a nut-topped biscuit from Tansy, then hurried out the back kitchen door.

Toffs, are they?
Kate wondered, as she hurried up the short flight of stairs into the main hallway. Couldn’t be early arrivals for next month’s hunt; Badger’s Run was closed until then.

Friends of Jared’s? A couple of stray members of the Privy Council? A visit from Trevelyan, his bloody self? Or Lord Grey, looking for his lost sacks of grain.

Feeling suddenly rumpled from roof to cellar, she peered out the front window at the drive up, hoping that the circle was free of livestock.

But there were the three goats, so very like the three Miss Darbys that she never let the thought linger in her mind for fear of it ambushing her at the wrong moment.

“Can’t resist those daisies, can you, girls?” Kate hurried out the front door, down the wide, stone stairs, across the gravel and into the unmowed patch of waist-high grass and flowers. She should keep it cut, but the animals seemed to love it here best, and gave such excellent milk.

“Come along now,” she said, grabbing Chloe’s and Buttercup’s bell collars, grateful when old Ginny followed them into the drive.

She’d gotten only a few yards when Grady came
running toward her from around the corner of the house, Justin and Jacob right on his heels, the little ones following.

“Hey! Can we help you, Lady Kate?”

“Please do, Grady. They need to be penned for a few hours.” Kate handed off the goats to the older boys, then dropped to her knees and caught the little ones as they surrounded her.

“Does your head still hurt, Lady Kate?” Mera asked, tugging on Kate’s apron. “Miss Rosemary said you were sleeping.”

“Miss Tansy said you and his lordship fished us more friends right out of the ocean!” Healy insisted on planting a kiss on Kate’s cheek.

“My head is much better, thank you. And we didn’t exactly fish them out, Healy. But we do have new friends.” And visitors coming any time now.

“C’n we go play with the new children, Lady Kate?”

“Maybe you can meet them all tonight, Dori. They’re very tired after their travels. So you must all be as quiet as you can today.”

“We will!” Jacob shouted as he strained to move Buttercup by her collar. “Come on!”

But the goats were heading back for the patch of daisies, dragging the three boys with them.

“Not this way, girls!” Kate jumped into the path of the goats, waving her arms, which brought on a flight of flapping arms and shouting from the children.

“Hey, who’s that comin’?” Jacob had popped his head up from the knot of goats and children and was stabbing his finger toward the stone gates.

Kate looked up from her struggles with the goats just in time to see two tall riders come loping easily through the entrance.

Toffs, to be sure.

“Stay right here, children,” she said to her little mob, though she did welcome Mr. McNair padding along behind her, poking his wet, reassuring nose into her palm.

The riders met her halfway around the circle, both dismounting with a flourish, both as handsome as her husband, as tall and broad-shouldered.

The one with the boyish, lopsided smile stepped forward with a charming nod. “Good morning, madam. This is Hawkesly Hall, isn’t it?”

“Indeed, sir. And I am Lady Hawkesly. May I help you?”

The towering man drew back as though she had just stunned him. “You’re Lady Hawkesly?”

He shared an unmistakable look of amazement with his friend, who then stepped forward with a fleet but appraising sweep of his gaze. “You’re Jared’s wife?”

“I am. I’m Kathryn.”

“Well, dash me!” the man said, beaming at his friend, who grinned at her with a disarmingly sheepish slant.

“Do forgive us, Lady Hawkesly. I am Ross, Viscount Battencourt and this is Andrew, Viscount Shefford. We are—”

“Don’t believe a word they say, wife!”

Kate whirled at the sound of Jared’s voice rumbling across the courtyard, staggered at its power to start her heart thumping.

He was striding down the wide stairs, collarless, his hair a little mussed, clutching a blanketed bundle against his shoulder as though he’d been a father for years.

“Good God, Ross, I never thought I’d see it!”

Ross laughed and nudged Drew with a rowdy elbow. “Bloody hell, he’s a quick one! What’s the man been up to out here in the country?”

“Plenty, I warrant!”

Now the children were swarming toward Jared, grabbing hold of his coattails as he kept up his jaunt along the gravelly drive, the goats dragging the boys, and Mr. McNair leaving his post beside Kate at a lope.

“Keep away from the blackguards, Kate, they’re dangerous.” But Jared was smiling broadly at her and then at his visitors.

She hurried toward him too, her pied piper, and held out her arms for the baby as they met in the midst of the children. “How is she?”

“Wriggly,” he whispered, smiling as he brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers, his eyes sparkling. “You look beautiful this morning.”

“Why, thank you.” A blush came rushing out of her bodice. “Now, may I hold her, Jared, or are keeping her for yourself?”

If he took the last as a challenge to his compassion, then she’d succeeded, though he looked so perfectly at home surrounded by the children and the goats. He lifted a dark brow and grunted as he carefully handed her the baby.

Such a spindly bundle of warmth and wriggling. No longer able to resist, Kate finally pulled aside the edge
of the blanket and got her first look at the sweet little face.

“She’s lovely.” With a button of a nose and a cherub’s mouth, a downy crown of silvery blond hair, and deep blue eyes that were looking intently back at her. And all the harrowing, heartbreaking signs of the famine that had stolen the child’s family from her and brought her here.

“You’re home now, little one,” she whispered against the soft little curls as she looked up at Jared. “Home to stay.”

H
ome to stay.

Jared thought his heart might just leap out of his chest, launching itself toward Kate and the baby in her arms and the innocent little faces in the crowd around them. He knew that Drew and Ross were standing outside the knot of children, the pair of them lathered with questions, but he couldn’t care in the least. Couldn’t drag his gaze from his wife and the baby, the tenderness in her voice, in her eyes, the love pouring from her.

Couldn’t speak for the huge lump in his own throat.

“Is that the new baby?” Dori said, jumping like a jack to be level with Kate. “Lemme see her, please.”

“One quick look, children,” Kate said, bending slightly to the throng, “and then you must all go help pen up the goats.”

Jared was overwhelmed by a feeling of protectiveness as he watched each child bend into the baby’s face and grin or giggle or plant a kiss on the top of her head and then go speeding off toward the garden.

A special greeting from each of them, the little one’s misfit, ready-made family.

“Not you, Mr. McNair.” He grabbed the hound’s collar just as he went diving toward Kate and the baby with his great lolling tongue and that goofy smile on his muzzle.

“Come along, silly doggy!” Mera scratched Mr. McNair behind the ears, and the dog went galloping off after the dark-haired girl who was wearing Kate’s rumpled hat.

Kate stood, her gaze passing between the baby and him with an equal amount of adoration. Then she turned all that staggering radiance on Drew and Ross.

“Welcome again to Hawkesly Hall, gentlemen.”

“Yes, welcome, Andrew, Ross. Old friends of mine, Kate.” Jared caught her around the small of her back, fitting his hand into the curve of her waist, over that soft, slight rise at her hip. “And this is Lady Hawkesly, my wife.”

“We’ve met your lovely bride, Hawkesly,” Ross said, giving a sudden study to the baby. “But whose ch—” He stopped and scratched his head.

“Husband, I promised the children a story. I think I’ll leave you to your guests for the moment.” Kate smiled up at him, mischief in her eye. “You gentlemen will be staying with us, of course.”

“You’re most kind, Lady Hawkesly,” Drew said. His
eyes had grown wide and staring as though he too had just begun to add up the months and the years and the age of the child tucked up in Kate’s arms.

She started away a step and then turned back to Jared, touching him lightly in the crook of his elbow. “Be thinking of a name for her, Jared,” she said, obviously playing this to Ross and Drew’s fertile imaginations. “Something soft and sweet-smelling.”

“The sooner the better, wife.” It must have been just the right amount of scandal for her and her audience: She raised her brows, and his friends went stone silent.

He watched her go. They
all
watched her. Jared, wanting to gloat openly about that fine, if unfondled, bottom and her slender waist, Ross and Drew because they both deserved to burn, to envy him his good fortune.

“Christ, man, I had wagered that you wouldn’t make it into your bride’s bower on the first try, and now you’ve gone ahead and populated the whole bloody countryside in record time!”

“Jared, whose child is that?”

Whose child indeed? “We don’t know, Ross.”

“You don’t know?” Ross barked the question. “Jared, do you know what you’re saying?”

“And what happened to the pair of you, Hawkesly?” Drew pointed to Jared’s forehead. “You both look as though you’ve been in a fistfight; scrapes and bruises. And I know that you’d never lay a hand on a woman. Even given the untenable position she’s put you into.”

God, he was enjoying this; twisting the blackguards on the pointy end of a scandal. Making them sweat for him.

“What position would that be, Drew?” He started rambling slowly toward the house, knowing they would follow with their horses.

“Now see here, Jared, you know that I would never presume to disparage your wife’s character, but—”

“Because I would tear out your heart and throw it to the hogs.” Jared kept up his steady pace, hiding his smile, certain that his friends were only looking out for his interests. Even more certain that he would do the same for them.

Ross caught up with him, his brow deeply fretted. “What Drew is doing such a piss-poor job of saying is that…. well, dammit, Jared, you’ve been gone all this time—”

“And she’s got all these children about the place…” Drew added from his other flank.

“Wait! Had Lady Hawkesly been married before you? Yes, that’s it! She’s a widow.”

“No, Ross, I’m Kate’s first, and only, husband. There’s been no one else before me.”

“Excuse me for being blunt, but that’s an infant she was just carrying.”

“Not quite two months, Ross. Or so.” Jared picked up his pace toward the house.

“She doesn’t know?”

“Or won’t tell you?”

“What the hell kind of excuse is that, Jared?” Drew hurried alongside him. “Where did she say the babe came from? The stork?”

“The ocean, actually.” Jared laughed at the absurdity.

“The ocean? And you believed her?”

“I was there.”

“You couldn’t have been, you were with us two months ago. Hey, wait just a damn minute.” Drew caught his arm and stopped him at the bottom of the stairs, lightning shooting from his eyes. “What the devil are you talking about?”

Oh, what bumbling investigators they had become. Off on a tangent when the facts were right in front of them.

“The new baby. Aren’t you?”

“My God, Ross, I thought you told him where babies came from.”

“He told
me
!”

Drew dragged his fingers through his hair. “Jared, your wife didn’t get that baby out of the ocean!”

“Yes, she did, Drew.” Jared finally couldn’t keep his laughter inside his chest. “Last night during that storm. Like I said, I was there when the little fool rescued the baby, a priest, and two other children from a boat that had run aground on the rocks.”

“She what? She rescued them?”

“Just in time, as it turned out.” He shook off the sharp memories of the night, the incalculable loss if she hadn’t acted when she did and the way she did, if she’d been swallowed by the sea. “She’s a hardheaded woman, and there was a moment or two when I thought I’d lost her.”

“Can’t you see the blighter’s been leading us on a merry chase, Drew?” Ross laughed and tied his roan’s bridle to the iron hitch ring set into the stone block. “That’s where all those scrapes came from.”

“Is this true, Jared?”

“Afraid so, Drew. No scandal here.”

“Then what about all the rest of the children? Don’t tell me she rescued all of them as well.”

That was the undiluted truth of it. Kate, the champion of the innocent. “She did just that, Drew. Rescued all of them, one way or another.”

Had rescued so many other people along the way.

Even Jared himself had begun to feel the distinct tug of her unyielding resolution.

“So all these children are yours?”

His? Jared swallowed, caught in his own trap. Unable to imagine the hall without them.

Without Kate. Without her respect.

“Come on, let’s go into the house,” he said like the coward he was. “We’ll find someplace quiet and you can report your findings. I’ll send someone for your horses.”

He led them into the house and opened the door to the south parlor, expecting the worst, but finding the usual half dozen hobby horses standing in the middle of the floor, a nursery’s worth of doll cradles, dolls sitting up in the chairs, toy soldiers lined up along the windowsills.

Neat, but well used.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” he said, moving the herd of horses out of the way of the settee.

“You sure fell into a patch of clover, Jared,” Ross said, dropping his saddlebag on the low table. “Your wife is an unimaginable beauty.”

Drew snorted and stood frowning, with his arms crossed high on his chest, obviously disgusted with himself. “And don’t I feel like a damned fool.”

“Kate will find your mistake in judgment amusing, Drew.”

“You’re not going to tell her what Ross and I were accusing her of?”

Jared laughed. “Believe me, she already knew what you were thinking. So take care. The woman’s mind works at twice the speed of mine.”

“Ha, so she did toss you out of her bed when you tried to climb in the first night.”

He’d been expecting this ambush, had composed a dozen believable replies, but preferred, “Bugger off, Drew. Now sit and tell me why you’ve come. Unless it’s just to plague me on my honeymoon, then I’ll thank you to leave.”

“You were right, Drew. She tossed him out of her bed.”

Jared ignored Ross’s jibe. “So, has the queen decided to take her grand tour of the Irish counties?”

The pair of them gave him the once over, but Drew finally said, “Postponed until late next summer.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t change her mind.” Because he’d been thinking hard about Kate’s view of the mess in Ireland, the motives and the mistakes. The responsibility. Still a powder keg.

Jared sat down hard in a chair opposite Ross, the low table between them. “So what did you do about the
Pickering
?”

“She’s been confiscated by the navy.” Ross flipped open his saddle bag and drew out a folio. “The good Captain Sewell is clapped in the brig until his trial, or until he cooperates, the grain in Liverpool, the guns commandeered by the Portsmouth armory—”

“And the feckless rebels waiting for the ship in Dublin arrested as conspirators.”

“So that’s the sum of it?” Jared sat back, feeling unsettled at the ease of the outcome.

“The end of the affair of the
Pickering
,” Ross said. “But the beginning of a larger mystery that’s causing all kinds of outrage and indignation at Whitehall and Westminster.”

“What is it? Another Effington scandal? Or has George Hudson finally been revealed as the crook he is?”

“Not that I wouldn’t welcome Hudson’s end, but that’s not it.” Drew had been sorting through a stack of paper, found what he was looking for, then handed Jared a thin, bound book. “Hardly worth our efforts, but Grey seems to believe the matter is a major threat to national security.”

“A scandal, at least,” Ross said.

Jared paged through the book. “An accounting journal?”

Drew leaned back against the settee, propping his boot across his knee. “We picked it up yesterday at one of Lord Grey’s warehouses in Liverpool.”

“Don’t tell me we’re to investigate the man’s clerk for embezzling?”

“For theft on a grand scale, carried out over the last six months. Frankly if the mousy Mr. Parkhurst is the culprit, he’s the finest actor I’ve ever seen. No, it’s more involved than that.”

Then Jared remembered their earlier messages. “Ah, yes, Russell and Trevelyan have suffered the exact same losses.”

“Beginning exactly at the same time. Charles Wood
has put his best auditors from the Exchequer on the investigation.”

“Hardly a threat to the nation,” Jared said, trying to rub the tightness out of his forehead, but running his thumb into a flinching bruise instead. “Has any of the stolen grain been traced? Grain sacks are sometimes marked with the name of the shipper or the granary. And has the grain been milled or is it unmilled?”

Ross lifted a shoulder. “Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. I suppose it was unmilled. Just arrived from Ireland.”

“Ireland? I doubt that, Ross. Exporting food from a country that’s starving to death?” Jared picked up Grey’s account book again and flipped through the pages. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Unless you’re an absentee English landlord, like Lord Grey,” Drew said as he stood and walked to the window.

Here was a clue, right in the journal. Facing pages of import entries from Dublin and Wexford and Belfast. All of them made in the last year.

“Bloody hell,” Jared said, flattening the book against the low tabletop and running his finger down a telling list, “here’s a bit of evidence. Wheat and barley, pigs and cattle, eggs, oats…” And all of it from Ireland.

Ross was leaning over the book, staring at the figures. “Evidence?”

“When the newspapers get hold of this story, it’s going to be flatly embarrassing to the three most important men in the government. And that is a very large signature. Because whoever has arranged this theft has chosen his victims with great political care.”

Drew nodded. “Ah, a protest.”

“A rather quiet way to protest, isn’t it?”

“Which is just the point, Ross. A practical theft carried out by a person with politics on their mind and mouths to feed by the thousands.”

“Who would do that?” Ross sat back against the chair and stretched out his legs.

Besides Kate? Jared nearly laughed at the speed of that wildly preposterous thought.

He shook his head of his wife’s suddenly distracting smile, her scent of lemon and cinnamon, and leafed through the other pieces of paper now strewn all over the table.

“What is the Ladies’ Charitable League?” he asked, scanning a list of warehouses that Ross and Drew had made note of while they were in Liverpool.

“Just another of those relief committees’ warehouses,” Drew said, sifting through the account book again. “Must be three on the Brunswick Dock alone—”

“A relief committee?” Ross stood and ran his fingers through his hair. “Isn’t this suddenly getting a little close to the mark?”

Jared had already made the connection and felt a guilty twinge. “Grain imported from a starving Ireland goes mysteriously missing from fat English warehouses owned by the Lords Russell and Grey, and that bastard Trevelyan. Add a zealous Irish famine relief organization and we’ve got ourselves a clever criminal conspiracy.”

“Ha!” Ross clapped Jared on the back. “And Drew thought that coming here would be a waste of time!”

“I was just tired of your face, Ross.”

“Enough, boys. Looks like you’re going back to Liver
pool for a little spying on the Ladies’ Charitable League and any other relief committee you come across.”

Drew snorted. “At least this time we won’t have to sit in a palm tree trying to look like a pair of coconuts.”