Ripe for Scandal (17 page)

T
he steady clip of the horses’ hooves was like the ticking of some fantastical instrument, measuring both time and distance,
taking Beau farther away from her life as Lady Boudicea and London both. Lord only knew when she’d next see Scotland. It hadn’t
seemed daunting until today. Until she’d said good-bye to her parents and actually left to go to a home of her own.

Of their own.

It didn’t help that Gareth was clearly miserable. He’d been unusually withdrawn since their encounter with Lady Cook, and
he’d barely spoken to her at all once they’d returned home from the cricket match, except to express his desire to be on their
way immediately. Whatever Lady Cook had said to him, it had stung worse than her crop, though the livid mark still stood out
across his cheek.

The thousandth green hill, studded with sheep and trees, rolled past the carriage’s window. Beau sighed and stretched until
her spine popped. She sagged back into the seat.

“What exactly does a gentleman farmer do?” Beau said, breaking the silence.

Gareth’s eyes snapped open, and the side of his mouth cocked up in a familiar, welcome way. “I believe he wears gaiters and
talks of nothing but bullocks. And perhaps pigs,” he added contemplatively.

“So you don’t know either,” Beau said with an attempt at a laugh. It felt easy, but there was an underlying constraint. She
couldn’t stop picturing the horror and heartbreak on Lady Cook’s face.

Gareth shook his head and fiddled with his cravat. “Haven’t the slightest idea, and not entirely sure I wish to find out.
Though perhaps I could be persuaded about the pigs.”

“I’m sure there must be a home farm. You can keep your pigs there, alongside the milch cow and chickens.”

“Very sporting of you,” Gareth said with a grimace.

“Even the queen of France does so at her little farm.”

“Have you seen it?” Gareth moved to the seat opposite her, drew her feet up into his lap, and began to unbuckle her shoe.

“No. I haven’t been to France since I was a little girl. The queen did pat me on the head and tell Mamma I was
très jolie
though. Have you seen it?”

“Me? No.” He stroked her foot, pushing his thumb into the tender underside. “Never seduced my way into the right bed, though
the Princess de Lambelle was a tempting option. I’ve heard the stories of perfumed lambs and pet chickens though.”

“No sheep,” Beau said. “Perfumed or otherwise.”

“No sheep?”

“I’ve dealt with enough sheep to last a lifetime. Scotland has more sheep than people, and each of them is dumber than the
next.”

“The people?” Gareth said with a grin.

“Them too,” Beau replied.

“You are severe today. First you attack my pigs, and now the queen’s sheep.”

“You don’t
have
any pigs.”

“Yet. I don’t have any pigs
yet
.”

“Be careful, or I’m going to get you pigs as a wedding present.” Beau narrowed her eyes and poked him with her stockinged
foot for emphasis. “And I’ll make you wear gaiters too, over a pair of old brogues.”

“Witch.”

“Popinjay.”

Gareth studied her with an evil glint in his eyes and then yanked her into his lap. Beau landed astride him, knees on the
seat, skirts riding up in a froth.

A rush of damp heat liquefied her core. Gareth’s knuckles brushed over the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and slick folds
between them as he freed himself from his breeches.

Beau bit down on the collar of his coat to keep from crying out as he entered her. Glorious and familiar, she struggled to
take all of him, rocking her hips, need almost frantic. Whatever he was thinking of now, it certainly wasn’t Lady Cook, and
that was triumph enough.

Gareth held her down by the shoulders and thrust upward. Beau gasped as their bodies met. He ground against her, holding her
down, and she nearly came on the spot. He’d never been so precipitous, or so rough, but her
body responded with what should have been humiliating swiftness.

Should have been. Beau could find no such emotion in the swirl of things running through her. There was shock, mingled with
excitement, and the thrill of possession. It was no wonder unmarried women were strictly warned not to bestow their favors.
Who could stop once they started?

Beau arched her back, and her nipples pressed almost painfully into the hard wall of her stays. Gareth’s mouth was on her
neck, lips and teeth surely leaving a mark. Beau locked her hand in his hair and pulled him away.

Gareth nipped at her again, and she gripped his queue with both hands, holding his gaze with her own. He let go of her shoulders
and slid his hands up her thighs until his thumbs rode over the hard peak of her clitoris as she rocked against him.

“Make me come,” he said. “All on your own. No help.”

“I’m to do all the work now?” she asked.

Gareth just smiled.

“Bastard.”

His smile grew, and he slid slightly forward so she had better leverage against the narrow seat.

“You’ve done this before!”

“And you haven’t,” he said provokingly. Beau sank down, rose up until he was barely inside her, and then rocked down hard
again. Gareth inhaled sharply, his hands tightening their grip. Beau found her rhythm, set her pace, and bent her every action
to the challenge. He was hers, and she meant to keep him.

The smirk slid off Gareth’s face, and his breathing
went shallow. He flexed beneath her. Hands starting to lift her away.

“Don’t you dare,” Beau said.

“But—”

“Wait.” She was so close. If he finished without her, she was going to kill him. “Just, one, more…” Her release rushed through
her, leaving her deaf, blind, and dumb.

Gareth groaned and attempted to unseat her again. Beau held on. “You could get pregnant.”

“So I could.” Beau clenched herself around him.

A deep growl was his only answer.

CHAPTER 23

L
ooks like someone beached a galleon and put a roof on it,” Gareth said with a hint of disgust.

Beau stood gaping at the Magpie quatrefoils that made up the façade of her new home. The branching
L
to the right was half-timbered in the same black and white, the color scheme broken only by the large windows that ran along
both floors, all of them made up of a dozen or more tiny panes.

A welcoming wisp of smoke curled up out of the middle bank of chimneys that rose from the heavy slate roof. Beau shivered
in the damp, watching the smoke disappear into the wet, gray skies.

“I think it’s beautiful,” she said, meaning every word.

“I think it looks cold and drafty,” he continued sourly, “and I’ll bet you a year’s pin money that it still has a turnspit
in the kitchen.”

“Lochmaben house certainly does. Though mother says she’s taking it out and replacing it with a French range next spring.”

A spatter of rain hit her as the door opened and an elderly couple stepped out to greet them. Gareth waved them back inside
and pushed Beau into the house before him, abandoning the coachman to find the stables on his own.

“Mr. Sandison?” the man said with a thick, musical accent that moved letters from one syllable to the next. “Peebles. And
this is my missus. We’ve made the house as ready as can be and hired on staff, as instructed by your father.”

The woman curtsied and hurried to take their coats and hats. “I’ve water on for tea, my lady. Come this way, through the Great
Hall. When you’re warm and rested, I can show you the house.”

Beau smiled at her husband, and Gareth raised his brows mockingly, daring her to continue liking the place. “Tea would be
wonderful, Mrs. Peebles,” she said. “Thank you.”

The housekeeper, her arms still overflowing with their coats, led them through an enormous, vaulted hall, down a paneled corridor,
and into a smaller parlor that boasted a fireplace that was merely large and a smattering of furniture, including a settee
flanked by tiny, spindly looking chairs.

“I’ll be back in a tick,” Mrs. Peebles said as she disappeared out the door on the other side of the room.

Beau spun slowly around, trying to take in all the ancient glory and then went to warm her hands by the fire. The logs crackled,
sap popping, spitting tiny embers out toward her skirts. “Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?” Gareth said, all innocence.

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s a Tudor pile, with a leaking roof, and the ghosts of murdered wives haunting the halls.
I don’t care. I like it.”

“Why not husbands?”

“Tudors and Elizabethans were always murdering their wives. Or didn’t you study history at Harrow?”

Gareth broke into laughter and dropped onto the settee, which squealed alarmingly and sank a bit closer to the floor. Beau
held her breath as she waited for it to give out, but it held. Gareth’s eyes roved over her. Beau caught his gaze and held
it. They’d been married a fortnight, and they’d hardly left the bedchamber except to travel from Dyrham to London, and thence
to Morton Hall.

The things you could do in a carriage… Just thinking about their trip set her pulse racing. And he was smiling again, though
the welt across his cheek remained to taunt her.

“You can stop thinking
that
too,” she said, half to herself, but mostly to Gareth. “We’re not going to scandalize the servants by being caught with your
tarse up my petticoats just as we’ve arrived.”

“My what?”

“Shakespeare,” Beau replied with a laugh. “I know you must have studied
him
.”

Gareth sputtered for a moment, looking highly aggrieved. “Thoroughly, but I don’t remember any such language in the Bard’s
work.” He paused, eyes quizzing her. “Are you suggesting that we wait to scandalize the servants at some future date, my little
libertine?”

“I fear it’s inevitable,” Beau said, well aware that what
he was saying was true, joy at the prospect singing in her veins. “You’re very badly behaved, you know.”

“I know.” Gareth smiled as he said it, shaking out the cuffs of his shirt like a bird fluffing its feathers.

Beau rolled her eyes and carefully took a seat beside him, brushing her lips hurriedly over his as she did so. Lady Cook be
damned, he was hers.

“The house has a fairy-tale quality,” she said, smoothing her skirts over her knees, pushing their absorbed warmth down into
her skin. “I can imagine Sir Lancelot bringing Guinevere here. Or Sir Gawain and his tusked-bride. It needs tapestries and
suits of armor and a great stag’s head over the mantle.”

“It needs chairs I’m not afraid to sit in,” Gareth replied, eyeing the chairs scattered about the room askance. “And very
likely every amenity invented after Elizabeth’s reign.”

“Are you determined to be dour?” Beau asked, starting to feel perturbed. “This is our house. Our home. I command you to find
at least one thing to like.”

Gareth screwed up his mouth thoughtfully and turned his head about, studying the room. Beau widened her eyes and refused to
smile. A flash of dimple caught her eye. Yes, he liked it too, loath as he was to admit it.

“I can find three. One”—he ticked it off on his fingers—“my wife likes it. Two, it’s far, far away from my family. Three,
did I already say my wife likes it?”

“Yes, but your wife
does
like it. And so shall you once we’ve settled in and the shock has worn off. Think of the parties. The Great Hall is practically
large enough to play cricket in, and just picture the size of the Yule log we
could burn in that fireplace. I swear it looked big enough to cook an ox.”

“It was probably designed to do just that,” Gareth said.

“Then we shall throw a fancy dress ball and roast an ox. I think your friends would find that terribly amusing. I know mine
would.”

Gareth smiled back at her, but his eyes were bleak again. Beau mentally cursed herself. She knew better than to bring up his
friends. Their desertion was an open wound, just as her father and brother’s refusal to accept the true version of events
was for her. They should have been falling over themselves with thanks.

Beau shoved the thought away. She was not going to let them spoil this. And she was not going to let any of it hurt Gareth
if there was anything she could do to alleviate the sting. Anything short of sharing him with Lady Cook, that was.