Storm (13 page)

* * * *

"Don't let Dowty upset you," he told her, concerned when he brought her hat back and saw her pale cheeks. "He's just a wretched pest." When she took her bonnet from his hands, he noticed her trembling. It had turned a little colder— one fat cloud having blown lazily across the sun to lurk there nonchalantly— but it would soon warm up again once that cloud passed. "Come on, let's walk this way. Do you need my coat?"

She shook her head.

"Aha! Something to eat! That must be it. That'll cheer you up and put some color back in your cheeks." He led her over to a stall selling pasties and bought one for Flynn too. "You must have one of these," he told her. "I guarantee it's better than anything you'd get in London."

Dowty— that damned menace! He should have sent the scoundrel packing long since, but Joe Dowty was a slippery fellow, always lurking around when and where he wasn't wanted, but seldom found when actively sought.

Good thing Sally had listened to him this time and taken herself off a safe distance. He had to admit to being a little surprised that she finally did as he suggested.

"You mustn't mind the things that blustering old fool says," he told Kate. "He doesn't know what he's saying half the time and is drunk the other half."

"I know," she replied finally. "I have some experience of the type."

Well that didn't make him feel any better.

"Is that the help you gave to Sally White?" she asked, her voice barely above a murmur. "When I saw her at your farm that day?"

"Yes. I gave her a little money to get away from him."

"Fifty pounds?"

"No," he replied, chagrinned. "She didn't tell me it was that much she owed. And I told her not to pay him, but to leave and get far away."

"Yes." She nodded, looking thoughtful, staring out at the sea.

Storm shifted his feet and scratched the side of his nose. "I would have done the same for any woman who came to me for help. Not just for Sally White."

Kate turned her head and squinted up at him. The cloud had finally moved, allowing the sun to warm the bay again. "Would you?"

He waited, so badly wanting her to tell him that she needed his help. But she was stubbornly independent.

"Shall I call Joss over to cheer you up? It seems he's better at it than I am." He took a large, angry bite of his pasty.

"Why do you say that?"

"I've never seen you laugh so much as you did when you danced with him."

She watched his lips as he chewed hard. "Have you considered that I might be laughing
at
him, rather than with him?" Her point gently made, she reached up with her gloved thumb and brushed a pastry crumb from the corner of his mouth. "As for me cheering up, I can assure you Mr. Dowty won't spoil my day. I've dealt with worse than him. Now I ought to find Flynn. I've left him to Olivia's watch for far too long and I'm sure she's been spoiling him." With that she walked across the sand to join her son.

Storm's heartbeat was still loud in his ears. He wondered if he had a touch of sunstroke, for he was feeling a little strange. Excitable. Not his usual stoic self. Should have worn a hat.

Chapter Eleven

Olivia introduced her to the tall, dark man at her side— a man who really needed no introduction.

"This is my fiancé. Mr. True Deverell."

They had not met formally before, although she had seen him at the farm auction, of course.

He was much as she'd imagined— darkly handsome— but younger in appearance than one might expect of a man well into his forties. He had a formidable presence that made him stand out in the crowd, and Kate could see how he must rule over his notorious gentleman's club when he was there. He had no need to speak a word; one could feel the energy thrumming quietly away inside the man. An energy, so rumor had it, that could turn dangerous in the blink of an eye if he was crossed.

"You've made quite a stir, Mrs. Kelly," he said to her. "How do you find life on the moor? Very different to London."

"Yes, but I am finding my way. Slowly."

"A good life can be made here," he told her. "If one makes the effort."

"I hope so. That's why I came so far. And I'm not afraid of hard work."

"So I hear." His eyes were a very strange color— almost silver. "I admire you, Mrs. Kelly. You don't let anyone stop you from getting what you want. Too many folk are held back by fear, because they've never really known what it is to fight for survival. To have only yourself to rely upon and the world against you. But once you've known that, there is no such thing as fear left."

It was as if he looked right inside her and read her like a book.

"My son appears to have recovered from his disappointment about the Putnam farm."

"Yes."

"I can see why. You've swept him off his feet. Just when I had begun to despair of ever seeing the boy unsure of himself."

She protested that they were merely neighbors and she had not done anything to his son's feet, but when he smiled it changed his face from rather fierce to warmly mischievous, reminding her of Storm.

"Don't embarrass Mrs. Kelly," said Olivia briskly, taking Kate's arm. "She's a proper lady, not one of these giggling hoydens chasing after your son."

He bowed, quickly straightening his lips, but not quite succeeding in dampening that wicked gleam in his uniquely colored eyes. "Whatever you say, my sweet."

"And I'm sure if Storm loses his footing, it's due to his own clumsiness. As I recall, he's not the only Deverell who occasionally fails to look where he's going."

While Olivia gently chided her soon-to-be husband, Kate looked around and saw Flynn laughing with his new friend, Sam Smith— the son of Mrs. Blewett's niece. He had probably not even noticed she was gone; he was enjoying himself too much to care. Good. She wanted the boy to know simple happiness, not to have any of those concerns she suffered. If she could, she would protect him from all the world's ills.

The sun was high again now, the clouds vanished. And the pasty was really very good. Quite delicious. She might have to eat Flynn's herself if he didn't soon come over and take it.

What a beautiful day it was. Yes, one nosy fellow accidentally calling her "Kitty" would not spoil it for her. As she'd said to Storm, she'd dealt with much worse.

Later, when she found her escort again he had purchased something else for Flynn.

"The parrot! Ma, look! My parrot! Mr. Deverell got it for me!"

She sighed heavily. "What are you doing with that noisy bird, sir? I can only hope you're taking it home with you."

"Now, Mrs. Kelly, you cannot deny it's a beautiful creature and it will add a spot of color to your house. Besides, your boy is very fond of it."

Flynn leapt up and down with excitement. "We can keep him, ma, can't we? I mean...
Mama
."

"The man who sold it, said he picks up words," Storm added. "He's very clever. Lucky too, apparently." Wide-eyed, he looked at her, holding the caged bird high for her approval. At that moment Flynn was looking at her with the same expression, the similarity quite striking and more than a little amusing.

What could she say?

"Noisy birrrd," the parrot croaked, eyeing her through the bars of its cage.

"Oh very well. But you will clean the thing out and feed it yourself, young man. I have enough to do. Perhaps it will teach you some responsibility."

"Thank you, mama. You are the best mother in all the world."

"I'm certainly the longest suffering."

Deverell passed the cage to her son. "You must take good care of him, Master Flynn."

"I will, Mr. Deverell, thank you, sir."

Marvelous how polite the boy could be when he'd succeeded in getting his own way.

It struck her then, as Storm hunkered down to the boy's height and she watched the two of them sharing a lively discussion about the bird, that they were alike in many ways— both trying to her nerves and her discipline. But Flynn had never had a reliable male influence in his life, never had a man to look up to. Seeing him with Storm Deverell she couldn't help but smile.Later, on the way home with Flynn drowsily content on her lap, the parrot cage beside her and Storm driving the horses, she looked back at the sun as it began its long melt into the sea and said, "It has been a lovely day."

"Yes," he said. "It's a good day to be living." And she knew that feeling too, for the first time in her life.

* * * *

Back at the farm, he took the parrot inside and she carried Flynn.

"So now you have met my father," he whispered. "What did you think of him?"

"He seemed quite gentlemanly. In some ways much as I'd imagined. In other ways not at all." She looked thoughtful. "He rather reminded me of a little boy on his best behavior."

"He's been a great deal happier with Olivia in his life. Less restless."

"I like her very much. She was kind to me from the moment we met."

"Why wouldn't she be?"

Kate looked over her shoulder as she carried her son into the bedroom. "That's the difference between you and I, Mr. Deverell. You always expect the best of people. I expect the worst."

While she was gone from his view he thought about that and how sad it was.

The light was fading now, the sky a blurred watercolor of burnt orange and lilac. This evening there was no breeze at all and the stillness felt close, expectant as it sometimes was before thunder rumbled overhead. He reached up and found perspiration in the creases of his forehead. Wasn't like him at all to be so nervous. Glancing over at the bedroom door again, he slid his fingers into his coat pocket and fumbled for the gift he kept there. Perhaps it was forward to buy her anything. She might throw it in his face again, just as she had done to the compliment he once gave her.

But he knew she liked pretty things, even if she thought it was wrong to say so.

At last she emerged from the other room and closed the door quietly.

"I think you've never had a real friend or anyone who cared about you," he blurted in a breathless whisper.

Her pale fingers fluttered against her dark skirt. Her face, partly in shadow, was unreadable just then, but he heard the forlorn waver in her voice. "Not everyone has been as fortunate as you. With so many friends and family."

"Then I was right and you did not have that."

"No." She was removing her gloves as she came slowly into the dappled bronze light through the window. "I wanted better for Flynn."

"Now you found it."

"Have I?"

He saw her eyes now, their somber gaze lifted shyly to his, the lashes seemingly heavy.

"Yes," he whispered.

It was now or never, he decided.

"Turn around." He didn't want those eyes glaring at him when he showed her what he'd bought from the stall at the fete.

"Why?" She frowned.

"Kate Kelly, will you trust me for once?"

She hesitated, smoothed a hand over her bodice and then, finally, turned her back to him.

Storm stepped up behind her and placed the velvet choker carefully around her slender neck. His fingers were trembling as he tried to fix the silver clasp so it took longer than it should and the dim light didn't help.

With a startled gasp, she raised a hand to feel the enamel butterfly in the center.

"I know you'll complain." His gusty sigh disturbed a curl of her hair. "But I saw this and thought of you. I couldn't very well buy a gift only for the boy, could I?"

"You most certainly didn't need to buy either of us a gift, Mr. Deverell."

He touched a delicate copper curl at her nape and then let his finger slowly trace downward, over the silver clasp and along her shoulder. "Don't tell me what I need and what I don't." It came out of him on a gruff breath. "No one knows that but me."

She spun around and tipped her head back. "It isn't proper." But her fingers still felt the butterfly, tentatively exploring its shape. Small, slender fingers, the nails chipped now after her weeks on the farm.

"You deserve lovely things," he whispered, aching to touch her again. She was so close, but once more he reminded himself to be patient. Like a skittish sparrow she would fly off the moment she felt uneasy. "And I want to be the one who gives them to you." Again he was aware of the newness of these feelings pulsing powerfully through him.

Her lashes swept down, finally giving in to their burden. "Do you think you're the first man who has said that to me?"

No. As much as it pained him to think of it, he had no doubt she'd received many other offers before.

His jaw clenched so hard his teeth hurt and his head began to ache. Unable to resist another moment, he put his finger gently under her chin and lifted it, making her look at him from beneath that dark fringe of wary lashes. "I'd like to be the last. The only one for the rest of my life."

As his fingers stroked down her neck to that delicate enameled butterfly he felt her swallow. "What...what are you asking me?"

What
was
he asking her? He had no idea. In all his thirty years, Storm had never bought such a frivolous, merely decorative gift for a woman. All he knew was that he wanted to keep looking at her and would find any excuse to do so. He'd wanted that from the first moment their eyes met in that over-brimming river.

But he barely knew anything about the damnable woman and she would not divulge her secrets.

Frustrated and confused, he drew his fingers back through his hair and groaned softly. His chest hurt. Everything hurt, in fact. When he looked at her it hurt worse, yet he still wanted to keep looking.

Suddenly she rose up on tip toe, put her hands around his face and pressed her lips to his. He was so startled he let her do it. The sweet softness penetrated all that pain he felt, broke it apart and scattered it.

Coming back to his senses, he grabbed her waist, tugging her up against his body. Her scent surrounded him. It was not anything distilled from a bottle— he was almost sure of that. But it was captivating, warming his blood like a glass of hot punch on a cold winter's eve.

She pulled away slightly, but he didn't let her go far. "Kate," he whispered, the sound full of longing. And then he devoured those tender lips again, crushing her in his embrace.

* * * *

His heat was almost too much for her, his strength overwhelming, his kiss greedy and demanding.

Coming from a man always so calm and steady, it was shocking.

Terrifying.

Appalling.

And—
Dear God Above
— she needed it.

For those few desperate moments she forgot everything else and became drunk on his kiss. She was dizzy with it, her bones softened to useless mush, her mind likewise.

All day spent in his company, getting to know him, had broken the barriers she tried to set between them. It was hopeless to resist the desire inside her. What she had meant as a friendly kiss of gratitude for their day out, soon turned into a tumult of passion.

His hands held her to him and she dared, at last, to let her yearning fingers stray across his shoulders. She felt the muscles flexing, all that power barely controlled. How many times had she watched him at work in his fields, her eyes afraid to look but secretly admiring just the same? His thick, powerful neck, still warm from the sun's heat, and his hair with that teasing glint of gold— shy treasure appearing through her fingers as she combed them through it. His rough cheek brushed her face and then his teeth nipped the side of her neck.

She trembled, her heart pounding, her body afire.

"We weren't supposed to do this," she gasped, pulling on his hair. "We had an agreement."

He looked into her eyes, setting her slowly down on her feet again. "You kissed
me
first."

"That's... beside the point," she muttered, her fingers fluttering down the lapels of his coat as if she'd only meant to straighten and tidy his apparel, not to feel the man beneath at all.

"Beside the point?" He chuckled, low. "Like it was beside the point that you got yourself stuck in that river?"

"I'm not going to argue with you about the details of who kissed whom first, sir, I'm just saying... we shouldn't have."

"
You
shouldn't have."

She groaned, despairing of herself in that moment. "I only meant to thank you for the butterfly." Pert, she added, "You complained before that I didn't thank you prop—"

Storm had raised his hand and brushed the pad of his thumb across her lips. "Kiss me again," he commanded softly.

How could such an apparently good man be such a bad influence on her, she mused. "But if I do, what then? Where will it end?" And where would she be? Her heart had been broken before and although the pieces had healed, it was not the same innocent, open, untainted heart.

"When you set your horses for that river, Kate, were you thinking then about where it would take you?"

"No. And look what happened!"

"Precisely." His eyes reached into hers, the blue so deep and cloudless. "You met me."

But it was all simple for him. For men it was easy. And he'd boasted to her before of how he managed to escape trouble.

Kate closed her eyes. "I... I have loved only one man before."

After a moment, he said, "You mean you have only had one lover?"

She nodded, her throat tight.

"Flynn's father, I assume."

Again she nodded.

"And?"

Kate licked her lips where they felt bruised by his forceful kiss. "He was nothing like you."

"Is that good or bad?"

When she opened her eyes a slight frown had lined his brow. May as well get it over with, she thought with a tense sigh. "He abandoned me," she whispered. "We were never married."

He said nothing.

Unable to look at his expression, she stared instead at his chin and the tiny gold hairs picked out by the dying light.

"He broke my heart," she confessed, the words wrenched out of her on a halting breath. How she hated to admit that weakness, but this man's honesty forced it out of her.

Still no response, no movement. His hands were on her waist, fingers spread.

Her heartbeat all over the place, she exclaimed, "I should like to trust you're a good man, Storm Deverell. But I don't know how to do that! I don't know how to trust anyone anymore." She was balanced precariously on a cliff edge, like that rock at Bothack Bay. Part of her wanted to take that step over and let him catch her. But another part held her back.

At last he moved, raising one hand to her face, he swept a curl back from her brow. "You trusted Reverend Coles, didn't you? You came all this way on a promise from him."

"Yes. But he wasn't a man. Not in that sense." She paused. "You must know what I mean to say. I was
safe
with him."

When she gathered enough courage to meet his gaze again, she found it regarding her with a heated desire that sizzled against her skin and made her blush. Thank goodness for the dim light.

He smiled slowly. "Well, I'm not like Coles then."

"You're not like anybody."

Lowering his head, he kissed her— this time gently. Yet somehow, it was even more arousing. Left her wanting more.

She took a breath, placed her hands over his and tried to move them off her waist. "I needed you to know. I wanted to explain. Please don't tell anyone else about my son. He doesn't know the truth."

"Kate, I won't tell a soul. You have my word." He put his head on one side. "I told you that my parents were never married. Surely you knew I would not look down on you or the boy."

"Sometimes men can be hypocrites. They can say one thing and mean another. They can even pretend to be one thing, and yet be quite another."

He squinted. "And women never do that?"

Kate laughed quietly, still trying to remove his hands from her waist. "I will not debate the differences of gender with you again. You're an impossible man to quarrel with, because you never raise your voice. It's most—" She searched for a suitably impressive word, her gaze straying toward the book shelf. "Discombobulating."

He grinned. "Glad to know I discombobulate you, Duchess. I trust it means something wicked and suitably horrifying. As a Deverell I do have a reputation to maintain."

She glanced nervously at her bedroom door, but it was still shut. Flynn always slept well and deeply. Always had, even as a baby he was no trouble. But..."You had better go."

He too looked over at the bedchamber door and then back at her, reminded no doubt, that she was not one of his other carefree and merry ladies just looking for a tumble with a handsome bachelor. That she had other responsibilities and complications.

Finally, his hands released her and she stepped back from his body heat.

"I'd like you to come with me to dinner at Roscarrock on Friday," he said quietly. "My family gathers in readiness for the wedding. That's another reason why I bought you the butterfly. You'll need something to wear."

"Surely I'll need more than this," she quipped, raising her hand to the choker.

He winked. "Clothing is optional at my father's house. You must have heard the rumors."

As he stood in her doorway with the sunset behind him she felt a powerful urge to run into his arms again. But she was no seventeen year-old ingénue anymore. No naive maiden wearing her heart on her sleeve and with a head full of wildly improbable romantic imaginings.

She was four and twenty, and a mother. Not only did she have one broken love affair behind her, but also a shattered cabinet door, several sins, a few crimes, and probably more than one man braying for her blood.

"I'll try not to discom your bobulates again next time," he added cheekily.

Shaking her head, keeping her lips tight to smother the laughter, she closed her door and leaned against it, listening to his soft whistle as he walked back to his cart and horses.

Eventually she heard the hooves and wheels moving away.

She walked over to her mother's spinet and placed a hand on the cool polished surface that guarded her secret. The reason, of course, why it wouldn't play a proper tune, was all those bank notes, tie pins, watches and ransomed silver snuff boxes, taken from Bert Soames' cabinet and then stashed inside this instrument.

If only she'd had more restraint when she smashed her wood axe through that thin cabinet to claim her rightful earnings, but she had got rather carried away in her dramatic moment and cleared out the contents entirely.

Why not? She deserved it after everything Bert put her through. And a lot of that money was probably taken from the men with whom she'd dined in private. Men who thought they could pay for her as if she was a fancy new Axminster carpet.

So yes, if she thought long and hard enough, she could come up with a dozen reasons why she took all that money from the cabinet.

None of those excuses were likely to help her in the dock, however, should she ever be apprehended and tried as the reckless thief she was.

"Well, mama," she whispered, "I never learned to play it, but I'm sure you're glad I finally got some use out of your precious spinet, even if it wasn't the one for which it was intended."