Storm (3 page)

The Devil too, so they said, was a charmer.

She sincerely hoped Reverend Coles knew what he was doing to leave her in this man's hands. His very large, grimy, work-roughened hands.

Chapter Three

"You're not what I expected," he muttered, scratching his chin.

"And vice versa," she replied, her gaze flicking disdainfully over his attire.

"Well, beggars can't be choosers, I suppose."

Her eyes flared and then narrowed quickly. "Quite."

She was a haughty piece of work, full of spit and fire, and— by the look of things—fallen on hard times and forced to earn a living.

When she'd finally allowed him to carry her from the cart, Storm guessed this must be a considerable concession she made, a privilege few would enjoy. He could only equate the sensation of achievement with one he'd felt when successfully earning the friendship of a stray kitten— a tiny, bedraggled creature he'd fed from a distance for weeks last winter, before it trusted him enough to venture over his doorstep. The night that kitten crept inside and curled up by his fire was one of the most contented evenings of Storm Deverell's thirty years. Not that he'd ever tell that to a living soul.

Like the kitten, this woman preferred the world to see her as a tigress. It was all about survival of course, a natural instinct to appear larger than one really was and keep predators at bay.

She stood with one hand on her cub's shoulder, keeping him close to her side, watching their rescuer with wary curiosity.

"You'll be glad to hear I've got fresh eggs and some good smoked bacon for my breakfast," he said. Ah yes, food. That was always a good way to start. "More than I can eat by myself." He winked at the boy whose eyes had instantly lit up. "Shall we go?"

The woman seemed to wrestle with her decision for a moment, but eventually, as if each word cost her a blood-letting, she agreed. "Very well, sir. I suppose we have no other choice. If this is what Reverend Coles planned."

Her features were pretty and refined, but there was no ladylike frailty apparent. Even when she'd thought he was about to commit some crime against her, the woman was ready to fight. Although Storm had little experience of fine ladies, he'd always imagined her sort to go through their day ever on the cusp of swooning. But he sincerely doubted this woman had cause to carry smelling salts.

"What happened to your husband?" he asked.

As soon as the words were out, he felt the sharp kick of a ghostly foot—probably his mother's— warning him that it was indelicate to ask. But clearly this woman didn't have one around anymore or she wouldn't be there, hiring herself out as a housekeeper. Why should he dance around the matter? She was going to work for him, wasn't she? Therefore he had a right to question her.

Her eyelashes lowered gracefully, shading her cheeks, but before she could speak the boy shouted proudly, "My Pa's asleep forever. He was a war hero."

Instantly she forgot to look demure and shouted at the child to get up into the cart.

"What shall I call you then? Or will Duchess be sufficient?"

"She's Katherine Kelly, but everybody calls her Kate," her son answered. "An' don't you mind her mean face. It always looks that way."

She frowned hard at the boy, and he quickly rewrapped his own expression in the woolen scarves that circled his head several times.

"Oh, it's not such a mean face," Storm replied solemnly. "I've seen worse. On the Bumble Trout."

The woman turned her stern appraisal upon him, but before she could utter a word, he said, "Well then... Kate...shall we?" He held out his bare hand and she looked at it doubtfully. Her lips pursed again in a frustrated puff, and then she stepped up into the cart. But she didn't take the assistance of his hand. She managed by herself.

He caught the teasing sight of a slender ankle clad in what appeared to be a silk stocking, embroidered with a tantalizing, upward twisting vine of ...hmmm...tiny red roses.

"I would rather you call me Mrs. Kelly," she muttered, the hem of her skirt hastily adjusted to cover the intriguing sight again as she sat. "We are not well enough acquainted for first names."

Not yet perhaps, he mused, suddenly feeling very warm under his wet clothes.

"And it wouldn't be proper between a man and his housekeeper," she added, her face flushed.

"If you say so. I think I prefer Duchess in any case." It suited her, he thought.

With one gloved hand she hurriedly swept a dark, damp curl from her cheek, thrusting it back under the limp straw brim of her bonnet. "Is that your house?" she demanded, pointing with her whip toward a small stone building down in the valley.

"No. That's old Putnam's place. He died recently and his widow moved to St. Austell to stay with her sister, so it's empty at present, but won't be for long." Storm had plans for that small holding himself.

"I thought you said everything within three miles is yours."

"Everything but that little farm," he replied. "That'll change soon, though. My house is in the next valley. Not far."

"Lead on then," she exclaimed impatiently.

Those were her last words for quite a while.

His dog ran on ahead, and Storm walked with the horses to guide them. "Been long on the road?" he yelled over his shoulder.

"Eight hundred years," her son shouted back. Unlike his mother, the child was not shy. "Where did
you
come from, mister?"

"Lived here all my life. Born near Truro. Never wanted to live anywhere else but here."

"I was born in London, like my Ma. But we're having a Fresh Beginnin's, ain't we, Ma?"

The woman didn't answer, concentrating on the horses and whatever thoughts troubled her.

Fresh beginnings, eh? So she was leaving something unhappy behind her. He shook his head. See? Complications. Danger. He knew it the moment he saw her. Every reluctant word out of her mouth had verified it. Yet there he was, bringing her home with him to feed her, as if she was another of those lost and stray creatures he came across.

He hoped the good Reverend Coles knew what he was doing to leave this fancy, high and mighty madam in his hands.

* * * *

Flynn was soon stuffing his small face with the promised bacon, but it didn't prevent a breathless trail of questions about everything and anything, including the man's dog, whose name, they learned, was "Jack". Listening to her son, Kate silently marveled at how much energy he had— even after their long journey. Nothing silenced his wandering stream of inquiry as it darted from one subject to another and back again. Fortunately, while there was so much of new interest going on around him, the boy had more than enough to chatter about without mentioning anything regarding their previous life in London.

Their host, meanwhile, answered all the questions her son fired at him, showing he had far more patience than Kate did. As he talked, he assembled their breakfast, fed his dog and gathered laundry from where it hung like ship's sails by the fire. Although the farmhouse was large, with several different rooms and even a staircase to a second floor, everything he needed seemed to be kept within easy reach of his long arms and the glow of that hearth.

It was evident that Storm Deverell lived alone. Several old newspapers— some yellowed with age and edged with a scalloped pattern of mice teeth— sat folded up on the arm of a tattered and patched chair, which was the only cushioned seat in the house. Every shirt drying on that wooden rack had seen better days. Clearly, he had no one to sew new ones or repair those he had. And he cooked for himself with a skilled, casual ease that proved he did it often.

"I had a housekeeper once," he told her, perhaps noticing her critical gaze taking in the shambles. "But she had to split her time between me and my father, and he's always been more demanding than me. Now he's getting married again and she'll be needed there more often, so I asked Reverend Coles to find me a handy woman."

She wondered why he had no wife of his own to take care of the house for him. He looked... healthy enough to manage a wife. Of course, it was hardly a question she could ask. One of them at least ought to have manners.

He kept a clean shirt in his hand and disappeared into the scullery. She heard water splashing from a pump.

"What made you come so far from London?" he shouted.

"It was Reverend Coles' idea." She sighed, looking around at the mess again. "He made the west country sound so appealing in his letters."

"You've experience as a housekeeper?"

She could lie, of course. The state of his house suggested this man wouldn't know a good housekeeper if he met one. But she decided to be honest. After all, this was a new beginning, a new life.

"I have not," she said, anxiously gripping her teacup.

"What about references? You must have some."

"I'm afraid not."

"None at all?" Deverell exclaimed, emerging from the other room, still in the process of tugging the clean shirt over his shoulders and exposing a tanned slab of naked torso at the same time. "But you can cook?"

She averted her gaze at once, her heartbeat suddenly leaping up into her throat, making it very difficult to swallow. "Yes. No." Oh, what was she saying? "I'm an abysmal cook... but not for want of trying."

"I see. What about sewing?"

"Not a stitch." In London, Bert Soames kept a seamstress who made all 'Kitty Blue's' clothes— or altered them from second and third-hand garments, which Kate often suspected had been taken from corpses at the morgue. She'd had more than a few gowns that looked as if they were once trampled under carriage wheels and horse's hooves, or dragged up out of the river. As for Flynn's shirts, their landlady had sewn those whenever he needed a new one.

"What about laundry?"

"I'm sure I can learn."

"Lighting fires? Cleaning windows?"

Still avoiding his gaze, she tucked that persistent stray curl back under her bonnet brim again. "How hard can it be?" How did she explain that when one lived a nocturnal life, clean windows were unimportant? And fires were for the wealthy who could afford coal— unless they scrambled for it in the Thames where it sometimes fell from barges.

There followed another short silence and then he said, "At least you've got a pretty face. We seldom see the like of you in these parts."

She gripped her cup of tea in both hands and took a hearty gulp.

Don't look up. Don't look...Oh, has he got the damnable shirt on yet?

Then he added, "Those lips alone might be worth the twenty-five pounds a year salary I promised."

Alas, she had to look. What else was a woman supposed to do when a man said such a thing to her? And in front of her son too. Had he no propriety?

Not that Flynn was listening. A quick glance reassured her that the boy was too busy eating bacon and playing with the man's dog.

Her new employer tipped his head to one side, hands paused in the motion of tucking the shirt into his well-worn riding breeches. "Did I speak amiss? You look all...peevish."

"Sir, it is not the sort of comment one should make to one's housekeeper."

He shrugged, only drawing her attention to his wide shoulders again. "You'll have to forgive me, if I'm too straightforward. I'm a country fellow, Duchess. I don't complicate matters. I tend to say what I think, as soon as the thought comes to me."

"I'm sure that causes you many trials and tribulations then."

"Once in a while," he admitted frankly, with a quick grin. "Mostly I manage to avoid trouble."

"Yes. Men generally do. After they've caused it."

He laughed. "Back to that again, are we?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The inadequacies of men and how we are to blame for all the world's problems. And all because I was honest and said you were bonny, when I might have kept it to myself?"

"I wish you had kept it to yourself," she muttered.

"Can't you take a compliment, Mrs. Kelly?"

"We have scarce been introduced, sir." He had better not think she was
that
sort of woman. "I wonder what you could mean by it." Kate had been told she was fair of face before, but no good ever came from it, and the men who tried to flatter her had only one intent. If anything, her face was a disadvantage when she sought to make an honest living.

"I meant no harm by speaking the thought aloud, but don't fret." He held up his hands in mock surrender. "I shan't worry you with another, now that I know you're not of a mind to receive any graciously." He said all this in a calm voice, more amused than angry. His eyes narrowed, crinkling at the corners, which explained the thin white lines in his sun-browned face. He must puzzle over a lot of riddles, she thought. "But 'tis a pity if you can't appreciate your own good looks," he added. "I know my face is as scratched up as a pair of old boots, but I value it all the same. It's well lived in and still has its uses. At least it has the required number of features and mostly in the expected order."

Old boots, indeed! Her gaze drifted from his damp, ruffled hair to his thick arms, firm chest and the fluttering tail of his shirt as he continued tucking it sloppily into his breeches. She closed her lips tightly, gritting her teeth.

Now she knew how Eve felt in Eden, with only one man as far as the eye could see. And oh, what the eye could see!

"You must be ravenous," he said, apparently misinterpreting her expression when he saw it again. "Eat up, madam. There's plenty of food." Leaving one side of his shirt casually adrift, he began to whistle that jaunty tune again as he moved around the room. Whatever irritation she'd caused by rejecting his compliment was now dispersed as easily as seeds on the wind, it seemed.

The front door creaked as he opened it to let his dog out. Instead of closing it again, he left it ajar. "My plowman will be by in a minute," he said. "He's such a shy fellow he won't dare knock on a closed door." Then he laughed softly and shook his head. "He'll think something's amiss if he sees my door shut."

"Why?" Flynn wanted to know.

"It's usually open in the daylight. Man, woman and beast coming in and out. Seems rude to shut my door to visitors."

It was the oddest thing Kate had ever heard. Wasn't he afraid of robbers?

"Besides," he added, a sudden naughty gleam sparking in his sky blue eyes as he looked directly at her, "they might think we're doing something we oughtn't, behind a closed door." Amusing concern, she thought, coming from a man who thought nothing of parading shirtless in her view.

Anxious to look at something other than him and finding her teacup empty, she quickly reached for the butter and then realized she hadn't cut herself a slice of bread yet.

"What things might you be doin', mister?" Flynn wanted to know.

"All sorts."

"We always bolted our doors in London, didn't we, Ma?"

"Yes, we certainly did," she replied, terse.

"We ain't got none now though. Our house is in that ol' cart. All our worldly treasures. But carts don't have doors."

Neither adult spoke. Kate looked down again, glad of her coal-scuttle bonnet, the wide brim providing a cooling shade for her blushes of humiliation.

"What if it's cold out, mister?" Flynn continued, apparently stuck on the subject of front doors. "You leave it open even then?"

"I put some extra coal on the fire and wear another coat." Smiling amiably, Deverell rubbed his palms together and came back to the table. "Fresh air, and a quantity of it, is the best thing for a man's health and spirits."

"Bacon's good too, I reckon," exclaimed Flynn. "This tastes better than any I ever 'ad before."

"That's because the pigs are raised happy here and well cared for."

"Until they're slaughtered," Kate muttered.

He shot her a surprised glance. "We all have to go sometime." Taking a seat across the table from her, he picked up a knife and began carving a thick slice of bread. His hands were clean now, the fingers long and square at the tips, the palms broad and weathered. Capable hands. Strong hands. At least he had enough manners to wash them before he sat at the table. "Best we can do with the time we have," he added, "is enjoy life every day to the fullest. Make our mark. Do some good in the world. Go out knowing we did our best. I keep my life simple."

"A sound philosophy, Mr. Deverell. You make it sound so effortless."

"Isn't it?"

She wished it was. At times it felt as if she had never stopped fighting and struggling, yet she couldn't get anywhere. Like her cart trapped in the river today, the harder she tried to get herself out of the mud, the deeper her wheels stuck. There was little time to enjoy the living when one's every breath was taken up by the requirements of survival.

"I suppose you're all in," he said suddenly, changing tone. "Eight days of travel can exhaust the strongest fellow. You need a good meal and a rest, before I put you to work." He passed two slices of bread onto her plate, as if she'd asked for them. In the next moment he leapt up to fetch more bacon from the pan for her son. Again, anticipating the need before it was uttered.

He looked over his shoulder and paused his whistle. "I'll try to keep my thoughts to myself from now on, Duchess. I won't pay you any compliments, if you promise not to bite me in the hindquarters."

Apparently he had caught her straying gaze. Mortified, she quickly looked down at her butter knife and considered gouging her eyes out with the blade. It might be the only way to keep them out of dangerous territory, if she was going to live there. But she needed her sight to watch over her son, so she would just have to fight the temptations that came her way. After the trouble she'd endured with men, she ought to be immune by now.

She thought she was.