The Black Sheep's Return (7 page)

‘Doesn’t that set the natural order of things on its head?’

‘The one that says Adam gardened whilst Eve span? If Eve was the better gardener, Adam should have learnt to spin,’ he replied and Freya wondered if he might be a radical after all.

‘Perhaps we should try a little of both if we want to improve?’

‘Aye, but first you must want to achieve such wonders, Perdita.’

‘True,’ she said sagely. Unwed daughters of
Earls did not dirty their hands with work and first her mother, then her sister-in-law ran the household, so Lady Freya Buckle had little to do and long hours of relentless boredom to do it in.

‘And here come my little neither gardeners nor spinners, unless I’ve mistaken a herd of wild horses for my sweet offspring,’ he said, as if she needed telling.

‘Papa, Papa, Keziah says there are soldiers in town,’ Hal shouted eagerly.

‘There are always soldiers in town, lad,’ his father told him as he hefted the kettle over the merrily burning fire.

‘But these are dragons, Papa,’ Sally said earnestly, pushing her big brother aside so she could nod at her father to emphasise the truth of her statement.

‘Not dragons, silly baby, dragoons,’ Henry told her scornfully and yelped when Sally’s carved dog hit him amidships, as it seemed to do with such regularity he ought to provoke his sister from a distance, if he must do so at all.

‘I’m not a baby,’ Sally wailed ominously.

‘Of course you’re not, my duck,’ a rather harsh female voice interrupted their quarrel.

‘I’m not a duck neither,’ Sally insisted sulkily,
as if she’d been looking forward to a nice refreshing drama.

‘I’m not a duck
either,’
her father corrected her with a quack-quack motion of a duck’s beak with his hands as he launched into a strutting walk, as if he was about to paddle about on the nearest pond. His nonsense distracted Sally so she joined in, and soon all three Cravens were lined up in a row, quacking happily like foraging mallards. Freya watched them with wide eyes and the newcomer shook her head and shrugged.

‘Mad as hatters the lot of ’em,’ the older woman said.

‘So I see,’ Freya replied and smiled shyly at the tiny little nut-brown woman, who looked as if a breath of wind might blow her away, although something told Freya not even an earthquake would dislodge her unless she wanted to go.

‘I
am
a duck, Kezzie. I really am,’ Sally insisted now, delight brilliant in her green eyes as she launched herself at her big brother’s back and he caught her mid-flight into a piggyback and tore outside as Freya finally realised the boy doted on his little sister.

Orlando stood and watched his still-quacking offspring dash towards the nearest pond with
resigned amusement, nodding a signal at faithful Atlas to go with them and keep the enterprising pair out of harm’s way.

‘It’s only two feet deep in the middle,’ he excused himself as if they might upbraid him for letting his children run so freely into danger, ‘and they can both swim.’

‘I wish I could,’ Freya said wistfully and wondered why so many useful things were forbidden to Earls’ daughters when being able to swim to safety might save their lives.

She sensed it on the tip of his tongue for a moment, the offer to teach her in rather more than two feet of water. Her disappointment when he bit it back made her remember she wasn’t here to enjoy herself, or learn useful accomplishments; she was here because she had nowhere else to go and he was too kind not to make her go away again.

‘Can’t see why, m’dear, nasty wet stuff is water. I wouldn’t swim in it if I was the Queen herself,’ the older lady told her with a twinkle in her bright brown eyes that told Freya she hadn’t missed her shameful fascination with her host and thought it quite normal for any woman to be dazed by Orlando’s manly charms.

‘Just as well. Neptune would take one look,
then carry you off to be
his
Queen,’ Orlando teased.

‘You do like to talk daft, Master Craven,’ she told him, but the impish light in her shrewd eyes and merry, gap-toothed smile told Freya she’d once lured in more males than she quite knew what to do with and Neptune would have to queue.

‘But you love me anyway?’

‘Of course I don’t—why would I waste good honest love on a rogue like you?’

‘Good question,’ Orlando said with a wry smile that spoke of many sins he was half-ashamed of committing. ‘But I haven’t introduced you to the belle of Longborough Forest yet, Perdita. Mrs Keziah Brooks, this is Miss Perdita Rowan; Miss Rowan, Mrs Brooks,’ he said as if they were about to take tea in the drawing room.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Brooks,’ Freya said sincerely and they bobbed heads towards each other as equals.

‘And it’s good to have another woman within shouting distance again, Miss Rowan, or whoever you really are.’

‘I’m just a lone female who got waylaid, then ran off and got lost,’ Freya claimed.

‘From what Master Orlando says you went
through a lot more than that yesterday. So you sit yourself down and heal, missy. Even little Sally could tell those hands ain’t made for toil. You’ll burn yourself if you don’t stop trying to learn all there’s to know about running a house inside a day.’

‘Little chance of that,’ Freya said and sat on the stool Orlando thrust at her, as if she was sadly in the way and making work for others to walk round.

‘I’ll have a look at that ankle of yours as soon as we’ve had this tea the young master promised us,’ Keziah said and Freya tried not to flinch at the idea of anyone even touching her sore foot.

‘All in good time,’ Orlando said with an affectionate smile at the older woman. Freya tried not to envy her while he made tea in a fat brown pot the current Countess of Bowland wouldn’t even allow in her lord’s kitchen.

‘We’re honoured today, ain’t we?’ Keziah asked as he produced two fine china cups and saucers from the cupboard on the opposite side from the one the kindling and the cooking vessels were kept in. ‘Your missus would be proud of you today, lad,’ she said with a nod Freya couldn’t interpret.

‘Would she now?’ he responded as if he wasn’t so sure.

‘And she’d be the last one to want to see you stay so sad and lonely because she ain’t here no more.’

‘I could hardly call myself alone when I’ve got my two imps of Satan to keep me company, but don’t make me out to be better than I am, Keziah,’ he said seriously and Freya had the oddest impulse to smooth his wildly curling hair out of his eyes and gaze into them with a tender smile in her own and had to clench her hands in her lap before they began the project on their own.

‘Y
ou don’t care a whit about me or the baby, Francis Martagon,’ Philomena, Marchioness of Lundy, said mournfully, rubbing a white hand over her swollen belly as if her unborn child reproached him too. ‘If you did, you would find the brat who could beggar us and dispose of him, as you should have done before our first child was born.’

‘What a wasted effort that would have been,’ her lord replied disdainfully, ‘since you only whelped me a girl.’

‘My father’s first grandchild, my lord. Don’t forget who holds the purse strings,’ the silvery-blonde and supposedly delicate Lady Lundy reminded her middle-aged husband with a steely glint in her blue eyes that would astonish
her admirers and those less impressed by her lovely face and avaricious nature, which she managed to hide most of the time.

‘Or who has the title you love so dearly,’ Francis Martagon replied.

‘Imagine how little I will love you if you lose it, my lord,’ she said silkily and if he had any illusions about his lady they evaporated under her chilly gaze.

‘It’s only a name,’ he said wearily.

‘Why were you willing to murder that wretched female and her unborn child to keep it, then?’ she taunted as if she wasn’t the one who’d needled and nagged him into that appalling act in the first place.

‘Because you refused to bear me any sort of child and would have done your best to win an annulment of the marriage through the courts if I didn’t. Even I am astonished at what you’ll do for a title, my dear, and I thought you’d taught me not to be surprised at anything an ambitious and venal woman will do to get her way.’

‘Why? What point would there have been in wedding you without one?’

‘Who knows?’ he said.

‘That boy ahead of you in the succession died and you were heir to a marquisate. Did
you expect to stay a fusty old bachelor absorbed in your books and letters after that? You’re a simpleton if you did, Francis Martagon.’

‘Less of a one now than I was when I wed you.’

‘I put steel in your backbone. You would have meekly handed your lands and titles over to a puling infant without a murmur if I hadn’t been here to stop you. You were nothing more than a sheep looking for the most peaceful field to chew cud in before you met me.’

‘I’m man enough to get you with child then and now,’ he muttered and Philomena saw the mulish set of his mouth and sighed. She hadn’t bargained for this when she lured him into marriage with the promises of a delightful young body in his bed and a pretty blonde wife his peers would envy him.

‘Find the brat and kill him. My son can’t be born a commoner,’ she said brusquely.

‘Like his mama was, you mean?’ Lord Lundy asked bitterly.

‘I may have been born without a title, but so were you. The only useful thing you ever did was make me a Marchioness and you couldn’t even do that properly,’ she taunted, then smiled with satisfaction at the impressive parkland
round Martagon Court for once when her husband strode furiously out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

‘You drive him too hard,’ a harsh voice even chillier than her own informed her as the owner of it emerged from the shadows of my lady’s private closet.

‘He’s spineless and idle; it’s the only way to goad him into action, Papa,’ Philomena argued impatiently.

‘Push too relentlessly and he’ll run the other way to spite you.’

‘Would I could be sure this baby was a boy, then we could make sure Francis went the same way as this phantom heir he can’t seem to find and destroy without your help.’

‘No, we’ll keep the fool alive even if this child’s born male. A boy could die and then where would we be if you don’t have a spare?’

‘Well, I’d be Dowager Lady Lundy with a huge dowry to catch a Duke with,’ Philomena replied practically.

‘No, you’ll be a penniless commoner’s widow if you dare cross me, my girl,’ Lady Lundy’s doting papa informed her coldly.

‘How could you threaten me with such a terrible thing, Papa?’ she objected half-heartedly, aware she might as well talk to the splendidly
moulded and plastered state-room walls for all the good it did her.

‘I don’t threaten—I do.’

‘Then find this wretched upstart brat Colton Martagon got on the giggling schoolgirl he ran off with and kill him for me.’

‘Nobody will rob my boy of anything he wants or needs, least of all the cursed brat that fool Seaborne’s hidden away so well you’d think it was his own,’ Jonas Strider asserted and even Philomena had the sense to shudder at the prospect as her father lived up to his name and strode out of the room to put his words into action.

Rich decided Perdita looked even more out of place decked in the colourful garb Keziah’s daughter had left at her mother’s house last time she drifted back there, with or without her Romani husband. Lucky that Cleo had inherited her
gorgio
father’s height as well as her mother’s fine looks, so her skirts only showed his waif’s ankles and one of them was unglamorously bandaged. Yet he still caught himself watching her like a fascinated boy. Her skin was beginning to turn golden from the sun now she spent her days outside playing with his children or trying to tend his fruit and vegetables,
despite her injury. She had even begun to reclaim Annabelle’s flower and herb gardens from the weeds and he wondered if he was man enough to let her go when she was strong enough to walk away.

No question about that; he had to. He still wanted her mercilessly, so he avoided her as often as he could, but in a cramped cottage in the middle of nowhere that wasn’t nearly often enough. So he’d shut himself in his workshop and barked at anyone who tried to interrupt him. He must work anyway in order to buy what he couldn’t make, like cooking pots and sheets—both of which were under threat thanks to Perdita’s best efforts. Yet he didn’t recognise the besotted fool in Rich Seaborne’s battered working boots. He’d known what it was to burn for a woman—what spotty youth full of fascinated curiosity about the opposite sex did not at a certain stage of his life? Yet since he had grown to manhood and learnt to satisfy a lover extravagantly he had never felt like this—as if his very skin was burningly sensitive with sheer, driven need of Perdita Rowan as his lover.

He’d wanted Annabelle with all of him as well, but he’d known from the moment they met that they would spend their lives together—once
he found out the man who put her babe in her belly wasn’t alive any more to object. There had been no restraint between them, before or after the brief marriage ceremony in a quiet city parish, far from the haunts of the
haut ton
. Yet there could be no such hasty and headlong coupling for him and Perdita. Even if he wanted a wife, he could never ask a high-born lady to live this far from civilisation and attend to the day-to-day needs of another woman’s children and her gruff and lust-ridden widower. Annabelle’s occasional fits of the dismals had rasped his conscience and she had as potent a reason to endure the solitude as he had himself.

And he was a Seaborne, for goodness’ sake. He owed it to his clan not to hopelessly crave the first pretty girl to stumble at his feet. Still he woke every morning in a rigid fever of desire and had to exhaust himself to ignore it all day. Then he had to lie in bed at night and fight his baser urges, knowing Perdita was downstairs in her box-bed and he yearned for her like a lovesick boy.

‘Damn woman,’ he muttered grumpily and gasped as he unwarily ran his chisel into his thumb because he wasn’t concentrating on what he was doing.

He’d been too busy watching Perdita labour in the garden even from here to pay attention and he looked down at his battered hands with a sigh. Every new mark and graze spoke of another daydream about her. Perdita wasn’t to blame, but try as he might to tell himself this was animal lust, she revived a tenderness in him that he’d made himself forget when agony at Annabelle’s death made him lock part of himself away in order to go on without her.

While he was busy growling and raging at the devil for torturing him so inventively, somehow Perdita coped with his house and his children and it only made him more cross-grained and driven. She even seemed to admire Hal’s natural arrogance and Sally’s determination to be her own person, whatever society and her brother had to say about a girl’s place in the world. Rich wondered what sort of childhood his lady of the woods had endured while he watched her laugh and attempt to run, as if such simple delights were usually denied her. Cursing as he caught himself thinking of Perdita in his life for more than the few more days it would take her to heal, he threw down the chisel in disgust and made himself consider her dispassionately.

She was pretty enough—her features evenly
made, although her nose was pert. Her eyes were the colour of sun-washed amber and might be her best feature, if he wasn’t so fascinated by her generous mouth. The sun was turning her creamy skin golden and her face clearly wouldn’t do much good in overcoming this obsession, so maybe her hair would turn the trick. Lucky it was brown, then, not Titian, angelically blonde or sable dark. Yet it curled in soft waves down her back, now she had given up on hairpins and wore it tied in a glossy tail or a loose plait. Glowing highlights shone in it where the sun seemed to linger in the soft curls that escaped to kiss her brow and tickle her nose as she worked.

He thought of her flicking impatiently at those stray wisps of fine curls and a tender smile quirked his lip at the trail of dirt often left across her cheek or nose. Idiot! He was supposed to cure himself of this obsession, not make the spell stronger. She was clearly an impractical woman to weather the life he lived now, but her dainty-looking hands and fine-boned wrists held far more muscle and sinew than he would have dreamt of at his first sight of her as a defeated waif lost in the wilds.

No use trying to lie to himself she wasn’t desirable then, but she still wasn’t for him. He
couldn’t seduce her or ask her to stay as either his woman or a wife. Unthinkable only a week ago, when he was arrogantly sure he would never consider putting another woman in Annabelle’s unique place. No, he had to send the confounded female back to live in the luxury he knew she was used to, from the look and sound and fineness of her.

His Annabelle had been the present Earl of Calvercombe’s first cousin and a DeMorbaraye by birth, but she had loved him passionately. He saw curiosity and feminine interest in Perdita’s eyes whenever she let them dwell on him for an unwary moment, but he couldn’t ask her to live like this. No lady would sacrifice so much for a boy who wasn’t even his son, let alone her own. Sometimes Rich thought it best the world forgot all about Hal for ever, but his boy was the rightful Marquis of Lundy. One day he might choose to reclaim his inheritance and then Annabelle’s son would need all the power of the Seabornes at his back, yet Rich had no legal claim on him. If he stepped into the light, Hal would be given into the ‘care’ of his nearest living relative—Francis Martagon—the man who had tried to kill him while he was still in his mother’s womb.

Rich hoped the worm was constantly afraid
of him and Hal riding up to Martagon Court to claim it from him; he deserved to suffer agonies whenever an unexpected carriage drove up or a knock hammered on the door. He had set out to murder a pregnant girl, his Annabelle and her son both, so Rich savagely hoped the rat looked over his shoulder every day and wondered if today was the day he would lose every acre, stone and penny he’d stolen off an unborn baby.

That was it, then—the brake on his need for a woman who would never have crossed his path if the gods were kinder to Rich Seaborne. The life they might have had, if he met her in an elegant drawing room or they danced at an overcrowded country ball, could never be. Yet never had he so badly misread his headlong Seaborne nature as the day he swore to his dead love he would never yearn for another woman. If he hadn’t been such a fool, he would have slaked his wilder passions with a female he could please and leave, but instead he met Perdita in a state of hibernation he hadn’t the sense to realise was as false as spring in December, until she dropped into his life like a wondrous gift from a contrary god.

Turning from the sight of his enforced guest weeding salad greens and laughing at his
daughter stealing strawberries, Rich bit back a howl of frustrated bitterness and thumped his powerful fist into the rough-hewn planks of his workshop wall.
Fool, you damned fool!
The unspoken condemnation echoed in his head as he sank on to his clenched fists and burned all over again.

No, he’d been wrong just now; nothing could put a brake on his endless need for this contrary jumble of a woman he hardly knew. A wry smile lifted his mouth for a moment as he acknowledged she didn’t know herself very well either. So much about her new life was a revelation to her. Her surprise at talents and qualities she never suspected she had charmed him. No, he couldn’t afford to be charmed by her; there were places, even round here, where a man could go when he needed a woman. Unfortunately he knew only this one would do and he had to get away from her until he had the madness walked off and self-control firmly back in place.

‘Sally, you stay here with Hal and Atlas and Miss Perdita. I need some green wood. If you need me, shout and I’ll hear you, Miss Rowan,’ he barked at her before striding away without giving them time to question or demand to come too.

Freya watched him go, then turned to reassure Sally all was well and check Hal was nearby. Did Orlando feel the tension strung between them too? Shaking her head at that very silly idea while trying to ignore a shiver of excited curiosity, she stood up and stretched cramped limbs. Making sure she could see both the children out of the corner of her eye at all times wasn’t likely to help her gardening efforts, so she sent Hal a questioning look.

‘It’s about noon, Miss Perdita,’ he said with a manly grin that told her his belly was empty and whatever time it was, it
should
be noon, so he could fill it up again.

‘Then I might as well find out if the milk has kept nice and cool in the scullery. It would never do if it turned before you two could drink it all.’