Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (22 page)

“I
am
a woman!”

“Thank the stars.” Ash took his “woman” into his arms and kissed her. “I meant that I no longer play the blanket hornpipe with women
other
than you. I will keep me only unto you for as long as we both shall live.”

“You will? Do you promise?”

“I did promise. So did you, by the way. If another man touches you, I shall break his arms.”

“I might like that you would be jealously brutal on my behalf, except … how many women have you tumbled? I can break arms as well, you know.”

Oh he knew. Ash raised his eyes to the heavens. “Forget numbers and think of my past as the practice that allows me to come so accomplished to your bed.”

Lark was having none of it. “How many women, Ash?”

“I failed to count.”

“Too many to count, you mean.”

“If I gave you a number, Lark, it would matter naught, for you refuse to learn your numbers, except for the ones on a deck of cards.”

She huffed. “I will begin my lessons tomorrow.”

“You will begin when the tutor arrives. I will not teach you myself, for I will not have
my
foot broken, no, nor anything else, come to that. I will write and inform the schoolmaster that we are ready to retain his services. He will arrive as soon as may be, and you will not attempt to bolt, mind, nor will you break one bone in the poor man’s body, nor knee, or shoot him either.”

Lark rolled her eyes. “He shall remain intact.”

“And you will give your lessons due attention? No more bolting?”

“Why would I bolt when there is such baby making to be had?”

“Wise girl.” Ash tapped her nose. “Besides, I would miss you if you ran.”

Lark stood on her toes and whispered her suggestion for a clandestine trip to the lavender field for an extra go at baby making.

Ash rubbed her nose with his. “In the middle of the day? I am shocked,” though he was tempted to say yes, until he saw Micah running their way.

Ash opened an arm to the boy, aware that during his weeks with them, Lark’s brother had taken more to his company than to Lark’s, and how sad Lark appeared when Micah demonstrated the preference. While she must be glad Micah finally had a father figure in his life, she must hurt for the loss of kinship she had expected would grow between the two of them.

A hand upon Micah’s shoulder and an arm about his wife’s waist, Ash squeezed them both. “Shall we take the wagon and escape to the spinney for a lazy day picnic? I am certain the tenants can dig the drainage ditches well enough without my interference for one afternoon.”

As Lark looked set to agree, a bottle green coach appeared, clattering up the drive, and stopped beneath the portico of the Chase. Ash released his grip upon his family to make his way toward the coach as the driver jumped from his perch and opened the door.

No sooner had he done so, than out flew a cursing wild-child, who ran past them as if running for his life.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ash demanded of the coachman who handed him a small, grimy fragment of parchment.

Ash read the note to himself, in the event it contained something upsetting.
Take her, Ash. Take our daughter and raise her
— There the parchment had been torn. Above the astonishing request was also writ the better portion of his name, title, and address. Ash, fortunately, or unfortunately, recognized the handwriting.

The coachman then handed him a more formal note, of a high quality Bristol-type vellum, properly folded, of the excellence his father had been wont to use.
The termagant was found on the London streets carrying this piece of parchment. Since I am your family solicitor, the authorities brought her to me. I send her in the event you plan to honor the note-sender’s anonymous request. If not, put her back in the coach and my driver is instructed to take her to the nearest workhouse. Yours, MJC, Esq.

“She is Ellenora’s daughter,” Ash said. “My first jilt.” He offered Lark both the parchment and the solicitor’s note. “Unlike the solicitor who sent her to us, I recognized Ellenora’s handwriting.”

“Should we not send her back to Ellenora, then?” Lark said, accepting the notes.

“Ellenora died in France. I have known for … nearly a year now.”

“Why would someone send her to us then?”

Ash sighed. “Read the parchment,” he said as he urged the coachman toward the rose garden to confer with him in private.

Ten minutes later, Ash dismissed the driver, rubbed his neck, and looked out toward the spinney. He saw Lark and Micah approach.

“The coachman carried no more than the notes and the girl,” Ash said. “The child owns naught but the rags on her back.”

“We must find her. She is frightened.”

“Yes,” Ash said, touching Lark’s arm. “Yes.”

“
Is
she yours, Ash?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Had Ellenora borne him a child? There was a question, one his wife wanted answered as much as he did, and who could blame her? “I must make inquiries,” Ash said. “There are people in London, friends of Ellenora’s, who might know, or a certificate of birth, perhaps, or parish registry to be unearthed.”

Ash rubbed his neck. “I expect she married Ames to give the child a name, which would explain the speed of her jilt, at least. As to whether the child is mine….” Ash shook his head with regret. “I would not have thought it possible, and yet….” He shrugged. “I am sorry, Lark, but it
is
possible, though I would rather not foist upon you an unwanted—”

Lark crossed his lips with a gentle finger. “What did you say about the way I spoke of your family? That frightened little one could well be the newest member.”

He should have known she would open her heart to a guttersnipe, to any child, he suspected.

“Do you know what became of Ellenora’s husband?” she asked.

“Killed in a dual shortly after her death, in questionable circumstances, I heard. Seems she had taken a lover—nothing new for Ellenora—and her husband found out.” Ash took Lark’s arm. “Come, we must fetch the wagon.” He reached for Micah’s hand.

His gentle wife took her nephew’s other hand to walk beside them to the stable. “Micah,” she said. “You may no longer be the lone resident of the nursery. Will you like company?”

Micah shook his head vehemently, a sign that he heard and understood, Ash thought, though it appeared that Lark was so pleased he did, she failed to take into account the significance of his negative response, which did not bode well for tranquility in the nursery.

Ash urged the aging pair of draft horses faster toward the spinney. “Any more unexpected arrivals of the infant variety and I will feel as if I am in competition with Reed and Chastity Gilbride St. Yves and their brood.”

“Are the St. Yves friends of yours? How many children do they have?”

“I fought with Reed under Wellington and was his groomsman when he married Chastity, but I’m sorry to say that I’ve lost count of their numbers, though I do know they’re expecting their first any day.”

“But you just said—”

“They take in abandoned children and make them their own, or Chastity did, and Reed had no choice but to join the ranks.”

“Why did he have no choice?”

“Because he fell top over tail in love with the lot of them.”

Ash and Lark regarded each other over Micah’s head, saying everything and saying nothing. Lark kissed Micah’s crown, and Ash followed suit, wondering if there wasn’t a bit of that kind of falling going on around Blackburne Chase. But he wasn’t certain, not even of himself, though he clung to hope as much as he shunned it, and he surmised it likely, from Lark’s speaking glance, that she hoped and feared for their future in the same bewildered way.

“Quite the interesting life I gambled us into, is it not?” Ash said.

“Interesting,” Lark responded, tilting her head in thought, “but certainly not the worst situation I’ve ever found myself in. Not yet.”

Ash looked up from driving the wagon, to her, and back, twice, not certain of her precise meaning, not certain he cared to know it at any rate. “Right.”

The wild child was a disgrace, a she-wolf angry with the world, hair chopped short, as if self-cut with a dull blade, and she smelled worse than Lark on their wedding night. She fought them in the spinney for half an hour, Micah standing to the side, in total disgust.

Ash and Lark cornered and caught her half way up a cherry tree. When they got her down, Lark tried to hold and calm her, but she bit Lark a good one, and to Ash’s shock, Micah roared his disapproval, charged forward in Lark’s defense, and shoved the she-wolf to her bottom in the dirt.

“Micah!” Ash and Lark shouted as one, but as they regarded each other, Ash could see the grin Lark suppressed, for her nephew had taken a first step toward speaking, not to mention the fact that he’d taken her side for the first time ever.

They got the girl back to The Chase under necessary constraint in the wagon bed. Lark tried but could not keep the struggling brat in her arms, so she simply sat beside her, stroking her matted thatch of raven hair.

Micah sat up on the wagon seat beside Ash, as he had done on the way to fetch the termagant, and it seemed to Ash as if Micah retained his role as Lark’s protector, for he kept looking over his shoulder as if he might jump to her rescue if needs be.

Back at the Chase, Ash once again called for a bath, and Lark once again fought him on it. “No, get her up to the nursery. We will not frighten her witless on her first night,” she said. “No telling how long she’s been left on her own. If I lived like an animal with a father and a roof over my head, this one’s like to be ready, after living on the London streets, to do injury in self-defense, or even for food. Mim, have Cook prepare her a meal, would you,” Lark asked, as Ash deposited the girl in her arms in the rocker.

Lark struggled to keep the child there while Ash stood before them, arms behind his back. “What shall we do with her?”

“Do with her? We will keep her, of course.”

They turned as one to the crash and roar from Micah, no longer watching from the side but staring at his bleeding hand. Judging by the broken window and glass beside him, and the startled look on his face, he had surprised even himself by shoving his fist through the glass.

Ash ascertained that the cut was minor and turned the boy over to Mim for bandaging when she returned with the termagant’s food, then he temporarily sealed the small broken pane of glass with a nursery book wedged into the spot.

However needless Micah’s jealous drama, it actually served to tame the wild child, Ash thought, for it had taken her attention from her fear, and she had settled against Lark to watch.

“How old do you think she is?” Ash asked as he completed his task at the window and moved the plate of food to the nursery table.

“Micah is seven and they are about the same size, though he is small for his age, so she might be five or six, perhaps. I should think you could better tell me.”

His wife had raised a speaking brow, which managed to tighten Ash’s cravat, and he warmed, despite himself. “If the note’s claim is true, then she is likely about six years old.”

As avariciously as the girl eyed the plate of steak and kidney pudding, she would not move from Lark’s arms to come for it when Ash invited her. “I told Mim to bring meat,” he said to Lark. “Is this all right?”

“I would likely have chosen something easier on her empty stomach like porridge or custard, but I’d wager she would prefer meat, if she were of a mind to say so.”