A Hellion in Her Bed (29 page)

And he didn’t want to leave.

He scowled. This was what came of letting a woman under one’s skin. She tempted him to want things that were ephemeral. She made him yearn.

Tonight she was driving him slowly insane. Her gown left just enough of her creamy shoulders bare to remind him of what it had felt like to caress them. Every time she tilted her head toward one of the children, exposing the slender column of her neck, he had a fierce urge to seize her and plant a kiss on her throat, to lick the pulse there until it jumped into the wild rhythm that showed she felt more for him than she dared display.

It wasn’t just that, however. Tonight the children were with them, since their nursery maid had the evening off. While he and Lake sat to one side playing loo, and Mrs. Lake embroidered a cushion, Annabel and the children gamboled about the parlor.

They adored their aunt Annabel’s singing, and rightfully so, since her clear, sweet soprano was well suited to children’s songs. They begged for any ditty that involved jumping about like monkeys or contorting one’s body into ridiculous shapes. Even Geordie, who claimed to be too old for such nonsense, was swinging the younger ones about and lifting his little brother to ride on his shoulders.

The cozy family scene reminded Jarret painfully of his own family before his world had crumbled. He couldn’t look away—their antics and her cheerful endurance of them captivated him to the point that he paid little attention to his cards. It was strange to watch a woman he desired so fiercely
playing nursemaid to a handful of giggling urchins. He shouldn’t find it enchanting, but he did.

Her words of a few days ago sprang into his mind:
And whose children would I be watching otherwise—yours?

Until that moment, he hadn’t even thought about having children of his own. He had no need to bear an heir, no need for a wife when there were taproom maids aplenty to tumble, and no wish to alter his way of life for some screeching harpy who didn’t approve of his late evenings and reckless gambling.

But the thought of giving
Annabel
children stole the breath from his body. Any children he and Annabel might have would probably resemble the motley crew presently wreaking havoc in the parlor—bright-eyed and ruddy-cheeked, their legs akimbo and laughter spilling from their mouths. Except that they would have his eyes or his hair or his nose. And they would call him Father.

A terrifying thought. To have children dependent on him, looking to him for guidance, expecting great things of him … his mind boggled. How could he ever live up to such expectations?

“Enough!” Annabel dropped into a chair and flattened her hand against her chest. “I’m all sung out.”

“Please, Aunt Annabel,” begged the youngest, a five-year-old girl called Katie. “One more.”

“It’s always one more with you children,” Mrs. Lake said. “Leave your aunt alone. You’ll make her hoarse.”

“Perhaps you can convince Lord Jarret to sing.” Annabel looked mischievous. “Assuming he knows any songs that can be sung in polite company.”

“I know a couple,” he answered, “but you’d be better off asking a fish to play the pianoforte. Trust me, no one would
want to hear me sing.”

“I can hardly believe that,” Annabel protested. “You have such a lovely speaking voice.”

He barely had time to register that she found his voice lovely before the children ran up to clamor for a performance. He held out as long as he could, but relented when little Katie stuck her thumb in her mouth and looked as if she might cry. “Fine,” he said. “But you’ll regret it.”

Rising to his feet, he made a production of clearing his throat and uttering noises like the ones he’d seen professional singers make. Then he launched into the only children’s song he could think of: “Hot Cross Buns.”

At the first notes, the children gaped at him as if someone in the room had just farted. Even Annabel blinked, and Mrs. Lake looked downright stunned.

He plowed on with great enthusiasm anyway. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned them, and he hadn’t been allowed to sing to anyone since his family had first discovered his deficit. Fortunately “Hot Cross Buns” was short, so he only had to torture them for a minute or two.

When he was done, a tense silence fell upon the room. Then Annabel said, eyes twinkling, “That has to be the worst rendition of ‘Hot Cross Buns’ I have ever heard.”

“Annabel!” Mrs. Lake said.

“Trust me, I’m not offended,” he told her with a smug smile. “I know my limitations.”

“Your singing is like cats fighting,” Geordie ventured.

“More like cats screaming, or so I’ve been told,” Jarret said. “Gabe claims I sound like a fiddle that has been stomped on.”

“Or a flute with a walnut in it,” one of the children supplied.

“Do it again!” Katie cried. “I like it!”

Astonished, Jarret knelt to stare into her face. “You like it, moppet?” He glanced at Mrs. Lake. “You neglected to tell me, madam, that insanity runs in your family.”

The others laughed, but Katie wouldn’t be put off. “I don’t know what ‘sanity’ means, sir, but your singing reminds me of the owl that screeches outside the nursery every night. I like owls. Can you sing another?”

Jarret laughed and chucked her under the chin. “Sorry, dear girl, but your parents would have me tarred and feathered.”

She clapped her hands. “That sounds like fun, too!”

He cast Annabel an amused glance over Katie’s head. “Your aunt would certainly enjoy it.” He leaned close to whisper loudly, “She likes to make me suffer.”

Annabel’s blush sent the blood roaring through his veins. Then she shot him a chiding look as she held out her hands to her nieces and nephews. “Come, children, it’s nearly bedtime. Let’s leave his lordship and your papa in peace to finish their card game, shall we?”

“But I want to see his lordship tarred and feathered!” Katie cried. “Mama, what’s ‘tarred’ mean?”

As the adults laughed, Annabel gathered up the children. Ignoring their whining, she and Mrs. Lake shooed them toward the stairs while Jarret rose to take his seat at the card table again. But when he picked up his cards, he noticed Lake staring at him with an assessing gaze.

“Something on your mind, sir?” he asked.

Lake set down his hand. “Forgive me for being blunt, my lord, but why did you decide to come here and help us? Even if this scheme works, there will be little benefit for Plumtree Brewery in it.”

Jarret arranged his cards. “I disagree. I’ve seen enough of Allsopp’s success to know that it could be beneficial for us
both.”

“If I can sustain it,” Lake said, a troubled expression crossing his brow. “Which is by no means certain.”

Jarret weighed his words carefully. “Having spent a great deal of time with you this week, I’ve come to realize that what your sister says about you is true. You have good business instincts. You just don’t trust them.”

“You see how close Lake Ale is to the edge,” Lake retorted. “Does that seem indicative of a man with good business instincts?”

“It’s not your instincts that are the problem. It’s your tendency to drown them in a bottle.”

To Lake’s credit, although anger flared in his face, he didn’t try to deny anything. “My drinking didn’t create the problems with the Russian market. My drinking didn’t raise the price of barrels or hops.”

“That’s true. But a man’s strength is measured by how he reacts to life’s challenges. And until now, you haven’t reacted particularly well.”

“You ought to know what that’s like,” Lake shot back. “From what I understand, you react to ‘life’s challenges’ by avoiding them entirely at the gaming table.”

Jarret gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t deny the accusation. Granted, he’d had no family to support, no reason to step in at the brewery when Gran held the reins—but he could have tried.

How would his life have been different if he’d approached Gran ten years ago and asked to be given another chance? At the time, he’d thought it foolish to invest his life in such an endeavor when all he ever got for his efforts was grief.

Now he began to wonder if that decision had been foolish. Not trying had gained him nothing, for here he was ten
years later, running the brewery anyway. If he’d started back then, he might have prevented some of the problems with the Russian market. He might even have kept Gran from getting so angry at her grandchildren that she’d felt compelled to lay down her fateful ultimatum.

That thought was sobering.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m not qualified to give advice about how to deal with the hand that Fate deals us. But I’m learning from my mistakes, and one thing I’m learning is that hiding solves nothing. It just delays the inevitable. Better to make an attempt and fail, than not to make an attempt at all.”

It was true. He’d found more hope, more enjoyment during this week of creating a future for their two companies than he had in years of gambling. The hand a man received might be unpredictable, but as in cards, what the man made of that hand could change everything.

The anger had faded from Lake’s features, but he was still watching Jarret as warily as a fox watches the hunter. “You haven’t answered my question. Why did you come here? How did Annie convince you to consider it?”

“Your sister can be very persuasive,” he evaded.

Lake nodded. “She’s also very pretty—something I believe you’ve noticed.”

“A man would have to be blind not to notice that.” He dared not say more until he knew where Lake was leading.

“I
have noticed that you’ve stayed longer in Burton than was strictly necessary to negotiate the terms of our deal. Is there a reason for that?”

Jarret grew irritated with this cat-and-mouse game. “Whatever you wish to say to me, sir, say it.”

“Very well.” Giving up any pretense of continuing their
game, Lake leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “If you have honorable intentions toward my sister, you should speak up. If not, I suggest that you leave her be.”

The warning was not entirely unexpected, but it rankled all the same. “What makes you think I have any intentions, honorable or otherwise, toward her?”

“For one thing, you have an uncanny ability to make her blush. I’ve never seen Annie blush as often as she has in the time you’ve been here.”

Jarret forced a smile. “I make a great many women blush, Lake. I don’t mean anything by it.”

“That is my point exactly. I don’t wish to see my sister’s heart broken by a scoundrel.”

Jarret’s eyes narrowed. “Your sister is perfectly capable of protecting her heart from anyone.”

“She had her heart broken by a rascal before.”

That threw Jarret off guard. “Surely you’re not referring to the heroic Rupert.”

Lake snorted. “A hero doesn’t court a woman above his station when he knows her family doesn’t approve.”

“Your father didn’t approve of Rupert?”

An exasperated look crossed Lake’s face. “Father knew, as did I, that Rupert was an impetuous young man with more pluck than brains. He had no money to support a wife and wasn’t likely ever to get any. His father left him and his brother with nothing, and though they worked hard, they had no ambition. Given time, I suspect Annie would have seen that, and the romance would have ended of its own accord.”

“So that’s why your father asked them to wait to marry?”

Lake nodded. “Father knew that if he out-and-out forbade
her to see Rupert, my willful sister would do the opposite. So he took a more subtle approach, hoping that if he delayed the wedding, she would eventually come to her senses.”

“But the subtle approach didn’t work.”

“It worked better than my method, which was to try to separate them.” He stared off across the room, a hint of remorse on his face. “That proved disastrous.”

“How?” Jarret asked, curious to know how much Lake would reveal about what had happened between Annabel and Rupert.

Lake’s sharp gaze swung to him. “The man went off to war and took her heart with him, that’s how. Then he got himself killed. And she hasn’t been the same since.”

The thought of her pining for Rupert drove a dagger in his chest. She’d spoken of her guilt over Rupert’s death, her pain that he might not have wanted her. But she’d never said if she still loved the man. That bothered him.

“Well, if her heart is still with Rupert, you needn’t worry that she’ll give it to me.”

“Do you
want
her heart?” Lake asked.

Another blunt question. It deserved a blunt answer. “I don’t know.”

That didn’t seem to surprise Lake. “Until you do, I suggest you leave her alone.”

It was almost funny; Jarret had said something very similar to Masters not a week ago.

Lake had every reason to warn him off, and it was a mark of the man’s integrity that he cared so much for his sister. Jarret admired that.

But none of it made absolutely any difference in how he intended to treat Annabel. After days without being able to
get near her, he burned even more for her than before. He
had
to see her again alone.

Making love to her should have dampened his need—it always had before with the women who flitted in and out of his life. Then again, Annabel wasn’t like those women. He craved her intensely.

Unexpected noises in the foyer made him and Lake turn toward the door. Then a familiar female voice wafted to him. “I was told I might find Lord Jarret Sharpe here. Is that true?”

Jarret rose from his chair with a sigh. Confound it all to hell. He had a sneaking suspicion that his time in Burton had just come to an end.

A
nnabel came down the stairs slowly, her heart in her throat as she heard the interchange with the butler. The woman was here for Jarret. What did that mean? Had he lied about his associations with women? Did he have a mistress? Or even a fiancée?

The thought drove a stake through her heart.

Especially since the woman was quite beautiful. Curls of sun-kissed bronze framed a face with laughing features, and a fashionable carriage dress of rose-lavender
gros de Naples
outlined a curvaceous form that any man would desire.