Linda Needham (12 page)

“No hope?”

“Exactly.” The word found its way through the linen of his shirt, burning through his skin to the center of his chest. “No hope at all.”

Responsibility. He’d long understood the word, but had never felt the meaning of it so completely. It was nudging at him to do something.

To be something, someone to Kate.

He could at least try.

“What would hope look like to you, madam?” He watched her face as she glanced up at him with a frown that pinched her brows.

“What do you mean?”

What
did
he mean? “Would your image of hope for our marriage include an apology from me?”

She sighed and shook her head vigorously, as though to shake out the very thought of such a thing between them. “There’s no need for that.”

He’d known all along who his rivals were, yet he didn’t know quite what to do about them. How to work around the obstacle they presented. “Then this is truly all about your orphans?”

She threw out another sigh. “I’m utterly serious about leaving with the children, no matter what you do to me.”

“And if I offer to find them a suitable home?”

She cocked her head, hands on her fine hips. “What do you mean?”

Nine children to place for her. “I’ll arrange somewhere for them to live.”

She eyed him, as skeptical as ever. “You mean to make Hawkesly Hall into a permanent orphanage?”

“No—”

“There!” She huffed and had her foot in the stirrup an instant later.

“Give me a chance.” Jared caught her by the waist again, and turned her sharply, glaring down into her face in the hopes that she would listen to him for once. “I’ll find something for them. I promise.”

She narrowed her eyes to diamond glints. “If not Hawkesly Hall, then where?”

“God, woman, how would I know? I just now thought of the idea.”

She considered him for a very long time. “Do you mean this, Hawkesly?” She grabbed hold of his sleeves at his elbows and pulled him closer. “You’re not just trying to patch things over for the moment so that you can trap me into staying, because—”

“Tempting, but I wouldn’t dare.”

She studied him for a very long time, tracking her eyes across his mouth and then his lashes. “And in the meantime, while you’re looking, where do the children stay?”

Much as he hated to imagine his house filled with chaos, he said, “At Hawkesly Hall.”

“But you will find them a real home, like you promised.”

“Yes.”

“Safe and clean and dry and heated, and above all, nearby.”

“Christ, woman, I’ll do my best.”

His outburst made her step backward and study his face even longer; one last, long perusal before she finally shrugged and nodded reluctantly, her judgment of his motives still obviously reserved for later.

“And in return, my lord, I shall do
my
best.”

Jared wondered what kind of trouble her best might get them into in the years to come, wondered most of all at the astonishing sensation of comfort and peace that had settled across his shoulders.

An important battle won. But only the first of many.

“Does your best include calling me something more personal than ‘my lord’?”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth, then gave a nervous laugh. “Yes, of course—”

“Jared.”

“Jared,” she said, as though his name would need hours of rehearsal.

“A good try.”

Her smile went sideways and demure and focused directly on his mouth, as though she was hungry for him, or curious. And if it weren’t for the pale, blue wash of the moonlight, her cheeks would be a blushing, bridal pink.

“And I’m Kate.”

“Yes, I know.” Great God, he was rocking slightly sideways on his heels, feeling a little giddy and shy, like a stumbling, inexperienced bridegroom.

Hell, he might even be on the verge of grinning like a bloody fool.

“You drive a hard bargain, Kate.”

Christ, here they were, married. The woman standing so boldly in front of him was his wife. His bride. He felt the tether between them just now as he hadn’t that sweltering day so long ago, or any day since.

And tonight he would complete the bargain. She would be safely and entirely his. In the fullest sense.

A day later than his unspoken wager with Drew, but timely enough, considering.

And well worth the wait.

“Welcome home, Jared. And thank you.”

His blood surged at the silkiness of her voice, the promising embrace of it, after he’d so thoroughly bunged up the situation. The callow feeling vanished, replaced by a ripe, rip-roaring craving for her.

For all of her.

“Remind me often, Kate, what a fool I was for not returning sooner.”

She was standing just inches from him, moonlight glistening on her lips, beckoning him closer, her scent of heather and loam embracing him and tugging at him.

“Perhaps it’s time that you find out for yourself what you were missing when you were so busy that you couldn’t come home to me. All that I hinted about to Colonel Huddleswell earlier today.”

“That was hardly a hint you gave the old colonel, Kate. You nearly killed him.” Jared slipped his fingers through her hair, stunned by the easy way she tilted back her head, the sound of her sigh sending his pulse
pounding through his veins, pooling heat in his groin.

“Oh, goodness,” she whispered through a bowed smile. “I’d wondered…”

“Wondered what?” Jared caught her around the waist with his other arm and lifted her closer.

“Ohhh…about this sort of thing.” She moved her hips against him, his groin, the constant erection there, purposefully, as though she understood what it meant and was set on driving him out of his mind. “About being, well…wifely with you.”

“Wifely, indeed.” Christ, the woman was sultry and soft, and oh, so pliable. With her mouth upturned and damp and mere inches from his, her breath against his.

“Because this is good, Jared. Very good.” She drew in a deep breath along his neck, and if he wasn’t dreaming all this, that was the tip of her tongue, tasting the underside of his jaw, sliding down his throat.

“God, woman.” His patience spent, his pulse wild, he enfolded her, marveling at the perfect fit of them, the thrumming heat, and when he closed his mouth over hers, he tasted honey and heather.

“Ohhhh, my!” She moaned against his mouth, made little, kitteny sounds in her throat as she raked her fingers through his hair and then dragged him closer. “You taste of cinnamon, Jared. Not like the colonel. Not anything like I imagined for all those months you didn’t come to me.”

She climbed even deeper into his embrace, as though she couldn’t get enough of him, nibbled and tugged. An excellent trait in a bride, passion so easily aroused. One he planned to encourage.

“What did you imagine instead, Kate?” Roused to the edge of decency, and only barely aware of the fact that they were out here in public view, Jared backed up against the thick trunk of an elm and pulled her against him, fitting her neatly between his legs.

“I imagined salt and sunlight, and yet nothing like this. Nothing beyond the simple kiss of a bridegroom on the deck of the
Cinnabar
….” She kissed himmadly, his cheeks and his brow. “Not all this, Jared. Not the feel of you against me, your hard places and your soft. Your hands—they’re so wonderfully large—and your delicious mouth and your tongue—certainly never your tongue or your teeth!”

“Christ, woman, you’ll stop that right now.”

“What? Why?” She looked up at him, her hands cupping his jaw.

He could barely catch his breath, let alone control the urge to grind hard against her, to lay with her on the loamy floor of the fragrant woods. “If you want our wedding night to be later tonight in our chamber and not right here outside the tackle shed where anyone could find us, then you’d best stop right now.”

To his great regret, Kate stopped her kissing and pushed an arm’s length away. “Tonight? You mean to consummate our marriage tonight?”

He caught her waist, missing her heated curves, trying to pull her against him. “As soon as you can decently remove yourself from your guests.”

“No, that won’t do, Jared.”

He was breathing like a rutting stag, the noise of it drowning out any other sound. “What won’t do?”

She shook her head at him. “Consummating our marriage tonight.”

He stopped breathing. “Why the devil not?” And then a thought came to him. “Don’t tell me that you’re…having your…woman’s time right now? Because—”

“My…? Oh. No, that’s not the reason. It’s just that….” She shrugged lightly, caught her finger in his watchpocket. “It…well, it just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Not right?” He straightened. “What do you mean? You just kissed the bloody hell out of me.”

“Kissing is one thing. Consummating is entirely another.”

“Good lord, woman! You’ve just spent the last half day chiding me for neglecting you all these months, for not beginning our marriage—”

“I’m dreadfully sorry if you got the wrong idea,” she said, clearly upset, clearly a lunatic. “But I can’t just leap into bed with a man I don’t know.”

He caught her by both arms. “I’m your husband, dammit. Of course you know me.”

She sniffed. “Who makes your shoes?”

“Galeno and Chavez. In Madrid.”

“I didn’t know that. What was the last book you read?”

“
Hook, Line and Spinner
. Why?”

“Your favorite soup?”

“Curry. Blazes, woman, you’re mad!”

“I might very well be completely out of my head, but since you don’t know me at all, you can’t be sure one way or the other.”

“Enough!”

“Which I’m not, by the way.”

“Not what?”

“Mad.” She exhaled as though she’d been carrying a huge burden for a very long way. “Don’t you see, Jared, I don’t know a thing about you. I’m just…well, if we had been properly betrothed…”

“We weren’t. And that’s that.”

“But if we had been properly betrothed, we’d have had time to get to know each other before we married. Small talk and lemonade and balls and whist until three in the morning. That’s what normal couples do.”

“I’m aware of that, but times weren’t normal.” And there wasn’t anything the least bit normal about the woman he married.

“But now that times are somewhat normal, I would like very much to have you court me, as though we had been recently betrothed.”

Jared blinked away the staring dryness in his eyes, flinching at the painful scrape against his eyelids. “Court you?”

“That’s right. It’s a simple enough request, easy to fulfill. You can call on me properly at Badger’s Run or Hawkesly Hall, and we can take long walks in the woods or by the chalk streams.”

“What the hell do you think we’ve been doing for the past twenty-four hours?”

“We can also sit in the library and have tea and discuss books that we’ve read.”

“Madam, our libraries have both been overrun by untold multitudes of unwelcome pests.”

“We can share a quiet meal together—”

“Where?”

“The where doesn’t matter in the least, just that we do it properly. It’s not like I’m asking you to change the tides, or wrestle an alligator. Only that you and I take a bit of time to learn a little about each other before we share our marriage bed. So that we’re not utter strangers when we do come together as husband and wife. I don’t think I’m asking too much. Not after all this time.”

After all this time? Wasn’t that the point!

Jared stood in stunned amazement, realizing that somehow she’d managed to perch herself astride her horse, the reins in hand as though she were going to ride out of his life and go blithely back to her own.

He opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of a thing to say that wasn’t a howling curse or a plaintive bellow, so he said nothing.

“So will I see you at the lodge, Jared?”

His jaw aching, nearly locked, he somehow managed a strangled, “I’d be…delighted.”

Her smile shamed the moonlight. “Good,” she said in her simple triumph that ought to grate but only made him feel like the lust-starved, slavering beast that he was. “Till then, husband.”

And in the meantime, he would burn.

In more ways than he could possibly count.

“H
e’s my
husband
!” Kate held fast to the saddle horn for fear of melting right off the horse. For the memory of Jared’s strong bronze neck, the broad heat that had poured off his chest and down the front of her blouse, setting off little, tingling fires.

“He’s home and he’s mine!” Her cheeks were still blazing hot and her heart was still rattling out of control as she tried to fit the word to the man.

“Husband!”

And he wanted her in his bed.

Tonight!

Oh, my, what a glorious delight that would have been. A night of sultry, sizzling pleasure with her husband. His kiss, his touch. All that thick-muscled heaviness of his body pressing against hers.

A torrid, erotic dance, hinting at her favorite Aba
santi celebrations. Swaying, singing bodies and firelight, drumbeats and heartbeats, writhing limbs and glistening skin.

Only this time she wouldn’t just be watching, wouldn’t be left alone at the fire with her imagination.

At least she hoped her wedding night would happen soon. If all went well, and Jared kept his promise to her about the children.

And if he never found out about the warehouses and the activities of the Ladies’ Charitable League.

Feeling just like a dazzle-eyed schoolgirl, Kate whistled the rest of the way to Badger’s Run, whistled and giggled to herself and grinned like a fool. She entered the stable yard at a trot, her face hot and her smile too huge not to draw suspicion from those who knew her well.

“Evenin’ to ya, Lady Hawkesly.” Corey met her in his eager, lanky gait and held the reins under Sunny’s bit.

“Good evening.” She felt dazed and a bit giddy as she dropped from the saddle onto watery knees and hurried off toward her office via the kitchen carrying the box of prize metals and ribbons.

She burst through the kitchen doorway, startling Mrs. Driscoll, who stared at her. “What the merry devil’s gotten into you, Lady Hawkesly?”

Was it that plain? Her blush deepened. “Nothing, Mrs. Driscoll, just running behind time, as usual.”

Because my husband has just come home and kissed the daylights out of me. And he promised he would care for the children! And I’m going to do my best to believe him.

“Well, my lady, supper’s on schedule, if that’ll ease your spirit. Here, lovie, have a taste.”

The rail-thin woman poked a succulent piece of perfectly seared trout into Kate’s mouth.

“Dear lord, that’s delicious.” It was no wonder Badger’s Run was gaining a reputation for fine dining. “My thanks as always, Mrs. D.”

Kate hurried off to check on the dining-room linens, then made her way through the lounge, already crowded with boasting fishermen, to speak with McHugh about the reserves in her husband’s wine cellar.

Jared’s
cellar…

Lord Hawkesly.

Oh, dear. What was she going to tell the household staff about the sudden arrival of her husband?

Far more daunting, what would the guests say? They were under the mistaken assumption that Jared was Colonel Huddleswell, a cranky, opinionated flyfisherman who’d had great luck with a trout.

She couldn’t very well explain that he was actually Lord Hawkesly in disguise—not only their host, but the lord of the manor and her husband? It would seem as though Badger’s Run were playing some bizarre trick on their unsuspecting guests. And it would hardly be fair to award Jared the daily overall weight prize for fishing in his own stream.

He wouldn’t be at all pleased with her plan, but he was going to have to remain Colonel Huddleswell until all the guests were gone.

She’d best get her story straight with him as soon as possible and come up with some believable explana
tion as to why she had to disqualify Colonel Huddleswell and his enormous rainbow trout from the competition.

“McHugh, if you happen to see my hus…um, I mean Colonel Huddleswell, please have him come find me. I’ll be in my office for a while.”

“Done, my lady. I heard the colonel caught himself quite a rainbow this afternoon.”

“Didn’t he just, McHugh.”

Kate found Foggerty’s list of the contestants’ names and their catch weights waiting for her on her desk blotter, and busied herself putting together the ribbons and metals for the day’s winners. But her concentration kept wandering off toward Jared and all those kisses, along her throat and beneath her ears. His hands, his mouth.

Her thoughts were sneaking upstairs and through the door to his bedchamber when she felt him standing in the doorway, watching her. Her fingers fumbled and the fish medallion clattered to the desktop.

She chanced a look at him, savoring the sight of him, from his tall boots, up the length of his fine wool trousers, his waistcoat and jacket, to his neckcloth and then his unreadable expression.

Amusement, caged anger, certainly impatience with her, though he was leaning easily against the jamb as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Ah, there you are, Colonel Huddleswell.”

He arched a brow and a slight smile. “So it’s to be that game again, wife.”

Afraid the man would simply abandon their ruse, Kate hurried to him, tugged him into the room by the
crook of his elbow. “Please, it has to be. At least until the tournament is over and the guests are gone.”

“Absolutely not. I refuse to play the avid sportsman for another two days.”

“Then how do I explain you to everyone?”

He caught her chin with his crooked knuckle and said with complete sincerity, “You’ll tell them I’m your husband. Simple enough even for the obnoxious Squire Fitchett.”

“Then how do I explain you disguising yourself as Colonel Huddleswell? Won’t they wonder why you’d do such a thing?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t much care. Against my better nature, I’ve agreed to postpone bedding my bride in order to pay her court—”

“Which she very much appreciates.” Though her cheeks were pinking again with the thoughts of him. “However, if you don’t wish to continue to play your part as Colonel Huddleswell here at Badger’s Run, then you’ll just have to stay with the children at the hall.”

“The hell I will.”

“I don’t know how much you care about your reputation, but you can bet that word of your odd disguise and your even odder deception—in your own hunting lodge—will eventually make its way back to your friends and colleagues in London and cause quite a stir.”

“Let them…oh, hell.” He glared at her, scrubbing silently at his jaw with his closed fist, giving the whole matter deep consideration.

“Well, am I to call you Colonel Huddleswell for a few more days?”

He inhaled as though he planned to bellow a curse, but the air came out in a long growl. “Once again you have me by the nape. And I don’t like it one damned bit.”

Not wanting to seem too pleased with herself, or with him for being so cooperative about the situation, Kate shook her head. “I’m afraid we’ve no other course.”

“Make no mistake, there are always ‘other courses’ in every situation. It’s the weight of the cost that decides the matter.”

“But this is only temporary and not the worst thing in the world.” For some reason that had something to do with the need to touch him and all that seething maleness cooped up here in her office, she brushed a thread off his sleeve. “After all, you certainly can’t complain about having to spend a few idle days fishing.”

He captured her hand and imprisoned it flat against his chest. “Madam, if I never see another fish, it’ll be too soon.”

“Come, Jared, pouting doesn’t become you. You needn’t give up fishing altogether just to spite me.”

“Spite has nothing to do with it. It’s the plain fact that I’ve never fished before today and that I—”

“Never fished? Don’t be ridiculous. You—”

“Shhh…” He lifted her by the hips, and slid her onto the edge of her desk, then peered closely. “I thought you were interested in learning everything about me before you let me into our marriage bed.”

“I am.” Though she wouldn’t mind learning what those big, hot hands of his would feel like against her skin.

“Then you’ll start out by believing that I know nothing at all about fishing, save that which I learned last night by reading and this afternoon by chasing that bloody trout down the stream.”

But he’d looked every inch the expert in his flyfishing stance. “What about the tackle you claimed that we…”

“Lost in transit?”

“You made a huge enough fracas about it.”

“A complete fabrication. Just like Colonel Huddleswell. Why would I—your husband—have brought my fishing equipment with me when I didn’t know a thing about Badger’s Run or any tournament?”

He was making sense, still—“But you managed to hook that huge rainbow trout—with all that ancient tackle.”

“I hooked it, but I didn’t land it, exactly.” He pushed up from the desk.

“Then how did you bring it in?”

“Well, I…um,” he said, shrugging, “I fell on the bloody thing.”

No wonder he’d been wet to the bone when she’d found him in the stream. “You fell on the fish?”

“Right on top of it, I’m afraid, in the middle of a reed bog. You mean you didn’t see me take that fall?”

“You fell?” Kate couldn’t contain the giggle, though she covered her mouth with her hand. “I was busy shooing away the children.”

“Go ahead, laugh. I suspect I looked the perfect fool. Especially to those children.”

“Jared, really! They think you’re wonderful.” He grunted at that. “And I’m not laughing at you.”

“At whom then, the trout? Don’t blame him, he was just doing his best to survive.”

Kate laughed even harder, letting herself down from her desk. “You’ve truly never fished before?”

“As God is my witness.” He raised his hand, glancing at the red mark just below his thumb. “And I’ve got all the injuries to prove it.”

She took hold of his hand, loving the size and the strength of him. “Your injury looks better.”

His voice grew soft. “Perhaps you can tend my wounded thigh later tonight? And my shoulder.” He sat down easily on the edge of her desk, thrusting his legs out in front of him, the rippling power of his thigh muscles making her palms tingle.

“I’d be glad to.” If she could resist the temptation to tend more than his wounds. “But why pretend that you were Colonel Huddleswell, the legendary flyfisherman?”

“For the same reason that you pretended to be Lady Hawkesly, the proprietor of Badger’s Run, when all the while you were my wife.”

“I wasn’t pretending; I was just trying to survive. But you were actually spying on me.”

“I confess, I was.” He flicked that piratical brow at her, making her smile. “I was damned suspicious. I still am. My wife, the proprietor of a sportsman lodge. Hell, woman, I had to uncover your motives.”

But he hadn’t yet, at least not all of the delicate complexities of her venture. With any luck, he never would.

“Instead, I uncovered yours: plainly to deceive me.”

It had only been a toss-away comment, meant to re
mind him that his deception hadn’t worked, but a darkly exciting gleam came into Jared’s eyes.

“To study you and then expose you, but in the end to bed you.”

“You shouldn’t keep saying that.” It made her cheeks flame and struck the breath from her.

“It’s the truth. I want you.”

There she went again, her limbs and her will melting away as he shaped his huge hand to her cheek and slipped his fingers into her hair.

Perhaps she ought to establish a few rules between them before he took matters too far.

Rule number one—

“Oh…Jared.” He kissed her, his mouth a soft, hungry heat against hers.

“I want you here in your little office.” He kissed her more fiercely than before, nibbling, possessive, his breathing unstable as he pulled her closer. “And in our bed—”

“Our…you…”—shouldn’t! But he moved his hands up her sides, his fingers softly kneading, his mouth probing hers.

“And I wanted you out there in the woods, beside the stream, and in it.”

“Jared, I don’t think this is a…” Kate couldn’t think at all through the silky pleasure swimming along her skin, could barely hear the tapping sound on the door and then the panel opening.

“Lady Hawkesly, Mrs. Driscoll wanted you to…. holy bleeding hell!”

Kate met McHugh’s startled gaze with one of her
own, feeling as though she’d been caught with her hand in the sugar sack. “McHugh, I…ah…Hello!”

But McHugh had already lifted a murderous glare at Jared, his brogue a harsh, drilling burr. “Sir, you’re no kind of a gentleman. And if you’re not gone from this place within an hour, I’ll be coming after you myself, with my shotgun loaded and barking.”

“Wait!” Kate caught McHugh’s sleeve as he turned to leave and yanked him into the office. “McHugh, it’s all right. He did nothing that I didn’t encourage.”

McHugh’s glare darkened. “No, lass. I warned him once before. The bloody blackguard knows exactly what he’s done. As well as his fate if he doesn’t—”

“She’s my wife, McHugh.”

Kate took in a breath as Jared came to stand just behind her, a dark, embracing heat that could have been his arms for the strength of it.

“Your what?”

Jared stepped around Kate like a cloud obscuring the sun, as though he were trying to protect her. “Lady Hawkesly is my wife.”

“You’re a damnable liar, Huddleswell.” McHugh pointed past Jared. “The lady is married to Lord Hawkesly. So you’ll keep your bloody hands off her.”

Jared’s arm went toward McHugh, and Kate grabbed for it, fearing that her husband was going to deliver a blow to the very faithful McHugh.

But Jared’s hand stopped abruptly in front of McHugh’s chest, his fingers extended. “And I must thank you for keeping watch over her in my absence.”

A handshake, not a blow.

Still McHugh frowned his implacable suspicion at
Jared’s hand and then at his face. “Ha! So now you’re saying that you’re Lord Hawkesly?”

“Because I
am
.”

“He is my husband, McHugh. Jared Westbrooke, earl of Hawkesly.”

“Ha! That’s what the blighter’s told you, my lady?”

Jared withdrew his hand. “My apologies for not owning up when I first arrived. But there were other considerations at the time.”