Linda Needham (16 page)

“I am not a lunatic, sir!”

And neither was her husband in this particular case; he’d made Justin laugh and eased his fear in a most amazing way.

“Watch out, then! I’m comin’ down, Lady Kate!” Justin’s lanky legs churned above her, his face pale with concentration and damp with sweat as Jared guided him lower and lower, until Kate had a grip around the boy’s waist.

“Got him, Jared. Good work, Justin.”

“Delivered safely, wife.” Jared let go of Justin’s wrist and the boy flung his arms around Kate’s neck, nearly knocking her off balance.

“Told you I could.”

“I had no doubt, Justin.” Kate carried him down another limb, closer to the ground, before he scrambled proudly the rest of the way, to the cheers of the other children.

One down, another to go.

“Hey, this is easy!”

Kate looked up to find Grady sitting on Jared’s broad shoulders, and Jared working his way down through the limbs, nearly blinded by Grady’s handholds.

By some miracle they all made it safely to the ground a few tense minutes later.

“Justin Cleary, I’ve warned you about making wa
gers. And the rest of you children about taking them. You especially, Grady.”

Grady pointed up into the tree. “Justin said there was eagles—”

“And if Justin had said the nest was filled with golden seashells?”

“In an eagle’s nest?” Grady narrowed his eyes at Justin. “I’d tell ’im he’s stupid.”

Justin butted his chest against Grady’s. “You’re just sore because—”

Jared caught them both by the collars and easily separated them.

“A rule of thumb, gentlemen.” Jared scowled at both boys, catching their wide-eyed attention. “If ever someone wagers you a tenner that he can make a farthing disappear from his own hand and then find it behind Lady Hawkesly’s ear, believe that he can do just that.”

He winked at Kate across the heads of the boys and sent her heart spinning wildly.

“A farthing from behind Lady Kate’s ear?” Grady laughed, swatted his belly.

Justin joined in, nudging his friend. “Who’d ever make a wager like that?”

“I would,” Jared said, letting go of the boys and revealing a penny farthing between his fingers. “Because I know how it’s done.”

“How?”

“Watch carefully, now.” He nicked the edge of the penny with a knife blade, then held up the coin again. “Proof that this is the very same penny as the one I’ll find behind the lady’s ear.”

The children gathered around him as though he were a piper, to peer at the coppery coin, then followed him as he walked toward her, his smile cocky and sure, as though he actually believed he could perform such a mountebank miracle.

“You shouldn’t tease them, Jared.”

He said nothing, but displayed the coin in front of her while the children flocked around them to get a closer look at her husband’s foolishness.

“You see the coin in my hand, my lady?”

She saw more than that behind his eyes, surprisingly more. “Of course.”

“I see it too, sir!” Dori wrapped her fingers in Kate’s skirt.

“Me, too!” came the ever-present chorus of rowdy little voices.

“Woof!” And Mr. McNair.

“Watch carefully, ladies and gentlemen, while I make this farthing disappear from my hand and then reappear behind Lady Hawkesly’s left ear.”

In the blink of an eye and with a great deal of show, Jared grabbed the coin from between his fingers with his opposite hand and closed it inside his fist. When he opened that same fist in the next instant the coin had disappeared.

“It’s gone!”

“Where’d it go?”

The children frantically searched the sky and the ground and behind their own ears, until Jared finally announced:

“Is the penny here behind the good lady’s ear, I won
der?” With another great show, he slipped his hand slowly through Kate’s hair and paused a breathless moment at her ear. “Why, I think it is!”

She felt the lightest touch of warm metal against her nape, and then his hand appeared again in the midst of his audience with the same penny shining from between his fingers, knife-nick and all.

“He did it!”

Marvel of marvels, he had.

And won the children’s devotion in the bargain. They cheered and jumped like jacks, and her husband hid his pleasure in a flexing muscle in his jaw.

It hurt her that he felt he needed to.

“Lesson learned, boys?” she asked Justin and Grady, who were gazing up at Jared in worshipful adoration.

“How’d you do that, sir? Will you show us how?”

She shook her head at Jared. “Next you’ll be teaching them pickpocketing.”

His eyes darkened, and an utterly wicked slant lifted the corner of his smile. “There are worse occupations, madam.”

Spoken as though he knew of them firsthand.

“Off you go, children, his lordship is going to keep that secret to himself. For your own good, I might add.”

The air filled with disappointed groans, scattering among the leaves that were beginning to tumble from the huge tree.

“Now, back to the hall with all of you before it starts to rain. I don’t want any of you sick. And the Miss Darbys are doubtless looking for you to help with lunch.”

“But, Lady Kate—”

“I said now, Grady!” Kate frowned at him, cutting off another bid for freedom.

“Beat ya there, Justin!” Grady took off, dust flying, the rest of the children following close behind.

“Thanks for looking out for them, Jared.” She watched for his reaction and found none at all.

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Neither have I.” Except that he’d seemed so comfortable with the chaos, so genuinely concerned about Justin and Grady. Perhaps he had a heart after all. She just needed to find it in time. “But whether you like it or not, you just made nine new little friends. Treasure them while you can. Good afternoon, Jared.”

“Dammit, wife!”

But she’d already started down the lane toward the hall, hoping he would stop her, or follow.

It took him only moments to ride up beside her, to lean down, scoop her up off her feet, and into his lap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He’d clamped his arm around her waist so she couldn’t move, beyond leaning away and staring at his square jaw with its dark unshaved edges.

“Where were you going?” he asked against her ear.

“To the hall to help arrange for taking the children away from here.”

“Chatter all you want about leaving me, Kate.” He heeled the horse forward down the lane. “You’re wasting your breath. I cannot, will not let you go. No matter what you threaten. I’m responsible for your well-being.”

“I can take care of myself.” She folded her arms across her chest and focused her attention on the laurel
hedge that marked the boundary of the hall itself. “I’ll sign papers to that effect. You won’t even miss me. Except that the hunting season starts in three weeks and you’ll have two dozen hunters show up at Badger’s Run for their tournament.”

He stopped the horse and turned her chin. “Hunting season?”

“Deer and boar. Badger’s Run is as famous for its hunting as it is for its fishing. And hunting season beats the fishing season hands down. We’ll be full to the brim for a month.”

“No, we won’t.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. The tournament practically runs itself. Magnus and Mr. Foggerty take the hunters out in organized shooting parties. With plenty of ghillies and brush beaters. They know what they’re doing.”

“Absolutely not. I came here to the country because I want my life back.
Our
life. Which means privacy.”

If the lout wasn’t careful he was about to have all the privacy one lonely man could stand. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing to be done; you can’t call off the shoot. You have reservations paid in advance—”

“I can damn well do whatever I want to do.”

“And what good has that brought you so far, Jared?”

A muscle worked beneath his jaw. A hard place that she wanted desperately to soothe with her palm.

But he grunted and gave a heel to the horse, then rode the rest of the way to the hall in silence. He halted at the base of the wide entry stairs and let her down to her feet.

“You’ll have dinner with me tonight, wife.”

She chose not to answer that particular demand, asking instead, “Did you receive your wooden box from London? Elden delivered it to Badger’s Run with the Douglas seeds.”

“I saw it.”

Though the box had given her a fright. It had been sent by Lord Grey.

“Do you advise Lord Grey as well as the queen?”

“On a daily basis.” His smile had a wry slant to it. “I am a spy, after all.”

Then the blackguard cantered off through the gates.

A spy, indeed.

At least his box of papers would help keep the man busy while Captain Waring brought the
Katie Claire
into Mereglass tomorrow.

But not half as busy as a seductive wife on a mission to distract him any way she could.

J
ared couldn’t tell if he was bleary-eyed from a day’s worth of reading or just bored. Lord Grey’s conglomeration of evidence and unimportant pieces of stray information were dry as dust, and just as old, compiled over the last two years by the customs office in Portsmouth.

And now this honeymoon had turned completely on its backside. A battle of wits one moment, a breezy kind of joy the next, all of it tinged with Kate’s threat to take the children and leave him.

He had isolated himself even more from the comings and goings of the staff. The suite of rooms at Badger’s Run rivaled anything at Hawkesly Hall, with a huge bay window in the anteroom, spilling late afternoon sunlight across his work table, and a fireplace and a goosedown bed in the bedchamber, though the suite
lacked the echoing sound of children’s laughter and the Darbys’ mouthwatering baked goods.

And Kate. She was gone from him too much of the time.

It seemed he would be having dinner alone tonight, as he had last night, despite his demand that Kate eat with him, and he didn’t like the idea one damn bit.

“Your pardon, my lord—”

As though he’d conjured her out of thin air, Kate was standing in the doorway, a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.

“Kate?” He got to his feet, as suspicious that she would appear just now as he was enchanted with the picture she made. Janie and another maid were peering into the room from behind her, both loaded down with heavy trays.

“If you’re not too busy, I thought you and I would share supper here tonight.”

“I’ll make room in my schedule. Come in.”

Without another word, Kate flashed him one of her seductive smiles and in moments a private banquet was set on the small round table nearest the hearth, complete with linens and silver, candles and wine, and another table was heaped with platters and tureens.

Kate’s smile was slightly off center as she closed and locked the door, her eyes glittering, a brow arched with one of her tantalizing secrets.

The question was: Why?

“To what do I owe the honor?”

She shrugged. “I just haven’t seen you much in the last day or two. Have you been
busy
with your work?”

He laughed, wary of that little trap and prepared to
offer up a bit of his pride. “Could I have been more boorish, Kate, or any more foolish? Too busy to come home to you?”

“We all have our foibles, Jared. I’ve completely forgotten it.”

Like hell she had. What the devil was she up to now? Letting him off the hook so easily and with such a fiery glint in her gaze? “Are you planning to seduce me tonight?”

Her eyes widened. “I…I don’t think so.”

He knew her better than that. She had something up her sleeve. But if it involved a bit of seduction, then he’d go along with her as far as she wanted to go.

“Let me know if you do and I promise to be entirely cooperative.”

She laughed. “I’ll keep your offer in mind. But you must be famished, Jared.”

“Likely to perish.” Starving for her as he hadn’t for any other woman he’d ever met. Hadn’t had one since his compelling marriage to his elusive bride.

God knows, he’d not set out to be celibate in the separation, but his opportunities had been few and his sense of loyalty to the woman he’d married had been stronger than his desire for another.

So here he was, rattling with need for her. For this particular woman who was standing beside the table, their marriage still unconsummated, though he’d been here a week as of today.

“Shall we eat, then, before Mrs. Driscoll’s feast gets cold?”

And he wondered again at this sudden attention, what he was supposed to do about it, what he would be
allowed to do. “What exactly are your plans for me?”

She lifted a brow. “Plans?”

“You’ve obviously prearranged this private dinner.”

“I did.”

“Dinner and wine and then what?”

“Scintillating, revealing conversation between us. Uninterrupted, at our own pace.”

Jared let go the laugh that bubbled in his chest. “So you are courting me now?”

“Of course not.” Then she frowned and reconsidered, setting her index finger against her upper lip. “Well, I don’t know.” Her eyes widened.

“Indeed.” Pleased with himself, with her, with this proper game of hers, whatever her motives, Jared decided to go along with her play and went to her side. “You’re very good at it.”

“Am I?”

“A natural.” He pulled out her high-backed chair and gestured for her to take her place, then poured two glasses of claret.

“It’s the best from your cellar. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I would have minded if it weren’t the best.” He handed Kate the glass, lingering as her fingers met his around the gentle bowl, before raising his own glass to her. “To courting, my dear.”

“To…courting. And to the freedom to change one’s mind.” She lifted her glass in his direction, her gaze an unflinching challenge to his stance on her orphans.

He almost called her on her blatant intent, but then she put the rim of her glass to her lips and delicately
sipped, leaving him staring, lovelorn, his heart racing like a rabbit’s.

“To anything you wish, my dear.” Anything at all. He sat back in the upholstered chair as she stood and went to the sideboard, admiring the view as she then ladled a hearty-looking vegetable broth into his bowl.

She was so unmindful of her place, so widely skilled and unafraid of failing.

Unpampered and determined. Where did that kind of independence come from in such a young woman?

“Persia!” he recalled suddenly, sitting up straight with the memory of a week’s old disagreement with her.

“Persia?” She blinked at him.

“A sudden recollection that you told me you’d been held prisoner by a warlord….”

“Oh, that,” she said as she easily ladled herself a bowl of soup. “I was just trying to make a point with you. That you couldn’t intimidate me.”

He relaxed a little. “So you were just spinning a tale about the Persian warlord?”

“No. It really happened. But it was nothing. Only a bit of posturing between my father and the local shah.”

“Good lord, you actually were taken hostage?”

“Technically.”

“For how long?”

“Nearly a month.” She sat down and dipped her spoon into the chunky liquid.

“And?”

She paused, the spoon poised at her mouth, her brows drawn in confusion. “And what?”

“Believe me, I know the ways of these warlords.” He leaned forward across the small table. “Always on the
lookout for stunning young brides, the younger the better, to add to their harems.”

“Stunning?” She laughed and smiled brightly at him, her eyes glittering with amusement in the lamplight. “I was neither stunning, nor in any danger of being wed unwillingly to Uncle Ashraf.”

“Any woman who is as beautiful as you are now had to have been a stunning young lady. Tempting to any man looking for a bride.”

“Not Uncle Ashraf, not ever. And I’m hardly a stunning beauty.”

“Like bloody hell, you’re not.” He took her hand and leaned on his elbow across the table. “Gad, woman, you’ll be the talk of London society.”

She laughed as though that were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. As if she couldn’t imagine just how magnificent she was. “Jared, please. Your soup. It’s getting cold.”

He jammed a spoonful of soup into his mouth, swallowed a chunk of carrot whole, then returned to his wife’s wild story. “Why do you call this Ashraf ‘uncle’?”

“He was as close to me as one; I can’t remember not knowing him and his family.”

“Are you mad? He kidnapped you and held you for ransom.”

“Not really.” She fanned a skeptical hand at him, grinning. “Only because he and Father were at odds over the price of a shipment of dates and myrrh.”

“So Trafford didn’t mind that his daughter had been abducted. You were part of a business deal?” The man had had absolutely no scruples.

“Am I going to have to wield your spoon for you? Please eat.”

Jared grabbed another swig of soup. “I’m not letting this matter of your abduction drop. And
then
I want to know about your being stranded on an ice-bound whaler.”

How the hell did a man keep a woman like his foolish wife out of trouble when she seemed to thrive on it?

“You’re making too much of everything. My father would never have let me go if I had been in danger. I was best friends with Uncle Ashraf’s three middle daughters. He loved me like an uncle, treated me like a daughter. And my uncle knew that Father would never leave port without me, so kept me at his court so that they had to meet and negotiate a settlement. They did, and then I left with my father. Reluctantly.”

“Reluctantly?”

“Because I got to see my three friends and my uncle but once a year at best and I knew I’d miss them terribly. In fact, I wangled an extra week with them. And I turned twelve while I was there.” She grinned impishly at some grand, myrrh-scented memory.

“And this ice-bound whaler you spoke of…how old were you then?”

“Fifteen.”

“Why the devil were you out at sea on a whaler? Did your father know this?”

“Of course. I was a passenger on my way to Boston, as Captain Ostein’s favor to my father.”

“Boston by way of the Arctic? What the bloody hell happened?” Not that he really wanted to know the details; they would only add to his restless nights.

“It was purely by accident. We lost a mainmast in a hurricane off Nova Scotia. It was late in the season and we were set adrift and forced above the Circle and trapped for six weeks in a hard freeze.”

“Good God, woman! You could have perished in dozens of ways, freezing to death being the kindest.”

“But I didn’t. And so now I know how to hunt seal with a spear and render an entire whale, from bladder to blubber.”

His pulse racing with helpless anger and fear of the future with a wife like Kate, Jared stood and paced to the fire. “Where was your mother in all this?”

She sighed and leaned back against the tall-back chair. “My mother died when I was eight. The love of my father’s life. I miss her so.”

“And so you were raised by a foolish father who should have left you home with an aunt where you would have been raised properly, safely.”

She stood abruptly, scowling at him as she picked up her empty soup bowl and his half-eaten one. “I’ll not have you insulting my father. He was the very best. A fine man and a finer father.”

“Who encouraged you to run wild across the Seven Seas, completely unchecked.”

“For which I am more grateful than you could ever imagine. I have no regrets about traveling with my father.” She paused and studied him, a smile lurking at the corners of her mouth. “Though now that I think about it, if it weren’t for him selling you part of his shipping business, I wouldn’t have been forced to marry you.”

Jared suddenly couldn’t imagine that. Missing out
on a life with her. “And I would have regretted that, my dear. To the end of my days.”

A dimple appeared on her cheek. “That’s a long time.”

God, she was beautiful! “It’s just that I’m not used to a woman so…”

“Well traveled?” He watched this complicated woman uncover a steaming bowl of carrots, following every move as she set it on the table beside her plate.

“Indeed. Most of the women of my acquaintance stray no farther than their dressmakers.”

“Then I doubt these ladies have witnessed the fertility dance of the Abasanti tribe?”

His blood stopped its shooshing, midbeat. “None that I know of.”

She shook her head as she reached for the silver serving spoon. “A pity, that.”

“A pity?” He knew exactly which dance she meant. Red, musk-scented flames rising in a moonlit night, naked skin veiled in silk and glistening with oil and sweat. Undulating lines of dancers curling around the leaping fire and each other, the dance increasing and increasing in sound and frenzy until bodies were writhing in pairs on the ground.

“A pity, Jared, because it’s a most…” She glanced down at the flames leaping in the nearby hearth and he could have sworn that she rolled her shoulders and dropped her hip—only the slightest movements, but provocative, erupting out of memories, not imagination.

“It’s a most what, Kate?”

She looked up at him as though surprised to see him
and then thoroughly pleased. “The dance. It’s a wonderment.”

“Are you saying that you’ve witnessed this…dance yourself?”

She bit her lower lip and nodded. “I’ve actually danced it.”

Bloody hell! His wife, dancing like a pagan spirit. “When?”

“Two years ago.” The memory must be fresh. “Just before you and I were married.”

“You danced naked and oiled?”

“And well veiled. Not exactly acceptable in a London ballroom, I know, but it’s the custom of the Abasanti. So I would have felt out of place if I hadn’t worn the costume.”

“Or not worn it! Dancing naked until…good God, woman!”

“Dancing until I thought it best to step out of the line and let the others find their joy.”

Joy! Now there’s a euphemism. “You didn’t finish the dance?”

“Heavens, no. I’m not Abasanti. It wouldn’t be proper.” Untouched, if he could believe her. And she was not capable of that kind of dishonesty.

“Christ, Kate. I’ve seen these primitive affairs myself, and—”

“Then you know how the Abasanti end their fertility ceremony?”

“I sure as hell do.”

She smiled and then sat back in her chair and sighed deeply, sadly. “It’s too bad, really, because I had been
hoping that you and I would try the dance ourselves one night.”

“What?” The word stopped halfway out.

“It would have been fun, Jared. You and me and a bonfire in the woods. If we had stayed married.”

“What?” He could only watch as she lifted a trio of long, buttery carrots onto his plate.

“Not outdoors then, a hearth would have done, or a candle. And a music box. I already have the scented oil.”

“Do you know what you’re proposing, Kate?” His blood leaped at this unfettered streak in his bride.

She spooned a few carrots onto her own plate. “To dance with you in the moonlight.” She laughed brightly.