Linda Needham (3 page)

Kate left the office for the dining room, angry at the colonel for defeating her so easily, angry at herself for allowing it when she had so many other more important problems to resolve.

The dining hall was paneled to the tops of the doorways in carved oak, plastered to the old coffered beam ceiling and encircled by heavily framed portraits of utter strangers alternating with the mounted heads of the fiercest kind of wild animal imaginable.

The diners were drinking and laughing and happily spending their money on the contents of her husband’s wine cellar. Each man had a fish tale to tell her, adding minutes to her trek to the dais.

Remembering that the colonel would need to be seated among the other fishermen, she glanced up to find him leaning against the dining-room arch, arms crossed, his eyes moving over the crowd.

Good thing that his angry glare couldn’t light fires, else the entire room would be ablaze. And at this point a meal seemed the least of his interests.

Well, let him starve.

Kate quieted the group merely by raising her hand.
“I want to welcome all of you to the second annual Fisherman’s Regatta at Badger’s Run.”

A roar of approval went up and Kate couldn’t help looking up across all the heads to find the colonel, not surprised that he was frowning.

“You’ll have three days to score your best catch in each category. In whatever order you choose. The best overall fisherman, by weight, wins.”

“Auch, if only you were the prize, Lady Hawkesly, instead of a case of your finest.”

Kate smiled down at the man, always amused at the way his moustache bobbed. “You’re a dear, Squire Fitchett, but it’s no good trying to influence my opinion. The tournament will be judged again this year by our wonderful gamekeeper, Whelan Foggerty.”

Foggerty nodded gravely to the applauding crowd, his deep pleasure crinkling only the corners of his eyes, before he stepped back against the sideboard.

“Submit your catches out in the courtyard, under the tent, and then take them to the kitchen to be dressed out by Mrs. Driscoll and her skilled kitchen staff and readied for our own tables.” The rest would be smoked and preserved to feed all the hungry mouths up at the hall.

Kate raised a glass to her guests. “My very best wishes to all of you, and to your unlucky quarry.”

The lot of them rose as one and the toast ended with a three-part hip-hip-huzzah.

Kate took a deep breath as the food began to flow from the kitchen like a river, then worked her way through the tables toward the door, trying to forget that Huddleswell was waiting for her there.

Colonel Leland P. Huddleswell.

Harumph and twaddle! He didn’t look anything like a Huddleswell, let alone a Leland, or a P.

Not with that rakish black hair so carelessly its own style: wind-tossed and shot with gold, nearly reaching to his collar.

And yet he did carry himself and his arrogance as though used to having complete command of any situation.

Even this one.

She’d best show him to his room before he caused an even larger disturbance, and let the dust settle where it may. The night was only just beginning, and with the new child now living at the hall, and the shipment to finish organizing, it was only going to get longer.

Kate paused in front of her surly guest only long enough to say, “If you’ll follow me, Colonel Huddleswell, I’ll show you to your lodgings, though I doubt you’ll be satisfied with anything I can give you at this late hour.”

Or at any hour, for that matter.

J
ared let the sweet, woodsy breeze of her wash over him as she brushed past him, her breasts high and taunting, the weight of them shifting as though unencumbered by a proper restraint, her hair flowing down her back.

Calling himself every kind of a fool for not ending this charade immediately, he followed her into the lobby, past the frowning McHugh, who was carrying a case of Hawkesly’s best Jamaican rum toward the kitchen.

“This way, Colonel.” His wife had stopped on the landing above, amiable and patient. She had a smile that welcomed and challenged and made his skin ache. No wonder her erstwhile guests seemed to dote on her.

Feeling roundly jealous of every man in the place, Jared started after her, his path still unclear, his mind a teeming muddle.

He’d barely gained the first step when a thunder of footfalls rounded the newel and a small child went rocketing past him and up the stairs, using his knee as a pivot pole.

“Wait for meeeee!” And flew right up into his wife’s arms as though she belonged there.

What the hell?

“Sarah, sweet, I’m so glad you found me!” The child received a snuggling embrace. “Whatever would I have done without your good-night hug?”

“You’d miss me terrible.”

“I would, indeed!”

“Who is this?” Jared asked sharply, riding out a boiling, unfamiliar jealousy.

A child he’d not been told about before the marriage? Another man in her life? A dead husband? After all, he’d known damned little about the scheming woman that he’d married in such haste.

“There’s the little groundling.” A lean-shouldered, elderly woman bustled past Jared and up the stairs, her arms outstretched. “Time you be abed, Sarah, before the wee folks carry ya off.”

“Not the wee folks, Mrs. Rooney!” And then a tremendous squealing and giggling came out of the little wriggling body as his wife tickled and juggled the girl and her wild limbs until Mrs. Rooney was carrying the bundle in her own arms safely back to wherever the devil it had come from.

“And who was that?” he asked again, sure that he hadn’t been heard the first time.

“Mrs. Rooney,” she said, her hand on her hip. “My ghillie’s mum.”

“I mean the child, dammit!” he said, aware that he’d made her flinch. “Who is she?” And what the devil was a ghillie?

A scowl flicked one of her brows. “You mean Sarah. She’s Mr. Foggerty’s little girl. Mrs. Rooney rounds her up for bedtime. Now come, Colonel, I’m sure you’ll want to settle in.”

She lifted the hem of her skirts and continued up the stairs, trailing her mysteries and her compelling scent.

He followed her for two more flights, suddenly wondering where she’d gotten the large staff required to polish the oak and brass.

And what about Hawkesly Hall itself? Had she closed it up completely? Had she turned it into a school for thieves, or debutantes?

“Your room is up here, Colonel.” She opened a narrow service door hidden within the paneling and then climbed the narrowing stairs.

Jared followed, suddenly suspicious, not remembering this particular staircase. Or the stuffy heat—or the cool of the exterior stone wall. And certainly not the quarter turn of the stairs before she opened the door above and stepped into the corridor.

Feeling suddenly like a lamb to the slaughter, Jared stepped hesitantly past her, imagining that his devious, suspicious-acting bride was about to knock him in the head. He’d wake up in the morning with a throbbing headache in the hold of a ship bound for Nanking.

They were in the attic, low-ceilinged and dim, the uneven-planked passage lit by the last shreds of the orange sky sliding over the sill of a window at the far end of the corridor. He’d been so distracted watching his
wife’s hips swaying and shifting in front of him that he hadn’t been counting the turns of the stairs.

“I warned you, Colonel. It’s not what you’re used to.” She lifted a brow as she brushed past him and then continued down the corridor, her head just inches from the rafter beam.

And those perfectly formed hips swaying just slightly, dancing, beckoning his hands.

Cool your heels, old man, you’ve a shady plot to uncover.

And a marriage to begin.

He stooped his shoulders and started after her, losing her for a moment around a quick corner and then another, until she was climbing another, incredibly narrow, but shorter set of stairs and opening still another door.

“Your room, Colonel.” She met him with a smug, poorly hidden smile. “Here in the old fourteenth-century bell tower.”

Jared held back on the narrow landing, trying to focus on the woman’s plotting, but enjoying the view of her ankles instead, intrigued by her sturdy boots, the dust and the polish and the scrapes.

Imagining those ankles bare and sliding through his hands, her calves and—

“Don’t you want to see it, Colonel?”

He grabbed a breath. Grateful for the dimness of the stairwell, Jared swallowed and nodded as he started up the stairs. “I do indeed, madam.”

“Watch your head.” She was already in the room, covering the ridge of the sharply angled door frame
with her hand and tugging on his sleeve to keep his head bent. “Here it is, Colonel, as unpleasant as I promised.”

Jared found himself face to face, then nose-to-nose, with her as he slipped slowly through the doorway. Could have been hip to hip, if he’d pressed his advantage.

Which probably wouldn’t have been a very good idea, given the moment and his head full of her scent and the roiling suspicions tumbling around inside.

“Badger’s Run promised me a great deal, madam.” He turned away from her too quickly and immediately crashed his knees into the foot of the small bed. He would have pitched forward, but the woman grabbed hold of his elbow and he turned back to her, closer than ever, his shoulders stooped.

“The room is quite small,” she said after a long moment that seemed to confound her. “But it’s clean, and has a number of amenities. A window that actually opens.”

Jared had already memorized the room. “Yes, madam, and a miniature bed, a child’s chair, a table the size of a dinner plate—and no place to stand up straight.”

“I’m sorry. But you’re very, very tall.” She was gazing up at him, her nostrils flaring slightly, breathing too sharply for a solidly married woman.

She was smaller than he remembered from that long-ago, faraway afternoon: lean-limbed, her chin reaching only to the middle of his chest. Her hair was wilder, too, and lacked that huge-brimmed bonnet that had
hidden her face from the sun and him and all the other distractions swirling around them on the deck of the
Cinnabar
.

Hiding her secrets even then.

“So how much do you charge for all this luxury?” he said, catching his hand on a rafter.

“Ten guineas for the weekend.”

“Ten?” His neck aching from the angle, Jared sat down on the rail at the foot of the bed. “Holy hell, madam, ten guineas will buy me a year’s membership in any one of London’s finest clubs.”

“Then perhaps you should go back to London, Colonel Huddleswell, if you’re not happy with the price of your room at Badger’s Run. Though I doubt you’ll find much sport in fishing the Thames off London Bridge, and nothing I would care to eat.”

“Your other guests—are they paying as much as you’re charging me?”

“Eleven guineas.” She took the two steps to the low, little window and closed the curtains. “After all, I couldn’t very well charge you the entire fee. Not with your having to stay here in this room.”

“How very considerate of you. What do I get for my money, besides this room?”

“The tournament, of course. It’s the reason you’re here, after all.”

“That’s all? No meals?”

“A reasonable extra charge.”

“And drinks? What about that expensive cellar you were emptying?”

“McHugh will be happy to keep a ticket for you.”

Gad, at least ten pounds a head lodging, and all
those meals and pints. The woman must be pulling in money hand by fist. And doing what with it? Buying herself gew-gaws? Jewelry? Gifts for her lover?

That thought hit him like a cold slap.

“If you’ll tell me where your luggage is, Colonel, I’ll have McHugh bring it up for you.”

Hell. Pembridge had sent his cases ahead to Hawkesly Hall. He hadn’t anything in his satchel but papers, and he couldn’t very well send up to the hall for his luggage. Might not even be anyone there to receive it.

Well, he was already knee-deep in this messy story—why not jump in all the way?

“What do you mean, my luggage?” He narrowed his eyes at her, hopefully setting her off guard. “Aren’t my cases here already?”

She straightened from him and frowned, her mind clearly racing backward through her busy day. “Already? What do you mean?”

Good! He had her on the run this time, pressed a bit harder with his wild story.

“I mean a portmanteau, two trunks, a half dozen cases. I sent my luggage ahead last night so that it would be waiting for me here. As well as my fishing…um”—blast, what was the stuff called?—“my gear…things. Poles and, um, whatnot.”

Instead of cowering, his wife merely stood her ground and shook her head. “Well, I assure you, Colonel Huddleswell, that nothing of yours arrived ahead of you. I would have been informed by the staff and then the lot would have been safely stored.”

“Unless it was stolen—”

Her cheeks flamed. “I do
not
employ thieves. How dare you suggest such a thing.”

Possibly because you have seized my hunting lodge for your own purposes, without my permission.

“Because, madam, my bags are missing as well as my prize-winning fishing equipment, leaving me without even a change of clothes.”

She touched her fingertip to the very center of her lips, surveying him. Then she sighed and shook her head. “Your visit seems to have been plagued with trouble from the start, Colonel Huddleswell. Perhaps it’s an omen of things to come.”

He’d been thinking the same thing, on this damnably delayed wedding night, in these very close and fragrant quarters. But blast the woman for saying it!

“What do you plan to do about it?”

“I’m going to suggest once more that you spend tonight in comfort at the Cloak and Gander in the village.”

“I’m staying here.” He crossed his arms and glared at the woman. “Now tell me how you plan to replace the contents of my luggage?”

She raised her shoulders and set her mouth. “You win, Colonel. I’ll send McHugh up here with some clothes and a suitable toilet kit. And if you come downstairs for a few minutes early in the morning, I can fit you out with the appropriate tournament equipment. I’ll need to know if you’re a game man, or a course?”

Bloody hell, that question again. At least now he knew that it had something to do with fishing.

“Both,” he said, refusing to be limited in any way,
and now wondering what the devil he’d said to make her lift both eyebrows.

“Well, I must say that I’ll want to see you in action, Colonel. By the way, the fish start biting around half past four in the morning. Good night.”

Then she turned and left him.

Just like that. On their bloody wedding night!

“Wait!” he bellowed, not at all certain what he was going to say or do when she turned back to him on the landing.

Only that he couldn’t let her go.

Not that easily.

Not tonight.

“Yes, what can I do for you, Colonel?” He heard the implied
this time
in the lilt of her impatience. The fire in her eyes delighted him, the strength of her gaze, its skill at putting him in his place.

“Do I pay you now for a meal, or do you trust me enough to pay at the end of the three days?”

She huffed this time at his paltry game. “You can settle up when you leave. You’ll have missed most of dinner, but Mrs. Driscoll will see that you’re fed.”

He damn well didn’t want to be fed by Mrs. Driscoll. He wanted to share a meal with his bride. But she had hurried down the stairs as though trying to outrun him, as though he would allow her the distance.

He would have caught up with her but for the great, shining mahogany and brass object that loomed like a ghost on the last turn of the landing.

The floor clock! His well-intended wedding present to his wife.

Blasted woman, she’d already unwrapped it and displayed it in his lodge! He shoved aside the fact that the gift had been an afterthought, Pembridge’s reminder.

Now he’d have to think of something else to give her. Something she wasn’t already using.

Hell and damnation! Now the woman had disappeared entirely. He looked over the balcony railing and watched the sated guests pouring out of the dining room and filling up the great room, breaking out the card games.

And
his
brandy!

But no sign of his wife.

Perhaps she’d gone to speak with the cook. He hurried down the stairs into the mobbing crowed and cringed when he heard a familiar voice.

“There you are, Huddleswell!” It was Fitchett; somehow he’d routed out Jared’s name. And now the rest of his party was closing in on him.

Breame took him by the elbow as though they were fellow conspirators. “Will you be fishing for trout in the morning, sir? Or will you be after the grayling prize?”

Damn and blast!