Linda Needham (6 page)

“In the morning?” He kept forgetting the early hours of these flyfishermen. Weary to his bones, Jared drew his fingers through his hair.

“A full country breakfast, in the dining room.” She stopped and stared at him for a long moment. “Dear God, what have you done to yourself?”

She moved the three steps toward him and caught his wrist before he could react, began inspecting the dried blood on the back of his hand.

Though he was hardly paying much attention; not with her palm so warmly supporting his, her fingers laced with his, their tips playing idly against the underside of his wrist, the brush of her breath against his skin.

Enough to drive a man over the brink.

“It’s a…nothing at all, madam.” He tried to pull his hand away, but she held fast and only peered closer at the dark red splotch.

“I know a fishhook injury when I see one.” She looked up at him in horror. “How did this happen?”

Hell. Was hooking oneself a flyfisher’s sin? A sign of incompetence?

“I…um—” God, her fingers were soft. And warm. Stunning.

“Were you actually casting overhead when I found you in the game house?”

Not knowing what truth to tell the woman, Jared shook his head and then answered, “Well…yes.”

She huffed. “In the near dark, with an armed fly, and hardly any clearance in any direction?”

“I told you I had little choice, with new tackle to contend with and the tournament tomorrow.”

“You could have blinded yourself!”

She was worried about him. Excellent. A smile begin to blossom in his chest, and then a sharp, suspicious twinge.

She wasn’t worried about her husband, but Colonel Bloody Huddleswell.

“I didn’t blind myself,” he said, hearing the snap in his voice.

“Stay put. I’ll be right back.” She slipped away in a cloud of her heady fragrance.

Now what? Feeling more trapped than he’d ever been, caught inside his hastily prepared disguise, Jared listened for her footsteps, so nearly silent as she padded down the stairs and along the corridor just below.

Had his carelessness—no, his utter clumsiness with the fishhook and that blasted rod given him away? Had she guessed his identity? No, not his identity, but the fact that he’d lied about being the greatest flyfisher of all time.

And wouldn’t she wonder why a grown man—a highly decorated colonel—would lie about a thing like his flyfishing skills?

“All right, give me your hand, Colonel.” He’d only just turned to straighten the tangle of tackle in the corner when the woman returned with a small pot of something.

“What’s that you’ve got?”

She patted the corner of the bed and said patiently, “Sit here, please. That’s a nasty cut, and it could get a whole lot nastier.”

“And you have a cure?”

She displayed the wide-mouthed jar and its tattered label. “Mrs. Rooney’s ointment.”

Feeling a bit more at ease, less on the spot, Jared sat. “Ah, Magnus’s mother.”

“Yes. I keep lots of it near at hand. Her ointment has kept many a sportsman from succumbing to his follies.”

“You’ve seen a lot of these injuries?” So she wasn’t accusing him of false credentials after all.

“More than I care to count. Not just fishhooks, either. Head wounds and scrapes and twisted ankles, not to mention the occasional set of bruised knuckles.” She wiped at the wound with a warm, damp piece of flannel, her touch firm but gentle.

Practiced. Making him wonder all the more about the woman he’d married.

“So Badger’s Run is a dangerous place to visit?”

“I’m saying that in general men seem to have no sense about them when it comes to wounds.”

Men. Multiples of them. A bolt of jealousy shot through him and he shifted closer to her, taking possession of her by resting his knee against her leg.

“It doesn’t hurt at all,” he said, challenging all those others who’d come to her before him with their whining.

She smiled and shook her head. “That’s the problem with most men. Fatal, false courage, when a bit of attention could save a limb or a life.”

“A bullet wound might be serious, madam. Or a knife wound, the slash of a sword. Believe me, this fishhook is merely an irritation.”

“I suppose you’ve been shot?”

“A few times.”

“Where?”

“Canton, the Punjab, Montreal, a few other places. Oh, and once in London.”

“Great heavens!” Her sympathy seemed genuine, and still she held firmly to his hand. “You’ve been shot that many times?”

“And shot
at
many more times.” How much dare he tell her? “It’s the nature of my profession.”

“Which is…what? Besides a colonel in the army.” She was peering too closely at him. “You’ve made it sound like you’re a gambler or a highwayman.”

Captain, earl, spy. Her eyes sparkled with interest, perhaps even admiration.

“Foreign service, actually. You see, I came by my rank honestly.”

“And your wounds.” She went back to her ministrations. “So you’ve been to China and India?”

“Often.” He let her dab a gob of Mrs. Rooney’s greasy ointment on his cut, relishing the care she took and the cool of her fingers.

“Have you ever been to Egypt, to Alexandria, specifically?” She suddenly seemed to purposely avoid looking up at him, letting her hair hide most of her face.

His throat went dry. He didn’t know what to say, beyond a feeble-sounding, “A fine city.”

“We were married there.”

We? Jared’s heart stopped cold.

“Lord Hawkesly and I.”

Dangerous waters. He didn’t like this kind of spying. The brittle knife edge, where time raced ahead of him and the risk mounted.

Where quickly and correctly calculating the stakes often meant the difference between life and death.

“Are you married, Colonel?”

He inhaled, needing clean air to clear his head, but only drawing in her compelling, distracting scent. He was finally able to answer,

“Yes,” he managed. “I am.”

To you,
he nearly said. But he still sensed danger so he held back.

Kate knew exactly where this feeling of heat and stumbling shyness and these thrilling sensations in her fingertips were coming from.

They were coming from him: Colonel Leland P. Huddleswell. From his broad, warm palm and the depth of his gaze.

And from a haunting familiarity that had plagued her from the moment they met.

And here she was feeling the urge to confess to a total stranger what she’d hardly broached to herself in all these years.

This just wouldn’t do. She was very married. And when Hawkesly finally did come home, it was vastly important that she be able to look him honestly in the eye.

Especially the eye she planned to spit into.

“There!” she said, with too much enthusiasm, putting the man’s hand on his own knee before standing. “That should feel better soon.”

“It does already.”

He stood, towered above her, knocking his head on the slant of the ceiling. “Thank you, Lady Hawkesly. Please give my best to Mrs. Rooney.”

“Yes, good night, Colonel.” Feeling her face begin to flame, Kate took her leave with as much dignity as she could muster, writing off her girlish reaction to the colonel as completely natural. He was an immensely dashing, startlingly handsome man.

And those dark eyes! Oh, how they probed and alighted where they shouldn’t!

She hadn’t had time for many girlish fancies in her life. And this one was definitely without any kind of future.

Now if she could only remember what her husband looked like.

If she’d only gotten a good look at him.

Beyond his great, broad height.

And his midnight-dark beard.

His long hair whipped in the breeze off the bay.

His features hidden in the glare of the Alexandria sun.

And a wedding that took but a minute, before he was off down the gangway without a backward glance.

The blackguard.

A good crack in the shins with her best boot would be a fine greeting after all this time.

Should he ever decide to come home.

“I
t’s a fine, flapping winner of the first order, Lady Hawkesly!”

“A beauty, Mr. Gilmott.” Kate stepped back from the large, wriggling trout dangling from the end of Gilmott’s line. “But to be fair, the next few hours will tell.”

“Ha! Old Fitchett’s going to wish he hadn’t been so puffed up about winning! Imagine, him the flyfisherman and me the lowly duck hunter.” Gilmott chortled and waddled off across the forecourt to record his contender with Foggerty in the tent pavilion.

Kate stood just outside lodge door, surprised how smoothly the tournament had run this morning. The first round was winding down. Men were returning to the pavilion with their catches to compare techniques and tell their stories, resting only long enough to down
a quick ale and grab a box lunch before they headed off for the afternoon’s fishing.

A perfect day. Warm and softly breezy. The occasional cloud to break the solid blue.

Still, Colonel Huddleswell would probably find something to needle her about. Some tree out of place, or his toast gone cold. She could only be grateful that he had yet to seek her out this morning. Something of a miracle.

“A message’s come to you from the hall, my lady.” Corey swabbed his shock of blond hair from his forehead and handed Kate the message.

“You look worn to the bone, Corey,” Kate said, brushing a spray of straw from his sleeve. “Have you eaten?”

“Just now, up at the hall.”

Then Corey had been filled to the brim with hotchpotch and oat bread, like the mob of others. “Poor lad.”

“It’s back to work, my lady. Them horses get hungry too.” Corey hurried off toward the stable.

Kate was about to stuff the message into the pocket of her breeches to read later, but a niggling sense of unease made her open it instead. She read Miss Rosemary’s blockish hand with a nagging dread.

A trunk?

From London? Dear God, then Hawkesly must be on his way home! Oh, but please, not yet.

This was only September! There was still so much to do. The tournament and the
Katie Claire
, the children and Father Sebastian’s soup kitchens! She wasn’t ready.

But perhaps she was jumping to the wrong conclusion. After all, this was merely a message
to
her husband
from
some unknown party in London. Which wasn’t absolute proof that his arrival was imminent.

It might just be a stray invitation to a ball from one of his social cronies. Or a note from a long-lost friend.

Blast the man and his arrogance! Believing that he could marry her, disappear for nearly two years, and then just show up to start their marriage when it suited him.

Well, it doesn’t suit me at all, Hawkesly, not right now.

Trying to decide on when she could wedge in an extra visit to Hawkesly Hall in the midst of her impossibly busy day, Kate tucked the note into her pocket, then hurried off to the recording pavilion and the crowd watching Magnus chalk in the weight of Gilmott’s trout.

“Eighteen pounds, three ounces, sir,” Foggerty announced in his unflappable drone.

“I knew it!” Gilmott preened as Foggerty held the trout aloft as though it had just won a boxing match. “The biggest of the morning!”

It was indeed a large rainbow for this late in the season. “What stream did you take it from, Mr. Gilmott?”

“Yes, where, Gilmott?” Fitchett shouted from the edge of the crowd, laughing as the other fishermen joined in the questioning.

“Yes, where, old boy? Tell us!”

“Not likely!” Gilmott snorted, then hurried off toward the lodge, obviously pleased with himself and his newfound celebrity, surrounded by his equally happy chums.

The tournament was a remarkable success—so far. Easy profits piling into such a large and empty bucket.

Please, God, keep Hawkesly away from home at least until Monday.

By then she’d have the strength to face his certain wrath and be in control of her own.

“Been a good catch all around, my lady.” Foggerty dropped Gilmott’s trout into a bucket with other fish.

“If the catch is good this year, Foggerty, it’s because you and Magnus have turned our streams into the finest fishing waters in the country.”

“Just doin’ my job, my lady.”

“Thank God for that, Foggerty.” Knowing that the man disliked the slightest hint of flattery, Kate studied the recording board as he ambled away, and found the colonel’s name, but nothing listed beside it. “No word yet from Colonel Huddleswell?”

“Yet, my lady?” Magnus strolled up and snorted. “No insult intended, but I’m thinking that the colonel will need more than a bit of luck if he’s going to land a keeper.”

“Don’t tell me the man is still prattling on about our
losing his favorite split rod and flybox? It would be a perfect excuse to explain the one that got away.”

“If you want him to leave Badger’s Run a happy fisherman, you’d best to send ’im off to the Glenwater Bend, about a half mile upstream from where Mr. Gilmott got that rainbow. Fish aplenty there. An’ ’at’s the only way he’s gonna bag anything. All the big ones seem to be comin’ out of the Glenwater this summer.”

“If I find the colonel, I’ll send him that way.” The Glenwater Bend was a just bit off the road on the way to the hall. Two birds with one stone. She could examine the message to Hawkesly—without opening it, of course—and then there was that odd trunk that Rosemary mentioned.

Plagued by the sense of impending doom, and the distressing feeling that she would find her husband waiting for her on the steps of Hawkesly Hall, Kate hurried past the smokehouse, the air around it already sharply aromatic with the first stock of fish for the coming winter. After checking in on Mrs. Driscoll and her crew of fish cleaners, Kate saddled up her little mare and trotted off toward Hawkesly Hall, by way of Glenwater Bend.

She tied up the mare on the hill above and picked her way down the riverbank through the fading ferns and bracken.

If the rainbow trout were here in abundance as Magnus believed, she’d let him know when she returned from the hall.

“Splash me, Grady! Splash me!”

Kate smiled at the sound of the swooooshing of water, then Healy’s happy shriek and Grady’s hooting
laughter that followed. The imps shouldn’t be playing in the chalk stream with the tournament going on.

For that matter, they shouldn’t be this far from Hawkesly Hall.

“Splash Dori now, Grady! An’ Mera, too!”

“Me, now, me, meeeee, Grady!” Dori called out in her squealy singsong.

Gracious! The whole gang of them must have wandered down from the house. She stepped around the brambles and over the fallen hornbeam, ready to shoo them away. But she paused above the rocky pool and its sun-dappled gilding, wrestling with a grin and that pesky lump in her throat at the sight of the children playing.

Just playing. Doing what all children were put on this good green earth to do. Fearless, untroubled hearts, full bellies, a place to snuggle up and be warm.

“Hey, look up there!” Justin was pointing at her, his eyes bright, his dimples deep and winking even from across the stream. “Lady Kate’s here!”

“Oh, watch me, Lady Kate! Watch me!” Little Lucas stuck his arms out like a pair of wings, stiffened, and then abruptly fell over backward into the water with a shallow splash.

“Excellent, Lucas!” Kate called out as the boy rocketed up with a squeal and an explosion of water.

“Guess what, Lady Kate!” Healy wobbled toward her atop the stepping stones.

“What, Healy?” The other children swarmed past the tottering boy.

“Grady can swim clear across the stream! All in one big breath.”

“Just like a pike!” Mera shouted, her fist dug into the thick, black fur at Mr. McNair’s massive scruff. The dog lumbered gently alongside the little girl, patient, devoted, that huge, goofy smile lighting his large hound eyes.

If only Mr. McNair were Prime Minister! He wouldn’t let the children starve.

Kate really ought to be chiding them about playing so far from the hall, but how could she resist kneeling to meet their hugs and their laughter? The little ones holding on tightly; Lucas and his cap, Dori squishing kisses onto Kate’s cheek, Healy climbing into her arms, Mera with one hand in Kate’s and the other wrapped around Mr. McNair’s neck.

“So you’re a pike now, Grady?” Kate asked.

“He’s incorrigible, Lady Kate.”

“Incorrigible?” Dear Glenna must have learned another new word today. Another to add to the plates of fear that she used to armor herself. “Ebullient, I’d call him.”

“Ebullient?” Glenna frowned more deeply as she stood apart, her curiosity never failing to distract her. “What does that mean?”

“You’ll find it—”

“In the dictionary, I know.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at Grady. “I was just saying that I told them not to leave the hall grounds.”

“Spoilsport!”

“Yeah!”

Kate stood upright, her arms still full of Lucas. “Glenna is only looking out for your best interest, children. And frankly, I agree with her.”

“With Glenna?” Grady swabbed his cheek with his forearm. “Why?”

Glenna sniffed. “Told you so.”

“Children, please.” Kate used their proximity to gather them with her arms and herd them up the bank, far away from the rainbow pool. “We’re hosting a fishing tournament at Badger’s Run; it’s our job to make sure the contestants have the very best time. Else they might not come back next year.”

“What’s a turmanent, Lady Kate?” Dori grinned up at Kate, thrusting the end of her tongue through the great gap between her front teeth.

“It’s a fish race!” Justin shouted, his cunning alive in his eyes. “Right, Lady Kate?”

“Not exactly a race, but a contest. Whoever catches the biggest fish after three days wins the prize.”

“We can win! Come on! Let’s go, Justin! I saw a big one in there!” Grady threw himself backward and stumbled down the bankside into a gorse bush, Mr. McNair grabbing the tail of the boy’s shirt before he rolled to a stop. “Oh, yuck, Mr. McNair! Get off!”

“The tournament is for our guests, Grady. You must promise to keep away from the streams and the fishermen until I say you can play there.”

“Ah, but, we really could—” The dog sat down on Grady’s leg, pinning him to the ground.

“I mean it, Grady. And you too, Justin. And the rest of you. You’re to stay clear of the streams and the lodge and the contestants. For the next three days.”

“Then get this blinkin’ hound off me!”

Grady shoved at the dog, but Mr. McNair merely
lapped his tongue across Grady’s face and the children burst out laughing; even Glenna smiled.

“Call him off, sweetheart,” Kate said to Mera.

“Come, Mr. McNair!” Mera stretched out her little hand and the dog lifted himself off Grady, then loped to her side. “He likes the new girl, Lady Kate.”

“Mr. McNair likes Margaret?”

Mera grinned broadly. “I do too. I let him stay with her last night. Miss Rosemary didn’t see.”

Rosemary doubtless did see. The woman missed very little and loved the faithful old dog every bit as much as Kate did.

“A man came to the house today, Lady Kate.” Glenna posted herself beside Kate. “On a fast horse.”

“Yes, I know, Glenna. Thank you.” The message for Hawkesly, all the way from London. Just the thought of what it all might mean gave her stomach a twist.

Certain doom for all her hopes and plans, because the man himself wouldn’t be far behind the message.

And what would he think of all the children?

A slice of cold fear sped down her spine; the image of them on their own again, unprotected.

Not that she’d ever abandon a one. But she could do so much more for them here.

“Can we go get apples from the orchard, Lady Kate?” Healy was still in her arms, nose to nose with her, his bright red hair smelling of leaves, his shoes drizzling.

“What an excellent idea, Healy.”

“Good, good, goooood!” The boy grunted as he hugged her neck fiercely.

“Why don’t each of you pick ten apples apiece and then take them back to the three Miss Darbys for supper?”

“Apple pudding and jam! Oh, boy!” Dori pulled at Healy and the boy slid out of Kate’s arms and into Dori’s.

“Will you be eating with us tonight?” Lucas asked, the breeze tousling his light brown hair.

“Probably not tonight, Lucas.”

“Pleeeeease!”

“I’ll be two more nights at Badger’s Run. It’s not so far away from the hall. And I’ll stop by at bedtime, and each morning. You’ll hardly know that I’m gone.”

“Yes, we will!” The little charmers.

She started herding them again. “Now off you go to the orchard—then right back to the hall.”

“Follow me!”

“Shhhh…quietly, Grady,” Kate said to the boy. “The fishermen need—”

But Grady had scrambled back up the embankment and was already speeding down the twisting pathway into the woods, the other children taking after him, Mr. McNair loping along beside Mera.

“I’d best go follow them, Lady Kate,” Glenna said with a huff far older than her twelve years, “else they’ll end up at Badger’s Run begging sugar off Mrs. Driscoll and pennies off the guests.”

“Your hair looks very nice today, Glenna.” The girl’s neat little cap was tied beneath her chin, a thick plait hanging down her back.

“Really?” Glenna touched the deep red curls that ringed her forehead. “How do you mean, good?”

“It’s getting to be a very pretty shade of auburn.”

“Is it?” It really was, shining and thick in the noonday sun. A year of proper food and sleep and warm clothes had done that.

“You know, Glenna, I’m sure that I have a pale pink linen cap with a winding border of embroidered lilacs along its brim and all the way down its ribbons. It’s just your size, and it’s yours if you’d like it.”

She gasped in utter disbelief. “For me?”