Patricia Rice (19 page)

Bea couldn’t understand her agitation in taking his
arm. By now she ought to know him well enough to feel comfortable around
him. She knew he hated kidney pudding and adored lemon tarts. He
thought Broadbury ridiculously primitive and crippled by tradition, and
that Americans were much more progressive. He wanted to own railroads.
She’d seen him nearly weep in fear over his niece. Why on earth should
she be holding her breath now when he towered over her and offered his
arm?

“Don’t breathe,” he muttered as she gingerly placed
her fingers over his coat sleeve. “Not until I’m safely seated under the
tablecloth. And don’t ask,” he warned as she started to do just that.
“I am facing the fact that I’m far too crude to sit at the table of a
lady as stunning as you are.”

Heat flushed her cheeks, and Bea not only didn’t
breathe, she wouldn’t look at him as he pulled out a chair for her and
her aunt and took his own seat. His tone had sounded more like
accusation than flattery. She couldn’t reconcile the inconsistency.

“Now tell me, Mr. Rector,” Aunt Constance said as
soon as they were seated. “What have you heard from my dear friend, the
Earl of Coventry?”

Distracted by her wayward thoughts, Bea was slow to
grasp the significance of her aunt’s conversational turn until Mac
uncharacteristically knocked over his wineglass and hastily sought to
sop it up with his napkin. His evident irritation at more than the
spilled wine reminded her—the earl was the children’s grandfather.

As she signaled James to bring fresh wine and linen, Bea glared warningly at her aunt. Constance ignored her.

Oblivious to the undercurrents, the curate flashed a
small smile. “As Miss Cavendish knows, the earl and his family seldom
visit his estate. We’ve frequently tried to solicit funds for the church
roof, but our only response is from the steward, who is a most... How
shall I say this without seeming uncharitable?”

“He is a most disagreeable man,” Bea answered
bluntly. “He would not let Papa extend the hunting field through their
woods. It’s not as if anything grows there but trees.” Nervously, she
sipped the wine her aunt had brought from the Continent. She usually
preferred water, but perhaps the wine would get her through this dinner.

“Of course, dear.” Aunt Constance patted her hand.
“The earl is simply a busy man with more important concerns. I shall
remind him of his obligations as soon as I see him. I do hope he isn’t
off on another of his jaunts.”

“Apples don’t fall far from trees, particularly
winesaps,” Mac muttered, setting down his newly refilled glass after
taking a large swallow.

Ignoring his reference to the earl’s drunken son and
the implication that the earl was also a drunkard, Constance waited
until the soup was served before returning to her previous thought.
“Why, I can remember the time the earl was so furious with a horse thief
that he tracked him all the way to France and brought him back to
England to be hanged. Dreadful temper, but I suppose he was within his
rights. Justice must be served.”

Across the table, Mac choked on another swallow of wine. Bea watched him with concern.

“It must have been a very valuable horse,” the curate said politely.

“On the contrary, Mr. Rector.” Aunt Constance
smiled. “The horse had been placed out to pasture. The earl simply
detests losing anything that is his.”

Oh, my.
Bea returned her gaze to her soup. If the earl would chase a horse thief to France, how far would he chase a child thief?

Across from her, Mac nearly inhaled the remainder of his wine. Thinking that an excellent idea, Bea did the same.

“Dear Bea is so modest. She cannot see that her
beauty would take London by storm.” Lady Taubee laughed at her niece’s
foolishness. “Why, she need only sit quietly in a corner and men would
flutter toward her like moths to a flame.”

And get their wings charred, Mac thought grimly,
sipping his wine. The damned footman was constantly hovering, filling
their glasses, and he’d lost track of how much he’d consumed. Obviously
not enough, since he could still see the lovely woman with long, glossy
curls brushing her creamy shoulders sitting across from him, pretending
he didn’t exist. She’d not said one word to him all evening.

“We would hate to lose Miss Cavendish to the city,”
the curate protested. “Miss Cavendish is Broadbury’s biggest asset.”
Hearing himself, he stumbled to correct his phrasing. “Our
finest
asset. We could not do without her. Why, just last week Mr. Daventry
Carstairs said he must come back more often if he could be assured of
Miss Cavendish’s charming company.”

Cynically, Mac thought Dav more inclined to visit
his hounds than Bea. She was too fine for either of the Carstairses. She
needed someone strong to keep her from bankrupting herself with
generosity.

He couldn’t imagine where she’d find such a paragon,
but that wasn’t his problem. His problem was surviving the evening
while staring across the table at the most perfect breasts designed by
God. High, full, and firm, they strained at the thin silk of her gown
until he’d become obsessed with watching for the moment a ruffle
slipped. He was a clod. A drunken one, to boot.

A flush rose from Bea’s throat to her cheeks, and
Mac knew she was aware of his stare, but he couldn’t help himself.
Leaning back in his chair to stretch his legs and ease the uncomfortable
tightness of his trousers, he gave up on food and settled in for a long
evening of drinking. He smiled wickedly as she reached for her glass as
well.

“Bea would make someone a wonderfully obedient wife,” Lady Taubee rhapsodized.

Obedient, his ass. Mac tilted his glass in salute to
Bea, who tried to pretend she didn’t see. The woman would undermine
anything a man did if she thought him in the wrong. He knew her
sort—smile pleasantly to his face, then do exactly as she pleased behind
his back. He’d watched his mother and countless other women manipulate
their husbands that way. No women for him, no sirree.
Independence
was his motto.

He was definitely sloshed. He’d be maudlin soon if he didn’t watch out.

“If it wasn’t for Miss Cavendish, the parish would
have to establish a poorhouse,” Mrs. Rector confided. “Because of her
and her father, there’s not a woman or child in the village without a
roof over their heads.”

But Miss Damned Cavendish would be without a roof over
her
head if the silly chit didn’t change her ways.

“What do you think, Mr. Warwick? Wouldn’t Beatrice make a wonderful mother?”

Mac had to jerk back to the conversation to realize
Lady Taubee was addressing him. He wanted to scowl at the meddlesome
witch, but big, brown eyes just like Bea’s beamed at him from behind
wrinkled, rouged cheeks, and he let the wine mellow him.

“Aye, that she would,” he agreed with a slight slur.
For someone else’s kids,
he added mentally. “She’s a bonny lass designed to bear a man’s babes.”

From beside him, Mrs. Rector giggled, and Mac
figured he’d committed some faux pas, but for once, he agreed with the
old hag. Bea could inspire even a man like him to want brats. Getting
them on her would be worth every minute of walking the floor later.

He hoped he hadn’t said that aloud. What the devil had turned his thoughts in that direction?

Bea turned bright red, and Lady Taubee stood up to lead the ladies from the table.
Good. Let them go.
Now he could sit here and quietly drink himself under the table.

“Son, if you need some guidance, I’m here to help,”
the curate offered after the women left, and the elusive footman had
produced a decanter of port and disappeared.

Mac raised an eyebrow in the curate’s direction. “I’m one and thirty. What are you, twenty-five?”

The curate’s smooth round cheeks flushed. “Age is
not the measure of experience. I have six sisters. I’ve watched their
suitors languish at our door since I was knee high.”

Mac reached for his port. “I had a sister, and she
died after bearing her sot of a husband’s second child. Men will never
understand women, no matter how many they know.”

The curate grimaced in sympathy. “It is difficult to
understand why they like us. I believe the fairer sex is more inclined
to follow their hearts than their heads.”

“And we follow our pricks instead of our hearts?”

Mac couldn’t believe he’d said that to a man of the
cloth, but he was entirely too aware of the part of him hidden by the
table linen. He’d not been in this embarrassing predicament since he’d
been a green stripling. And it was all that witch’s fault for pointing
out Bea’s most attractive qualities.

The curate coughed and choked and reached for a
glass of water. Helpfully, Mac pitched him a leftover roll. “Bread’s
best to stop that.” He patted his coat pocket and located a cigar. “Mind
if I smoke?” He’d had to refrain these last nights, since the ladies
had insisted he accompany them rather than leave him sitting alone.

Biting doubtfully into the roll, the curate shook his head.

“My theory is that men and women possess only one
thing they can share equally,” Mac declared, “and that need be done only
in a bed behind closed doors. The rest of the time they ought to steer
clear of each other.”

The curate nearly turned purple. Mac wondered if he
ought to pound him on the back. When the man reached for his water glass
again, he decided the curate was probably more woman than man, and he
shouldn’t have confided in him. Well, it really didn’t matter much. The
curate wasn’t the sort who would dare mention such a subject to the
ladies.

Putting his foot up on the chair Bea had vacated,
Mac took another good swallow of port. If he could just stay here at the
table, a good wine in one hand, a cigar in the other, he’d be a
reasonably happy man. The idea of encroaching on the spider web of
females beyond the drawing room door gave him cold shivers.

Now, if it were just Bea alone...

He closed his eyes against that temptation. She was a
woman. She would trap him with her soft scents and beguiling eyes and
phenomenal... Hell, he couldn’t even hide behind his eyelids without her
lurking there in vivid color and glorious dimension. That he even
needed to hide from temptation irritated the hell out of him.

“The ladies civilize our weaker impulses,” the curate said, intruding upon his thoughts.

Mac peered from beneath his lowered lids to watch
the man nervously crumbling his bread. “How so?” he demanded. He’d just
like to see a woman who could have prevented him from stealing Marilee’s
children. If that hadn’t been a weak impulse, he didn’t know what was.

“Men are... Men are inclined to act on the physical
passions of lust and anger.” The curate stumbled over his words but
seemed to be thinking furiously. “If a physical action is available,
they’ll take it rather than think it through logically.”

“Sheep dip,” Mac declared, crushing his cigar in the
tray. “I’m far more inclined toward logic than Miss Cavendish is. Her
soft heart will lead her to ruin.”

The curate shook his round head vehemently. “No,
that’s not what I mean. Women do let their tender feelings guide them
more often than men do, but their actions are more apt to lead to good
than evil. Men, on the other hand, are led by their stormier passions.
An action taken in anger or lust is more generally a hurtful action.”

As Mac attempted to interrupt, the curate waved his
hand to signal he wasn’t finished. “I believe the ladies can soften us,
draw away some of our more violent tempers, and lead us down more
rational paths. You are a blunt man, Mr. Warwick. Are you inclined
toward rash, destructive actions after you’ve... uh, spent time in a
lady’s company?”

Mac snorted. “If you mean bedded a woman, I suppose
you have a point. I’m not likely to pop anyone in the jaw after a good
bedding. But I don’t need ‘ladies’ for that.”

The curate sighed and reached for his port. “Well,
no, I suppose not, but that’s such a risky business. I’ve never really
understood fornication outside the marriage bed. There’s the risk of
disease and unwanted children, and there cannot be the same pleasure as
sharing something beautiful with one you love. No, I can’t think it’s
the same at all. A wife can be a soothing presence when the rest of the
world is out of kilter.”

Mac figured he’d had just enough port for that to
make sense. Of course, in his version, that soothing presence lay in bed
behind closed doors. In any other room of the house, a woman was an
intrusion. Except maybe in the kitchen. In bed, though... The vision was
even clearer. The woman he saw sprawled across his pillow had polished
curls and a wide, tempting mouth, and eyes that lit with interesting
fires as he approached. Not to mention her more... uplifting assets.

The hot poker in his pants heartily agreed with the curate.

The curate coughed politely. “Um, perhaps we should join the ladies?”

Sure, sometime in the next decade or two.

With a determined effort, Mac conjured up Bitsy in
dirty nappies and Buddy heaving up the morning’s mush, and he was soon
in a fine state for confronting the ladies. Nothing like imagining an
army of children to take the wind out of a man’s sails.

Of course, thinking about the children spawned new
doubts. He couldn’t remember his parents ever playing on the lawn with
Marilee, as Bea had done with Bitsy and Bud. He hadn’t really noticed
their stiffness until he compared it with Bea’s spontaneous ease. He
grimaced. Well, that thought certainly had diminished temptation.

As they entered the drawing room, a maid stood with
eyes downcast, apparently awaiting a reply to the missive the curate’s
wife was perusing. At their entrance, Mrs. Rector looked up with relief.

“There you are, Fred. It seems poor Mrs. White is in
a terrible way and wishes your presence. I daresay she’s overeaten
again. Perhaps you could persuade her to stay away from those rhubarb
tarts.”