Linda Needham (17 page)

“God, Kate, have you a proper bone anywhere in your body?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Proper?” She sat down in her chair, her jouncing making the carrot roll off the serving spoon. It hit the edge of her plate and landed on the blade of her bread knife.

“How do I begin counting your improprieties, Kate? They are legion.” Deciding that the urge to bury himself in her softness was dangerously near to winning, Jared spun away from her.

“How do you mean? I know very well how to conduct myself in society. At a ball or the opera. I play the pianoforte and I sing.”

“How did you find the time to learn? You were raised at sea, traveled the desert with barbarians, which is doubtless where you learned to wear trousers.” Though God alone knew how she had contrived to
turn an elegant manor house into an orphanage.

Feeling safely distant again, he turned back just in time to see her stick a tine of her fork into the wayward carrot then lift the tip of it to her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Jared. But I don’t consider any of my behavior improper.”

But, God, she was. Oh, so very improper. Exotic and wonderful.

And his. If he played the right cards, in the right order.

He stared, gaped, as she drew the tip of that fat, butter-glistening carrot between her lips.

His bones ached, his penis raged with lust for her, a weather vane, a thick iron rod to her mystic, magnetic north; it wanted her.

He wanted her.

He watched the carrot disappear inch by inch into her mouth, in tiny succulent nibbles, while her gaze wandered his face, innocent of guile, but flushed with passion.

His throat had dried with his feral breathing, but he managed the best warning he could, considering the rawness of his nerves. “Here’s my situation, Kate. If you don’t stop with your talk of dancing naked, and your manipulation of that lucky vegetable as though it were part of me, then I can offer you two choices.”

He saw her swallow, admired the long column of her throat as she sat upright. “And they are?”

“That one of us leave the room immediately—”

She frowned fiercely at that choice, which pleased him. “Or?”

“That I take my marital rights here and now.”

She blinked at him, touched her lips with her fingers. “I’m quite sure you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“You wouldn’t without my permission, no matter how tempted. Or how much you bluster about it. I’ve learned that much about you. And that speaks volumes about a man’s character. And I’m counting on your character, Jared. Counting on it in so many ways.” She grinned at him from across the table and his blood surged again, his erection harder than ever, determined to have its way.

As eager as he was to delve deeply into this woman who hunted whale and rode with warlords—

And wished for him to dance naked with her in the moonlight.

Kate wondered if she hadn’t taken this whole ruse a little too far. Because the only thing going through her mind at the moment was:

You’d look so very fine dancing naked in the moonlight, husband.

Sleek.

Glistening.

Corded and bronze.

Standing there in his fine wool jacket and his crisp white linen shirt, a tiger ready to spring.

Wondrously fine!

Not that she could risk saying that just now without accepting the explosive consequences. She wanted to be his wife in every possible way. But the children had to come first, no matter what.

And the
Katie Claire
was docked in Mereglass with
her pilfered cargo. Another hour and the ship would be safely out of the harbor, heading toward Dublin.

And in the meantime Kate might find herself breeched and boarded and her plans foundering.

“Your carrots are getting cold, Jared.” Her nerves jangling, flushed to the tips of her ears, Kate leaped from her chair to the sideboard to serve the peas.

“Damn the carrots.” He began stalking slowly toward her, an utterly untameable look in his dark eyes. “You never cease to amaze me.”

He was wearing that intoxicating smile again, the one he wore just as he was about to kiss her, his finely sculpted lips parted and hungry looking.

“About what?”

“You were wearing a prim bonnet when we married.” He threaded his warm fingers through the hair at her temple. “But you are the most brazen woman I’ve ever met.”

“And you looked like a scallywag at the time, hardly a merchant or a stone-headed, prudish advisor to the queen.”

“Or a spy.” He arched a dark brow then took a long breath. “You were right, by the way.”

It took Kate a moment before she realized what he meant. “You’re a spy for the queen?”

“And for the Home Office and the admiralty and at the prime minister’s discretion.”

The Home Office? Her husband spied for Lord Grey? “You must be joking.”

“Not a bit. Which took me aback the other day when you announced my secret to the entire staff.”

Kate backed away for a better look at him, the devil in her midst. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“I tried.”

“Not hard enough.” On top of everything else, her plans and schemes, she might have put his life in real danger. “You let me babble on. You should have throttled me.”

“I should have kissed you.” He reached out to her, cradled the back of her head between his large hands. “God knows I haven’t done that nearly enough.”

His dark eyes were shining, his teeth glinting white through his wicked smile, his cheeks warm and his mouth a dazzling heat against hers.

She was deeply hungry for this, for him, her husband and spy, for his breath to mingle with hers as he delved deeply with his tongue and danced with hers.

“That is a fine claret, Jared.” She felt him smile against her cheek, then against her mouth. “Rosy.” A kiss. “And rich.” Another kiss.

“And you’re buttery sweet, wife.” This one low at the base of her throat where her pulse raced and his fingers played at the buttons at the front of her shirtwaist. Unfastening the top one and then the next few fell before she could lodge a feeble protest.

“Where are you going, Jared?”

“Inside,” he said, dipping his head, following his fingers with his mouth until he was hovering between her breasts, kissing her there.

Inside! Dear heavens, she was in way over her head with this foolish plan to keep him occupied.

“I really shouldn’t let you….” But there she went,
slipping her fingers through his hair at his nape and pulling him closer to this heady danger.

“Oh, yes we should. I should have come back to you months ago.” The brazen man laced his fingers beneath her backside like a sling, then dropped with her into the chair she’d just been sitting in, landing her in his lap.

“I didn’t really mean to go this far.” So very, very far, that she had now slipped her legs around his waist and was straddling him in a thoroughly indelicate pose.

And feeling like a princess riding her knight, nuzzling at his neck and squirming her bottom against his thighs.

“I mean us to go much farther than this, Kate.” He was taking such blatant advantage of her position on his lap, slowly unfastening another button on her shirt and another….

And she wasn’t trying very hard to stop him, this delicious man who could scuttle her plans. “We can’t, Jared.”

“Beautiful, Kate.” He drew his thumb across her nipple and she found herself gasping from the pleasure, laughing in little breathless bursts.

Her heart was a muddle of wanting him, his hot, heavy body, of wishing the impossible and knowing this wasn’t wise.

This wondrous intimacy with him. When it had no future.

And still she let him draw aside her shirt at her shoulder, let his mouth pull and tug and travel a giddy path
along her collarbone, while his warm fingers teased and taunted.

“Please, Jared!” Now she was begging for more, enchanted by a deep yearning for him that had smoldered inside her since that day on the deck of the
Cinnabar
.

Their wedding day. So brief and confusing, and now this uncontrolled wanting, when she knew that she shouldn’t.

That she couldn’t possibly.

“This isn’t working, Jared.”

He murmured against her throat, still teasing at her breast with his fingers, making her gasp and tug at his shoulders. “It’s working fine, wife. Don’t know how it could be working any finer.”

“Please—”

“Unless we were in that big bed in the next room, and even then I don’t think it would matter. You couldn’t taste better than—”

“No! Stop!” This wasn’t right. She couldn’t go on playing him the fool. Not even for the sake of the
Katie Claire
. There must be other ways to distract him. She scrambled off his lap, the cool air hitting her nearly bare chest like a fist. She started buttoning up her shirt. “I can’t, Jared! There are still too many differences between us.”

He remained in the chair, a caged bear, breathing like a stag and glaring at her. “Not this, certainly. We plainly want each other.”

“But I want a family I can love and respect in all things.” Not knowing what else to do with her hands,
Kate finished serving the peas with a sharp clank of the spoon.

His brow dipped in a look of dismay. “You don’t respect me, Kate?”

“Not in the way I would dearly love to.”

And the potatoes.

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, because she couldn’t muster much respect for herself at the moment.

“There’s not much to say, except that your supper is ready.” And she had to stay here with him. To keep an eye on his activities.

To offer up herself completely should he suddenly insist on going to the village.

But he didn’t insist, only glared and snorted and shook his head at her. They ate a cooling supper together, played a game of cribbage. She read an entire issue of the
Hearth and Heath
gazette cover to cover while he went to work on his snowbank of papers from Lord Grey.

Sometime during the long evening, the mood between them became more comfortable, the fire warmer, the brandy richer, sweeter. He never touched her again, but she could feel him as though they were skin to skin. She must have fallen asleep in the chaise, because she woke up near dawn lying on his bed.

She was still in her clothes, draped by a silken counterpane, Jared snoozing on the pillow beside her, boyishly innocent and dashingly masculine at the same time.

A dangerous combination with so much at stake.

Regretting that so many things had turned out so very badly, Kate slipped out of bed and made her way toward Hawkesly Hall, leaving a good part of her heart at Badger’s Run.

“G
one again!” Jared glared at the empty place in the bed beside him, the dent in Kate’s pillow.

Stubborn, befuddling woman.

She’d sprung his courting trap then escaped to God knew where. But not for long. He planned to spend his day with her, whether she liked it or not. To tag along in her adventures, with the rowdy orphans or without.

He could take it.

Pembridge had yet to get back to him on the particulars of their placement, but that sort of thing took time. He’d instructed the man to check on the living conditions himself. That too would take time. But would smooth the way for Kate to accept what was best for her orphans.

He dressed for the cool morning and was just head
ing down the stairs when the treads beneath his boots gave a sharp shake.

And then a great booming sound rocked the walls.

Then the ceiling and the prisms hanging from the sconces on the landing started to dance.

Cannon fire!

“Bloody hell!”

Booooommm!

And another! A twenty-four-pound mortar if he’d ever heard one.

Coming from the north, near the sea cliff.

Holy hell! Suddenly terrified for Kate, he took the stairs three at a time and sped toward the stables.

“Are we under attack, my lord?” Corey’s eyes were saucers, even as he handled the saddle with the unshakable ease of a seasoned soldier.

“I’m going to find out, Corey.” Who would be shelling his estate? And from where? The sea? And
why
?

He hoped to hell that Kate was well out of range. And the children! Please keep the wily little scamps at the hall and out of harm’s way.

Jared mounted the bay moments later, and galloped north toward the barren cliffs, where the barrage seemed to have come from.

He followed the main road for nearly a mile under a dark, blustering sky before he was almost knocked from the saddle by the roar of another shot.

He must be nearly on the weapon, could even see the smoke rising from above the scrub and the scree at the base of the treeless cliffside. He turned off the main
road into a narrow, recently traveled lane, ignoring the foolish chance that he was taking.

He knew better than to gallop headlong into danger, but this attack was different, some kind of madness.

Smugglers? Gun runners?

Completely stumped, Jared dropped silently from the saddle and secured the bay’s reins to a tree. Then he crept along the line of brambles until he heard voices.

One a gruff male voice and then a lighter baritone and then…Kate?

Captured? Kidnapped? A stone dropped into the pit of his stomach. Fearing the very worst, seeing only the slightest movement through the thickness of the underbrush, Jared threw himself into the clearing, ready for anything.

Anything but Kate, and a six-inch-carriage cannon, Elden, a fizzing torch, Magnus Rooney and an awestruck audience of children scattered a hundred feet behind her in the trees. She was wearing those bloody trousers, an oversized coat, and a flop-brimmed hat.

What the devil was she doing?

“Stand away, children!” she shouted.

The lunatic was about to fire off another volley!

“Cover yer ears, ya little dodgers!” Magnus shouted.

“Firing now!” Kate then touched the torch to the fuse, turned away and covered her own ears. Five seconds of sizzling silence later the cannon went off.

Kabooom!

The children squealed. And Jared followed the object’s trajectory, a high and wide arc that ought to look like a cannonball in flight, but wasn’t at all.

It seemed to be a large ball of wad, and as he watched, it broke open suddenly, then exploded into a dark brown cloud above the rocks and brush, about as far up the sharply banked hillside as it could go. Whatever the cloud was made of started falling to earth and made Kate leap for joy.

“It’s going to work fine!”

Another round of cheers echoed across the hillside.

Jared was on the woman in the next second, grabbing the torch from her hand and turning her to face him with the other. “What the devil do you think you’re doing, Kate?”

She frowned in a thin line. “I’ll ask the same of you.”

“Then sorry, madam! Don’t mind me! I’m just out here looking to see who was firing on Hawkesly Hall with a six-inch cannon!”

“Hawkesly Hall is quite safe. I know what I’m doing.”

“Then please tell
me
, so that I’ll know too.”

She yanked her wrist out of his hand. “I’m planting Douglas fir seeds.”

“I want the truth, Kate.” A vein in his forehead began to throb. “Are you planning to pitch a battle against Parliament?”

“Now, that’s a fine idea. But I’m busy at the moment planting seeds.”

“No, Kate, you were firing off a cannon.”

“Like they’ve been doing on plantations in Scotland for nearly a hundred years.”

“Planting?” By God, the woman looked utterly truthful, with the sudden wind lifting her hair and scattering the leaves that littered the rocky ground.

Unconvinced, because she’d played him the fool too many times before, because it was all so absurd, he went to the wagon near the stand of willows and pulled out one of the wads.

And found a six inch diameter silk pouch packed tightly with fir seeds. He turned back to her scowling, stunned and amazed at the woman’s devices.

“And this is how you plan to plant this hillside? By bombing it with balls of seed?”

“That’s exactly how Nature does it, if you think about it. Branches fling the seeds from the cones into the wind from hundreds of feet in the air. So it makes perfect sense to use a cannon to do the same thing if you haven’t any trees yet.” She pointed behind him into the sky. “Especially when a big storm is going to be blowing in off the sea, bringing lots of rain to soak the seeds and help them to germinate. The conditions couldn’t be better.”

She was explaining all this as though it made sense in her eccentric world. “But with a cannon?”

“Brilliant, isn’t it?”

As though to prove that she held the power of nature in her hands, the wind whipped up again, stirring the leaves and sending a cloud bank scudding across the sun.

“Are you mad? You could have been killed!”

She stepped back and laughed with an indulgent amusement. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Dammit, Kate, there’s nothing ridiculous about blowing yourself up or those children!”

A crack of far-off thunder drew her eyes away toward the peak, then she turned to Magnus and Elden.
“Hurry, Magnus! Let’s move the cannon on to the next site before the storm makes land.”

“Stop right there, Kate!” Jared grabbed her hand when she would have reached for the cannon hitch. “That cannon’s not going anywhere.”

“Please, let’s not argue. The seed needs to be scattered before the storm comes. It’s my best chance for the forest to take root this fall.”

“I’m not going to let you use a cannon—more’s the point, woman, where the devil did you get it?”

She flicked a brow. “In the village, behind the smithy. It’s apparently off an old ship. I didn’t think you’d mind. I cleaned it up and made it fit to—”

“
You
did? You repaired a cannon?”

“Cleaned and oiled the barrel and the wheels. And cleared the fuse channel. You saw for yourself, it fires just fine, though it does pull a bit to the right.”

“What the hell gave you the notion that you know anything at all about cannons?”

She drew back again, amused again. “I’ll admit that I’ve never been tested in the thick of battle, but I served for years on my father’s ships. I can clean, load, and fire any one of a dozen different cannons, with my eyes closed. So if you’ll pardon me…”

“You’re not going anywhere!” He hadn’t bargained for this kind of wife, one who believed that all children should be cherished, who fired off cannons and…and danced naked in the moonlight.

But he did want her, wanted everything about her. The brightness of her eyes and this unorthodox tree-planting scheme.

But, blast it all, how much courting was a man expected to do?

“Please let me finish the job. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

He doubted that, but as he studied her more carefully, the cannon and the wads of seed and the steep hillside, the plan began to lose some of its folly.

“You learned of this technique where?”

“From the Highland company that sold me seeds.”

“Bloody, crazy Scots.”

“They were very specific and I followed every step of their instructions.”

He couldn’t believe he was even considering this. “And the seed isn’t harmed in the blast?”

“Not if it’s packed specially to keep the heat away from the seed itself.”

Still he couldn’t quite believe that shooting fir seeds worked, so he nodded up the hillside. “Show me then.”

“Very well.” She begrudged him a tight smile with those luscious lips, then said, “Go on ahead of us, Magnus. Set up and then wait for me. Children, you stay there in the woods until I call you.”

The little wide-eyed mob had been so quietly behaved, or so utterly terrorized, that he’d nearly forgotten they were there.

She started up the hillside, battling the wind that rose up the mountain, that lifted the brim of her hat and the loose strands of her hair.

He followed her, admiring the unorthodox view, her coattails flapping, the shape of her thighs, her backside
shifting beneath her tweed trousers as she clambered up the incline.

She stopped abruptly about a hundred feet up and picked up a seed, holding it out to him as he approached. “See, Jared, unharmed and ready for the rain.”

He inspected the seed for damage, its color and shape and its wing. He looked down into her eager face. “The fact that there’s no damage doesn’t lessen the reality that this is a lunatic idea.”

“Give this hillside three years of sun and rain, and these little brown seeds will be trees as tall as your knees. Good enough to harvest ten years after that. I think that’s pretty miraculous.”

He felt an odd stinging at the backs of his eyes. “You’ve got too much in that pretty head of yours, Kate.”

“Are you going to let me continue?” She waited for him to speak.

“Under my supervision.”

Her little sigh made him feel barely tolerated. “All right, then, but we’d best hurry. Mrs Driscoll’s elbow has been giving her pains.”

“Which means?”

“The storm will be here by late afternoon. And it’s looking to be a big one.”

“Come quick, Lady Kate!” Grady was standing below them, waving his hands. “The seed wagon’s stuck.”

“Don’t move it, Grady!”

So much for supervising,
he thought as the woman started loping down the hillside, as agile as a mountain goat, beating him to the bottom.

She was already under the tailgate, consulting with Magnus. “Looks like the axle has split in the center, so the wheels bind up when it tries to move.”

“I’ll go fetch another wagon,” Magnus said.

Kate sighed as she rolled out from under the wagon and looked up the threatening sky. “Which puts us well into the early afternoon.”

“Possibly not,” Jared said, waving Grady over. “You, there!”

“Yessir!”

Forever amazed at the boy’s good-natured eagerness, Jared lifted a bulging wad of silk out of a keg in the wagon bed. “Think you can carry a few of these to the next spot?”

The boy smiled and stuck out his arms. “Give ’em over, sir.”

Jared had loaded four of the wads into Grady’s arms, when he heard the other boys running toward them from the woods.

“I c’n take more ’n that, sir!” Grady said, eyeing the friends who swarmed around them.

“Me too!”

“And me!”

“If you all take care,” Jared said, looking up to find his wife shaking her head at him.

“Follow Magnus, then, lads,” she said to the boys as Jared loaded up their arms with the bags of seed.

“There, you see, Kate,” he said as soon as the children were well out of hearing, “they seem to enjoy working, as any boy does.”

Kate’s condemning frown returned, harder this time. “Hawkesly Hall is not a parish farm, Jared. Or any
kind of an orphanage. It’s their home.” Her eyes lost their fire. “At least it was. Now let’s get on with the planting, while we still can.”

The hare-brained woman then picked up an entire keg of gunpowder and staggered off after the others, her knees bowing under the weight, her shoulders sagging.

“I’ll take that,” Jared said, catching up to her and lifting the keg onto his shoulder.

“I can do it!”

“Not as well as I can. Now go back and get the torch and the flint.”

He left her standing on the rock-strewn path, wondering how she was going to react when he refused to allow her to go running off with her orphans.

“You’re a monster, Lord Hawkesly!”

Then an acorn bounced off the back of his head.

No, she wasn’t going to take the news at all well.

Could she possibly chew through rope, he wondered? God knows she would try.

Damnation! What the hell was he going to do with her?

Jared continued to monitor the storm through the afternoon. It brewed slowly, rainless, but increasingly windy until the clouds piled up darkly against the mountain and the first isolated drops began to fall at exactly four o’clock, just as Mrs. Driscoll’s elbow had predicted.

“Just this last shot, Jared, and we’ll be finished!” Kate shouted over the wind and the splatting rain as she bent to light the fuse. But she paused there again too long, too close to the cannon.

“Stand back, Kate!” Jared reached out for her, then hauled her backward against him as the cannon fired.

It went off at the same time as a satisfying crack of thunder, the pair of sounds echoing across the cliff face and tumbling down the swale.

“Isn’t it marvelous!” She pointed up at the explosion of seed as the wild wind took hold of it and tossed it against the steely-gray clouds.

“Indeed.” A provocative, powerful sight, even in the half light, with his untried bride shaping her back against his chest, her round, perfect bottom tucked up against his groin and the front of his thighs.