Rexanne Becnel (23 page)

“You mean Langley?”

“I mean my father. He said if James would keep the children out of London he might reconsider our betrothal.”

“The hell with your father!”

Her eyes widened.

Kerry pressed on. “Marry me, Catherine. I may not have the title you seek, nor the money. But I’ll make up for the lack in other ways. I swear, I will.”

She studied him intently. “What ways?”

That took him aback. But it also fed the insane hope that had awakened in his chest. “I’ll love you. Neither James nor Langley can promise you that. I’ve loved you for years. I always will. You’ll be the most important thing in my life. The center of my world. My very life will revolve around you, Catherine. I swear it.”

Once again tears glinted in her luminous blue eyes, but tears for him. Kerry took her hand in his, afraid to believe that he might actually win this beautiful, delicate woman for himself. “Marry me, Catherine. I know you don’t love me,” he hurried on. “But you like me—probably more than you like either James or Langley. We’ve always gotten on well, and I…I do love you. Don’t let your father hobble you to any man who can’t say that with utter conviction. Marry me.”

She was silent so long he began to perspire. Then finally, “All right,” in a soft, vulnerable voice.

“All right?” Kerry froze, hardly able to breathe. Had he heard her correctly?

“I’ll marry you,” she said with the beginnings of a smile trembling on her lips.

He bent down, drawn to those sweet, quivering lips, dying to kiss them after so many years of knowing he’d never have the right to do so. He needed to kiss her, to make certain this was not some dream he’d conjured in his fevered brain. But mere inches from his goal, he stopped. “When will you marry me?”

“As soon as you like.”

“Tomorrow?”

She laughed, the prettiest, tinkling sound he’d ever heard. “That soon?”

“It’s either that, or accept that I must compromise you.”

“All right.”

He
was
dreaming; he
must
be! But he was willing to gamble that the dream was real. “All right, you’ll marry me tomorrow? Or all right, you’ll let me compromise you?” He gave her a teasing grin.

She rose up on her toes until their lips were nearly touching. “I think…I think whichever one you prefer.”

The cottage at Plummy Head was empty. No smoke rose from the central chimney. No life seemed to exist inside the stone walls. It wanted Phoebe for that, Phoebe to cook and garden and mind her small flock of chickens and goats.

James sat his restless horse in the front yard, ignoring the dreary drizzle as he scanned Phoebe’s simple home. If she could make a happy home here, how much easier it should be for her to make a happy home where money and space were no object.

Then his eyes lit upon a trail of muddy footprints on the porch. Small, muddy footprints. Izzy was somewhere nearby. Not in the house, however, for the steps veered away from the door and back to the yard. Rather than chase her down, however, this time he wanted her to come to him. He wanted the same trusting hug from her that he’d received from Helen. He might not get it today, but perhaps he could begin the journey to someday deserving it from her.

So he dismounted and led his animal to the small porch, then sat down on the top step. “Are you there, Izzy? Can we talk?”

No answer. He tried to determine which way she might have gone, but the rain had erased any trace of her direction. “I need your help, Izzy. I can’t fix this family of ours without you helping me.”

Again nothing. He racked his brain for something else to say, something that might draw her out—if she was even nearby. “I’m sorry,” he called into the emptiness around him.

He strained to hear a response. Then from across the yard, from the brand-new goat shed, came, “Sorry for what?”

He squinted at the shed, unable to see her. But at least she was there, and she was waiting for an answer. He said the only thing he could think of. “I’m sorry I’m such a failure as a father.”

“You should be sorry,” the accusation came after a long silence. “You do everything wrong. Everything!”

James stared down at his clasped hands. She was right. He’d had good intentions when he’d taken her and her sisters in to raise. But so far nothing had turned out as he’d expected. He looked up at the goat shed. “Maybe with your help I could learn to do better.”

Slowly the door of the shed opened and a slight figure moved into sight. Izzy, muddy and bedraggled. A rush of relief surged through him. But her chin jutted out, he noticed, and her arms were crossed, as belligerent as ever. “Whyn’t you just go back to London and leave me and Helen and Leya here with Phoebe? Go on and marry that stupid snob and leave us alone.”

He shook his head. “I can’t leave, Izzy. You’re my daughter, my oldest child. And Leya is my youngest, and Helen is my middle girl. Every one of you is special to me, and the thing is, I don’t want to live anyplace that you three don’t live also.” He meant it. He could never go back to London without them.

“Well, I’m not going anywhere with you and that Lady Catherine. I’m stayin’ here with Phoebe. So’s Helen and Leya.”

“So am I.”

The words surprised him as much as they surprised Izzy. She stared at him across the splattered yard, disbelief clear on her face. “Are you bamming me?”

“No.” He stood and started with measured tread toward her. “I’m not bamming you, Izzy. I’m not going to marry Catherine. And I’m not moving back to London. I think what I want to do is stay here and raise my girls all around me.”

Izzy cocked her head. “And marry Phoebe?”

He chuckled. It was easy to answer that. “And marry Phoebe—if she’ll have me.” He stopped three paces from her. “I’m not sure she’ll have me though. What do you think?”

She gave him a contemptuous look. “Considering what an idiot you’ve been, I’m not so sure.”

That wasn’t what he expected. “Will you help me?” he asked, realizing he wasn’t just saying that. Maybe she could help him.

Izzy’s face remained doubtful. “You want my help? Don’t you know how to make a woman want you?”

“I know what to do with the wrong kind of woman,” he muttered. He let out a groan. He couldn’t believe he was having a conversation like this with a ten-year-old girl. But Izzy was not just any ten-year-old. She’d lived a hard life and seen things no child should see—things he’d make sure she never had to see again. “The thing is,” he went on, “I’ve never dealt with a woman like Phoebe—the right kind of woman.”

“Do you love her?”

He’d been avoiding that question. Every time it came up in his tortured thoughts about Phoebe, he’d avoided it. But now this too-wise child was asking him in her straightforward way whether he loved the woman he said he wanted to marry.

“Yes. I believe I do.” He was amazed at how easily the truth came out. He did love Phoebe.

“Well, she hates you.” Izzy crossed her arms as if daring him to contradict her.

He frowned and rubbed one gloved hand across the back of his neck. “So, how do I change that?”

“Well, you have to make her love you.” Relaxing her pose, she ventured out of the doorway of the shed. “You have to give her something she really, really wants.”

“I don’t think gifts are what Phoebe wants from me—” He broke off when an idea occurred to him. “You do want her to be your new mother, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“All right, then. Can we make a pact?”

“What kind of pact?”

He squatted down on his heels, putting them face to face. “It seems to me that we both want the same thing: Phoebe as my wife and mother to my children. Agreed?”

She shrugged and studied him a long moment with a wary expression. “Agreed.”

“Then we need to work together to make that happen.”

She tucked her chin against her neck and considered his words. Her eyes were far too old for her young years, he realized. If he did nothing else for her, he had to change that one thing.

“What do I have to do?” she finally said.

He stood. “The first thing we need to do is send Catherine home to London.”

“And her ugly friend.”

“And Mrs. Donahue,” he agreed.

“But Mr. Kerry can stay, if he wants.”

“Actually, I think he may want to accompany Catherine home, to offer her the comfort of his shoulder to cry on.”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “If you say so. Men are idiots. That’s what my mam used to say.”

James felt a spurt of guilt. Yes, men were idiots. And he’d been the biggest idiot of all. About women. About his children. About love and loyalty and how to be happy. Trust a ten-year-old raised in the rough streets of Seven Dials to cut straight to the root of his flaws. But he could change; at least he meant to try. To Izzy he said, “Once Catherine and company are on their way, I’ll talk to Phoebe.”

“She’ll probably say no,” Izzy said.

“What do you mean? To my proposal of marriage? Why would she do that?”

“To get even with you for being so mean to her.”

“Do you honestly think Phoebe would do that?”

Izzy considered a moment, then the tiniest smile curved up one side of her face. “No. She’s far too nice to get even with you like that. Look how nice she was to me after I stole all her stuff. She doesn’t even know everything I took.”

“What else did you take?”

A guilty wave of color washed onto her face. “Once I picked her pocket—just to keep in practice, you see. I got a whistle and a watch. But I put them back the next time I came over.”

James shook his head, but he had to grin. “It seems like her goodness must be rubbing off on you. But you’re right, she was nice about you stealing the things she knew about.”

But as they made the wet ride back to Farley Park with Izzy sitting in front of him, guiding the horse with her small, sure hands on the reins, James knew he’d stolen far more from Phoebe than a bucket, and a watch, and a few other inanimate objects. What he’d stolen couldn’t be returned, for he’d stolen her innocence. He’d also stolen her beloved child, at least that’s how she must see it.

He couldn’t undo any of that. The question now was whether he’d broken her heart beyond repair when he’d fallen back into a betrothal to Catherine, and whether he’d destroyed her ability to ever trust him.

He suspected he could coerce her into marrying him. She was, after all, practical. But as he considered that possibility, the truth about what he really wanted from Phoebe finally began to dawn on him. It was astonishing. Staggering. He wanted Phoebe’s love when he married her. He wanted her smiling and happy and as eager as he now was to bind them eternally together. He wanted that more than he wanted a career in politics—or anything else for that matter.

As sweet as it had been, stealing Phoebe’s innocence was a small thing compared to what he wanted from her now. For he’d resolved to steal her heart and never give it back.

Church had been a dreadful affair. Phoebe had arrived early, hoping to avoid conversing with any of her neighbors, most of whom no doubt expected her to reveal all about life in the unusual Farley household. She’d managed to duck into the dark, ancient church without meeting anyone, and take a seat in her family’s pew.

But praying for guidance in her dealings with James had done absolutely no good, for each prayer disintegrated into a pathetic plea to see him again. Today. Tonight.

She’d groaned and bowed her head, screwing up her face beneath the shelter of her hands. But nothing would drive out the thought of the cursed man. Then Mrs. Leake had entered the quiet church and slid into the Churchill pew to sit with her.

“Now, now,” the woman had whispered. “Don’t let yourself get so downhearted, Phoebe girl. I know you love young Helen. But the good Lord has something better in mind for you than minding other people’s children. A husband of your own and a baby every other year. That’s what He wants for you, and that’s what I want for you too.”

It had taken every bit of Phoebe’s willpower to squelch the sudden urge to strangle the woman and run screaming from the church.

From that point the day had descended straight to hell. She’d heard the murmur that rippled through the congregation when Lord Farley and his children and guests took their seats in the normally empty Farley box. Izzy and Helen turned around to wave at her; Mr. Fairchild winked. Lady Catherine and Mrs. Donahue didn’t acknowledge anyone, not upon their arrival nor their departure.

As for the viscount himself, thank goodness his back was to her throughout the service. She only had to keep her head bowed in prayer as he departed so as not to meet his eyes. But she’d felt that hard, blue gaze upon her.

Had he felt as keenly the weight of her own gaze during the vicar’s rambling sermon? Had he prayed as hard for forgiveness as she had—and with as little success?

From the misery of the church she went to the misery of dinner in Mrs. Leake’s overcrowded dining room. The meal was a noisy affair, with nearly a dozen guests besides herself. The butcher and his youngest son; a widowed farmer from Wickfield; a blustering, red-faced tradesman whom she suspected of being a smuggler. Mrs. Leake had never been one for subtlety, and today was no different. Phoebe felt like a milk cow being examined on market day.

Of the several single fellows consuming great quantities of Mrs. Leake’s food, the one she most favored was sweet, simple Martin. At least he liked her for herself, not for the farmland and the sturdy house that came with her.

By the time Mrs. Leake’s cook brought out a dessert of rum cake and sweet cream, Phoebe’s temples ached from the pressure of smiling while dodging questions about her scandalous employer.

“Have they reconciled yet?” Mrs. Leake asked, leaning to look at Phoebe. “Seeing as how they came to church together, it stands to reason they’ve reconciled. She and her friend have been visiting with him for nearly a week.”

“Five days,” Phoebe said. Then realizing how snippy she sounded, she added, “I suspect any announcement they make would be to their families first.”

“But surely you suspect which way the wind blows,” Mrs. Tinsdale said. “Servants always know what’s going on in a grand household like that. Tha’s what my sister says, and she’s worked a dozen years belowstairs for the Earl of Fenham.”

“A governess is more than a servant,” Mrs. Leake put in. “Besides, our Phoebe is related to Viscount Farley now, being Helen’s aunt and all. So you see,” she said, catching the eye of each bachelor, one at a time. “Our Phoebe girl has quite come up in the world. Yes, indeed, she has.”

Quite come up in the world. The words trailed Phoebe home, tormenting her more with every step along the muddy cart track. Yes, she’d quite come up in the world. Mistress to a wealthy peer. Wasn’t that every girl’s dream?

A quarter mile from Plummy Head it started once again to rain. But Phoebe didn’t increase her pace. There would be no more dinners at Mrs. Leake’s for her. No more making excuses why she’d rather walk home than be delivered in Malcolm Horstat’s wagon. No more explaining why she’d rather walk alone than beside Denby Fulcrumb. No more silencing the fact that she’d rather beat herself senseless with a hammer than try to converse one more minute with Gordie Wilkins.

Spinsterhood had never looked so appealing.

But being James Lindford’s mistress would be much more fun.

She groaned at her own perversity and swiped raindrops from her face. Then she pulled the brim of her bonnet to a steeper angle over her brow and slogged the last steep slope up to Plummy Head. It would be fun, yes, moments of fun sandwiched between days of despair.

Yet the thought of never seeing him again was its own sort of despair.

She was cold, wet, and miserable by the time she reached home. She removed her damp shoes and outer garments, built up the fire, and put on water for tea. While that heated she dusted and swept, and brought more wood in from the wood shed near the kitchen door. Anything to stay busy and not notice how quiet and lonely her cottage had become.

Once upon a time she’d dreamed of just this sort of solitude, to have no one making demands on her or telling her how to behave. Just the comforting crackle and pop of the fire while the rain beat fruitlessly upon the windows. But how quickly solitude turned to loneliness.

As the tea kettle began to shriek, she stared about the neat, lifeless cottage, and admitted the unwelcome truth. She was lonely. Last night had been lonely enough. Tonight would be even worse. She hated living at Plummy Head without Helen. But if she followed Helen, then she would put herself in the way of James Lindford and the same sort of emotional storm they’d fought last night.

It would also put her in the way of James Lindford’s wife.

Again she sighed, facing a truth that she desperately preferred to avoid. Tomorrow she must go back to Farley Park. Despite the dreadful battle she and James fought, each of them trying to subjugate the other, she must go back if she wanted to continue to be a part of her niece’s new life.

“All right. I’ll go,” she said to the lifeless cottage. If it weren’t raining so hard, she would go now so as not to suffer the endless, empty night that loomed before her. Since the weather made that unwise, she decided to stay busy by bathing and washing her hair.

It took time to heat enough water for a full bath, to stoke the fire and refill the pots and drag in the tub that hung on an outside kitchen wall. Dusk had fallen over the sodden land before she stepped into the steaming bath scented with dried lavender leaves. She sank down so that only her head and bent knees showed above the surface.

“Ahh.” She leaned her head back, reveling in the pervasive heat. She would unpin her hair in a minute and begin the laborious task of washing and rinsing the waist-length tresses. But for a few moments she simply wanted to relax, to let the scalding heat of the water ease the tautness in her shoulders, and loosen the kinks in her neck. She would rest like this for just a little while, her eyes closed, her head comfortable against the tub’s rolled rim. Just a few more minutes…

Smoke from the single chimney of Phoebe’s cottage fled west on the salty wind gusting in from the North Sea. She was home.

Both anticipation and dread swept over James as he urged his animal on. He’d returned Izzy to Farley Park, letting her off at the kitchen door, then taking his animal to the stable. He’d had every intention of following her inside, then having a private conversation with Catherine. But once in the kitchen he’d been informed by the cook that Lady Catherine had retired to her room for the evening, requesting a tray be sent up for supper. Likewise, Mrs. Donahue and Mr. Fairchild had requested the same.

The cook indicated the three trays on the wide kitchen table. “Miss Helen said she wanted to take her supper down here with me. So did Miss Izzy. But since you’re home now…” She trailed off, a question in her voice.

“That’s fine. The girls can eat in the kitchen if they like.”

“Very well. And yourself, milord? Will you take your meal in the dining room, or shall I prepare a tray for you in your study?”

James glanced at Izzy, who lurked in the shadows near the pantry, listening to every word. He gave her a wink. “You needn’t prepare anything for me. I have to go out, something I need to do.”

Then with Izzy’s grin of approval to warm him, he’d gone straight back to the stables, saddled a fresh animal, and despite the weather, taken off for Plummy Head.

Now that he was almost there, however, he wasn’t certain how to begin. Beg her forgiveness first? Propose first?

What he wanted was to seduce her first, to get her soft and willing to do anything he asked so that she would accept his proposal before she had time to think and remember how thoughtless and unintentionally cruel he’d been these last few weeks. How dense and obtuse and undeserving of a woman like her.

Most especially he didn’t want her to think about his past history with women and what it implied about his future behavior. He was a changed man, though he had no way of proving that to her. But he was good at seduction—that was his only ace in the hole—and he knew how willing a partner she could be.

Just the thought of her firm, peach-toned skin, so responsive to his touch, made blood rush to his loins. He didn’t realize his hands had fisted on the reins until his horse tossed its head and half-reared.

“Sorry, fellow.” He petted the horse’s neck, but it was easier to calm the blowing animal than to calm his own rising excitement. There in that unassuming little cottage waited the woman who would spend every night of the rest of his life in his bed. Calm be damned! The glimpse he’d had of her in church had tortured him all day. He’d not wait one more minute to be with her.

Across the rocky meadow they flew. The horse took the ancient stone wall with clearance to spare. It might have been merely a molehill for all either of them cared. “A generous feed bag for you when we return,” James promised the horse when he flung himself down, then tethered the spirited animal inside the goat shed. Impatient, he nonetheless hauled up a bucket of water from the well before striding for the house.

He expected Phoebe to meet him in the doorway. Hadn’t she heard the horse hooves on the hard ground? It was too early for her to have gone to bed. Then an unhappy thought struck him. Could Phoebe still be in town? Was it perhaps her new maid who’d built up the fire?

“No,” he growled, willing away that unacceptable possibility. Ignoring the precepts of good society, he burst into the house without knocking. There he came to a sudden stop. From the bracing cold of the cliff-top winds to the moist warmth of the overheated kitchen, from fear of finding someone else in her place, to confronting Phoebe’s dewy form asleep in a large tin tub before the fire, the transition was abrupt. He had the presence of mind to shut the door behind him quietly, but nothing else. He should leave and come back later. Or leave and knock until she awoke and dressed, then let him in.

But it would take a far more saintly man than himself to turn away from the feast set before him now.

Phoebe at her most vulnerable. Phoebe at her most innocent. Young and exhausted and more beautiful than anything he’d ever had the privilege to view.

Her hair curled in damp ringlets at her temples. Her lashes cast perfect crescents on the creamy curve of her cheeks. Diamond beads of moisture gathered on her brow and in the hollows of her bare shoulders and throat. She deserved real diamonds, he decided, though he doubted they could be more flattering to her than the ones that adorned her now.

One of her arms draped over the side of the tub, and his gaze slid down the curving length, past dimpled elbow and elegant wrist to the curl of her lax fingers.

He sucked in a breath. This was perfection. The perfect woman who deserved a man far better than he. But he was not noble enough to forgo the gift handed to him now. He wanted her. He would always want her.

Without thinking he shed his hat and gloves, then shrugged out of his coat. He stepped nearer, bending over her to touch the water. It was cooling. He wanted it warm, for her and for himself. So spying another pot simmering at the hearth, he slowly poured in the water, careful not to burn her. He halted when she turned her head and shifted within the tub. But when her eyes remained closed, he resumed his task.

“I’m sorry for making your life so complicated, so hard,” he whispered to his sleeping beauty, his future wife. “But I plan to make every bit of it up to you.”

He was rewarded with the ghost of a smile, the faintest lift of those pink, succulent lips of hers. He suspected it was not his words that pleased her but rather the warming bathwater. But he didn’t care. He emptied the pot, then with one hand swirled the water to spread the warmth around the tub.

One of his fingers grazed her knee; his thumbnail slid along her thigh. Blood rushed to his loins and he groaned. The heat was not enveloping just Phoebe. It had spread to him, gushing through his eager body in a fever of love and desire.

He went still at the thought. Love and desire. Not just desire; not even desire first and love second. Love was the fire burning through his veins, love for this one particular woman. Phoebe and no other.

“Phoebe,” he whispered, crouching on one knee beside the tub. “Phoebe, wake up.” He traced a line up her thigh and across her knee, then down into the water. His cuff became wet but he didn’t notice. “Wake up, my beautiful soon-to-be bride. Open your eyes and see what you’ve done to me.”
Hurry up, else I will rip my breeches for wanting you.

Phoebe was warm and comfortable, and therefore unwilling to come back to wakefulness. She shouldn’t doze off in the bathtub but rather should wash herself while the water still retained some warmth. But she had time, she decided in the one part of her brain that was marginally alert. She shifted in the tin tub and sighed. The water was still warm. There was plenty of time.

Something slid along her nose, light as a feather or a breeze. She wrinkled her nose and it departed, only to land upon her mouth. She wriggled her lips and it was gone. Then it was back, tracing the curve of her lower lip, then her upper.