Tremaine's True Love (15 page)

“You looked after my sheep,” he said.

“You looked after mine, sir. Teaching the children their letters that way was brilliant. Those are bright children. They’ll be reading their Book of Common Prayer by Beltane.”

Ironic that the only book in that house should be from the Church. Tremaine stepped back, because a chilly ride yet awaited them.

“The mother can read?”

“Addy had a genteel upbringing. Some local fellow got her in trouble, her family turned their backs on her, and the rest is a cautionary tale. I’ve told her about vinegar and sponges, but they don’t work for everybody.”

Lady Nita pulled on her gloves, as if such a topic were unremarkable for the proper daughter of a peer. Would Horton have bothered to tell a soiled dove about vinegar and sponges? Did he even know? Had Lady Nita’s mother been the one to pass along knowledge decent women weren’t supposed to have?

And was Tremaine the only soul in Christendom affronted that Lady Nita should be burdened with these concerns?

“Do you ever think the Chalmers family would be better off in the poorhouse?” Tremaine asked.

Lady Nita fairly bounced down the steps, the visit having apparently restored her energy as cottage pie and ale could not.

“Tell me, Mr. St. Michael, would the merino sheep be better off with Edward Nash? Would you leave your tups in his care?”

Tremaine boosted Lady Nita into the saddle for the fourth time that day and did not dignify her question with a reply, for a gentleman did not argue with a lady. Lady Nita looked after this family and after others. She did not question the responsibility or attempt to shirk it, even when she ought to.

Who looked after her? Somebody clearly needed to, lest illness or nervous exhaustion carry her off. If Tremaine offered to take up that post, would she make a habit of tucking herself close to him and finding him
very dear
?

“Lovey, I don’t trust Mr. St. Michael.” Nicholas Haddonfield snuggled up to his countess and pillowed his cheek on her breast. Nick’s siblings knew better than to comment if they thought it unusual that the earl and his countess retired to their rooms after the midday meal.

How did women always manage to smell so good? Leah’s scent was lily of the valley with other notes. Sweet, kind, lovely notes that Nicholas would die to protect.

“You are not in the habit of allowing men you distrust to gallivant about with your sisters,” Leah observed.

Sweet, kind, lovely—also practical, that was Nick’s countess, even before she’d become the mother of his heir.

“I trust Nita,” Nick allowed, “and I know the effect frigid air can have on a man’s base urges. St. Michael lurks in the social undergrowth, like a wolf studying a henhouse from downwind. I wish I knew what he was truly about.”

Leah traced Nick’s eyebrows with her fingertips, which made Nick want to close his eyes and groan like a horse being groomed in that one particular spot that rolling on the ground and acting like a horse never quite attended to.

“Are you falling sleep, Nicholas?”

“I am composing a letter in my head to Beckman. Nita and George should pay Beckman a visit, if the weather ever breaks.”

“If the flu season starts, you mean. Why not send your entire horde of siblings?”

The idea was tempting, which was no credit to Nick’s familial loyalty.

“I love my brothers and sisters,” he said, “but since the baby showed up…” Since the baby had arrived, Nick never had time alone with his wife.

“You worry more,” Leah said. “You worry in a whole new way, and you were a prodigiously talented worrier before his lordship arrived.”

The little Viscount Reston was healthy as a shoat, with a full complement of Haddonfield blond hair and marvelously merry blue eyes—most of the time. The boy enjoyed marvelously healthy lungs too.

“Am I too heavy?” Nick asked.

“You are too anxious. What aren’t you telling me, Nicholas?”

Nick mentally rummaged around among his cares and woes, put aside his curiosity about Tremaine St. Michael, and lit upon his most recently acquired problem.

“Edward Nash mentioned something about Addy Chalmers when last I spoke with him.”

Leah’s fingertip paused on the bridge of Nick’s nose. “When he attempted to wheedle coin and sheep from you, under the guise of asking permission to pay his addresses to Susannah?”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Nick said, shifting to crouch over his countess. “But Susannah fancies him and she hasn’t fancied any other fellow, so what’s to be done? When Nash assured me the baronetcy came with a tidy income, I thought he was acknowledging that Susannah’s dowry was of no moment. Then he turns around and hints about the sheep, between broader hints about Addy Chalmers.”

Leah kissed Nick’s nose, a now-see-here sort of kiss. “What did Edward say about Addy? He’s caused you to frown, and I prefer my earl smiling.”

“Nash asked me how long I intend to tolerate a fallen woman raising up her brood of bastards under my very nose.”

“Oh, dear.”

Bastards were a sensitive topic among the Haddonfields, and not only because Nick’s older half brother Ethan bore that dubious distinction.

Nick brushed Leah’s dark hair back off her forehead. Since having the baby, her hair had become different—thicker, softer, more kissable.

“What sort of ‘oh, dear’ was that?” he asked, kissing her brow.

“Oh, dear, Edward has appointed himself the moral magistrate of the shire. What business is it of his if you’ve reduced Addy’s rent?”

Reduced it to nothing, while allowing her boys to poach game and firewood from the Belle Maison home wood.

“You’d have me tolerate sin among our tenants, lovey?”

Leah turned her face away, presenting Nick with an ear to kiss instead, but it wasn’t an ear-kissing moment.

“You’ve never been a hypocrite, Nicholas. I love that about you.”

Such were the Countess of Bellefonte’s charms that she could scold while murmuring endearments.

Nick flopped to his back, because his sweet, kind, lovely, practical countess was also the lodestar of his honor. Around them the house was quiet, as if waiting for spring and weary of winter.

“I used to tease little Addy Chalmers in the churchyard. I helped carry her mother’s casket. Now, she’s no longer decent, but is that the fault of her children? Am I to burn her out and put those children on the parish when their sustenance costs me nothing but a few skinny hares and rotting tree limbs?”

Prostitution was not illegal—the great men of England who made the laws had been careful about that. Living entirely on the proceeds of immoral commerce was, however, against the law, and Addy had no other reliable means of earning coin.

“Nicholas, do you ever wonder whose children those are?”

Nick did kiss Leah’s ear. “All the time. The oldest one, the little redhead, reminds me of somebody. Addy would know who her father is too.”

“But Addy has never said. Do we have work here for Addy?”

A family the size of the Haddonfields could employ a small army, assuming the staff didn’t make Addy’s life hell.

“Nita has asked the same thing,” Nick admitted, “but then who would watch those children? The oldest girl can’t watch a newborn. The infant needs its mother.”

Her
mother, for this time Addy had born another girl, may God have mercy on the little mite.

“Let me think about it,” Leah said, drawing Nick’s head down to her shoulder. “Nita says she’s a bright child, and I’m sure she’s a comfort to her mother. Her name is Mary.”

Nick allowed himself to be comforted, but the problem of Addy Chalmers was complicated and tangled up in the problem that was Nita. Also, in light of Nash’s meddling, the problem that was Susannah.

Given that list, the problem that was Tremaine St. Michael, and a bunch of bleating, stinking sheep, didn’t even intrude into Nick’s awareness as he fell asleep in the arms of his countess.

* * *

What could be more dear than a gentleman decked out in London tailoring, sitting on the floor before the hearth of a simple cottage, teaching children their letters in the ashes?

That sight had upset Nita, had put a lump in her throat where no lump ought to have been and had filled her with an aching joy. Somebody else saw the Chalmers children as worthy, as innocent. Somebody besides Nita and their own mother, and that was every bit as enthralling to Nita as Mr. St. Michael’s kisses.

“Will you stay for the assembly?” Nita asked him as the horses trudged along the deserted lane.

“I’d like to, but perhaps not. Bellefonte has promised to set a price for the sheep, and it shouldn’t take him days to do that, if he’s willing to part with them at all. I’m needed in Oxford, I have business to tend to in London, and a trip to Germany is still a strong possibility.”

“You’d travel now, when winter is at its worst?” Beckman had traveled for years, George had just returned from travel, and Nita had worried for both of her brothers.

She worried for Mr. St. Michael more. When he’d been ready to ride out of Nita’s life, Mr. St. Michael had said he’d wished he could see her turning down the room.

Had that wish meant anything?

“I am known to be a shrewd businessman, Lady Nita. I travel when others are snug in their homes. I do business with any with whom I can turn a reasonable profit. I am often accused of sharp practice when, in truth, I’m guilty of working harder, taking more risks, and seizing more opportunity than most. When it suits me, I travel on the Continent as a Frenchman. When it suits me, I’m a canny Scot. When it suits me, I’m an Englishman with substantial holdings in Northumbria and the Midlands.”

Quite a speech from him—and a warning too.

“You won’t cheat Nicholas out of his sheep.”

Mr. St. Michael said nothing for a good distance of frozen ruts, bitter breezes, and sheep, who regarded the passersby curiously from behind stone walls.

“Your Nicholas is tempted to send the sheep to Squire Nash. I had the sense that were I to offer for you, the sheep might more easily fall into my hands.”

Atlas came to a shuffling halt in the middle of the lane without Nita having asked it of him.

“Nicholas said
that
?”

All manner of emotions lay behind her question. Indignation that Nicholas would see any of his sisters as part of a livestock transaction; compassion for Susannah, who would likely be married as a function of such a bargain, and to
Edward
; relief that Mr. St. Michael would warn Nita regarding Nicholas’s nonsense.

These reactions ricocheted through her in the time it took Atlas to stomp one big hoof and swish his tail.

And then…an emotion Nita did not want to name, somewhere between curiosity and hope.

“I have never considered marriage very appealing,” she said. “Were you tempted?”

Mr. St. Michael sent William forward and Atlas moved off as well. “Tempted? Not by the sheep, my lady.”

In the middle of a gray, bitter winter afternoon, as Nita rode home in anticipation of scolds and censuring looks from family, as she worried for Addy Chalmers and her offspring, sunshine, pure, sweet, and warm, flooded her soul.

She hugged that sunshine to her heart until she and Mr. St. Michael had handed their horses off to the grooms and were crossing the winter-dead gardens behind Belle Maison.

“You were tempted by the prospect of marriage to me?” Nita asked.

Mr. St. Michael marched along beside her until they reached the gazebo, a lonely sentinel guarding the flower beds until spring returned.

“You needn’t sound so pleased. I’m no sort of bargain, Lady Nita. I have wealth, of course. Many men have wealth, but I travel a great deal. I’m firmly in trade. My disposition is not genial, and I eschew tender sentiments. I frequently come home at the end of the day smelling of sheep or commerce, or preoccupied with how to get ’round some solicitor’s clever wording. I lack charm and have all the wrong accents.”

Nita took Mr. St. Michael’s arm and fairly danced down the garden path with him when he would have stood in the wind reciting his shortcomings all afternoon.

“You were tempted,” she said, beaming at the dead roses rather than allow Mr. St. Michael to see her smile. “By marriage to me.” A niggling, inconvenient, tender part of her heart pointed out that he’d resisted the temptation—so far.

Nita led the way into the back hall, where warmth and the scent of fresh bread blended with the odors of damp wool and mud.

Mr. St. Michael pulled the door closed, rendering the hallway gloomy—or cozy.

“You are intelligent, attractive, kindhearted,
mostly
sensible, energetic, well connected, and reasonably dowered,” he muttered, his fingers at the fastenings to Nita’s cloak. “A shrewd businessman rejects no offers out of hand unless the terms are outright illegal or dishonorable. Marriage is an honorable institution, and illegality is not a concern in this case. You are free of prior obligations and of age.”

Nita was on the shelf. She started on the pewter buttons to Mr. St. Michael’s greatcoat.

“You make a list of my faults, Mr. St. Michael, not positive attributes. Hold still.”

Holding still for more than an instant was not in Tremaine St. Michael’s nature, and yet he’d tarried long enough on the floor with the Chalmers children to get them to the letter
W
.

W
was for Welsh rarebit.

Nita undid the last of his buttons and pushed the heavy garment from his shoulders. She hung it on a hook and found her own cloak whisked from her shoulders.

“I tell you things I ought to keep to myself,” he said, another shortcoming apparently. “I abet your insubordination of the earl’s very reasonable dictates. I consult you on matters a gently bred lady ought not to hear of.”

Mr. St. Michael’s tone was gruff and Scottish—gruffness was very much in his nature—and yet Nita suspected he was more bewildered than annoyed. She was bewildered too, also damned if she’d fail to seize an opportunity, no matter how unlikely.

“The earl knows better than to have dictates around his family,” Nita said, remaining right where she was, before a man soon to depart for damned Germany.

“You’re also magnificent,” Mr. St. Michael said, remaining right where
he
was, in a gloomy back hallway surrounded by cloaks and boots and two hanging hams.

The last of Nita’s common sense evaporated at that accusation, for Mr. St. Michael was magnificent, in his willingness to confront Edward, his dislike for Dr. Horton, his
W
is for Welsh rarebit.

Nita wrapped her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. He remained unmoving, as if his brain hadn’t quite heard what his lips were telling it, and then his arms settled around her, and his entire posture shifted.

He enveloped Nita in warmth and strength, in maleness, and in his embrace. A hint of cinnamon biscuit flavored his kiss, and a hint of tenderness. He cherished, he tasted, he invited.

While Nita accepted. No winter apparel came between them, no misconceptions, no immediately impending departures. Mr. St. Michael knew Nita for who and what she was—of age and all that—and he was honest about himself.

Shrewd, capable, literate—and endlessly kind.

The kindness attracted Nita as broad shoulders, poetry, wealth, and even bold, tender kisses could not. Tremaine St. Michael understood her. Nita felt that understanding in his palm cradling the back of her head and his fingers tracing the angle of her jaw.

She wanted to know more than his kisses though, wanted to know the planes and geometry of his muscled chest, the turn of his flanks, the exact texture of—

His tongue traced her lips as delicately as a warm breeze, then again. Nita returned the overture, and the kiss went skittering off into an entire assembly of dances and flirtations Nita had had
no
idea
could transpire between a man and a woman.