“I have nothing for wages.” She bit that poor, luscious lip again. “But I could use the help.”
Another forward step ... and Reed tumbled headlong into a pair of wide violet eyes. “I’ll work for a roof over my head and food in my belly,” he said, drowning happily in her amethyst gaze.
“You are hungry? I have food.”
So she knew hunger, did this ethereal creature with the heavenly voice and brave carriage, this woman unnerving him at every turn. Never mind this kinship he felt, though they only just met.
“What can you do in the way of work?” she asked.
As the oldest on a farm with more children than a schoolhouse? “I can do anything— I do not know your name.”
She lowered the knife a notch. “Chastity Somers.”
Chastity. That figured. He had known her five minutes, found himself ripe to seduce her—she had already seduced him—and her name was Chastity. He should take it as a sign, but in her voice, with that accent, her name sounded more like music than a warning. “I can do anything, sweet Chastity Somers. I can build it, fix it, grow it, weave it, thatch it.”
“Mr. Gilbride, you are a gift from above.”
That threw him. For a moment there, she reminded him of—
“You shall be the Sunnyledge caretaker. Heaven knows the house needs attention. Find yourself a place to sleep down here for tonight. I do not yet know where the bedchambers are.”
A very new housekeeper, and naïve. She would let him sleep in the house? Reed grinned.
Chastity stepped back. “I thought it best to explore in the light of day,” she said as she turned to go.
Disappointment gripped Reed.
“Oh.” She stopped. “Put one of the chairs against the door to secure it for the night.” Her chin rose again. “And Mr. Gilbride, I will be keeping this knife by my side all night.”
“Lucky knife.”
Her eyes widened as she turned away, again, and the light followed her from the room as the shadows’ dance slowed to a bleak stop. That she brought light into a room she entered crossed Reed’s mind. That he was an addled idiot followed.
After he chose a parlor in which to sleep, he found the library—where secrets go to hide. At the number of books it held, excitement and dismay warred within him. He could spend a lifetime searching here and never find out who he was.
Chastity fought to keep her knees from buckling all the way back to the kitchen. She placed the candle and knife on the table and fell into a chair. She had been frightened when she heard the noise, and saw him standing there, a Greek God with piercing topaz eyes, his height and breadth huge. But when she heard his voice, his laugh ... again.
Reed Gilbride—the man who caught her taking the children, who knew more than was safe for any of them—here at Sunnyledge. How could fate be so fickle as to bring to her door the one man she wished never to set eyes upon again?
Hiring him made sense, for if he stayed, he would not meet Mr. Sennett, or the authorities, anytime soon. Once he got to know the children, he could not help but understand that she had taken them to keep them safe. He would see that she loved them, that they needed her.
She would make him see.
He had not recognized her—of that she was certain—or he would have left posthaste. He disliked children that much. When hers woke, she would put them on their best behavior.
Panic struck then. Was she daft? Accepting a house, for heaven’s sake, on the basis of a home for ... stolen children? Allowing a strange man to move in?
In the last week, she had committed every sin she had been warned against her whole life—imprudence, willfulness, deceitfulness, vanity. What made her think the children would fare best with her? Four young lives were at stake, here. Chastity moaned and covered her face with her hands. Nightmares and she had not yet slept.
Perhaps that was it; she acknowledged her exhaustion. Everything would make sense in the morning. Closing her hand around the knife on the table, Chastity snuffed the candle and pillowed her head with her arms.
* * *
WARRONNNK. WARRONNNK.
Reed made to jump from the settee on which he slept, but knocked it over in the attempt, rolling from its tapestried back to the floor, tangled in his blankets, his ankles somehow caught.
On all fours, he shook the cobwebs from his brain, looked about him, tried to move, and realized he must be bound in some way.
In the dim, unfamiliar room, he saw a boy with a horn and reached, as the scamp prepared to blow the infernal thing again.
Ppfffft. “Hey! Let me go!”
An older boy grabbed Reed’s boots and ran. A tiny girl took an armful of his clothes and scurried past.
“Damnation!” Grabbing horn-blower by the back of his trousers, Reed caught the girl thief’s dress, and she set up a wail set to pop his eardrums.
“I’m caught!” horn-blower bellowed. “Let go, you big bully!”
“Let them go,” a third boy yelled. How many were there?
Something struck him on the shoulders, rattling him to his bones. “I’ll let go when you lower your weapon, shoe thief returns my boots, and she-thief drops my clothes.”
The weapon—a chair—fell beside him. His clothes got tossed in an arc. Reed cursed and tried to shrug a shirt from his head. Horn-blower, despite Reed’s hold, gave another blast. She-creature wailed louder. Reed saw that he held a hank of her hair with her dress and let go. His hand free, he took the blasted horn and tossed it behind him, cringing at the sound of breaking glass.
Chastity woke with a start to the sounds of an uproar, her heart pounding with a need to protect, but the children were gone. She lit the candle, grabbed her knife, and ran toward the chaos, arriving in time to catch Rebekah sinking her teeth into Reed Gilbride’s thigh.
“Damnation!” the man swore as she bit him, and Chastity noted with grudging approval that he actually pried the child gently free, though Bekah held his flesh in her teeth like a dog with a bone.
“I’m going to thrash the lot of you, you miserable pack of scruffy bast—”
“Mr. Gilbride!” Chastity shouted.
Caught in the act of raising a table above the man’s head, Mark had the grace to stop and look sheepish when he saw her.
“These dirty little beggars tried to rob and assault me!” Reed shouted.
Rebekah had pulled away when Chastity spoke, but with the man’s insult, she bit into him again.
“Damnation!” Reed wound his arm about her little waist and pried her from his flesh, setting off her ear-splitting wail. “Believe me, Missy. That hurt me a hell of a lot more than it hurt you.”
“Unhand those children, you disagreeable man!”
“Believe your eyes, woman. ‘Twas I who was set upon, here. Look, the man-eater’s drawn blood.”
Chastity regarded his thigh as he knelt there, mostly covered by his blanket, and though it was still not quite dawn or light enough to discern details, he must be naked. He seemed to realize it at the same moment.
With a squeak, Chastity turned her back and blew out her candle, Mark dropped the table, and several sets of small arms closed about her.
Putting down her knife and candle, Chastity hugged each child in turn, reassuring herself, and them, that they were safe. “Who is missing?”
When the fourth hug came, she released her breath.
As dawn broke, Reed Gilbride stepped before her, hands on hips, now wearing nothing but a pair of well-worn buckskin trousers. His wide shoulders and hair-matted chest, his furrowed brow and whisker-shadowed jaw, put her in mind of a dark angel ... bent on revenge.
“Such a big brute,” she said, trying to regain her scattered wits in the face of his potent masculinity, “to be overset by a few, small children.”
His look turned incredulous. “Bedlamites! I’ve wandered into an escaping band of Bedlamites. They bound my ankles! Where are my boots?”
“Give Mr. Gilbride his boots,” Chastity demanded. “Now!”
<
br /> No one moved.
“Return those boots this instant, or I will let Mr. Gilbride have at you.”
Matt pulled the boots from behind a cabinet and offered them with a long stretch of his arm.
“Thank you.” Reed took them none too gently. “Are these your children, Madam?”
“No.” Chastity felt Mark stiffen. “Yes! Yes, they are.”
“No we’re not, Kitty.”
“Hush, Luke.”
Reed stepped back as if struck. “Good God, it’s you.”
“Oh, bother,” Chastity said.
“I can’t believe it. Damnation, woman, I thought you were alone, here, but ... children of all things.”
“Go away then, because we don’t like you, either.”
“Mark!” Chastity snapped.
Reed ran a hand through his hair and gazed out the window. “Children! Can’t abide the little beggars.”
“Do not speak of them in that insolent manner.”
“Ill-mannered children deserve insolence in return.”
“They have been abandoned.”
He faced her. “That does not give them the right to rob and assault. If it did, half of England would be thieves. Life is hard. They’d best learn that and be honest and upstanding, despite their misfortune. Punish them if they do wrong, like anybody else.”
“I will thank you to allow me to handle the children, Mr. Gilbride. They are my responsibility, after all.”
“On whose authority?”
She thought of her failure to save William, of the similar result if she failed the children. “On God’s authority.”
His laugh mocked her, the dimples in his left cheek and the center of his chin deep and ... woman-slaying.
Chastity’s anger became interest. She swallowed and tried to ignore the pull. For the sake of the children, she needed to turn him up sweet. “These children are my family.” “Matt, take your brothers and sister to the kitchen. We will discuss your behavior later.”
They filed out, Bekah’s hand in Matt’s.
“Told’ja not to blow that stupid horn,” Mark said.
Matt sighed. “They were mighty fine boots.”
“Lizard’s eyeballs, Mark, why’d’ja hit ‘em?” Luke asked.
After they left, Chastity shrugged. “They’re only children.”
Reed righted the settee, knowing he should go. “Why did you take them?”
“They needed me.”
He snorted. “If you want children, get better-behaved ones. You know, there are more pleasurable ways to— Never mind. Why them?”
“I went to ... Aunt Anna’s, and found the children, abandoned at her death, hiding in her cellar to keep from getting separated or going to the workhouse.”
“Anna’s?”
“Anna’s cellar, yes. I just told you that.”
He looked disgusted. “No. Are they Anna’s children?”
“Heavens, no. She was old as Moses. She was their great aunt. Their mother left them with her.”
“You do not seem saddened by Anna’s passing.”
Anna was, in fact, William’s aunt. “I had only just learned of her existence. The children had been on their own for weeks, sleeping during the day and, ah, foraging for food and supplies at night, which is what they were doing now. They find it hard to believe that I will provide for them.”
Reed chuckled. “Quite a fairy tale you spin. You stole the brats from the workhouse. You forget; I saw you.”
“First, I found them at Aunt Anna’s, then they were taken from me and put in the workhouse, then I rescued them.” She should tell him what children endured there, about the ones who died the week she worked there trying to get hers back, about the newborn she had wanted to take, but he would not believe her.
“And why may I ask were they taken from you?”
“The Beadle said I had no means to provide for them.”
“Did it never occur to you that he might be right?”
“He cared naught for their welfare. He said if I were to ... perform a certain ... task, I could keep them.”
Reed raised a brow. I find it difficult to believe that you let him take them without a fight.
“I— Before I left, I nearly-accidentally dropped a bust of Jeanne D’Arc on his foot, and I am not sorry.”
Reed coughed and turned away, and Chastity supposed she deserved his contempt for assaulting a man of the cloth, despite his depravity. “The children need a home, Mr. Gilbride. They are alone, lost. Surely after all they have suffered, you could find it within yourself to forgive their misdeeds.”
“Misdeeds?” He turned in disbelief. “They’re street-hard. I should take a paddle to their tough little hides. Children are locked up for less than they did, tonight.”
“That’s barbaric,” Chastity said.
“People are heartless where hunger and poverty are concerned. Children are sent to prison, or worse, for stealing bread. That, Madam, is barbaric. Their short, grim lives are not even regarded in pronouncing sentence.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you of another world, Chastity Somers, that you are unaware of such things?”
Yes, she thought, I am, but she remained silent, and shocked to her soul.
“Life is brutal,” he said. “So gather your cold and hungry cygnets under your feathers, sweet, sheltering swan, for the world outside your nest can be worse than hell itself.”
How cynical, how hard he could be. “Could you not think of the children as people, like us, but smaller?” she asked.
“Small ones are the worst kind.”
Chastity raised her chin. “Do you stay then, Reed Gilbride, or do you go?”
CHAPTER THREE
He’d dreamed of sweet Chastity Somers last night.
That morning, after bathing in the river, Reed made his way back to the house recalling the odd jumble of fancies, chaste and not, that had troubled his sleep before his assault. After his rude awakening by the blonde brigands, however, his dreams turned to nightmares he’d rather not recall.
As he made his way back to the house, Sunnyledge shone gold against a bright morning-glory sky. He caught the song of a Lark, thought the buds on the trees had swelled overnight, and was filled with a rare sense of hope.
WARRONNNK.
Ah. Horn-blower had found his instrument of torture outside the parlor window. His veneer of hope burst like a soap bubble.
What a horrid jest, with the answer he sought so near to hand, that he should be given an obstacle in the guise of children. He scoffed and shook the excess water from his wilding hair, thinking that perhaps sweet Chastity Somers—so innocent, she’d let a stranger share the house—could trim it for him.
Damn, that woman needed locking up, or looking after—but not by him. Reed rubbed his thigh. Her brood might be protection enough for her, though. He had the teeth marks to prove it. As to whether her virtue was safe, however, was another matter entirely. Reed fingered his bristly chin, and grinned. Perhaps ferocity would keep all the beggars at bay.
As he entered the kitchen, Reed came face to face with the objects of his musings, the smallest male heathen dancing clean and naked, horn in hand—WARRONNNK—his two brothers cavorting beside him in like state.
Bent over a small tin tub, Chastity struggled to keep the man-eater in her bath. Reed knelt to help by holding the little one’s tiny shoulders, to keep the she-devil down, but his touch set off her god-awful wail.
Chastity glanced at him with apprehension.
“Are you afraid of me?” Reed asked, and when she bit her lip, he guessed she had not as yet decided. “I am no villain.”
Humor filled her eyes. “Just what a—”
“Villain would say, I know, but you have nothing to fear.” He regarded the children. “Any of you.”
How easy Chastity’s trust—instant and unquestioning; there on her face for all to see—but how weighty a burden to receive it. And he had been right; her smile did brighten a room.
Even with a topkn
ot of sagging curls, she was a beauty, though water spots dappled her gray striped apron. But the rest of her clothes? Beneath the wide sleeves of her hideous black dress hid a white undergarment, one he could not name, its sleeves wrapped and pinned tight at the wrists, their edges soiled and wet.
Like a true rogue of the club, seducing her played in his mind, a notion he should quell, and fast. Something about her, innocence perhaps, he was loath to destroy.
Even as the man-eater’s keening continued, Reed could not take his eyes from the woman, nor she from him, it seemed. She pushed a damp, springy wisp of russet hair from her face leaving suds on the tips of her long, thick lashes.
Reed warmed and nodded toward the man-eater for distraction. “Best wash her and quick, or we’ll lose our hearing.”
WARRONNNK.
Reed regarded horn-blower. “Sorry, did I forget to give you credit for your portion of the din?”
“Hush, Luke,” Chastity said.
The scamp called Luke, and his brothers, watched their sister get the scrubbing of her life, and when Chastity sat back and blew hair from her face, those suds clung to her lashes.
“Done?” Reed asked.
“Done.” She sighed.
Reed released the small, bony shoulders, and up came the water-sprite, to run wet from the kitchen, three brothers at her heels.
“Bother,” said Chastity, kneeling in a puddle. “I suppose they’ll be back sooner or later.”
“Afraid so.”
Chastity frowned and rose to throw the bath water out the kitchen door. “How sad that you dislike children. They have so much love to give. Do you dislike them all, or just mine?”
He passed on questioning her custody any further. “Suffice it to say that I do not dislike every child as much as I dislike their company, especially in groups.”
“How big a group?”
“Two?”
Shaking her head, Chastity refilled the tub with water that had been heating, and threw in a bar of the lye soap. “Why did you help with Bekah?”
“Self-defense. She smelled.”
Yes, Reed thought, Chastity Somers was even more beautiful when she smiled. He watched her gather the children’s clothes, toss them into the soapy water and push them under.
Unmistakable Rogue Page 3
