Chastity reined in her wayward thoughts to keep a blush from climbing her neck, and not until she held herself in check did she step into the room. “What are you about?”
Reed looked up, an unfathomable expression in his topaz eyes. An awkward, self-conscious grin etched his chin and dimples into deep prominence and made her think that he might once have been a shy boy.
He bowed, a lad no longer, but a rogue with mischief in mind. “A bath for milady,” said he, “with my compliments.”
Chastity grinned as well. “I have gone to heaven.”
“Not yet ... but soon, perhaps.”
What he meant by that, she dare not ask. Silence reigned for a taut span, and when she did attempt to speak, no sound emerged from her throat.
As if to help, Reed cleared his. “Since I caused your bath in stable-dust, I thought that a soap-and-water bath was the least I could do. Besides, unlike the rest of us, you had no opportunity to bathe today.”
Chastity was less embarrassed over sitting naked in a tub he had prepared for her, than she was delighted by the decadent prospect—which caused a corresponding dart of self-reproach ... that she ignored. “Bother the guilt, I can hardly wait.”
Reed grinned. “You can be private in here with the children upstairs. And me,” he added on a rush. “I’ll be up there, as well.” He searched the room with an anxious gaze, relief washing over him as he grasped the violet brocade like a lifeline. “I found this.” The unfolded length became a dressing gown, which he held before her, presumably to gauge its fit, and he whistled.
“Not too matronly, I take it?”
Reed groaned. “I have expunged the word from my vocabulary. I thought it would be perfect, I mean, you could wear it after.... He wadded it, thrust it her way, and turned to check the heating kettle.
Chastity supposed it was best they remain uneasy in the intimacy of a candlelit setting. Their arrangement was no more than a temporary convenience, after all.
Reed poured the last of the steaming water into the tub. “I secured the front door for tonight and will fix it properly tomorrow. Oh, I almost forgot.” He handed her a bar of soap.
Chastity cupped the fine-milled satin-textured cake, brought it to her face, and inhaled. “It smells like a rose garden after a summer rain.”
Reed stood as if lightening-struck. “I, ah, found it in the same trunk as the dressing gown.”
“Thank you. I can think of nothing nicer than a bath in roses and rain.”
CHAPTER SIX
Reed hit his thumb for the third time. “Damnation!” Anybody would think he had never held a hammer before. If he did not stop thinking of Chastity’s naked body covered in roses and rain, he would bludgeon himself to death.
Balancing atop a less-than-sturdy ladder, he leaned against the broken door to cradle his throbbing thumb.
“Damnation!” Luke exclaimed, working at ground level, directly below him.
Reed looked down to watch the cussing child pound a ha’penny nail into the door, choose another and poise the hammer to strike again. “Damnation!” he repeated, before smacking the second a good one, and Reed had to swallow his grin. He damned near liked that boy.
He was getting a good handle on this cussing business, which meant that Reed would not need a hammer to do himself harm, Chastity would do it for him, for teaching the children bad language.
“Damnation!” Luke’s cussing was picking up speed and enthusiasm.
“Luke, we have to stop using that word.”
“Why?”
That boy could really look innocent. Talk about deceiving. “Chastity will be angry.”
“Why?”
Reed’s frown deepened. “It’s considered vulgar.”
“What’s vulgar mean?”
“Bad, nasty, as in getting your behind warmed by a wooden spoon for saying it.”
The child looked troubled. “But you say it.”
Clever brat. “I know. I’ll stop saying it, as well.”
“Cuz you don’t want Chastity to warm your behind?”
Now there was a question. “We are both going to stop saying it, from now on, right?”
Luke shrugged and went back to work. He pounded a nail, shook his head and looked back up. “Works better when I say somethin’ nasty. Makes me hit it harder, you know?”
Here was one of the reasons children annoyed the hell out of him. “Then find another nasty word,” Reed all but shouted. “Just not that one.”
Luke shrank at his anger. Damn.
After a minute, the boy shrugged and picked up a nail.
Reed was cross and he knew it. He had not slept for thinking of Chastity, soft and naked in a summer garden. It had been all he could do not to come down to see if she was wearing that violet silk dressing gown, the very shade of her incredible eyes, which would do incredible things to his body, if he saw her in it. Or out of it. Hah. Who was he kidding? Incredible things had happened to his body all night, as they were happening now, for just thinking about her wearing it.
“Brussels sprouts!” Luke said as he gave the nail a good whack, and Reed understood exactly how he felt.
Luke looked up with a disarming grin. “It was the baddest thing I could think to say.”
Reed might have laughed, but he saw Mark against the wall, watching. Ah, that look. Mark wanted to belong, but when he saw that Reed noticed his yearning, his expression changed to indifference.
Reed suspected that his banter with Luke had brought a burning need to Mark’s gut—a need as strong as Mark’s determination to deny it. Reed experienced it all over again just remembering. “Luke, go upstairs and get Chastity. I need to ask her a question.”
Luke dropped his hammer. Lit by shafts of sunlight filtering through the huge mullioned windows, the boy crossed the foyer like a living pawn on a huge board, as he made his way across the white and black marble checkered floor, choosing to land on some squares, jumping others.
The foyer, itself, must once have been a source of pride to the St. Yves family, yet here amid a musty pile of rubble, he, an unlikely claimant, stood nailing the front door shut. Generations of Earls would spin in their graves, if they knew.
Reed returned to his project, hit a nail thrice, and dropped his hammer. “Mark, get that for me, will you?” He held out his hand, waiting expectantly for the hammer.
Seconds ticked by; but his reaching hand remained empty. “Mark?” Reed made a come-along motion with his fingers.
Tentative steps, then the hammer weighted his palm, and Reed breathed an inner sigh of relief. Like with a filly or a woman, no acknowledgement of accomplishment could be made. “Thanks,” he said regarding the boy. “Can you help me for a minute?”
“How?” Anger, distrust, longing, were all evident in the one word.
“Drag that chair over here, grab some nails and climb up, so you can hand them to me.”
The chair scraped. Reed knew better than to show Mark his response mattered. More than reaching out, Mark dreaded failing, or being failed.
Too many hidden memories—of being on the outside, wanting in, pretending he didn’t want—resurfaced around Mark, and Reed didn’t like it, not one damn bit. “Where the devil is Chastity?”
Mark jumped.
Reed shoved his hand through his hair, and apologized, and the boy shrugged as if Reed’s bad temper mattered not. Big surprise.
Where was Chastity? But for her decision, he was nearly done, yet she was nowhere in sight.
Rebekah, he saw, sat beneath a hall table hugging a tiny quilt, watching him, as she had watched at breakfast.
Reed checked his work, took some more nails from Mark, hammered them, and looked back at Bekah, her blue, blue eyes still trained on him. Jeez he was getting skittish.
His sister Peg, six years younger than him, at about Bekah’s age, spent her early years shadowing him, like Bekah was doing now. Watching, following. At first it made him furious, and then of a sudden, he had liked having her around.
<
br /> If not for Peg, Reed thought he would have no capacity to care at all. He sighed and regarded the wide-eyed man-eater, so frail, she might break. She needed milk; they all did. As soon as the door was repaired, he would go to the village and see what he could do. He needed to get the hell out of this tomb, away from these come-hither hoodlums and their roses-and-rain protector.
The London Missionary Society should know where the children’s evangelizing parents went. Children should grow up with the parents who gave them life; Reed knew that better than most. For the children’s sakes, he would send a letter to the Missionary Society today when he went into the village.
Of course, if their parents came for the children, he and Chastity would be left alone, which might be interesting ... and perilous. “Damnation, where is she?”
“You told Luke not to say that word!”
Grateful Mark spoke at all, Reed raised a brow. “Brussels sprouts! Where is that woman?”
Mark scowled, rather than smiled, until the sound of laughter drew their gazes upward, to Matt and Luke running down the stairs, Chastity in frolicking pursuit. Skirts raised, she descended the drunken stairs at a run, infusing Reed with a combination of panic over the danger, and desire over ... a mere glimpse of ankle?
Devil it; he was in a bad way. Her laugh, like music, made him want, and the wanting made him mad. “What took you so long?” He aimed his question at her, his harsh tone, at himself.
All smiles vanished. “I ran down two flights at your summons. I think—and I could be wrong, because I have no experience—but I think that since I employed you, you should have come to find me. You have a question?”
There must have been thorns in those roses. From atop the ladder, Reed bowed. “My sincere apologies, your ladyship.”
“Do not be a nodcock. Ask your question so I may return above stairs.”
He was used to giving orders. He had run the farm and his twelve non-siblings, after the old man died, even before that, when the only dead the blighter was, was drunk. He had been a Major in Wellington’s Life Guards, where he gave a great many more orders. But she was right, and damned if he didn’t applaud her spirit. “I do not have what I need to fix the door,” he said. “I’ll need to go into Painswick.” He held up a mangled door hinge. “If the iron monger does not have one for purchase, I will have to go to the smithy and have one forged. The best I can do for now is nail the door shut.”
Chastity nodded. “We can use the servants’ entrance off the kitchen. We spend most of our time there anyway.”
“And there’s a set of French doors in the library,” Reed said.
“And lots of windows,” Luke added.
Reed raised a brow, applauding the scamp for holding true to form.
“I will thank you to use the doors, if you please.” Chastity shifted her gaze from child to child, before gazing back at him. “Fix it as best you can. Now if you no longer need me, I am going back upstairs.”
Were needing and wanting different? Reed wondered. “Chastity? If you come upon anything ... interesting, while cleaning, you will show it to me, will you not?”
“You are beyond annoying, Reed Gilbride,” she said, before turning to climb the stairs in a huff.
Four innocent-looking, but oh so dangerous, little people preceded their provoking protector up the stairs, while Reed watched Chastity’s single braid sway as she climbed, speculating as to which spot the tip of burnished rope would stroke at each tilt of her perfectly-rounded hips.
His body found such diversion delightful, while his mind knew it for a danger to his sanity. Blast him for a fool for showing her how to fix her hair in the first place.
She had asked him to braid it again this morning, because she washed it last night—in roses and rain, he could not forget. When he complied, its sweet rose scent had nearly cut him off at the knees.
The children had watched with interest as he took the russet thickness into his eager hands, plaited and braided it. Angry at his physical reaction to the task, Reed had snarled at their running commentary, theirs and hers.
Chastity frowned, looking hurt and angry, and apologized for arousing his ire.
Oh he had been aroused all right, but ire was not the issue. “Turn and let me finish,” he had snapped, forcing his mind and body under control. If he could not hide his peevishness, he was no better than the wide-eyed ragamuffins who watched.
Rebekah, he remembered, took a hank of her own long hair, examined it, and then twirled it around her finger, as if considering a braid of her own.
When he finished Chastity’s, Reed had stifled an annoying, thoroughly surprising urge to offer Bekah his services. What was he, a lady’s maid? “I have work to do,” he’d said, too loud, once more.
“Then by all means, Mr. Bear, remove that thorn from your paw with due haste so you may proceed.” Chastity had marched from the kitchen, and he had been out of sorts since, the children adding to his restiveness.
When the door was finished, for the time being, Reed put the ladder in the shed then returned to the library to pen a missive to the Missionary Society, haunted by thoughts of sweet Chastity Somers. Her effect upon him was profound, more so than any other woman he had known, even in the physical sense. What in bloody hell was he doing, lusting after a nun?
Always, when he sought physical succor, willing women stood in line. Where were they now, when he needed them most? Reed nearly laughed at the jest fate was playing on him. He would not want a one of those women, if they wound themselves about him. He wanted sweet Chastity Somers, Sister Chastity of the gentle touch and warm smile—he wanted ... to take a nun to bed.
Damnation—literally.
Perhaps, if she wore her veil, he might ... what? Be disinclined toward so virtuous a sight? Be persuaded to ignore his physical needs?
Not bloody likely.
What he wanted was to remove all signs of her virtue and proceed at a languid pace to remove innocence itself ... the innocence of a nun.
Reed cursed. What sorry sin had he ever committed to deserve this fate? He shifted in his chair, his arousal hard testimony to his decadence. With a curse and a flourish, Reed proceeded to inform the Missionary Society where to find the Jessop children. That way, when their parents returned—soon, Reed hoped—the family could be reunited.
Before signing the letter, he experienced a surprising need to add that the children were being well and lovingly cared for. When he finished, he went outside to saddle Stealth. He left for town, his mind set on providing milk for Chastity’s unruly brood, the letter she wordlessly refused to compose, herself, setting fire to his pocket.
Only a few hours after Reed left for town, Chastity hated to admit that she missed him. In a small room adjacent to the bedchambers she chose for them all, she sat before a trunk with waves of fabric spilling into her lap.
She did. She missed him. Double bother.
Well, she had best stop it. He would be leaving for good before long, anyway. Enough was enough. She had work to do.
She examined the rich fabrics, some of which would serve for children’s clothing. But the red striped, the blue flowered damask, along with the violet sprigged muslin, were put to one side as impractical for that purpose.
She could hear the children whispering secrets beneath a tent of Holland covers, draped over a jumble of furniture pushed into a corner, an adventure she would have adored as a child.
Hearing Reed’s name, Chastity listened shamelessly.
“He watches Kitty all the time,” Luke said, not so much in secret as like an actor on a stage.
“Kitty smiles in her eyes when she looks at him, too.”
Did she? That unnerved her. She edged closer.
“If they got married, they could be—they could take care of us ‘till we’re grown.”
Chastity straightened. What a surprising thing for Matt to say.
“What about Mum and Da?” Mark asked, his tone chiding and questioning, much like the words at the tip
of Chastity’s tongue.
“Kitty and Reed could take care of us ‘till Mum and Da come back, then,” Matt said. “But we should remember that missionaries don’t always come back.”
Chastity was touched and proud of Matt, trying to prepare his brothers and sister, in case something happened to their parents.
“Member, Mum and Da said that losing them is a sacafice we might have to make for the heathens,” Luke said. “We gots to be grateful we were borned.”
Despite herself, Chastity’s eyes filled. Luke spoke of his parents’ deaths in too world-wise a way, then everything became hushed, the silence heavy.
A soul-deep sigh. “Maybe we’d best not trust anyone, but us, to see us grown?” Matt said, somehow unconvinced.
Poor child. As oldest, and self-appointed protector, he was afraid to trust even her. Chastity supposed his caution should not hurt; he had ample reason not to trust. “Kitty’s nice,” he said. “She would make a fine mum, but Reed gets awful mad sometimes.”
“I like him. He likes Leonardo Avichi, like me.”
“Leonardo Avichi.” Mark’s echo belittled Luke.
“Kitty is soft and smells good,” Luke added. “But when Reed’s nice, I get to smiling inside.”
“Yeah.” Matt revealed surprise. “Me too.”
“They’re already like Mum and Da, sort of,” Luke said.
“Maybe if they get mushy like Mum and Da used to,” Matt said, stopping Chastity’s heart, “they would want to keep us.”
“You’re all a bunch of stupid babies,” Mark returned in tones of hushed anger. “Nobody wants us, but us. Another thing, if they get mushy, they’ll get babies of their own, then they’ll like theirs better and won’t want us anymore.”
Chastity wanted to reassure them, but she dare not. She would simply have to show them how much she loved them. Besides, the notion of Reed and her, and babies, was too absurd to contemplate, except that it shivered her from her warm cheeks to her curling toes.
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