Reed caught the tea tray as it slipped from Chastity’s fingers, scalding himself in the process. “Damnation!” he cursed in a furious whisper.
“Precisely!” Chastity made for the salon posthaste, her neat bottom—
Reed cursed one more silent time, as he entered the salon behind her and put the tray safely down. He wiped his stinging hand with his handkerchief.
Her convoluted explanation of how he filled and heated buckets of water for her evening bath seemed an unfortunate matter of the lady protesting too much. Reed wished he knew how to end her diatribe without adding to the impression.
“Afterward, he goes up to his room,” Chastity said, the silence heavy with the echo of her words.
“Up to his room?” Sennett said. “Up ... where?”
The man was nothing if not single-minded, Reed thought, as he folded his arms and braced a shoulder against the acorn-carved mantle.
“To the third floor, to bed,” Chastity said, looking around, as if for escape.
“Your caretaker sleeps in the house? Where, precisely?”
“Next door to Kitty,” Luke said. “We use the doors between the rooms to go—”
“Hush Luke!”
Reed stifled a chuckle at the forceful tone his sheltering swan had finally employed on one of her cygnets.
“Rebekah and I share a room, Mr. Sennett,” she said. “The boys use the room on one side of us, and Reed, ah, Mr. Gilbride sleeps in the room on the opposite side, so the children do not disturb him,” she added in a rush.
The solicitor raised a brow. “My dear, you are aware of how impressionable young children can be?”
Reed tried to warn Chastity, with a look, to stop while she was ahead, and he could almost hear her groan as she silently begged for his help.
Sennett cleared his throat and regarded them fixedly.
Damnation, now the man had more to ponder. Did casual acquaintances, like him and Chastity, normally communicate without speaking? Either the ability they shared was a prime example, or they were in trouble.
“The two of you, sharing the house—why, it’s practically indecent,” Sennett said. “I think you must leave, young man. I meant for Chastity to hire female help.”
On Chastity’s visage, Reed saw fear and panic taking hold. “But Reed is doing so much,” she said. “Surely a woman could not repair a roof or plow and plant.”
Though she had never admitted that she needed him, Reed thought she must finally realize it, else she would not argue to keep him.
“Still,” Sennett said. “I see no way for such living conditions to continue ... unless you plan to marry?”
Chastity gasped.
Reed straightened. Was the man daft? “Mr. Sennett, you do understand that Chastity’s present situation precludes the possibility of marriage. Certainly that is reason enough for the world to see our living arrangement as harmless, and for the sole purpose of setting up her children’s home.”
Reed paced away, sighed, and returned to his position by the mantle. “I’ll move into the barn. I should have insisted at the start. My own greed for comfort allowed me to accept living conditions I knew were not quite—” He looked Sennett in the eye. “Chastity has no notion, you must see, of the pitfalls. Do not hold her accountable for that which she does not understand. You do take my meaning?”
Sennett nodded somewhat grudgingly.
Did the man question even a nun’s innocence? He must, Reed thought, for now he was shaking his head. “It simply will not do,” Sennett said. “The world takes a dim view of a man and woman living together under any circumstance.”
“But Chastity is a—”
“Bereaved widow, I know, but a woman, nonetheless. And you, Sir, are a man.” Sennett glanced from one child’s rapt expression to the next, then back to Reed. “What more can I say?”
Reed found it necessary to sit. His equilibrium seemed to have deserted him. Chastity was a widow? Not a nun? He looked to her for denial, but her expression could not be more confirming, or more awash with crimson, were she bent over a roaring fire. Yet with a disarming look, she implored him to understand.
With a glancing glare, he ignored her plea. He had been lied to by a woman who spouted verity at every turn. What had she once said? ‘Telling falsehoods would set a bad example?’ The impostor. The liar! But she did not lie, not really. He remembered the conversation. He had assumed and she had not corrected. He had demanded answers that she had skirted. There was no other explanation. She had wanted him to believe her a nun, by God. Well, to be fair, God had surely not entered into it. She did have her standards.
Reed groaned inwardly at explaining her innocence to Sennett, more fool he. Yet he could not help but consider her naive, even now, though why he should, her being a widow and all, he did not know.
By all that was holy, Chastity was a woman of experience. A wife. She had received her husband’s kisses, his touch, had taken him into herself. Reed’s groan almost escaped then. For weeks he had held back, dared not touch. He sidestepped the act of seduction at every turn, though the notion dogged him like a love-struck hound. Last night, he had left her willing and wanting.
Last night he had been noble.
Well, no more.
Sennett’s cough made Reed look up, surprised, to find the roomful of people, all watching him. Had he spoken his thoughts aloud? By the look of Sennett, Reed’s musings were at the very least, suspect, though Chastity seemed none the wiser.
There it was again, the contradiction—world wise and without guile, all in one package.
Well, her innocence, or her lack of it, mattered no more. For the first time in days, what mattered more to Reed were his own goals, and he was relieved. Glad. Delighted.
He made a resolution then and there. Despite Sennett’s protestations, despite Chastity’s perfidy, he would stay to find the proof of his birth. If Lady Innocence suffered from his methods, fair or foul, then so be it. If he must become betrothed to Sister Virtue-Gone-Astray, then betrothed he would become, by damn.
Reed regarded the vixen, then, from the top of her cinnamon crown to her perilously pallid complexion, her expression screaming fear—and so she should be terrified, for he would make her pay.
Regarding her in such a way as to shiver her in her slippers, he examined, not her religious habit, but her widow’s weeds, as she clasped and unclasped her white knuckled hands in her lap.
Reed denied his need to console her, and he forced a slow-growing smile, to make her devilish uneasy, as he turned to the solicitor with purpose. “The fact is, Mr. Sennett, if I may be so bold, I have grown to—”
As Reed regarded Chastity, she grew paler, and he was forced, once again, to stifle his need to take her into his arms. How dare she wring gentleness from him. “Mrs. Somers would make an excellent wife and mother.” No false ring there, he was pleased to note. “So with your permission ...” Reed waited for Sennett’s sanction.
The solicitor nodded.
“I would be perfectly willing ... nay, delighted, to betroth myself to her.”
“Absolutely not!” his high-and-mighty, no-longer-cowed but suddenly-self-righteous, non-celibate lady snapped.
Reed knelt before her in the way of a gallant, Chastity shrinking against her chair, as if he were a viper come to dine ... on her. And so he would.
He took one of her cold, delicate, trembling hands in his, and massaged the palm with his thumb, gazing into her spring-violet eyes, telling her silently, privately, what he would like to do to her—after he beat her.
He conveyed so much passion, as to bring heat to her face and a swelling to his loins, and when he realized they had both been stirred, he winked.
Chastity gasped and made to pull away, but Reed would not allow it. She tried crushing his fingers but found he owned the greater strength. Her embarrassment turned quickly to anger. Fine, he was stronger, she silently admitted.
Reed loosened his hold just enough to remind her which of them held t
he trump hand. “Why do you refuse?” he asked, knowing her answer should not matter. This was nothing more than a business arrangement, after all, a matter of expedience, and forced at that. Though there could be benefits.
Chastity made to push him away as she stood.
Reed teetered on his haunches, but rose with recovered grace, never releasing her hand.
She struggled to reclaim it, to remain calm. “I cannot marry. I am in mourning for the better part of a year yet.”
“I request only that we become betrothed,” Reed said with such sweetness, he wanted to laugh. “You do need my help.”
“I can manage without you,” she said chin high.
“You cannot. You need more cooking lessons.”
“Chastity cooks good,” Mark said, stepping aggressively forward in his first defense of anyone.
Rebekah nodded so hard, she bounced her braid against her bottom, and warmed a place in Reed’s thawing heart.
“My cooking will do,” Chastity said, to convince herself as much as anyone, Reed thought.
“Be that as it may, your farming and gardening skills are nonexistent.”
“I can sew,” she said, chin raised, lips aquiver.
“You sew beautifully.” Reed cursed himself and ran a hand through his hair, annoyed at his weakness. “Admit it,” he said. “You needed me from the minute you climbed through that wind—
“Yes! All right! I’ll marry you!” she shouted, and then she looked from one astonished face to the other, and took a breath. “I mean that I will become betrothed to you.”
Reed believed they understood each other. No question in either of their minds that this would begin and end with a betrothal to appease Sennett. No marriage. Fine.
Fine, Chastity thought, heart racing. Reed had nearly revealed—to Mr. Sennett of all people—that she stole the children. They would never marry, of course, praise be. She could not believe she had, just last night, dreamed of marrying him.
She sighed; she had forgotten how hard he could be. A betrothal might work, though, as it would enable her to get a firm start on her children’s home in the same way it would enable Reed to search for his heritage. Why was everyone watching her?
“You do agree; do you not, Chastity, my dear?”
“Agree?”
“That you need a chaperone,” Mr. Sennett obviously repeated.
Lord, she must appear a half-wit. “A chaperone?”
Reed stopped his chuckle with a cough. His dratted dimple gave his merriment away, and it rankled that she amused him. “Of course we need a chaperone,” she said, Reed’s instant chagrin turning victory her way.
“Good, good.” You will hire your neighbor, Miss Thea Pomfret,” Sennett said, issuing an order. “She wrote to me just recently, seeking employment.”
“As cook.” Reed grinned. “And housekeeper.”
“The locals are afraid of the Sunnyledge ghost,” Chastity said. “None will come and work here.”
“This woman lives in the vicarage on the property. Her father had the living once, then her brother.”
Chastity went from suspicious to relieved. “The Vicar’s sister?”
Reed shook his head. “This is a woman we’ve not so much as glimpsed in all the time we’ve been here. Sounds like an odd fish to me.”
“We saw her,” Luke said.
“I don’t like her,” Mark added, and Bekah nodded her vehement agreement. Matt simply shrugged.
Reed grimaced. “There’s a glowing recommendation.”
“Nonsense,” Sennett said rising. “She sounds perfect. I’ll go for a jaunt, shall I, and see if she is amenable?”
“Let us all go and see this paragon.” Reed suggested.
The white-washed, thatched-roofed vicarage did indeed sit at the edge of the Sunnyledge property, not twenty feet from a small chapel that Reed decided he surely must search. An earthen path to the vicarage door, well-trod and blue-bell-lined, led almost the entire way from Sunnyledge. Odd that the path should appear so well used, when no one ever did use it, Reed thought.
Sennett rapped the knocker against the scarred arched portal.
An elegant, older woman, her rich, dark hair arranged in a loose bun at her nape, skin pale as porcelain, answered. “Hello,” said she, more than a bit short of breath. Her voice was refined, and a flowery scent that Reed liked not at all, wafted about as she examined them. When she fixed her gaze on him, her smile brightened and she placed her hand on his chest.
Reed stepped from her touch.
“I have missed you,” she said, her eyes awash with tears. “Why did you—”
“You mistake me for someone else,” Reed said, feeling skittish and uncomfortable.
“Miss Pomfret,” the solicitor broke in, “I am Everard Sennett, to whom you wrote seeking employment. This is Mr. Reed Gilbride, the Sunnyledge caretaker, and Mrs. Chastity Somers, who is planning to turn the house into a children’s home. The children are her wards.”
Chastity saw that the woman kept her regard fixed on Reed, her look filled with longing. Then she touched her brow. “Oh, but you cannot be, can you?” She closed her eyes, and opened them again, her smile different, still in place but detached, her eyes duller. “Years have passed, have they not?” She kept only Reed in her sights. “Please call me Thea. What did you say your name was?”
“Gilbride. Reed Gilbride.”
“Ah, yes. Do come in. All of you.”
Thea Pomfret was no housekeeper, Chastity thought, feeling vindicated for her own lack in the kitchen. They followed her into a small cluttered sitting room with low, thick-beamed ceilings. The woman, herself, was elegant and aristocratic in bearing. Her ornate, satin peacock dress—better worn for a ball—must once have cost a King’s ransom. Chastity wondered at Reed’s odd silence and questioned him with her regard.
He shrugged. “Miss Pomfret, do I remind you of someone, the previous owner perhaps? Did you know him?”
“Lovely man was the old Earl, but no, you remind me of no one.” She turned to the children. “I can bake cakes and cookies,” then to Chastity, “Need help, do you? Mr. Sennett, you remembered my letter; how kind.”
Chastity felt a distinct unease in the flighty woman’s presence, but hoped that would change in time. If a chaperone would keep Reed at Sunnyledge, then a chaperone they would hire. “I understand you’re the old Vicar’s sister?”
Thea nodded. “And the older Vicar’s daughter.” She wiped away a nonexistent tear. “Papa and Clive have gone to their just rewards and now I must seek employment.”
She could hardly say no, now, Chastity realized. While the woman’s proximity to Sunnyledge was astonishing, and her own discomfort real, they were hardly reasons to hesitate. “I cannot believe we have never met,” Chastity said.
With a huff of impatience, Mr. Sennett took matters in hand. “Fine, fine, it is settled, then. When can you move in?”
Move in? Chastity thought, as surprised as Reed looked.
“I shall be there within the half hour. Oh, Lord,” she said as they were leaving. “I have so much to do.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chastity grudgingly conceded that Thea’s oatcakes were lighter in color and considerably more so in texture than hers, though the children, particularly Matt, passed on breakfast. The bread she brought was light, the cheese fresh and tasty, and the very mention of apple tartlets made Reed vocally anticipate luncheon, for which Chastity wanted to thrash him.
Mr. Sennett said his good-byes after Thea’s morning meal, so they were free to explore and search for Reed’s heritage with no thought to running Sunnyledge or feeding the children. By late morning, scents from the kitchen, apples, cinnamon, sage and roast duckling, rose as high as the third floor where they worked.
Reed sent the children to search the trunks in another room, and now he advanced on her. “I want an answer, Chastity. Why did you pretend to be a nun?”
Chastity lowered herself to a shrouded chair, aware that the qu
estion was due, but unprepared nonetheless. “Believe it or not,” she said, raising a wide black sleeve. “This is a religious habit. I really was a nun, until the day I married William.” She raised her hand when Reed made to protest. “What I said was true; I was raised by nuns in France at Notre Dame Abbey, where I became a nursing sister at the age of sixteen. Eventually, I worked beside Doctor William Somers.”
If not for William’s anonymous note, they might still be there, with William alive and her, a nun. Chastity shivered at the notion of never meeting Reed or the children, of never giving or receiving love. “William only married me because he wanted a traveling companion for his trip home to England.” And because she had asked him to.
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“Nevertheless, we sailed for England the day after we wed.” Her, in despair, having once again been denied the love she craved, “William, filled with excitement and lofty expectations. But during a channel storm, William went on deck, against orders, to tend some injured sailors, and he was washed overboard.” Chastity regarded her trembling hands.
Reed’s hand covered hers. “I am so sorry.” He placed his arms around her. “I did not mean to make you relive the horror.”
“You deserved an explanation.”
Reed stepped away and ran a hand through his hair. “I do, but you have not yet given it. Why did you want me to think you were a nun, still?”
“Oh, that.”
He nodded. “That.”
“Well, you kissed me and—”
“I kissed you?” He cocked a skeptical brow.
“Hush. I thought I’d be safe from ... improper inclinations.”
“On whose part?” He chuckled when she colored. “You can stop wringing your hands now,” he said. “I understand, but Chastity, there’s something you need to understand.”
His intense look made her shiver. “What?”
“You did not succeed in stopping me from having improper inclinations; you simply stopped me from acting upon them. Now there is nothing to stop me.”
Chastity turned to the window so he would not see anticipation beating in her breast.
Unmistakable Rogue Page 16
