Reed was stunned. Sennett laughed. Chastity’s smile was forced.
“Mr. Sennett,” Reed said. “Chastity is convinced you’ll stop her from opening a home for children.”
“I might,” he said. “She’s wise to be concerned. I cannot abide a breach of rules, which she knows.”
“I’ll just go check on our guest, shall I?” Reverend Perkins said, making his way to the door.
“No wait, please,” Chastity said. “I’ve come to a decision. Pray, hear me out.” She gazed at each child with love. “I learned today that interfering in someone’s life, no matter the reason, even if it appears just, can destroy lives, cause turmoil and upheaval.”
She turned to Reed. “In your case, as in the case of your brother, my husband, your lives were altered to such an extent as to make me weep. The Vicar should have left you with your father.”
“Edward St. Yves was cruel and heartless,” Reed said. “He abused the woman who loved him, twisted and tormented her mind. You would have condemned me and William to that?”
Taken aback, Chastity, nevertheless, persevered. “No one has a right to play God.” She turned to her benefactor. “Mr. Sennett, you were right. There is never cause to breach the rules. I am sorry to have disappointed you.”
The solicitor nodded, but said nothing.
Chastity addressed the prelate. “Good Reverend, t’would be best for the children to await their parents with the Missionary Society. I give them into your keeping.”
“T’would be best for them to be loved!” Reed shouted.
Matt launched himself at Chastity. “Don’t send us away, Kitty. Please, don’t.”
She stroked his hair and held him close, her eyes closed, tears coursing down her cheeks.
“Please keep us, Kitty.”
Mark tugged on Matt’s arm. “Don’t be such a baby, Matt. Come on. We don’t need her. We don’t need anybody.”
Luke took Bekah’s hand and came to Reed, which humbled him. Luke’s arms, as they came around him, and Bekah’s about his neck, as he picked her up, brought such a rush of love, Reed feared his knees would buckle.
Matt swallowed convulsively. “You still want us, don’t you, Kitty?”
“Baby!” Mark yelled.
“Of course I want you. I love you. But I was wrong, Matt. Taking you was wrong.”
“You tried to take us the right way, but the Beadle wanted you to do bad things. I heard him. You wouldn’t have needed to take us if he wasn’t low as Lucifer.” Matt regarded Sennett. “Mr. Sennett knows; I told him.”
Chastity took Matt by the shoulders. “But your parents, Matt. You should be in London waiting for them when they come home.”
Matt pulled away and looked at his brothers and sister. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Mum and Da are not comin’ home. Never.”
“Liar!” Mark shouted. “Take that back.” He threw Matt to the ground.
Reed gave Bekah and Luke over to Chastity. Having once been so inwardly wounded, he knew Matt and Mark needed to beat the tar out of each other, to feel pain and inflict it. But Chastity’s demands that he put a stop to the fracas won out and he pulled them apart.
Matt sported a bloody nose, and though Mark took the worst of the beating, his angry shell remained intact.
“They died,” Matt told Chastity, “both of them. I got the letter upstairs. It came to Aunt Anna and she gave it to me.” He looked at his brothers and sister. “Mum got the fever nursing Da. I didn’t want you to be sad, so I didn’t tell you. Then Aunt Anna died and you had more reason to be sad, so I still didn’t tell you.”
He turned back to Chastity. “Then you found us in Aunt Anna’s cellar, Kitty, and I was afraid you wouldn’t want us, if you knew we needed keeping ‘till we’re grown. It’s gonna be a long time ‘till, you know,‘specially for Bekah. But,” He wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve, “she talks and laughs now and all, so we know she’s happy and—” He threw himself at Chastity and started to cry. “Bekah needs you, Kitty. She needs you, bad.”
“Me too,” Luke said, worming his way into her embrace.”
“Need Weed, too,” Bekah said, regarding him from under her lashes.
Reed’s heart broke. If Chastity didn’t say something soon, he was going to sit right down and bawl with them.
Everyone turned to Mr. Sennett who blustered and sniffed. “No other aunts, uncles, grandparents?” he asked the children.
Matt shook his head and his siblings followed suit.
Mr. Sennett cleared his throat. “Matthew will please give me his letter,” he said, “and I will do the paperwork, and follow the proper channels.” He regarded the children. “My recommendation will not be questioned. If Chastity wants you, you’re hers ‘till you’re grown.”
Chastity stifled a sob. “I want you,” she shouted. “I would not give you up for anything. “I love you, and ... I need you to love me back.”
“Sniveling babies,” Mark shouted. “Keep those sissies, if you want, but I’m leaving first chance I get.”
Chastity and Reed talked through the night, but every conversation ended the same way. If he stayed, they’d be breaking the law, breaking rules, teaching the children the wrong lessons. He loved her. She loved him. No doubt, no qualifications. He wanted Matt, Mark, Luke and Rebekah. He wanted her. He wanted them to have children together.
She wept. So did he. He could not flout the law and marry her; he could not live with her and not touch her.
It could not be. They could never be.
They made tender, incredible, exquisite love, then held each other, wakeful, sorrowful, through the longest night of their lives.
The next morning, Chastity and the children stood in a row beside Sennett’s carriage. Reed was leaving with him. “You’re the man in the family, Matt,” Reed said. “You have to keep them out of trouble. No more pilfering, mind. Make sure Luke doesn’t build an ark or something. If you discover two of every animal missing, you find that boy.”
Matt’s smile wobbled. “Yes, Sir.” He threw himself at Reed, who held tight for a minute, firmed his stance, shivered, disentangled himself, and stepped before Mark.
“I don’t need you,” Mark said.
“Then you’re the lucky one, because I need you.”
But Mark turned and walked away.
Reed moved to Luke whose sobs had been consistent since they stepped from the house. “Don’t go.”
Reed knelt, closed his eyes and held the scamp. “The lot of us have broken enough rules and laws to last a lifetime, son. There is just no more room on our list of accounts for even one more breach. Someday you’ll understand.” He pulled back and looked Luke in the eye. “I’m giving you my most important job.”
“What?”
“Braid Bekah’s hair every morning for me, will you?”
“Weed?” Her arms were open and he fell in, getting squeezed so tight, Chastity felt the pressure closing her throat. “Love you,” Bekah said, as if she understood there was nothing more that could be said.
“’Till the day I die,” Reed whispered, clearing his throat, handing her to Chastity, looking now into glistening violet eyes. “’Till the day I die.”
Then he was sitting beside Sennett and the carriage was moving.
Chastity’s heart raced; it withered. She and the children stood unmoving long after the carriage disappeared. Not until she realized that the moisture on her face was rain did she see that the sun had gone with the morning.
* * *
Reed had been gone for days. The children ate little. Nothing seemed to cheer them. Chastity rose to clear off the table. Bekah and Luke helped. Mark and Matt sat beside Zeke’s box petting her babies. Where was Luke?
“Luke?” There was no reason to panic. Thea had left with the missionaries. Chastity went to the bottom of the stairs. “Luke, where are you?”
“Here I am.” His gallop down the stairs matched the beat of her heart, but she was too relieved to be angry. “Kitty, these le
tters are for you. You were too excited to listen before, but—”
“Letters? Where did you find them?”
“‘Member the papers with the books? When we were cleaning Thea’s mess?”
“Your mess, you mean.”
He nodded. “I tried to tell you, this one’s from that Abbey you told us about, where you grew up. I thought it might make you happy again.”
Chastity knelt down. “Ah, Sweetheart. You make me happy, you and your brothers and sister.” She put the letters in her pocket, until she sat with them in the library, that night. The one already open was from Mr. Sennett. It contained a draft for her allowance and announced that he was arriving the day he found Reed with his pants down.
Chastity thrust sorrow aside for after the children were asleep. She wondered why Thea had stolen her correspondence. Did she want Mr. Sennett to catch them unaware and demand they have a chaperone? How long had she been watching and manipulating them?
Mother Superior’s letter made Chastity think someone might have died, so she opened it with trepidation.
My dear Chastity. I write in response to your disquieting letter. There is so much to address, I hardly know where to begin.
Chastity relaxed. Everyone was fine. Though it hardly mattered now, she read on.
Please accept my condolences on William’s passing. He has surely gained everlasting reward. But, my dear, I find it disturbing that so little time has passed since his death. Too little for you to have found an all-consuming love. Yet if, as you say, you loved William only as a friend, then I must understand, for William was, as you know, my own friend.
Does love acquit abandon? you ask. Since this is a question I thought never to have put to me, I found it necessary to consider my answer thoughtfully.
It is good and right for a woman to love one man, heart and body, when he is the man intended as her mate, within the sanctity of marriage.
Chastity’s face warmed for the love she and Reed had shared without the benefit of marriage. Yet it was all they would ever have, and she would not change it for anything.
William, we both knew, was a man and a doctor of integrity. He further proved this with his determination to travel to England to right a wrong, which he intended to explain to you during your journey. He carried with him, he said, papers that must be given to the St. Yves solicitor, without delay.
Chastity rubbed a sweaty palm on her skirt. William had wanted to talk to her about something important. He tried several times, but she was afraid it had to do with his turning from her, so she kept him from speaking. Now she could barely hold the letter steady to read it.
The injustice William wanted to correct was committed by his mother. In order to receive money under false pretenses, the woman passed William off as a child who’d been given into her keeping, but died days before William’s birth. In his medical bag you should find—
Chastity dropped the letter and ran for William’s bag.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Every soul in the Green Dragon Inn seemed to be sound asleep. “Uh, Kitty, this is scary, like the workhouse that night, ‘cept we’re breaking in, instead of out.”
“Hush, Luke.”
“This is stupid,” Mark said, hugging Zeke, regarding the tree branch on which his older brother precariously perched. “What are we doing here, anyway? It’s the middle of the night.”
“That’s why I said it reminds me of—”
“Hush, Luke. It’s a surprise, Mark.”
Mark snorted. “Some surprise.”
“Can you get the window open, Matt?”
“Not yet, Kitty, but, that’s Reed, sleepin’ in there. I’m sure of it.”
“Does he sound kind’a’like a hungry bull?” Luke asked.
Matt chuckled. “That’s how I know it’s him.”
Chastity’s heart sped and fluttered. Reed Gilbride St. Yves, the Earl of Barrington, was her destiny, even if he did snore like a ravening bull.
The children loved him as much as she did, and they might all be together soon—if he wanted them and they didn’t get pinched first—if Matt ever got the window open. “Perhaps we should wake the innkeeper, after all,” she said.
“Got it!” The window opened with a squealing screech.
“Mark, is that Zeke? How did you manage to bring her without my knowledge? Where are her babies?”
“Sleepin’ in the back of the wagon.”
“Honestly,” Chastity said. “Go on up. Watch that branch. Now climb in and stay quiet. Your turn, Luke. Got your horn? Good. Bekah, are you sure you can climb— That was fast.”
Chastity hauled herself up the tree as well. Her grin so wide, she could hardly contain it, as she slipped into the room where Reed slept.
She examined the figure in the bed with longing, and barely kept from throwing herself at him.
The children muffled their giggles at his snoring.
“All right, my loves,” she whispered. “Go to it.”
Matt bound Reed’s ankles and wrists, and Mark made to pull down his blankets.”
“Wait!” Chastity caught his arm. “Best not.”
Matt chuckled. “Definitely best.”
Bekah stood watching him sleep, with so much love in her expression, Chastity might have wept, if she wasn’t so happy. “All set?” she whispered, wondering who among them was more excited, her or the children. “Ready, attack.”
Bekah climbed on Reed’s chest and plucked at his chest-hair, Matt tickled his feet, and Luke’s tickle-bug got hold of an ear. Chastity couldn’t keep herself from touching his hand. Then Mark made a snort of disgust, and Luke blew his horn. WARRONNNK.
Before Reed opened his eyes, a sense of having lived this moment before, hit him. Confusion disarmed him. He tried to shake the cobwebs from his brain. “Damnation!” he said as he tried to rise from the bed, but fell to the floor.
WARRONNNK.
He sat up stunned, silent, until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Oh, no. Oh, God. Either this is a nightmare or the best of dreams. “My ankles,” he said on a laugh. “The brigands have bound me, wrists and ankles,” but they were untying him and hugging him even as he spoke.
Then he saw Chastity, the light of dawn behind her. “The best dream, ever.”
“We came,” Chastity said. “To rescue you.”
His laugh was pained as she knelt on the floor beside him. “We want you to marry us.”
“No!” Mark shouted.
“I’ll marry you,” said a man rising from an easy chair. Had he been there all along? “I need a wife. Yesterday, if not sooner.”
Reed chuckled. “Not this one. Chastity, this is Ashford Blackburne, Earl of Blackburne, Ash to his friends, a fellow rogue and former member of the Guards. We fought together at Waterloo.”
“And drank half the night away,” Ash said.
Reed nodded. “He just arrived last night. We commiserated over a few drinks, and he fell asleep in the chair.”
“Nice to meet you,” Chastity said, wondering if all the rogues were as handsome as these two.
“I’ll play you for her,” Ash said. Winner gets ... Chastity did you say?”
“You’d play your granny for her last farthing. No,” Reed said. “No dice.”
“I have dice.”
“Forget it, Ash. I mean it. If I cannot have her, neither can you.”
“Hey, Reed’s wearing britches,” Luke said.
“Because I spent the better part of the night wide awake, telling myself that I could live without you all.”
“And telling me that he could not,” Ash said. “He’s been miserable. It’s true. He’s a morose drunk.”
Reed ignored Ash and concentrated on Chastity. “When I left you, I thought I’d go mad. For the love of God, what are we to do?” He helped her from the floor and took her into his arms. “If we had not vowed to obey the law— “ He spotted the open window. “Did you break in?”
Chastity laughed. “We break in, we break out. We�
��re the brigands of Sunnyledge.”
The boys began to sing the words, until a rap at the door hushed them.
Ash opened it to Mr. Sennett, in cap and nightshirt. “Noise fit to wake the— Kitty? Children?”
“Mr. Sennett? What are you doing here?” Chastity asked. “‘Twas your maid told me where to find Reed, but she did not say you were together.”
“Reed insisted we look into that foolish law,” Sennett said, “to see if we could break—”
Chastity laughed and waltzed the rotund solicitor, cap tassel bobbing, around the room. “I haven’t lost my wits,” she said, noting the bemused looks on all three men. “But I have the answer.” She produced William’s documents with a flourish and presented them to Mr. Sennett, along with the Superior’s letter. “Here.”
While Mr. Sennett perused William’s birth record, and Reed’s twin’s death certificate, Chastity stepped into Reed’s arms. “I am not your sister-in-law,” she said, and kissed him. “Now you have to marry us.”
“Devil take it,” Ash said. “I suppose I’ll have to find my own bride, now.”
“I’ll be dashed,” Sennett said.
“Are we free to marry?” Reed asked.
“You are, my boy.”
Reed regarded the children. “I’d like your permission to marry Chastity and make you my children, to care for and reprimand and tickle and love.”
“Yes!” came Luke’s response, echoed by Bekah and Matt.
“I don’t need you,” Mark shouted. “I don’t need anybody. I mean it. I’m going.” When no one made a move to stop him, Mark raced out the door.
“I know exactly how the lad feels,” Ash said.
Reed chased Mark out and to the back of the inn, where he found the boy sitting against a woodpile, Zeke in a stranglehold, his face against her fur.
Reed felt his chest constrict at the memory of himself in such a state and at so young an age. If he did not help Mark now, the boy would become so mired in apathy, he’d deny love for the rest of his life. Not everyone is lucky enough to find a woman who can wring love from an iced-over heart.
Unmistakable Rogue Page 27
