by Isobel Carr
The thousandth green hill, studded with sheep and trees, rolled past the carriage’s window. Beau sighed and stretched until her spine popped. She sagged back into the seat.
“What exactly does a gentleman farmer do?” Beau said, breaking the silence.
Gareth’s eyes snapped open, and the side of his mouth cocked up in a familiar, welcome way. “I believe he wears gaiters and talks of nothing but bullocks. And perhaps pigs,” he added contemplatively.
“So you don’t know either,” Beau said with an attempt at a laugh. It felt easy, but there was an underlying constraint. She couldn’t stop picturing the horror and heartbreak on Lady Cook’s face.
Gareth shook his head and fiddled with his cravat. “Haven’t the slightest idea, and not entirely sure I wish to find out. Though perhaps I could be persuaded about the pigs.”
“I’m sure there must be a home farm. You can keep your pigs there, alongside the milch cow and chickens.”
“Very sporting of you,” Gareth said with a grimace.
“Even the queen of France does so at her little farm.”
“Have you seen it?” Gareth moved to the seat opposite her, drew her feet up into his lap, and began to unbuckle her shoe.
“No. I haven’t been to France since I was a little girl. The queen did pat me on the head and tell Mamma I was très jolie though. Have you seen it?”
“Me? No.” He stroked her foot, pushing his thumb into the tender underside. “Never seduced my way into the right bed, though the Princess de Lambelle was a tempting option. I’ve heard the stories of perfumed lambs and pet chickens though.”
“No sheep,” Beau said. “Perfumed or otherwise.”
“No sheep?”
“I’ve dealt with enough sheep to last a lifetime. Scotland has more sheep than people, and each of them is dumber than the next.”
“The people?” Gareth said with a grin.
“Them too,” Beau replied.
“You are severe today. First you attack my pigs, and now the queen’s sheep.”
“You don’t have any pigs.”
“Yet. I don’t have any pigs yet.”
“Be careful, or I’m going to get you pigs as a wedding present.” Beau narrowed her eyes and poked him with her stockinged foot for emphasis. “And I’ll make you wear gaiters too, over a pair of old brogues.”
“Witch.”
“Popinjay.”
Gareth studied her with an evil glint in his eyes and then yanked her into his lap. Beau landed astride him, knees on the seat, skirts riding up in a froth.
A rush of damp heat liquefied her core. Gareth’s knuckles brushed over the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and slick folds between them as he freed himself from his breeches.
Beau bit down on the collar of his coat to keep from crying out as he entered her. Glorious and familiar, she struggled to take all of him, rocking her hips, need almost frantic. Whatever he was thinking of now, it certainly wasn’t Lady Cook, and that was triumph enough.
Gareth held her down by the shoulders and thrust upward. Beau gasped as their bodies met. He ground against her, holding her down, and she nearly came on the spot. He’d never been so precipitous, or so rough, but her body responded with what should have been humiliating swiftness.
Should have been. Beau could find no such emotion in the swirl of things running through her. There was shock, mingled with excitement, and the thrill of possession. It was no wonder unmarried women were strictly warned not to bestow their favors. Who could stop once they started?
Beau arched her back, and her nipples pressed almost painfully into the hard wall of her stays. Gareth’s mouth was on her neck, lips and teeth surely leaving a mark. Beau locked her hand in his hair and pulled him away.
Gareth nipped at her again, and she gripped his queue with both hands, holding his gaze with her own. He let go of her shoulders and slid his hands up her thighs until his thumbs rode over the hard peak of her clitoris as she rocked against him.
“Make me come,” he said. “All on your own. No help.”
“I’m to do all the work now?” she asked.
Gareth just smiled.
“Bastard.”
His smile grew, and he slid slightly forward so she had better leverage against the narrow seat.
“You’ve done this before!”
“And you haven’t,” he said provokingly. Beau sank down, rose up until he was barely inside her, and then rocked down hard again. Gareth inhaled sharply, his hands tightening their grip. Beau found her rhythm, set her pace, and bent her every action to the challenge. He was hers, and she meant to keep him.
The smirk slid off Gareth’s face, and his breathing went shallow. He flexed beneath her. Hands starting to lift her away.
“Don’t you dare,” Beau said.
“But—”
“Wait.” She was so close. If he finished without her, she was going to kill him. “Just, one, more…” Her release rushed through her, leaving her deaf, blind, and dumb.
Gareth groaned and attempted to unseat her again. Beau held on. “You could get pregnant.”
“So I could.” Beau clenched herself around him.
A deep growl was his only answer.
CHAPTER 23
Looks like someone beached a galleon and put a roof on it,” Gareth said with a hint of disgust.
Beau stood gaping at the Magpie quatrefoils that made up the façade of her new home. The branching L to the right was half-timbered in the same black and white, the color scheme broken only by the large windows that ran along both floors, all of them made up of a dozen or more tiny panes.
A welcoming wisp of smoke curled up out of the middle bank of chimneys that rose from the heavy slate roof. Beau shivered in the damp, watching the smoke disappear into the wet, gray skies.
“I think it’s beautiful,” she said, meaning every word.
“I think it looks cold and drafty,” he continued sourly, “and I’ll bet you a year’s pin money that it still has a turnspit in the kitchen.”
“Lochmaben house certainly does. Though mother says she’s taking it out and replacing it with a French range next spring.”
A spatter of rain hit her as the door opened and an elderly couple stepped out to greet them. Gareth waved them back inside and pushed Beau into the house before him, abandoning the coachman to find the stables on his own.
“Mr. Sandison?” the man said with a thick, musical accent that moved letters from one syllable to the next. “Peebles. And this is my missus. We’ve made the house as ready as can be and hired on staff, as instructed by your father.”
The woman curtsied and hurried to take their coats and hats. “I’ve water on for tea, my lady. Come this way, through the Great Hall. When you’re warm and rested, I can show you the house.”
Beau smiled at her husband, and Gareth raised his brows mockingly, daring her to continue liking the place. “Tea would be wonderful, Mrs. Peebles,” she said. “Thank you.”
The housekeeper, her arms still overflowing with their coats, led them through an enormous, vaulted hall, down a paneled corridor, and into a smaller parlor that boasted a fireplace that was merely large and a smattering of furniture, including a settee flanked by tiny, spindly looking chairs.
“I’ll be back in a tick,” Mrs. Peebles said as she disappeared out the door on the other side of the room.
Beau spun slowly around, trying to take in all the ancient glory and then went to warm her hands by the fire. The logs crackled, sap popping, spitting tiny embers out toward her skirts. “Don’t say it.”
“Don’t say what?” Gareth said, all innocence.
“I know what you’re thinking. It’s a Tudor pile, with a leaking roof, and the ghosts of murdered wives haunting the halls. I don’t care. I like it.”
“Why not husbands?”
“Tudors and Elizabethans were always murdering their wives. Or didn’t you study history at Harrow?”
Gareth broke into laughter and dropped
onto the settee, which squealed alarmingly and sank a bit closer to the floor. Beau held her breath as she waited for it to give out, but it held. Gareth’s eyes roved over her. Beau caught his gaze and held it. They’d been married a fortnight, and they’d hardly left the bedchamber except to travel from Dyrham to London, and thence to Morton Hall.
The things you could do in a carriage… Just thinking about their trip set her pulse racing. And he was smiling again, though the welt across his cheek remained to taunt her.
“You can stop thinking that too,” she said, half to herself, but mostly to Gareth. “We’re not going to scandalize the servants by being caught with your tarse up my petticoats just as we’ve arrived.”
“My what?”
“Shakespeare,” Beau replied with a laugh. “I know you must have studied him.”
Gareth sputtered for a moment, looking highly aggrieved. “Thoroughly, but I don’t remember any such language in the Bard’s work.” He paused, eyes quizzing her. “Are you suggesting that we wait to scandalize the servants at some future date, my little libertine?”
“I fear it’s inevitable,” Beau said, well aware that what he was saying was true, joy at the prospect singing in her veins. “You’re very badly behaved, you know.”
“I know.” Gareth smiled as he said it, shaking out the cuffs of his shirt like a bird fluffing its feathers.
Beau rolled her eyes and carefully took a seat beside him, brushing her lips hurriedly over his as she did so. Lady Cook be damned, he was hers.
“The house has a fairy-tale quality,” she said, smoothing her skirts over her knees, pushing their absorbed warmth down into her skin. “I can imagine Sir Lancelot bringing Guinevere here. Or Sir Gawain and his tusked-bride. It needs tapestries and suits of armor and a great stag’s head over the mantle.”
“It needs chairs I’m not afraid to sit in,” Gareth replied, eyeing the chairs scattered about the room askance. “And very likely every amenity invented after Elizabeth’s reign.”
“Are you determined to be dour?” Beau asked, starting to feel perturbed. “This is our house. Our home. I command you to find at least one thing to like.”
Gareth screwed up his mouth thoughtfully and turned his head about, studying the room. Beau widened her eyes and refused to smile. A flash of dimple caught her eye. Yes, he liked it too, loath as he was to admit it.
“I can find three. One”—he ticked it off on his fingers—“my wife likes it. Two, it’s far, far away from my family. Three, did I already say my wife likes it?”
“Yes, but your wife does like it. And so shall you once we’ve settled in and the shock has worn off. Think of the parties. The Great Hall is practically large enough to play cricket in, and just picture the size of the Yule log we could burn in that fireplace. I swear it looked big enough to cook an ox.”
“It was probably designed to do just that,” Gareth said.
“Then we shall throw a fancy dress ball and roast an ox. I think your friends would find that terribly amusing. I know mine would.”
Gareth smiled back at her, but his eyes were bleak again. Beau mentally cursed herself. She knew better than to bring up his friends. Their desertion was an open wound, just as her father and brother’s refusal to accept the true version of events was for her. They should have been falling over themselves with thanks.
Beau shoved the thought away. She was not going to let them spoil this. And she was not going to let any of it hurt Gareth if there was anything she could do to alleviate the sting. Anything short of sharing him with Lady Cook, that was.
“We could invite the neighbors,” Gareth said with forced cheerfulness. “As the new arrivals, we’ll be expected to do something. Especially as the house has been unoccupied for some thirty years or more.”
Beau nodded her head, grateful that Mrs. Peebles chose that exact moment to return with a well-laden tea tray. Beau ate one Naples biscuit after another, suddenly ravenous. Outside, the rain had begun to fall more heavily, the darkening sky leaving the room as gloomy as her husband.
“Garderobes,” Gareth said with horrified awe as Mrs. Peebles pointed out the two small doors just off the master’s bedchamber.
His wife gave him a slightly exasperated look, and Gareth let the topic go. The house was worse than he’d feared, but Beau seemed determined to like it, and to force him to do likewise. The dark paneling she called cozy. The beds, raised up on daises and engulfed in ancient, rotting curtains, were impressive. But even she could find nothing better than historical for the intact garderobes.
There was an impressive long gallery on the first floor, lined with tall, empty bookcases separated by caryatid columns. It ran over the entry, its windows looking out on a sweeping view of the lane leading up to the house and the lawn that led down toward the chalk cliffs and the road to Kingstown.
Beau wandered away from him and Mrs. Peebles, running her fingers along the windowsills. Her lips were moving, as though she were talking to herself.
“Cursing my father?”
She shook her head. “Making a list. Every house needs books. I’d never thought to create a library from nothing though. It’s a bit daunting.”
“It does give one the option to leave out fusty sermons and improving tracts,” Gareth said. Mrs. Peebles shot him a scandalized look before dropping her eyes. Gareth snorted. It was best that she know right from the start whom she was working for.
“We never had many of those at home,” Beau said. “We had a Bible, of course. Several in fact, but the duke is not fond of religious treatises. Unless they’re Roman and advocating the proper way to worship Mithras or the like, that is. Those he’d display with glee.”
Mrs. Peebles hands were clenched into tiny fists, the knuckles burning white. Gareth bit his tongue and let Beau continue to rattle on about pagan deities and just what sorts of books they should send for. He gave the Peebleses a month at most before they gave their notice.
After a few minutes, the housekeeper excused herself to check on the preparations for dinner, and Gareth gave into the amusement that had been slowly overwhelming him. His guffaws echoed back from the barrel-arched ceiling, making it sound as though the room were filled with laughing men.
“What?” Beau said, looking adorably confused. “You’re not allowed to say you don’t want a library. And you’re certainly not allowed to laugh at my penchant for novels.”
“Buy all the novels you like, brat. But for heaven’s sake, don’t start the library out with your sister-in-law’s donation. I think that really would be the last straw for poor Mrs. Peebles.”
“Oh,” Beau said with dawning understanding. She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she always did when worried or perplexed. “Do you think she’s packing at this very moment, or might we simply be on notice?”
“Definitely on notice, the both of us. I thought it was going to be just me, but then you had to go and talk about filling the house with odes to pagan gods.”
“And novels. Don’t forget the novels. Surely those are every bit as bad.”
“If not worse,” Gareth agreed. “Shall we see if we can find our way back through the rabbit warren to the parlor? I’m beginning to lose all sensation in my fingers and the night isn’t going to get any warmer.” He rubbed his hands briskly together for emphasis.
After several false starts and roundabout journeys, a somewhat startled maid led them back to the parlor. “Is it me,” Gareth said, “or have the chairs shrunk since we were last here?”
“Perhaps you’ve grown,” Beau said, reclaiming her seat on the settee.
“Those,” he waved his hand at the chairs, “are going to have to be banished to the nursery, assuming we have one. We must, mustn’t we? All old piles do. Can you imagine Thane attempting to balance his great carcass on one of them?”
Gareth cringed as soon as the words left his mouth. Beau blinked, clearly afraid to respond. Damn it all. They’d been on tenterhooks ever since their encounter with Lady Cook in Hy
de Park. His former mistress had waylaid him with a plea for help with her stirrup, and things had deteriorated from the moment he’d swung out of the saddle.
She and Vaughn were both busy portraying him as a villainous seducer. Vaughn out of anger, Lady Cook out of a thirst for revenge. She’d accused him of slighting her. As though he were somehow her possession.
Bad enough that he was persona non grata with the League. He’d expected problems there, though perhaps not quite such serious ones. Lady Cook was bent upon reminding the ton of his every misstep. She wanted his transgressions fresh in their minds.
And no one was going to give him the chance to explain, except perhaps Devere, who seemed as blasé about this as he did about everything. The fact that almost every member of the League had known Beau since she was a girl thundering about behind them on her pony could only have served to make things worse.
Sisters were sacrosanct. Everyone knew that.
CHAPTER 24
The first three days of their life at Morton Hall took place in a deluge. It was like living inside a goldfish bowl. By the time the storm broke, they’d explored every inch of the house, from the attic to the kitchen.
Gareth had claimed one of the smaller parlors on the ground floor for his study, and Beau had left him there, poring over the spider scrawl in the account books while she went outside to explore the remains of the gardens.
The very formal pathways were all still intact, but the herbal borders had died away, and the beds contained nothing but a deep layer of straw mulch. Some distance from the house, the geometric pathways and beds gave way to a lawn, the transition marked by a long line of untidy yew sentinels.
Beau pulled the hem of her gown up through her pocket slits to shorten it and headed for the cliff’s edge. The ground squelched underfoot, sinking beneath every step. Her half boots were soaked through by the time she caught her first view of the sea, but the view was undeniably worth wet feet and ruined stockings.
