Within two weeks, a dozen hard-working military men and their families moved onto Huntington tenant property. Some would work the home farm, completing the harvest, however sodden the crops. Two were ships’ carpenters, one a millwright and two others, bricklayers. They would make immediate repairs to the buildings, working in exchange for rent, and no monetary compensation, as there was no money, though Hawk gave each family a goodly-sized portion of land for their own use. Wives and children could work that for themselves and raise enough produce to feed their families and sell the excess at market for a respectable profit. St. Albans was a famous enough market town to make that effort more than worthwhile.
Hawk set himself up as Huntington’s estate manager. But in preparation for the time when he would take the family to London for Claude’s season, he taught one of their long-standing tenants to take over temporary management, for a lower rent and a larger cottage.
When Hawk found a widow offering two dozen black-faced Suffolk sheep for a pittance, he bought the animals to raise for wool. He secured several cows and a bull for similarly low prices, as more farmers were daily giving up and heading for the city. These he would raise for milk and beef.
Hawk’s diamond stickpin bought them a mare rumored to be in foal by Mercury, a prize-winning racehorse. The mare alone was worth more than the stickpin, for she was a prime breeder in her own right, and would produce fast, healthy, hard-working carriage horses. But if Mercury had sired her offspring that infamous day he broke loose and covered half the mares in Hertfordshire, then she was worth a dozen diamond pins for her foal alone. He named her Quicksilver.
If he was skilled at one thing—other than that for which he had become quite famous with the ladies—Hawk told Alex later, it was horses. And if he could not turn a profit with good horseflesh, then no one could.
Alex thought that if she could not get him to demonstrate his other famous skill, she was going to crown her gentleman farmer with his own pitchfork.
Several days before they were to leave for London, Claudia said that perhaps she did not need a season after all. Not this year, at least, and Alex laughed. “Do not even try to pretend with me, Missy,” she said. “You do not wish to go, because you have failed to talk Chesterfield into following us to town. Is that not right, or as near right as might be?”
Claude huffed and flapped a sheet to lay flat against Bea’s small bed. “Just because you are content to live without love, Alex, does not mean that I am.”
The words felt like a slap, and Alex gasped, looked into Claude’s stricken eyes, and exited the room at a hurried pace, only to plow into Hawksworth.
“Ho, steady, there.” Still unstable on his feet, he latched onto her for balance, and Alex pretended the same need, allowing him to hold her, treasuring the embrace. Between Claude’s harsh words and Hawk’s arms about her in the light of day, Alex began to weep. And, once the floodgates opened, she could not seem to close them.
Then Claude stood beside her apologizing, except that Alex could not focus on the girl, because of the wondrous look of concern in her husband’s eyes, which only made her weep the more.
Claude attempted to pull her aside, but Alex did not wish to be disengaged from Hawksworth’s embrace, and fortunately, he fought to keep her there.
Alex did squeeze Claude’s hand, however, giving her a look begging understanding, hoping the girl would realize that she could not miss this God-given opportunity with her husband.
Grateful for Claude’s dawn of understanding, Alex stepped with Hawk into the privacy of their bedchamber.
When he closed the door, shutting them alone inside, Alex fairly floated in the fixedness of his attention.
He urged her onto their bed and lay beside her, pulling her close. “Alex, sweetheart.” He wiped a tear with a fingertip. “Tell me what is wrong.”
“Hold me, Hawk. Please hold me.”
His gentleness was almost too wonderful to bear. Perhaps he did not love her, but Claudia had been wrong about one thing—Alex was not content to continue that way. Oh, she was not.
Because Hawk shushed and rocked her in his arms, she cried the more. She wept for all the years without his arms around her, and for Claudia’s words, because they sliced too close to the bone to be borne.
Alex felt more alive than she had since the night they nearly made love beside the fire. She wanted more such experiences. But almost as much, she wanted to know why her husband had not come home to her. “Why, Hawk? Why did you not find us as soon as you returned from Belgium?”
He kissed her brow, her lips. He sighed and resettled them, pulling the corner of the counterpane over them, like a pair of Egyptian mummies.
Alex experienced heaven in his arms, but hell loomed in the weight of his silence. Her fear that he could not have borne to come home to her was so great, she wanted to weep the more for his hesitancy.
“If I could understand, myself,” Hawk said, several, long minutes later. “I could explain it, though my staying away had nothing to do with my father, I promise you.”
Silence held sway, until Alex initiated a second kiss, which at length came to its inevitable, breath-seeking conclusion. They looked into each other’s eyes, then, almost into each other’s souls, and she remembered how, over the years, he had a difficult time overcoming his natural reticence. And Alex understood, with sudden clarity and great relief, that his current silence might have nothing to do with her, but with the man he had become, at heart—as perhaps did his previous silence. “Just talk and I will listen,” she said.
Reluctantly, Hawk nodded, understanding somehow, that this might be the most important conversation of his life, though he was not certain why. “You might have noticed,” he said, closing his eyes against a hoard of painful memories, “that I was badly wounded in Belgium.” He looked to see if she would wince or pale.
She did not. “I had noticed.”
“I thought as much.” He sighed. “Blast it, this is impossible.”
“Just talk.”
He gave her a half nod, wishing himself anywhere but here, compelled to speak of things he’d as lief forget. “For months after Waterloo, I thought I would die at any moment. Then for a while, after I began to recover, I was sorry that I had not died.”
“Oh, Hawk, no.”
He crossed her lips with a finger. “Shh. You promised you would listen.”
She kissed the finger, humbling him. “I apologize. Go on.”
Hawk pulled her closer, settled her head upon his shoulder, and allowed himself the luxury of burying his face in her hair for a moment. Her violet scent soothed him. “I was ashamed, for one thing. Better men than I had died, you see. Braver men, smarter, stronger, worthier men, who had made something of their lives. What right had I to live, with them gone?”
Alex shook her head.
“I did not promise, Lexy, that you would approve, I simply promised that I would talk, and frankly it is deuced uncomfortable without your disapproval.”
“Forgive me.”
He nodded. “When I suspected I wanted to live again, I was, frankly, afraid.”
Alex bristled and Hawk regarded her. “I am admitting, here, that Sabrina might have been right. Never tell her so.”
“Never,” Alex promised solemnly. “Go on.”
“I might have used Sabrina and the boys as an excuse to linger in London. She is also family, never as strong as you, and they were in trouble. Ultimately, I was glad I stayed, because I helped them with a situation plaguing them.”
“Then I am glad you stayed, as well,” Alex said. “Perhaps she will tell me about it one day. Sabrina is another stubborn one, like you, who keeps her problems to herself.”
“And you do not?”
“Of course n— No. Perhaps. Sometimes.”
Hawk hugged her tight for a second.
Alex was uplifted by the beat of his heart at her ear and the strength and need in his crushing, almost desperate embrace. “After you helped Sabrina and t
he children, why then did you remain in town?” she asked, prodding him to continue.
“I think—I know—that I did not want to force my wretched presence upon you all, for then you would see how damaged I was.”
Hawk shook his head, for he could not even understand. “Inside, Lexy, I still feel, sometimes, as if I was broken in so many ways that I was not put back together properly, as if I… live now in someone else’s skin—I know it sounds fanciful, but I cannot explain any better. I am sorry.”
With the same tenacity required to ignore the abiding ache in her heart when she first believed him dead, Alexandra ignored the fact that Hawk did not mention missing any of them, not even Claudia and Beatrix. That he never seemed to have worried about them.
“Even on the day Sabrina came to tell me of your wedding,” Hawk continued, “I was not yet ready to face any of you.”
Alex felt him shudder inwardly. “Then, without knowing how I got there, I found myself standing at the mouth of hell, inside a church, and I saw you, a bride beside your bridegroom. A woman. Beautiful. About to be joined to another.” He kissed her brow and held her fiercely for several long, delicious moments.
“My first inkling that I wanted to live again slipped into my conscious mind as I began that everlasting trek up the aisle. I could not for the life of me imagine why I had been so eager to go marching off to war, in the first place, or why I stayed away so long after my return. I knew only that you were mine and I must stop you from going to another.”
Though they were not quite the words Alex wanted—that he had missed her, needed her, cared for her—they were a great deal more than she expected and she whooped in happiness, and tightened her arms around him, kissing him wherever she could reach.
Hawk wanted to tell Alex, then, how much he had missed her. He wanted to tell her so badly that to keep from admitting it, he kissed her. Otherwise, he would commit himself to becoming her husband in every way, and that, he could not do.
He kissed her slender fingers, her wrist, the pulse at her temple, her invitingly parted lips. And just when her eyes darkened and his body came to life, a hedgehog ran across the blankets.
Alex screamed in surprise.
“What the… ?”
They heard a familiar giggle.
“Beatrix Ann Jamieson,” Alex said. “You come out this instant.”
Bea rose from the floor on the opposite side of the bed and came around to their side.
Hawk held Alex close, while little Miss Mischief, behind her, placed her elbows on the bed and rested her chin in her small hands. “What’re you and Alex doing up here in the middle of the day?”
Alex’s giggle was muffled against his chest, and as sanity returned, Hawk became more and more grateful to his Bumble Bea by the moment.
“We were, ah, taking a nap.”
“Oh, good.” Beatrix scrambled up onto the bed and climbed over Alex to squeeze herself into the tight place between them, crossing her shod feet and tucking her fists, as if to warm them, beneath her chin.
Alex removed Bea’s tiny kid slippers and pulled the blanket over her, tucking it up to her chin.
“Remember after Mama died, Uncle Hawk,” Bea said, snuggling in, “when you used to take naps with me, so I would not have bad dreams? I missed our naps when you were gone.”
“I missed them too, Pup.”
“Alex napped with me after you left. She sleeps quieter than you do, but I like napping with you too.”
“Thank you,” Hawk said, looking over at Alex, raising a brow at her chuckle.
“I like best having you both to nap with.” Bea gave a huge yawn. “It makes me feel safe and happy, like having a mama and a papa, both, again.” Then she sighed and closed her eyes, and before they knew it, she was snuffling like a contented hedgehog.
Hawk regarded Alex over Bea’s head. Just that easy, this little one had cracked the foundation of all his good intentions.
He reached over to take Alex’s hand and weave their fingers together. Then Bea turned on her side and buried her face between Alex’s breasts, sighing in sleepy contentment.
Lucky Pup, Hawk thought, Bea’s words playing in his head, whether he wished them to or not. Having Alex and him both was like having two parents again—a humbling but disquieting announcement from a six-year-old who had lacked parents for more than half her life.
Alex took Bea’s cue and fell asleep as well, her fingers still laced with his. And Hawk lay there and worried about them and watched over them.
His family… perhaps not wholly better off without him after all.
SIXTEEN
DAYS LATER, Hawk was still worrying Bea’s words like a pup with a bone. If he went ahead with his plan to set Alex free, what would losing her do to Beatrix, who had already endured the separate losses of her parents? Not to mention how she must have felt for losing him as well.
He recalled how she had wept for him when she had not quite recognized him. Now, here he was, back from the dead and planning to set Alex free, which amounted to the same thing as taking away her new mother. Poor Bea.
Poor Alex. She would never allow herself to be set free, if she thought Bea might suffer for it. So, how could he release her now, Chesterfield or no?
Hawk had detested Chesterfield for so long. For years, they had played some silent game, vying for the same stakes: women, money, and the respect of their peers. Hawk did not even know exactly when the game had begun or why.
He knew only that he had won, hands down, for the most part, until that fateful day at White’s, when Chesterfield and his father met by accident, apparently, and found themselves sharing a brandy and becoming fast friends. Later his father had said that Chesterfield was a good man, a man a father could be proud of.
The bitter taste of that pronouncement had lingered and festered inside Hawk, until the day his father contrived to offer him pride at the last, that fateful, consequential day.
After that, their old rivalry had been forgotten in the chaos of war and pain, until it flared anew, blazed, that day at the church, and worse since, until Hawk discovered that Chesterfield practically saved Bea’s life. Now he found himself trying to swallow an adjustment of his attitude toward his old nemesis.
To complicate matters, Chesterfield had come striding right up to him recently, there on Huntington property, while Hawk tried to help one of his seasoned tenants deliver a lamb, of all things. The lambing was not only Hawk’s first, but the delivery difficult at best, and out of season, so there was some worry that the lamb would be too weak and small to withstand a prolonged birth.
Chesterfield had ignored their struggle and ripped up at him. “Claudia is going to get herself into trouble visiting men at their homes, without a maid in tow, sending notes, inviting them to woodland trysts and unchaperoned walks,” the blighter shouted. “If you continue your lackadaisical guardianship in this way, Hawksworth, your niece will be ruined.”
“Do not presume—”
“It is one thing for her to be naturally friendly and exuberant here in the country,” Chesterfield continued, ignoring Hawk’s attempt to respond, “but entirely another in town. If she continues to care naught for her reputation, she will run wild in London and find herself at the mercy of some blackguard who misunderstands her and accepts the wrong invitation, with no care to her safety or good name. I trust I have made my point,” Chesterfield said, even as he stormed off.
“Just see that you stay away from her,” Hawk shouted after him.
“I am bloody well trying,” Chesterfield snapped.
“Wait,” Hawk said, stroking the laboring ewe to calm her. “What did you give Alex, for which she owes you something in exchange?”
Chesterfield cursed. “Her freedom, damn you to perdition.”
No matter that Hawk called the blighter back for his foolish answer, Chesterfield did not so much as falter or turn, but kept walking.
Still Hawk wondered which piece of the puzzle remained missing, for the ones he
had garnered thus far did not fit.
Now, as their borrowed carriage carried them smoothly toward London, Hawk could not decide if he was grateful to Chesterfield for his warning about Claudia, or furious with him over his mysterious exchange, of sorts, with Alex.
He did realize, however, that Chesterfield was right about one thing. Hawk knew less about raising girls than he did about birthing sheep.
He knew even less about grown women, wives in particular. One wife. His. He needed to talk to someone with experience. Perhaps Gideon, though his fellow rogue had less experience with children than Hawk. But he did have a wife, Sabrina—Hawk’s sister since his late and villainous half-brother married her.
Not that Hawk could not speak to Alex about Claudia. He could and did, to a point, but he would rather not bring Chesterfield into any of their conversations, if he could help it—no need to remind her of what she had lost.
Besides, he could ask Sabrina about Alex as well as Claude. Bree seemed to know instinctively what to do in most situations, and she understood him so very well, in the same way he understood her. So much so that Gideon had once imagined they were in love with each other.
Now that was a story he would have to share with Alex someday.
Alex was pleased their two-hour trip to London remained for the most part uneventful. Hawk had dressed in his own clothes for the first time, a deal newer and more fashionable than the ones from his Belgian family. Though getting him to agree had taken a bit of cajoling and more than one satisfying kiss. He even agreed to have Weston take a few nips and tucks to bring his attire up to snuff, though he hated for the ton to become generally aware that his pockets were to let.
Claudia had pouted for days because she failed to talk Chesterfield into following them into town. And Hawk was inordinately annoyed with her for trying, after the truth came out, though Alex wasn’t quite sure how he learned it.
What worried her now was that Claude’s pout had disappeared, only to be replaced by the spark of satisfaction lighting her guinea gold eyes.
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