Boring was no price at all to pay for kindness and trustworthiness, and Amery’s lady hadn’t found him boring in the least.
“You know Lord Amery, then?” Loris asked.
“I know him fairly well, because that employer I mentioned earlier, Lord Fairly, regards Lord Amery as a close friend. They were brothers-in-law at one point, and they still have some complicated family connection through Fairly’s sisters.”
“How is it a man you describe as boringly proper is friends with a man who owns a brothel?”
“Men are like that. We don’t make sense.”
Must he sound so proud of that shortcoming? “An eternal verity, to be sure, my lord. Take the right fork up here,” Loris said at a divergence of the path. “The trail winds up at my cottage, and this way, you will not be seen in your damp glory by one and all.”
“Protecting my modesty, Miss Tanner? Bend down,” he directed as they approached a sapling hanging low over the path.
“Protecting my own,” she shot back, leaning over Rupert’s neck. Behind her, the baron bent forward as well, so Loris’s was momentarily pressed against his lordship’s naked chest.
“Perhaps I should walk,” she said when they straightened, “or you should ride Evan from here.” Lest she expire from the baron’s proximity before she reached the safety of her cottage.
“We’re almost there, and whatever damage I’ve done to your cantle and Rupert’s back won’t be remedied by switching horses at this point. Down again.” Sutcliffe didn’t wait for Loris to bend, but nudged her forward, his chest to her back.
Fortunately, the trees were thinning, and soon Rupert toddled around a small pond at the foot of Loris’s grassy yard.
The baron drew his gelding to a halt right at the back porch of Loris’s dwelling, a tidy cottage that sat in the middle of a clearing. Blooms spilled from hanging baskets and half barrels, from beds and borders and window boxes. His lordship would probably think them frivolous and a waste of seed and soil.
Though Loris loved her flowers, and made more than pin money from them in a good year.
His lordship slid off the horse’s back end, right over the beast’s tail, then reached up for Loris.
“I’ll wait out here with the horses, my lord.”
“Off you go. You’ve been on that horse all morning. You might as well stretch your legs while I attend to my wardrobe.”
Sutcliffe tugged Loris from the saddle, and she found herself standing beside Rupert, the baron’s hands still on her waist.
And, heaven have mercy, all Loris wanted to do was close her eyes and feel the warm bulk of his lordship’s muscles under her fingers. Thank God she still had her riding gloves on.
The baron stepped back and hung his damp shirt, waistcoat, and cravat over the porch railing.
“My father’s clothes are in the trunk at the foot of his bed,” Loris said. “You’ll find wash water in my bedroom, and you may use my combs and brushes as well.”
Sutcliffe bowed. “My thanks.”
The gesture should have been ridiculous when he was clad only in damp breeches, but when he turned to go, Loris was too mesmerized by the sight of those breeches clinging intimately to the baron’s fundament.
On babies, buttocks were cute. On horses, they could be muscular and impressive. On grown men, Loris had somehow failed to note they existed. But the baron’s muscled flanks were a sight to behold.
For, oh ye trumpeting cherubs, his lordship was not wearing underlinen.
* * *
“You followed Chesterton into Haybrick?” Nick asked Beckman.
Beckman paused, a load of dirty straw in the barrow before him. Inside the barn, the air was close, but outside in the stable yard, the temperature would already be stifling.
“I followed him to the Cock and Bull,” Beckman said, taking out a flask and tipping it up. “I tarried with my pint long enough to hear Chesterton railing against the injustice of his fate. He took a room at the inn, and was in the company of Anderson and a couple of the other disaffected stable lads when I left.”
They hardly qualified as stable lads. Most of the crew Chesterton had hired had been little more than incompetent, and Nick was glad to see them go.
As were the horses, no doubt.
Nick had not been glad to see Loris Tanner ride off in the company of Baron Sutcliffe.
“Did any of the grooms mention quitting?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” Beckman said, tucking his flask away and mopping at his brow with a frayed linen handkerchief. “They grumbled about barons who came strutting down from London, and about the daughter of a steward who needed to learn her place. I had the sense talk was mostly for my benefit.”
Mostly, but not entirely. Nick did not need this complication now, and neither did Loris Tanner.
“Sutcliffe seems like a reasonable sort,” Nick said. “I don’t think he’d blame the loss of a half a stable crew on Miss Tanner.”
Beckman stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket. “I’d rather they did quit, Nick. The next man I see mishandle a horse will meet the business end of my fists.”
The heat was making everybody irritable, though Beckman wasn’t simply expressing his temper. He was protective toward those who could not defend themselves, and Nick was painfully familiar with the same impulse.
“Where do you think Miss Tanner and the baron have got off to?” Nick asked.
Beckman hefted the barrow. “It’s too hot for Sutcliffe to get any wayward notions, Nick. By the time you finish raking the aisle, she’ll come trotting up the lane, a tired, befuddled baron trotting after her. For two years, most of the fellows working this estate have worn that expression, and for two years the estate has run more or less well.”
On that observation, Beckman took the dirty straw out to the muck pit, leaving Nick to finish raking the aisle.
By the time he was done, even the barn was becoming as hot as a Dutch oven, and still, Miss Tanner and the baron were nowhere to be seen.
* * *
Loris ran up Rupert’s stirrups, loosened his girth, and took his bridle off, doing the same for Evan so they could graze in her back yard. She cast around for something else to do, something to prevent her from dwelling on the damp, impressive baron in her house—likely naked in her house.
He’d be inspecting her personal dwelling, handling her things, and knowing him, he’d make his assessments without bothering to dress first.
Loris grabbed a watering can, filled it at the pump, gave the pansies an extra drink, then busied herself pulling off dead blooms. To remove the spent blossoms and gently untangle the plants soothed her, like currying a horse or brushing a child’s hair. Tending her garden was usually an activity for the cool of the evening, a time for solitude and winding down from the day’s exertions.
“I see you’ve decided to trust Rupert,” the baron said, as he came down the stairs in stockinged feet. He retrieved his boots from the bottom step and sat to tug them on.
“Have I grown an extra nose?” he asked, standing.
“Those are my father’s clothes.” They had never looked like that on Micah Tanner.
“He liked a well made garment, though I gather he wasn’t quite as tall as I am.” Sutcliffe shrugged into his riding jacket. “Do you miss your father?”
Loris took up Evan’s bridle and slipped it onto the gelding, who didn’t regard a bit as a reason to stop chewing the grass in his mouth.
“For so long,” Loris said, “since I was a girl, I felt responsible for my father, as if my reason for living were to look after him and take care of him. I do miss him—he had a keen sense of humor and never forgot a detail of agricultural science.”
Loris was also relieved that her father had taken himself off. She tightened the horse’s girth and ran the stirrups down the leathers rather than voice such a disloyal, bewildering sentiment.
Her father had never forgotten anything when sober.
The baron said nothing, likely busy with his
own stirrups and girth.
“My father was like most of us,” Loris went on. “A mixture of the admirable and the exasperating, and preoccupied with his own concerns. You note that Papa’s taste in clothing was refined. So was his taste in almost everything. He’d do without rather than tolerate goods of merely average quality. He was given to dramatics, which was tiresome for a person not given to dramatics, and who managed the best she could on a modest budget.”
“That’s honest,” Sutcliffe said, coming to stand beside Evan. “Up you go.”
Loris cocked up her left leg at the knee, allowing the baron to grasp her booted ankle. He one, two, three’d her into the saddle.
One-handed.
“What do you think happened to your father?” Sutcliffe asked as he climbed aboard Evan and took up the reins. His wet clothes remained draped over Loris’s porch railing, large, startlingly white, and best ignored.
Loris ought to have resented the baron’s question; instead, having somebody to talk with about Papa’s absence was another relief.
“I honestly do not know what has become of Papa. He could behave himself for months, but then, when he’d drink spirits, he’d binge to the point he could not recall what he had done, where he had been, or with whom. In that condition, he could have been picked up by a press gang.”
“Last I heard,”—the baron nudged his horse into a walk—“few press gangs lurked in the wilds of Sussex.”
“He could well be dead.” Loris suspected the baron had been thinking this, and was too much of a gentleman—too kind—to be so blunt.
“How will you spend the rest of your day, Miss Tanner?”
Another abrupt, welcome change in subject, courtesy of his lordship.
“I will look in on the stable, and make sure Chesterton’s effects are delivered to the Cock and Bull. I’ll send Wee Nick for that, because I’ll want a receipt from the man, and Nick can read. We should also bring in Penny from the mare’s pasture.”
“Who is Penny, and why is she to give up her grass?” the baron asked as they turned up the long driveway.
“She is another of Greymoor’s rescues,” Loris said. “His lordship had a soft spot for damsels in distress. Penny is a draft mare plowed to permanent lameness. Greymoor bought her to tend the yearlings, then decided she wasn’t sound enough to travel to his other properties, where he owns a stud farm. He bred her to Pettigrew’s stallion and hoped to produce a nice, large, placid riding horse.”
The baron’s eyebrows went up, as if women were to believe baby horses came prancing forth from the middle of fairy rings.
“What do we know of Pettigrew’s stud?”
Talk of assaults, fallen women, and a missing steward had not merited much of a reaction from Sutcliffe, but an unusual choice of brood mare had the baronial eyebrow arching heavenward.
“Pettigrew’s stud has good conformation but a sour disposition. I would be cross too, had I his life.”
“You don’t approve of Pettigrew’s husbandry?”
Odd word choice. The horses approached the front paddock, and again, Sutcliffe arranged his mount so Loris and Rupert had the best of the shade.
“Squire Pettigrew died some years ago,” Loris said. “His widow stands the stallion, and she isn’t a horsewoman. The beast is not exercised, not safely confined in a stud paddock, not allowed to consort with any other horses. It’s easy to see how he would become out of sorts, but she continues to keep him bored, isolated, and without meaningful work.”
Sutcliffe glanced over at Loris, as if the terms—bored, isolated, and without meaningful work—might have applied somewhere besides the horse.
“Stallions can be difficult,” Sutcliffe said, as they approached the stable.
A baron could be difficult, too. “A stallion will have a personality, my lord, but the stallion is the horse as God made him, and he’ll need companionship, a sense of purpose, and understanding. Not isolation and harsh handling.”
Old Jamie came out to take their horses and frowned without comment at the ring of dampness at the back of Rupert’s saddle.
“When you are done with your tasks here, Miss Tanner,” the baron said as he assisted her to dismount, “might you attend me in the library at the manor? We have much to discuss, and can reschedule our inspection of the remaining land.”
“As you wish, sir.”
He bowed and sauntered off, and the damned man probably knew full well Loris was watching his retreat.
Again.
* * *
“You want to get rid of me when we’ve been married only a handful of weeks?” David, Viscount Fairly, asked his wife.
In the privacy of their bed chamber, he could venture such an honest inquiry. Letty sat at her vanity, the picture of domestic innocence, though Fairly knew—and liked—that she watched him in her mirror.
“Sussex is not darkest Africa,” Letty said, setting aside her hair brush and rising to kiss her spouse. “Thomas has no one else to help him settle in, and he would never ask you to visit when we’re so newly wed.”
Thomas Jennings would never ask anybody for anything. Fairly knew himself to be cast in the same mold, and yet, he’d asked the madam of his brothel to marry him. Thank God, and a goodly complement of mutual regard—also mutual lust—she’d accepted.
“You are trying to muddle me,” Fairly said as Letty bit his earlobe.
“Am I succeeding?”
He led her to the bed, a lordly acreage of pillows, quilts, fragrant sheets, and wonderful memories.
“We must talk, Letty-love.” They had enjoyed many conversations in that bed, not always using words.
Letty turned so Fairly could undo her laces. With the neckline of her dress dipping low across her chemise, she undid his cravat and sleeve buttons. In a very short time, these marital courtesies had become routine, and yet, Fairly would never take them for granted.
Letty draped her dress and stays across a chair. Fairly’s shirt, waistcoat, and breeches soon joined the pile, and then—the morning was warm, after all—Letty’s chemise topped the lot, like icing on a sweet.
“Into bed,” Fairly said, smacking Letty’s bum. She’d made the mistake of telling him she liked a confidently playful application of his hand to her fundament, so Fairly was doomed to oblige her frequently.
Letty crawled across the bed to the side closest to the window. “You are going down to Sussex, David. For years, you had no one to rely on but Thomas, and he never once failed you.”
“Why can’t you come to Sussex with me? Amery took Gwen with him, and that turned out rather well.”
Fairly climbed onto the bed and took a moment simply to enjoy the breeze across his naked flesh, his wife’s hand in his, and the rock-solid sense that though they were newly wed, they’d already developed a foundation of honesty and respect.
“I could come to Sussex with you, but then I’d be the odd lady out, and you’d fret, and Thomas would fret, and that is not the point of the excursion.”
Fairly kissed his wife’s knuckles. The day was warm, so a lazy loving was called for, all soft kisses and sweet sighs. His cock stirred in anticipation, and Letty took him in her hand.
“I get the sense Thomas does not enjoy having a title,” she said, her fingers glossing over Fairly like the breeze across the pristine sheets. “Your hair is golden even here, reddish golden.”
“Thomas never wanted a title,” Fairly replied, though he’d soon be unable to form coherent sentences. He and Letty competed with each other to see who could pretend to ignore arousal the longest.
He invariably lost, but in the interests of giving a good account on behalf of new husbands throughout the realm, Fairly turned to his side and drew his hand down Letty’s midline.
“I forbid you to tickle me,” Letty said, arching into his caress. “How long has Thomas been a baron?”
“Two years, that I know of. His twin cousins killed each other in a duel, so the title represents a double tragedy to him. I don’t kno
w as he has any other family, save a sister or a cousin or an aunt at the Sutcliffe family seat. I love to see the sunshine on your naked breasts.”
That was the last thing Fairly said for long minutes, besides, “please,” “now,” “damn it, Letty,” and “my love.”
Letty was dozing on his chest, the breeze cooling them gently as the day advanced, when Fairly bestirred himself to recall their earlier conversation.
“Do you really think I ought to look in on Thomas, Letty-love?”
“You’ll worry otherwise,” she said, running her tongue from his collarbone to his ear. “You must be presumptuous and lordly, Husband. Tell Thomas you’re making a visit. Don’t hint, don’t ask, don’t suggest. He’ll get the knack of baron-ing if you demonstrate some viscount-ing.”
“I rather prefer husband-ing and lover-ing.”
“I’m fond of your husband-ing and lover-ing, too, and because you are leaving for Sussex by the end of the week, perhaps you’d best bestow more of same upon me now, hmm?”
Fairly indulged his lady’s suggestion to the utmost, for the least he could do was make sure she missed the hell out of him when he went a-viscounting in the wilds of Sussex.
Chapter Four
Loris waited some twenty minutes in the manor house library while her employer changed into attire of his own. She used the time to consider what she might have said or done differently during the morning’s outing, what employment she might find if Sutcliffe gave her the sack, and what she had on hand for luncheon, breakfast being but a dim, fond memory.
To combat nerves, she took down the matched pair of pistols stored on the highest shelf. They might not be dueling pistols per se, but they were high-quality firearms, and had likely not been cleaned in some time. She set about rectifying that oversight, seating herself on the threshold of the French doors, spreading the necessary tools on the flagstones at her feet.
“Penny for them, Miss Tanner.”
Loris yelped at the baron’s voice. He lounged against his desk, a drink in his hand. How long had he been lurking at her back, and why hadn’t she heard him?
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