Claiming His Defiant Miss

by Bronwyn Scott

  ‘Oh!’ May gasped, tears of relief, of disbelief springing to her eyes. ‘It’s a boy, Bea, it’s a boy! You did it, Bea.’

  Liam was beside her, cutting the cord. ‘Wash the babe and give him to Bea as soon as you can. I’ll finish up here.’

  * * *

  An hour later, the house was at peace, as if the eventful day had never happened. Bea’s room was clean, the baby snuggled against her, both of them sleeping. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the babe in Bea’s arms, May would have wondered if the whole surreal event had even occurred. All other signs of stress and worry had been obliterated. The baby stirred in Bea’s sleeping arms and May went to take him. Bea needed to rest. There would be plenty of other nights when Bea would wake and care for him.

  ‘You’re my boy, too,’ she whispered to the little bundle in her arms as she walked the quiet cottage. ‘I delivered you, Matthew William.’ She had not asked Beatrice why she’d chosen Matthew. William had been an addition. Bea had wanted the baby to have Liam’s name in some discreet way, to honour him for his efforts today.

  The warmth of the kitchen drew her. It was the cosiest place to be and her stomach was starting to rumble. She hadn’t eaten all day. The porridge had only made it as far as the bowl and she’d been too worried about Beatrice to have an appetite later. Perhaps she should make something for Liam, too. She didn’t think he’d eaten either.

  She stepped into the kitchen only to discover Liam was already ahead of her. He looked up from the worktable where he was laying out a loaf of bread, cheese and cold meat. ‘I was just about to come and get you,’ he began, but his words caught as his eyes rested on the baby in her arms. His throat worked awkwardly. ‘You look good with a baby, May.’ That was when it hit her; she wasn’t in danger of falling in love with Liam Casek again. She’d never fallen out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Goodness, it was hard to look at her with the baby in her arms and not think of the possibilities, his throat was thick with them, fantastical as they were. They might have had a child, they’d certainly been careless enough back then.

  ‘The odds were on our side.’ May smiled softly, reading his thoughts as she came to the table.

  ‘Were they?’ He busied himself with slicing bread, wanting to disguise the emotion that accompanied such thoughts. A baby would have changed everything. She would have had no choice but to walk out of the drawing room that day with him. They would have had no choice but to be together. Her father would have seen to it. No one would have been allowed to leave his precious daughter alone and with child.

  May juggled the baby in one arm so she could eat with the other hand. ‘A child would have forced our hand. We wanted to make our own choices in those days, not have them thrust upon us. That was the whole point of rebelling, to prove we weren’t puppets to be controlled.’

  Liam gave a quiet chuckle at her clumsy efforts to eat one-handed and came around the table. He took the bundle from her. ‘Here, let me take him. You’ll drop him at this rate. I’ll hold him for you and then you can hold him for me. We’ll take turns eating.’ This was as close as they’d come to talking about what had happened between them at the end and it was enough to bring that horrible last day to life.

  They were both thinking of it, both remembering it, here in the kitchen, a memory brought on by the events of the day; what might have been, what could have been, what wasn’t and what was...

  * * *

  ‘I will marry her, Worth.’

  Liam stood with straight shoulders, mustering all the dignity a young man could possess after being caught compromising a father’s daughter. His trousers fastened, his shirt was tucked in, somewhat. The ache of incompletion ebbing from his body. It was a damnable time to be hauled into account. There was no amount of decency that could rectify what Worth had seen and there was no explaining away what that was for anything else. But Worth was not interested in him, his offers or explanations. Worth’s attention was fixed, blazing green eyes and all, on his daughter.

  ‘Did he force you, May?’ His voice was quiet, wrath simmering beneath the surface. A quiet, angry man was far more dangerous than a loud one. The loud ones forgot to think. Worth never forgot.

  May’s eyes, so much like her father’s, fired with the same green temper, but her anger was far more rash. ‘No!’ She spat the word at him. ‘You’d like to think that. You’d like to think that rape was the only way possible for a girl like me to be with a man like him.’

  Rape. Liam fought the urge to cringe. Did she have to use such a strong, graphic word? Not even Worth had ventured to use it. He watched Worth’s face colour at the mention. He wanted to caution May, wanted to go to her and squeeze her hand, but Worth stood between them, keeping May rooted in a chair by the window and he by the door. The closer to throw him out, was Liam’s guess.

  May wasn’t done with her father yet. ‘I love him. I love who he is, I love what he thinks, what he stands for. I love how I am when I’m with him.’ The words made Liam proud. His May was afraid of nothing. It gave him strength. Even if they’d quarrelled over the question of running away, she was still willing to fight with him for them.

  ‘We will be married at once, as soon as the banns are read,’ Liam restated his offer.

  A satisfied smile took Worth’s mouth and Liam felt as if he had just walked into a trap. The right words had somehow become wrong. ‘I am sure you would be pleased to marry my daughter.’ He waved a hand to indicate the room. ‘You think you’d have lifelong access to all of this: summers at the lake, town houses in London, country estates and hunting boxes in the autumn, access to position and wealth. Guess again. You marry her and I will cut her off without a penny. There will be no dowry. A man should take care of his wife, not the other way around. If you were a real gentleman you would have known that, just as you would have known not to lay so much as a finger on her until after the wedding. Real gentlemen marry virgins.’ Worth turned to May, who had paled at the news. Liam’s stomach clenched. She had not expected to be cut off without a cent, without any recourse to the life she knew. Liam saw in her eyes that she’d wagered her family would support her if pushed. The pride he felt a moment ago wavered.

  Her father read her shock, too, and his tone softened slightly as he turned towards his daughter. ‘My apologies, May. You should go to your room. This discussion will be unpleasant and you need not be exposed to it. It is a matter to settle between men.’

  Liam could have told Worth how that command was going to play out. May would have none of it. Her chin was up, her jaw was set. ‘No, I will stay. This is my future. Who better to decide it than me?’

  Did Worth not recognise his daughter’s intractability when he saw it? It was so much like the man’s own. Apparently he did. Worth merely nodded. ‘All right then. You want to decide? Decide.’

  ‘That is unfair!’ Liam stepped forward, outraged beyond patience and frightened, if the truth be known. How could May possibly choose him in the face of her father’s threat? He would lose her. ‘She is seventeen. Why does it have to be either or?’

  ‘That’s right, she is seventeen.’ Worth rounded on him. ‘She hasn’t even been out in society. You should have thought of that before you bedded her.’ Worth cocked a menacing eyebrow. ‘Or maybe you did? Maybe you were counting on her naiveté. Consider this: what does she know of the world? How do you expect her to take care of you?’ Worth snarled. If he hadn’t been on the receiving end of his anger, Liam might have better appreciated the ferocity of his defence of his child. A lion could have done no better.

  ‘She can’t cook, she can’t clean, she can’t shop for food. She can, however, prepare menus for others to cook, she can arrange a seating chart, she can oversee the rotation of household chores, when to polish the silver, when to beat the rugs, how many times a year to polish the floors, she can fill out invitations and host t
eas with the help of her mother’s guidance. In short, she is wasted on the likes of you. You haven’t even one piece of silver to polish.’

  ‘Father, that’s enough,’ May said quietly, her own anger fading. Liam stared at her, watching her wilt. Worth had humiliated them both with his last argument.

  The man would not relent. He knew he had May backed into a corner and that Liam could do nothing, short of physically attacking him. ‘Then decide, May. Walk out of here now with him, or stay here with your mother and me and your brother, in the life you were born to live, the life you understand. We will sort out your mistake together.’

  The words gutted Liam. Mistake. He was to be classified as a mistake, something to be corrected, erased. He should never have come here, should never have let Preston talk him into the game. Mistakes were things like misspelling a word, or arriving late for a party. Minor oversights. Was he to be treated as nothing more than a small error?

  He wanted May to fight, but he knew she wouldn’t, she couldn’t. She was trapped and he had no right to expect she would do other than what she did, no matter how much he wished otherwise. May looked down at her hands. ‘Father, please, I love him. Isn’t there another way?’

  ‘I will not let him use you, May. It is my job to protect you and to protect this family.’ Her father deftly slipped into a gentler role, kneeling beside May and taking her hands.

  ‘I am not using you, May,’ Liam interjected from across the room, knowing the argument was already lost. Still, he had to try. ‘I love you and I will provide for us.’ He tried to lend her strength with his words. ‘Do not be afraid to come with me.’ He would prove himself. Somehow.

  ‘Even now, he’s betting I will relent, that I will give in to your tears, May,’ her father answered. ‘Do not test my resolve. You know I mean what I say.’

  Liam could see her eyes squeeze shut. She wouldn’t look at him. He knew it was lost then, but that didn’t stop the words from hurting. ‘I will stay.’

  Worth turned towards him now, the remainder of his wrath for Liam alone, his body shielding May from Liam’s view. ‘Go immediately. Do not stop to pack. I will have Preston send your things on. You may take the horse you’ve become fond of from the stable. That is all. Thompson will see you out.’

  The butler already stood at the ready, his face impassive, showing neither anger nor sympathy. There were no arguments left to make...

  * * *

  The baby squirmed in his arms, starting to wake. The movement recalled Liam to the warm kitchen and the present. The little bundle would be hungry soon and wanting his mama. A thought occurred to Liam as he looked down at the little face. ‘Was there ever a chance, May?’ Would anyone have told him if he was already gone? Would her father have given away the child as the most expedient solution to the lingering remnants of ‘the mistake’?

  May shook her head, too smart to pretend she didn’t know what he asked. ‘I was late, but that was all. Just a few weeks, which isn’t all that unusual when there’s undue stress.’

  ‘I’m sorry, May.’ Sorry there’d been no baby—because he heard the sadness behind her hurried justification and she had thought for a short while there might have been; sorry he’d left even if there hadn’t been another choice for him.

  ‘You would have lost your choices, too, if you’d stayed.’ If there’d been a child, she meant. ‘My father would have required you to marry me. More than that, he would have forced you to be the man you pretended to be among our guests. That could hardly be what you wanted.’ There would have been no Serbia, no work for the government, no earning a place of his own as a highly trained agent provocateur, thanks to Preston’s efforts on his behalf.

  He would have had to pretend the rest of his life that he’d met Preston at Oxford as something more than a delivery driver. May’s father would never have let him admit to being anything less, even if it was all a lie. There were those who would argue everything had worked out for the best. May had escaped a pregnancy and he’d escaped the shackles of matrimony that would have followed.

  And yet, leaving her in tears, alone, to face the wrath of her parents in that great cavern of a drawing room had been counterintuitive to everything he knew about honour. He’d come to believe leaving hadn’t been his choice, but May’s choice for him. It was the only way he could justify leaving her behind: She’d been given the choice and she hadn’t wanted to come. She’d made her choice. Leaving hadn’t been his choice, it had been hers for him.

  Over the years, he’d convinced himself he knew the reasons for it: he was too poor, too uneducated, too lacking in prospects. But he couldn’t convince himself to hate her for it—although he tried. He really did try. He was more successful some days than others. Today was not one of those days.

  ‘Why be sorry? It turned out well for you,’ May said with a touch of steel to her tone. ‘You got a fine horse out of it. You still have him. You kept Preston as a friend and you were able to advance your career.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps not a bad trade for a boy from the streets. You got Serbia, after all. I didn’t know about that. Not until today when you told Beatrice.’ There was hurt and practicality mixed with an odd sense of understanding. ‘Perhaps if I had been in your position I would have done the same thing.’

  ‘What did you want me to do, May?’ There’d been only so much he could have done. He’d offered for her and to her and been refused on both accounts.

  May came around and took the baby, fixing him with a penetrating stare. I think the question is: “What did you want me to do?”’

  He gave the baby over to her reluctantly. They couldn’t change the past. What was done was done. They’d parted, albeit at her father’s direction. They’d spent years feeling betrayed by each other and that had left gaping wounds and unresolved, confusing feelings of love and hate. ‘Maybe it only matters what we do now.’ It was the sort of comment people made after a momentous day had successfully passed and they realised they’d survived it.

  ‘Maybe.’ Her gaze softened for an instant.

  Maybe indeed. They were both changed. Had they changed enough or too much? He was twenty-six now. He had a career in the government, albeit a rather shadowy one with unsavoury aspects to it, especially for a man who had wanted to save lives instead of taking them. But one profession needed schooling, the other just needed good aim when it was required. It wasn’t always required.

  He wasn’t the only one who had changed. May was different, too. He’d seen the difference in these weeks. The wild, unchannelled strength of her that had originally drawn him to her was now refined, sharply honed. She knew her strength, was experimenting in its use to be herself in a world that insisted she be otherwise. The image of her delivering a child, all cool competence when he’d come in from the barn, would always be one of his favourite mental pictures of her. Who would have guessed, May Worth, the coddled high-born daughter, would have had it in her to do that?

  ‘You did well today, May,’ he offered. Could these changes in them be enough to warrant trying again? They would be faced with the same obstacles, the same choices, but perhaps this time they’d make different decisions.

  She paused at the door, the softness lingering in her gaze when she looked at him. ‘So did you.’

  He heard all the unspoken feelings in those words: You let me deliver the baby, you didn’t shove me aside as helpless, you didn’t doubt my abilities, you didn’t lie to my friend when you could have pretended otherwise. Thank you for being there for Beatrice and for me. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  The words didn’t answer the questions they’d posed. They were a three-word truce, nothing more, and that truce would hold until one of them broke it. Now that the baby was born, he needed to think about getting her to Edinburgh and safety, no matter what she wanted. He hated the thought of being the one who would take her away from the life she’d
created here. Would she hate him for it, too?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Liam swung the axe hard, feeling the blade make a strong bite into the wood, the echo of that bite absorbed by his muscles. The physical work felt good. He was starting to sweat despite the cold weather. This morning, there’d been a heavy frost on the ground, which had prompted the need for more firewood. Liam set down his axe and cast an eye to the heavy grey sky. He didn’t think it would snow. They were too close to the sea to see much of the white stuff and, fortunately, Edinburgh could be reached by ferry. Or unfortunately, if one wanted to be a pessimist.

  Snow and poor roads would delay or prevent Roan from reaching them. But if Roan made it as far as Edinburgh, the ferry would help him, too. Neither of them needed to rely on the roads being clear when the time came. That time would come, sooner rather than later. May needed to understand that.

  May’s stubbornness was fast becoming an issue. He picked up the axe and set back to work. That pile wasn’t going to chop itself. He took a swing and then another, letting the rhythm free his mind to wander, to think. He was starting to figure some things out. There was a reason beyond the baby that May didn’t want to go to Edinburgh and he was strongly beginning to believe there was no ‘Mr Fields’. The number-one clue being that May wanted to avoid both of those topics whenever he brought them up.

  There were so many topics to be avoid, it seemed. They’d never returned to their conversation in the kitchen the night Matthew was born, to the harsher conversation that had started their morning that day, they certainly hadn’t revisited the ‘barn incident’ and he hadn’t even dared to bring up Edinburgh. So much to talk about and not talk about, all hanging in the air between them. He supposed that was something else gentlemen did; they didn’t talk about difficult issues for fear of creating more difficult issues. If that was the case, it was one more reason he’d never be a gentleman.