Harlequin Historical November 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2

by Carol Arens

  What was happening to her? She had never longed for the scent of a man. No indeed, she’d kept males as far away from her person as she could without appearing uncivil.

  For some reason, she wanted to be civil to Clark...very civil.

  There was something about him that set him apart from other men. His kindness, to be sure, but there was more than that.

  She liked the way he smelled. She was sure to like the way he tasted, were she given the chance.... Also, there was the way he looked at her when he wasn’t aware that she noticed.

  “Auntie’s becoming muddleheaded.” She settled Mary in her arms. The baby stuck her thumb in her mouth. Lilleth stroked the moisture from her niece’s round, pink cheek. “What can Auntie sing to soothe you?”

  Baby songs weren’t in her repertoire, but she remembered a few that her mother used to sing before unfaithful men had snatched away her joy.

  “I see the moon and the moon sees me,” she sang. It felt good to let her voice out. The odds were remote that anyone would hear her, even more remote that they would recognize her by it. “The moon sees somebody I’d like to see. God bless the moon and God bless me, and God bless the somebody I’d like to see.”

  She barely finished the short verse before Mary fell asleep. “And God bless your momma, little one,” she whispered into Mary’s delicate ear. “I’m going to see her very soon.”

  Not much could feel better than holding this precious bundle, soothing her, watching her sleep. Still, there was work to be done, and sitting here listening to the fire crackle while she watched Mary’s peaceful breathing wasn’t getting it done.

  Outside, the sun shone. Water dripped from icicles; chunks of snow slid off the roof and hit the ground with a soft splat.

  In town folks would be taking advantage of the respite in the weather to scurry about their business. Here in her little cabin the woods, though, Lilleth would take a moment to feel the warm, sleepy weight in her arms and steal a second to daydream.

  It was true what she had confessed to Mary—she was becoming muddled. She never daydreamed, at least not much, and not about men.

  Clark’s near kiss had certainly changed that. Not only did she daydream about his mouth, his scent and the feel of his beard stubble against her fingertips, at night she dreamed about things she should never be pondering with a baby on her lap.

  With a sigh, Lilleth looked for a place to set Mary down. The sooner she had the cabin cleaned up, the sooner she would be out of Clark’s home and the sooner she would get her emotional balance back.

  Life was about the practical. For instance, where would she lay Mary down? The hearth would be warm but dangerous. The table was clean but a bit slanted, and Mary might roll off. The bed was unthinkable.

  A quiet knock sounded on the front door. The latch lifted and the door opened wide.

  Silhouetted by sunshine stood the object of her muddleheadedness, carrying the answer to her prayer in his arms.

  Clark closed the door with his foot, then set a wood cradle beside her chair.

  * * *

  Trace stared at the blank sheet of paper on his desk. He tapped his idle pen on the blotter.

  In his mind’s eye he saw Lilleth in the moonlight, wrapped in his jacket. He felt again the way her weight fitted into his arms, the curve of her hip and the shape of her thigh.

  Had she not been married, he would have kissed her...and thoroughly. He’d enjoyed some kisses in his life, but not a single one compared to the one he’d nearly had with Lilleth. In his mind’s eye he saw her lips again in the instant that she touched her fingers to his face.

  He had fully believed that moonlight brushed her lips and that starlight frolicked in her eyes. That time had turned back on itself.

  The very last thing he had expected was to be resisting her kiss.

  Now nothing would be the same until he had one in the flesh.

  He’d never been a man to enjoy a parade of meaningless lovers, but he’d hadn’t lived a monk’s life, either. He had known a few women. Two had been foisted upon him by his ever so helpful brothers, another by his sister. One had been his own choice.

  Four women, and all of them lovely. It was just that somehow he could never commit his heart to them.

  He suspected that the reason for that was at this very moment soaking in his bathtub in a room just off the kitchen. Her pretty wet body could only be forty feet and a closed door away.

  No wonder the blank sheet of paper stared up at him. His pen could do nothing but smear a black blob on the blotter.

  Trace shook himself. He’d sat down at the desk with a purpose, and that purpose had not been to imagine what Lilleth looked like lying naked in his bathtub.

  It had been to make note of his latest findings on Hanispree Mental Hospital, and wire them to the family. Three days had passed since his last correspondence, and they were bound to wonder. It was a long-standing company rule to wire daily.

  He needed to be able to tell them something other than that there was a woman in his bathtub, though.

  Lilleth aside, he’d broken another cardinal family rule: never become personally involved in a case. His job was to observe and report. Anything more than that created problems.

  He had come to Riverwalk to uncover secrets and write an exposé that would shut Hanispree down. The inmates could then be sent to institutions where they would be cared for.

  The trouble was, how many of those inmates would even survive the care given at the asylum long enough to be transferred? When old ladies shivered in their beds, when previously vital human beings looked to be bones more than flesh, and when otherwise intelligent brains began to rot, someone had to step in.

  Clark Clarkly was that someone.

  If a cardinal rule was bent, the family would survive. The victims of Hanispree might not.

  Darkness pressed upon the library windows, and the temperature was falling. Tonight, he would be bringing food and lighting fires.

  Fortunately, he would no longer have to waste time sneaking keys from the nurse’s desk. He’d configured one of his own that would open every door in the place.

  The Ballentines were gifted with skills that most families were not. Making a universal key was something he had learned to do at the age of fifteen. He could do it in his sleep, if he were getting any.

  Trace stared down at his paper...still blank. The stain on the blotter had grown to the size of a silver dollar.

  From the back of the house, Clark heard the bathroom door open. Feminine footsteps padded up the rear stairs.

  What would his houseguest be wearing? Trace set down his pen to prevent accidentally bending the tip.

  A practical flannel gown that covered her from neck to toe? Something filmier that stroked the curve of her breast and caressed the line of her thigh?

  Or just a short towel that left her legs and arms bare? If so, drops of scented water might linger on her skin, catching the light of the lantern that dimly illuminated the stairs.

  If that was the case he’d be astounded, since she had just tiptoed into a room she shared with two sleeping children. When it came to Lils, apparently his imagination had no sense or reason.

  Flannel then. But he had never once, in the last sixteen years, ever imagined that she would be here with only that one layer of fabric between her flesh and his dreams.

  Trace stood up. He shook himself, which seemed to be becoming a habit. Lilleth would go her way soon and he would go his. That’s how it had to be.

  He went to the kitchen, put on the heavy coat that hung beside the back door, and picked up the bag of food he had prepared earlier.

  He stepped out into the cold.

  * * *

  Lilleth heard the back door close. She tiptoed past the bed where the children slept, and looked out the win
dow into the small yard below.

  Just as he had on previous nights, Clark made some kind of excursion into the dark and the cold. The full moon cast his shadow on the snow. Once again, he carried a big bag. Tonight he took his ax.

  Lilleth hugged her robe tight about her and tapped her foot.

  It didn’t take a lot of figuring to know where he had gone. Off to chop firewood for some woman, unless she missed her guess.

  “Lilleth Preston, you are a mountain of a fool,” she mumbled, frowning as Clark’s long and...no mistake about it...confident strides took him around a corner.

  Who was Clark Clarkly, really?

  He was a puzzle, and it was no business of hers to try and figure him out. She had no claim on him. Whether there was or was not a woman in his life, it was no concern of hers.

  A ninny was what she was. Without knowing his attachments, she had mooned over him. Had come close to kissing him! She had let herself ride a magic carpet of wishes, imagining that he was her hero. That she might be special to him.

  But then again, from what she knew of Clark, everyone was special to him. Maybe the woman he was carrying his ax for was just someone in need of charity.

  In the end, Lilleth could not guess where he was going tonight. What she did know was that her hair was wet and she was going downstairs to sit by the fire and let it dry.

  She kissed Jess on the cheek. He stirred and smiled in his sleep. Maybe he thought it was his mother’s kiss. Lilleth did the same to Mary, inhaling the sweet baby breath that grazed her nose.

  Downstairs, she picked a book from the library shelf, then settled in the chair that Clark slept in at night.

  This chair did smell like him. There was no denying that he was her hero, spending night after night on spindly legged furniture while she and the children snuggled in his bed.

  She spread her hair over her shoulders so that the heat of the flames could reach it.

  She opened the book. Maybe she ought to have been more selective rather than taking the first volume she touched.

  “‘Miss Fairhaven and the Dashing Blade,’” she read out loud. “The title is featherheaded.” Certainly she would be bored to sleep by page two. She ought to get up and select another, but she was settled and her hair arranged just so.

  In time, she did get sleepy. Just when the Dashing Blade had cornered Miss Fairhaven in a convent closet, after having rescued her from brigands, losing her in a creepy forest, then discovering her again in a deserted town and chasing her into the nunnery, Lilleth’s eyes grew too heavy to continue.

  Drat! What was Miss Fairhaven going to do?

  Meet the Dashing Blade at the county fair, naturally. There he was; she saw him behind her closed eyelids. He found her crouched behind the kissing booth. She had been hiding from someone, but probably not the Dashing Blade.

  He offered her a slice of peach pie and she came along quite willingly.

  “Hey, Lils,” he said. “Let’s go sit on the bridge and watch the fireworks.”

  Miss Fairhaven must have thought that was a fine idea. She skipped along beside him, looking much younger and happier than she had hiding in the closet of the nunnery.

  They sat down on the bridge, hip to hip, eating pie and listening to the creek gurgle under their feet. Miss Fairhaven couldn’t remember ever feeling so content, sitting here with Trace and watching fireworks burst over the fields like a million fairies dancing in wild abandon.

  Trace held her hand.

  “Be my king,” she whispered to him. “And I’ll be your fairy queen. We’ll swirl away into the night and live blissfully ever after.”

  Trace bent his lips to her ear to whisper something.

  “Lilly?” A big warm hand touched her shoulder.

  Hazy, half in and out of sleep, Lilleth opened her eyes.

  “Trace?” She blinked, stared, then sighed. “Oh, Clark, it’s you.”

  “Disappointed?” He straightened his glasses on his nose, then pulled up a chair and sat across from her, knee to knee.

  “Not at all...just surprised. I was dreaming.”

  “Your robe.” He cleared his throat and tipped his head in the direction of the garment. “It’s slipped.”

  “Oh!” She bolted up in the chair. Miss Fairhaven and her oh so Dashing Blade fell out of her lap and onto the floor. Lilleth tugged gray flannel over her shoulder and hugged it tight to her neck. The lace gown she wore under it covered her as thoroughly as a shadow. Clark had just been privy to a sight not seen by any other man.

  Heat blazed in her cheeks. Her face must look aflame. She was disconcerted, flustered, by what she had exposed to him.

  But it was her immodest mind that turned her crimson with mortification. She studied his face, watching for a reaction.

  Did he like what he had seen?

  “Who is Trace?” he asked, shoving his glasses to the bridge of his nose, as though her charms had gone unnoticed.

  “Clark.” She let go of the robe choking her throat. It sagged open, but more modestly this time. “You’ve just seen more of me than...never mind.”

  She’d nearly forgotten she was married, and not a woman who had experienced only one, exceptionally brief, encounter with a man. She would have to be more careful in the future.

  “You thought I was him, just for that second.” At least he had the decency to be fighting a grin. “Just wondering, is all.”

  “I didn’t think you were him. You woke me from a dream.”

  “You were dreaming...of him?”

  “I was not. The Dashing Blade was flitting in and out of my dream, if you have to know.” How odd that for a brief second he appeared disappointed. “Trace was a boy I knew a long time ago. We were childhood friends, that’s all.”

  “Childhood friends make the longest-lasting impressions. Mine did. What about this Trace fellow? He must have been darn special, since you dreamed about him after all this time.”

  “He was.” What could she say? He had been her everything and it had devastated her when she had been dragged away in the night, crying her heart out. The tears had gone on for weeks. She’d become physically ill. As a result, she hadn’t allowed herself to have a friend that she cared for so deeply again. “He was my first and dearest friend. He was also my last.”

  “I’m sorry, Lilly.” Clark reached for her hands and held them in his. He rubbed her palms with his thumbs.

  The robe gaped open another inch, but he probably didn’t notice.

  Chapter Six

  Trace walked toward the mercantile with sunshine warming his shoulders and slush soaking his boots.

  It had been three and a half days since he had wakened Lilleth from her dream. Seventy-four hours of joy and torment.

  Lace under flannel!

  Trace felt off balance with that revelation. It was becoming a challenge to his self-control to remain Clark Clarkly.

  Luckily, Lilleth and the children would be moving into the cabin tomorrow. Maybe then he’d be able to concentrate on his exposé instead of constantly watching Lilleth out of the corner of his eye. Maybe then he’d remember that a blank sheet of paper required words to be written on it.

  Deep in his thoughts, Trace nearly ran down a stick-thin man walking past the front door of the Riverwalk Hotel.

  This time it had not been intentional. The man was not watching where he went. He gazed down, scanning the boardwalk, side to side. Maybe he’d lost something.

  “I beg your pardon,” Trace murmured, passing by the stranger and glancing down to make sure he didn’t trample the thing that the man was searching for.

  A beetle, lured from his autumn hiding place by the warm day, scurried over a cracked wood plank, so Trace stepped wide of it. The thin man cocked his head in apparent interest in the bug.

 
Strange man.

  A moment later Trace spotted Lilleth with the children a few shops down, at the milliner’s. She carried Mary on her hip and pointed to some lacy object in the window. The baby reached for the glass and Lilleth smiled. She said something he was too far away to hear.

  Jess knelt beside his mother’s skirt, trying to coax a stray cat to come and smell his hand. Lilleth went into the store, but Jess remained outside, while the cat inched toward his fingers.

  What wouldn’t Trace give to have them as his family! He’d give everything, everything but his calling. And that was only because innocent lives depended on him.

  Well, then, since he couldn’t give her Trace Ballentine, he would give her what he could. Just now, as Clark, he bumbled his way to the mercantile to buy her a bed, one for Jess, too.

  Having provided the Gordons with plenty of firewood and a place to sleep, he would be free to continue his quest to shut down Hanispree. He could not allow anything to be more important to him than seeing each and every one of the inmates transferred to a respectable institution.

  With his hand on the doorknob of the mercantile, Trace turned moon-eyed, to see if Lilleth had come back outside. At some point he’d have to learn not to do that. Watching her smile, studying the arch of her brow and discreetly watching her bosom rise and fall with her breathing could only end in misery.

  His Lils was no longer his Lils.

  He began to step over the threshold of the store, but stopped dead still. Warm air from inside washed over his face while the cold knob chilled his fist.

  The narrow-faced stranger was staring at Jess. The man had gone into the alley between the milliner and bakery. He peeked his head around the corner of the building, blatantly spying on the boy.

  Strange man...strange behavior.

  Trace closed the door on the warmth. He hurried down the steps to get between the stranger and Jess.

  All at once an arm snaked around Trace’s shoulder and a man’s weight sagged against him. Alcohol reeked from his jacket but not on his breath.

  “Brother, can you spare a fellow a dime?”

  * * *