Beckman: Lord of Sins

Fourteen

“My turn, sir.” Sara saw approval, anticipation, and all manner of lusty things in Beck’s eyes. Her fingers shook slightly as she slid his sleeve buttons from his cuffs, and shook even more as she undid his falls. When she knelt to take off his slipper boots, his hand glanced over her hair, and she had to concentrate, focus her mind, and think to draw her next breath.

She rose and leaned in, pressing her forehead to Beck’s sternum. “I shouldn’t let myself do this.”

“You shouldn’t deny yourself this,” he countered, stroking his hand down her braid. “Not tonight. With me, not ever.”

Ever with Beckman could end any day, given how his father was failing. On the strength of that thought, Sara started on his shirt buttons. When she’d worked her way up from the bottom button, she parted the linen and pushed it to the side so she could lay her cheek over his heart. His hands settled on her shoulders, kneading gently, and she felt the tension of the day ebbing.

Beck kissed her cheek. “Enough thinking. I believe you were in the process of undressing me.”

She pressed a kiss to his bare chest and slipped the shirt off, then ran a fingertip down his sternum. “In just the few weeks you’ve been here, you’ve put on muscle, and you were in fine condition when you arrived.”

Beck drew in a breath at her touch. “As long as you like what you see, I won’t complain about resembling a stevedore.”

Sara wanted to linger, to inspect and tease and play at sophisticated games having to do with pleasure and anticipation.

More than any of that, though, she wanted to kiss him. She stepped in close, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and stretched up on her toes to touch her lips to his. His arms closed around her in earnest, and he sealed his mouth to hers with a growl.

“Breeches,” Sara whispered against his neck a moment later. “Have to get you out of them.”

He took her hands and set them on his waist, but didn’t stop the progress of his lips over her eyes, cheeks, chin, and brow. Rather than look down, Sara found his waistband and pushed his clothes off him. He stepped back only long enough to free himself from them altogether then swooped in to resume kissing her.

“Bed,” Sara reminded him.

Beck scooped her up, tossed her onto the bed, then climbed in behind her. “God above, how I’ve missed you.”

Sara did not want to talk with him, or rather, she wanted to talk too badly, to lay her burdens across his muscular shoulders. Beckman would accept those burdens—he was a man in the habit of accepting burdens—but he’d want answers first.

Sara lay back and lifted her knees, feet spread on the bed.

“Don’t make me wait, Beckman.”

A man who’d traveled to many a foreign port developed both an ability to observe his environs and an instinct for when something, some small detail was out of place. Beck had learned to listen to that instinct.

A nervous horse could signal that ambush lay around the bend of a sleepy provincial road. A serving girl a little too friendly might be a hint that the fancy English gentleman’s wine had been drugged.

Sara’s responses, hesitant, then eager, and now nearly desperate, were setting off an indistinct alarm in Beck’s mind. She hadn’t explained two weeks of apparent indifference, hadn’t apologized for it, hadn’t assured him there would be no more of the same. She hadn’t made any reference whatsoever to his failed proposal either—though he knew damn well she hadn’t taken it as a jest.

Those silences on her part should matter, though Beck’s body wanted them to matter later. Sara brushed her fingers up his erection, sending a cannonade of pleasure over the deck of Beck’s thinking brain. She took him in her hand, then, a broadside to his reason, and tried to tug him closer to her body.

He resisted. “Tell me you missed me.”

“I’ve missed you, Beckman Sylvanus Haddonfield,” Sara whispered near his ear. “I missed the feel of you.” She tugged on him again. “In my hands, in my body. I missed the scent of you, the taste of you. I missed the feel of your hands on me, missed the sound of your voice in the dark.”

He needed desperately to ask her why, if she’d missed him, she’d held herself at such a distance and not even considered his proposal.

He needed more desperately to join with her again. She undulated against him, a bodily plea for consummation that echoed his own dearest desire. Her hands ran over his back, hips, and buttocks while her teeth scraped up his neck.

“Please.” Sara arched up and hugged him to her.

“Easy,” Beck cautioned. “No rush.”

“Want you.”

Love now, talk later. “I’m right here, love.” He gave her the first increment of penetration, then stilled and waited for her body to accommodate him. When her breathing slowed and he felt her sigh softly against his neck, he let himself glide another half inch deeper into the glory of her heat.

“You.” Sara kissed the side of his neck, and her body relaxed further, her trust in him manifest in her willingness to give him unilateral control of this most precious intimacy. He gave a slow hitch of his hips and gained another half inch, then another.

He advanced and waited, advanced and waited, his arousal a steady burning in his whole body. Even so, he could spend an eternity just joining his body to Sara’s and know no frustration; it felt that right to be making love with her.

When he was hilted inside her, he went completely still and gathered her against him. To have this closeness with Sara was sweet, dear, and more overwhelmingly precious than anything Beck could recall. He tried to find a name for what he felt, for the sense of being in the one place, with the one person, he was supposed to be.

Homecoming.

The term settled in his mind, and he began to move in her. Slow, steady thrusts that had Sara groaning softly beneath him and undulating in counterpoint to him. He plied her with monumental patience and self-restraint, bringing her to orgasm easily then letting her recover while he barely moved. When she’d found her balance, he eased her up again, then let her recover once more.

“I’m being greedy.” Sara brushed his hair back from his forehead and stretched beneath him. “We both need our rest.”

Beck nuzzled her shoulder. “Are you complaining? Are you suggesting I’ve kept you awake, Sara Hunt?” Though he had, and she needed her rest.

“I’ve kept you awake, but I feel boneless now, Beck. Light and warm and…”

“And…?”

“Happy,” Sara conceded. “It makes no sense, but I feel happy.”

He kissed her cheek and wondered why happiness in the arms of a lover should make no sense. “I will endeavor to make you happier still.”

The tenor of his lovemaking shifted, became more… serious.

“Beck…” In her breathless whisper, Beck felt Sara’s body gathering for yet another bout of pleasuring. “I’m content, beyond content. More would be too much… Beckman?”

“Hush.” He levered up on his arms and gazed down, frankly staring at the place where their bodies joined. “I say when it’s too much, Sara. Trust me.”

He picked up the tempo by increments, watching her face in the glow of the candles, then watching the thick, glistening length of his cock sinking into her heat.

“Beck…” She arched up and wrapped her arms around his neck. He capitulated this time, folding down over her, thrusting into her with banked force.

“Too much…”

Never too much, not with her. Beck drove himself into her, even when her body seized around him, even when she dug her nails into his back and moaned against his shoulder. Her contractions became deeper and stronger; then she fisted around him in one interminable spasm that sent him over the edge.

Beck felt his orgasm start in that drawing-up sensation at the base of his spine; then pleasure swamped him, running right up his center and off into the infinite reaches of his body. He heard someone groan—him?—and bucked and throbbed as his seed left him, heard another groan as he tried to draw in air to sustain him while the pleasure built and built.

It didn’t end, it just… diffused, becoming more and more softly focused until every particle of him was light and warm and… happy.

God, yes, he was happy.

“Don’t move.” Sara patted his buttocks, and that made him happy too, a little stroking caress Beck felt all over.

“Can’t move,” he murmured against her shoulder. “Not yet.”

“Good.”

The infernal woman found other ways to touch him. Ran her tongue along his neck, drew her toe up his calf, and nuzzled his ear, but they were little touches, the gestures a woman thoroughly wrung out by passion could offer.

“I’m crushing you.”

“I love the weight of you. It’s comforting, when my body feels so overcome it might float away.”

He didn’t believe that, not when there was fifteen stone of him comforting her like so much filleted mackerel. Sending up a sincere prayer for strength first, Beck levered up on his forearms. “You all right?”

Sara brushed his hair back. “You ask me that when you’ve pleasured me witless. I am fine. Witless, but fine.”

“Good.” He kissed her nose and carefully extricated himself from her body. “I’m fine too. Don’t move.”

“As if I could.” Sara lay on her back, knees bent, gaze on him as he crossed to the hearth.

He scrubbed himself off briskly, taking in the sight of her sprawled without a lick of modesty—or worry—then did a much more careful job with her.

Sara watched him as he hung the cloth over the edge of the basin. “Next time, I will tend to this washing-up business.”

So there was to be a next time?

Beck blew out all but one candle and crawled over the mattress to cover her again with his body. “Next time, I will pleasure you so witless you won’t be able to speak, much less move when we’re through.”

He braced over her, tucking her face against his collarbone and laying his cheek on her crown. “You’re truly fine? I become enthusiastic at times.”

“You become…” Sara kissed his throat. “Breathtaking, spectacular, unbelievable. You truly ought to be the subject of a royal proclamation.”

He rolled them so Sara was atop him.

“Maybe I won’t pleasure you out of your speech.” Beck buried his fingers in a fistful of her hair. “You spout such flatteries, and a man needs to hear them sometimes. Particularly when the woman in his arms is so very breathtaking herself when she’s about her pleasuring.”

And when she’s not.

“Ah, Beck…” Sara tucked herself against his chest. “You are the sweetest man, the most dear, and the most dangerous.”

Sweet and dear were flattering. When he’d unplaited her braid and indulged himself with a long session of stroking her hair, Beck fell asleep wondering if being dangerous in Sara’s mind was really a good thing.

He came awake slowly, convinced Heifer had found his way to the bed and was flicking his tail over Beck’s cheek. When his eyes opened, though, the single guttering candle revealed North’s saturnine features as he used a lock of Sara’s hair to brush against Beck’s nose.

North looked diabolically dark and unhappy—darker and unhappier than usual. He gestured silently with his thumb toward the sitting room, waiting until Beck nodded before he turned to go. Beck shrugged into his dressing gown and mentally catalogued the list of emergencies that could merit this unprecedented intrusion—Allie falling ill, Ulysses coming down with colic, Polly going missing?—then paused by the bed and tucked the covers up over Sara’s shoulders.

Beck closed the door between the bedroom and the sitting room, ready to offer North a whispered tongue-lashing, but the expression on North’s face stopped him.

“Allie? Polly?”

“No, lad.” North’s eyes, usually so guarded and mocking, held regret. “Your dear papa has gone to his reward, and I fear it is my sad duty to be the first to address you as Reston.”

“Papa?”

“I am so sorry, Beckman.”

“It isn’t… unexpected.” But Beck’s lungs were fighting to draw breath, and his hands had a sudden sensation of emptiness. His guts felt empty; his life felt empty.

“The rider from Linden is in the kitchen,” North went on, gaze on a carrying candle flickering on the low table. “He said your brother Ethan and your sister Nita were with the earl, but the old fellow just slipped away quietly in his sleep. The funeral will be on Friday.”

“I want…”

“Anything you need,” North replied. “Name it.”

He wanted his papa. Wanted another acerbic lecture assuring him his father loved him, forgave him his many shortcomings, would be there to forgive him again when he stumbled, because Beck always, eventually, stumbled. And the earl always found some way for him to redeem himself, to allow them both the fiction that someday, the stumbling would be over.

“Beck.” North laid a hand on Beck’s arm, and it was enough—one simple gesture of caring from a man who lived a study of indifference was enough—to make the earl’s death more real.

Beck shook his head at nothing in particular, but when he felt North draw him closer, he leaned on his friend.

“I’m having Soldier and Ulysses saddled,” North said. “You can be at Linden before dawn, and the baron’s stables will provide remounts. You can make that funeral if you leave now and the clouds don’t obscure the moon.”

Beck pulled away, though he wanted to cling, curse, or possibly put out North’s lights. “Gabriel, I don’t want to go.”

North nodded, a world of sympathy in his expression. “You don’t want to, but you need to. I’ll pack your clothes. Polly is putting you together some food. You might want to say something to Sara.”

Beck glanced at his bedroom door. What would he say?

“Let’s get you dressed,” North suggested. North did most of the dressing, while Beck stood there, silent and passive. “You know the roads between here and Kent?”

“I do.”

“You going to wake Sara up?” North tied a simple knot in Beck’s neckcloth. “I can wake her, if you’d rather.”

“Let her sleep.”

“At least leave the woman a note, Beckman.” North passed him his riding boots. “She’s in your bed, for pity’s sake, and you won’t be here in the morning with any explanations.”

North wasn’t judging Sara’s location, but by his tone he was mightily definite on the obligation Beck had to leave a note. Beck wouldn’t be here in the morning. In all likelihood, he would never be here again.

“A note, then.” Beck pulled on his boots, wishing for all he was worth he could stay in that bed beside Sara until morning, wishing she could make this journey with him. What an odd reaction to a very expected death.

He wanted—he needed—to at least see her before he left his rooms, because for all he knew—and quite possibly for all Sara cared—he wouldn’t be coming back.

“I’ll be down directly.” Beck stood and glanced around his room, as if he’d find answers by inventorying his surroundings.

“Get your shaving gear,” North said. “I’ll fetch clean clothes for you from the laundry.” Beck nodded his acquiescence then didn’t want North to go—to leave him alone.

“My thanks, Gabriel.”

“Beck?”

“Hmm?” Beck left off eyeing the door to the bedroom again, torn between wanting to wake Sara up and the greater kindness of letting her sleep.

“The rider in the kitchen,” North said. “He’ll call you my lord, and Lord Reston, and he’ll be wearing a black armband.” He didn’t have to add, because Beck understood clearly, those small ritual courtesies were going to hurt like hell.

“I know that.” Beck let out a breath. “And so it begins.”

“You’ll manage, because you have to, and because your papa expected you would—also because you’ve no bloody choice.” The last was offered with a hint of the typical North dissatisfaction with life, but it gave Beck a ghost of a reason to smile.

North left him alone, without further reassurances, but the warning had been needed and kind. Beck was the Bellefonte heir now, complete with courtesy title, and Nicholas, God help him, was the earl.

Beck stayed in his sitting room for maybe five minutes, trying to gather his wits, then gave up. There was no way to go from making love to Sara, sleeping with his arms wrapped around her, to dealing with the earl’s… passing.

His death.

“Papa is dead.” Beck said the words experimentally. “Papa is at peace.”

That was true too, he realized, gathering up his shaving kit. “Papa is at peace, and he’s gone. And I never said I was sorry for all the times I let him down.”

He grimaced, because these soliloquies were not fortifying him in the least. He gave one last look at his bedroom door, squared his shoulders, and left the privacy of his chambers. He stopped in the library, thinking to pen Sara a note, but when his candlelight fell over the surface of the desk, he saw somebody had set out the writing paraphernalia already.

Sara, he recalled, when he’d come down here looking for a pot of ink.

“Dear Tremaine?”

Who in the bloody hell was Tremaine, and what did he mean to Sara?

Voices drifted up from the kitchen, Polly and North speaking in the quiet tones of people who didn’t want to wake the rest of the household. Beck wanted to crumple up the paper but left it, thinking he’d pass a message to Sara through Polly rather than alert anyone to what he’d seen. Still feeling a sense of unreality, he directed his steps to the kitchen where the buttery, domestic scent of breakfast cooking hit his nose.

“My lord.” The rider, looking haggard and windblown, stood.

“Jamie.” Beck recognized the old groom he’d worked with for two years at the Linden stables in Sussex. When the grizzled former jockey would have bowed, Beck pushed at his shoulder and wrapped him in a hug. “You’re too old to hare across the shires like this.”

Jamie smiled up at him. “Not too old to bring you the good news as well as the bad, Becky, me lad.”

Becky, me lad. The grief and shock eased minutely. “What good news could there possibly be?” Beck eyed the black armband on Jamie’s jacket.

Jamie grinned from ear to ear. “Your wee brother has hisself a countess, Beck. Married a few days past and got word of the deed to your papa before the old earl cocked up his toes.”

Beck rubbed his jaw in wonder. “Nick is married?”

“At your granddame’s town house. Wee Nick wanted it done proper, so the lady’s father couldn’t cry foul.”

“This is… good news. Interesting good news.”

“They’ll be expecting you at Linden by first light,” Jamie went on, “and they’ll have remounts waiting for you. The baroness said you’re to break your fast with her, regardless of the hour, and I’d not vex the lady by ignoring her, were I you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Beck’s mind struggled to keep up with the conversation, even as Polly set a stack of griddle cakes with butter and honey before him.

“Eat,” she said. “You don’t want to, but you need to.”

Her unwitting quote of North had Beck smiling distractedly, and he did as she ordered, not because he wanted to or needed to, but because refusing her efforts would hurt her feelings.

North came in from the laundry, a tightly wrapped bundle in his hands. “Your clothes. Polly, be a love and pack the man a couple of flasks, brandy in one, sweetened tea in the other. He’ll need some comestibles he can eat in the saddle too.”

Polly moved off without a word, but Beck had to wonder what she was thinking.

Did she know who Tremaine was? Was he Polly’s dear Tremaine too? A cousin? An uncle? If the ladies had a relative who could offer them aid—and the relative had declined to do so—Beck was going to…

He wasn’t going to do anything except… except finish his meal and go to his father’s funeral.

North came in from the back hallway just as Beck was taking his empty plate to the sink.

“Horses are ready,” North said, “and you’re as ready as you’ll ever be.”

“Amen to that.” Beck’s eyes went to the stairway, and as if he’d conjured her, Sara appeared, her slipper boots first, followed by the green hem of the velvet dressing gown Beck had given her earlier in the evening.

“Beckman?” Sara’s expression was sleepy and curious, and her hair—her glorious, unbelievably lovely hair—spilled down her back in cascades of fiery beauty.

“I’m off to Belle Maison,” Beck said, holding out a hand to her. Unmindful of Polly and North disappearing to the back porch, he wrapped his arms around her.

“Your father?”

“Gone.” Beck closed his eyes and thanked God for this chance to hold her before he left. She didn’t say anything but held him to her, her arms around him, her face pressed to his collarbone. The great hard knot of loss in his throat eased another fraction. “I wish…” He stopped and swallowed, then soldiered on. “I wish you could come with me.”

Sara leaned back to brush his hair with her fingers. “I wish I could spare you this, go in your place and spare you the loss of your father. And I will remind you to not take chances as you travel, Beckman. One funeral at a time is more than enough.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her cheek, touched by her warning and fortified as well. “Do something for me?”

She nodded, holding his gaze when he would have given anything to hear the words “Must you go?” from her even once.

“Sleep in my bed tonight?”

Another nod, accompanied by a blush. He was relieved he didn’t need to explain or bargain or suffer her refusal.

“I’ll be off, then.”

Before he could turn to go, Sara caught his arm and looped it over her shoulders. “I’ll walk you to your horse.”

“Horses. I’ll lead one, ride the other, and make better time. Linden will provide fresh horses, and I should make the funeral at Belle Maison by Friday.”

“Your half-crazy brother might be completely crazy by then.”

“To say nothing of my sisters.” And Ethan—God above, at least Ethan had been with the earl at his death. That had to count for something.

Beck grabbed his coat, and they reached the back porch. Seeing North patting Soldier over at the mounting block did something to Beck’s insides. The hastily consumed meal threatened to rebel, but just when the question became pressing, Sara slipped her hand into Beck’s.

She squeezed his fingers. “I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers.”

“And you will be in mine,” Beck replied, relieved to have some sentiment from her suggesting… what?

That they meant something to each other. Something that would transcend distance and parting. Because this was parting. He’d never represented that it could be anything else, except when he had offered her the entire rest of his life and all his worldly goods.

“Safe journey.” Sara hugged him again, kissed his cheek, and settled back, wrapping her dressing gown around her.

“Godspeed,” North echoed, stepping back to let him climb aboard Ulysses. “If you lose the moonlight, don’t be stupid. Put up until dawn, which will be along soon enough.”

“Yes, Gabriel.” Beck swung up onto his horse and accepted Soldier’s reins from North. He saluted with his crop, blew Sara a kiss, and trotted off into the night.

North watched as Polly sent a pitying look at her sister then turned to get back to the house where she’d, no doubt, be making use of her handkerchief where North had no opportunity to comfort her.

When Sara started to cry, North wrapped his arms around her, tucked his worn handkerchief into her hand, and fashioned a lengthy list of curses that included full moons, elderly earls, stubborn lordlings, and even more stubborn housekeepers.

“His penmanship is exemplary, and he says the funeral was lovely.” North frowned at Beck’s note. “How can a funeral be lovely, of all the perishing nonsense? His brother’s wife is lovely, his sisters are lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Here.” He thrust the note at Polly, who passed it to Sara. “I have work to do, and you lovely ladies can decipher this. If I’m not back by midday you may assume the piskies have stolen lovely me for their own.”

“Mind you don’t miss the meal,” Polly called as he stalked from the kitchen to the back hallway. She sipped her tea—Sara had flavored this batch with bergamot—while Sara read the note. Gabriel needed to be alone—never had God fashioned a man more suited to being alone—and Sara needed company.

Sara scanned the note and sat back. “It’s as North indicates. Pleasantries and platitudes, but at least Beckman writes those.”

“To North, he can’t really write much else. It hasn’t been a week, Sara. He may write more when the edge of his grief has dulled.”

“I know.” She managed to put a world of loss into two words, though Polly heard the hope Sara would never admit, too. “I wrote to Tremaine.”

About time. “Good.”

“You don’t know what I wrote.”

“You’re overset,” Polly said gently. “The man you care for has gone to bury his father, likely never to return, and you’re worried for him. You’re also worried for us, and Beckman isn’t here for you to confide in.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Polly.” Sara picked up her teacup, holding it under her nose as if she were sniffing the rising steam. “If Beckman knew what lay in our past, he’d have no choice but to take himself off to his titled life and put as much distance between us as he could. His father dying when he did was a mercy.”

“He was the spare in truth a week ago,” Polly said. “The heir has finally married, and so Beck’s only presumptive now. I truly don’t believe it matters to him, in any case, or he would have married by now.”

“He did.” Sara’s misery was audible. “And she died, and I’m sure he loved her.”

This was news, and likely some of the explanation for how distracted and distant Sara had been since coming back from Portsmouth. “She didn’t die recently.”

Sara shook her head. “Years ago, and he hasn’t remarried or settled down. I believe he’s still attached to her memory.”

“He’s talked about his dead wife with you?” Polly’s protective instincts were stirring, though this was exactly the kind of confidence she might have treasured from Gabriel North.

“I asked. He answered only the questions I put to him, but in what he didn’t say, I can tell he has feelings for her still.”

Polly topped up Sara’s tea when what she wanted was to rail against the lunacy of the male gender generally. “So he has feelings for her, but she’s gone, and it’s you who can’t wait to dive into your green dressing gown each night, and who has started wearing your new bootish things all over the house. It’s you who looks down the drive a hundred times a day, and you who has slept in his bed since the night he left.”

“I want the scent of him—I want even just the scent of him.”

They were probably the most honest and private words Sara had said to Polly in years. Polly wished she didn’t understand them so easily.

“Sara, he could well come back.” Polly did not believe these words, but a loyal sister had an obligation to be kind as well as honest.

That Sara didn’t bother arguing caused more alarm than relief. “Tremaine wants to come for a visit, and I did not wave him off, not exactly.”

“You didn’t?” Polly rose, stalked across the kitchen, whirled, and stalked back. “Don’t you think such a drastic measure called for a little consultation first, Sarabande?” For Tremaine to visit when Beckman—Lord Reston—was not on the premises made no sense if Sara feared Tremaine’s intentions, and yet Beck wasn’t offering to return.

Sara rose as well. “He will not visit. You wanted me to write to him, to assure him all was well, but he won’t believe those assurances unless he hears something approaching a welcome. All is well, Polly, we’re managing now, and Three Springs looks better than it has in decades. I reminded him that a housekeeper hasn’t the authority to invite guests, which is the simple truth. He won’t come, but if he did, now would be the time for him to see we’re not in need of his avuncular resources.”

Polly stopped short and narrowed her eyes on her sister. “You’re bluffing, then.” There was some sense in Sara’s position—they’d bluffed their way through many a daunting circumstance—also some risk. “Did you explain this to Beckman?”

“Explain what to Beckman?” North’s rasping baritone cut through the tension in the kitchen.

“There’s a remote possibility we’ll have company,” Polly said, giving Sara time to form her answer. “Family might drop by, briefly, one hopes.”

“Family?” North’s green eyes narrowed. “I’ve known you ladies for going on three years, and now family pops out of the woodwork? I’m just the steward, so the goings-on here in the house could not possibly affect me, you understand, yet I admit to curiosity. Who is this family?”

Just the steward. Polly wanted to have at him with a rolling pin.

Sara answered with enviable composure. “His name is Tremaine St. Michael, and he’s my late husband’s half brother. He has been writing lately to inquire as to Allie’s well-being, and in his latest letter has suggested he’d like to visit. I said we appreciated his concern but intimated that a visit wouldn’t be appropriate, given our positions here.”

“You hope he won’t visit,” North countered abruptly. He regarded Sara, then Polly, then Sara again, his frown deepening. “Mind you warn the child. I was thinking to take her into the village with me this afternoon, if you ladies don’t object?”

“Of course not,” Sara replied, but she’d glanced at Polly first, and Polly had no doubt that North, being North, had seen that too.

“I cannot fathom why the earl didn’t fire that lot of vultures.” Ethan handed Beck a drink, which Beck sipped, sighed over, and set down.

“That is fine libation, Mr. Grey.” Though a cup of Polly’s stout black tea would have been finer.

Ethan shrugged. “One grows used to what comforts money can command. Did any of the terms of the will surprise you?”

“Your presence surprised me.” Beck bent forward to tug off his boots. He was staying with Ethan at his London town house, the invitation coming as another surprise in a week full of them. At Nick’s request, both Ethan and Beck had stayed in Town for the reading of the late earl’s will.

“I’ve had some chance to get to know our new sister-in-law.” Ethan’s big feet appeared beside Beck’s on the low table—this was the private lair of a man in charge of a bachelor household, after all. “I think Wee Nick has met his match, and I’m not inclined to wander too far afield until he acknowledges this.”

The new Countess of Bellefonte, Leah, was pretty, kind, smitten with Nick, and very much up to the new earl’s weight in mischief and marital machinations. That alone would have recommended her, but she’d also taken charge of the logistics of the earl’s funeral, so the Haddonfield family could more effectively manage its grief.

Beck leaned his head back against soft leather and listened to the fire crackling in the hearth. What was Sara doing on this cool and cozy evening? Had Allie taken the slop bucket to Hildegard?

“Nick still carps at me to see to the succession.”

Ethan eyed him dispassionately. “You’re a reasonably appealing fellow. A wife solves a few problems.”

“And creates others,” Beck shot back. “Or are you prepared to march back up to the altar yourself, Ethan?”

“As you no doubt know,” Ethan replied evenly, “when a man is lonely for certain pleasures, he need not assuage them with a wife.”

“That isn’t lonely, that’s merely randy, and you well know the difference.” Beck knew the difference too, much better than he had even weeks ago.

“I know the difference, but in my marriage, I was far lonelier than I’ve ever been in the unwedded state.”

Beck peered at his brandy. “I have to say I came to the same conclusion, though I was married just a few months.”

“And I, a few years, but they were long, long years. What happened to your wife?”

This was a question a brother shouldn’t have to ask, not because it was impertinent to inquire, but because a brother—any brother—ought to know these things.

“She was carrying another man’s child when we wed,” Beck said, closing his eyes. “And I did not learn of this until we’d endured our honeymoon and I’d gone up to Town in deference to my new wife’s wishes. She was not… easy in my presence. I wasn’t gone three weeks before Nick told me he’d dropped in on my household, looking for me, and she was entertaining a gentleman in a compromising manner. He didn’t get a look at the man’s face, for which we can all be grateful.”

Though it had fallen to Beck to notify the poor bastard of Devona’s passing—at his wife’s dying request.

Ethan crossed his feet at the ankle, a man apparently comfortable with secrets Beck hadn’t intended to share with anybody. “And being Nick, he went after the man with guns blazing?”

“Being Nick, he blistered my wife’s ears for all to hear. Until then, she’d thought I was the Berserker of the Bedroom’s younger brother and at no risk for siring the next earl. Nick set her straight, and things went to hell from there.”

“I’m sorry.”

It was the same damned platitude Beck had heard over and over again, but when he glanced at Ethan—a brother and a fellow widower—there was a world of understanding in his blue eyes.

“She didn’t kill herself outright.” Beck stared hard at his drink. “She took steps to make sure she lost the child, but she also lost her life as a consequence. I have not acquainted Nicholas with the specific consequences of his actions, and he has atoned for them in any case.”

And there was peace of a sort in that realization. For years, Beck had assuaged his own guilt by blaming Nick for interfering, blaming Nick for presuming and assuming and generally being Nick.

Bold Nick, stubborn Nick… protective Nick. Nick who now had his own problems and had only been trying to help.

“Atoned by retrieving you from one of your less successful journeys.” Ethan cursed softly in the direction of stubborn idiot younger brothers generally, rose, and refreshed his drink. He cocked an eyebrow at Beck, who shook his head. He’d barely touched his brandy, despite being in the midst of a discussion that might make a man very thirsty indeed.

Ethan dropped down right beside Beck on the sofa. “Did you love her?”

For reasons having to do with red-haired housekeepers and difficult partings, this question had been on Beck’s mind for much of the last week. His first inclination was to offer Ethan a shrug, a platitude, and the sort of smile that would allow the question to remain essentially unanswered. Ancient secrets were one thing; recent revelations were quite another.

“I was young. All young men are romantics in some corner of their souls. I loved her the way an ignorant young man loves a foolish young woman, but in hindsight, I can see it was more that I fancied the notion she would make me an adult and capable of giving Bellefonte his heir. I did not love her—I did not know her—but I loved the idea of her.”

Ethan nudged Beck with his shoulder. “I’ve never considered there are actual advantages to being the bastard. This business of the succession weighs heavily between you and Nick. Too heavily.”

“I told him to swive his countess.” Beck raised his glass to take another sip of his drink, then changed his mind and set it aside. “He looked so haunted, Ethan, I about wanted to cry.”

“He and Leah will sort it out,” Ethan murmured, but Beck knew damned well that was a hope on Ethan’s part, not a prediction. It was Beck’s hope, too. “What will you do about your Sara?”

“She is not my Sara.” Maybe she was Tremaine’s Sara? “I will find some project or other that requires travel on the Continent, or perhaps head north before cooler weather arrives. Scotland is beautiful in high summer.”

Scotland, for all its beauty, was also as good a place as any to be miserable, there being a liberal sprinkling of whiskey distilleries amid the glens and valleys.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

Would he? Beck did not want to return to Belle Maison, where a bevy of sisters was trying to deal with their father’s passing. He did not want to visit one of Nick’s smaller properties, there to idle about with memories and regrets. He did not want to impose further on Ethan’s hospitality now that the will had been read.

And he was bloody damned if he wanted to freeze his parts off come grouse season, tramping about on some arctic Scottish moor.

“I will not. I haven’t paid my respects to Lady Warne, and she should have a full accounting of the state of Three Springs.”

“You are being stubborn, Beckman.” Ethan tossed back his drink and went to an escritoire over by the windows. “Nita sent some correspondence for you out from Belle Maison. My baby brother has apparently become a man of parts.”

Beck did not want to deal with his factors, did not want to fashion a reply to the stewards and agents who handled his various commercial endeavors. He wanted to get blind, roaring drunk, though he knew that to be his personal version of the road to hell.

Ethan passed him a packet of letters. “You’re welcome to stay here, you know, or you could bide a while at Tydings.”

This was another load of peach trees, another attempt to close a distance that had formed without either Ethan or Beckman willing it. To give himself time to come up with a response—Beck did not want to bide at Tydings, an extraneous uncle to two little boys he’d never met—he sorted through his correspondence, coming to an abrupt halt at the third epistle in the stack.

A note from North.

The hope that shot through Beck was pathetic.

“You’ve had some news?” Ethan asked as he resumed his place beside Beck.

“Probably a note of condolence.” Beck eyed his drink but didn’t pick it up. He slit the seal rather than wait until he was alone in his guest room. A slashing backhand scrawl took up exactly two lines.

Reston, get your lordly little arse back here. Trouble’s afoot.

North.

PS: Sincere condolences on your loss.

Seven words: Get your lordly little arse back here. They rocketed into Beck’s awareness from two directions. First, worry suffused him, pushing past the grief and restlessness. If North said trouble was afoot, if North asked for reinforcements, then Sara might be in danger.

“You looked pleased,” Ethan observed. “Fierce, but pleased.”

“I am.” The second tangent of Beck’s reaction to the note was more than relief, it was soul-deep satisfaction at the realization that Three Springs was where he wanted to go. The place wasn’t nearly restored to its former glory, and North’s summons—it was nothing less—suggested Beck still had a contribution to make there. “I’ll be heading south again.”

“I see.” Ethan studied the decanter. “As it happens, I have business south of Town myself. I’ll ride out with you in the morning, and we can call on our new sister-in-law together. You are leaving in the morning, aren’t you?”

“At the very first light.”