Beckman: Lord of Sins

Seventeen

The haying was successfully completed, the barns and sheds and even the house sported repaired or replaced roofs, the walls and fences were again sturdy and straight, and the crops matured in the fields. Summer eased past the solstice and into July, hitting the lull between haying and harvest when life should have been sweet.

At Three Springs, since the evening Beck had explained his intent to invite Tremaine St. Michael for a visit, every adult on the property had lived with an underlying sense of tension. The lack of further destructive mischief only made the anxiety greater.

There was good news, at least for Beck, in that Nicholas had reconciled with his new countess.

“You are still determined to leave?” Beck asked as he and North rode in from the eastern barley fields.

North patted Soldier’s dusty neck. “I am. I thought you’d have matters wrapped up by now, and St. Michael has apparently gone to ground.”

“He’s on his way here.”

“He’s on his way…” North’s scowl was thunderous. “This man puts a little girl in harm’s way, he’s on his way here, and you didn’t think to mention this to me? The women will draw and quarter you, and I’ll sharpen their knives.”

“I got his letter in the village today. Seems he’s been walking the Lake District or some such, and he’s happy to grace us with his presence as of the first of next week. You are duly warned, so what will you do about it?”

“Fret prodigiously.”

“Just so, and I appreciate the warning. But you’ll still go.”

“Soon,” North said, his eyes straying to the back of the manor house. “When you’ve routed the enemy, I’ll move along, so you’d best be looking for a new steward.”

“You were going to stay through harvest,” Beck reminded him as they turned their horses into the stable yard.

“I was going to try, but it isn’t working out that way.”

Beck regarded him as closely as one could regard North, given his ability to mask his feelings.

“Is Polly angry with you?”

North swung off Soldier. “She is not, or not as angry as she should be. She’s… brokenhearted, and that I cannot abide. The sooner I’m gone, the sooner she’ll realize I was a complete waste of her sentiments.”

“Gabriel…” How did Beck, of all people, tell another man that leaving didn’t solve anything?

“There is no good outcome for us, Beckman,” North said as he ran up his stirrups. “The most honorable thing I can do is take myself off and let her get on with her life.”

“You aren’t even giving the woman a chance, North. At least tell her the truth of your situation—whatever that might be—before you go, so she has a reason for your departure other than her own failings.”

“God.” Clearly, this possibility had not occurred to North. He rested his arm over Soldier’s muscular neck and bowed his head as if exhausted. “She’ll blame herself, won’t she?”

“The good ones do. The worthy ones.” Just as Beck had blamed himself for his young wife’s decisions.

The realization went through him like a dose of strong medicine. He felt the relief of it, the absolution of it settle into his soul while North stood braced against his horse.

“I sometimes wish I’d gotten on that ship with the damned snake.”

“But you would have left my flank exposed,” Beck said. “So blame your situation on me, but please consider the terms of your parting. What affects Polly affects Sara and Allie, and me as well.”

“You should have been a vicar.” North loosened Soldier’s girth. “Inducing guilt is one of their most highly cultivated skills.”

“You should have been a marquess,” Beck said, letting instinct have free rein.

North shook his head as he took Ulysses’s reins from Beck. “If I’d been a marquess, I would never have met Polly Hunt, never have built my first snake palace, never have soaked away my aches and worries with you and your nancy damned soap. Being a steward has had rewards being the marquess would never have. I’ve brought in crops I saw planted and tended, cared personally for beasts and buildings, and developed an appreciation for the people closest to the land. It hasn’t been all bad, Beck. In fact, in some ways, I’ve been happier here at Three Springs than I ever would have been as Hesketh.”

Hesketh. Hesketh was indeed a venerable, much-respected marquessate. “And you’ll miss it,” Beck warned. “Worse than you miss Hesketh’s holdings.”

“That I will.” North’s eyes strayed to the house again before he led the horses into the barn. In that single glance, Beck had seen a peacefulness in North’s eyes, an acceptance that boded ill for the man’s future. North was going to leave, and there would be no talking him out of it.

Beck’s situation with Sara wasn’t leaving him peaceful in the least. When he kidnapped her to his bed, she was a sweet and passionate lover. She never sought him out at night on her own, though, and in her embrace, Beck felt an increasing desperation. He reminded her of his proposal regularly, and she renewed her promise to consider his offer if ever she believed Allie in danger.

But that was before Beck had an acceptance of his invitation from Tremaine St. Michael. He broached the topic as lunch was finishing up, when he had Sara and Polly to himself in the kitchen.

“Ladies, we’re to have a guest.”

Sara looked up sharply from where she was sorting the silver back into a drawer. “Your brother?”

“Tremaine St. Michael has accepted our invitation to visit, and he’ll be here on the first of the week.” He was looking right at Sara, so he saw her stiffen and close her eyes. Polly set down the plate she’d been scraping into the scrap bucket and muttered an “excuse me” before leaving the kitchen at a fast clip.

“Let her go,” Beck said softly. “She’ll find North, and I’ve already warned him.”

“I was hoping…” Sara bit her lip and took up the plate-scraping Polly had abandoned.

“You were hoping St. Michael had fallen from the face of the earth,” Beck finished for her. “Apparently, so was Polly.”

“Polly is in a difficult position,” Sara said, keeping her gaze on her task.

“Because North is leaving?”

Sara straightened and moved on to the next plate. “That, but also because Tremaine is coming. Polly cares about… all of us.”

“And we care about her, but what aren’t you telling me, Sara?” Because as sure as Gabriel North was a man with problems, Sara was still keeping secrets.

She finished with that plate and reached for the next, then stopped and turned her back to him. His arms were around her before she got her apron untied.

“Talk to me, Sara.” He drew her against him. “For the love of God, no more silences. Please talk to me.”

Sara felt Beckman behind her, solid, strong, and secure. Were the issue anything less than Allie’s safety, and were it anybody else demanding Sara’s confidences, she would have gone right on scraping Hildy’s supper into a bucket.

“Please talk to me.”

Sara nodded. He gave her a moment, probably knowing she needed to gather her courage, her wits, her breath.

“There are paintings,” she said, glad he couldn’t see her face. “Tremaine has them. Reynard gave them to him for safekeeping when he fell ill, or Tremaine stole them, I know not which.”

“What sort of paintings?” Beck said, misgiving in his tone beneath the calm.

“Nudes. Of me.”

Nothing about his embrace shifted. Not one thing. “Nudes are acceptable artistic subjects.”

“Nudes of some statue might be. Nudes of mythical gods and goddesses are allowable. Nudes of one’s neighbor aren’t. Nudes of one’s housekeeper aren’t. With those paintings in his possession, Tremaine can ask pretty much anything of me, Beckman, and I’ll comply.”

“Polly feels responsible?”

“She was young and angry and didn’t see the harm. The poses are such that my face isn’t quite visible in any of them.” Nor was it quite obscured.

“How many?”

He had to know one painting was enough to destroy a woman’s life.

“Three.” Sara turned in his arms and laid her cheek against his chest. “They’re good, almost charming.”

“Is this why Polly stopped painting for others?”

“Part of it. Most of it.”

Beck pressed a kiss to her temple. “So we’ll buy the damned paintings.”

“Why should he sell them to you?” Sara asked miserably. “He can have the cow, so to speak, by holding on to those three pictures.”

Beck was quiet for a minute, his hands stroking idly over Sara’s back. “How does he have title to them?”

She went still when he posed the question—a simple question. Or was it? “What do you mean?”

“Provenance is the first thing any reputable collector will want to prove.” Beck took half a step back and led Sara over to the table.

“The dishes…”

Beck was out the back door in three strides, bellowing for Maudie, who came from the carriage house at a trot.

Beck pointed toward the kitchen. “The dishes, my girl. And mind you don’t be getting the lads in trouble.” She bobbed a blushing curtsy and scurried to her task.

When Sara had been escorted to Beck’s sitting room, the door firmly closed behind them, she had the sense the real inquisition was about to begin.

Beck settled beside her on the sofa. “Let us discuss provenance. The painter owns the painting unless paid a commission. In this case, I doubt Reynard commissioned the works.”

And why, in years and years of being mentally dogged and harassed by those infernal paintings, hadn’t Sara once considered this?

“He did not, though he could argue he was owed the paintings for putting a roof over our heads, that sort of thing.”

“He didn’t put a roof over anybody’s head,” Beck shot back. “You did.”

“But what belongs to me belonged to him, as my husband, so he was owed, not me.”

“In the absence of a contract of some sort, that’s at least debatable. Polly is family, but if Reynard sold her paintings in addition to your performances, then she earned her keep.”

“He did, or he sold most of them.”

“We have a situation where you and Polly are both bringing in income, but you think Reynard somehow had title to the paintings Polly created? What sort of man would rely on that reasoning to keep paintings from the women who should have them? And what sort of uncle would use those paintings to control women he ought to have been assisting for the past several years?”

“Reynard’s brother,” Sara said shortly. “Possibly—I don’t know, Beck, but it’s my rosy fundament that will hang in some drawing room if Tremaine decides to be difficult.”

“Is this what has been bothering you?” He phrased the question delicately, though Sara suspected he was asking if this was why she hadn’t accepted his proposal. Proposals, plural.

“It bothers me, yes.” Haunted her, more like. Sara forced herself to ease her grip on Beck’s hand. “It bothers me terribly.”

“Did you pose for these paintings?”

“Of course not, though I could see why you’d ask. Polly was on hand, backstage, before I’d perform sometimes. She and Allie both saw me in all manner of dishabille, and at the coaching inns, quarters were often cramped and privacy limited. No one thought anything of it.”

“But your trust was somehow betrayed. Do you think Reynard put her up to it?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t something we talk about.” One of many things they didn’t talk about, at least until recently.

“I am beginning to think nobody talks about anything on this property,” Beck muttered. “Will Polly confide in North?”

“I don’t know that either. Somebody should explain this to him. He’s family.”

“If she doesn’t, I will.”

“What about the others?”

“They don’t need to know. How much does Allie comprehend of these difficulties?”

“Not much.” Sara chewed a thumbnail. “I hope.”

“Somebody is going to have to explain to her that discussing her art with Uncle Tremaine is not well advised. Her little studio is going to have to be dismantled for the nonce.”

Well, of course, though Sara had been too upset to see even this far ahead. “We can do that. How long do you think he’ll stay?”

“It’s England in the summertime. Who knows? I can summon reinforcements if we need them. Lady Warne might enjoy taking a hand in things.”

Sara stopped mistreating her thumbnail as one more confidence went flying past her common sense. “I’m scared, Beckman.” She pitched against him. “I’m scared for me, Allie, and Polly, and even a little bit for you.”

His arms came around her; his scent tickled her nose.

“Don’t be scared for me, Sara. Get those paints put away and stored somewhere St. Michael won’t find them.”

Sara let Beck go find North. As relieved as she was to have this secret aired, she’d also noted that now—when the respectable suit of an earl’s son might have faced Tremaine down—Beck hadn’t renewed his proposal.

Which was of no moment, really. She still could not have accepted him.

“Did Polly tell you about the paintings?”

North glanced up from where he was cleaning his bridle in the saddle room, but his expression was harder than usual to read.

“She did.”

“I can offer to buy them.” Beck lowered himself to sit beside North on the plank bench. “Our womenfolk will do anything to keep those paintings from becoming public, though, and establishing that Tremaine doesn’t have title to them will make them public indeed.”

Which, of course, he hadn’t pointed out to Sara.

“Polly says Sara’s face isn’t clear in any of them.” North eyed his reins, which looked perfectly clean to Beck. “Sara’s hair will give her away to anybody who knows the artist.”

“Polly’s upset?”

“Oh, one might say that.” North went silent for a moment. “I’ve never seen her cry before.”

“Christ.” Beck leaned back against the wall. “I will be more relieved when this is over than I was to get home from Virginia.”

“Too many snakes?”

“Slavery, in all its brutal splendor, with no softening fiction I was among Bedouins or South Seas’ cannibals. My father’s chums from school, no less, slaveholding and quoting Scripture to support it at table.”

“Polly and Sara felt like slaves. They don’t want Allie to suffer that fate.”

“I won’t allow it,” Beck retorted. “You won’t allow it.”

“Allow?” North blew out a breath and settled back beside Beck. “Just who are we, Beckman, that we’re allowing and not allowing matters in the lives of the Hunt womenfolk?”

“Damned if I know.”

“I shouldn’t be here.” Sara stared up at the ceiling of Beck’s bedroom, having held her fire until his door was safely closed behind them.

“Nonsense.” Beck shucked his dressing gown and climbed in beside her. She wasn’t volunteering to take off her nightgown, so he pulled her to his side clothed as she was. “You asked me to leave you in your own bed only when Tremaine is underfoot. I will miss you badly in this bed starting tomorrow night, so I’m gathering rosebuds while I may. Or Sarabuds.” He kissed her nose, hoping to lighten the mood.

“I’m bleeding.”

He absorbed that, though it wasn’t the first time the topic had been mentioned between them.

“Cramps?”

“A little,” she said and turned away from him onto her side. He spooned himself around her, settling his hand over her womb.

“Sorry, love. I wish I could hurt for you. You’re worried about Tremaine?”

“Of course.” She sighed and rolled over to her other side, tucking her face against his chest. “I hate the waiting, and I’ll hate having him about, and I’ll hate not being able to spend my nights with you.”

“One is encouraged to hear that last,” Beck said, drawing her braid over her shoulder. “You leave a man to wonder, Sara Hunt.”

“Don’t wonder. Be assured, Beck, when Tremaine shows up, our dalliance is over.”

Beck gathered her closer, getting a whiff of flowers and worry for his trouble. “I want to marry you.”

“It doesn’t help, you know?” Sara’s index finger began to draw patterns on Beck’s bare chest. “You need to stop proposing to me and consider when you’ll move on about your life.”

“I’m about my life now,” Beck rejoined. “This very minute I’m about my life, Sara.”

“This very minute you are depriving yourself of sleep so I might scold you yet again for being unrealistic.”

“For caring about you?” Beck shifted, covering her with the warmth of his naked body though she lay on her side. “For loving you?”

Silence, and then tears. Quiet tears eased from her on long, careful breaths, while Beck held her and wondered why on earth a woman would cry to know she was loved. They fell into exhausted slumber without finding an answer.

Tremaine St. Michael had been at Three Springs for two days, and Beck was increasingly perplexed by him. He was a man of odd contrasts, physically, socially, intellectually.

He’d bowed very correctly over Sara’s and Polly’s hands, but swept Allie up in a tight, protracted hug. He was reserved with Beck and North, but possessed of a quick, dry wit as well. Physically, he was built like a dragoon—tall and well muscled—but he moved with peculiar quiet. His features were at odds as well, with eyes and hair of such a soft, lustrous dark brown as to appear black, but high cheekbones, a Viking nose, and a jawbone that looked descended from Vandal antecedents. His voice was a unique blend of growling Scots burr and graceful French elision.

Nothing about the man added up, though Ethan’s letters claimed Tremaine St. Michael knew the Midlands wool trade inside and out, and was profiting accordingly. Toward the ladies, Tremaine was unfailingly polite, but to Beck’s practiced eye, Sara and Polly were both avoiding the man.

Which left him often in Beck’s company, or Beck’s and North’s.

“That end is too hot,” Beck said, pointing off to the water on his left. “Here, however, it’s just right. Bring the soap, will you, North?”

“Soap I can carry,” North said. “You can haul your own damned spirits.” He fired a pocket flask at Beck and finished undressing.

“There’s a ledge here.” Beck sank into the water. “It’s just made for man’s weary fundament. I don’t know if the Romans put it here, or Mother Nature, but to me, it’s the best feature on the property.”

Tremaine took a seat beside his host. “So far, I have to agree with you.”

He sank down on a long sigh and leaned his head back against the stones.

“You could fetch a pretty penny for the property based on the springs alone,” Tremaine said when North had taken a place several feet away on Beck’s other side.

“Drink?” Beck uncapped the flask and passed it to his guest.

“Mighty fine,” Tremaine declared, his burr showing more clearly. “So, now that we’re great friends, Haddonfield, drinking by moonlight and larking about like pagans in your grandmother’s springs, tell me why my brother’s widow won’t give me the time of day.”

“Plain speaking,” North growled. “Have to give him points for that.”

“Drink.” Beck passed North the flask. “And hold your tongue, old man.”

North obliged and passed the flask back.

“It’s complicated,” Beck said carefully. “I think it has to do with items that came into your possession after Reynard’s death.”

“Items?” Tremaine took a swig from the proffered flask. “That doesn’t narrow it down. Reynard sent me scads of things over the years, particularly after he married. His fortunes improved, I gather, and he had nowhere else to hoard his treasures.”

“You still have these things he collected?” Beck asked. “Because by law, unless he willed them to you or conveyed them overtly, I believe they belong to his wife and daughter now.”

“One comprehends this.” Tremaine had to be reminded to pass the flask along by Beck taking it from his hand. “I have a load of plunder for Sara and Allie to go through and sort, at least. There are paintings, too, which I gather might be Polly’s work or purchased for her. I’m surprised she isn’t still painting—she’s very good. Reynard considered her every bit as great a find as Sara.”

“How did Sara feel about being found?” Beck asked. He sent the flask on to North without partaking.

“Gentlemen…” Tremaine’s voice took on a hint of steel. “We can agree my brother was a rotten excuse for a man. He lived off his womenfolk, exploited them shamelessly, and refused to let them rejoin their parents when his scheme became obvious to his young wife. I offered to see the ladies back to England at one point, but Sara refused to go.”

“She refused?” That made no sense, like everything else associated with Tremaine and his infernal brother. Beck passed the flask back to his guest, though trying to inebriate St. Michael into confidences was likely a lost cause.

“For two reasons.” Tremaine took a goodly pull before elaborating. “First, I gather Reynard had written to the senior Hunts, lamenting Sara’s difficult temperament, her lack of gratitude for his hard work on behalf of her art, her lack of dedication to her God-given gifts, and so forth. When Sara wrote to them asking if she could come home with her daughter and sister, her parents replied with a scathing lecture about a wife’s vows and familial sacrifice. I gather the damage has become permanent.”

“She’s written to her parents recently,” Beck said, though her epistle barely qualified as a note.

“She has,” Tremaine replied. “I paid my respects to them on my way down here, but neither Sara nor Polly has asked after them.”

“Did they ask after her?”

“I have a letter from them.” Tremaine closed his eyes and sank lower in the water. “I’m not to pass it to Sara unless she inquires.”

“So prompt her to ask,” Beck growled, getting up from his seat and leaving North and Tremaine to share the remainder of the brandy. Beck retrieved the soap and started scrubbing himself briskly.

“You think I should?” Tremaine sounded genuinely perplexed. “I was hoping the ladies would accept my aid rather than go running home to Mama and Papa.”

“Why?” Beck submerged and came up. “Three females are a substantial expense.”

“Because to me,” Tremaine said levelly, “they are due the support. It is not an expense. It is a privilege, and thanks to a lot of bleating, stinking sheep, I can easily spare the coin. You have family coming out your ears, Haddonfield, both brothers and sisters, an old granny of some sort. My family in France is gone—mostly murdered in the fruitless march toward a republic—and what few second cousins I have in Scotland regard me as a bloody Sassenach.” He dropped into a soft burr. “These women, Allie in particular, are all the family who will claim me.”

North swirled the water and shot Beck a thoughtful look. Beck dunked again, then passed him the soap and traded places with him on the bench.

“You are an orphaned comte?” Beck asked.

“I don’t use the title.”

“You need to talk to Sara,” Beck said. “You mentioned two reasons she wouldn’t accompany you to England. What was the second?”

“The child.” Tremaine tossed the empty flask onto the bank. “By the law of any civilized land, a man’s legitimate progeny are his to control, period. Sara would not risk antagonizing Reynard lest he separate her from her child. And he would have, much as it shames me to say it.”

“Happy for him, the man is dead,” Beck said, “else I should have to see to his demise myself.”

“For observing the law?” Tremaine caught the soap when North pitched it.

“For exploiting a seventeen-year-old girl who’d just lost her brother,” Beck began. “For parading her all around Europe like some musical whore, for using Polly and her art just as badly, for being an obscene perversion of what a husband should be, for coming between parents and their only surviving offspring—need I go on?”

Tremaine submerged and stayed under long enough for North to murmur, “I won’t let you drown him, Beck. He’s no more Reynard than you or I are.”

Excellent—if irksome—point.

“I can’t argue with you, Haddonfield,” Tremaine said when he’d whipped his hair out of his eyes and tossed the soap onto the bank. “I want to. I want to protest you’re being too harsh, my brother meant well, his wife was an ungrateful no-talent schemer, but I can’t. Reynard was raised under difficult circumstances, and he did not rise to the challenges in his life. For all that, Sara still probably blames herself for what befell her and her sister and rues the day she ever sent for Reynard.”

A beat of silence, and then Beck asked, “She sent for him?”

“She hasn’t told you this? Reynard used to gloat to me in his letters about it.” Tremaine disappeared under the water again, coming up closer to the hot end of the pool. “Sara had heard of Reynard. He’d some success managing a pair of brothers who played violin and viola, and she expected he could do the same for her and her brother. No doubt, she thought he’d find them some engagements around London, start them off on the private parties, that sort of thing. A young lady performing in a concert hall might not be the done thing, but a brother and sister making music in private homes before Polite Society is another matter.”

“A reasonable expectation from her viewpoint,” Beck said.

“True.” Tremaine climbed back up on the ledge. “But Reynard saw much greater potential for income by taking one violinist—a young, lovely female with dramatic red hair—and marching her all over the Continent, where women can and do perform professionally. If he’d taken Sara and Gavin, they would have supported each other against him and been much more difficult and expensive to handle. So he chose Sara and took the brother aside, explaining the boy owed it to his sister to step out of Sara’s path. He similarly closeted himself with Sara and said she needed to free her brother from worrying about her, focusing on duet literature, and so forth. Reynard promised her Gavin would be a better musician on his own two feet rather than pandering to his sister’s lesser talent.”

“Perishing, sodding, bloody, contemptible hell.” Beck shot off the ledge and slogged to the bank. “How can you recount this perfidy so calmly?”

“The picture emerged slowly.” Tremaine followed Beck and North out of the pool and accepted the bath sheet North tossed him. “I did not see much of my brother, but we’d cross paths occasionally on the Continent. He wrote often though, dropping a hint here, a detail there. He did regret Gavin’s death, though, of that I’m sure.”

“I thought it was an accident.” Beck stopped drying himself, unease wrapping around the anger in his gut. “Sara told me Gavin’s death was an accident.”

“She no doubt wants you to believe that.” Tremaine pulled his shirt over his head and stepped into his breeches. “Gavin was supposedly cleaning his gun the day after Sara accepted Reynard’s proposal, and the thing went off. The boy left a note encouraging his sister to take her chance for happiness with Reynard, and asking his parents to forgive him.”

Beck strode off and stood a few paces away, rage and sorrow ricocheting in his mind while curses in five languages clamored for an airing. North handed Tremaine his boots, gathered up the soap and the empty flask, then caught Tremaine’s eye and jerked his chin toward the manor house.

They left Beck alone and half-naked in the dark, the silence of the night screaming around him.