Beckman: Lord of Sins

Six

After dinner, an uncharacteristically sociable North had accompanied Beck to the hot springs, and a medicinal soak had followed. As Beck hung up the new towels in the laundry to dry and made his way to his room, it occurred to him his sojourn at Three Springs was different from many of the other trips he’d been sent on.

Here, while the typical traveler’s propensity for observing hadn’t left him, he was not among strangers. He was among the same people day and night, and he was becoming familiar with them in ways a lone wayfarer in a distant land did not.

He was, in short, growing attached. Whatever plagued North, Beck wanted it resolved, not out of a need for tidy endings and neat answers, but because it weighed on North’s soul, put shadows in a good man’s eyes, and kept him scanning the horizon rather than focusing on the bounty at his feet.

And then there was Sarabande Adagio herself. Beck’s feelings for her were growing complicated, beyond the simple, powerful lust of a man who permitted himself only infrequent attractions. He watched her moving around the house, taking down this set of curtains for a good washing, polishing andirons in that unused parlor, mixing up a salve for burns to keep in Polly’s kitchen.

Sara was preoccupied, biding her time, doing what the situation called for, but she had an eye on the horizon as well, and it was an anxious eye. Beck wanted to banish her anxieties, to carry her burdens for her and offer her the comfort of a shoulder to lean on—and so much more.

Except she deserved to be able to rely on the man she bestowed her favors and her fears on. Rely on him utterly and exclusively, and Beck was not that man. He sank down on his bed, frowning, as something nagged at the back of his mind, something from the day’s flotsam of conversations and silences.

Hermione’s dripping from both sides.

Allie’s casual information trotted up from the back of Beck’s mind, pushing him to his tired feet even as he cursed the need to check on the mare. He took a lantern and a jacket from the back hall and shuddered at the chill of the spring night.

As soon as he spied Hermione in her stall, Beck knew he wouldn’t be going back into the house any time soon. She was slowly circling, pawing at the straw, her belly distended, her eye both restless and resigned. She swung her gaze at Beck as soon as he approached her stall.

“It’s only me, sweetheart.” He kept his voice low and relaxed, because a mare could stop the foaling process if she became disturbed. “I’ve come to tidy up your nest. Thought you might want a bit of company on a chilly night.”

While Hermione stood along one wall of her stall, pawing occasionally, Beck mucked out her loose box and heaped extra clean straw in one corner. He scrubbed out her water bucket next and forked her a mound of fresh hay into another corner, then left her in peace to resume her pacing.

“I’m told”—he spoke softly to the horse—“I’m good at foaling. Nick says the mares like me, which is fine with me, because I certainly like them. One wonders, though, who the papa of your foal is, Miss Hermione Hunt. You were a naughty girl, going courting without an escort that way…”

He pattered on, until with a heavy groan, the mare went to her knees then lay down on her side. She began to strain, and Beck went silent, standing outside the stall and praying for nature to do what nature alone could do best. A few minutes later, a very undainty hoof emerged from beneath Hermione’s tail.

Beck had assisted at many, many foalings, from the time he’d been a boy at Belle Maison right up through the past two years in Sussex. He was good at it, and he enjoyed it. If the size of that hoof and the one appearing next to it were any indication, Hermione had taken up with a damned draft stud.

She couldn’t help that now, of course, so Beck waited another couple of anxious minutes while the mare made no progress.

Resuming his quiet monologue, Beck eased open the door to the stall and approached the mare.

“Not cooperating, I take it.” Beck knelt and stroked a hand over the mare’s sweaty flank. “Children are like that. Ask my papa. What say I lend a hand, and we’ll see if we can’t persuade the Foal Royal to join us sooner rather than later?”

Hermione rested her head in the straw, lying flat out as if dead, which was only prudent when she was between contractions. God willing, the old girl would need her rest. Beck continued stroking and talking until he was positioned behind the mare, his hands wrapped around the foal’s hooves. When Hermione began to strain again, Beck exerted a steady, increasing pull on those hooves, and the foal started to shift in the birth canal.

“Come to Papa,” Beck gritted through clenched teeth. The mare was laboring to the limit of her strength, Beck’s aching back was screaming with his efforts, and progress was agonizingly slow. The contraction ebbed, and Beck released his hold as the foal slipped back a few inches.

“Next time, my girl, we are going to have a damned foal,” Beck panted, getting his breath while he could.

Hermione grunted and thrashed and began to push again, so Beck went back to work. It took two more back-aching, harrowing attempts, but on a rush of fluid, a sizable filly was born. Beck peeled the placenta back from the foal’s nose, made sure the little beast was breathing, then sat back in the straw, leaning against the sturdy wall.

He beamed at the mare, who had shifted to start licking her new treasure. “Would you look at that? Look what a lovely little business you’ve done here. She’s gorgeous and hale and full of beans already.”

The filly was shaking her head and trying to prop her front feet out before her, while Hermione methodically licked her baby’s coat dry.

“Beckman?” Sara’s voice came from the aisle way. “To whom are you speaking?”

“My newest goddaughter.” Beck rose slowly, careful not to disturb the mare and foal. “Hermione has tended to the Creator’s business tonight, and done a splendid job.”

He eased from the stall, moved, as he always was, by the spontaneous joy of seeing a new life begin. Hermione was acquitting herself like an old hand, but Beck would stay around to make sure the foal nursed in the first hour of its life and the mare passed the afterbirth. After that, there was little he could do to keep the odds running in the filly’s favor.

Sara, wrapped in a thick wool shawl, peered over the half door. “What a little beauty.”

“A big beauty,” Beck countered. “Hermione has an eye for the draft stallions, I think, but the filly’s elegant for all her size.”

“She’s gorgeous.”

Beck was taken aback to see a sheen on Sara’s eyes. He moved in close and wrapped his arms around her. “Mother and baby are doing fine, and all’s well.”

“I know.” This sounded more like lament than agreement. “But she’s so… dear. Precious.” Beck said nothing, thinking dear and precious applied to the female in his arms as well. When he stepped back, he kept hold of her hand.

“I’ll mind them until the baby nurses,” he assured her. “Sit with me over here. They’ll do better with a little privacy.” He tugged her across the darkened barn aisle to sit on a trunk outside Ulysses’s stall. The gelding noted their presence without a pause in his consumption of hay.

“What made you come out here?” Sara asked, her hand still in his.

“Allie told me the signs were pointing to sooner rather than later, and mares are famous for dropping foals in the quiet and privacy of the night,” Beck said. “How about you? What drew you out here on this chilly night?”

“I saw your lantern light.” Sara’s voice was soft, as if she were mindful of the peace conducive to a newly forming bond between mare and foal. “I don’t think North could have been any help, so badly is his back hurting.”

“Does it pain him often?” The ladies seemed better attuned to North’s back than the man himself was.

“When he overdoes, which is to say, yes. Last year, he tried to do the plowing alone, and it did not go well for him. Polly made him hire help for the haying and the harvest, or he’d still be sitting in the hot spring, cursing and refusing help.”

And the ladies would have been without any meaningful protection. The precariousness of Sara’s existence at Three Springs loomed more clearly in Beck’s mind.

“North and Polly are stubborn, but Three Springs requires stubbornness, I think.” Beside him, he felt a little shudder go through Sara’s smaller frame. “You’re cold.” He tucked an arm across her shoulders. “Budge up. I’m good for warmth, if little else. So when are you going to let Allie make another painting?”

He drew away again to drape his jacket around Sara then used his arm about her shoulders to draw her close to his side.

She made no protest, and the feel of her against him comforted in a way that had to do with the mare and foal and with being far from home.

“I should let Allie paint again soon. She needs to paint the way Polly needs to cook and North needs to stomp around the property cursing the weeds, the fences, and the foxes.”

“And what does Sara need?” A safer question than what Beck himself needed.

“To see the people I care for happy and safe,” Sara said. “That’s what I need, Beckman. What about you?”

“This is a mystery.” Beck resisted the urge to nuzzle her hair, was which flowing down her back in one glorious fat plait. “For now, I need to be here in this barn with you, and I need that little filly to thrive with her mother.”

“Good needs,” Sara said. “If only for the near term.”

“Your hands are cold.” Beck covered hers with his own where it rested on her thigh. “I should shoo you back into the house, Sara. You haven’t the luxury of the periodic cold or sniffle.”

“I won’t go back to sleep until you tell me the little one is nursing. And what if you hadn’t been here? North is worn out, and Polly and I wouldn’t have known what to do. How would we have managed?”

His question exactly. “Nature usually knows what to do, but you and Polly need more help here.”

Beside him, Sara pokered up but didn’t move away. “Without family in residence, there’s no reason for hiring more staff.”

“There is every reason to,” Beck said, sitting up to watch as the filly tried to thrash to her feet. “The estate needs the help, even if you don’t.”

“Should we help her?” Sara started to rise, but Beck tugged her back beside him.

“She has to figure out where her feet go,” he said softly. “If she struggles so long she’s getting too weak to stand, then we’ll intervene, but give her a chance to work it out for herself first.”

“That’s a very difficult part of parenting.” Sara sighed as she settled against him and brushed her nose near the jacket lapel, where the fabric would carry his scent. He resettled his arm across her shoulders and took a whiff of her hair.

“Difficult? Watching a child’s first steps?” Beck folded her hand in his again, and again, Sara made no protest.

“That, and the whole business of letting them struggle, letting them find their own balance. I am protective of Allie, sometimes I think not protective enough.”

As if worrying about her very livelihood and the entire manor house wasn’t enough?

“What’s the worst that can happen to her? Short of a tragic accident or illness, such as might befall anybody?”

Sara was silent for a moment; then she tugged his jacket more closely around her.

“She might meet the wrong type of man,” she said, “and let him take her from all she’s ever known, fill her head with silly fancies about fame and art and wealth, and discard her when her usefulness is over.”

Beck heard the bitterness and the bewilderment too.

“We all have the occasional unwise attachment,” Beck said gently, for it wasn’t Allie whom Sara was discussing. “And nobody chooses a perfect fit.”

“Was your wife a good fit?”

Well, of course. He should have known Sara Hunt, quiet, serious, and observant, might ask such a thing. The sense of… rootlessness in his belly grew as he considered an honest answer.

“We were not married long enough to assess such a thing.” A version of the truth. “We were both eager for the union, and our families approved.”

“How old were you?”

“Not old enough. Not nearly old enough.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I have been grateful, on occasion, that Reynard lived long enough for me to see his true colors, to hate him. I cannot imagine losing a spouse with whom there was potential for a lifetime of happiness.”

What did it say, that a woman professed to be grateful to hate her own spouse? Beck’s arm over Sarah’s shoulders became less casual and more protective.

“I would have been grateful for a few years of contentment,” Beck said. “It wasn’t meant to be.” And what a useless, true platitude that was.

“How long were you married?”

“Little more than a summer. At the time, it seemed like forever, and then she was gone, and forever took on a very different meaning.”

“I was married for nearly a decade. That was a forever too.”

A decade was forever to grieve, forever to carry guilt and rage and remorse by the barge load. “So how do you manage now? What sustains you?”

“Allie,” Sara replied immediately. “Polly.”

“But what sustains you?” Beck pressed. “Allie will grow up, sooner rather than later, and Polly could well bring Mr. North up to scratch. Five years hence, Sara Hunt, will it be enough to polish silver, beat rugs, and mix vinegar to shine the windows?”

Would it be enough for Beckman to spend most of his year traveling, to hear more foreign tongues than English, and to be always planning the next journey, even as he turned his steps for home?

Sara was quiet, and Beck regretted the question.

He squeezed her fingers. “Don’t answer. I am feeling philosophical because my father is at his last prayers, and he was always such a robust man. I am aware that any day I could be summoned to his side, and you’ll no longer be plagued by my larking about here.”

“You are on good terms with your father?”

How to answer? “Such good terms, he sent me down here, rather than allow me at his bedside.”

“You’re hurt by this,” Sara concluded. “You mustn’t be. Men are proud, and they can’t admit when they need to draw comfort from others.”

He did not want comfort, he wanted to go home and have his father be there. He wanted…

What he wanted astonished him and made perfect sense. “What of you, Sarabande Adagio? Can you admit you might need to draw some comfort from another?”

She made no answer but didn’t protest when he shifted on the trunk, untangled their hands, and used his free hand to turn her toward him.

“Would you let me give you some comfort, Sarabande?”

Beckman was going to kiss her, and she was going to let him. Sara felt heat not just radiating from him but welling up inside her body, filling the tired, lonely depths she’d learned to ignore. His lips brushed over hers, and then again, a soft, warm hint of pressure behind the caress.

This kiss was different from the last one, more personal. Sara liked it better and returned his initial gesture, dragging her lips over his as her fingers burrowed into the silky hair at his nape. On a soft groan, he lifted her to straddle his lap, again placing her slightly higher than him and giving her an advantage of sorts.

A control or the fiction of it, even as he so casually demonstrated his superior strength.

Balanced on her knees, Sara was free to explore his body with her hands, to stroke over the breadth of his shoulders, and learn the curious curves and textures of his ears. His hands roamed too, slowly, carefully, tracing the shape of her elbows, the span of her hips, and the bones of her back.

“Settle,” he whispered, urging her to let him have her weight in his lap. She sank onto him, feeling the tumescence of his arousal against her sex. She knew what that was, knew what it meant, and rather than feel embarrassed, she was reassured.

Somebody—a man she esteemed and desired—could feel desire for her, even at her great age. Even though she was mother to a growing girl, measuring her days on some forlorn, neglected estate, she was still desirable.

And—even better—she could still feel desire. Reynard hadn’t taken that from her after all, not permanently. She smiled against Beck’s mouth, the joy of that realization fueling the warmth inside her.

“What?” Beck pulled back and traced her lips with his finger. “Am I amusing you?”

“Not amusing. This isn’t funny.” She curled down against him and felt his hand trace down her spine.

“But you smiled, Sara,” Beck said, his other hand cradling the back of her head. “I like that I can make you smile.”

“This is wicked.” Lest he think she condoned her own behavior—except in a sense she did. His behavior too.

“To find a little comfort isn’t wicked.” Beck kissed her check. “Though it is wicked to take a lady unawares. I can’t offer you much, Sara. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, and I don’t intend you any disrespect. You can decline my advances, and I’ll understand you aren’t interested in what I’m offering. But while I’m here, I can… share pleasure with you, if you’d like.”

His tone was careful, measured, and that, more than his words, helped Sara surface from the haze of sentiment and physical pleasure clouding her judgment.

“I hadn’t considered this.” That was a lie. She had considered this, particularly since having seen Beckman at the cistern. She’d considered little else.

She lifted her face from his shoulder to peer at him in the shadows. “I am not… sophisticated, Beckman. For all the time I spent with Reynard, who was sophisticated, I still did not discover the knack of dallying.”

He kissed her nose. “I am not as proficient at it as you might think. I am attracted to you, regardless of common sense, regardless of the dictates of gentlemanly behavior, regardless of being physically exhausted. I do not think I am going to plow you out of my system, Sara Hunt.”

Somewhere in his words lurked a compliment, but Sara was too overwhelmed by what he offered to puzzle it out.

He would be lovely in bed. Sumptuous, generous, considerate, and good-humored. He’d be patient with her inexperience, tender with her sensibilities, cherishing of her body. How could she not…?

“And if I conceive a child?” Sara asked, some of the bloom wearing off her pleasurable anticipation.

He did not heave out a manly sigh of long-suffering at a question that would douse most men’s passions. He traced her hairline with the side of one thumb, a caress that beguiled with its very simplicity.

“I understand you have a dim view of marriage, Sara. My own experience with it was not encouraging, but I can provide for you and a child easily and well. You could live anywhere you pleased, in fine style, if that’s what you wanted, but I would not want…”

He paused to nuzzle at her throat.

“You would not want…?” Sara prompted, even as she angled her chin to encourage him to continue.

“I would not want to be a stranger to my own child, and I have to tell you”—he bit gently on her earlobe—“I have an illegitimate half sibling, and I cannot relish the thought of bringing bastardy down on any child of mine.”

“Nor would I relish such a prospect,” Sara managed. He was suckling at her earlobe, and God above, the sensations that evoked were strange and wonderful.

“So we’ll take precautions.” Beck left off touching his tongue to the pulse in Sara’s throat, which was fortunate for her sanity. “I will take precautions, and there will be little chance of a child.”

“If we dally.” Sara willed herself to focus on the words, not on the glorious, naughty, unlooked-for sensations he was creating.

“If we dally,” he agreed solemnly. “You’ll think on it and let me know your decision.”

“I will.” Sara sank against him and realized that big, warm hand of his was stroking her calf. In all her years of marriage and fending off the advances of Reynard’s drunken friends, no man had put his hand on that portion of her body. The caress was different, slow, soothing, and yet… His hand shouldn’t be there, and she loved that it was.

His thumb traveled over the joint of her knee, tracing the bones, bringing a melting warmth that traveled up her thigh. Sara rested against him, listening to the sensations her body was experiencing. Who would have thought a knee could be so receptive to tenderness? Who would have known an earlobe was capable of sensation at all?

Beck’s lips traced over Sara’s cheek, and she lifted her face to meet his kiss. When she raised up on her knees, the better to frame his face with her hands and kiss him back, she felt Beck’s hand on the small of her back, holding her against him.

“Let me pleasure you,” Beck whispered, his hand now stroking slowly over her thigh. “Let me touch you, Sara.”

Of course she was letting him touch her, letting him chase away the chill, the darkness, the years and years of isolation, and the self-doubt that never yielded to common sense or stern admonitions. With a start, Sara realized exactly where Beckman sought to touch her, but just as she would have drawn back to protest, he slid a hand around to cup her breast and gently close his fingers over it.

Sara groaned against his neck as heat and arousal coursed through her from that one gentle caress. “I feel…”

“Tell me.” He did it again then set up a soft, slow rhythm of pressure and release on her breast even as Sara felt the backs of his fingers brush over the curls at the apex of her sex.

“Too much,” she breathed. “This is too much.”

“Not enough,” he countered, his fingers closing around her nipple, intensifying the sensations with a more focused caress. “I want you utterly undone.”

When his thumb brushed upward, Sara whimpered with the intensity of the sensation.

“You must not,” she whispered, flinching.

“I want to put my mouth on you here,” Beck rejoined, his whisper growing hoarse as his thumb found her again. “I want to taste you and make you scream with pleasure.”

“Beckman…” Sara’s grip on his hair tightened. “I can’t stand…”

He silenced her by sealing his mouth to hers, using his tongue, his thumb, and his hand to destroy her ability to think, much less speak. She began to rock shamelessly against his hand, her body damp with desire for more of his caresses.

“I want… Beck…”

“Let me give you what you want.” His voice was a low, rasping command. “Stop fighting the pleasure, Sara. Stop fighting yourself.”

He increased the pressure and speed of his thumb, and she stifled a moan against his neck. Her hips picked up the tempo, and then she was lost, overcome with pleasure, keening softly and riding his hand with mindless determination. When her pleasure finally subsided, she was limp in his arms, panting and without words.

Utterly undone.

And despite his own unappeased need, Beck was apparently content to hold her, to stroke her hair and her back, to fit his breathing with hers and to wait for her to regain her equilibrium.

“Love?” He kissed her cheek. “Sara, sweetheart?” He patted her backside gently, and she lifted her head then tucked her nose against his neck.

“What did you do to me?”

“Petted you a bit. Cuddle up, or you’ll take cold.” He tucked her closer, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his chin against her hair. “Talk to me, sweetheart. A woman gone quiet in her dallying is not a reassuring prospect. Are you all right?”

Sara tried to assay her bodily state and found the results did not lend themselves to articulation. The confusion of her emotional state defied any description whatsoever.

“No. I am not all right, but I can’t be more specific.” Part of what was amiss had to with these affectionate, cherishing little touches being every bit as overwhelming as what had gone before.

“I wasn’t too rough?”

“Of course not.” She let him see her eyes, see the truth of that. “You were…” She hid her face again. “So tender.”

A silence spread, not uncomfortable. Tenderness was the furthest thing from a transgression, and yet Sara felt as discommoded as if Beck had committed some domestic misdemeanor.

“She’s nursing,” Beck said softly. Sara twisted to peer over her shoulder and saw he was right. The filly’s tail was twitching, and her mother was contentedly lipping hay while the baby fed.

“They’ll be fine now, won’t they?” This mattered terribly. If anything should happen to either the mare or the filly now, Sara would lose her mind.

“They should be.” Beck lifted Sara so she wasn’t straddling him anymore but was across his lap instead. She was full grown and well fed, and he moved her around as easily he might lift Heifer. “What about you, Sara? Are you all right?”

“I think so.” She bit her lip in thought. “I will be, I am just… That wasn’t what I expected.”

“So are we dallying?” Beck’s expression was utterly unreadable as he studied the mare and foal.

“I must not decide this now.” She tucked into him as she said it, gathering a scent that was a combination of bergamot, hay, and horse. “I cannot think, Beckman. I cannot think one sensible thought just now.”

“Good.” He sounded smug and relieved both.

He lifted her in his arms, had her take the lantern down from its peg, and carried her back to the house. When he set her on her feet at her apartment door, he didn’t kiss her, but he did take her in his arms.

His voice rumbled under her ear where she’d laid it against his chest. “Even if you decide we shall not dally, Sara Hunt, I will be in your debt for the comforts you shared with me this night. All the comforts.”

When Sara wished he’d kiss her again or at least hold her for a few more moments, he disappeared up the steps to the cold and darkness above.

“May I ask for your help with something in the barn this morning, Miss Allie?” Beck tossed an orange into the air, caught it, and began peeling it.

“You may.” Allie tried to toss her orange, only to have Beck pluck it out of midair. He started over on hers, then set both oranges on the counter. “Mr. North hasn’t come down yet, so I’ll help with his chores.”

“Give him a little time,” Beck said. “I doubt you’d manage to get his chores done by Tuesday, so conscientious is our Mr. North. Put your sabots on, please, so we can see to this task before your aunt is done making breakfast.”

“What if Mr. North died last night?” Allie asked, clumping out the back door in her wooden shoes. “Or took off for Portsmouth like the twins?”

“What if the fairies took him and dropped him in the hot spring?” Beck suggested, “Which is just about as likely.” He held the barn door for her, provoking a shy grin from Allie. “Are you ready to help?”

“Yes. But with what?”

He led her over to Hermione’s stall and hefted her up to stand on a trunk.

“You have to help someone learn to make friends,” he said, nodding toward the occupants. “There’s a little girl in there ready to take the world by storm, but she needs a friend to scratch her neck and pet her and show her what brushes are for.”

Allie’s eyes went round, and her shoulders lifted with glee. “A baby for Hermione, and you say it’s a girl. She’s gorgeous, absolutely bee-yoo-tee-ful. I must sketch her this instant, and then, she must have a name.”

That sketching came before naming struck Beck as significant. He spent a few minutes acquainting Allie and the filly, until Allie was gently scratching the little beast on its fuzzy neck.

“I must get my sketch pad.”

Beck rose slowly from the straw so as not to spook the filly. “I suggest you eat a decent breakfast, feed Hildy, and do whatever other chores are expected of you before you start, or you’ll just have to stop midway.”

A jutting chin was his answer. “That is not fair. That is just not fair. She’s all soft and pretty and cute now, and I want to sketch her now.”

Beck tweaked a braid. “She’ll be here, Allie. When you get back to the house, be sure to wash your hands. Be thinking of a name while I take care of mucking and watering.”

“I will.” Allie turned abruptly to dash out the door, caught herself, and left the stall at a dignified pace. She even walked to the barn door before breaking into a dead run across the backyard.

Beck had mucked the stalls, refilled the water buckets, fed the chickens, and pitched fresh hay for the horses and the milk cows when Sara appeared, the egg basket over her arm.

“Good morning.” Beck smiled at her as he hung up his fork. “How fare you on this fine, frigid day?”

Sara kept her gaze on the foal, who was in fine fettle. “It is colder, isn’t it? Is she doing well?”

“She couldn’t be better. What of you, Sarabande Adagio?”

No cap. He would go to his grave pleased in some measure to have rid her of her caps.

Sara glanced at him, but only fleetingly. “I’m fine.”

Sara’s variety of fine did not invite a good-morning kiss. In Beck’s breeches, the sunrise lost some of its glory.

“Are you truly fine, or wishing the ground would swallow you up?” He leaned in and pitched his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Or are you a trifle sore and anticipating the next time you come upon me all alone late at night?”

“Of course not.” She put more surprise than dismay in her words.

Beck lingered close long enough to catch a hint of her scent before aiming a naughty grin at her.

She fought a shy smile and lost. “Oh, maybe a little, anticipating, that is, but maybe not.”

“Well, there’s a rousing endorsement of a fellow’s opening moves.”

“This isn’t a chess match,” Sara said, watching as the foal teetered around in her bed of straw. “But whatever it is, I don’t know how to go about it.”

She sounded genuinely perplexed and not exactly pleased.

This again, though not, Beck surmised, for the last time. “It’s a friendly dalliance, Sara, and it’s not complicated. Here’s how it works: you indicate to me my advances are welcome, and I offer you what pleasure you’re inclined to accept. There is no obligation and no particular significance to it beyond the moment. I would ask, however, that we observe a certain exclusivity in our dealings for whatever duration it suits you.”

To add that condition cost him some pride. Would that he’d clarified his stance on the matter of exclusivity with his poor wife.

“Just like that?” With the toe of her boot, Sara pushed bits of straw around in the dirt of the barn floor. “You wait for me to drop my handkerchief, and we go at it?”

“I wait for you to encourage me,” Beck corrected her, “and then I have your permission to persuade you to my bed.”

“You’re thinking of bedding me right now, aren’t you?” Sara’s tone was puzzled. “And you’ve thought of it before.”

“I have,” Beck replied, trying to fathom the direction of her thoughts. “I can only hope you’ve had reciprocal thoughts about me.”

“And I can rely on your discretion?” She peered at her egg basket, as if the contents might be getting up to mischief if left unsupervised.

“Sara…” Beck’s tone was patient. “I won’t maul you before your daughter, and I won’t discuss you with North, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I suppose it is.” She rearranged the eggs. “I don’t know how to go on, Beckman. In the cold light of day, I don’t know why I would want to—though… I do. Want to go on. I think.”

Were she being coy, he would have flirted and flattered and charmed, and they would soon be climbing the ladder to the hayloft. Sara was not being coy; she was being honest, and while the rutting male part of Beck resented it, the part of him far from home and a little sick with it valued her for her genuineness.

“I’ll remind you why.” Beck took her free hand, cradled it between his own, then brought it to his face and rubbed his cheek along the backs of her fingers. When his gallantry elicited a soft sigh from Sara, he pressed her fingers flat and planted a lingering kiss on her palm, then folded her fingers around it.

“I’m reminded,” Sara said, snatching her hand back a little breathlessly.

She disappeared in a swirl of skirts, leaving Beck to admire her retreating form.

“You’re reminded,” he murmured, “and so am I, Sarabande, so am I.”