“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.”

Seven

“You have mail again.” Beck’s voice startled Sara where she bent over the makings of Allie’s dress. When she straightened, her back protested the shift in position.

“Here now.” Beck stepped in behind her and settled his hands on the small of her back. “Can’t have you competing with North for least able to hobble about.” He kneaded the muscles running along her spine, and Sara gave up even pretending to ignore him.

“You shouldn’t be doing that, but you can stop five minutes from now, while I lecture you about people walking in the parlor door unannounced.”

“Who’s to walk?” Beck did not desist—she had hoped he wouldn’t. “North is flat on his back, Polly is putting together the midday meal, and Allie is sketching the filly. Not a one of them could be dissuaded from their present course by anything short of a French invasion.”

“Don’t say that, not even in jest. If you’d seen what the Corsican’s ambitions did to most of Europe, you’d know nothing associated with him is humorous.”

“I have.” Beck’s arms slipped around her waist. “I spent most of a year in Paris not long ago, and I’ve seen many other once-lovely towns and villages devastated. In the end, the man’s penchant for supporting his armies by foraging helped do him in, particularly on the Peninsula, and at what cost to the countryside?”

“Foraging?” Sara’s tone became bitter. “More like pillaging, and from the innocent people who had no notion of the glory of France or the glory of anything, save a decent meal and a roof that wouldn’t leak.”

“Those things are glorious,” Beck said, and he sounded sincere. “As is your hair.”

He sounded sincere about that too, blast and bless him.

“My hair is a disgrace,” Sara said, angling her chin to accommodate him. “Your manners are a disgrace.”

“Shall I ask?” Beck kissed her below her ear. “Sara, may I please hold you for a few moments in the middle of the day? May I remind myself how delectable you taste? May I offer you a little teasing and affection before you sit down to lunch?”

He turned her and wrapped his arms around her, but when she didn’t banter back, he let her go. “Who’s the letter from?”

“I don’t know.” Sara glanced at the missive he’d passed to her. “I don’t recognize the address. I take it you nipped into the village?”

“I did. I made it a point to tell Polly I was leaving the property. I should have told you as well, and in future, if I’m rambling beyond the estate, I will.”

This from a man who’d be leaving any day to assume a place as an earl’s heir?

“Have the twins been back to collect their pay?”

Beck’s mouth—his beautiful, tender mouth—creased with disapproval. “The twins are nowhere to be seen. I ran into a relation of mine in The Dead Boar.”

“In our village?” He was related to an earl, for pity’s sake. “Are we to have company?”

“Not at present,” he said, finding a seat on the arm of a sofa. “My brother Ethan was on his way to Portsmouth to look in on some peach seedlings he’d had shipped from Georgia. It was probably a chance encounter, as most of ours are.”

Sara studied him, catching the scent of some unresolved family difficulty. “You seem to like your family. Is this Ethan not agreeable to you, that you meet him only by happenstance?”

Beck reached for her, and she let him take her hand. “In truth, I hardly know the man. He was booted off to boarding school under a cloud of drama when I was nine, and never did come back to Belle Maison. My father’s situation may be inspiring some sort of rapprochement between Ethan and the earl, but at the very least it was good to have a cordial exchange with my brother.”