“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.

Eighteen

“He has a letter from your parents.”

Sara knew that voice and that scent, but did not know Beckman would accost her while she lay in her own bed. She opened her eyes when Beck climbed into that bed, spooned himself around her, and gathered her close.

“Get out of this bed.”

“Polly’s off somewhere,” Beck said, smoothing her braid over her shoulder. “Allie’s fast asleep. I checked.”

“You…” Sara tried to roll over to glare at him, but he held her gently in place.

“I expect your sister is trysting with North at the springs. I hope she is. We should try it sometime.”

“You should get out of this bed,” Sara insisted. “Allie has the occasional nightmare, and when she does she comes looking for me.”

“She’ll find you, but one wonders where this argument was all the nights you spent in my bed, Mrs. Hunt. Aren’t you interested in your parents’ letter?”

“No.” Sara flopped the covers for emphasis.

“Mendacity in domestics is a terrible problem.” The dratted man kissed her ear.

“Beckman…” The mere sound of his voice, the slightest hint of his scent, and some of the tension Sara had carried since Tremaine’s arrival left her body. “I’m not interested in another sermon from my father.”