Grace Burrowes - Beckman: Lord of Sins

Too much wine with dinner perhaps, or not enough.

* * *

Mr. Haddonfield was in some sort of male mood. As he prowled along beside her through the dark, frigid corridor, Sara had to question her own motives. He knew where his room was now, and he was moving past the role of guest to temporary household member.

He did not need a housekeeper to tuck him in.

But Sara needed something from him. A few minutes of adult conversation that weren’t about Hildy’s slop bucket or Heifer’s amours.

A hand on her shoulder, a smile unlike the ones he tossed out so liberally in company during a dinner that had felt interminable.

“I’ll make sure Maudie turned down your covers.” She brushed by him into his bedroom, hearing his footsteps behind her.

“Sara.” Large male hands settled on her hips as Sara flipped down his covers. She straightened slowly then froze.

Had her thoughts inspired him to this? He’d touched her before, and God help her, she’d liked it. He was comfortingly large, clean, and full of a kind of bodily masculine competence that reassured. She wasn’t reassured—exactly—by this touch, and it wasn’t in the least proper. Still, she merely stood and tried to draw air into her lungs.

“You should slap me,” he murmured near her ear. “You really, really should.” He remained like that, his hands on her hips, holding her lightly but firmly from behind; then Sara felt one hand shift, and her cap was gone.

“I’m asking you to wallop me, Sara.” His voice was a low, soft rumble at her nape, and she felt his hand withdrawing pins from her hair. He kept his other hand around her middle, his fingers splayed just below her waist.

Over her womb. The heat from his hand alone threatened to buckle her knees.

“I just want…” He paused, and more pins went silently sailing to the quilt on his bed. Her braid came down and down, and then he unraveled it, slowly drawing his fingers through each skein until it fell to her waist in wild, curling locks.

“You hide your light,” he accused softly, and Sara felt him nuzzling her nape.

This was wrong; she knew it was wrong, but in his world she was a widow and fair game. Nominally, she was out of reach because she was under his extended family’s protection, but he was in truth just a visitor—and even according to the rules of his kind, she could stop him.

She would stop him, she vowed, just as he gently brushed aside the hair at her nape and settled his lips against her skin.

“Merciful God…” As heat ricocheted from his kiss through her body, Sara hung her head, knowing his arm was now supporting her, knowing the bed was right before them.

The bed…

She marshaled her considerable resolve and lifted a hand to cover the one spread over her belly.

“Mr. Haddonfield.” She couldn’t manage much more than a whisper, not when he was working his way to the side of her neck, the brush of his mouth so devastatingly tender she wanted… “Beckman, you have to stop.”

He went still, and she felt his sigh against her collarbone. He turned her in his arms and folded her against him, resting his chin on her crown. She slipped her arms around his lean waist and silently thanked him—both for ceasing and for not expecting her to stand unaided.

“You should still slap me,” he rumbled, his tone sad. “I would apologize, but that would imply remorse, and after this day, after listening to North’s litany of economies and inconveniences, after tramping through mud for hours and missing… all I feel is frustration.”

No, that was not all he felt. Plastered against his body, Sara could feel the contour of a nascent erection pressing against her belly. God above, he’d be… splendid. She wanted to push that thought away and push the man away as well, but he sounded so bleak, almost as bleak as she felt.

“No more damned caps, Sara.” He rubbed his chin over her unbound hair. “They’re a damned lie, and you’re fooling no one.”

He wasn’t being charming and gracious now. Perhaps she was the one who’d been fooled earlier.

“I do not countenance untruths.”

“Yes, you do.” His tone was amused, but Sara didn’t dare steal a glance at him. “We all do, myself included, if only to lie to ourselves. But you are not to wear those ridiculous caps.”

“And you are not to go kissing me in your bedroom.” She tried to pull away, but forgot the bed was immediately behind her and found herself unceremoniously sitting on it. She gazed up at his great height, trying to read his expression by the firelight.

“I haven’t kissed you.” He sank to his knees, utterly befuddling her. “Yet.”

He remedied the oversight, brushing his lips over hers while he knelt between her legs. He wasn’t an arrogant or clumsy kisser, thank God, because as long as it had been since her last kiss, Sara needed to be coaxed. He’d been clever by going to his knees, putting her a few inches above him, a position that suggested she had more control than he. His hand cupped the back of her head, gently burying itself in her hair as if he were hungry for even that simple touch.

But his mouth… he tasted of the cinnamon in Polly’s apple cake, and his lips were cool while his tongue was hot and knowing, and full of delicate, dangerous invitation. Sara’s insides fluttered, but she couldn’t resist the temptation to touch his hair, to part her lips just a little.

Still, he didn’t plunder but rolled his head back against her hand, rubbing his scalp against her fingers, then settling his mouth over hers again. Sara’s other hand found his shoulders and went skimming over his arm and his chest, then joined its mate tangled in his hair. Such silky, thick hair he had, and such a silky, skillful tongue.

She sighed into his mouth, and the wistfulness of it surprised her. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers.

The fire roared softly, while Sara sat on the bed, her hands in his hair, her mind as empty as the moors in winter, while her body… her body knew exactly what it wanted, with whom, where, and when.

“I’d just use you,” Beck whispered. Sara didn’t push him away. He sank down, his arms around her waist, and laid his cheek against her thigh.

“That would hardly be novel.”

Nor tragic, and yet, she approved of him for regaining his senses. She did not like him for it—she positively resented him, in fact—but he was striving for honor, something Reynard would have found laughable.

When Beckman made no move to rise—to let her off the bed—she indulged the urge to pet him. His hair was corn-silk fine, and his jaw slightly raspy with beard. The scar near his temple barely registered beneath her fingertips, but she did feel it.

For long moments, he didn’t stop her, so maybe her touch was soothing to them both.

“You deserve better, Sarabande Adagio,” he said, loudly enough she knew he intended her to hear him.

“Maybe you do too, Beckman Sylvanus.”

They stayed like that until Beck shoved to standing and drew Sara to her feet.

He frowned down at her, looking not at all like a man intent on dallying with the housekeeper. “I’m still not apologizing.”

Sara frowned right back. “And I’ll wear my caps if I blessed well please to.”

Brave talk. He stroked a hand over the scandal of her unbound hair and smiled.

“Of course you will.” He kissed her cheek and stepped back. “But it will be a lie, and we will both know the truth.”

She was not going to allow him the last word. Sara brushed a hand through his hair, kissed his cheek, and swished past him.

“Go to sleep, Beckman,” she called over her shoulder. “You are more tired than you realize, and tomorrow is a busy day.”

Like a good housekeeper, Sara—no plain “Mrs. Hunt” kissed like that—closed the door to Beck’s bedroom to keep in the heat. The agreeable result for Beck was that her various homey scents lingered as well. He sat on the bed, canvassing his emotions, trying to find the shame and failing wonderfully.

What he felt was horny.

He also felt relieved—not quite proud—because he had stopped. When she’d asked it of him, he’d stopped. He hadn’t even gotten a hand on one of those magnificent breasts of hers; he’d merely kissed her—and she’d kissed him back.

The wonder of that had him opening the falls of his breeches and extracting his cock from his clothing. He wasn’t given to frequent masturbation, but the erection in his hand didn’t deserve to be ignored. Typically, he refrained from onanism because his imagination wasn’t up to the task of adequately inspiring his body. Recalling images of Sara’s unbound hair glinting in the firelight and indulging in the fantasy of it brushing over his naked body, Beck let himself have his pleasure. When he was thoroughly spent, he stripped, washed, and climbed between the covers, his last thought a bet with himself that Sara wouldn’t wear her cap tomorrow.

* * *

Beck took himself down to the kitchen in the morning expecting to find only North, because the womenfolk made a religion out of rising early. To his surprise, he found Sara and Polly both, and the room redolent with the scents of bacon and fresh bread.

“Sleeping Beauty arises,” Polly chirped from where she was taking bread out of the oven.

“It’s getting light earlier and earlier,” Beck improvised, stealing a glance at Sara only to find her stealing a glance at him.

No cap.

Her smile when he caught her eye was like a spring sunrise on a cold morning, slow, sweet, and powerful for pushing back the cold and the darkness both. She winked at him, and his pleasure in the day defied description.

He winked back nonetheless, thinking Nick would have winked first.

“I’ll bring in some wood,” Beck said, for that smile and that wink had parts of his body in need of the cold air.

“Don’t bother.” Polly took another fragrant, golden loaf from the oven. “North has seen to it, and Allie’s helping him.”

“Then I can help Maudie milk the cows.” Beck was off to the back hall before Polly had a rejoinder for that too. He stood on the back porch, hearing the baritone of North’s voice from the woodshed across the backyard and the higher-pitched tones of Allie’s voice in reply.

North emerged, carrying a large armload of wood. “If it isn’t the man responsible for the clearances.”

“Good morning, Mr. Haddonfield,” Allie piped. Her load was much smaller, but her posture copied North’s exactly.

“What clearances? And good morning to you too, princess.”

“The twins are gone.” North paused to let Allie dump her wood into the wood box first. “Must have left after you reminded them of their options. Thank you, Miss Allie.”

She curtsied and grinned. “I’m going to help Maudie.”

“We’ll tell your mama,” North assured her, “and stay out of the stalls until we’ve mucked. You don’t have your boots on.”

She waved that admonition aside and took off for the barn.

Beck frowned at her retreating form. “Cheerful little soul.”

“The women are all in good spirits this morning.” North dumped his load on top of Allie’s smaller offering. “Even Hildy seems to be smiling, which is unnerving from a lady uniformly out of sorts unless there’s a slop bucket in the offing.”

“Maybe there’s a promise of spring in the air.” Beck did not comment on a man who was confessing to reading the moods of a breeding sow.

“Maybe.” North straightened slowly and braced his hands low on his back. “And maybe the ladies were more uncomfortable with a pair of drunken wastrels on the property than I perceived, and for this I feel remiss.”

Remiss was probably North’s term for wanting to beat himself silly. Beck savored that notion in the privacy of his thoughts. “Do you think it’s dry enough to risk a trip into the village today?”

North glanced around, likely seeing a thousand chores that would not complete themselves. “For what purpose?”

“To bring back a load of hay from the livery, to pick up the post, to ask about the twins, and to leave their severance at the posting inn. To lay in a few staples to tide us over until we can make it in to Portsmouth, to get the hell off this muddy patch of earth.”

“Ah, youth.” North loaded a wealth of amused condescension in two syllables.

“You’re at best a few years my senior,” Beck said. “Recall I’ve yet to see this thriving metropolis of a village.”

“There’s a whorehouse, if that’s what you’re not asking.” North stopped on the back porch. “I’m told the ladies are clean and friendly, though it’s not at all what you’re used to.”