“I do, Geoffrey dear, and you know better than to worry.”
“You could send him to St. Peter Port, to the castle.”
“No, I couldn’t. You know I couldn’t.”
Geoffrey sighed. “I know you won’t worry over what others may think, or say-how it will look that he’s staying in the house, but-”
“Geoffrey, answer me this-who is there to see? Who will ever know where he slept?”
Geoffrey frowned at her. “What you mean is that no one anywhere around here will argue with whatever you decree.”
“Exactly.” Smiling, Linnet stretched up and bussed his cheek. “Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you next time I get to church.”
Vincent appeared with Geoffrey’s mount. Linnet stepped back as, capitulating, Geoffrey swung up to the saddle. After waving him off, she remained in the yard, watching him ride away.
Then she turned and strolled back to the house. Clearing the line of screening trees, she paused and looked up. And saw Logan in the window of her bedroom looking down at her.
Brazenly, she gazed back at him, drinking in the sight of his broad shoulders, his height, the sense of innate virility in his powerful frame, then, unhurriedly, she resumed her journey to the house.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, send Logan on his way-not until he remembered who he was. And if that gave her time to experience more of the singular pleasure he could show her… so be it.
After luncheon, she suggested he should rest. Logan thought otherwise. “I’ll come with you and the girls.” He held her gaze. “Montrose mentioned you tended animals, but he didn’t say what sort.”
“All sorts!” Gaily, Gilly grabbed his hand. “Lots of sorts. You can help us-we’ll show you how.”
Getting to his feet, Logan smiled-as innocently as he could-at Linnet.
She narrowed her eyes, but didn’t argue further. They donned coats and cloaks, then, with Jen, she followed him and Gilly from the house.
“The pens are this way.” Turning left from the back door, Gilly towed him along a path running along the back of the house and on toward another line of trees. Glancing around, Logan noted that the house was more or less encircled by trees, all old and gnarled, but affording excellent protection from the prevailing winds. The path led them through an archway formed by living branches, out onto a wider, more open expanse-pastures and enclosures protected by more trees.
“We have to feed the babies.” Gilly tugged him to a large wooden bin with a slanting wooden lid. Releasing his hand, she looked up at him expectantly. “You have to open it.”
He smiled and did, remembering at the last minute to push up with his right arm and not lift his left.
“Careful of your stitches.” Linnet was suddenly beside him, helping to set back the lid. When he raised his brows at her, faintly amused, she waspishly informed him, “Muriel and I spent more than an hour sewing you up-I don’t want our handiwork damaged.”
“Ah.” He continued to smile, continued to be tickled by her irritation; he’d noticed that none of the others dared bait her temper.
Then again, she had red hair.
And gorgeous green eyes, which she narrowed at him, then she reached into the bin, lifted a sack, and thrust it at him. “You and Gilly can feed the baby goats.”
Taking the sack, he turned to find Gilly jigging with impatience. With a grin, she whirled and dashed off. He followed her to one of the further enclosures and consented to be instructed in how to feed young goats.
By the time they’d done the rounds of all the pens, feeding calves, donkeys, fawns, even a few foals as well as the rambunctious kids, he’d realized what the vicar had meant about Linnet’s strays. Strays, orphans-those without family. She took them all in, and did her best to care for them.
With daylight waning before what looked to be a storm blowing in, they returned the sacks of grains, carrots, and turnips to the bin, then between them, he and Linnet lowered the lid and secured it. They’d exchanged barely a word since beginning the feeding. Falling into step alongside her, behind Jen and Gilly, who skipped ahead comparing notes on their favorite “pets,” he glanced at Linnet’s face, smiled, and looked ahead.
Deciding she was unlikely to do more than wither him for his presumption, he murmured, “You’re not exactly the usual run of gently bred female.”
He felt the green glance she sent him.
“Do you know so many gently bred females, then?”
He considered the question. “I suppose I must, given my comment.”
She made a scoffing sound. “If you can’t remember details, how can you know what gently bred females are like-what the limits of behavior are?”
“I know they wouldn’t share a bed with a stranger-not under any circumstances.” He caught her eyes-her wide green eyes-as she glanced at him. “I remember that much.”
He could see the question in her eyes-and could think of only one reason it would be there. His pulse leapt, but before he could press further and wring an admission from her, she looked forward and said, “Thank you for helping-you’re very good with children. Perhaps you’ve spent time with others at some point-can you remember? Perhaps you have some of your own?”
The idea rocked him. But… “No-I don’t think so.” But he couldn’t be sure. The notion left him with a hollow feeling; the idea he might have children and had forgotten them, however temporarily, chilled him-and in some stirring corner of his brain, he knew there was a reason for the feeling.
When he continued silent, keeping pace beside her, cloak pushed back, his hands in his breeches pockets, head bent, a frown tangling his black brows, Linnet tried to congratulate herself on having so successfully deflected him, but his continued silence nagged at her. Almost as if she’d landed a low blow.
She suspected she had.
She’d noticed how well he interacted with the boys; they’d only known him a day, yet they’d instantly taken to him. That wasn’t, perhaps, surprising; even bandaged, he cut a dashing figure with his peculiar aura of danger hanging about him almost as tangibly as her father’s old cloak. But the girls were usually much more reserved, yet even quiet Jen had smiled and chatted to him as if she’d known him for months, if not years.
He’d been attentive, responsive, engaged, yet utterly dictatorial. He’d stopped Gilly from climbing too high on a fence with the simple words, “No-get down.”
The order had been utterly absolute; he’d expected to be obeyed-and he had been.
That moment, above all, had bothered her; she knew all there was to know about command, and she liked, indeed insisted on, being the one who wielded it.
Logan-whoever he was-was a born leader; now she’d started looking, she could see the telltale signs. And all her instincts were telling her it wasn’t his size or his strength she should be wary of. In personality and character they were very much alike. Giving him any reason to consider her one of those it was his duty, indeed, his right, to protect-and to therefore issue orders to, ones he would expect to be obeyed-would only result in battles, battles he wouldn’t win, but she didn’t need those sort of clashes in her life.
She didn’t need, didn’t want, a man who expected to control her, to bend her to his will, anywhere near.
Especially not if he might succeed.
Her saner side had come to the fore. Despite her brazen self still wanting to spend as many nights as possible in his arms, self-protection trumped her newfound desire for sexual satisfaction.
Which had resulted in her instinctive, and it seemed perfectly gauged, deflection.
She glanced at him, saw him still brooding, and inwardly grimaced. Felt a touch guilty.
But at least she’d had time to slow her heartbeat. He’d evoked a moment of uncharacteristic panic, but she was over that now. No matter how much he might suspect, no matter how much he might hint, he couldn’t actually know-not for certain. Unless she told him, or in some way gave herself away, he couldn’t be sure he truly had made her sob and moan last night.
They entered the house in the girls’ wake. When they paused to hang up their cloaks in the hall, she glanced at him again.
