doing, after all.” He leaned back in his chair, abruptly a study of elegant ease.
Leam had no further use for the spy. He left the pub. The dogs bounded to him across the thick expanse of white street, young Ned in their wake. He wasn’t more than three or four years older than Jamie, but the lad with his toothy smile looked nothing like the sober-mouthed child Leam would meet at Alvamoor if he ever left this village.
“I run them to the butcher’s, gov’nor. Got us a nice young goose for Christmas Eve dinner.” He lifted a wrapped parcel, his reddened cheeks shining with pride. Leam hadn’t any idea if Jamie ever smiled like that when he wasn’t around. Leam’s youngest sister, Fiona, said he was a happy boy. Leam had never wanted to hear. He’d never wanted to remember. But now he was going home for good and he would be obliged to remember every hour of every day.
At this moment he was trapped. Not only in a snowbound village. Trapped between the life he cared nothing about and the life he had avoided for half a decade, the place where his wife’s and his brother’s bodies rested not six feet from each other in a massive marble mausoleum.
He did not wish to ponder it deeply. Never again deep ponderings, he had vowed. It would be easier to let himself think ceaselessly about Kitty Savege, to caress and seduce her—or perhaps more accurately to allow her to seduce him as she seemed intent upon doing—and spend his holiday in a limbo of hedonistic captivity.
“Ned, I’ve two questions for you.”
“Yessir, gov’nor.” He fluffed the shaggy fur atop Hermes’s head, and the big dog leaned into him, setting the boy to teetering on the icy path.
“What can you play on that fiddle of yours?”
“Anything you like, milord.” He smiled wide.
“Good. My second question: Is there a man in this town who might know something about smithing gold or silver?” He had returned the cashmere muffler and coins to Cox earlier in the day, watching his reaction. Cox had thanked him affably but said nothing of the broken gold chain still in Leam’s pocket. It could prove useful to know what might have hung on such a chain, information Cox clearly did not wish to share.
“Sure is, gov’nor. Old Freddie Jones. Used to be a watch-maker in Shrewsbury till he lost three fingers to an angry cow.” His grin never wavered. Leam could not help returning it.
“Can you take me to him?”
“Yessir. Now?”
Anything to avoid a beautiful woman with amorous intent. At least until he cooled off a bit.
“Now is perfect.”
They set off along the street through drifts up to the boy’s thighs, Ned chattering the entire way about his master and mistress, Lady Emily’s coachman and the carpenter who had both helped mend the roof, Freddie Jones, and any number of other villagers. Leam listened carefully, for the moment content to be doing what he’d done for five years. And if his boots were ruined because of his need to prepare himself for his next encounter with Kitty Savege, that would be what he best deserved.
Lord Blackwood did not return to the inn. Mrs. Milch planned dinner for five o’clock, remaining with Emily in the kitchen all day, leaving Kitty to wallow in confusion and frustrated intent. As she was a woman of action, those emotions had never been her fond companions.
She set about decorating the place for Christmas. Clipping bits of low-hanging branches from an old pine at the edge of the yard, she tied them with green and white ribbons. A basket of cones arranged around a thick candle with a gold cord purloined from her reticule made a lovely centerpiece.
She was considering what might be done to rearrange the furniture in the sitting room for greater comfort when hushed voices came to her from the rear foyer.
“It’s quite precious, Milch.” Mr. Cox’s tone seemed abnormally tight. “I shan’t be happy to discover that one of your people here has taken it.”
The innkeeper made a coughing sound. “Well now, sir, you needn’t be worrying. If you dropped it about here Mrs. Milch is bound to find it while she’s cleaning and it’ll be restored to you right and tight.”
“It had better be, or I’ll make things very uncomfortable for you, Milch.”
“Now, now. That won’t be necessary. Could be you lost it before you arrived?”
“I did not.” But the gentleman didn’t seem quite as adamant, rather more anxious now. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Kitty busied herself arranging cushions. Mr. Cox emerged into the chamber.
“How convenient for you to come along, sir, for I am contemplating shifting these chairs about but they are too heavy for me to move.”
Kitty had never before witnessed a man so obviously shake off anxiety and don an amiable facade.
“I would be happy to assist you, my lady.”
They accomplished the remainder of her project easily enough. She thanked him and went to her bedchamber to straighten her hair and don the single accessory she possessed, a pair of ear bobs she carried in her traveling purse. Her mother had given her the pearls set in antique gold during her first season in town. Kitty’s father apparently had chosen them three years earlier, on her sixteenth birthday, not understanding that they were too mature for a girl.
Now she understood better why her mother had not allowed the gift. Her father’s mistress had chosen them, the woman Kitty never once met but who shared his life for thirty years.
Kitty fiddled with the ear bobs between her fingertips. Lord Blackwood said she should not have been with Lambert. He assumed she had been Lambert’s mistress, as everyone did. They were not wrong, to a degree. She had given herself to Lambert Poole when she was foolishly young and in love, and then again when she sought information that would ruin him. She had made her spinster’s bed; she could be no respectable gentleman’s bride now. But her behavior with a barbaric Scot made it perfectly clear that she needed a man in her life.
No. She needed that man. A man wholly unsuitable for her in every manner except one in which he suited her better than she had ever imagined possible. Hurried and unsatisfying, her experiences with Lambert had not prepared her for Leam Blackwood. Beneath the Scot’s heated gaze and strong hands she felt as helpless as the bird Ned had brought home for dinner, and just as easily consumed.
Innocent … as she had been when she first met Lambert—not during her first season in society, but years before that, at the age of fifteen, in Barbados. At that time her father’s mistress had taken precedence in his life. Kitty’s mother sought to win him back and she had not wanted her daughter to witness the struggle. Conveniently, the earl was rusticating his eldest son for yet another occasion of unfilial behavior. Aaron went along with his twin as always, and Kitty and her governess were sent too.
Lambert, managing his father’s neighboring plantation, came to Kitty in secret, encouraging her to sneak away from her governess to be with him. Aaron soon discovered it and brought it to an end, and Kitty was sent home to England heartbroken, not believing what Aaron told her—that Lambert hated Alex and only wished to use her dishonorably. Four years later, after their family emerged from mourning the earl’s death, Kitty finally made her bows to society and met Lambert again in London.
He pretended to still love her. She believed his promises and she finally gave her innocence to him.
But in all of that, in the tumult of girlish infatuation, she had never felt the heady confusion and sheer, unrelenting desire she did now.
She set the pearl earrings in place, smoothed her tired skirts, and for the hundredth time that day tried not to think of the earl’s words, that he did not know who she should have been with, that he had nearly called out Lambert three years earlier at that ball. Upon what grounds she could not guess, and it made her stomach flip over. He had adored his wife and remained faithful to her in refusing to again marry. Society accounted him an incorrigible flirt, but not a philanderer; he did not engage in indiscriminate affairs. He would not take full advantage of her.
In the corridor Mr. Yale appeared, trailed by a wolfhound.
“My lady.” He bowed. “I understand you are to thank for the holiday aspect of our surroundings below. You are all graciousness.”
“Sir, we stand upon the most brief acquaintance, I realize—”
“And yet one feels as though we have all known one another an age,” he finished with his slight smile.
“I suppose there is a sense of familiarity due to our remarkable circumstances.” A familiarity that had encouraged her to wrap her arms and mouth around a stranger in the alcove beneath where she now stood.
“No doubt.”
