Beckman: Lord of Sins

“Several hours at least. They walk out. She takes him his lunch. I think he reads to her some evenings.”

Good work, North, Beck wanted to retort, but he had a point to make.

“And how many hours in a week do you spend in housework?”

She was silent a moment. “Seventy, at least.”

“But you think this one hour with me will define you to the exclusion of those seventy? I’d say you’re entitled to one hour a week, Sara, at least one, to be pleasured, held, and talked to like an adult. Surely you don’t begrudge yourself that little respite?”

Surely he didn’t begrudge it to himself?

When she didn’t answer but went back to playing with his nipple, he knew she was considering his argument. He could tell this, he assured himself, by the thoughtful manner in which she was driving him beyond reason with her mouth.

She fell asleep on his chest, much to his relief. He indulged in a long, long hour of holding her and letting his hands travel at will over the soft planes and hollows of her skin before wrapping her in his dressing gown and carrying her through a silent house to her bed. When he was convinced she wouldn’t wake, he returned to her room with her clothing and slippers, kissed her as she slumbered on, and sought his own bed.

Not until he was almost asleep did it occur to him that a married woman, of all women, ought to have a nodding acquaintance with a piss hard, particularly if she’d traveled with her husband in close quarters.

But to Sara, the whole idea had been terra incognito—as had the idea of sexual pleasure.

Interesting.

Ten

Nick Haddonfield rode along beside his half brother Ethan Grey as their horses trotted the perimeter of one of Nick’s farms in Kent. Long ago, as boys, Nick had not needed to speak with his brother, so thoroughly familiar had they been with each other’s hearts and minds. And now… the silence had taken on a taut, unhappy quality that made Nick want to gallop off in any other direction.

They could not discuss the earl’s failing health—what would be the point?

They would not discuss the weather, Ethan having no tolerance for idle talk.

They should not discuss Nick’s attempts to find a bride before the earl passed away, lest Nick end up babbling to his brother about impossible things best kept silent.

Ethan rubbed a gloved hand down his horse’s golden neck. “I ran into Beckman down near Portsmouth.”

Beck was a fine topic for discussion, a safe topic.

“I gather from his correspondence that Three Springs was much in need of attention?”

Ethan shot Nick a look that suggested the topic was perhaps not so safe. “Beck is plowing and planting like a yeoman, Nicholas. His muscles rival your own. I begin to think his sense exceeds yours or mine too.”

Nick steered Buttercup around a mud puddle, while Ethan’s gelding shied at the comparable hazard in the parallel rut. “Beckman is very sensible, except when he’s not.”

The next look from Ethan was easier to read: Nick was spouting nonsense. “Beckman will see Three Springs put to rights, provided you or the earl don’t banish him to some foreign shore once again.”

Nick silently scolded his grandmother for carrying tales to all corners of the family, even corners estranged from one another—banish, indeed. “Better that dear Becky take a repairing lease overseas from time to time than be the object of unkind talk.”

“Hmm.”

Nick was an older brother many times over. He knew older brothers took special delight in finding the most aggravating delivery possible of even a single syllable. In future, he noted to himself, he would not “hmm” quite so often at his younger siblings.

“What, Ethan?”

“God forbid a Haddonfield should engender talk, particularly talk more interesting than that caused by the Berserker of the Bedroom.”

As broadsides went, that quiet observation would do nicely. “You aren’t in possession of all the facts. The death of his wife rather knocked Beck off his pins. He’s done better lately, but one worries for him.”

“For him, or for the consequences to his family? From what little I know, Beckman has been widowed nigh eight years. For the last three of those years, I haven’t heard a single word regarding him when there’s a Haddonfield to be gossiped about.”

The retort Nick was prepared to deliver never made it past his lips.

Three years? Had it been three years since he’d dragged Beckman out of that cesspit in Paris?

No, closer to four…

“You’re silent, Nicholas. When you might be describing some fool’s errand in the far north for our younger brother or a repairing lease in, say, St. Petersburg, you’re silent. I beg you not to spoil such a boon. One thanks God for the occasional small favor.”

Ethan nudged his gelding into a canter, and Nick—rather than offer a reply—let his mare speed up to keep pace.

* * *

“What has you in such a good mood?” Polly drizzled brown sugar icing over the sweet buns she’d taken from the oven, interrupting Sara’s humming with her question.

“I slept well,” Sara replied, which was not a lie.

“I looked in on you before I came out to start the bread dough,” Polly said. “You were sleeping well in a very large blue dressing gown, and your clothes were draped across the bottom of your bed.”

Sara wished a blight on concerned sisters the world over, even if they did bake up delicious sweet buns. “Why would you look in on me?”

“I often do. It’s an old habit, from when you performed and were never there when I went to bed. I’d check on you first thing when I woke up, and last night, Sister dearest, you were not there when I went to bed.”

Sara felt her lovely mood wafting away. “Are you going to be difficult?”

“I am not.” Polly considered the buns, which were dripping with sweet icing. “I am going to be concerned for you. Just…”

Her thought was interrupted by a cold breeze from the back hall, followed by the sound of North’s voice sporting its customary irritable edge.

“The ladies will have to decide where to put them,” North was arguing. “I am not an arborist. Good morning, ladies. Are those sweet buns I spy on yon counter?”

Allie crowded in behind the men. “Wash your paws. Aunt will smack your fingers if you don’t, and she’s got good aim.”

Sara smiled at her daughter, glad for the interruption. “Good morning to you, too. Gentlemen, when you’ve seen to your hands, you can tell us what you’re arguing about.”

“I’ll tell you now,” North volunteered as he approached the sink and worked the pump. “Haddonfield’s esteemed brother has sent him a half-dozen peach trees, for pity’s sake, and now we must find them a sheltered, well-drained but fertile location, as if we’ve that to spare.”

Beck joined him at the sink. “It’s the first remotely civil gesture my brother Ethan has made in years—many years—and the gift isn’t to you, it’s to Lady Warne. It isn’t as if you’re expected to plant the deuced things yourself.”

“Deuced.” North shook his wet hands out, spattering Beck liberally. “That’s precious. I say the ladies can find a place for your deuced trees.”

“We can,” Sara interjected, as clearly, North was a bear with a sore paw—or back—about something. “And the walled garden strikes me as one possible location. Polly, do you need help with that? There are at least two healthy, full-grown men here capable of carrying food to the table.”

Or possibly, a pair of oversized, hungry little boys.