“Your servant, Mrs. Hunt.” He bowed slightly and smiled at her, and they were soon treading the cold corridors.

“You’re quiet all of a sudden, Mr. Haddonfield, as if a candle has gone out. You were charming at dinner. Now you fall silent.”

“Considering Polly and her swain,” Beck replied as they approached his door. “You don’t have to escort me up, you know, but I considered you might have wanted to leave them some privacy.” He opened the door for her and admired her backside as she preceded him into his sitting room.

She was quick and graceful, and she smelled of all the lovely scents of a well-kept home. He hadn’t spent dinner being charming. He’d spent dinner making infernal small talk, wishing she’d look at him and resenting the hell out of her stupid caps.

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.”