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.”

Four

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.”

“North…” Beck paused, because privacy was one thing, and North’s opinion of him was something else entirely. “You do not know what I’m used to, and I did not ask you for particulars on the vices available close at hand. I am not, nor have I ever been, plagued with the tendencies that make my brother nigh infamous.”

“Your brother?”

“Nicholas, Viscount Reston.” Beck walked over to the porch railing and leaned a hip on it. “He is rather a favorite with a certain stripe of female, with any stripe of female for that matter. For those of questionable virtue and reasonable discretion, he returns their appreciation… or he did. He’s bride hunting now, and one suspects this has curbed his enthusiasm for certain activities.”

“He bride hunts while you rusticate. London’s loss is Three Springs’s gain. Shall we see to our breakfast?”

From North, that amounted to a ringing endorsement of Beck’s chosen task, which North would, of course, serve up as casually as scrambled eggs on toast.

“This is beautiful, Mr. St. Michael. Absolutely… I saw one like it in the villa of a Russian archduke near Sebastopol. It’s likely Persian and worth a great deal.”

Tremaine St. Michael did not let his impatience show by gesture or expression, because commerce was commerce, whether one peddled wool—which he did in great quantity and very profitably—or wanted to know what a very old and ornate amber-and-ivory chess set was worth.

Of course, it was worth “a great deal.”

“Can you appraise it?”

Mr. Danvers, a thin, blond exponent of genteel English breeding, studied the set for a moment, kneeling down to peer at it from eye level. “Only approximately. The surest indicator of value is to hold a discreet auction for those with the means to indulge their aesthetic sophistication.”

Aesthetic sophistication. This was English for greed. Tremaine’s Scottish antecedents would have called it stupidity when it meant significant coin was spent on a game. His French forbearers would likely have called it English vulgarity.

Though it was a pretty game. Where Reynard had found it remained a mystery. Danvers was the English expert on antique chess sets; if he didn’t know its provenance, then nobody would.

Which might be very convenient.

“I have some other pieces I’d like you to look at.”