Beckman: Lord of Sins (20 page)

***

The day was idyllic and sleepy, like a Sunday in late spring should be, but warm enough to make the shore breeze comfortable. Beck hired a horse and buggy to take Sara up on the headlands for a picnic, finding a depression surrounded by stubby trees near a hilltop to spread a blanket. The view from the nearby cliff top was at once private and spectacular, with the sun bouncing off a sea of white caps and the town spread out below them.

Sara brought her book, and Beck read to her, her head on his stomach as he lay back on the blanket. He hadn’t packed wine for some reason, but felt as lazy and relaxed as if they were on their second bottle. He set the book aside, thinking perhaps he’d read his audience to sleep, and let his hand stroke over Sara’s hair. Her eyes drifted open, and she turned so her cheek was on his stomach.

Her hand came up to shape him through his breeches, and Beck had to close his eyes. A gentleman wouldn’t ask anything of her today—hell, a gentleman would not have swived her silly before she even broke her fast. A gentleman…

She was undoing his falls, and he didn’t protest, but he did have his limits.

“You need to recover,” he managed. “I mean it, Sara.”

She paused, frowning, then extricated him from his clothing, which was a delicate challenge when he was more than half aroused.

“You need something else entirely,” she said. She got her mouth on him, but to Beck’s relief, she desisted abruptly. He watched with silent curiosity as she took his hand and wrapped it around his shaft, then shifted around so she was lying on her back at right angles to his chest.

Slowly, slowly, she eased her skirt up over her bent knees, and God in heaven, the woman wasn’t wearing drawers. She let her knees fall open, and let go a sigh.

“You wanted to look this morning,” she said. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, Beckman. No reason you shouldn’t touch.”

She tossed all modesty aside and began opening the buttons down the front of her bodice, while Beck watched, speechless and increasingly aroused, as she pushed her clothing aside until she was lying in a pagan tangle of flesh and fabric, exposed to the sun and his hungry eyes.

He did not resist what she offered, but feasted on the sight of her. He looked, he touched, he tasted. He put his hands on every inch of her, took down her hair and draped it over every inch of him. He brought himself to orgasm more than once just looking at her, brushing his fingers over her sex, her breasts, her derriere, her mouth. She refused him nothing, obliged his every request, seeming to understand that in this situation, trust and arousal were bound together for him.

“You’re going to burn,” Beck cautioned when he lay naked, spent for the third time, his hand caressing the firm curve of Sara’s bare buttocks.

Sara smiled over at him and wiggled under his hand. “Not in the biblical sense.”

“I’m not usually so…”

“Lusty?” Sara’s smile broadened. “Amorous? Passionate?”

“Horny.” Beck’s smile was embarrassed. “Selfish, hedonistic.”

“For God’s sake, Beck.” Sara’s smile faded. “It’s a beautiful spring day, you’re a healthy young man, and a little friskiness doesn’t make you your half-crazy brother.”

His eyebrows shot up as he considered the possibilities she was raising. Had he checked his lustier impulses to avoid sharing Nick’s tendencies?

“You’re not like him,” Sara said, seeming to read his mind. “He discards women as easily as old boots, to hear you tell it. He goes for the jades and widows, almost as if he doesn’t deserve a good woman’s affections. You know better.”

Put like that, Beck…
pitied
his older brother, a novel and not entirely unwelcome perspective. It was easier than judging Nick, and felt closer to the truth. His hand closed on the firm curve of Sara’s derriere, and she undulated again like a cat seeking attention.

“I have discovered”—she closed her eyes—“I like it when you pinch me.”

“Here?” He pinched her, not hard.

“Yes.” Sara arched. “There. And my… breasts and other parts.”

Those
parts. While he’d pleasured himself several times with her assistance in this protracted bout of friskiness, she’d yet to demand anything of him. And how odd was it that a woman married for eight or nine years wouldn’t know her own pleasures?

Beck smoothed his hand over her again. “Your husband was a selfish cretin, Sara. You deserved better.”

“I won’t argue that.” She rolled over, which left his hand resting right over her pubic curls, and Beck lectured himself not to start in with her. So far, he’d petted, caressed, looked, and looked some more; he’d kissed, tasted, and teased, but he hadn’t done anything that might irritate her tender parts.

Hadn’t needed to, not for his own pleasure anyway. It was a revelation, at least to a man who’d taken lovers on four continents.

“I haven’t played like this before,” he said, wondering when the brakes had been disconnected from his mouth.

“I haven’t either,” Sara said, fondling his flaccid cock. “It gives me ideas about those hot springs, Beckman. I hope you are prepared to be a sparkling-clean fellow in the near future.”

He hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her to him, in charity with Creation at her words. A feeling expanded out from his chest, of beatitude and humor and overwhelming affection for the woman half-naked on the blanket with him. It crested, and subsided before his fool mouth opened and embarrassed him trying to express it, but it didn’t fade entirely.

Not when they dressed each other, teasing and laughing; not when they drove back down to town, sitting too closely on the buggy’s seat. Not when they made slow, quiet love that evening; not when they fell asleep tangled in each other’s arms that night.

Only when Sara laughingly declined his proposal of marriage over breakfast did Beckman’s newfound joy in life abruptly diminish.

“It came on Friday,” Polly said, handing the little letter over to Sara in the stable yard. Beckman was in the barn, dealing with the inventory and the horses, while Sara dealt with an ache inside that had no cure.

“I wanted to read it, to hide it, and to burn it,” Polly said, keeping her voice down.

Sara glanced at the address, knowing it was from Tremaine even before she opened it. “Thank you.” She put it in her skirt pocket then drew it out again when she saw Polly regarding her with steady compassion.

“You had a lovely weekend, didn’t you, Sara?”

Sara considered the manor house as she and Polly approached it, as well as the outbuildings, gardens, and every other feature of Three Springs that appeared exactly as she’d left it just days ago. “The weather was gorgeous, Beckman is a consummate quartermaster, and Portsmouth shows to good advantage when one has rusticated as long as we have. What about you?”

She put the question as casually as she could, but there was a difference about Polly, a peacefulness that hadn’t been there a few days before.

“We managed,” Polly said. “Allie is going like a house afire on her new painting.”

“What did she choose for her subject?” Sara’s gaze drifted upward, to where the third-floor windows gleamed silver in the last of the evening light.

“Soldier. North professed to be hurt, that she’d consider his horse a more worthy subject than he. She’s probably already dreaming of the next study. She’ll be relieved to know you’re home.”

“Let her sleep, but, Polly?”

Sara met her sister’s gaze, on solid ground now that the first few difficult questions had been answered—or dodged. “My thanks, my very sincere thanks for looking after Allie and Three Springs. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to get away.”

Polly turned toward the eastern horizon, to where two stars were visible against the darkening sky. “Did it go well? With you and Beckman? I can have North thrash him, you know, if he… misbehaved.”

“Or didn’t misbehave? He was everything I could have hoped for, Polly. A completely, thoroughly enjoyable companion.” At least until breakfast that morning, when he’d completely, thoroughly bewildered her with his proposal.

“For somebody who spent the weekend with a thoroughly enjoyable companion, you look tired and sad, Sara. Let’s get Tremaine’s letter over with, and then I’ll tuck you in with a posset.”

Sara had wanted to forget this letter, too, but Polly was right: ignoring the threat Tremaine posed was not prudent. She followed Polly into the kitchen and glanced around.

“Where’s North?”

“Soaking,” Polly said, putting on the kettle. “It helps his back, and he promised Beck he would.”

Sara tore open the letter, scanned it, and handed it to Polly.

Polly frowned. “It’s pretty much the same. Greetings, he’s been remiss, would we consider a visit, how fares Allie… I don’t detect a threat in this, Sara.”

“He has those portraits, Polly.” Sara sat at the table, feeling as if her little weekend in Portsmouth happened to someone else a century ago. Somebody whom God liked and spared a little joy every once in a while—a lot of joy, in fact, and a generous portion of pleasure, too.

“He’s had years to use those portraits,” Polly replied. “He doesn’t mention them, and he may not understand what he has in them. Drink your tea, and where’s Beckman?”

“I expect he’s anywhere I’m not.” Sara did not want tea. She did not want to dissemble before her sister, either. “I think I hurt his feelings, Polly. I know I did, in fact.”

Polly was silent for a moment, stirring a fat helping of sugar into her own cup of tea.

“I used to be a nice person.” Polly sat, pushed Sara’s teacup closer, and covered Sara’s hand with her own. “Now I’m old and mean, and so I say: Better his feelings hurt than yours, Sara.”

“You’re still a nice sister.” Sara smiled wanly and sipped her tea.

***

“The prodigal returns.” North’s voice came not from the pool itself but from the shadows to Beck’s left, where the boulders were gathered along the water’s edge. “All that wagon travel put you in need of a soak?”

“Greetings, North.” Beck sat and tugged at his boots. “And yes, I am in need of a soak.”

“Maybe you didn’t get much rest this weekend,” North mused, “what with all that procurement to tend to?”

Beck threw his boot in the general direction of North’s voice.

“Cranky,” North observed, “but you’ve good aim. I take it Mrs. Hunt did not haul your ashes, Haddonfield, which must have come as a blow to your considerable charm.”

Beck fired the second boot at a higher velocity then nigh strangled himself getting his neckcloth undone. “She hauled everything I own or ever coveted, right out to the dung heap.”

“She’s
trifling
with an upright young sprout like you?” North put a world of dismay into his voice, and Beck was glad no lethal weapons were at hand.

“Stubble it, North.” Beck heard something rip as he yanked his shirt over his head. “I bloody proposed to the woman, and she bloody laughed and told me I mustn’t tease about such things on an empty stomach.”

Even North was temporarily silenced by that admission.

“You proposed?” Then, “You proposed
marriage
? The ‘do you, Beckman, take this woman…’ sort of marriage? To Sara?”

“That general idea.” Beck stood naked, fists clenched at his side, wanting to break something—or someone. North would have served nicely, except his back was already fragile. Then too, Beck, as usual, had no one else to talk to.

“Fast work, if you ask me.” North ambled out of the shadows, in a state of complete undress. “Maybe a little too fast. Shall we?”

“Why weren’t you already soaking?” Beck asked as he waded in. The heat felt good, but it made him realize how tense he was, how primed for violence.

“I come here to think.” North carefully negotiated the bank, and Beck could see well enough to realize the man was still moving gingerly. Very gingerly.

“You idiot,” Beck chided, “what did you do while I was gone? Patch up the west boundary wall by yourself?”

“You’ll see I did not when you ride out tomorrow and make sure the entire estate is exactly as you left it on Friday.” North eased one large foot into the water. “Now about this premature proposal you bungled so egregiously. I take it your manly charms were in adequate evidence to impress the lady?”

Beck had to smile at North in an avuncular role, or perhaps at the fool who’d heed North’s advice. “You are going to diagnose my love life?”

“Somebody had better. Sara is a sensible lady, and sensible women don’t turn down proposals from toothsome lordly pups like yourself.”

“What are you?” Beck found the underwater ledge and lowered himself to it. “Five years my senior? Three?”

“I am millennia your senior in experience, as is evident by my ability to perceive you rushed your fences.”

“I married a woman I knew far less well than I do Sara.” Which did not refute North’s point.

“And how did that turn out?” North asked, finding a seat several feet away, where the water would not be as hot.

“Disastrously, for her, anyway.” And for him. In some ways, it turned out worse for him.

“Maybe Sara doesn’t think she merits a man of your station. I, for one, am hesitant to ask any woman to shackle herself to me, and you must allow I am not the worst creature to crawl across Creation.”

“Not quite. Our womenfolk like you, so you must have some endearing qualities. In deference to your sensitive nature, I will refrain from enumerating same, but minding your sore back is not one of them.”

“A sore back will heal. A botched proposal will lie there, dying by inches, unless you revive it.”

“Or put it out of its misery. I cannot fathom why she turned me down, North. I am a toothsome lordly pup, for all she knows, and the next thing to an earl’s heir.”

North shifted to sink lower in the water. “You want to see a woman fidget, you ask her a question beginning with ‘Why did you…?’ Shuts her up faster than a loud fart in the churchyard.”

He fell silent, while Beck began to
think
rather than simply rant.

“I’m wealthy,” he said. “Not just comfortable, North. I’ve filthy, leaking pots of it, more than I could spend on three wives.”

“And the great good taste to keep this vulgar state of affairs to yourself.” North grunted as he shifted under the water.

“I’m not ugly.”

North sighed, as if finding a more comfortable position—or tolerating another man’s brokenhearted maundering. “I will allow you your petty conceits regarding your appearance, which is passable.”

“I have all my teeth.”

No comment.

“She’s says I’m kind, and I get on with Allie.”

“Allie is a tolerant little soul. Witness: she likes me.”

“Adores you and your horse, at least one of whom is passably good-looking.”

“A female of discernment.”

Beck swirled his hand through the steam rising from the pool. “I wonder if it’s not so much that Sara won’t marry me, and more that something impedes her from choosing freely.”

North was silent for a few heartbeats. “Haddonfield, you have your moments of inspiration, few though they are in number. Did you bring your nancy soap?”

“My future is imperiled here, and you want to scrub up?”

“I fail to see how your love life, as you call some pretensions toward romping, will benefit by my eschewing a good wash. I can be both sympathetic and clean. How much do you know about Sara’s first marriage?”

“I know Reynard was a cad who exploited her shamelessly,” Beck said slowly. “He was selfish in all the ways that matter—every one of them—and she hasn’t said it, but she was relieved when he died.” For which, Beck of all people did not blame her.

North shrugged in the water, causing concentric ripples to fan away from him. “Maybe she’s just reluctant to remarry. Were you going to get that soap?”

Beck rose in a shower of steaming water. “You don’t have to dissemble with me, your enfeebled lordship. I watched you try to navigate that bank.”

“I don’t want to go sailing onto my arse when I’m naked as the day I was born, and have only you to lend assistance.”

“Idiot.” Beck slogged to the bank, retrieved the soap, and lobbed it across the water at North. “Your back is killing you, and you are afraid if you fall, you won’t get up.”

There was silence from the water, perhaps because North was as appalled as Beckman himself at this bald pronouncement.

“Not killing me, precisely.” North put the soap to use on one muscular arm. “But muttering threats to that effect. I might have overdone it a bit riding into town on Saturday.”

“On horseback,” Beck pressed, rejoining him in the water, “or did you for once show a little common sense and take the wagon?”

Another silence.

“If it wouldn’t threaten you with permanent lameness, I’d thrash the daylights out of you, North. What can you be thinking?”

“Well… as to that.” North swished around in the water to rinse. “I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Oh?”

“No, I was not. Soap?”

Beck swiped it out of his hand and began scrubbing vigorously. “Did something rob you of your feeble wits?”

“Someone.” North’s teeth gleamed as he smiled wistfully in the dark.

“Hauled your ashes, did she?” Beck paused to smile back at him, relieved at least somebody had enjoyed their weekend—more like two somebodies.

“Not quite.” North’s smile faded. “But she appended a little lecture to our dealings, you see, and I was disconcerted to be told I needn’t be proposing, for she’d turn me down flat were I to wax inconveniently chivalrous. I’m well suited to a little rustic diversion, but not the kind of man who need offer marriage. I believe this rejection was offered in an attempt to encourage my dishonorable attentions on future occasions.”

He shut Beck up for about five long seconds, because a speech of that length from North required pondering.

“Sorry, North.” Beck pitched the soap onto the bank. “You didn’t even get to propose before she was handing you your boots.”

“Rather puts your situation in perspective.”

“Women.” It was said in unison, part prayer, part curse, and all bewilderment.

***

“I think North’s back is finally improving,” Sara said as she helped Polly with the last of the tidying up after supper.

“It should have taken days, not weeks.” Polly blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “He is the most stubborn man I’ve ever met, and if it were getting cooler, not warmer, I doubt his back would be healing at even this rate. Shall we have a cup of tea?”

“We shall not. I’m going to tuck Allie in, and then get the laundry handed around.”

“Wasn’t Allie supposed to do that?”

“She did the chickens for me instead. I don’t think she’s cut out to be a housekeeper. She will always choose the outdoor task over the indoor task.”

“You’re outside plenty.” Polly rinsed out a washcloth, and started going over the counters one last time while Sara did the same with the table.

“I am, but if I were keeping house in a less rural setting, say in Bath or York, I’d be a creature of the house, and the maids and footmen would be the ones beating the rugs and so on.”

“And are you thinking Bath or York might bear consideration?”

She was. With a third polite, ominous letter from Tremaine, Sara was indeed thinking of housekeeping elsewhere. Sara glanced at Polly over her shoulder and saw her sister expected an answer.

“When did you get so perceptive, little Polonaise?”

“When I turned sixteen. I do not want to leave here, Sara. The place is just coming to life, and Allie is comfortable here.”

“She doesn’t know any better.” Sara finished the table and draped her rag over the back of a chair. “Would you be as attached to Three Springs if North weren’t here?”

“Would you be as anxious to leave if Beckman weren’t here?”

“Ouch.”

“Yes.” Polly wrung out her rag within an inch of its wet little life. “Ouch.”

“I don’t think North will stay much longer, Polly.” Sara kept her tone gentle, though she hurt for her sister.

“I’m counting on him leaving.” Polly crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter. “Not really counting on it, but assuming it will come to pass. I just hope…”