Beckman: Lord of Sins

Five

Sara blushed, a hot flooding of color no housekeeper ought to be blushing. “I saw both of the men today. When I was scrubbing the windows in the carriage house, they bathed in the cistern behind the barn, and God’s nightgown, Polly… Your pencil would be smoking, did you sketch what I saw.”

Polly stabbed her needle into a hoop of linen but didn’t pull the thread through. “How is Gabriel’s scar?”

Sara was too consumed with the images in her head to sit, and yet, the little parlor hardly allowed room to pace. “I don’t know if it’s the cold or the passage of time, but I thought it somewhat faded compared to last summer. In any case, it didn’t seem to inhibit his movement. But, Polly, I also saw Beck—Mr. Haddonfield. Would to God I had seen such a man as a young lady, and I would have been utterly bored with Reynard’s silk-and-lace affectations.”

She’d seen him again, not in the dimly lit confines of the laundry, but in the broad light of day, sunshine kissing every wet, muscular inch of him.

“Lace affectations were only part of Reynard’s charm,” Polly reminded her, setting the embroidery aside. “I don’t have to guess at Mr. Haddonfield’s appeal in the nude. He’s taller than Gabriel but more sleek, without any lack of brawn. My fingers itch to sketch him. I envy you, Sister.”

Sara shook her head, though her lips curved in recollection. “Don’t envy me. They were magnificent, the pair of them, but the sight of them will keep me up nights for many a week to come.”

“Is there anything you miss about Reynard?” Polly asked.

Sara paused in her circumnavigation of the parlor, hearing the careful delicacy of the question—delicacy they should have been long past.

“Not one thing. He was not a good man, Polly, and his dying when Allie was young was divine justice.”

“I suppose.” Polly considered the hoop that had been set aside. The beginnings of a Tree of Life sprouted up in soft greens and muted golds, and a peacock strutted about its base. “It’s good you can say that, good you can be that honest.”

Sara kept her gaze on Polly’s domestic artistry. “Do you miss him?” An even more delicate question.

“I used to. I never understood exactly what he was up to, Sara, and he was always kind to me, as long as I behaved, that is. But then I see that Allie is almost ten, and I realize I was fourteen when Reynard came to St. Albans—I thought I was so grown up then, as all little girls do, but I was a child. He exploited a child, and that child was me. So no, I don’t miss him.”

“I miss things I thought I could have had with him,” Sara said softly. This realization was… sad enough that Sara took a seat in her rocker.

“Could you be any more tentative?” Polly’s smile was sad too. “Things you thought you could have had?”

“Dreams,” Sara said. “When he proposed, I had dreams for a happy marriage. When he talked of travel on the Continent, and touring, I had dreams of artistic recognition, of making some contribution to music. When we bought the villa in Italy, I still at least dreamed of good things for my sister. Despite all the hardship and travel, and… all of it”—even in this extraordinary conversation, Sara could not be more specific—“I dreamed, Polly. Now I fret.”

“What do you fret about, Sara?”

“I fret about Allie. I fret whether we’re doing the right thing for her. Beckman complimented Allie’s talent, and I almost took his head off. I fret Lady Warne will die, and we’ll be begging for crusts or worse. Allie is so pretty…”

“You can’t think like that,” Polly rejoined earnestly. “We can go back to St. Albans, pride be damned, Sara. Mama and Papa would provide something for Allie, at the least. We both have trades, and we’d have characters. Beckman sees clearly what we’ve been up against, and he’d make provision for us in any case. An earl’s son knows people, and I’ve a little put by. We’d manage, Sara. We would.”

“We always have.” Barely and badly, sometimes not even speaking to each other, but they had. “Mr. Haddonfield assured me he’d find something for us, but he’s a man, Polly, and here on some sort of lark or familial obligation. He could be gone tomorrow. We can’t rely on his word.”

“We might have to,” Polly said, “though for the present, I’d say things are improving. North is certainly more sociable with another man shouldering some of the load, and Allie seems to like having more company as well. Can you believe the twins were pilfering our household money?”

“Yes, I can believe it. What I can’t believe is none of us guessed it.”

“Just as he spotted that problem,” Polly went on, “I think Mr. Haddonfield can bring a fresh eye to the whole undertaking here. North works like a demon, but it’s as if he’s already too tired to see the larger perspective.”

Sara did not ask if Polly’s interest in the man was part of that larger perspective. She did not have to. “He does have a weariness about him. I fear I’ve acquired it too.”

“Then, Sister”—Polly picked up her hoop and frowned thoughtfully at the unfinished peacock—“you must allow Mr. Haddonfield to bring you a fresh perspective as well.”

“I still say he’s married.” Any man that fine looking had to have been dogged with opportunities to marry. “He’s just too… canny, too at ease with females in the kitchen and the laundry and the still room.”

Polly stabbed the thread through the fabric. “If he’s so married, then why hasn’t his wife written to him? Why hasn’t he written to her? Why doesn’t he wear a ring? Why doesn’t he get a faraway, missing-his-wife look on his face when he lingers over his last cup of tea? Why does he watch your fundament at every turn, and why, when I heard North telling him of the boarding house in the village that caters to men, did I hear Haddonfield disdaining to know of it?”

“Polonaise Hunt, you are a naughty, naughty girl—for eavesdropping so, and for not telling your only sister sooner.”

“I want to show you something, Mr. Haddonfield.” Sara’s tone made it plain, if the crisp Mr. Haddonfield did not, that she wasn’t going to show him how much she’d missed him that day. “Come along, we haven’t much light left.”

Beck ignored the glance exchanged between Polly and North, ignored everything except Sara, rising from the table and moving off to the back hallway.

“Polly, my thanks for an excellent meal.” The compliment was sincere. That he’d again beaten North to expressing his appreciation for Polly’s cooking was no little satisfaction.

“Where are we going?” Beck asked as Sara held his coat out for him.

“A short walk. I won’t keep you long.”

Pity, that. When she would have swished off ahead of him across the yard, Beck instead captured her hand and put it on his sleeve. “I’m not in any hurry, and I think Polly and North might appreciate a few minutes’ privacy.”

North might also kill him for it, but men were fools where true love was concerned. This truth might not be universal, but in Beck’s experience, it was at least international.

Sara’s steps slowed. “Do you think so? I used to be able to read my sister like a simple etude—you look at the melody on paper and you can hear it in your head and feel it in your fingers and your bowing arm. Now I must interpret her cooking spices and her silences.”

“While I interpret your caps and the way your skirts whip and swish as you rampage through the house.” They reached the end of the garden, and Sara kept moving Beck away from the house. “I’m glad you’re not avoiding me, Sara. Did I offend last night?”

He wasn’t going to mention her lack of cap. He was instead going to hope that if he had offended, he’d also disappointed a bit too, when he’d chosen to limit his offenses.

“You did… not offend. I’m a widow, not some pampered lady.”

She was taking him in the direction of the trees that formed the hedgerow of the home wood, a dark, tangled mess sporting two decades of deadfall and windfall.

“I’m told widowhood can be lonely.” God knew, being a widower was lonely. “That it can feel like an ongoing wound, an indignity, not just a loss. I’ve wondered why you and Polly use the same last name.”

And yet if she was lonely, like him, she hadn’t remarried.

“Lonely is a good word, an honest word, but I don’t think you mean lonely, exactly.”

“Where are you taking me, Sara?” Because she was leading him down a declivity, such that the house had disappeared from view.

“To the springs.”

“One suspected a property named Three Springs might boast some of same.” He switched his grip on her as they approached the trees, linking his fingers with hers. They circled around the side of a medium-sized pond and traveled a little ways into the woods along the stream feeding the pond.

“Hot springs?” Beck guessed. Steam rose from the water in the deepening twilight, creating a land-of-the-faery quality. He took a whiff of the air. “And not sulfurous. Shall we sit a moment?”

Because hot springs were worth noting, but they weren’t the reason she’d dragged him away from home on an increasingly chilly night, nor why she’d dodged his question about her surname.

“We can’t sit for long. It will be dark in just a few minutes.”

Dark enough for kissing? As a very young man, Beck had cadged a tumble or two under the stars, but always with the benefit of a blanket and some congenial weather. Then too, Sara was giving off not a single hint she intended to tumble him.

Which ought to have occasioned more disappointment than it did. If Beck coaxed Sara Hunt into intimacies, he’d be using sex with her as an antidote to lust and something else—grief, maybe. That she would use him wasn’t the comfort it ought to have been.

“There’s a bench.” She tugged him over to a rude plank and arranged her skirts while Beck came down beside her. “You should have Gabriel bring you here. His back gets to bothering him, and he’s too stubborn to find what relief he might.”

Beck took her hand as an experiment in modest comforts. Sara’s weight settled against his side, perhaps her own version of an experiment.

“This is a pretty spot, Sara. Thank you for showing it to me.”

The location was peaceful and attractive, not just to the eye but also the ear, graced as it was with the sound of gently flowing water.

“I resumed the use of my maiden name because I wanted to forget most of what transpired while I was married. I wore my caps because it was appropriate to my station.”

Beck looped an arm around her shoulders—the evening was chilly, and the sun was all but gone. “You wore your caps because they meant you had a kind of privacy, but housekeeping is an occupation, not the sum total of who you are.”

The longer she remained silent, the more Beck pondered the rightness of his words. She was Polly’s sister, somebody’s daughter, Allie’s mother, and much more that he could only guess at but was sure of too, somehow.

The first star winked into view on the western horizon.

“I am not just a housekeeper, Beckman, and Three Springs is not just a list of purchases and tasks. It has beauty and dignity and value—also hot springs some people would find a very valuable addition to their holdings. Most people.”

Another star winked into view against the darkening sky. Beckman rose and offered Sara his hand, which she took. As they strolled back in the direction of the house, he admitted that making love with Sara Hunt—who also had beauty and dignity and value—might be about more than loneliness and lust after all.

“I love that sound,” Beck said as North set a mug of hot tea down before him.

“What sound?” North sat across from him at the kitchen table and shuffled a deck of cards.

“If you’re quiet,” Beck said, “you can hear the murmur of the women’s voices in their apartment. They’re discussing the day, trading opinions, making plans for tomorrow, and so on. It’s the same cadence and rhythm in any language.”

And it put him in mind of the music of the stream by the springs.

“You notice odd things. Prepare to be defeated.”

“I notice you’re still disconcerted by today’s letter,” Beck said. “One hopes you’ll be able to concentrate on the game.”

“With your witty repartee to distract me,” North drawled, “the matter is in question.” He played carefully but made the occasional chancy decision, and they were evenly matched halfway around the cribbage board.

Beck moved his pegs. “I have a question for you.”

“You always put your fives in the other fellow’s crib,” North said, which was fine advice provided a man wanted to lose badly.

“Earlier today, you said Polly spoke six languages and had been to every capital in Europe. Were you speaking literally?”

North appeared to consider his cards. “Sara, as well. I don’t think Allie was much more than an infant when they returned to England to visit. Why?”

“So Sara speaks all those languages? Sara’s been to all those exotic places?”

“She has.” North tossed down a card. “If what Polly says is true, Sara was touring.”

“Touring?” Beck glanced over his cards. “As in being a tourist, seeing the sights?”

“That too.” North waited for Beck to play a card. “Sara has musical talent, as a violinist. She performed all over Europe. The Continentals aren’t as stuffy about women on stage as we are.”

Beck set his cards down as a curious prickling sensation ran from his nape to his fingers. “She was that good, and she’s spending her days washing the lamps and polishing the silver?”

“I believe it was her choice,” North said. “She has a child, if you’ll recall, and that effectively ends a career before the public, even on the Continent. Or it should, in the minds of most.”

“Why isn’t she at least giving lessons? This place… you don’t keep house at a place like this if you have other options.”

“Beckman”—North’s voice took on that patient, long-suffering quality—“we all have other options. You, for example, could be with your brother, flirting and gaming your way across London during the Season, but you’re bathing in cisterns and mucking stalls here at Three Springs.”

“Valid point.” And while he did want to be at Belle Maison, Beck did not want to be racketing around the vice-ridden terrain of Mayfair in spring. “You’re impersonating a land steward, and Polly—who I assume is a talented artist—is impersonating a cook.”

“I cannot vouch for her artistic ability.” North counted up his hand. “Allie says her aunt is as good as anybody she saw in London.”

“Allie’s been to the museums?”

“I gather she would have been four at the time.” North moved his peg. “She remembers what she saw.”

“Sara…” Beck ran a hand through his hair, mentally revising and reassessing things he’d tried to tally up before. “She’s hiding then too.”

“What do you mean?” North appropriated the deck and began to deal the next hand.

“You’re hiding.”

“Earlier today I was entitled to privacy. Now I’m hiding. And what of you, are you hiding?”

Beck smiled a little. “Probably. When I keep company with my brother in Town, there are too many females willing to tolerate my attentions in exchange for an introduction to Nick. It’s safer for me and Nick both if we move independently.”

“I’m familiar with the problem,” North said. “I’m told you first become aware of it when some sweet and naughty young thing rises up from your sheets and asks if you ever carouse with your brother.”

Beck’s eyebrows flew up. “And here I thought I was the only one.”

“We always do,” North said, glowering afresh at his cards. “We always think we’re the only ones when it counts, though in fact, we never are.”

Beck finished a quick lunch under a shady tree, soreness reverberating through every muscle and sinew of his body. At least the crushing fatigue of spring plowing had kept him from misbehaving with Sara again.

She hadn’t dragged him to any more pretty corners of the property, and no longer offered to light him to his room. Allie was a good and constant chaperone, and ye gods, the child was sharp. She was waiting for him when he got back to his team, grinning as she stroked the nose of the nearest horse.

“Watch your feet around these fellows,” Beck warned, checking the harness. “One misstep on their part, and you’ll have toes like a duck.”

“I’m wearing my half boots.”

“So have you come to help?” Beck surveyed the ground yet to be turned. Thank all the gods, there wasn’t that much of it. Just another few backbreaking, arm-wrenching, hand-blistering, gut-wearying hours of work.

“I have come to cadge a piggyback ride on old Hector. Mama said I might, because it’s a lovely day, the chores are done, and you’re to send me back to her if I’m a nuisance.”

“Duly noted.” Beck hefted her up into his arms. Hector took the outside position on the left, which, given the direction Beck turned the team, put him on the inside of each turn, and gave him the least to do. He could carry a little girl without even noticing the weight. “Up you go.”

Allie scrambled onto the horse’s broad back and, predictably, began to chatter. Not so predictably, she also scooted around, swinging a leg over the beast’s withers, then another over his rump, so she was sitting on him backward.

“This is more polite,” she informed Beck as the team turned into the first furrow. “So when are you going into Portsmouth? Mama says you might also make a trip into Brighton, because you’re thinking of selling the vegetables there later this summer. I think you ought to sell our flowers.”

Conversing with somebody facing him while he plowed was oddly disorienting. Beck had to look past Allie to fix his gaze on some object at the end of the furrow. Plowing straight was an art, and Beck would have said he had the talent for it, until Allie sat between him and the end of the furrow.

“What sort of flowers, princess?”

“All kinds. I don’t know all their names, but I can draw them. We put them all over the house when summer comes. Before the strawberries even come in, we have bunches and bunches of tulips and irises—I know how to separate those—and there are roses too, but Mama despairs of them. I like to draw the roses—they’re complicated.”

“What have you been drawing lately?” Beck asked, reaching the first turn.

“I always draw. In my head, mostly, which Aunt says is good practice. Mama saw you and Mr. North without your clothes, and Aunt said she wished she could draw you.”

“That’s nice,” Beck muttered. Turns were tricky, especially with horses hitched three across. “What else do you—she saw what?”

“You.” Allie grinned beatifically. “Without your clothes. Both of you. Mama and Aunt Polly saw Mr. North in the pond last summer, but after you unloaded hay, Mama was up in the carriage house and saw you bathing in the cistern. She said the sight would keep her up at night for weeks, which is silly. It’s just skin.”

Beck tried to divide his attention. “Allemande, you can’t go repeating such things merely to provoke a reaction. I’m sure your mother was mortified, and had we known, North and I would have been mortified as well. Modesty is a virtue shared by most decent folk.”

“Not Aunt. She says artists have to study nudes because human subjects are the most complicated. She drew naked people all the time when we were in Italy. I will draw naked people again too one day.” She wrinkled her nose and sighed in resignation. “I draw naked pigs and cats and so forth now. From what little I’ve done with them, I don’t expect people will be much different.”

“We aren’t going to talk about naked people. Or naked pigs or cats. What’s for dinner tonight?”

“Aunt is making roast chicken with smashed potatoes.” Allie smacked her lips dramatically. “And she said she’s making a chocolate cake with icing to sweeten Mr. North’s temper, because plowing makes him cranky.”

“Plowing, not getting much sleep, and dodging busy little girls with nothing better to do than plague their elders.”

“I’d paint if Mama would let me,” Allie groused. “Am I really plaguing you?”

“Of course not,” Beck assured her, though she absolutely was. He wanted to carefully examine his recall of the day they’d unloaded the hay wagon, and go over every detail of his dunking in the cistern. They’d both stripped down completely; that much he was sure of.

“I’ve decided I would like to paint Mr. North’s hands,” Allie went on happily. “It’s not quite a human subject, because I’m forbidden those, but I like hands.”

“Your mother might not approve. She was not even comfortable with your doing Heifer’s portrait.”

“But she told me it turned out well, and Aunt agreed. Aunt is never one to spare feelings at the expense of truth. She says an artist has to be ruthless.”

“I can’t like the idea of you being ruthless,” Beck said, thinking a relatively carefree Allie was challenge enough. “But tell me something, oracle of the plow, when was the last time you heard your mother play her violin?”

“I haven’t heard her play since I was little. There’s a pianoforte in the downstairs parlor, but she only dusts it, she doesn’t play it. She and Aunt argue about that too.”

“About dusting it?”

“No, silly.” Allie lifted her arms to the spring day in casual joy. “Aunt says Mama should teach me a little so I am suitably capable at the keyboard, but Mama gets all tight around her eyes and does that cranky-without-saying-a-word thing, and then Aunt gets quiet, but that never lasts.”

“Most mamas know how to do what you describe, sisters too.”

Allie lowered her arms and shuddered. “Papa could do it. I was little, but I remember him glaring and glaring. Mama wouldn’t play for him and his friends, and it was awful.”

She glared herself in recollection.

“I thought you were very young when you came back to England, Allie.” The plow hit a subterranean rock, and the team stopped.

“We came back when I was four, and we saw everything. That’s when Papa found out I could draw like Aunt. Then it was back to Italy, and I got lessons and everything. Aunt and I both had lessons. Then we came back to England again, but we didn’t see anything except Brighton and Three Springs. Papa was dead. Mama said I didn’t have to wear black if I didn’t want to.”

Beck urged the team forward and hefted the plow over the rock, his back screaming at the abuse.

“Did you want to wear black?” Beck tossed the question out as a distraction, unwilling to pry more directly. From Allie’s account and Sara’s own comments, Sara’s marriage had had its share of rough spots and challenges.

Allie smoothed her hand over the horse’s broad rump. “Of course not. I’m to have more long dresses in the fall.”

“You are growing up,” Beck said, wishing it didn’t have to be so. He missed his sisters badly and wanted nothing so much as to leave the team in the field, mount Ulysses, and see his father one last time. The realization blended with the plowing-ache to form a peculiarly poignant misery.

Allie heaved a great sigh. “I know it’s not all bad, growing up. When I’m older, Mama won’t be able to tell me what to paint. Hermione’s udder is dripping on both sides.”

“Thank you for telling me.” The plow hit another rock and sent jolts of pain up both Beck’s arms into his shoulders. “For good measure, I think you ought to tell Mr. North as well.”

“I’m being a nuisance.” Allie grinned, nuisance-ing apparently being great good fun in her lexicon. “See if I share these biscuits Aunt sent out for you, Mr. Haddonfield.”

Beck signaled the horses to halt at the end of the furrow. “If you want off that horse, my price is one biscuit.”

“Here.” Allie passed him a sweet and drew one from her pocket for herself. “They’re still warm.” They shared a companionable moment, munching their bounty, then Beck swung her down.

“Don’t sneak up on North. His language is colorful today.”

“His back hurts,” Allie said, her tone serious. “Aunt says he needs horse liniment, but he’s too stubborn to admit it. Mama agrees.”

“Then it’s unanimous. Where is the horse liniment?”

“Mama makes it.” Allie began to trot off to the next field. “It isn’t really for horses, and it’s in the still room with a purple flower on it. ’Bye!”

Leaving Beck to try to recall if, on the occasion of bathing in the cistern, he’d scratched his ass, pissed in the yard, or otherwise disgraced himself. He didn’t think so, because the business of the moment had been getting clean.

And Sara hadn’t just peeked, she’d peeked and told and was plagued by the memory of what she’d seen. He decided this was only fair. In the past weeks, he’d seen Sara on four occasions with her hair not only uncovered, but flowing down her back in a shiny, thoroughly unforgettable braid.

His sore, aching hands itched with the frustrated desire to undo that braid and touch the silken glory he’d known once before. His groin started to throb, until the plow hit another rock, and pain once again served to displace desire.