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“My, what a fertile imagination for a vicar’s daughter.” Chance shook his head, wondering if he could have made a worse choice of nanny for his daughter if he’d hired a Bow Street Runner for the job.
Then again, how could he have known Courtland would turn into an idiot?
“And what would you tell the authorities, Julia? That you helped a dastardly family of smugglers to flee the Marsh? That your host employs old seamen on his estate? Ainsley’s well-known here and well respected. Who, of the two of you, looks guilty?”
Julia bit her bottom lip for a moment, then said, “You. You look guilty.”
Chance threw back his head and laughed. “My God, woman, you’re right. Do you think it’s too late to ride after Dickie and his brother, turn them over to the lieutenant at Dover Castle? That may be the only way I can save myself.”
“We’re talking in circles,” Julia said, then sighed. “I’ve nowhere else to go at the moment and no way to leave here, and we both know that. And in any case, I don’t want to leave Alice until I know she will be happy here once you’ve gone back to London. But then I’m leaving.”
“To go where? Back to London? Back to Hawkhurst?”
“You really are an annoying man,” Julia said, exasperated with the entire conversation. “And I’m hungry.”
She got as far as the main room of the nursery before Chance stopped her by placing a hand on her forearm. He had to get through to her, make her understand, make her believe. “My family are not smugglers, Julia. I give you my word on that. But that does not mean that any of us would turn over two frightened boys to be hanged or transported.”
Julia took a steadying breath. “If I say I believe you, will you let go of my arm?”
Chance loosed his grip. “God, you’re impossible.”
“And you’re insulting,” Julia said, gathering all her courage and not even bothering to wave goodbye to her common sense. “I saw your reaction last night when I told you about this Black Ghost of Dickie’s. You know him, whoever he is. Don’t you? Is that why you’re here, why you’re really here? Are you simply using Alice as your excuse?”
Chance stood in front of the closed door to the hallway, blocking her escape, if that was going to be her next thought.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you the truth. My only reason for coming back here—God, why did I even think about coming back here? My only reason was to bring Alice here, away from London, with people I could trust to take care of her. Unfortunately my superior at the War Office decided I should remain here for a while, poke about, possibly find out why, with all the troops we have stationed along the coast, smuggling is growing more prevalent, not less so.”
“A fool would know that. Half the troops are in league with the smugglers, for one thing,” Julia said. “And, for another, the local smugglers are giving way to large gangs financed by wealthy men in London. Go to London if you want to find the source and most of the profits.”
Chance tugged on his earlobe again, realization dawning on him. “How involved was your father with the local Owlers? Did he simply turn his back while his church was used to store smuggled goods before they could be moved inland? Or did he go out on the runs?”
Julia set her jaw. “My father was a man of God, a man who cared deeply for those in his care and did everything in his power to alleviate their suffering.”
“Which doesn’t answer my questions, does it? But it does tell me what I already knew. You know the reasons and the consequences and can be trusted as much as anyone can be trusted. But we’ll keep up the facade, I believe. Jacko might not be as easily convinced or as impressed by those beautiful eyes of yours.”
“Stop that,” Julia said, angry. “Just stop that. Wasn’t last night enough for you? Believe me, I’m suitably cowed. I’m more than aware of my current situation. I know I’m alone here and under your so-called protection. Please don’t expect me to listen to your lies, like some impressionable girl. You have my promise that I’ll never say anything about what I saw last night or what I believe or don’t believe about what might be happening here at Becket Hall and even where your loyalties might lie. Is that enough? That has to be enough.”
Chance stepped forward, ran the back of his index finger down her smooth, pale cheek. “For an intelligent woman, Julia Carruthers, you can be quite naive. Do you really believe I’m not…attracted to you?” He leaned forward, whispered his next words in her ear. “Or that you’re not attracted to me?”
Julia kept her arms at her sides, her hands drawn up into fists. “You’re no gentleman.”
Chance pulled his head back slightly, cupped that determined chin of hers in his hand. “No, I’m not, am I? I’d had hopes, but I’m afraid it’s true, no matter how long it takes, blood will out. Lucky, lucky me.”
“Don’t—” Julia said just before Chance brought his mouth down on hers. He smiled as he kissed her, she could feel that smile against her lips even as her knees threatened to buckle beneath her.
She wasn’t resisting. Alas, she also wasn’t responding. Chance stepped closer, so that their bodies touched, and cupped his hands on either side of her face, directing all his energy into coaxing her mouth to soften, to respond.
He needed her soft, compliant. Willing to stay where he could watch her, too occupied with him to poke that pretty nose of hers where it didn’t belong.
What he hadn’t counted on was his own reaction to their kiss. The sudden need he had to feel her warm and willing against him.
“Open your mouth for me, Julia,” he whispered against her lips, feathering them with light kisses. “Let me in….”
Julia heard herself whimper involuntarily as her senses swam, as she felt her body fill with a yearning words couldn’t describe, urges her mind refused to understand. She only knew that fighting him—or simply her traitorous self—wasn’t an option.
“Oh, yes, Julia, there’s a dear,” Chance breathed as he felt her melt against him. He deepened the kiss, lightly brushing the tip of his tongue across the roof of her mouth.
She didn’t know what to do, how to respond. But, oh, what a lovely invasion! Julia needed an anchor or she’d float away. She raised her arms and grabbed on to the full sleeves of Chance’s shirt, not touching him yet pulling him closer.
Her obvious inexperience intensified Chance’s reaction to her. For all her bluster, all her show of bravado and independence, she was unschooled in the ways of a man and a woman. Unschooled but, bless her, not uninterested.
Not too quickly, he told himself, even as he slid his hands down her sides, to her waist, then slowly brought them up again, lightly cupping her breasts. She was slim and long-waisted, her breasts high and firm. Her body structure was so different from those smaller, rounder bodies now in fashion in London.
Artfully placed curls, dimpled cheeks; soft, giggling girls of little conversation and less wit. These were the young women the gentlemen of the ton favored now. They’d all bored him, even his own wife. Just as she had been bored by him.
Then again, Julia had just told him what he’d finally learned after fighting that truth for more than a dozen years: he was no gentleman.
She fit against his body, his hands, with the sleek strength and suppleness of a racehorse, the fine, clean lines of a greyhound. Made for speed, for grace, and with a great heart for the race.
Ridiculous! She was a woman. No different from any other woman. Many would call her too thin for lovemaking.
But none had ever kissed her. Had ever held her.
Chance broke the kiss, knowing he was becoming fanciful. He had to concentrate on the matter at hand and Courtland’s idiocy. “No one will question our association now, Julia, not even Jacko,” he said, touching her softly pink and swollen bottom lip with the tip of his finger. “You look well and truly kissed.”
Before Julia could think, she stepped back and slapped Chance hard across the face. “And what will your family think of that, sir?”
He put his hand to his cheek. Damn, it stung. He’d probably wear the mark of her hand on his skin for most of the day. “They’ll think, Julia, that at last Chance has met his match with this woman of his and that it’s damn well time.”
“I don’t understand. Why would your family allow your…your mistress under the same roof with your daughter, your sisters? Are you Beckets that uncivilized?”
“Do we give a tinker’s damn what anyone else thinks of us? No, Julia, we don’t. However, I am probably the exception, so please don’t shriek and faint when I introduce you to my sisters as my affianced wife.”
“So you’ll lie to your sisters, your own daughter? I don’t believe you. All of this deception because of what I saw and heard on the Marsh last night?”
“Among other concerns I or anyone in my family might harbor, yes. Not that we’re announcing the banns, as I’m still in mourning. In other words, our betrothal is for here and for now, that’s all. Give me a month, Julia. I won’t press my attentions on you again. After a month, it won’t matter who you talk to or what you think you know.”
Julia protectively pressed her hands to the center of her chest, then realized she had waited much too long to worry now about her modesty. “It’s…it’s as if I were a prisoner here at Becket Hall.”
“True enough.” Chance smiled as he held out his arm to her. “Nevertheless, Miss Carruthers—welcome to the family. Shall we go down to breakfast?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
JULIA SAT IN THE MAIN salon at Becket Hall, her stomach comfortably full after a plentiful and well-prepared dinner, wondering how long she would have to wait before she’d be allowed to retire to her newly assigned bedchamber on the second floor.
She hadn’t seen Chance Becket all day. He’d simply left her alone outside the morning room to muddle through coddled eggs on her own, and she really was more than a little angry with the man. Even if he had looked so very handsome tonight at the dinner table, arriving late, with no apologies and only a warning squeeze of her shoulder as he bent to kiss her cheek before taking up his own chair.
Callie had giggled, and Julia had known that her cheeks had gone red. But then everyone had started talking at once again and Julia had had to choose whether to sit and stew or join in. She’d joined in. And taken peeks across the table, drat that huge candlestick, to see if Chance might be looking at her.
He had been, several times. But was that because he wanted to see her or because he thought he should appear as if he wanted to see her?
If only she could forget that assault on her person this morning. And, more especially, her reaction to Chance’s kiss, the intimate way he had touched her, the words he had spoken to her. Open your mouth…let me in….
She felt caught up in a dream, one that could just as easily become a nightmare. Even now, Julia’s head was still spinning from everything that had occurred from the moment the coach had stopped on the Marsh last night.
She’d come face-to-face with the most benevolently frightening man she’d ever seen. She’d met Cassandra and the rest of the Beckets. She’d been kissed by Chance Becket.
She’d kissed Chance Becket.
At least the family called “happily uncivilized” by Chance Becket had adopted the trappings of civilization. Becket Hall was wonderfully appointed, if located in a very isolated area of Romney Marsh.
And his sisters were delightful.
Morgan Becket amazed Julia, simply amazed her. The young woman was exotic, with darkest brown hair and deep gray eyes. She had the glow of the sun about her on her flawless skin and she seemed…ripe. Yes, that was the word. Ripe. Lush. Stunningly beautiful. But perhaps what was most beautiful about Morgan Becket was that the girl seemed to have no idea of that beauty—or, at the least, did not act as if she cared.
Morgan Becket walked and spoke as if she wore breeches, not her simple but well-made palest blue gown, more than once quietly cursing her skirts for tangling when she crossed her legs at the knee.
She’d told a story at the dinner table, a more than slightly bawdy joke, then waited until Ainsley Becket had smiled a small, indulgent half smile before she’d laughed.
Julia thought at the time that Morgan hadn’t really understood the joke but had simply parroted something she’d heard and hoped for a reaction from her family.
For as lively and animated as Morgan was, another Becket “daughter” was quiet.
Julia looked across the large room, pretending not to watch as Eleanor Becket adjusted the skirt of her simple gray gown over her legs, then bent to rub at the calf of one of them. Eleanor was small and slight, ethereal-looking, with huge brown eyes in a gamine face that wore a much too serious expression for such a lovely young woman.
“Her leg pains her,” Cassandra whispered as she sat down beside Julia. “We don’t notice.”
“I’m sorry,” Julia said, quickly lowering her eyes. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
“Elly didn’t see you looking,” Cassandra assured her, then popped another sugarplum into her mouth. “Now please pretend you are enjoying my company very much or else someone will take it into their head to send me back upstairs to bed, and I’m heartily sick of being sick in bed.”
Julia smiled at the girl. “I think we’d be smart to keep Alice away from you. You may be a disquieting influence on her.”
Cassandra considered this. “No. That would be Fanny. Odette says she’s got the devils in her. I’m simply spoiled straight down to the bone because Papa thinks I look like Mama, and he loved her very much.”
“Is that her portrait above the mantel?” Julia asked, sure it was, for Cassandra looked very much like the smiling young woman in the portrait, captured in all her youth and beauty. The woman’s hair was darker, but the smile was so like her daughter’s it was almost uncanny. “She’s wearing the most beautiful gown. All those colors!”
Cassandra looked at the portrait. “Odette says Mama called it her rainbow gown. Papa found the silk somewhere and brought it to her as a present. But it’s gone now. It got lost.”
“Callie, why are you still here? I went to your room to tuck you up and you weren’t there.”
Cassandra Becket sighed theatrically and Julia hid a smile behind her hand.
“You didn’t want to tuck me up, Fanny,” Cassandra said. “You wanted to ask me questions about Julia. What’s she like, Callie? Will I like her, Callie? Why don’t you just sit down and find out for yourself?”
“You’re an odious child,” Fanny said in an offhand tone that told Julia she’d offered those sentiments often in the past, and then she smiled at Julia. “Callie’s such an infant. Come along, infant, you belong in bed. If Papa comes in here after his brandy and cigar and sees you, he’ll look at you. You don’t want him looking at you, do you?”
Apparently Cassandra did not. “I have to go upstairs now, Julia,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “But don’t worry, I’ll see you in the morning.”
Julia watched Cassandra and her sister Fanny leave the room holding hands, Cassandra already chattering to her sister, Fanny nodding her blond head as she smiled a delightfully wide smile down at Callie.
“Fanny makes it sound as if Papa would punish Callie if he found her still here,” Eleanor said from her chair. “It’s hardly that. Callie’s been sick, and no one wants to worry Papa about anything.”
“I see,” Julia said, not seeing at all. Ainsley Becket certainly hadn’t given her the impression that he needed to be shielded from anything. He’d generously included her in their dinner conversation and seemed to listen with both ears when she’d talked about her late father and their life in Hawkhurst.
Julia had gotten the feeling that there was nothing Ainsley Becket saw or heard that he didn’t remember. And that some of what he’d seen and heard still hurt him very badly.
“You’re feeling overwhelmed, aren’t you?” Eleanor asked, sitting very still in her chair, her hands folded in her lap. “We Beckets can be a bit…daunting.”
“Not to mention numerous,” Julia said as she stood, walked over to seat herself in a chair closer to Eleanor. “I should like to write all of your names down on scraps of paper, then pin them to you until I can sort you out.”
Eleanor’s smile was glorious, lighting her entire solemn little face. “I felt the same at first. Perhaps I can help?”
Julia wondered what Chance’s answer would be to that question, wondered how much he really wanted her to know about his “family.” But then again, Chance was with Ainsley and his brothers, still in the dining room. “Yes, please. As you said, I am feeling a little overwhelmed.”
“But certainly not because we all look like peas from the same pod,” Eleanor said, then sighed. “I’m sure Chance told you at least that much? That we’re Papa’s children but not really his children, except for Callie?”
“Yes, he did tell me that.” Julia looked toward the closed double doors to the dining room, hoping they’d stay closed until Eleanor had told her more about her siblings, most especially about Chance.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Eleanor said. “They’ve left the dining room by now and are shut up tight in Papa’s study, all of them ringing a peal over Courtland’s head for some reason or another, or so Morgan told me. They’ve been at it all day, and I doubt they’ll be coming in here any more tonight.”
“Courtland’s rather a serious sort, isn’t he?” Julia asked, remembering the man who had sat across from Eleanor at the dinner table. Courtland Becket was tall but shorter than Chance and built along sturdier lines. Only his longish, unruly light brown wavy hair softened his features and kept him from looking petulant rather than intense.
“Courtland enjoys being dour and sober,” Eleanor said, then sighed. “Life is very serious to Courtland. I think Callie’s the only thing that keeps him from becoming positively grim. It’s as if the weight of the whole world is on his shoulders, and what isn’t there, he’ll pick up for the rest of us and carry it. He feels responsibility for everyone, you understand.”
“But he’s not the oldest,” Julia said, remembering what Chance had told her at the inn. “Chance is the oldest. I’m sure he told me that.”
“Yes, all right, we’ll do it that way,” Eleanor said. “There are two ways, you understand. Our ages or when Papa found us. Chance was both the first and the oldest. Papa always kept him close, so that’s why it’s so difficult that…”
“That Chance doesn’t visit Becket Hall very often?” Julia supplied helpfully, trying not to sound too eager.
“They had a falling-out when…some years ago. It’s why we’re all so glad he brought Alice here—and brought you here. To be fair, I think he tried to mend things before, by bringing Beatrice and Alice here, but his wife made it very plain that she wanted nothing to do with us or with Becket Hall. She called us a “barbarian menagerie” and much worse than that. Of course, Fanny did put a dozen frogs in her dressing room, with Callie’s assistance, which didn’t really help matters.”
Julia laughed. “No, I suppose not. How old is Fanny?”
“Sixteen, so she’s not the one I should tell you about next, although she is one of the last Papa adopted. Both Fanny and Rian the same day.”
“Those are Irish names, aren’t they? They’re really brother and sister? By blood?”
Eleanor shook her head. “No. But they were orphaned at the same time. Rian is six years older than Fanny. They used to be very close, but now he and Spence call her a pest. And she is, I suppose. Not quite a child, not quite grown. She still thinks she should be running free and even refuses to put up her hair.”
“Spencer,” Julia said, remembering the dark-haired young man who’d sat at the table looking very much as if he longed to be somewhere else, anywhere else. “He and Morgan seem somewhat alike—in their coloring, that is.”
“Some Spanish somewhere or even Portuguese,” Eleanor said, nodding. “At least Papa thinks so. They’re both very…passionate people. And when they argue? It’s really almost funny, unless Morgan is throwing something.”
Julia pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “I think I’m even more confused now. Eight of you! I know that isn’t a large family, especially here on the Marsh, but I had no siblings at all. Now let me see if I have this correctly. Chance is the oldest, then Courtland, then—Rian or Spencer?”
“Spencer by a year. Then me, then Morgan, then Fanny and lastly Callie. Papa hadn’t planned on us girls, not at all, but here we are.”
