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Liam stepped outdoors and scanned the yard, looking for a destination. The stone fence to his left seemed as good a place as any to have this conversation. He strode towards it, aware of May behind him. He’d give her five strides before her patience broke and she started demanding information.
One... May Worth could still frighten the living daylights out of him. That hadn’t changed in five years. He would have thought a man who’d been to war, a man who’d seen men die, who’d often delivered that death personally and intimately on behalf of the Crown, would not be so easily frightened by a single female. But logic failed to account for May Worth. There was so much to be frightened by: her beauty, her intelligence, her overwhelming confidence in the rightness of her opinion, but it was her stubbornness that frightened him the most, not because she intimidated him but because he revelled in her fearlessness.
Two... He’d once found her fearlessness so intoxicating he’d believed he could change the world for her. He’d been drawn to it like an addict to opium. He was a stronger man now, his own ideals and expectations better tempered by reality. Was she? He feared that reckless stubborn streak would be the author of her demise someday.
Three... Look where it had led already today: it had her pulling a pistol on a guest and demanding safe passage to her brother’s side, then refusing to leave the cottage. Very shortly it was going to prompt her to ask for every ounce of information he possessed regarding Preston and she was not going to like what he had to say.
Four...
‘Tell me everything,’ May blurted out, catching up to him. Five strides had been too optimistic. ‘We’re alone now, there’s no reason not to.’ There was a scold in there somewhere for him. She was angry he’d held back. She was anxious, which made her anger excusable, understandable even, but he still made her wait until they reached the stone fence. Someone had to teach May patience.
He leaned his elbows on the rough surface of the stone and looked out over the expanse of green field. It was far less disconcerting than looking at her and seeing those beautiful green eyes that could stalk a man like a tiger or burn with emerald passion, the rich walnut sheen of her hair, the elegant sweep of her jaw, the defiant point of her chin, the delicate, straight length of her nose set to perfection on her face, all of which informed a man without asking that this was a lady born to wealth and luxury. And then there was that skin, so perfectly translucent it called to mind every cliché he’d ever heard about silk and pearls and alabaster. It was indeed hard to speak when one could choose to look at May Worth instead. He’d learned to cultivate the skill, however. His sanity and male pride had depended on it.
‘The Home and Foreign Offices sent your brother to track down a man named Cabot Roan.’ He began in low tones, glancing around out of habit. They were in the middle of nowhere, but he couldn’t help it. One could never be too cautious. ‘Roan is suspected of leading an arms cartel whose interests do not always parallel Britain’s.’ He would not patronise May with an elementary explanation. She was intelligent. She would understand the implications.
‘Apparently my brother found him,’ May said drily.
‘Yes, and then they found us, on the road out of town at dark.’ Liam paused, letting her digest the information. She knew the rest from what he’d told her inside. ‘Roan will come looking for you. If he can’t find Preston, he will want to use you as leverage to get to him. The protection I offer is real, as is your need for it.’
May scoffed and repeated her earlier argument. ‘Hardly anyone knows I’m in Scotland. I rather think my location is my best protection.’
‘You’ve already heard my answer to that. Roan is very resourceful. He will find the people who know. Now that his life is on the line, he will be even more redoubtable. We must proceed as if he will find out.’
May was instantly wary. ‘Does this process involve more than sleeping in my cottage and repairing my barn roof?’ He could feel her eyes on him, probably narrowed to emerald slits of consideration.
Liam mentally braced himself for the storm. She wouldn’t like this next part. May did not tolerate being told what to do under the best of circumstances. ‘I am to be with you at all times and, if not, I need to know where you’ll be, when you’ll be there and who you’ll be with.’ He had to look at her now. The temptation was too great.
She shook her head and the storm broke. ‘I will not be treated like a small child who can’t be out of her mother’s sight on the off chance this Cabot Roan might come looking for me. So if you’ll excuse me, I have vegetables to put away before they wilt.’ May’s eyes flashed and she turned on her heel, presuming to walk away.
Liam reached for her, grabbing her arm, forcing his body to absorb the shock of touching her again after so long. ‘This is not the time to be stubborn, May,’ he growled, determined to make her see reason.
Her gaze went to his grip on her arm, her voice sharp. ‘Take your hand off me. I will not allow you to be my gaoler.’
‘Not your gaoler, May, your bodyguard. Please, May. This is not about what you want or even what I want. This is about Preston, about keeping Mistress Fields and the baby safe.’ It was his best argument, this appeal to pathos. May would do anything for the ones she loved, the ones who needed her protection. It was yet another way she was like her brother.
Some of the fire went out of her eyes and she relented. ‘How long before we know if Roan is coming?’
Liam shook his head. ‘We don’t know. He could come tomorrow, perhaps he is just a day or two behind me. Perhaps it will be a couple of weeks or months depending on how long it takes Roan to discover where you are.’
‘Perhaps he’ll never come.’
‘We can hope for that.’ The odds weren’t convincing. He knew Roan. The man was tenacious.
May wrapped her arms about herself and shivered in spite of the wool shawl she wore. It was cold out, the day brisk even for November, but he thought the shiver was from something more than the weather. ‘We’ll have to tell Beatrice.’ She shot him an accusing glance. ‘You could have told her inside.’ Now that she had her information, she could indulge in the scold he’d sensed was brewing earlier. ‘You didn’t have to hold back. You can trust Beatrice.’
It was his turn to go on the defensive. ‘How was I to know if I could trust her or if it would be too upsetting in her condition?’ He had his suspicions about Mistress Fields and her seafaring husband, but he wasn’t going to voice them out loud and risk alienating May. He had more important battles to win today.
‘I had only an acquaintance of minutes to rely on for my judgement. I erred on the side of discretion for the sake of the baby.’ If Beatrice Fields had secrets, it was hardly any of his concern. In his line of work, he’d learned women had secrets just like men, and like men, they, too, could be dangerous creatures. He wasn’t going to underestimate anyone simply because they were female. At the moment, his only interest in Beatrice Fields was her connection to why May was in godforsaken Scotland.
‘I’ve told you what I know, now it’s your turn. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you stay in Sussex with the family after the wedding?’
‘That should be obvious. Beatrice needs me. She can’t deliver a baby on her own.’ May fidgeted a little and looked past his shoulder out to the field. There was more to this than the loyalty of friendship.
‘That’s what doctors and midwives are for. Have you delivered many babies in the last five years, then? With a gun in one hand, none the less?’ Liam pressed. May wasn’t lying—May never lied, not even to spare a man’s feelings, so he had learned. But she wasn’t telling him quite the truth either.
‘This is the wilds of Scotland. Two women on their own can’t be too careful. I wasn’t expecting company, that’s all,’ May snapped. He realised it was as close to an apology as he was going to get for being greeted with a pistol.
He arched a dark brow. ‘I disagree. No one carries a pistol when they’re not expecting anything. I think you were expecting something—trouble, perhaps?’
‘Trouble doesn’t follow me everywhere,’ she began.
‘No, it doesn’t. You follow it, as I recall. There was that incident with the oak tree, the rowboat, the cigars—need I go on?’
‘I was precocious in my younger years.’ Her cheeks burned with the admission. He shouldn’t have teased her. She would hate having her adolescence thrown in her face as much as he would.
‘I’d wager you are still precocious.’ His tone softened and he allowed himself a smile. It was dangerous to let himself entertain even a moment of nostalgia where May was concerned. ‘I always liked that about you, May. Never afraid of a challenge, which leads me to conclude that’s really why you’re here. You’ve followed your friend into exile perhaps, as you say, to help her birth this whelp, perhaps to thumb your nose at your parents and society. Perhaps a little of both. But, there is something more. Neither of those are a particular challenge to you.’ He was quiet for a minute, studying her, searching for the answer. He hadn’t ferreted out the real reason she was here. ‘What is Mistress Fields going to do with the child?’
‘Raise it. It’s what you do with children,’ May said too sharply. He’d hit pay dirt.
‘Hence the need for the pistol,’ Liam surmised with no lack of sarcasm. ‘She’s afraid her family will come and take the child from the home of a woman with only an errant husband to provide for her.’ With no man in the house, a protective, financially secure family would want to see a child raised in far safer circumstances. Assuming there was a husband at all—he had his doubts there, but no proof.
‘No one will take it,’ May said firmly, her eyes locking on Liam’s, her reckless stubbornness in full bloom. May thought she could hold off Beatrice’s family with a gun and the two of them could play house and raise the baby on their own. It was an admirable goal even if it was a bit over-innocent in its assumptions. Two women alone would be prey to all sorts of mischief. May didn’t know true danger. He never wanted her to know it.
Something protective stirred in him, something he didn’t want to acknowledge. There’d been only trouble down that path last time he trod it. May Worth wasn’t for him. She was beautiful and headstrong, naïvely confident that she could overcome anything. That was what money and a good family could do for a person—create the innate belief that you were as close to immortal as one could get. There wasn’t anything you couldn’t conquer. He didn’t want the world to crush that out of May.
They stood in silence, the wind picking up around them. May shielded her eyes and looked towards the empty road, Beatrice and her dubious husband forgotten. ‘You think he’ll come.’ She let out a deep breath.
‘Yes, I do. But I’ll be here, May. You needn’t worry.’ In that moment he wished it were all different; that he hadn’t been born a poor, Irish street rat, the unwanted son of a St Giles whore, or that he hadn’t aspired above his station, that Cabot Roan didn’t pose a threat to her, that he hadn’t had to come here and endure the exquisite torture of being in her presence. It was a moment’s whimsy only. All he had to do was remember how they parted and the anger would come rushing back, the resentment. In the end, class and wealth and privilege had all proven too big of a chasm to cross. When it had counted, she hadn’t wanted him. Even five years later, she still looked at him as if he was the biggest mistake she’d ever made.
‘I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for Preston.’ Perhaps if he defined the rules out loud they would serve as a clarification of the boundaries for both of them; a clarification they both needed if there was to be no repeat of their previous foolishness. That might be excused as the folly of the youth. But now? Now, there would be no excuse. They both knew better. ‘This is strictly business, May.’
She glared. ‘I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear.’ She turned towards the cottage and this time, he let her go, pretending the rules would indeed succeed in preventing disaster from striking twice.
Who was he kidding? The rules had never held any power over him, not where May was concerned. After all, despite her protests to the contrary, he’d seen her pulse beat fast at his nearness and his own thoughts had wandered towards nostalgia more than once. They were both in jeopardy here, rules or not. All it would take to shatter their fragile restraint would be for him to decide he wanted to try on that brand of foolishness one more time, just to be sure it didn’t fit.
Chapter Four (#u9ef7eef6-3ea4-5bab-83d2-0fcdcee2957a)
He’d looked at her like she was the biggest mistake he’d ever made! He wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for Preston! He had made his feelings perfectly clear. May hacked at the feathery green tops of the carrots and began slicing with more ferocity than finesse. She threw the carrot pieces into the stewpot.
‘Toss, May.’ Beatrice leaned across the worktable in the kitchen and put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘We toss the carrots into the pot. We don’t hurl them. Especially when they’re Farmer Sinclair’s carrots,’ she added with a wry smile. May smiled back, apologetically.
‘Good. Now that I have your attention, tell me what’s wrong. Is this pique of yours entirely about Preston or is it something more?’
‘Something more?’ May snapped, reaching for another carrot to dismember. ‘Isn’t it enough my brother is lying wounded in an obscure farmhouse at the mercy of a treasonous villain and no one will take me to him?’
Beatrice smiled patiently, years of experience in dealing with May’s hot temper and outbursts behind her. ‘It is enough. I am worried sick for him myself.’ Her hand went unconsciously to her stomach and rubbed it in a soothing, settling gesture. ‘I think the baby is worried about him, too.’
She laughed a little, but May frowned. ‘Are you all right, Bea?’ Bea had struggled the last two weeks with swollen feet and the occasional contraction, and she was huge.
Bea waved a dismissive hand. ‘We were talking about you. Don’t try to change the subject. You have a bad habit of doing that whenever the subject gets too hot.’ Bea reached for the mallet to hammer out meat for the stew. ‘Speaking of hot, May, Liam Casek is no iceberg.’ May didn’t miss the sly look Bea gave her. ‘Do you know him? I don’t recall Preston ever bringing him around.’
‘Bea! Shame on you for noticing. You’re about to give birth.’ May opted for a teasing scold.
Bea gave her a sly smile. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t notice a handsome man.’
May finished putting the ingredients in the stewpot and lifted it, trudging over to the large arched brick hearth and hanging the heavy pot over the fire. She wiped her hands on her apron before responding. ‘He’s not the sort to be brought around.’ How did one explain Liam Casek and how he’d somehow risen from a pickpocket to being one of the Home Office’s most prized agents. She wasn’t sure exactly what he did, but he worked with Preston and that carried some weight. Preston did important and apparently dangerous work that could only be entrusted to the best.
‘But obviously Preston brought him home at least once.’ Bea was persistent, studying May with an intensity that boded no good. Suddenly, Beatrice snapped her fingers. ‘I know when it was! The summer of 1816, the summer you went to the lakes and Jonathon Lashley was home recovering from his wounds.’ May watched in dismay as the wheels of Beatrice’s sharp mind began to turn. ‘Preston always took Jonathon on holiday with your family, but that year he was unable to go.’
It had been a terrible year. Jonathon’s brother had gone missing in action and Jonathon had come home near death after Waterloo, something no one had expected. He was an heir. He was supposed to have been kept safe delivering dispatches behind friendly lines. May remembered hearing the news. Jonathon was one of her brother’s closest friends. The family had gathered in the drawing room, quiet and sombre. Her indomitable mother had been pale and her father had taken her grown brother in his arms and held him tight as if to convince himself his son was alive and healthy. They’d gone to the lakes that summer and Liam Casek had come in Jonathon’s place. Her father hadn’t entirely approved of Liam in the beginning. Her father had liked him a lot less by the end.
‘It’s funny you never mentioned him.’ Bea cocked her head to one side, considering. The next moment she let out a pained gasp, one hand on her belly, the other on the worktable to steady herself.
May was instantly beside her. ‘What is it, Bea?’ Beatrice had gone white.
‘I don’t know. Oh!’ Another pain took her and May got an awkward arm about her waist.
‘Let’s get you to your bed. You can lie down.’ It was all May could think of to do. It was hard work moving Bea from the kitchen to the downstairs bedroom. May was thankful they didn’t have to go upstairs. But Bea wouldn’t lie down. She held on to May’s arm.
‘You need to go for the doctor, May,’ she said softly. ‘I think I’m bleeding.’
‘I’ll go.’ Liam’s voice in the doorway made May jump. She’d have to get used to him being around all over again.
‘I’ll go, I won’t get lost. You don’t know where he lives,’ May insisted. If he was out seeing patients, Liam would never find him.
‘Then give me his direction,’ Liam insisted, his eyes hard as they squared off. ‘We can hardly have you out riding willy-nilly over the countryside presenting an easy target and we can’t both go.’
‘Just someone go!’ Bea said through clenched teeth, doubling over as another sharp pain took her, her grip on May tight.
May relented at the sight of her friend’s agony. ‘He keeps an office in the High Street next to the solicitor’s.’
‘Ah, so you can sue him if you don’t like his remedies.’ Liam chuckled. ‘Very nice arrangement.’ Even Bea smiled a little at the jest.
* * *
Liam was fast in bringing Dr Stimson, a tall, sombre man whose face showed no emotion. He wasn’t the friendly encouraging sort, but he’d been educated in Edinburgh. May didn’t especially care for him under the best circumstances. Today, she had no use for him at all.
He examined Beatrice, suggested she was likely experiencing false labour which was entirely normal and which seemed to have stopped once she lay down. He prescribed bed rest until the babe was born and pocketed a little more of their coin.
‘I could have done as much!’ May challenged, following him out to his horse. ‘It has to be more than false labour. How do you explain the blood?’
The man didn’t even glance at her as he mounted up. ‘All babies come into this world in their own way.’ His voice was weary. ‘When you have birthed as many children as I have, you can tell me how to do my job, Miss Worth.’
May grabbed the bridle of the big horse. ‘She will not be one of the twenty per cent, sir.’
That got a response. He cast her a condescending look down the long pike of his nose. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Twenty per cent of women die in childbirth. She will not be one of them.’ It was a recent great fear of hers since Beatrice had got so big. What if there was no one around to help when the baby came? What if they didn’t have enough skill if the birth was difficult? She knew Bea worried, too, and all she could give her friend were empty promises she didn’t know if she could keep.
‘May, let the good man go. I had to call him away from his supper.’ Liam was behind her, his hand over hers, removing it from the bridle, his touch, no matter how perfunctory, sending sharp pricks of awareness up her arm. He was too close. She had nowhere to go that didn’t involve backing into his chest.
It was too close for the doctor, too. ‘Are you her husband?’ Dr Stimson’s eyes slid between them.
‘No, sir, I’m a friend of her brother who has come to watch over them,’ Liam offered and May bristled. He made it sound like they were children who needed a nursemaid.
The doctor shrugged, ignoring her entirely. ‘Too bad. That one needs taking in hand, a strong hand.’
‘Duly noted, sir.’ Liam nodded and May stepped on his foot. How dare he engage in a conversation about her when she was right there?
‘Ouch! What did you do that for?’ Liam scowled once the doctor had ridden away.
‘Why didn’t you defend me?’ May railed. ‘I despise that man and you kowtowed to him. “Duly noted, sir,”’ she mimicked.
Liam laughed. ‘You don’t need defending, May. You can handle yourself perfectly well when you want to. But you have to learn not to alienate the entire neighbourhood. Don’t you know you catch more flies with sugar than vinegar?’
May folded her arms across her chest, studying him. ‘Is that what you’ve been doing these past years? Catching flies with sugar?’ There’d been nothing but vinegar about him when she’d first met him, this glorious, angry young man who rebelled at everything, who was fiercely proud of being from the streets. He’d been rebellious in ways she couldn’t be or didn’t dare to be. She’d admired what she thought of as his courage.
‘When it suits me, yes.’ The rebel was still there in his long tangle of hair, the rough-hewn planes of his face and the hard muscles of a man who knew how to labour. But the rebel shared space now with a man who carried intelligence behind his blue eyes alongside his anger. This was a man who knew how to control himself, whose anger was no longer tossed about indiscriminately. She wasn’t sure if she resented him for that or if she envied him that control. ‘It’s important to be nice, May, until it’s time to be something less...nice.’
‘You sound like Preston.’
‘Maybe because that’s where I learned it.’ That gorgeous mouth of his smiled at her as winter dusk fell about them. Her knees wanted to go weak. This was the real danger, not the elusive Cabot Roan, but these moments when she could forget the past, forget the problems of the present and lose herself in him. She didn’t want to succumb to his rough charm again. One disaster was enough.
* * *
Disaster seemed to be the theme of the day. May sat on the edge of her bed, unopened letter in hand, staring at it. It was going to be bad news, she just knew it, but there was no sense in waiting. If she didn’t know what was in the letter, she couldn’t begin to plan against it. She drew a fortifying breath and slid a thumb beneath the seal. Her mother’s flowery script always looked so innocent. But she’d learned long ago that doom lurked in those elegantly cultivated letters. May skimmed the opening paragraphs, confirming they were her mother’s standard opening gambit: news about town, friendly gossip to soften the reader up so when the real punch came, it would blindside you.
There it was, four paragraphs in. May re-read it slowly.
We will be in Edinburgh for the holidays in order to conduct some business of your father’s regarding shipping and manufacturing that I don’t pretend to understand. We would kindly request your presence.
We’ve taken a town house in New Town, the address is at the bottom of the page. I’ll pack your gowns since you’ll have nothing suitable with you to wear. We are looking forward to spending the holidays together even if we are not able to spend them in London.
I have heard Edinburgh is quite festive this time of year and there will be plenty of entertainment. We’ll expect you December first. Several of your father’s business associates will be in town as well with their families.
Families. May crumpled the paper. She knew what that meant. Sons. Sons who had been groomed to run wealthy, productive businesses, who were ready to take their place in society as wealthy men. Some of them would probably have titles, all of them would have connections to some sort of nobility—perhaps their grandfathers if they were in business and allowed to make money, but still acceptable for the daughter of a second son like herself, still well placed enough in society to rise above the stigma of trade if need be.
She’d been so sure she’d run far enough that her parents couldn’t get to her here, that she’d be safe from their matchmaking efforts. All along she’d been worrying over the summons home. But they’d proven her wrong. If they couldn’t bring her home, they’d simply come to her and they had. Suddenly Scotland didn’t seem so big any more. Edinburgh was just a ferry’s ride away from their village on the firth and she didn’t think her mother’s letter was as harmless as it sounded. Her mother likely had a suitor picked out, or two or three.
She would not panic. She still had some time and she had Liam Casek under her roof, the one man in all of England her father truly despised. She could only imagine the look on her parents’ faces when she showed up on their doorstep with him. There was no question of him allowing her to travel without him, he’d made that plain today. Of course, that was assuming she went to Edinburgh at all.
She had almost a month. Anything could happen. There could be a storm. The Forth could be too choppy to cross, the alternate road route impaired from winter weather. Perhaps Cabot Roan would actually kidnap her! Her parents could learn of Preston’s injury and cancel their journey. Maybe they already had. This letter would have been posted before they’d have had news of Preston. Then again, if Preston was working secretly, they wouldn’t know at all. Still, it was possible one disaster could play against another to her benefit.
The news would devastate Beatrice. May wouldn’t say anything until she had to. If she actually left, it would most likely mean she wasn’t coming back. She didn’t see how she’d escape Edinburgh. The baby would be born by then and her original argument for coming here would be gone. Her parents would insist she’d done what she’d come to do and make her go home with them, back to ‘real’ life.
May folded the letter into squares. Just this afternoon, she’d been looking ahead to spring, making plans for the greenhouse, imagining raising a baby here. In a matter of hours, that fantasy had been shot to hell. She fought back tears. The past was closing in on her from all sides. She couldn’t go to Edinburgh. It would be the end of her life as she knew it. There was only one solution. She just wouldn’t go. One disaster was enough.
* * *
