The Black Sheep's Return (8 page)

Sally followed Freya back to the house happily enough and only Atlas cast longing looks after his master. Freya hoped she concealed her obsession better than he could, or Orlando must know by now that she was on pins whenever he was nearby and about as shamelessly eager for his attention as his devoted hound.

‘I was nearly right,’ Hal said once they had the door open and their eyes were used to the
shadowy light within so they could actually see the time.

‘Only an hour here or there,’ Freya agreed straight faced as she removed the netted cover from the earthenware milk jug. ‘Just half a mug now,’ she insisted and Hal grimaced, ‘you will get a full one with your luncheon and not an hour before it, young man.’

‘Can we have one of your bakestone cakes as well then, for we’re both very, very hungry,’ he said with the mournful expression of a sad bloodhound to back up his assertion.

‘That might be possible, given the right words in the right order.’

‘Please may we have a cake, dearest Perdita?’

‘You may, Master Craven, but I shall decide who is to have which one. Sally and I don’t think the smallest of everything should always be her lot in life.’

Sally nodded emphatically and Hal threatened to sulk for a moment, but shrugged and accepted the equal-sized flat scones she handed them. Freya was proud of her latest efforts, since the little cakes were not even burnt, once she let the bakestone heat up exactly the way it said in a neatly written receipt in the commonplace book she’d found in the
scullery. It was full of the observations Orlando’s late wife had made on daily life. The odd clever sketch and that lady’s notes about plants of the forest were enlivened with a sense of wonder.

Freya sensed this young woman had had to feel her way with the domestic arts just as she was doing. Mrs Craven must have been a lady, accustomed to others doing the housework and cooking as well. Freya liked her rueful recording of minor success and failures and it felt odd that the one woman who could understand her deepest dilemmas if she was alive was also the last person she would ever confide them to.

How could she confess to a woman of character she thought she was falling in love with her husband? Unthinkable for Lady Freya to love a woodsman; beyond ridiculous to fall under his gruff spell if there was a Mrs Craven to make it a bigger sin to want him so much it made her ache with yearning. So why must Orlando, out of all the men she could have chosen to secretly desire, have to be the one who made her heart beat faster? It wasn’t as if he flattered her or set out to charm her. His sharply critical green eyes had cut through Lady Freya Buckle’s thorny pride to the vulnerable creature
beneath from the first moment they laid eyes on each other and she wasn’t at all sure she liked being an open book to a man who guarded his own inner self so fiercely.

He was still a mystery to her and that made her fume, so she put all she knew of him together and told herself it made him less than her adoring inner idiot thought him. He was abrupt and rude as well as short-tempered. She doubted he could fit politely into a great lady’s drawing room or trim his impatience to the mannered politeness of the
haut ton
. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine him enjoying the snobbery and petty amusements of bored society beaux and sophisticated young matrons either. She only had to imagine his impatience with the pretence and flattery of a night at Almack’s Club or the grand balls of the London Season to catch herself grinning at nothing.

No, this was doing her no good. She was just losing herself in daydreams again and where were her supposed charges while her thoughts were on their complex sire? Forgetting the absurd notion of Orlando making his début in high society, she hobbled outside to find Hal and Sally. Relieved to find them playing with the hobby-horses their father had made, she sat down on a convenient tree stump and let
herself wonder what it would feel like if they were her children. For that to be so, Orlando would have to be her husband and she told herself not to be a fool as a warm shudder racked her. No need to steel herself to face the marriage bed with this man who made her pulse race and an odd feeling of sharp heat clench her loins at the very thought.

Her heart raced for a very different reason as Sally waved happily at Freya, as if she was part of her young life. She waved back and smiled even as tears stung her eyes at the idea of waving goodbye to them when her ankle was properly healed. How she wished she
had
been born to a country squire and his comfortable lady. At least then stumbling on Orlando hiding in the woods with his children wouldn’t be the disaster it was threatening to become for my Lady Freya, lately of Bowland Castle.

As it was, sitting brooding over a life Orlando didn’t want to share with her was only silly, so she got up to begin hauling enough water in to fill the improvised copper so they could have a bath of sorts tonight. Orlando would do it if she asked, but she didn’t want to ask. Better not to see much of him, so she could live without him better when she went back to real life.

Two days later Freya was still wondering how to do that. Now she could manage without her stick for short trips to the well or the woodpile and had even managed a week’s baking with Keziah’s amused assistance and Mrs Craven’s invaluable book. There was no Orlando handy to carry pots and pans, wield the long rakes and paddles to get rid of the fire, then push first the bread into the oven, then pies and cakes for her, though. Thanks to Keziah’s help in putting the list of ingredients together and judging the heat of the oven at least most of it had been edible, even if she was forced to bathe in the stream to rid herself of the sweat and grime of her labours afterwards.

Whatever would society make of Lady Freya not only working for her daily bread, but making it as well? she wondered ruefully. From here Lady Freya looked like a haughty and rather useless luxury to Perdita Rowan, so was it any wonder even her own family had judged her so harshly once upon a time? Probably not, she conceded, and felt her heart sink into her borrowed shoes at all the silly waste and misunderstandings that had blighted her old life.

She had been looking for a different future
when she left Bowland and had certainly found that, but how could she stay here when reality was waiting outside the forest? She felt more at home here than she ever had in the echoing splendours of Bowland Castle, but how could she stay here as Perdita when Orlando clearly didn’t want her to?

It was as well Keziah came striding through the forest just then to say her daughter and son-in-law were back and distract her from her own woes. Keziah spoke so little about her daughter Freya sensed anxiety under her front of pleasure at having company again. At least someone else’s problems made a change from her own and Freya felt ashamed of herself for using Keziah’s family difficulties to mask her own. She was on the edge of loving Orlando while he did his best to avoid her, but Keziah’s Cleopatra and her husband Reuben were back in Longborough Forest and the world ticked relentlessly on.

It did so even more determinedly when she met Cleo’s hostile dark eyes and noted how they flickered across and lingered possessively on Orlando’s powerful shoulders and strong masculine features. This sensuously lovely creature might as well pin a notice
on him, despite the handsome husband most women would have been very content to call their own. ‘Mine,’ it would smugly insist. ‘My lover.’ Freya might accept Orlando wanted her gone, but she couldn’t let herself believe he would seduce another man’s wife when he could have Freya instead if he only chose to ask.

Heat scorched her cheeks at that shocking conclusion and she informed herself she was worth more—had always been worth more. The contrasts between her latest suitors and Orlando were stark, but she’d let herself believe she might wed the Duke of Dettingham once upon a time and nobody could accuse him of being less than masculine. Watching Cleo flirt and play up for Orlando’s attention, Freya kept her distance and wondered what made Orlando so potently attractive to her own sex and how she could stop herself following in this wayward beauty’s footsteps by making it a little too clear she would welcome him in her bed.

He was so real, she decided at last. Which was odd when she was sure Orlando wasn’t his real name. In disguise or not, maybe he’d buried his heart with his wife, the mother of his children, but why would he love Freya even
if he hadn’t? She was an impostor nobody but her mother and nabob grandfather had ever found lovable. So that settled that, she decided, and did her best to forget their impossible sire and protect Hal and Sally from the dislike they seemed to rouse in Cleopatra for some strange reason.

Rich left his workbench as graciously as he had it in him to do anything at the moment, which meant so gruffly he won a speculative look from Reuben and an arch smile from Cleo. Now why was she little more than an annoying fly buzzing in the background compared to his sharp awareness of Perdita’s every move? Only a fool could think Perdita more beautiful when Cleo seemed born to embody a man’s most unlikely fantasies, yet her sloe-eyed beauty left him cold.

If a man’s ears could be attuned to a voice his were on Perdita’s. His eyes wanted to watch slavishly as she went about this odd life of his with a leaven of wry humour. There were scratches on her tender skin, a battle scar from the hot oven door and the odd blister and broken nail marred her once-immaculate hands. He didn’t want to admire or need her and couldn’t help doing both. There were times when he lay
in bed and felt as if he could smash through walls and floors between them because he wanted to be in the box-bed with her so badly.

He caught himself trying to gauge her reaction to Reuben Summer and glared at the mocking devil, then reminded himself the man was as close to a friend as he got these days. Lucky they both knew he wouldn’t lay a finger on Cleo, since the witchy female was doing her best to flirt with both men and ignore Perdita, his children and Keziah. He exerted himself to play genial host, despite Cleo’s worst efforts, and ended up sitting next to Perdita while they drank his weakest cider and ate cake and pretended for a while all was exactly as it should be in Longborough Forest.

F
eeling his body react to the feel and scent and touch of Perdita next to him with Cleo’s dark eyes sharp and accusing on both of them for no good reason, Rich tried to pretend he was somewhere else. He felt Perdita stiffen at his side, then hold a little aloof from him as if she sensed his unease at Cleo’s silent malice and thought she was the source of it. Rich wondered gloomily how a lady in her early twenties could be so naïve about the workings of the male body as to think she repulsed him. Whoever was in charge of the upbringing of well-born young ladies had an awful lot to answer for, he decided, as he burned on the rack of forever wanting her and not being able to even kiss her.

‘You’re a martyr, my friend,’ Reuben Summer murmured as they exchanged handshakes before parting. ‘Why not take her to your bed?’

The urge to hit someone bit so strongly Rich’s fists knotted before he could remind himself part of him was wondering the same thing. He made himself relax before he ruined his friendship with the wily rogue beyond mending.

‘She can’t stay here and I can’t go with her,’ he reminded himself bleakly.

‘Why not,
veshengro?’
Reuben asked with a shrug that said his forester friend was an idiot for not taking his woman to his bed, whether it was for an hour, a week or for ever.

As he had clearly thought Cleo was his for life when he married her, Rich didn’t think Reuben was particularly expert on affairs of the heart. No, this was merely a physical need a mature male ought to be able to endure as the side-effect of having a young and pretty woman in his house and not sharing her bed.

‘She doesn’t belong here, Reuben, and I can’t leave.’

‘You’re a fool, Orlando.’

‘There’s a lot of it about,’ Rich made himself say lazily, as if parting from Perdita as soon
as she was well enough would be a gnat bite to him and no more.

‘At least I’m a satisfied one, Englishman.’

‘Lucky you, Gypsy,’ he mocked back and sighed with relief when Reuben laughed, nodded and made a lewd gesture Rich hoped nobody else saw.

That evening Rich lit the lamps he used to work by during long winter evenings and shut himself away in his workshop. Reuben’s idea—that he could keep Perdita at his side, living as he must for the sake of Anna’s beloved son—had made his attention drift until he cursed colourfully and threw his latest attempt to block out a chair seat under the bench to be remade as something lesser when he wasn’t so distracted. A picture of Perdita wearing his wedding band, dreamy eyed and contented as she watched his children grow and laugh, while another little Craven grew and kicked in her belly, nearly doubled him up with longing. He smashed his fist into the wall to mask some of his frustration with a different pain.

Never—he simply couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t take her innocence and snare her into a life of unrelenting work and constantly
looking over her shoulder for the enemy who wanted Hal dead so badly he would seize any advantage to make sure he got his way. The thought of Perdita in Martagon’s hands—held as hostage against his beloved son—made him shake and go so cold he wondered if he was about to faint.

The moment she could put her foot to the ground without pain, Perdita simply had to leave. Meanwhile hard physical labour would have to blot out the image of Perdita naked in his bed, with only her silken skin and that luxurious hank of softly waving nut-brown hair to cover her. He nearly threw the unformed block of elm in his hand at the wall and despaired, but he was A Seaborne and he was going to beat this. Miss Perdita Rowan would walk out of the forest a maid. A lonely one, whose family had already failed her, the siren voice in his head argued; his fist clenched again at the thought of the terrible danger she’d run from the day she tumbled into his life. No, it was self-serving rubbish to tell himself she was better off with him; he must let her go.

He managed to focus on the task in hand at last and only stopped work when the dawn chorus informed him he’d made it through another
night without trying to seduce Perdita. Returning home with the dawn, he tried to ignore her asleep in the chair by the cold hearth. He crept up the narrow stairs, shut his door and sprawled face down on the bed, then slept as if he’d returned from a war and not been able to relax during a whole campaign.

Freya awoke with protesting limbs and all sorts of strange dreams fogging her heavy head. She stretched, then groaned at the stiffness in her neck and shoulders, cricks in her back and the raw nag of pain from her injured foot. Last night she had waited for Orlando to come in, but it seemed that he’d crept in whilst she was asleep. ‘Drat the man,’ she muttered crossly to herself, then looked about her temporary domain and sighed. She raked out the fire, re-laid it and reached for the tinder box. It was a fine June morning, but she was shivering with cold.

Orlando was out of reach and she was a fool to dream he was wrapped in this chair with her, holding her on his lap as he soothed and caressed and mesmerised her to sleep in his arms. Not that her body dwelt much on the idea of sleep when she thought of being in his arms. The detail of how a man and a woman
made love were still a bit blurred, but instinct told her there was more to it than simply mating as the animals did, then sleeping in a man’s arms. Even falling asleep feeling him breathe so close would be warming and intimate, but it was only a pipe dream. So Freya lit her fire and sat soaking up the warmth and comfort of it until the children stirred and it was time to begin another day as the guest in Orlando’s house he couldn’t wait to be rid of.

When he finally awoke, nearer to midday than morning, Freya soon wished Orlando had stayed upstairs and slept off his ill humour. For a while he stumped about the place with a forbidding frown that hardly let up even for his children, who soon decided they preferred her company until his dark mood lifted and gave him a wide berth.

‘Take the children to Keziah, Perdita, and stay with them there,’ he ordered abruptly at last. ‘I shall be gone all day and most of the night and she will keep them safe for me.’

As if she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, when she would fight with her last breath to keep his children from harm. Determined not to betray her hurt that he didn’t trust her to care for his children by herself while he was away,
Freya gave him a regal nod. ‘Very well,’ she said stiffly.

‘Papa?’ Sally faltered.

‘I’ll be back by morning, darling. You stay with Perdita and Kezzie and be a good girl,’ he managed more gently for his beloved daughter. Then he whistled Atlas, ordered him to stay with the children and walked away.

‘And goodbye to you too,’ Freya muttered at his retreating back and rolled her eyes at Sally to make her laugh and Hal thaw from his offended man-of-the-house pose, since she didn’t think she could cope with two grumpy Craven males today.

As their father had been so busy and distracted of late the children hardly seemed to miss him once they settled down to eat their luncheon, then play at knights and dragons. Freya sat close by to mend their clean clothes with neatly meticulous stitches she blessed learning from her embroidery, a skill all the world knew was suitably ladylike, she reflected ruefully. So maybe her once being a lady had its uses after all and at least her task kept her from thinking too hard about Orlando and she could keep an eye on the children. Once it was done and they were happily ensconced in the low-branched oak tree nearby
pretending to be King Charles the Second hiding from the Roundheads, there was nothing to stop her thoughts racing straight back to the wretched man.

However hard she tried to tell herself he didn’t matter to her, she was wrong. Which left the problem of what to do about him stark in her mind; she could walk, or limp, away and resume her old life as if she’d never discovered what it was like to truly live. Or she could employ a chaperon respectable enough to outfox Bowland and set herself up as an eccentric but independent lady. How odd that neither idea appealed and she only wanted to stay here in the woods with Orlando and his children, although he was a widower who had adored his late wife and probably always would.

He had so little to offer her she wondered at herself for yearning for him every waking moment, as well as a few sleeping ones when he managed to creep into her dreams. She hoped she didn’t moan his name out loud with the sensual longing those fantasies unleashed in her sleeping mind. When sensible Freya was no longer awake to resist the masculine spell of this man her inner siren wanted her imagination blossomed and informed her she was a passionate woman. So that left one last scenario
she hardly dared let herself fully explore. Freya let the book she had taken from his shelf of them drop into her lap as she pondered it at last. She could take a lover.

Since there would only ever be one, wasn’t it as well he should be skilful, tender and passionate? Impossible to know why she believed Orlando would be all three and that there would be nothing cold and calculating about his loving, but somehow she still did. This new Freya decided she wanted to be reckless and bold for once in her life. After years of seeing marriage as a way to make her family realise her value, as a mere girl, she was awake at last and so glad fate hadn’t let her wed a Duke of any description. What a relief to cast off the hollow idea of outranking her father and half-brother and showing them she could be every bit as good as them. Her mother was dead and Bowland thought more of his pet dog than his half-sister, so there was no doting relative pulling her back to endure the narrow life she’d fooled herself was enough for her for so long the waste seemed almost criminal.

She would leave the
haut ton
behind without a pang and her heartbeat thundered as another possibility tugged at her imagination. If Orlando got her with child she could bear
it under another name, then keep it and Lady Freya could disappear for ever. How would it feel to be reborn as a grieving young widow left to bear his posthumous child alone?
Dangerous
, her more cautious self informed her.
Wondrous
, Perdita argued serenely. Something told her she would mourn Orlando as her one and only lover for ever, but at least she would have a heart and purpose to her life. More of that than if she made a suitable marriage and bore a troop of proper ladies and gentlemen; one bastard with Orlando sounded a life of hope compared to watching her impeccably bred family take after their very dull father and turn away from her as well.

Why she knew he wouldn’t let her stay was something of a mystery to her, like the rest of his secret life in the hidden house deep in these woods. Part of her knew him better than she had any other being and yet they had only met days ago. She remembered the way Jack Seaborne and his Jessica had been together during that house party at Ashburton and finally knew why passion and love and yearning drew them so inevitably together that even the arrogant daughter of an arrogant Earl couldn’t shine through as the ideal wife for a Duke in search of a Duchess. A wry smile twisted
her mouth at the thought of herself then, believing she only had to be Lady Freya for the highest in the land to want to marry her. Jack and Jessica had known each other for years before they finally let love in, so wasn’t she more privileged to feel the certainty of it so much more quickly?

She chuckled at the thought of her proud ladyship of three years ago even admitting she could fall in love with a man who earned his own bread with hard physical labour, who lived in a two-up, two-down cottage in the midst of a forest miles away from civilisation and was still abidingly in love with his late wife. Had she picked out the ideal man
not
to fall in love with, that man would surely be Orlando Craven; a man who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, share his true name with her, let alone the secrets of his formidably guarded heart.

‘What are you laughing at, Prudie?’ Sally scrambled down from her tree to ask, having grown bored with lying still along a broad branch so Cromwell’s long-dead troops couldn’t find her, or the self-proclaimed King Hal on the next one up.

‘You, my princess,’ she lied and gave the lichen stains and liberal smudges of dirt about
the royal person a rueful look. ‘As well I’ve finished mending your other skirt, your highness, since that one will have to be washed and mended again before it’s fit to be seen.’

‘Papa’s not half as good at mending as you, Prudie,’ Hal told her, using his sister’s nickname for their uninvited guest as easily as if he’d always known her.

It sounded as if he thought tending their clothes and feeding them at regular intervals was her given task in the wide scheme of Henry Craven’s life. Freya realised how infatuated she was with all three Cravens when that seemed a treasured compliment, not the insult it should be to a lady of birth and fortune. How her heart would reel and contract when she had to leave these two not very angelic children behind as well as their sire. She swallowed a weak desire to weep at the very thought and told herself to treasure what she had now instead of mourning what she might not have tomorrow.

‘So you’ve turned up at last, have you?’ the Duke of Dettingham greeted his friend and cousin-in-law, Alexander Forthin, Earl of Calvercombe. ‘I was about to send for you.’

Alex raised one arrogant black brow and
refused to ask why even a Seaborne thought he could summon my Lord Calvercombe as if he was a tame lackey.

‘I think Rich is in trouble,’ Jack Seaborne confided in a low murmur to avoid even the acute hearing of their wives, who were greeting one another only yards away.

‘Any particular kind?’ Alex asked warily, knowing a wife’s ears were attuned to her husband’s secret thoughts, let alone anything he was rash enough to say aloud.

‘No, but I always knew when he was in a black mood. Not long after Jess and I married, he was in despair for some reason and there’s something wrong now.’

‘I thought only twins felt each other’s thoughts, but I’ll believe you. You two always were more like brothers than cousins. Indeed, it must be hard for you to have that resty devil forever in your head, but we’ll talk about it later,’ Alex said, since they didn’t want their ladies wound up in Rich’s troubles.