The Taste of Innocence (45 page)

Charlie nodded. “We’ll do our very best to catch him.”

The rattle of carriage wheels in the drive heralded the arrival of the bishop’s carriage. With Sarah, Charlie walked the dean out, saw him settled, then retreated to the porch and waved as the carriage rolled away.

A horse man was trotting up the drive; he drew to the side and, noting the carriage’s insignia, bowed respectfully as it rolled past. Then with a twitch of his reins, he came on.

Charlie glanced at Sarah, hesitating beside him. “It’s Sinclair.” He grimaced. “No doubt he’s safe enough, but the fewer who know of our plan the better. Do you feel up to more acting? You’ll need to appear as if the dean put the orphanage staff through the wringer and made dire threats to close the orphanage.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Exhausted, upset, and not wanting to talk about the subject at all.” Leaning on his arm, she looked up at him. “I’ll stay long enough to greet Mr. Sinclair—it would look odd if I didn’t—then I’ll retire to nurse a headache.”

His gaze on her face, Charlie hesitated, then murmured, “I’m going to act irritated and annoyed—I’ll say we’ll speak about it later. Once you’re gone I’ll explain about the dean’s visit and the orphanage. If we believed those allegations, I’d be insisting you sell the place—it’s what our villain will expect to hear. Malcolm’s starting to become known in the neighborhood. While I don’t like to deceive and use him, he could be a good conduit to get our reaction to this latest gambit into the local gossip mill. If any hear an observation from him, they won’t imagine he’s made it up.”

Sarah nodded, facing the forecourt as Malcolm trotted up. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

They did, and even though she said it herself, they gave an excellent performance.

When Sinclair approached she plastered a patently false smile on her lips—one that neither reached her eyes nor erased the vertical line between her brows—and gave him her hand. “Mr. Sinclair.”

“Countess.” He bowed, concern in his eyes. “I trust I find you well?”

Sarah pressed her lips tight, then acknowledged, “I’m afraid I’ve had some…rather distressing news.” She shot a sideways glance at the rigid male looming beside her; his face wore its usual impassive mask, yet disapproval and irritation radiated from him. “I…ah.” Raising a hand, she rubbed at that line between her brows. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll lie down for a while. I’m sure his lordship”—another swift glance at the censorious presence beside her—“will appreciate your company.”

“Indeed, my dear.” Steel flashed beneath Charlie’s clipped tone. “I know how much the recent news has upset you. We’ll discuss the matter later.”

An ominous promise infused his last sentence. Sarah nodded to Sinclair, then, lips tight, her head rising, her body tense, walked to the stairs.

Watching her go, Charlie quashed an impulse to applaud; she’d conveyed “fragile overset female” perfectly. One glance at the frown in Sinclair’s hazel eyes confirmed he’d been convinced. Charlie waved toward the library.

Sinclair paced beside him. “An ecclesiastical visit…surely the bishop isn’t the cause of the countess’s malaise?”

Charlie recognized the question as not quite correct—not a question a gentleman should ask in the circumstances. Yet although mildly irritated that Malcolm harbored sufficient interest in Sarah to inquire into what was clearly a private matter, he pounced on the opening the question afforded. Reaching for the library door, allowing a definite frown to show, he glanced along the corridor as if confirming there was no one about to eavesdrop, then waved Malcolm in, followed, and shut the door.

He led the way to his desk. “I’m afraid the countess has un wittingly become involved in a rather”—compressing his lips, he dropped into his chair—“unsavory situation at the orphanage. By involved I mean through her association with the place, not that she personally is implicated in any wrongdoing.”

“Of course not.” Malcolm sank into the chair before the desk.

His accents harsh, Charlie continued, “The bishop’s advisor came to inform us of the problem, which had come to the bishop’s ear. Steps have been taken to deal with the staff involved.” Picking up a pen, he tapped it on the blotter. “It will, of course, be necessary for the countess to distance herself from the place—a point she will no doubt appreciate once she has rested and regained her equilibrium.”

Malcolm frowned. He hesitated, then diffidently said, “I understood her association with the orphanage is both long-standing and in the nature of a legacy.”

Charlie nodded curtly. “However, under the circumstances she’ll no doubt find some other charity to fill her time, and her godmother is dead, after all.” Pointedly he fixed his gaze on the folded sheet Malcolm had drawn from his pocket. “Is that the report on the Newcastle-Carlisle syndicate?”

Malcolm blinked at the sheet as if he’d forgotten he held it. “Ah—yes. You said you’d like to see it.” Reaching over the desk, he handed the sheet to Charlie.

Charlie took it, opened it, and kept his attention and comments focused on matters financial for the rest of Malcolm’s visit.

When Malcolm eventually rose and took his leave, Charlie saw him out, then inwardly sighed. He scrubbed a hand over his features, trying to obliterate the last traces of the contemptuous—contemptible—role he’d been playing. Rigid, controlling, unforgiving, ruthless in his protection of the earldom and its reputation, and prepared to ride roughshod over his wife’s feelings in pursuit of that goal—he’d led Malcolm to believe he was that sort of man…even though it was all pretense, he felt besmirched.

Almost guilty by association.

Shaking off the feeling, he set out to find Sarah—to reassure himself, and her, that he wasn’t that sort of husband at all.

Two days passed before their efforts bore fruit in the form of a solicitor’s clerk, dispatched from his employer’s offices in Wellington to lay what the solicitor had plainly believed was a straightforward offer to buy Quilley Farm for a mildly staggering amount before the Earl of Meredith and his countess.

Charlie sat in an armchair in Sarah’s sitting room, battling to hide a grin as he watched her, seated on the chaise, give the hapless clerk a pointed lesson on the proper way to approach a countess over a piece of property said countess owned.

Once the clerk was reduced to babbling, all but groveling at her dainty feet, she deigned to haughtily accept the written offer he held out to her.

Sarah glanced over the papers, noting the sum and the absence of any client’s name. She looked up, and waved the clerk away. “Wait in the front hall—I wish to discuss this matter with my husband.”

She waited until Crisp, who had lingered by the door, escorted the obsequiously bobbing clerk away, then handed the papers to Charlie. “No name, but the amount is larger than last time.”

Barnaby had been standing before the French doors, ostensibly looking out; now he joined them, going to the armchair to look over Charlie’s shoulder, scanning the pages as Charlie turned. “Wellington—that’s west of Taunton, isn’t it?”

Charlie nodded. “About ten miles.” Finishing with the last sheet, he flipped the others back. “Other than the lack of name, this is a simple enough offer.” He glanced up at Barnaby. “What do you think—should we run with your plan?”

Nodding, Barnaby reached for the papers. They’d spent hours discussing their options—or rather their lack of them. “I’ll take your answer back to this solicitor. Doubtless he has no more real information than the others, but if the villain follows his usual pattern the agent will appear to learn your answer. When he does, I’ll be there. I’ll follow the clerk back—we’ll let him ride ahead alone in case the agent approaches him along the way.”

Charlie studied Barnaby’s face. “Be careful.”

Barnaby smiled sweetly. “I will be.” He glanced at Sarah. “You’ll need to be careful, too, and keep up the pretense of being exercised over the orphanage. With a villain like this—one who may well appear perfectly respectable—you can never tell when he, or someone he knows, will be watching.”

Sarah grimaced, but nodded. “If you’re going to ride to Wellington, you won’t be able to return to night.”

Barnaby’s grin grew intent. “No matter—I’ll stay in Wellington until I meet this agent.”

Later that night Charlie lay beside Sarah in the downy comfort of their bed, and prayed that Barnaby had met with success. The sooner he could dispense with the role of domineering, disapproving husband the better.

With Sarah all warm feminine limbs, boneless in the aftermath of the plea sure they’d shared, snuggled against him, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder as if it were made just for her, his arms loosely yet definitely holding her to him, satisfaction was a rich drug sliding through his veins.

The taste of innocence transformed, rich, passionate, and even more addictive. He wanted to secure it forever, to know that it would always be his.

He would do anything, literally anything, to ensure it was.

That impulse—that commitment—clashed badly with the role the current situation forced on him.

The sensation of her resting so trustfully against him only strengthened his welling resistance to the pretense they’d enacted over recent days, whenever any outsider was present. Sarah had summoned Mrs. Duncliffe and Skeggs to inform them of the dean’s visit and ensure that the staff ’s good names remained unblemished, just in case the villain thought to start a whispering campaign to further pressure her into selling. But mindful of the need for secrecy, they hadn’t been able to tell either the vicar’s wife or Skeggs the full truth; instead, they’d had to convey, not by word but by suggestion, that Charlie was privately insisting that Sarah turn her back on the orphanage.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Worse, his assumed role demanded he behave in a manner that ran directly counter to his needs. To how he wanted, now and forever, to behave with her.

To how he knew and accepted he needed to behave if he wanted their marriage to be all that it could be.

They’d laughed after Mrs. Duncliffe and Skeggs had gone; as if sensing his discomfort, Sarah had smiled and teased, easing the emotional cuts and scrapes the interlude had inflicted, both on her and him. Yet he couldn’t help but feel—irrationally perhaps—that in even acting as he was he was betraying her and their love.

He still inwardly flinched at thinking of that word in relation to himself.

Which illustrated why he needed to end the charade, to be free of the villain’s unexpected influence so he could concentrate on overcoming his ingrained reaction to admitting to love. To letting it show, to letting it weave through his interactions with Sarah regardless of the where and when. Fighting free of the mental conditioning of decades wasn’t a simple matter; he was still too frequently conscious of the prodding of the latent belief that love was too dangerous an emotion to let loose in his life.

Yet he was determined to succeed, to overcome and eradicate that entrenched resistance and so give Sarah and their marriage what both needed from him to not just survive but thrive.

Perhaps if he could say the words aloud? He hadn’t—he knew he hadn’t. That was a milestone he could aim for and achieve.

A small milestone, perhaps, but didn’t the philosophers argue that if one could articulate a commitment, one stood a better chance of meeting it? That certainly held true for investing; why not for marriage?

So he needed a declaration, something that rang true, that she would know came from his heart.

Words, the right words.

He was reasonably certain they weren’t “Are you pregnant?” even though he suspected she might be. She hadn’t said a word, and he wasn’t sure he had the right to ask, at least not yet…and it might be better if he waited until she told him; he had a suspicion that was one of those feminine declarations at which wise men feigned complete surprise.

Back to the right words. His mind circled, examined, wondered…until he fell asleep.

Two days later, with the afternoon light softening over the hills, Sarah set out from the orphanage on Blacktail’s back to ride home to Morwellan Park. She smiled at how quickly she’d adjusted to thinking of the Park, Charlie’s home, as hers. From her first day as his countess, it had felt right—like a comfortable glove sliding about her, fitting perfectly.

Eager to get back, she let Blacktail’s reins ease. Behind her, Hills, the groom Charlie had insisted she take, kept pace.

She’d ridden to the orphanage purely to check, to reassure herself that everyone was safe and that there’d been no further accidents. There hadn’t been, and everyone was coping with the increased level of vigilance they’d all deemed the best way to guard against further attacks.

Charlie had intended to come with her, but Malcolm Sinclair had called to discuss some reports on investment banking that Charlie had promised to share with him. Although they’d preserved their charade before Sinclair, Charlie had been torn; he’d patently wanted to send Sinclair packing and ride north with her instead.

She grinned, holding the moment close, clutching to her heart all that it meant. The wind whipped her hair back; she laughed and leaned forward to pat Blacktail’s sleek neck.

A faint whiz was all she heard before fire lanced across her back.