Twice Tempted (41 page)

Please turn this page for an excerpt from

Once a Rake
.

Chapter 1

S
arah Clarke was not going to let a pig get the best of her. Especially not this pig.

“Willoughby!” she called as she scrambled over the broken fence.

Blast that pig. She had even tied him up this time. But the pen was empty, the wood on one side shattered, and precise little hoofprints marched away through the mud.

Sarah took a brief look at the stone outbuildings that clustered around the old stable. She could hear rustling and creaking, which meant the animals had heard Willoughby escape. But there were no telltale porcine snortings or squeals. If she knew her pig, he was headed due south, straight for disaster.

Sarah rubbed at her eyes. “The cliffs. It had to be the cliffs.”

She hated the cliffs. She hated the height and the uncertain edge and the long, sudden drop she had almost made on more than one occasion all the way to the shingle beach below. Just the thought of facing them made her nauseous.

“I have better things to do,” she protested to no one.

It was closing in on evening, and she should be feeding her animals. She needed to help Mr. Hicks rescue the sheep who had taken advantage of another fallen fence to wander in among Sir Magnus’s prized Devon Longwools. Then she needed to inspect the debris that seemed to be diverting the stream into her wheat field. Instead she would be dancing on the edge of death to collect her pig.

She sighed. She had no choice. Willoughby was Fairbourne’s best source of income. And he was in imminent danger of tumbling off the edge of Britain.

Ducking into the barn to retrieve her secret weapon, she picked up her skirts and ran for the path that snaked through the beech spinney. It was the same route Willoughby had taken the day before and the week before that.

Oh, why couldn’t he become enamored of an animal in his own farmyard?

“If it weren’t for the fact that you are such a good provider,” she muttered, pushing her hair out of her eyes with one hand as she ran, “I’d leave you to your fate. Stupid, blind, pigheaded…well, I guess you would be, wouldn’t you?”

Both pigheaded
and
blind. One of her husband, Boswell’s, few good ideas, Willoughby was a new breed called the Large Black, which produced lovely gammon and even lovelier babies. He also had ears that were so large they flopped over his eyes, making it difficult for him to see. The problem was, Willoughby didn’t seem to notice until he was trapped in mire or running right over a crumbling escarpment.

Why couldn’t Fairbourne have been situated farther away from the sea? Sarah mourned as she wove her way through the wood. Somewhere like, oh, she didn’t know, Oxford. Quiet, dry, and relatively clean. Away from oceans or high cliffs, with libraries that held more than Debrett’s and gothic novels. Yes, especially libraries.

Not that she had ever actually seen Oxford. But she had always thought how wonderful it must be to stroll the stone walks and smooth greens that stretched beneath golden spires, soaking in the history, the culture, the learned discourse of men in flapping black robes. Books and lectures and good dinner conversation. No mud, no mucking out, no pigs of any stripe. But especially no Great Blacks with a predilection for falling in love with inappropriate species.

His latest amour resided in Squire Bovey’s pastures, which were reached by way of the coastline. The coastline, which at this point was a cliff several hundred feet above the Channel and apt to crumble for no reason.

Sarah was still running when she burst through the trees into a hard blast of cold Channel wind. She stumbled to a halt, her heart stuttering. Beyond her the land rolled away, barren of all but bracken as far as the jagged, uncertain cliffs. She could see the better part of a mile both ways. She did not see her pig.

Oh, lord, please don’t let him have gone over. He’s the difference between getting by and going hungry.

She was still standing fifty feet from the cliff, working up the nerve to get close enough for a look down, when she caught the sound of a plaintive squeal. Whipping around, she gaped. She couldn’t believe it. There, tucked into the spinney not ten feet away, stood Willoughby, securely tied to a tree. He didn’t look happy, but Willoughby never looked pleased when his plans were thwarted.

Sarah looked around, expecting to see the squire’s boys, or Tom Scar, who did odd jobs in the neighborhood and could always be seen walking this way at end of day.

But there was no one there. Just the grass and bracken and never-ending wind, which tugged impatiently at her skirts and tossed her hair back in her eyes.

Could it be her mysterious benefactor again? For the last few days she had suspected that she had a guest on the estate. She had been missing eggs and once found evidence of a rabbit dinner. Probably a soldier, discharged after ten bloody years of war and left with no job or home. He wasn’t the first. He certainly wouldn’t be the last.

At least he had attempted to repay the estate’s meager bounty. Sarah had come out each morning to find some small task done for her. The breach in a dry stone wall mended. Chicken feed spread, old tack repaired, a lost scythe not only found but sharpened. And now Willoughby.

Another aggrieved snort recalled her attention. Willoughby was looking at her with mournful eyes. Well, Sarah thought he was. It was difficult to see past those ears. She walked over to let him loose and was butted for her troubles.

Whoever had tied him had known what they were about. It took ten minutes of her being goosed by an anxious pig to get the knot loose. Wrapping the rope around one fist, Sarah reached into her apron pocket for the piece of coarse blanket she had plucked from the barn. Fluttering it in front of the pig’s nose, she tugged at the rope. Willoughby gave a happy little squeal and nudged her so hard she almost toppled over. She chuckled. It never failed. She pulled him into motion, and he followed, docile as a pet pug.

It had been Sarah’s greatest stroke of genius. Willoughby might not be able to see all that well, but a pig’s sense of smell was acute. So Sarah collected items belonging to Willoughby’s current amour to nudge him along. Her only objection was the fact that her pig couldn’t tell the difference between her and the squire’s mare.

“Come along, young man,” she coaxed, striding back through the spinney with him in tow. “You truly must cease this wandering. Your wife and babies are waiting for you. Besides, I have four very pretty sows coming next week to make your acquaintance, and you needs must be here. It is iniquitous, I know, but I need that money to tide us over the winter.”

If Willoughby finally did manage to tumble off that cliff, she would have no money at all to make it through. She would have no pig to sire new babies, and no stud fees. So the first thing she must do when she returned was fix the pen. Then she still had lost sheep and a diverted stream to attend to before finishing her evening chores.

As she did every autumn, when the farmyard was perennially muddy and her skin chapped, Sarah wished she were somewhere else. It wasn’t as bad in spring or summer because then she had growing things, new babies to raise, the comfort of wildflowers and warm skies. Every spring she imagined things could be better. Every autumn she admitted the truth. She was caught here at Fairbourne, and here she would stay. She had nowhere else to go.

She wouldn’t think of that, though. It served no purpose, except to eat away at her heart. Tucking the bit of blanket on the fence where Willoughby could smell it, she tied him up with a scratch of the ears and an admonition to behave. Then, rewrapping her muffler against the chill, she went about her work, ending with a visit to the henhouse.

It was when she slipped her hand beneath Edna the hen that she knew for certain who had tied up Willoughby. Edna was her best layer, and yet the box was nearly empty. Sarah checked Martha and Mary and came up with similar results. Someone had taken their eggs. And it hadn’t been a fox, or at least one of her birds would have been a pile of bloody feathers.

Well, Sarah thought, collecting what was left, her visitor had earned his meal. She wished she had seen him, though. She could have at least rewarded him with a few scones for rescuing Willoughby from sure disaster.

On second thought, she considered with her first real smile of the day, maybe not scones. They would be Peg’s scones, and Peg’s scones could be used for artillery practice. No one should be rewarded that way.

Sarah might have thought no more of the matter if the men hadn’t ridden up. She was just shoving the chicken coop door closed when she heard horses approaching over the rise from Pinhay Road. She sighed.
Now what?

Giving up the idea that she would eat any time soon, she gave the coop a final kick and strode off toward the approaching riders. She was just passing the old dairy when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A shadow, nothing more, by the back wall. But a big shadow. One that seemed to be sitting on the ground, with long legs and shoulders the size of a Yule log.

It didn’t even occur to her that it could be anyone but her benefactor. She was about to call to him when the riders crested the hill, and she recognized their leader.

“Oh, no,” she muttered, her heart sinking straight to her half boots. This was not the time to betray the existence of the man who had saved her pig. She closed her mouth and walked straight past.

There were six riders in all, four of them dressed in the motley remnants of their old regiments. Foot soldiers, by the way they rode. Not very good ones, if the company they kept was any indication. Ragged, scruffy, and slouching, they rode with rifles slung over their shoulders and knives in their boots.

Sarah might have dismissed them as unimportant if they had been led by anyone but her husband’s cousin Martin Clarke. She knew better than to think Martin wished her well. Martin wished her to the devil, just as she wished him.

A thin, middling man with sparse sandy hair and bulging eyes, Martin had the harried, petulant air of an ineffectual law clerk. Sarah knew better. Martin was as ineffectual as the tides.

Just as Sarah knew he would, he trotted past the great front door and toward the outbuildings where he knew he could find her at this time of day. She stood where she was, egg pail in hand, striving for calm. Martin was appearing far too frequently lately.

Damn you, Boswell
, she thought, long since worn past propriety.
How could you have left me to face this alone?

“Martin,” she greeted Boswell’s cousin as he pulled his horse to a skidding halt within feet of her. She felt sorry for the horse, a short-boned bay that bore the scars of Martin’s spurs.

“Sarah,” Martin snapped in a curiously deep voice.

He did not bow or tip his hat. Martin knew exactly what she was due and wasn’t about to let her forget it. Sarah wished she had at least had the chance to tidy her hair before facing off with him. She hated feeling at a disadvantage.

“Lady Clarke,” the sixth man said in his booming, jovial voice.

Sarah’s smile was genuine for the squire, who sat at Martin’s left on an ungainly looking sorrel mare. “Squire,” she greeted him, walking up to rub the horse’s nose. “You’ve brought our Maizie to call, have you? How are you, my pretty?”

“Pretty” was not really a word one should use for Maizie. As sturdy as a stone house, she was all of seventeen hands, with a Roman head and a shambling gait. She was also the best hunter in the district and of a size to carry Squire’s massive girth.

Maizie’s arrival was met by a thud and a long, mournful squeal from the pigpen.

The squire laughed with his whole body. “Still in love, is he?”

Sarah grinned back. “Caught him not an hour ago trying to sneak over for a tryst.”

The squire chuckled. “It’s good someone loves my girl,” he said with an affectionate smack to the horse’s neck. Maizie nuzzled Sarah’s apron and was rewarded with an old fall apple. Willoughby sounded as if he were dying from anguish.

“Thank you for the ale you sent over, Squire,” Sarah said. “It was much enjoyed. Even the dowager had a small tot after coming in from one of her painting afternoons.”

“Excellent,” he said with a big smile. “Excellent. Everyone is well here, I hope? Saw Lady Clarke and Mizz Fitchwater out along the Undercliff with their paints and hammers. They looked to be in rude health.”

Sarah smiled. “They are. I will tell them you asked after them.”

“This isn’t a social call,” Martin interrupted, shifting in his saddle.

Sarah kept her smile, even though just the sight of Martin sent her heart skidding around in dread. “To what do I owe the honor, then, gentlemen?”

“Have you seen any strangers around?” the squire asked, leaning forward. “There’s been some theft and vandalism in the area. Stolen chickens and the like.”

“Oh, that,” Sarah said with a wave of her hand. “Of course. He’s taken my eggs.”

Martin almost came off his horse. “Who?”

Shading her eyes with her hand, Sarah smiled up at him. “‘Who’? Don’t you mean ‘what’? Unless you name your foxes.”

That obviously wasn’t the answer he’d been looking for. “Fox? Bah! I’m talking about a man. Probably one of those damned thievin’ soldiers wandering the roads preying on good people.”

Did he truly not notice how his own men scowled at him? Men who undoubtedly had wandered the roads themselves? Well, Sarah thought, if she had had any intention of acknowledging her surprise visitor, Martin’s words disabused her of the notion. She wouldn’t trust Napoleon himself to her cousin’s care.

“Not unless your soldier has four feet and had a long bushy tail,” she said genially. “But I doubt he would fit the uniform.”

The squire, still patting his Maizie, let out a great guffaw. “We’ll get your fox for you, Lady Clarke,” he promised. “Not great hunt country here. But we do. We do.”

“Kind of you, Squire. I am certain the girls will be grateful. You know how fatched Mary and Martha can get when their routine is disturbed.”