Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (24 page)

“Tell me about your man,” Brian said getting back into Lark’s lap, sleepy after her bath. “My mother said there was a man who loved her and would love me. Is your man the one who loved my Mama? My real name is like his, is it not?”

Lark stilled while her blood felt as if it left her body. “I … do not know if my husband is the man who loved your Mama,” she said, rocking again, “but your Mama’s note was addressed to him.”

“Is he a good man?”

“Yes, Lark said. He is. Micah is my nephew, you see, but my husband takes very good care of him.”

“The boy hates me.”

“And you love the boy?”

Brian made a rude noise that made Lark laugh and bring her close.

“Are you going to keep the boy too?” Brian asked on a sleepy yawn. “What does he call you?”

Micah doesn’t call me anything, anymore, Lark thought, because he hasn’t yet spoken a word. “You may both call me Auntie,” she suggested, or Mama, she dared not.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Once Brian had begun talking, there was no stopping her. She not only spoke for herself, but for Micah as well, except that Micah did not always like what Brian said on his behalf, which made him angry and turned him into a handful of a normal little boy. Lark was as grateful, and entertained, as she was frustrated by her bickering children.

Ash taught them a great deal about the estate and often took one or both of them with him on his rounds.

Brinks taught them to ride.

Grimsley could most often be found teaching them manners.

Lark took them to visit Ash’s mother for fifteen minutes every morning, holding her hand and speaking to her mother-in-law as if the frail old woman understood. Lark called her Mother and encouraged the children to call her Grandmother.

She took the children on playful adventures throughout the estate. In the spinney, they pretended to be explorers, lost in the trees and brush. They played hide and seek among the farm sheds, the buttery, the root cellar and dovecote. They ran through the ghostwalk as if chased by ghosts, played tag in the lavender field, and climbed trees in the orchard. On rainy days, they made lavender sachets, as cook had taught them, or played war with Ash’s tin soldiers, or held banister races in the foyer.

Lark had Olive teach her how to sew Brian a rag doll and after she completed it, Brian took to playing house like a normal little girl, though Micah hated that game as much as any normal little boy.

Sometimes the resentment between them vanished, and Brian and Micah played like reasonably well behaved children, but other times Brian would turn wild again. She cut a fence and stole a chicken from a tenant for no good reason, and only got caught when she let the squawking bird loose in the kitchen and politely asked cook to roast it.

In early June, Stan Redman caught both children swimming naked in the lake. They had tied Mim to a nearby tree to get free. Brian admitted talking Micah into joining her in a cooling swim, while Micah admitted to ambushing Mim.

But nights were for her and Ash and baby making.

“You would think that Micah would be a good influence on Brian, rather than her being a bad influence on him,” Ash said one night as he turned Lark to undo the buttons down her dress.

“I do not even care,” Lark said. “I am happy to see Micah play like a child, even a naughty one, for the first time in his life.”

“Well, I’d be pleased if Brian didn’t cause any more damage to my tenants’ property.”

“At least she doesn’t scream the house down when I leave her to come to bed at night anymore.” Brian had finally accepted that Mim was there for her at night and that Micah slept just across the nursery, and Lark was grateful that she and Ash had been able to resume their baby-making.

“Are you certain you still want to have a baby?” she asked as she climbed into bed with him, for she’d had a particularly difficult day with the children.

“Have you changed your mind then about how much you enjoy playing the blanket hornpipe?” he asked, as he touched her in such a way as to make her yearn.

She gave his body the same studied attention. “Not in the least, but I have discovered of late that children are a great deal of trouble, or haven’t you noticed?”

“Oh, what kind of trouble?”

He was paying more attention to her body now than to her words. “They’re both stubborn little tricksters, always into one scrape or another. If it isn’t fighting like wildcats with each other, it’s skinning knees or breaking something of value in the house, not to mention tearing their clothes and cussing like sailors.”

Ash laughed and rose above her. “They are, both of them, exactly like
you
.” He kissed her nose.

Lark gasped in outrage, and then she gave him a prideful grin. “Really?”

“Really,” Ash said. “Let us make another.”

Lark could do nothing, of course, but agree.

When the tutor finally arrived, Brian, Micah, and Lark, together, became his pupils. He was to teach them reading, writing, and numbers.

A prig of a miserable old schoolmaster, he looked down his nose at Brian’s name as well as her clothes, at Micah’s silence, and at Lark’s own advanced age. He chided her often and told her she was stupid compared to the children, which Lark could forgive, because it was true. She was his dunce, said he daily, and he made her wear a cone of a cap on several occasions just to prove it.

Micah was his brightest, pupil. The man said Micah might have been his star pupil if he could only talk. Lark often wanted to use her knee on the prig where it counted most.

Brian was his constant interrupter, and when he called her on it, he sneered at what he called her “masculine” clothes. So what if the girl wasn’t yet ready to wear dresses, which Lark could understand. Why not ignore the clothes on her back and get on with their lessons?

Unfortunately, Brian felt the schoolmaster’s disdain, and when the man pointed out a word in her reading book that she’d read incorrectly—by tapping it with his ink-stained finger more times than was bearable, even to Lark—Brian swooped down, bit the offending digit, and promptly gagged.

He might have forgiven that transgression and forgotten the incident. But a few weeks later, when in the course of his incessant searching for his spectacles, the prig broke a bladder of ink someone had slipped into his claret frockcoat pocket, he lost his temper, and when Brian giggled, he went for her in a rage with a strap.

Lark hit him with a chair to stop him from hurting Brian, and Ash dismissed the tetchy tutor without a reference. The following day, Ash himself began teaching them, but not before he gave them a talking to about their behavior during lessons.

He paced with as much pomp as the tutor, except that his inexpressibles fit him like a second skin, and Lark knew that his legs and shoulders were not padded. As a matter of fact, she knew what he looked like all over, and in the throes of passion as well, so she did not feel the least intimated.

She and the children sat in silence at the nursery table, books open, waiting for their new tutor to finish his lecture.

Finally, he rounded on them. “One more thing,” he said, looking from one of them to the other. “No more schoolroom pranks. Now, which of you put the bladder of ink into your former tutor’s pocket?”

“Micah did it!” Brian charged, pointing the boy’s way.

Micah rose to his feet and roared his outrage pointing back toward Brian.

“Lark,” Ash said. “That leaves only you. Did you do it?”

Lark looked from one child to the other and raised her chin. “Yes,” she said. “I did.”

Ash made a noise of disgust. “You did not.”

“You doubt that I could?”

“Not at all, but I do doubt that you would become a poor example for the children.”

“I did it,” Lark repeated.

“Fine then. You will stay late and do an extra assignment when we are finished.”

“Oh, for Dirty Dan’s Sake, I did it!” Brian said, sticking her tongue out at Micah.

Micah mirrored the action, while Lark refused to meet her husband’s gaze, so he would not see her amusement.

“You lied,” Ash said to Brian.

She hung her head. “Yes Sir.”

Ash sighed. “I dislike dishonesty above all things, Brian. Do you understand?”

“Yes Sir.”

“I would rather you told me when you were naughty, than lie about having done it.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Good. Now that’s settled, let us open our reading books at page sixty-three. Brian, since you perpetrated the prank that lost us our tutor, you will begin. You will also have an extra assignment at the end of the lesson as punishment … for your lie, not your misdeed. By my account, the tutor got what he deserved.”

Brian nodded. “My
Maman
said
you would be strict but fair.”

Ash started, as if he’d seen a ghost, then he glanced red-faced at Lark, before nodding for Brian to begin reading.

Lark had tried to forget what Brian said about Ash loving her mother. She had never asked him if he loved anyone before, only if he’d played the blanket hornpipe with anyone else, or made a babe with them, which he might have done with Brian’s mother, as it turned out, and which bothered her more with each day that passed. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Brian; she did. But Ash was her husband and she felt a womanly ownership that she did not want to share. She wanted to know, damn it, if he had loved another woman.

She wanted to know if he loved
her
.

“Daydreaming during lessons, Lady Blackburne?” Ash said with a smile, and Lark turned her attention back to the book in front of her, her face warming.

The children were both bright. Micah helped Lark with her numbers, while Brian helped her with her reading, a sad and humiliating state of affairs.

After a particularly difficult lesson, Lark threw down her pencil, rose, and went to the nursery window, where she sat on the window-seat to look outside.

Ash followed. “Lark, is something bothering you?”

“I am not smart enough to be your wife and I am not half good enough either. I do not know why you put up with me.”

Ash’s arms came around her, his cheek met hers, and she reveled in his silent support. “I do not know why, either,” he said, his unexpected words cutting, despite his kiss on her neck. When he dared to chuckle, Lark rose and stomped on his foot with near as much force as she’d used on the dancing master, though to be fair, she was wearing less painful heels at this time.

When she saw her husband’s pain, she placed her hand against her mouth, in shock at what she’d done, felt her eyes fill, and quit the room.

“Devil it! Why did you do that?” Ash called after her. He looked at the children. “Why did she do that? What the …” He sat and massaged his throbbing foot. “I never saw that woman cry for no reason.”

Brian shook her head. “You were supposed to tell her you loved her, Dolt.”

“You are wiser than your years,” Ash said, before he called for Mim to supervise in the nursery, so he could follow his bride to her bedchamber.

Did he love Lark? Ash wondered, finding the thought as frightening as ever. Would his mother have suffered so badly at his leaving for war, if she had not loved him?

To him, love had always seemed to cause more pain than joy.