When his thumb brushed upward, Sara whimpered with the intensity of the sensation.

“You must not,” she whispered, flinching.

“I want to put my mouth on you here,” Beck rejoined, his whisper growing hoarse as his thumb found her again. “I want to taste you and make you scream with pleasure.”

“Beckman…” Sara’s grip on his hair tightened. “I can’t stand…”

He silenced her by sealing his mouth to hers, using his tongue, his thumb, and his hand to destroy her ability to think, much less speak. She began to rock shamelessly against his hand, her body damp with desire for more of his caresses.

“I want… Beck…”

“Let me give you what you want.” His voice was a low, rasping command. “Stop fighting the pleasure, Sara. Stop fighting yourself.”

He increased the pressure and speed of his thumb, and she stifled a moan against his neck. Her hips picked up the tempo, and then she was lost, overcome with pleasure, keening softly and riding his hand with mindless determination. When her pleasure finally subsided, she was limp in his arms, panting and without words.

Utterly undone.

And despite his own unappeased need, Beck was apparently content to hold her, to stroke her hair and her back, to fit his breathing with hers and to wait for her to regain her equilibrium.

“Love?” He kissed her cheek. “Sara, sweetheart?” He patted her backside gently, and she lifted her head then tucked her nose against his neck.

“What did you do to me?”

“Petted you a bit. Cuddle up, or you’ll take cold.” He tucked her closer, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his chin against her hair. “Talk to me, sweetheart. A woman gone quiet in her dallying is not a reassuring prospect. Are you all right?”

Sara tried to assay her bodily state and found the results did not lend themselves to articulation. The confusion of her emotional state defied any description whatsoever.

“No. I am not all right, but I can’t be more specific.” Part of what was amiss had to with these affectionate, cherishing little touches being every bit as overwhelming as what had gone before.

“I wasn’t too rough?”

“Of course not.” She let him see her eyes, see the truth of that. “You were…” She hid her face again. “So tender.”

A silence spread, not uncomfortable. Tenderness was the furthest thing from a transgression, and yet Sara felt as discommoded as if Beck had committed some domestic misdemeanor.

“She’s nursing,” Beck said softly. Sara twisted to peer over her shoulder and saw he was right. The filly’s tail was twitching, and her mother was contentedly lipping hay while the baby fed.

“They’ll be fine now, won’t they?” This mattered terribly. If anything should happen to either the mare or the filly now, Sara would lose her mind.

“They should be.” Beck lifted Sara so she wasn’t straddling him anymore but was across his lap instead. She was full grown and well fed, and he moved her around as easily he might lift Heifer. “What about you, Sara? Are you all right?”

“I think so.” She bit her lip in thought. “I will be, I am just… That wasn’t what I expected.”

“So are we dallying?” Beck’s expression was utterly unreadable as he studied the mare and foal.

“I must not decide this now.” She tucked into him as she said it, gathering a scent that was a combination of bergamot, hay, and horse. “I cannot think, Beckman. I cannot think one sensible thought just now.”

“Good.” He sounded smug and relieved both.

He lifted her in his arms, had her take the lantern down from its peg, and carried her back to the house. When he set her on her feet at her apartment door, he didn’t kiss her, but he did take her in his arms.

His voice rumbled under her ear where she’d laid it against his chest. “Even if you decide we shall not dally, Sara Hunt, I will be in your debt for the comforts you shared with me this night. All the comforts.”

When Sara wished he’d kiss her again or at least hold her for a few more moments, he disappeared up the steps to the cold and darkness above.

* * *

“May I ask for your help with something in the barn this morning, Miss Allie?” Beck tossed an orange into the air, caught it, and began peeling it.

“You may.” Allie tried to toss her orange, only to have Beck pluck it out of midair. He started over on hers, then set both oranges on the counter. “Mr. North hasn’t come down yet, so I’ll help with his chores.”

“Give him a little time,” Beck said. “I doubt you’d manage to get his chores done by Tuesday, so conscientious is our Mr. North. Put your sabots on, please, so we can see to this task before your aunt is done making breakfast.”

“What if Mr. North died last night?” Allie asked, clumping out the back door in her wooden shoes. “Or took off for Portsmouth like the twins?”

“What if the fairies took him and dropped him in the hot spring?” Beck suggested, “Which is just about as likely.” He held the barn door for her, provoking a shy grin from Allie. “Are you ready to help?”

“Yes. But with what?”

He led her over to Hermione’s stall and hefted her up to stand on a trunk.

“You have to help someone learn to make friends,” he said, nodding toward the occupants. “There’s a little girl in there ready to take the world by storm, but she needs a friend to scratch her neck and pet her and show her what brushes are for.”

Allie’s eyes went round, and her shoulders lifted with glee. “A baby for Hermione, and you say it’s a girl. She’s gorgeous, absolutely bee-yoo-tee-ful. I must sketch her this instant, and then, she must have a name.”

That sketching came before naming struck Beck as significant. He spent a few minutes acquainting Allie and the filly, until Allie was gently scratching the little beast on its fuzzy neck.

“I must get my sketch pad.”

Beck rose slowly from the straw so as not to spook the filly. “I suggest you eat a decent breakfast, feed Hildy, and do whatever other chores are expected of you before you start, or you’ll just have to stop midway.”

A jutting chin was his answer. “That is not fair. That is just not fair. She’s all soft and pretty and cute now, and I want to sketch her now.”

Beck tweaked a braid. “She’ll be here, Allie. When you get back to the house, be sure to wash your hands. Be thinking of a name while I take care of mucking and watering.”

“I will.” Allie turned abruptly to dash out the door, caught herself, and left the stall at a dignified pace. She even walked to the barn door before breaking into a dead run across the backyard.

Beck had mucked the stalls, refilled the water buckets, fed the chickens, and pitched fresh hay for the horses and the milk cows when Sara appeared, the egg basket over her arm.

“Good morning.” Beck smiled at her as he hung up his fork. “How fare you on this fine, frigid day?”

Sara kept her gaze on the foal, who was in fine fettle. “It is colder, isn’t it? Is she doing well?”

“She couldn’t be better. What of you, Sarabande Adagio?”

No cap. He would go to his grave pleased in some measure to have rid her of her caps.

Sara glanced at him, but only fleetingly. “I’m fine.”

Sara’s variety of fine did not invite a good-morning kiss. In Beck’s breeches, the sunrise lost some of its glory.

“Are you truly fine, or wishing the ground would swallow you up?” He leaned in and pitched his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Or are you a trifle sore and anticipating the next time you come upon me all alone late at night?”

“Of course not.” She put more surprise than dismay in her words.

Beck lingered close long enough to catch a hint of her scent before aiming a naughty grin at her.

She fought a shy smile and lost. “Oh, maybe a little, anticipating, that is, but maybe not.”

“Well, there’s a rousing endorsement of a fellow’s opening moves.”

“This isn’t a chess match,” Sara said, watching as the foal teetered around in her bed of straw. “But whatever it is, I don’t know how to go about it.”

She sounded genuinely perplexed and not exactly pleased.

This again, though not, Beck surmised, for the last time. “It’s a friendly dalliance, Sara, and it’s not complicated. Here’s how it works: you indicate to me my advances are welcome, and I offer you what pleasure you’re inclined to accept. There is no obligation and no particular significance to it beyond the moment. I would ask, however, that we observe a certain exclusivity in our dealings for whatever duration it suits you.”

To add that condition cost him some pride. Would that he’d clarified his stance on the matter of exclusivity with his poor wife.

“Just like that?” With the toe of her boot, Sara pushed bits of straw around in the dirt of the barn floor. “You wait for me to drop my handkerchief, and we go at it?”

“I wait for you to encourage me,” Beck corrected her, “and then I have your permission to persuade you to my bed.”

“You’re thinking of bedding me right now, aren’t you?” Sara’s tone was puzzled. “And you’ve thought of it before.”

“I have,” Beck replied, trying to fathom the direction of her thoughts. “I can only hope you’ve had reciprocal thoughts about me.”

“And I can rely on your discretion?” She peered at her egg basket, as if the contents might be getting up to mischief if left unsupervised.

“Sara…” Beck’s tone was patient. “I won’t maul you before your daughter, and I won’t discuss you with North, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I suppose it is.” She rearranged the eggs. “I don’t know how to go on, Beckman. In the cold light of day, I don’t know why I would want to—though… I do. Want to go on. I think.”