“Because to me,” Tremaine said levelly, “they are due the support. It is not an expense. It is a privilege, and thanks to a lot of bleating, stinking sheep, I can easily spare the coin. You have family coming out your ears, Haddonfield, both brothers and sisters, an old granny of some sort. My family in France is gone—mostly murdered in the fruitless march toward a republic—and what few second cousins I have in Scotland regard me as a bloody Sassenach.” He dropped into a soft burr. “These women, Allie in particular, are all the family who will claim me.”

North swirled the water and shot Beck a thoughtful look. Beck dunked again, then passed him the soap and traded places with him on the bench.

“You are an orphaned comte?” Beck asked.

“I don’t use the title.”

“You need to talk to Sara,” Beck said. “You mentioned two reasons she wouldn’t accompany you to England. What was the second?”

“The child.” Tremaine tossed the empty flask onto the bank. “By the law of any civilized land, a man’s legitimate progeny are his to control, period. Sara would not risk antagonizing Reynard lest he separate her from her child. And he would have, much as it shames me to say it.”

“Happy for him, the man is dead,” Beck said, “else I should have to see to his demise myself.”

“For observing the law?” Tremaine caught the soap when North pitched it.

“For exploiting a seventeen-year-old girl who’d just lost her brother,” Beck began. “For parading her all around Europe like some musical whore, for using Polly and her art just as badly, for being an obscene perversion of what a husband should be, for coming between parents and their only surviving offspring—need I go on?”

Tremaine submerged and stayed under long enough for North to murmur, “I won’t let you drown him, Beck. He’s no more Reynard than you or I are.”

Excellent—if irksome—point.

“I can’t argue with you, Haddonfield,” Tremaine said when he’d whipped his hair out of his eyes and tossed the soap onto the bank. “I want to. I want to protest you’re being too harsh, my brother meant well, his wife was an ungrateful no-talent schemer, but I can’t. Reynard was raised under difficult circumstances, and he did not rise to the challenges in his life. For all that, Sara still probably blames herself for what befell her and her sister and rues the day she ever sent for Reynard.”

A beat of silence, and then Beck asked, “She sent for him?”

“She hasn’t told you this? Reynard used to gloat to me in his letters about it.” Tremaine disappeared under the water again, coming up closer to the hot end of the pool. “Sara had heard of Reynard. He’d some success managing a pair of brothers who played violin and viola, and she expected he could do the same for her and her brother. No doubt, she thought he’d find them some engagements around London, start them off on the private parties, that sort of thing. A young lady performing in a concert hall might not be the done thing, but a brother and sister making music in private homes before Polite Society is another matter.”

“A reasonable expectation from her viewpoint,” Beck said.

“True.” Tremaine climbed back up on the ledge. “But Reynard saw much greater potential for income by taking one violinist—a young, lovely female with dramatic red hair—and marching her all over the Continent, where women can and do perform professionally. If he’d taken Sara and Gavin, they would have supported each other against him and been much more difficult and expensive to handle. So he chose Sara and took the brother aside, explaining the boy owed it to his sister to step out of Sara’s path. He similarly closeted himself with Sara and said she needed to free her brother from worrying about her, focusing on duet literature, and so forth. Reynard promised her Gavin would be a better musician on his own two feet rather than pandering to his sister’s lesser talent.”

“Perishing, sodding, bloody, contemptible hell.” Beck shot off the ledge and slogged to the bank. “How can you recount this perfidy so calmly?”

“The picture emerged slowly.” Tremaine followed Beck and North out of the pool and accepted the bath sheet North tossed him. “I did not see much of my brother, but we’d cross paths occasionally on the Continent. He wrote often though, dropping a hint here, a detail there. He did regret Gavin’s death, though, of that I’m sure.”

“I thought it was an accident.” Beck stopped drying himself, unease wrapping around the anger in his gut. “Sara told me Gavin’s death was an accident.”

“She no doubt wants you to believe that.” Tremaine pulled his shirt over his head and stepped into his breeches. “Gavin was supposedly cleaning his gun the day after Sara accepted Reynard’s proposal, and the thing went off. The boy left a note encouraging his sister to take her chance for happiness with Reynard, and asking his parents to forgive him.”

Beck strode off and stood a few paces away, rage and sorrow ricocheting in his mind while curses in five languages clamored for an airing. North handed Tremaine his boots, gathered up the soap and the empty flask, then caught Tremaine’s eye and jerked his chin toward the manor house.

They left Beck alone and half-naked in the dark, the silence of the night screaming around him.

Eighteen

“He has a letter from your parents.”

Sara knew that voice and that scent, but did not know Beckman would accost her while she lay in her own bed. She opened her eyes when Beck climbed into that bed, spooned himself around her, and gathered her close.

“Get out of this bed.”

“Polly’s off somewhere,” Beck said, smoothing her braid over her shoulder. “Allie’s fast asleep. I checked.”

“You…” Sara tried to roll over to glare at him, but he held her gently in place.

“I expect your sister is trysting with North at the springs. I hope she is. We should try it sometime.”

“You should get out of this bed,” Sara insisted. “Allie has the occasional nightmare, and when she does she comes looking for me.”

“She’ll find you, but one wonders where this argument was all the nights you spent in my bed, Mrs. Hunt. Aren’t you interested in your parents’ letter?”

“No.” Sara flopped the covers for emphasis.

“Mendacity in domestics is a terrible problem.” The dratted man kissed her ear.

“Beckman…” The mere sound of his voice, the slightest hint of his scent, and some of the tension Sara had carried since Tremaine’s arrival left her body. “I’m not interested in another sermon from my father.”

“Your husband is dead. What can your father sermonize about?”

That stumped her, which was a relief, because their increasingly frequent nocturnal arguments bit at her composure far more than she’d ever allow Beck to see. He seized the advantage of her silence.

“We had an interesting chat at the springs, your brother-in-law and I.” Beck’s hand kneaded at the base of Sara’s spine, where her menses left her feeling achy. “He freely admits to having a store of items sent by Reynard for safekeeping, and admits those items are yours, Allie’s, and Polly’s.”

When Beck touched her like that, it was hard to form words, much less think.

“It costs him nothing to admit such. Next he’ll be insisting we accompany him back to Oxford to look over this treasure trove, and then we’ll be virtual prisoners.”

“He asked me if he could buy you Three Springs,” Beck went on, his hands working magic.

“Asking and producing the deed are two different things.”

“Sara, the man has no other family.”

Sara rolled over then, mostly to reclaim her powers of speech and thought. “Beckman, you acquit him of all the trouble we’ve had here and find him worthy of trust and confidences and God knows what else, all because you’ve splashed around in the springs together? Forgive me if I’m slower to trust. His brother was similarly charming and kind and interested only in my welfare, until he’d sprung his trap, leaving my life in ruins, my brother dead, and my parents believing every lie Reynard spun, while my sister…”

“Sara?” Polly stood at Sara’s door.

“God save me,” Sara muttered.

“My apologies,” Polly said. “Allie’s not in her bed.”

“She’s not?” Sara sat up in an instant, scooting to the side of the bed. “Could she be at the privy?”

“Not likely,” Polly said. “She’s been warned not to leave the house at night.”

“Dear God…” Sara was almost off the bed before Beck stopped her with fingers wrapped around her wrist.

“Wait.” He reached for his dressing gown with the other hand. “Think first, Sara. We’ll find her. Where’s North, Polly?”

“He thought he saw a light in the barn and was going to investigate, but Allie wouldn’t take a lantern out there without permission, not with all that hay to catch on a single spark.”

Beck kept his grip on Sara’s arm when she would have bolted for the door in her nightgown. He handed her the green dressing gown and then her slipper boots. “Your sister will need a shawl, Polly, and a lantern. I doubt she’ll let me leave this house without her.”

Sara nodded affirmation of that notion, and Polly disappeared.

“I’m going to see if Tremaine is in his bed,” Beck said, standing to yank on his breeches. “You will not panic, Sara, do you hear me? Allie was in her bed not fifteen minutes ago, and she can’t have gone far by moonlight.”

Unless, of course, she was bundled onto Tremaine’s horse and heading for the first ship out of Portsmouth. Sara kept that thought to herself as Beck escorted her to the kitchen and saw her into Polly’s keeping, while he went to see if Tremaine—alone in all of Creation—was yet abed.