“So why are things in such poor condition?” Mr. Haddonfield asked. He reached out and brushed her hair back over her ear. The gesture should have startled Sara right off the bed, when instead it made her want to purr.

Like Heifer, who was probably the happiest member of the household.

“I’ve told Lady Warne the funds aren’t sufficient as baldly as I might. It’s as if she doesn’t get my letters. Her notes are chatty and pleasant and wish us well, but the funding doesn’t change.”

“She’ll read my letters. If I have to have Nicholas read them to her, she’ll read them.” He was very sure of himself. She’d expect no less of him.

“Who is Nicholas?” Sara’s words came out sleepy, not quite slurred, and Mr. Haddonfield made the same gesture again, smoothing her hair back over her ear. She should rebuke him, except there was no disrespect in his touch.

Only an inability to abide disorder—Sara suffered from the same penchant—or perhaps a passing inclination to offer comfort.

“Nicholas is my older brother, the heir to the earldom, whose job while I’m immured here is to marry his prospective countess.”

A little silence ensued, broken only by the crackling of the fire. He caressed her hair a couple of more times, his touch lingering.

“Mrs. Hunt?” Mr. Haddonfield’s hand slid to her shoulder and shook it lightly. “Sara?”

“Hmm?” Her eyes fluttered open, and she focused on him with effort. Too much laudanum and too little sleep. What must he think of her?

“You’re falling asleep. North claims it can be done with the eyes open. I can carry you to your bed.”

“Carry me?” Sara straightened her spine through force of will, but between fatigue, the dragging of the poppy, and the mesmerizing pleasure of Mr. Haddonfield’s hand, it was an enormous effort. “That won’t be necessary.”

His smile was slow and slightly naughty, like a small boy would be naughty, not a grown man. “If I wanted to carry you, you couldn’t stop me.”

“But you are a gentleman, so you will not argue this point with me.”

“Suppose not, though I’ll see you down the stairs, at least.”

“I’m a housekeeper, Mr. Haddonfield.” Sara rose, only to find her hand placed on Haddonfield’s arm and held there by virtue of his fingers over her knuckles. “Your gallantries are wasted on me.”

Though they were sweet, those gallantries. Sara liked them probably about as much as Mr. North liked his chocolate mousse.

“I respectfully disagree.” He took up the candle and escorted her from the room. “If I lose favor with you, I’m out of clean laundry, candles, coal and wood for my fire, clean sheets, and God help me if I should split the seam of my breeches.”

“God help us all, in that case.” Sara gave up trying to hold her weariness at bay and moved at his side through the darkened house. “You really aren’t going to sell the place?”

Beside her, Mr. Haddonfield stopped, a sigh escaping him in the near darkness.

He set the candle down and turned her by the shoulders, while Sara felt her heart speeding up for no good reason.

“You’ve managed as best you can, managed brilliantly, but you’re battle-weary, Sara. You keep firing when the enemy has quit the field.” He kept a hand on her shoulder, his thumb sliding across her collarbone in a slow, rhythmic caress.

He made no other move; he didn’t use that seductive baritone on her in the darkened corridor, just circled his thumb over the spot where neck, shoulder, and collarbone came together. A vulnerable, lonely point on a woman’s body.

Her mind did not comprehend what he was offering, but her soul longed for it, and her body leaned closer to his, then closer still. In the cold, dark corridor, she leaned on him, despite her pride, despite common sense, despite all the reasons she couldn’t lean on any man ever again.

His arms came around her, and it felt so good. He’d called her Sara, and that had felt good too.

“I give you my word I will not recommend to my father or to Lady Warne that Three Springs be sold,” he said, his voice sounding near her ear. “The house has good bones, and the resources are available to set it to rights. And even if Lady Warne should die and leave the property to some distant relation, I’ll see you and yours situated. I give you my word on that too, and I’ve the means to do it, easily.”

She lingered in his embrace for a few precious moments, wanting to believe him but knowing only that she hadn’t been held like this for years. It was worse, in a way, to be reminded of what she’d never have.

“Come.” He turned her under his arm and slipped his hand down to her waist. With his free hand, he picked up the candle then escorted her in silence to the foot of the stairs. “Do you believe me, Sara?”

“I believe you mean what you say. I do not believe life often fits itself to our intentions, though.”

“You’re cautious. I can understand caution. To bed with you now, and you are ordered to make a nice long, expensive list for me, agreed?”

“I can manage that.” She managed a smile too, albeit a tired one.

“Take the candle.” He passed it to her, along with a smile that conveyed benevolence and something friendlier. His lips brushed her forehead, feather soft, like a warm breeze in the depth of winter. “Sweet dreams.”

“Likewise.” Sara turned without further words, feeling an equal inclination to touch her fingers to the center of her forehead and cry like a motherless child.

Menses. Damned, interminable, inevitable, toweringly inconvenient menses, and a tot of the poppy. That’s what had put her in such a taking. It had to be her menses.

Three

Allie opened the door to a large, mostly bare room on the third floor. “This is my favorite place to play. I like the light best here, even on rainy days.”

The light was abundant, Beck noted, mostly because what came in the row of uncurtained windows reflected off the gleaming hardwood floor and ricocheted off unadorned walls and a single large mirror.

“You paint.” Beck took in the folded, paint-spattered cloth, the shortened easel collapsed against the wall, and the lingering scents of linseed and turpentine.

“I love to paint. I’m not allowed to paint human subjects, or portraits, but I will when I’m older, Mama said. This is what I finished a few days ago, so now I won’t paint for a while. Mama doesn’t want me to forget how to be a child, whatever that means.”

She gamboled over to him, a small canvas in her hand. Beck took it from her, expecting to have to gush credibly over a crude rendering of some books and flowers.

“God’s toenails.” His carried the painting to the windows the better to goggle at it. George was the art connoisseur of the family, but Beck had been to enough royal exhibitions at various European courts and was enough his mother’s son to have something of an eye.

“This is quite good. I expect Heifer to yawn and stretch right in my hands.” She’d used brushstrokes to somehow render his fur nearly… pettable.

“The light on the mouse isn’t quite right.” Allie leaned over his forearm to peer at her work. “I’m working on secondary light sources, according to Aunt. She’s my teacher. I got Heifer right, because he will hold still and let me study him, but mice aren’t good subjects.”

“You could study a painting of a mouse, or do sketches to work it out.”

Allie looked intrigued. “I’ve never used a painting as a subject. It would have to be a good painting.”

“If you go to the exhibitions in London, there are all manner of art students sketching the masterworks,” Beck said, still fascinated with the little canvas, because clearly, he was in the presence of a budding genius. Allie’s quick mind and inherent creativity weren’t suffering for lack of hide-and-seek. The child was built to focus on things more interesting and sophisticated than which playmate was hidden under the bed.

“You’ve got a whimsical touch, Allie.” Beck tilted the frame. “You’re deadly accurate too. Don’t paint sad things, or you’ll have everybody in tears.”

Allie took the painting from him and frowned at it. “You don’t think I should stick to watercolors?”

“Are you competent with watercolors?” Beck asked, eyeing the room and seeing it made over into a studio.

Allie wrinkled her nose. “I’m competent. Watercolors are tedious, though, and best suited to tedious subjects, like weather and landscapes. For living things, oils are better.”

“But you’re not to paint portraits?”

“I am not.” Allie heaved a martyred sigh. “So I did Heifer, and I rather like it myself. I think I’ll do him again—Mama allowed it wasn’t quite a portrait.”

“You could also do my horse. There are people who make a great deal of money doing portraits of beasts for the very wealthy.”

“I could be rich?” Allie was pleased with this notion.

“Or you could be in a lot of trouble.” Sara’s voice cracked like a whip from the door.

“Hullo, Mama.” Allie’s features arranged themselves into careful neutrality, and Beck felt as if the sun had disappeared behind a maternal thundercloud.

He donned a smile and faced the bad weather. “Good morning, Mrs. Hunt. You look rested.”

She did. Rested and mortally peeved.

“Allemande, your aunt could use help preparing luncheon,” Sara said, her tone softening. “And there’s a bucket of scraps to take out to Hildegard. If you see Mr. North, tell him lunch will be ready soon.”

“Yes, Mama.” Allie scampered off, leaving a ringing silence in her wake.

“She’s quite talented.” Beck picked up the cat’s picture. “Quite talented.”