Читать книгу Claiming His Defiant Miss - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 12

Chapter Three

Liam stepped outdoors and scanned the yard, looking for a destination. The stone fence to his left seemed as good a place as any to have this conversation. He strode towards it, aware of May behind him. He’d give her five strides before her patience broke and she started demanding information.

One... May Worth could still frighten the living daylights out of him. That hadn’t changed in five years. He would have thought a man who’d been to war, a man who’d seen men die, who’d often delivered that death personally and intimately on behalf of the Crown, would not be so easily frightened by a single female. But logic failed to account for May Worth. There was so much to be frightened by: her beauty, her intelligence, her overwhelming confidence in the rightness of her opinion, but it was her stubbornness that frightened him the most, not because she intimidated him but because he revelled in her fearlessness.

Two... He’d once found her fearlessness so intoxicating he’d believed he could change the world for her. He’d been drawn to it like an addict to opium. He was a stronger man now, his own ideals and expectations better tempered by reality. Was she? He feared that reckless stubborn streak would be the author of her demise someday.

Three... Look where it had led already today: it had her pulling a pistol on a guest and demanding safe passage to her brother’s side, then refusing to leave the cottage. Very shortly it was going to prompt her to ask for every ounce of information he possessed regarding Preston and she was not going to like what he had to say.

Four...

‘Tell me everything,’ May blurted out, catching up to him. Five strides had been too optimistic. ‘We’re alone now, there’s no reason not to.’ There was a scold in there somewhere for him. She was angry he’d held back. She was anxious, which made her anger excusable, understandable even, but he still made her wait until they reached the stone fence. Someone had to teach May patience.

He leaned his elbows on the rough surface of the stone and looked out over the expanse of green field. It was far less disconcerting than looking at her and seeing those beautiful green eyes that could stalk a man like a tiger or burn with emerald passion, the rich walnut sheen of her hair, the elegant sweep of her jaw, the defiant point of her chin, the delicate, straight length of her nose set to perfection on her face, all of which informed a man without asking that this was a lady born to wealth and luxury. And then there was that skin, so perfectly translucent it called to mind every cliché he’d ever heard about silk and pearls and alabaster. It was indeed hard to speak when one could choose to look at May Worth instead. He’d learned to cultivate the skill, however. His sanity and male pride had depended on it.

‘The Home and Foreign Offices sent your brother to track down a man named Cabot Roan.’ He began in low tones, glancing around out of habit. They were in the middle of nowhere, but he couldn’t help it. One could never be too cautious. ‘Roan is suspected of leading an arms cartel whose interests do not always parallel Britain’s.’ He would not patronise May with an elementary explanation. She was intelligent. She would understand the implications.

‘Apparently my brother found him,’ May said drily.

‘Yes, and then they found us, on the road out of town at dark.’ Liam paused, letting her digest the information. She knew the rest from what he’d told her inside. ‘Roan will come looking for you. If he can’t find Preston, he will want to use you as leverage to get to him. The protection I offer is real, as is your need for it.’

May scoffed and repeated her earlier argument. ‘Hardly anyone knows I’m in Scotland. I rather think my location is my best protection.’

‘You’ve already heard my answer to that. Roan is very resourceful. He will find the people who know. Now that his life is on the line, he will be even more redoubtable. We must proceed as if he will find out.’

May was instantly wary. ‘Does this process involve more than sleeping in my cottage and repairing my barn roof?’ He could feel her eyes on him, probably narrowed to emerald slits of consideration.

Liam mentally braced himself for the storm. She wouldn’t like this next part. May did not tolerate being told what to do under the best of circumstances. ‘I am to be with you at all times and, if not, I need to know where you’ll be, when you’ll be there and who you’ll be with.’ He had to look at her now. The temptation was too great.

She shook her head and the storm broke. ‘I will not be treated like a small child who can’t be out of her mother’s sight on the off chance this Cabot Roan might come looking for me. So if you’ll excuse me, I have vegetables to put away before they wilt.’ May’s eyes flashed and she turned on her heel, presuming to walk away.

Liam reached for her, grabbing her arm, forcing his body to absorb the shock of touching her again after so long. ‘This is not the time to be stubborn, May,’ he growled, determined to make her see reason.

Her gaze went to his grip on her arm, her voice sharp. ‘Take your hand off me. I will not allow you to be my gaoler.’

‘Not your gaoler, May, your bodyguard. Please, May. This is not about what you want or even what I want. This is about Preston, about keeping Mistress Fields and the baby safe.’ It was his best argument, this appeal to pathos. May would do anything for the ones she loved, the ones who needed her protection. It was yet another way she was like her brother.

Some of the fire went out of her eyes and she relented. ‘How long before we know if Roan is coming?’

Liam shook his head. ‘We don’t know. He could come tomorrow, perhaps he is just a day or two behind me. Perhaps it will be a couple of weeks or months depending on how long it takes Roan to discover where you are.’

‘Perhaps he’ll never come.’

‘We can hope for that.’ The odds weren’t convincing. He knew Roan. The man was tenacious.

May wrapped her arms about herself and shivered in spite of the wool shawl she wore. It was cold out, the day brisk even for November, but he thought the shiver was from something more than the weather. ‘We’ll have to tell Beatrice.’ She shot him an accusing glance. ‘You could have told her inside.’ Now that she had her information, she could indulge in the scold he’d sensed was brewing earlier. ‘You didn’t have to hold back. You can trust Beatrice.’

It was his turn to go on the defensive. ‘How was I to know if I could trust her or if it would be too upsetting in her condition?’ He had his suspicions about Mistress Fields and her seafaring husband, but he wasn’t going to voice them out loud and risk alienating May. He had more important battles to win today.

‘I had only an acquaintance of minutes to rely on for my judgement. I erred on the side of discretion for the sake of the baby.’ If Beatrice Fields had secrets, it was hardly any of his concern. In his line of work, he’d learned women had secrets just like men, and like men, they, too, could be dangerous creatures. He wasn’t going to underestimate anyone simply because they were female. At the moment, his only interest in Beatrice Fields was her connection to why May was in godforsaken Scotland.

‘I’ve told you what I know, now it’s your turn. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you stay in Sussex with the family after the wedding?’

‘That should be obvious. Beatrice needs me. She can’t deliver a baby on her own.’ May fidgeted a little and looked past his shoulder out to the field. There was more to this than the loyalty of friendship.

‘That’s what doctors and midwives are for. Have you delivered many babies in the last five years, then? With a gun in one hand, none the less?’ Liam pressed. May wasn’t lying—May never lied, not even to spare a man’s feelings, so he had learned. But she wasn’t telling him quite the truth either.

‘This is the wilds of Scotland. Two women on their own can’t be too careful. I wasn’t expecting company, that’s all,’ May snapped. He realised it was as close to an apology as he was going to get for being greeted with a pistol.

He arched a dark brow. ‘I disagree. No one carries a pistol when they’re not expecting anything. I think you were expecting something—trouble, perhaps?’

‘Trouble doesn’t follow me everywhere,’ she began.

‘No, it doesn’t. You follow it, as I recall. There was that incident with the oak tree, the rowboat, the cigars—need I go on?’

‘I was precocious in my younger years.’ Her cheeks burned with the admission. He shouldn’t have teased her. She would hate having her adolescence thrown in her face as much as he would.

‘I’d wager you are still precocious.’ His tone softened and he allowed himself a smile. It was dangerous to let himself entertain even a moment of nostalgia where May was concerned. ‘I always liked that about you, May. Never afraid of a challenge, which leads me to conclude that’s really why you’re here. You’ve followed your friend into exile perhaps, as you say, to help her birth this whelp, perhaps to thumb your nose at your parents and society. Perhaps a little of both. But, there is something more. Neither of those are a particular challenge to you.’ He was quiet for a minute, studying her, searching for the answer. He hadn’t ferreted out the real reason she was here. ‘What is Mistress Fields going to do with the child?’

‘Raise it. It’s what you do with children,’ May said too sharply. He’d hit pay dirt.

‘Hence the need for the pistol,’ Liam surmised with no lack of sarcasm. ‘She’s afraid her family will come and take the child from the home of a woman with only an errant husband to provide for her.’ With no man in the house, a protective, financially secure family would want to see a child raised in far safer circumstances. Assuming there was a husband at all—he had his doubts there, but no proof.

‘No one will take it,’ May said firmly, her eyes locking on Liam’s, her reckless stubbornness in full bloom. May thought she could hold off Beatrice’s family with a gun and the two of them could play house and raise the baby on their own. It was an admirable goal even if it was a bit over-innocent in its assumptions. Two women alone would be prey to all sorts of mischief. May didn’t know true danger. He never wanted her to know it.

Something protective stirred in him, something he didn’t want to acknowledge. There’d been only trouble down that path last time he trod it. May Worth wasn’t for him. She was beautiful and headstrong, naïvely confident that she could overcome anything. That was what money and a good family could do for a person—create the innate belief that you were as close to immortal as one could get. There wasn’t anything you couldn’t conquer. He didn’t want the world to crush that out of May.

They stood in silence, the wind picking up around them. May shielded her eyes and looked towards the empty road, Beatrice and her dubious husband forgotten. ‘You think he’ll come.’ She let out a deep breath.

‘Yes, I do. But I’ll be here, May. You needn’t worry.’ In that moment he wished it were all different; that he hadn’t been born a poor, Irish street rat, the unwanted son of a St Giles whore, or that he hadn’t aspired above his station, that Cabot Roan didn’t pose a threat to her, that he hadn’t had to come here and endure the exquisite torture of being in her presence. It was a moment’s whimsy only. All he had to do was remember how they parted and the anger would come rushing back, the resentment. In the end, class and wealth and privilege had all proven too big of a chasm to cross. When it had counted, she hadn’t wanted him. Even five years later, she still looked at him as if he was the biggest mistake she’d ever made.

‘I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for Preston.’ Perhaps if he defined the rules out loud they would serve as a clarification of the boundaries for both of them; a clarification they both needed if there was to be no repeat of their previous foolishness. That might be excused as the folly of the youth. But now? Now, there would be no excuse. They both knew better. ‘This is strictly business, May.’

She glared. ‘I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear.’ She turned towards the cottage and this time, he let her go, pretending the rules would indeed succeed in preventing disaster from striking twice.

Who was he kidding? The rules had never held any power over him, not where May was concerned. After all, despite her protests to the contrary, he’d seen her pulse beat fast at his nearness and his own thoughts had wandered towards nostalgia more than once. They were both in jeopardy here, rules or not. All it would take to shatter their fragile restraint would be for him to decide he wanted to try on that brand of foolishness one more time, just to be sure it didn’t fit.