2
MARIAH stewed with dread the next day, even after giving orders to turn away all callers with word that she was indisposed. So when Carson’s boy arrived in the afternoon with word that the prince had received a message that put him in a bad humor, climbed aboard his horse and ridden off to Scotland, she wilted with relief.
She had been delivered from the consequences of her brazen behavior.
She should have felt grateful, but instead she was seized by an unholy restlessness. Stalking down to the inn, she went from room to room, sorting and rearranging, clearing rooms and then moving the furniture back. Nothing pleased her. If she hadn’t feared a servant revolt, she’d have begun scrubbing walls and pounding rugs, spring-cleaning six months early.
At wits’ end, she sent for Old Farley to bring some soothing music up to the house. But she sent the old boy away again shortly after he began to play. Every note evoked the memory of a brooding golden-eyed presence.
Even a week later, the restlessness had not lessened.
Desperate to spend the tension inside her, she put on her oldest clothes and went to work in her garden one morning. The oak trees were bare, the flowers had died back, and the shrubbery—all but the balsam and holly—had surrendered to the cold and shortened days. But even here, on her knees in her beloved garden, she had trouble banishing thoughts of that night.
“Tart,” she said irritably, jamming her spade into the cold, dark earth. The autumn sun was too pale and remote to warm the ground where she was planting bulbs beside the arbor walk. Her gloves were caked with wet soil, her fingers were half frozen, and her back ached from the bending. But she was determined to set these blessed daffodils.
“That’s how you are behaving, you know. Like a tart.” She straightened onto her protesting knees. “I am not.”
Glowering, she stabbed the earth again and snatched up another handful of papery golden bulbs.
“I did nothing wrong. He accosted me.”
Though to be fair, accosted was painting it a bit black. He hadn’t kissed her. Hadn’t set hands on her. There wasn’t even a name for what he’d done to her. But it was intimate and pleasurable and furtive, which, by all decent lights, made it wrong, wrong, wrong.
And just like that, she was immersed in the memory she had tried to keep at bay and reliving those erotic sensations in the prince’s darkened sleeping room. Warmth and breath commingled…bodies pressed hard together, hungry, straining for more…Her throat tightened at the thought and her breath came quicker. It was the strange nature of the encounter, she told herself, that made it so difficult to dismiss.
Curse “Jack B. Nimble” for rousing such desires in her.
After Mason had died she had locked away that part of her. It hadn’t been easy; her worldly older husband had been a remarkable lover who tutored her expertly and boldly cultivated her passions. When he died unexpectedly, she had been blooming into her sexual prime and struggled nightly to subdue the desires he had so deftly roused. But then she learned of the entailment that placed her husband’s land in the hands of distant relatives. Left with no income, only an aging house and a coaching inn in bad repair, she had to scramble to survive and poured the energy of her stubborn desires into the hard work of remaking the inn into an establishment capable of supporting herself and her people.
The result was that the Eller-Stapleton had never looked so fine or received such brisk trade. It seemed, after two grueling years, that her life and her business were on the brink of flourishing—despite the debts she had incurred—and that was satisfaction enough.
Until a week ago.
She shoved bulb after bulb into the damp, pungent earth, each time giving the dirt above it a smack, daring the bulb to show its head until spring.
Thus occupied, she didn’t hear Carson’s boy approach.
“Miz?” She turned so sharply that she fell back on her rear, scattering the bulbs she held across the ground. Young Jamie stood with hands in his pockets and a grin on his round, cold-reddened face. “Ye got callers, miz.”
She pressed a hand to her chest to contain the racing of her heart.
“Yes? Who is it?” The cold had set her nose running. She sniffed.
“Gen’lmen. Pa said I should bring ’em up.” He stepped to the side and revealed two men standing on the path some distance away.
Mariah scowled at their caped greatcoats and black top hats. Whoever they were, they dressed like bankers. The thought made her heart seize.
She started to rise and realized her skirts were twisted around her, exposing her old woolen stockings and muddy boots. She knew there was dried dirt on her face, where she’d pushed her hair back earlier; she looked a mess. But then, she hadn’t invited them here. Clumsy from the cold, she staggered to her feet and brushed her skirts before realizing that her dirt-caked gloves were making her even more of a mess. Scowling, she pulled them off and threw them into the wooden trug that held her tools.
The men’s backs were to her; they seemed to be surveying her garden.
“You wished to see me, gentlemen?”
They turned as she approached.
She stopped dead on the path as her gaze connected with a pair of cool bronze-colored eyes and the bottom dropped out of her stomach.
Him.
“EDGAR MARCHANT, madam—Baron Marchant,” the shorter man introduced himself, tipping his hat. It took her a moment to recognize “Jack O. Lantern”…the prince’s friend with the round face and pomaded hair.
“John St. Lawrence, Mrs. Eller.” Jack B. Nimble removed his hat, and her knees weakened. Broad shoulders, dark hair, golden eyes; he was exactly as she had remembered him.
She crossed her arms and refused to give in to the panic blooming in her chest.
“Gentlemen,” she said, thinking that despite their smooth manners and expensive clothes, they were anything but.
JACK ST. LAWRENCE took in Mariah Eller’s dirt-streaked clothes and rosy, dirt-smudged cheeks. This was hardly how he expected to be received by the feisty widow. She looked like a servant girl sent out to weed the kitchen herb patch. Younger and fresher than he had recalled, and even more appealing. It was a good thing Marchant had spoken first; his own throat had tightened.
“We have come on an errand of some importance,” Marchant intoned with lordly precision. “Perhaps you would like us to return in an hour or two, so that you might have time to—” he glanced at her clothing “—prepare to receive our news.”
It was the wrong thing to say, apparently. She seemed startled by Marchant’s offer of time to make herself presentable, then offended by it. Her gaze darted to the basket by her feet; she looked as if she could gladly drive a garden tool through the baron’s heart.
Damn and blast Bertie, Jack thought, sending him on such an errand. He was used to handling matters and seeing to it that the prince’s desires were carried out. Capable and always in control, he was the perfect man for a sensitive mission. But not this mission.
He dreaded facing this woman the way he dreaded a dentist with a pair of pliers. And he didn’t want to think about why.
“Anything you have to say to me, sir, you may say here and now. As you can see—” she gestured to her bulbs and tools “—I am quite busy. I doubt there will be many more days this season suitable for planting.”
A very bad feeling developed in the pit of Jack’s stomach as her chin came up. It was his presence that raised her hackles, he was sure of it.
“At the very least,