‘My husband is dead,’ she said, indignant he thought she ought to have one to take charge of her when Bran was as irresponsible as a cuckoo whenever he was far away from his command and the sea.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said so soberly she almost believed him.
‘As I am for yours,’ she replied, and if he chose to think she meant the death of his father he was welcome.
‘I don’t deserve pity,’ he said harshly.
‘Yet your dilemma was made by two people,’ she said with a brutal frankness she refused to regret even when he glared at her, then shook his head as if silently admitting she might be right.
‘Most of them are,’ he said with a half-weary, half-wolfish smile that made her heart skitter, then race on in panic. No, she refused to be a fool for a handsome face ever again. She had been one for Bran for a heady, brief time, and now this man was baiting her she almost wanted to flirt back. Luckily, he waved a hand as if he was being more unworthy than usual in using such tactics to deflect her. ‘I cannot deem my child a mistake, then shrug and carry on with life untroubled, Mrs Champion, even if her mother wants me to,’ he added bleakly.
Her heartbeat sped up again as she put herself in Lady Drace’s elegant shoes for a moment and decided she would say yes to almost anything if he asked her to in the right way. ‘Why would you?’ she managed to argue even so.
‘You heard Lady Drace, Mrs Champion. I have been dismissed from their lives and I hope you and Champion did a better job of being parents, for all your sakes.’
‘He died before Toby was born,’ she said, frowning at the prickly memory of how little Bran wanted the baby in her belly during his last shore leave.
‘That explains a lot,’ Magnus Haile said as if it might well.
‘And do you always use rudeness to deflect personal questions, Mr Haile?’
‘Only when frigid politeness fails me, Mrs Champion. None of which explains why my elder brother sent you here when our mother is from home and the place half-finished,’ he persisted.
He waved an impatient hand at the lovely little Queen Anne manor house behind them. It was obviously still undergoing improvement from piles of sand and gravel and a dusting of sawdust, and Hetta wondered if he had sent the builders and carpenters away for the day, so he could get drunk in peace. The strength and elegance of his long-fingered hand caught her feral imagination and painted her a picture of him sensually rendering parts of her helpless with longing and melted to the core. She was so shocked she glared at him to make up for the shameful image and thought she saw a reluctant echo of her own fascination in his dark brown eyes for a moment before they were sternly guarded again.
This will not do, barked her inner puritan, so she grasped at the reason she was here to divert them both.
‘Lord Carrowe caught Toby climbing the roof at Carrowe House, despite all the nailed-up doors and windows and his dire warnings not to go anywhere near the worst parts of the poor old place. His lordship suggested I get Toby out of London before he killed himself in such a deathtrap and it was kind of him to suggest we came here for a few days, given Toby’s mischief. I would have had to stop him bothering the builders here, I suppose, but we cannot stay now, so at least that’s one less thing to worry about—and that reminds me. I must find somewhere to stay tonight before the inns are full, so I shall bid you good day, Mr Haile.’
‘Wait, there’s no need to quit the place. I am in the way of the builders and upholsterers anyway and of my mother’s cook and housekeeper, who insisted on staying to be sure the builders do not make a mess. My mother hired servants for the summer season because she wanted those two to enjoy an easy summer after years of devoted and often unpaid work, so looking after me is hardly a rest.’
‘They don’t seem unduly worried, rather the opposite, in fact.’
‘Peg was our nursemaid and playmate when I was young and we still had a few servants willing to stay in such a decaying old wreck as long as my mother managed to scrape together their wages. By the time my youngest sisters came along, Peg and Cook and a very ancient butler were the only staff left. Peg is more a member of the family than a housekeeper and Cook is too happy with her new kitchen to complain about anything much.’ He smiled and looked as if his memory had taken him back to more innocent days, before he recalled Hetta was a stranger in his home and snapped back to the present. ‘This business with the old Earl must have made my elder brother think harder about his responsibilities if he got you out of the old dust heap before your son did himself permanent damage,’ he said as if it almost explained her presence. ‘And I ought to leave this place, not you. There are plenty of low dives where I can stay and you cannot.’
‘No, finding a new place to stay is hardly a great hardship and we will soon be back on the Continent and back to a proper summer, so it hardly matters where we stay for now.’
‘Is this an improper one, then?’ he asked with a ghost of rakish innuendo in his naturally husky, fascinatingly deep voice.
The sound of him reciting a laundry list would make goosebumps rise on her over-sensitised skin, so his almost-suggestion they misbehave together made her shiver with something very far from cold. ‘No, just a British one,’ she said flatly.
‘Aye, the rain must have found all the holes in the roof and made Carrowe House even more uncomfortable than usual,’ he said as if he had already repented his lighter mood.
It was wrong of her to wish he hadn’t changed his mind and his mood, she reminded herself, as she tucked away a fantasy of being locked in his arms until they both forgot the season and everything else on a lazy afternoon in the middle of the sun-sleepy Heath. Magnus had been brought up at Carrowe House with a bullying father and a mother wilfully mired in scandal by her own husband, so it was silly of Hetta to feel sorry she had never had a real home to go to. Her father’s country house had been let out ever since he inherited it in order to cover the costs of his mother’s grand London home. And Magnus Haile’s own home was so tumbledown and faded she wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. She kept her suspicion that someone was slipping in and out of Carrowe House to herself. It was only a prickly feeling of being watched from shadowy corners and once fancying she heard a soft footstep where feet should not be able to go. She had no proof and if she mentioned it the impulsive idiot could gallop off there to lie in wait for a murderer. Hetta shivered and was more glad than ever to be out of the poor old house, despite Magnus Haile’s drunken revulsion at the sight of her.
‘Yes, I suppose it did feel damp and a little depressing in the rain yesterday, but I doubt you need a stranger to confirm its shortcomings,’ she said almost politely.
‘Gresley says most of it was habitable when he was a boy, but nobody should have to endure the place now if they don’t really need to.’
‘Although you wish he had sent us somewhere else?’ she asked, and as he said nothing she knew she was right. ‘I suppose you will be glad when Carrowe House is torn down,’ she said to fill an uncomfortable silence.
‘Aye, and Gres will have to pay someone to do it and that will delay matters. There isn’t a shred of gold leaf worth more than a farthing to salvage after my father stripped it bare to fund his excesses, so at least my brother and your father should be safe from thieves there since there’s precious little left to plunder.’
‘Couldn’t your brother stop your father doing so? He was the heir.’
‘You never met our father,’ he said with a gesture of that fine-boned hand to distract her again. ‘Although Gres was wild in his youth and closer to our father than the rest of us back then. Shortly before he married he seemed to wake up to the folly of it all, though...’ He paused and they avoided one another’s eyes as Lady Drace’s bitter parting words reminded them of a possible reason why. ‘As the heir he was the only one who could rescue the rest of the family fortunes from the same ruin. Our father would have