Her stomach had not got over that appalling sea crossing yet, so the stir of something hot and sharp deep in her belly was caused by it being emptied so often as the ship rode the waves of a vicious summer storm like a cork at the mercy of furious Mother Nature. This tall and formidable man could not stir her sensual instincts back to life without even a smile or an interested look, so there was no other explanation for it. And he had Toby firmly under his arm as if her boy was a mere bundle of faggots, so those instincts would be wrong anyway.
‘Is this yours?’ he barked at her as soon as he was within earshot.
As Hetta was the only woman gaping at him with her mouth open, it must be easy enough to pick her out as Toby’s mother. She was vaguely conscious Lady Drace had jumped as if she had been shot at the sound of his deep voice, then turned to stare at him with horror in her light blue eyes. So that made two women scared by the great clumsy oaf roaring and raging as if he had every right to make rude comments about anyone he wanted to, and she wondered why the rest of the world had not stopped to watch him open-mouthed as well.
‘What have you done, Toby?’ Hetta didn’t quite answer the man’s rude question and told herself she was too worried about her son to care about gruff strangers or her new friend’s reaction to them.
The Honourable Magnus Haile frowned at the strange woman staring back at him like a simpleton. Given the gasp of relief the boy had given on first sight of her, she was his mother, and what a neglectful shabby-genteel idiot to leave her offspring running loose without a keeper. He didn’t have any time to spare, so why was it his job to chastise a brat who threw himself under his weary horse and nearly killed them both? Luckily his younger brother’s man, Jem Caudle, told Magnus he would stable the exhausted and unnerved beast for him, then reminded him the packet would sail if he didn’t hurry. Jem even told Magnus to leave the lad to him and get to the vessel faster, but Magnus was too shocked and angry to leave the boy to Jem’s mercy. So, he’d grabbed the brat in order to berate the boy’s parents before he thought of some way to stop Delphi and his little girl leaving England without him, even if he had to throw himself aboard the boat and leave his homeland with no more than the shirt on his back.
He was a father now, whatever Delphi had to say about it. His frown went fierce again as he grappled with that fact and his helplessness to do anything about it when Delphi refused to marry him. He longed to be able to keep his daughter out of wild scrapes like this when she was big enough to be naughty. Not that his little Angela could ever be as wayward as this brat, but the boy’s parents obviously didn’t know how lucky they were to have the right to protect him from harm. Yet they let him run around like a street urchin! Now the boy was scratching and trying to bite, as if Magnus was the villain, and he was tempted to drop him on the cobbles and walk away. ‘Try that trick again and I’ll dust your backside for you, whether your mama is looking or not,’ he threatened dourly.
‘No, you won’t. She won’t let you,’ the lad shouted, lower lip wobbling and his dirty face scrunched up with the effort of producing a tear.
‘Once she knows what you did she will thank me for saving her the effort of doing it herself.’
‘No, she won’t. She will skin you alive, then boil you in oil if you even try to smack me.’
‘Then I won’t need to worry about anything, will I? Least of all a wicked little liar like you,’ Magnus said grimly.
‘Put my son down this minute,’ the sunburnt woman in dull clothes, a drooping bonnet and the most ridiculous pair of eyeglasses he had ever seen demanded furiously as she finally snapped out of her trance.
Magnus could now see where the boy got his temper, if not his wild blond curls, wide blue eyes and the daredevil spirit that made him look like a fallen cherub. Perhaps his father was absent for a good reason, but Magnus’s inner sneer felt cheap when he eyed the termagant in petticoats and wished for a brief, mad moment he’d fallen in love with such a tigress in spectacles, instead of the woman hiding behind her, trying to pretend she had never seen him before in her life, even with his baby in her arms chortling at her father with Haile written all over her darling little face like a banner.
‘Gladly, if you promise to keep him under better control in future,’ he told the woman grimly and tried to ignore the pain in his heart when his Angela reached out her arms to him and Delphi snatched her away as if she hated him. ‘A collar and lead should serve. He nearly killed himself running under my horse just now. Luckily for all of us the poor beast was too weary to throw me when I curbed him, or you would have a lot more to worry about than a filthy little thug in a foul temper. A blow from the nag’s iron-shod hooves would have killed him outright.’
The woman went even paler under her unladylike sunburn and Magnus regretted his harshness for a moment. But, no, she needed a shock like this to force her to keep a better eye on the boy in future. He had to harden his heart again when she pushed her spectacles up her nose with a shaking hand and he counted himself lucky she wasn’t having an attack of the vapours. She braced her shoulders instead and he had better things to do than admire her resolution and the fine figure he should not even notice when he had ridden all the way here at breakneck speed to plead with Delphi not to take his child so far away he might never see her again.
‘Stop that ridiculous wriggling and pretend-crying, Toby Champion,’ the boy’s mother snapped at her flailing offspring.
Magnus felt the boy still as if she had waved a magic wand. Deciding the brat was not likely to get away with his sins after all, Magnus swung him down. ‘Buy him a chain if you can’t keep him under better control in future, madam,’ he barked.
‘How can you be so harsh, Magnus?’ Delphi broke in as the lad threw himself at his mother so enthusiastically she lurched and nearly fell over.
Magnus had been so intent on the boy’s mother he hadn’t noted how Delphi’s wide and horrified eyes were fixed on him as if she expected him to lash out as the late, unlamented Sir Edgar Drace was prone to when something about his young wife did not suit him. It said much for his baby’s sunny nature that she was gurgling and wriggling in her mother’s arms as if this was a fine show, instead of cowering and grizzling as she caught the megrims from her mother.
‘If someone doesn’t check the boy, he will kill himself,’ he explained with an impatient glance behind him to convince Delphi he wasn’t in the least like the straw man she had married for some reason he had never managed to fathom.
‘Only your horror at the idea of doing so could excuse such a wicked display of temper,’ Delphi said, reproaching him with the stiffness in her voice.
‘I could hardly pat him on the head and bid him be more careful next time.’
‘No, he could not,’ the boy’s mother admitted with a sigh, as if it cost a lot to stand up for such a grim stranger. She turned to Delphi with a resigned shrug and said, ‘He’s right. My son is far too adventurous for his own good. And I want you to see your eighth birthday, despite all your best efforts not to, my lad, so you can take the wounded expression off your face and listen to your elders and betters for once,’ she added as her boy let go of her narrow waist to stare up at her with the wide eyes of a wronged cherub.
Magnus revised her age down a decade and decided, if she still had a husband, the neglectful idiot should be here, trying to back up her efforts to keep their child alive so she wouldn’t look elsewhere for comfort for herself and a little help with the lad. A ridiculous, totally unacceptable part of him wanted to be the source of both for her for a moment and hadn’t he already had a harsh enough lesson about throwing himself at complicated and unfathomable women? And what did he know about how to bring up well-balanced and happy children after the childhood he and his younger siblings had endured at their father’s hands anyway?
‘I