Chapter Eleven
Malcolm could not forget it.
Nor could he sleep. Not that night. Not after what had occurred.
He found the bedroom at the end of the corridor completely unoccupied—he checked this time—and realized that this one must have been the chamber set aside to receive Miss Scarlett Perkins.
The servant who had shown her to his room must have gotten confused. Not surprising, given that they had many servants who had come up from London with Beatrice and who did not know Parkhorne well. And Malcolm kept his room so neat that it might have looked easily like a guest chamber.
He was now lying down on the crisp, clean sheets and had his palms pressed into his eyes.
He could not believe that he found himself in these circumstances.
Of all the women that he could have had such a mishap with, did it have to be her?
The one woman whom he found more attractive than any other he had yet seen in his life?
Whom he had immediately coveted with a ferocious, primal desire, that he hadn’t even known he was capable of feeling?
On the first night of their disastrous acquaintance?
He returned again and again to the vision of her unclothed before him. He grew hard again at the thought and swore at himself. He thought of her flushed, pink face and bit his own lip so hard he tasted blood.
And then, lying there in bed, a new anxiety broke through his desire.
What if she had gotten with child?
He understood that he hadn’t spilled within her, which he knew, of course, was usually necessary for such a thing to occur. But he realized he wasn’t sure that it was impossible for such a near miss to result in a pregnancy.
He would need to speak to her of it.
He would need to reassure her that he would do the honorable thing if it came to it.
Of course, he did not have much to offer a woman like Miss Scarlett Perkins. She was used to London, to its gaieties and luxuries, and as his wife, she would be marooned in the country.
But still. It was all he could offer. He wouldn’t be like his father. He wouldn’t shirk the consequences that came from messes of his own making. He would offer what he could.
After this revelation, he gave up all hope of sleep.
The entire house party would be descending in a few hours upon the church for an early service.
Malcolm resolved that he would find a way to speak to Scarlett before or after.
To knock on her bedchamber felt like far too much of an invasion after all that had passed this night. No, he would find a way at the church.
He dressed in the dim light and resolved that a walk would be good for his spirits.
No servants were kept in the hunting lodge under normal circumstances, but there was a kind of makeshift kitchen below stairs.
He went down there, to where he kept a loaf of cinnamon bread, one of his few indulgences, and some hard cheese, and had a modest repast before setting out over the fields.
The walk calmed his nerves. He loved seeing the lands that he had cultivated, the vast operation that he oversaw.
At Parkhorne, they did nearly everything a farm could do.
Right now, they were busily cutting hay, and the laborers would soon begin their day scything and stacking the bales.
And then there were the large vegetable gardens, which needed to be tended every day, and the planting there for summer that would need to happen soon.
And none of this activity included anything with the livestock.
The cows that would soon be milked, the chickens to be fed, and the shearing of sheep.
The operation had once been much smaller, before Beatrice’s marriage.
But afterward, she had given the money to expand operations, and Malcolm had done everything he could to build the place up.
He had made all that investment back now, many times over.
It was his life’s work, and he was proud of it.
Given the shape of the property, Malcolm could walk its three hundred acres in two hours, and he resolved to do that now, surveying and checking on all within his domain. It calmed him. While he couldn’t feel tranquil about seeing Scarlett again, it made that reality almost tolerable.
By the time he looped back to the hunting lodge, he realized that he had reveled too long in his fields. He was going to be late for church. It was a mile to the place, and he still needed to dress.
When he entered the lodge, the maid he encountered on the stairs informed him all the others had gone already.
He had suspected as much, but this revelation proved particularly fortuitous when he realized that all of his clothing was still in his—no, now, her—room.
It felt like a violation to walk into that room again, but he had no choice.
He walked into the chamber, trying not to look at the bed or any of her things, and crossed to the armoire he used, the other usually lying empty.
It would be full now of her things, of course.
He pulled out all the clothing he could, roughly bunching it into his arms so that he would not have to return.
Before he left, however, he erred.
He caught sight of the bed, still unmade. A hot bolt of lust went through him at the sight, an ache of need so deep and wide that he almost fell to his knees. Then, he caught her scent, that scrap of heavenly citrus, and went hard.
For a moment, he had a terrible, desperate desire to climb into the bed and rut the very sheets. To pretend that he was having her.
Christ.
He staggered out of the room to his strange new quarters. He threw water over his face from the basin and through sheer force of will calmed his body.
He changed as quickly as he could and began the walk.
Soon, he saw the little stone structure looming in the distance.
Malcolm hastened toward the back entrance, where he could slip into a pew nearly undetected. Before he could round the corner, however, he was confronted by a strange sight.
Miss Maven Larchman, her flame-red hair exposed to the elements, gesticulating wildly at his brother, Philip.
The two old friends were clearly arguing. And as Malcolm drew closer, he could actually hear what they were hissing at one another.
“You cannot be serious, Philip! You cannot intend to marry a woman that you don’t care for! Just for money!”
“Who says I don’t care for her? I may very well come to do so.”
“Who is the her in that sentence? Because as I understand it, you have multiple quarries.”
“What is it to you, Maven?”
“I’m your best friend!” the girl proclaimed. “I care about you.”
“If you cared about me,” Philip shouted. “Then you would be concerned that I have no fortune, no prospects, and no future.”
“That’s not true! You are at Cambridge!”
“Cambridge doesn’t win a man’s bread—not to mention that I have no profession.”
“So you plan to sell yourself to the highest bidder?”
“Yes,” Philip snapped. “And I ask that you let me.”
Maven crossed her arms and then startled when she caught sight of Malcolm. Philip whirled around.
“Malcolm,” he said, schooling his features from their wild frustration of a minute before into something much more like his usual casual indifference. “You sneak up on a fellow.”
“I am not sneaking up on anyone,” Malcolm said, unsure whether to be annoyed or amused by his little brother’s quick change in demeanor. He had no idea what to make of this little scene he had just witnessed. “Shouldn’t you two be in the church?”
“Ah, yes,” Philip said. “We were just going in.”
“I wasn’t,” Maven said, turning her pale face away from Malcolm. “I am going back to the vicarage.”
Malcolm waited for his brother to offer his friend an escort and then realized that such a request was not forthcoming.
“Would you like me to accompany you, Miss Larchman?” Malcolm said into the silence.
From the look of disappointment on Maven’s face, he could see that, in her estimation, the wrong brother had tendered this request.
“No, I prefer to go alone,” she said haughtily, and stormed off.
As he and Philip watched her go, Malcolm said, “I think she would prefer that you accompany her.”
Philip sighed. “That is the problem.”
Malcolm arched his brows. It was unlike Philip to be so forthcoming. Malcolm would be lying if he hadn’t wondered a time or two if there weren’t something more between Maven and Philip than friendship. But now it appeared that Philip had other ideas.
He knew that acknowledging what he had overheard—that Maven objected to Philip having one …
or multiple … of George’s heiresses in mind for himself—would only earn his brother’s ire.
Last night, Philip had indicated Miss Perpetua Jones would be his preference.
But it seemed that he hadn’t ruled out Lady Daisy or Miss Wallington either.
Regardless, Maven appeared to disapprove of his plan.
And whatever her feelings were for his brother, she wasn’t wrong that he was being mercenary.
Still, after the night Malcolm had had, he felt kinship at this moment with his youngest brother. Female problems appeared to be quite catching at the moment.
“Shall we go inside?” Malcolm asked after the passage of a heavy silence.
“Yes,” Philip replied, directing himself to the door with a rapid jerk of his body and a shake of his head.
Mr. Larchman was typically a lively preacher to whom Malcolm enjoyed listening.
Some regarded him as a radical, as he often spoke on political matters—he was particularly fiery on the subject of abolition and the rights of women.
But this morning the sermon seemed to drone on, and Malcolm struggled to catch its theme.
No, he was too busy staring at the back of Miss Scarlet Perkins’s bonnet. Ladies’ bonnets these days were rather large, but still, somehow, he knew which one was hers. Among the monstrosities, it seemed somehow more elegant, more refined.
He stared at the back of that bonnet and wondered how he would manage to speak with her.