“This isn’t a chess match,” Sara said, watching as the foal teetered around in her bed of straw. “But whatever it is, I don’t know how to go about it.”

She sounded genuinely perplexed and not exactly pleased.

This again, though not, Beck surmised, for the last time. “It’s a friendly dalliance, Sara, and it’s not complicated. Here’s how it works: you indicate to me my advances are welcome, and I offer you what pleasure you’re inclined to accept. There is no obligation and no particular significance to it beyond the moment. I would ask, however, that we observe a certain exclusivity in our dealings for whatever duration it suits you.”

To add that condition cost him some pride. Would that he’d clarified his stance on the matter of exclusivity with his poor wife.

“Just like that?” With the toe of her boot, Sara pushed bits of straw around in the dirt of the barn floor. “You wait for me to drop my handkerchief, and we go at it?”

“I wait for you to encourage me,” Beck corrected her, “and then I have your permission to persuade you to my bed.”

“You’re thinking of bedding me right now, aren’t you?” Sara’s tone was puzzled. “And you’ve thought of it before.”

“I have,” Beck replied, trying to fathom the direction of her thoughts. “I can only hope you’ve had reciprocal thoughts about me.”

“And I can rely on your discretion?” She peered at her egg basket, as if the contents might be getting up to mischief if left unsupervised.

“Sara…” Beck’s tone was patient. “I won’t maul you before your daughter, and I won’t discuss you with North, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I suppose it is.” She rearranged the eggs. “I don’t know how to go on, Beckman. In the cold light of day, I don’t know why I would want to—though… I do. Want to go on. I think.”

Were she being coy, he would have flirted and flattered and charmed, and they would soon be climbing the ladder to the hayloft. Sara was not being coy; she was being honest, and while the rutting male part of Beck resented it, the part of him far from home and a little sick with it valued her for her genuineness.

“I’ll remind you why.” Beck took her free hand, cradled it between his own, then brought it to his face and rubbed his cheek along the backs of her fingers. When his gallantry elicited a soft sigh from Sara, he pressed her fingers flat and planted a lingering kiss on her palm, then folded her fingers around it.

“I’m reminded,” Sara said, snatching her hand back a little breathlessly.

She disappeared in a swirl of skirts, leaving Beck to admire her retreating form.

“You’re reminded,” he murmured, “and so am I, Sarabande, so am I.”

“You have mail again.” Beck’s voice startled Sara where she bent over the makings of Allie’s dress. When she straightened, her back protested the shift in position.

“Here now.” Beck stepped in behind her and settled his hands on the small of her back. “Can’t have you competing with North for least able to hobble about.” He kneaded the muscles running along her spine, and Sara gave up even pretending to ignore him.

“You shouldn’t be doing that, but you can stop five minutes from now, while I lecture you about people walking in the parlor door unannounced.”

“Who’s to walk?” Beck did not desist—she had hoped he wouldn’t. “North is flat on his back, Polly is putting together the midday meal, and Allie is sketching the filly. Not a one of them could be dissuaded from their present course by anything short of a French invasion.”

“Don’t say that, not even in jest. If you’d seen what the Corsican’s ambitions did to most of Europe, you’d know nothing associated with him is humorous.”

“I have.” Beck’s arms slipped around her waist. “I spent most of a year in Paris not long ago, and I’ve seen many other once-lovely towns and villages devastated. In the end, the man’s penchant for supporting his armies by foraging helped do him in, particularly on the Peninsula, and at what cost to the countryside?”

“Foraging?” Sara’s tone became bitter. “More like pillaging, and from the innocent people who had no notion of the glory of France or the glory of anything, save a decent meal and a roof that wouldn’t leak.”

“Those things are glorious,” Beck said, and he sounded sincere. “As is your hair.”

He sounded sincere about that too, blast and bless him.

“My hair is a disgrace,” Sara said, angling her chin to accommodate him. “Your manners are a disgrace.”

“Shall I ask?” Beck kissed her below her ear. “Sara, may I please hold you for a few moments in the middle of the day? May I remind myself how delectable you taste? May I offer you a little teasing and affection before you sit down to lunch?”

He turned her and wrapped his arms around her, but when she didn’t banter back, he let her go. “Who’s the letter from?”

“I don’t know.” Sara glanced at the missive he’d passed to her. “I don’t recognize the address. I take it you nipped into the village?”

“I did. I made it a point to tell Polly I was leaving the property. I should have told you as well, and in future, if I’m rambling beyond the estate, I will.”

This from a man who’d be leaving any day to assume a place as an earl’s heir?

“Have the twins been back to collect their pay?”

Beck’s mouth—his beautiful, tender mouth—creased with disapproval. “The twins are nowhere to be seen. I ran into a relation of mine in The Dead Boar.”

“In our village?” He was related to an earl, for pity’s sake. “Are we to have company?”

“Not at present,” he said, finding a seat on the arm of a sofa. “My brother Ethan was on his way to Portsmouth to look in on some peach seedlings he’d had shipped from Georgia. It was probably a chance encounter, as most of ours are.”

Sara studied him, catching the scent of some unresolved family difficulty. “You seem to like your family. Is this Ethan not agreeable to you, that you meet him only by happenstance?”

Beck reached for her, and she let him take her hand. “In truth, I hardly know the man. He was booted off to boarding school under a cloud of drama when I was nine, and never did come back to Belle Maison. My father’s situation may be inspiring some sort of rapprochement between Ethan and the earl, but at the very least it was good to have a cordial exchange with my brother.”

Beck referred to the earl’s illness as a situation, and even that passing mention dimmed the light in his blue eyes.

“Only cordial?” Sara brushed her free hand over Beck’s hair. “I would hate to be only cordial with Polly. Loathe it, in fact.”

“Cordial is better than civil.” Beck turned his face so his cheek rested against her palm. “But then, Ethan has his reasons for keeping his distance, and they’re reasons I can understand. Sometimes I want to shake my father, so stubborn is he in his convictions.”

“Fathers can be like that.” Sara moved a step closer of her own accord, and without leaving his perch on the arm of the sofa, Beck again tucked her against him.

Beckman Haddonfield was an affectionate man. This posed a greater threat to Sara’s self-possession than the fact that he was also a lusty, handsome man. “Your papa is a despot?”

“A loving despot.” Beck’s hand stroked over Sara’s hair, a sweet, tender gesture with nothing carnal about it.

“Mine is too, or he was. I haven’t seen him for years, and we don’t correspond.”

“You should,” Beck said, rising and wrapping his arms around her. “For Allie’s sake, if nothing else, you should make the overtures, Sara.”

“And if the overtures are rejected?” And that was the real problem, wasn’t it? With Beck’s arms around her, she could admit that much to herself.

“You can make them again another day, or at least know you tried. I’ve been astounded at what can be forgiven between human beings, and how completely. My parents would argue vociferously at midday only to be billing and cooing over supper.”