The Black Sheep's Return

Why on earth she was sitting here dwelling on the family who had begun her descent into the ranks of the unmarriageable she had no idea. Perhaps it was because Orlando struck her as a man of suppressed power, she suddenly realised, and her instincts were probably better than she’d realised back when so much was done for her she had never needed to test them. Or at least she hoped they were, because if he wasn’t an honourable man she could still be in deep trouble. It was obvious he had deliberately marooned himself in the heart of this forest where nobody would find him except by the purest chance, but he didn’t strike her as a man who would run from trouble. She could imagine him meeting it with guile and reckless courage, but not hiding where he could do no good except to his family and there, she decided with a triumphant sense of those instincts leading her well, was the key to the whole mystery.

For the wife she sensed had been more dearly loved by her Orlando than Lady Freya Buckle had ever dared dream of being loved by a man, he would have crossed oceans and fought every battle it took to keep her safe. The reason he was still here now had to mean there was some sort of threat to his children as well and she shook her head and frowned, dubious at the idea anyone would harm such bright and hopeful little mysteries in miniature. Had he eloped with Mrs Orlando in the teeth of powerful opposition? she wondered. He was clearly raised a gentleman, so maybe he had been tutor to a noble family and run off with some great lord’s daughter? Or, worse still, could it have been the man’s own lady he stole away from him? She would have been the man’s legal chattel and he couldn’t raise a bill to divorce her in the House of Lords, or drag her home by her hair to fulfil her duty and bear him a boy instead, if he couldn’t actually find her in the first place.

Freya tried to be shocked by the very idea of such scandalous goings on, but found she couldn’t blame the woodsman’s wife if she had decided she preferred him to some fat old noble her family had forced her to marry. She had nearly been the victim of such a conspiracy herself, although she lacked the gallant rescuer who would make that marriage to the fat politician irrelevant. Finding herself guilty of the most shocking immorality as she wondered why the woman couldn’t have taken a handsome and vigorous young lover to make up for the lack of both in her marriage bed, Freya reminded herself this was all speculation and even the prospect of a one-day lover could not have reconciled her to marriage with Bowland’s latest repellent protégé.

Maybe Orlando was a follower of Rousseau, or a romantic philosopher-poet who preferred a simple life wrenched from the forest by his own hand? Yet the picture of him, austere and intent as he stood and watched her for one long moment with hot green eyes telling of unimagined delights in his bed, argued he had once been a more rash and hedonistic adventurer than any idealistic poet or shrinking recluse could ever be. For a quick and wickedly exciting minute she knew how it felt to be urgently wanted by a compelling rake. Then he doused the lust and longing and promise sparking between them before it could become a blaze and walked away as if she was dressed from head to toe in propriety.

Dropping the brush on the rumpled bedclothes as if it had become red hot, Freya fought off the most ridiculous jealousy of the woman who once owned it. Her now wildly flying imagination invited her to visualise Orlando brushing her hair for her with long, sensual strokes as he played with the heavy locks and arranged them over her naked body to his satisfaction, before satisfying her as royally as a woman had ever been satisfied by her man. Except she had no idea how it felt to be sensually seduced and satiated, she reminded herself sternly.

Nor did she want to know, if her lover had to be this penniless ex-pirate who hid in the woods from his own kind. A burn of curiosity tightened her suddenly very sensitive nipples under the bedcover toga and made her squirm against the surprisingly comfortable mattress under her, as she sought to douse the inquisitive fire at her feminine core. She told herself she didn’t want a rustic lover with two bold and enterprising children dependent on him as both father and mother, who were likely to resent even the smallest sharing of his attention with her. As soon as she could put her foot to the floor with any degree of comfort she would walk out of here and not look back, ever.

So why did it feel as if she was on sabbatical from her duty once she’d plaited her hair a little clumsily and tried to put her foot to the floor once more? Pain shot through her as sharp and almost sickening as it had been last night when she first injured herself. Fool, she castigated herself as she tottered across the room in search of the next necessity of life and peered out of the door for a privy or conveniently secluded bush to relieve herself behind, since the problem was becoming urgent. Spotting a rustic shelter some yards upwind of the house, she blessed the fact she hadn’t tumbled into his cesspit last night and told herself Lady Freya Buckle could not afford to expect comfort in this most basic form of country life. She hopped towards the honeysuckle-covered shelter with her flapping bedcover grasped to her body with one hand, while she used the other to prop herself upright with a stout stick left leaning by the back door for her with a consideration she refused to find disarming.

It didn’t matter if he had been sensitive enough to her needs to let her get on with learning to do as much for herself as she could. Yet Lady Freya seemed to be fading into a stiff caricature of herself as she embraced being Perdita instead. She reflected on William Shakespeare’s story of a foundling princess left to be brought up by peasants. How would she have been now if she had been taken from Bowland Castle in some fanciful start of her father’s that her mother had been unfaithful and his despised daughter was not his child? A nagging suspicion she might be relieved not to be Lady Freya Buckle seemed unthinkable, considering her mother brought her up so proud of the ancient name she bore.

Luckily the privy turned out to be surprisingly clean and smelt of tarred wood and earth as much as it did of humanity. Observing the strange device her host had rigged up for his family, she shovelled what looked like dried earth into the hole after herself and hoped that would cover everything, then limped back towards the cottage feeling considerably better, if now left with one less distraction from being very hungry indeed.

‘We’re having Percy for breakfast,’ the boy popped out of the trees at the other side of the clearing to inform her mysteriously and the little girl doggedly caught up with a squeal of triumph, as if she spent most of her life following her big brother about just in time to watch him disappear again.

‘Who is Percy?’ Freya asked distractedly as the delicious cooking smells emanating from the direction he had just come from began to tease her eager nostrils.

‘One of last year’s piglets,’ he told her with a resigned shrug for the realities of cottage life that left Freya wondering if she really wanted to know the name of her food before she ate it.

‘It smells delicious,’ she managed as hunger fought her scruples for at least ten seconds as her mouth watered at the scent of breakfast and wood-smoke.

‘It is ’licious,’ Sally stated emphatically, with a frown in her direction, as if it was her fault they weren’t already eating. ‘Papa said we was to fetch you,’ she accused and Freya realised it would be no easy task to win over the female so firmly in possession of the cottage and its owner’s heart.

‘That was kind of him. I am very hungry indeed after missing my luncheon and my dinner yesterday,’ she said with unfeigned horror.

‘Not even any supper?’ the little girl asked with a slight softening towards this unwanted guest she had better not take for granted, Freya decided ruefully.

‘By then I was too tired to care,’ Freya confirmed and could almost see the child brace herself against nodding sympathetically.

‘We’re not tired and we’re very hungry indeed, since Papa had to light a fire in the woods to cook on because we weren’t supposed to disturb you,’ the boy asserted with a cool stare that accused her of causing a delay he found nigh intolerable.

‘And yet you still did so?’ she said just as coolly and met his uncannily direct blue eyes equal to equal.

‘I never saw a dead person,’ he explained as if that trumped every idea of polite consideration his long-suffering parent had tried to teach him.

‘Oddly enough you still have not done so, have you?’ she parried.

‘No, unless you feel a bit ill?’ he suggested as if she might, out of consideration for those who were kind enough to delay their breakfast for her.

‘Not in the least,’ she said airily and discovered it was true. ‘Just a bit sore and my ankle hurts,’ she admitted as she hobbled along and even little Sally had to slow down to match her pace.

‘It could be worse than you think,’ the boy suggested hopefully.

‘Why are you so eager to see a dead person?’ she asked.

‘’Cause my mama is one and I can’t really remember what she looked like no more,’ he said crossly, as if he blamed her for asking, but was still too young to lie.

‘I’m very sorry about that. My mama is dead too, and I miss her every day of my life, but at least I remember her. I hadn’t realised how lucky I was until I spoke to you, Master Whoever-you-are.’

‘That’s not my name,’ he said, reluctantly impressed she shared his motherless state.

‘He’s called Hal,’ the boy’s sister said impatiently, as if everyone ought to know that and she was a very ignorant visitor after all.

‘My name is Henry Craven, Master Henry Craven to you.’

‘Very well then, Master Henry,’ Freya said with the shadow of an elegant curtsy that was all she could manage with her staff clutched in her hand and an ankle that was sure to let her down if she bent any lower.

‘Who are you, then?’

‘Miss Perdita…’ Freya cast about for a suitable alias and found inspiration all around her. ‘Rowan,’ she finally came out with and decided she might like being Miss Rowan of nowhere in particular, if she wasn’t dressed in a bedcover and someone else’s underwear whilst hobbling along like a ninety-year-old invalid to eat a breakfast her hosts were personally acquainted with before it became a tasty meal.

‘It’s a pretty name,’ Sally approved with a smile of feminine conspiracy she must have acquired by instinct and years of manipulating her father mercilessly.

‘Thank you, and so is yours, Miss Craven.’

‘Papa, we found her,’ Sally cried as if they had been looking much of the day and Freya tried not to envy her host the confident joy in the little girl’s voice at the sight of him.

It would be easy to love the spirited and naughty little girl, Freya decided wistfully. Their father seemed to be raising his children as individuals, not patterns of childhood silence kept strictly away from the adult world her own father had expected children to be. She supposed it was easier to gently teach the realities of life when you lived in a hovel, not a mansion, and dined on what you could grow or raise, like poor Percy the pig.

‘Your breakfast, ma’am,’ Orlando said with a piratical bow as he handed her a trencher of rough bread topped with bacon, mushrooms from the forest and her share of a kind of omelette he seemed to have made with the addition of herbs and tips of various greens from the large garden he must have hacked out of the forest.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said as she sank on to the tree stump they had saved for her with as much dignity as she could manage, which wasn’t much as she tried to ease herself down without jarring her foot. ‘It smells delicious.’

‘Your fork, ma’am,’ he added with the wicked parody of a liveried and impassive footman that made her wonder anew about his real place in the world.

‘What a delightful luxury, Mr Craven,’ she said lightly as she took the two-pronged, freshly carved wooden one he must have whittled especially for her.

‘Then eat, Miss…’ he said, trailing off as he realised she hadn’t given her surname last night.

‘She’s called Miss Rowan, Papa, had you forgot?’ his son piped between mouthfuls of food and shook his head at them with such quaint wonder they were bothering with social flummery while their food went cold that Freya was reluctantly enchanted all over again.

‘I don’t believe Miss Rowan gives her name as easily to grown gentlemen as she did to you, my son. You must have charmed her quite wondrously well.’

‘Yes, he did,’ Freya insisted in the face of Henry’s slightly conscious flush at the memory he had actually demanded it of her rather rudely.

‘Eat,’ said Orlando Craven as if unable to argue with a lady just now.

Freya had never enjoyed breakfast so much, sitting on a tree stump in a forest clearing miles away from civilisation. Birds sang and Atlas snuffed politely about the edge of the clearing, pretending not to be lurking for leftovers. Every bite of crisp bacon, richly dark mushroom and deliciously herbed egg tasted like ambrosia and as the juices soaked into the bread underneath, it seemed no hardship it wasn’t fine and white as she was used to and she pulled pieces off it with the same glee she saw in the children’s rapt faces as they ate. Now and again she allowed herself a shy glance at Orlando and noted he ate with neat economy, but somehow the idea of him seeing her naked in his scullery not half an hour ago stopped her saying how she appreciated his cooking and the thoughtfulness that had made him do it outside and not disturb her. Because he had disturbed her, acutely.

‘Better?’ he asked at last, seeming to wake from some sort of reverie when she sighed and handed Atlas the still-savoury remains of the bread where the crust was too hard to eat without endangering her teeth.

‘Much better, thank you,’ she said with a contented sigh. ‘Your dog has very fine manners, Mr Craven,’ she added as Atlas took the morsel with such polite courtesy she felt no fear as his impressive teeth and powerful jaws closed on it.

‘Nice to know I can flatter myself on one success in that area,’ he said with a stern eye on his angelic-looking offspring that argued he hadn’t forgotten their disobedience.

‘I wonder what time it is?’ she mused, more to divert him than from an urgent need to know.

‘About seven of the clock,’ he said without reference to a timepiece and she must have betrayed her disbelief, since Sally piped up,

‘Papa always knows what time it is.’

‘I’ve learnt the habits of the sun and the creatures around me,’ he said with a shrug, as if that wasn’t an unusual skill, and Freya felt guiltily at her own ignorance about the busy schedules of those who must toil for a living.

‘It must prove very useful,’ she said and heard self-consciousness in her voice as she couldn’t get the awkwardness of their last encounter out of her head.

‘It is,’ he said as if he couldn’t either.

‘Can we go, Papa?’ Henry interrupted as if growing tired of adult silliness.

‘So long as you stay within earshot,’ his father said with a straight look that said he meant it and his son returned it with a solemn nod. Sally gave an exasperated shrug at the sheer contrariness of men that made Freya long to laugh out loud.

‘And while my little demons are gone, we need to think about your day, Miss Rowan,’ Orlando said without looking directly at her.

‘I will try not to get in the way,’ she said, Lady Freya’s rigid dignity hard in her voice and she regretted the return to her old self more than she would have dreamt she could only yesterday.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped as if she was demanding he devote every minute of it to her comfort.

Now Freya knew what Sally meant to convey with her long-suffering gesture. She must know all too well what it was like to live with two such prickly males. Freya wished she had the faintest idea how to cope with this Craven male and bit back a weary sigh.

‘You still need to do whatever it is you do to earn your bread. I cannot see how my offer to let you do so is ridiculous, sir,’ she told him with icy dignity.

Hopefully he didn’t know how conscious She was of sitting here with bare shoulders and a rather inept plait of hair hanging down her back. She did her best to stop her impromptu gown showing the length of her right leg to anyone who wanted to see it, even if he already had, along with the rest of her, and she tried hard not to blush at the very idea.

‘A day away from it won’t hurt me,’ he said gruffly as if silently agreeing he was being unreasonable, but unable to stop being so.

‘I don’t need to be entertained like a fractious child.’

‘Good, I already have two of those to cope with,’ he said and finally the wry smile that had made her trust him against her will last night broke through his dark mood. ‘We need to solve some practicalities before you hoe my peas to the ground or randomly chop down trees,’ he told her as if he had as little confidence in her domestic skills as she did herself.

‘Even I know this isn’t the time of year to fell whatever it is you usually fell.’

‘And do you know a pea from a bean?’

‘Not unless it’s on my plate.’

‘So you might as well agree to leave them where they are until I can teach you which is which, might you not?’ he said.

She wondered if he really thought Lady Freya Buckle might dirty her hands and get blisters on her fine soft skin to repay his hospitality, or relieve her boredom in a household without the usual ladylike occupations. Freya nodded regally and wondered what on earth she was going to do with herself while she waited to be well enough to walk away.

‘It will all work out in the end,’ he reassured her as if he knew the reality of her situation had come rushing back as soon as she thought about the day she would have to leave here and go back to finding her way in the wider world.

‘I really don’t see how,’ she argued with a quiet despair that sounded very un-Lady Freya-like in her own ears.

‘With life and hope it’s remarkable what the human spirit can cope with, Perdita,’ he said and she supposed he must know what he was talking about.

‘I know and I will try to be more optimistic.’

‘And perhaps agree you need to sleep as well?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then why don’t you do so while I take the children over to fetch some clothes for you?’

‘I don’t see why you should put yourself to so much trouble, sir,’ she said a little stiffly, wondering where he was to get them and a ludicrous shaft of jealousy bit into her as some likely possibilities leapt into her mind.

Chapter Five

Orlando let his eyes rest on Freya’s smooth white shoulders and the swell of her breasts under the tightly knotted cotton, then the hint of a bare calf under her awkwardly shuffled-up draperies and she flushed. If he was one or two of the gentlemen she had met in society, or the two greedy-eyed villains of yesterday, she would shrink from his open masculine scrutiny, but this was Orlando. Part of her she didn’t dare to examine too closely was flattered if he thought her desirable and, given the banked-down heat in his eyes, she rather thought he did—whether or not he welcomed the fact was perhaps more open to question.

‘It will be no trouble,’ he assured her softly.

Freya had no idea if he meant he wanted her covered up so he didn’t have to watch her with too many possibilities in his eyes, or because he knew she was uncomfortable with her bare shoulders and arms so blatantly on show. ‘Then I must thank you in advance for your trouble,’ she said and let her eyes meet his properly for the first time since he had seen all she was this morning.

‘You are welcome, lady,’ he said with a version of his son’s courtly bow that made her realise where young Henry got his grace and some of his swagger.

It was a bow that said here is a gentleman of power and leisure who only bends his knee to anyone because he chooses to. She could imagine him an immaculately dressed beau strutting up St James’s long after noon, to meet one of his select band of cronies for whatever elegant dissipation they had planned for the day. Frowning at the idea he might be even more of a mystery than she’d thought, she used the staff to get up and made certain no more of her showed than was inevitable in her state of semi-nakedness. If she had met him in a London drawing room when she first came out, might he have saved her all the petty humiliations of the last few years? He must have been wed and done with the stifling elegance of the London Season by the time she came out, if he’d ever been tame enough for that in the first place, so it was just as well he hadn’t been there to confuse her even more.

‘Where are the children?’ she asked to distract herself from such silly daydreams.

‘About somewhere. They usually obey me in their own unique fashion and at least Atlas is with them,’ he said as he stood aside for her to precede him.

‘Would it not be better if you went ahead? I’m very slow, despite the staff you kindly found for me.’

‘Who knows what you might get up to if I leave you to make your own way, Perdita? You might even find a bear to chase you.’

She chuckled at the reference to the most unlikely stage direction in the whole of Shakespeare’s mighty canon—‘exit, pursued by a bear’—and decided to occupy herself by reading A Winter’s Tale from the volumes of the great playwright’s work from the shelf slotted in next to her box-bed, as he clearly had to use every inch of the small space the cottage allowed.

Rich fought the husky and totally unselfconscious appeal of the right sort of feminine laughter. He vividly recalled the high-pitched titter of the débutantes and their older, freer sisters as they did their best to charm elusive Richard Seaborne, grandson of a Duke and close relative and friend to the wild and deliciously elusive Jack, Duke of Dettingham. Now the difference between those brittle, affected lovelies and his lost princess was so similar to the gulf between his Annabelle and the rest of her kind it should make him wary.

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