Chapter Five
“He’s rather like my favorite hunting hound. Nose at attention, ready for action. Question is who does he wait for?” Mr. Goodspeak doled out this insight while sizing up the Sheep Head’s newest dartboard.
“Hard to say with the black mask on.” Mr. Littlewood peered at Jonas from the pine wood settle tucked into their section of the Sheep’s Head.
Jonas leaned a casual shoulder against the wall, the Sheep’s Head door in his sight line. A slender tavern maid dressed like a shepherdess plunked four cups brimming with mulled wine on the table. Jonas fished out the necessary shillings and dropped them into her outstretched hand. She brushed a panniered hip against his thighs, eyeing him over her shoulder as she sashayed to the bar rife with pine boughs.
Mr. Meakin held his cup to his bottom lip. “Methinks our boy just got an invitation from the shepherdess.”
Mr. Goodspeak hummed thoughtfully, one eye squinting at the dartboard. “My money’s not on the shepherdess.” He lobbed the dart and missed the board entirely.
“With luck like that you won’t have money to wager a’tall my good man,” Mr. Meakin said, chortling in his cup.
Mr. Littlefield removed a clove floating in his wine. “Whoever it is, she hasn’t arrived yet.”
“You realize, gentlemen, I am right here,” Jonas said in good humor.
Mr. Meakin’s knees cracked as he rose from his chair to take his turn at the dartboard. “Just a spot of fun m’boy, enjoying what we can of Plumtree’s den of iniquity.”
Jonas took a long swallow of his wine, the spicy cinnamon and clove flavors rich in his throat. He’d held this spot for the better part of an hour. The Sheep’s Head was a far cry from a den of iniquity, but Plumtree’s normally staid residents were out in full force, pushing the bounds of decorum. One man pinched a serving maid’s bottom. She yelped and gave him a tongue lashing. Another woman lolled on the lap of a strapping man dressed as a plague doctor. Throngs milled the smoky room, laughter bouncing off timbered rafters. Men and women alike slurped pints of ale and mulled wine. Half the comers wore elaborate costumes from the new blacksmith dressed as a medieval Welsh archer to his friend boasting a Henry the Eighth doublet. The rest of the revelers brushed off their garb and wore their best smiles.
The Captain was conspicuously absent, claiming an ailing head. Jonas was glad his grandfather wasn’t here. The Captain’s shrewd eyes would see Jonas dancing attendance on Livvy Halsey, and the old man would sing the praises of Plumtree’s finest maid. He slid two fingers inside his cravat as if the marital noose had settled around his throat.
He would leave Plumtree. But a night of fun with Livvy—
The door opened and four bodies stumbled in, their heads tipped with frivolity. He locked onto one familiar face masked in black lace. The woman’s eyes scanned the public house. He waited. His body tensed. He could hear himself breathe while he waited for her to see him. Livvy searched the room, her fingers unhooking her cloak’s frogs under her chin until her stare touched his.
His belly clenched. Her hands stilled. The moment was perfect, taut with expectation. A promise of what could happen hung between them. Livvy felt it. Her plump, flesh pink lips parted, and he’d swear he could see the diminutive dark space between them—a small soft part, begging to be kissed.
For his kiss.
The power of it.
The desire. It cast a lure between them.
The rush inside his body breathed new life into him. There’d be no bad kisses tonight. With Livvy, even thoughts of their awkward kiss made him smile. Only a woman like her could make a man think that.
He pushed off the wall. This potent connection with Livvy sent a slow burn through his chest. Carnal sensations landed in the skin between his legs…teased his balls…played havoc with flesh tucked deep in his placket. The twinge was as pleasant as it was painful.
Holding Livvy’s attention across the room, he told the Captain’s friends, “Don’t bother to wait for me tonight, gentlemen.”
Did the men mumble at his back? Jonas couldn’t say. He advanced on the newcomers, his focus locked on the copper-haired woman staring at him. A laughing woman in a gold mask pulled Livvy’s cloak from her shoulders, and his step faltered.
Livvy wore homespun breeches, a gentleman’s bottle green coat, and familiar scrubby, black boots.
Was she sending him a saucy message with her choice of costume?
A smile split his face. Above the sea of revelers, he gave her a knowing nod and descended on the newest arrivals. The corners of Livvy’s mouth curled with a cat-like smile. A game was afoot, one as old as time. Friendship and flirtation would blur tonight.
Her chin tipped a degree. She breathed deeply thrusting out her breasts, showing part of her costume was not the same. A black waistcoat covered Livvy’s spectacular bosom. He was sure a proper corset did too under each mannish layer of clothes. A hearty clap on his shoulder shook him out of his Livvy-induced trance.
“Jonas Braithwaite, I’d heard you’d come home.” Will Hastings plucked off his gloves in rapid order. “It is good to see you, old boy.”
“Hastings.” Jonas gave a quick bow. “Good to see you.”
“It has been a long time.”
“Ten years.”
“Truly? That long?” Will fisted a glove-filled hand on his hip, his eyes clouding as if he counted the years. “Hmmm…I suppose it has. You’ll remember my sister, Miss Emma Hastings. Last you saw her, she was playing with dolls under the watchful eye of her nurse.”
Miss Hastings rolled her eyes and sketched a curtsey.
“Allow me to introduce you to her friend, Lady Rowena Gage.” Hastings pivoted to Livvy. “Of course you remember Miss Olivia Halsey…all grown up now.”
“I remember,” he said, stiffening. He’d forgotten that no one must know about his visits to her tower.
“Mr. Braithwaite. It’s good to see you again, all hale and hearty, sir.” Livvy’s voice was a smoky promise.
“Hale and hearty, indeed. Big Ox. Isn’t that what I called you when we were boys swimming the River Trent?”
Jonas smiled, gritting his teeth. No doubt Will thought Big Ox a fun boyhood name. “I can’t recall.”
Livvy frowned at Mr. Hastings but the jocular man was too busy stuffing his gloves in his coat pocket to notice. Did she find the childhood sobriquet distasteful? Her eyes expanded within her mask as if chiding Jonas, Tell him not to call you that!
His answer was the smallest of shrugs.
“We can reminisce over a pint. Will you join us?” Will spoke above the noise, his head poking over his sister as he searched the room. “I am to play chaperone tonight until my aunt arrives to guide these young women. These ladies need a man’s steadying hand. Two would be better.”
“You’ll not put a damper on our fun, Will.” Emma pouted prettily and fixed her gold mask. “I plan to make mischief and neither you nor Mama nor Aunt Ophelia can stop me.”
Will Hastings grimaced at Jonas. His baleful visage saying, See what I must contend with? before checking the room again. His chin jutted at an empty table in a back corner.
“Ah, there’s a table.”
The five-some threaded past seated revelers rocking back their chairs on two legs. Evergreen boughs decorated with red bows lined heavy-wooded rafters. Tallow candles burned from wall sconces and a rustic, iron lantern lit with a dozen candles hung overhead, yet the public house was dim inside. Jonas set his hand on the small of Livvy’s back and the end of her long braid brushed his hand. She’d wrapped her hair in black silk from her nape to the feathery tip swishing against her breeches.
He bent low and whispered in her ear, “A housebreaker…an excellent choice of costume.”
Her head angled toward his. “I thought you would find humor in it.”
His hand brushed her bottom. “You are a fast one, Livvy Halsey.”
She jumped, her gaze sparkling at him like brown fire in her black lace mask.
“If ever there was a woman in need of a man’s steadying hand,” he teased.
Her slender nostrils flared and she almost collided with the shepherdess serving wench. Jonas grabbed Livvy’s arm and pulled her close. “Careful.”
The side of her body wedged up against him. Another passerby jostled them. Livvy’s face was within kissing distance, but a mild storm clouded her eyes.
“You are a confusing man, Jonas Braithwaite.”
“How?” he asked not liking the sharpness of her tone.
“That first night you kissed me like…”
“Like what?”
He leaned in, the balls of his feet pressing hard on the plank floor, his body on tenterhooks. Her hips fit in the notch between his legs, almost touching his placket. Any other evening, this would be unseemly, but debauchery’s patina colored the Sheep’s Head. People crowded close. None noticed them. Masked women landed in the laps of male patrons who caressed skirt-covered thighs. Jonas would caress Livvy’s thighs, if she’d let him. But not here.
Her brows furrowed in her mask, the bottom of those copper arches visible in the eye holes. “The first night you kissed me as if I were the first and last woman for you.”
“I aim to please.”
“Yet the next day in the tower? It was awful. Embarrassing to say the least. Now you pat my bottom like some lascivious sailor,” she finished, her lips pinching with distaste.
His mouth opened, but no words came. He’d seen lascivious sailors and his touch was a far cry from their handling of a woman’s bottom. But, Livvy had a point. What could he say? That he was taken aback at her kiss last night but, tonight, he hungered for her? That he was baffled by the rush of emotions being with her?
He lightened his grip on her arm. “You have that effect on me.”
The line of her mouth firmed. He wanted to erase it with a melting kiss better than what he gave her his first night home.
“I have been here a handful of days. I couldn’t wait to leave. Yet, being with you is…is different.”
“How different?”
“Braithwaite. Miss Halsey. Are you coming?” Will Hastings waved from a table squeezed between two high-back pine settles.
Jonas began to maneuver around laughing patrons. Livvy’s hand on his sleeve stopped him.
“Tell me. How different?” The exposed half of her face tensed with anticipation.
He wasn’t good at baring his soul. Never had been. Emotions were best kept in check.
Staring into Livvy’s expectant, hopeful eyes, he’d swear the ground moved. His first time at sea was like this. Lightness in his stomach. The world unsteady. Yet, the ship had cut through uneven water, the sea’s vastness stretching before him. It could’ve swallowed him whole. Instead, it became the world he needed to reach beyond simple existence and thrive. Livvy Halsey was quickly becoming the same to him—her essence was his future, his life.
That future could never be his if he didn’t risk the first step with her.
“You are the kind of a woman a man could spend forever with, and forever still wouldn’t be enough time with you.” Shoulders squared, he smiled at her, the lightness filling him.
And by the glow in her eyes, it filled Livvy, too.
Patrons jostled around them. Her hand slid down his sleeve into his hand as if made for it. Mr. Meakin strummed notes on his fiddle, and calls for clearing the room for a dance were shouted to the rafters. Hastings called for them again.
“Come,” she said, giving his hand a gentle nudge. “We have the whole night ahead of us.”
He was tongue-tied as they scooted into the pine settles with the Hastings and Lady Rowena.
“What a squeeze.” Lady Rowena laughed above the noise.
Miss Hastings set both elbows on the table, blowing an errant curl falling across her eyes. “Dancing and games are sure to start soon.”
“What kind of games?” her brother asked, waving over a tavern maid.
Miss Hastings rested her chin in her palm. “Blind Man’s Bluff for one.” Her gaze wandered to the tall figure dressed as King Henry the Eighth and the Welsh archer beside him.
Lady Rowena’s shoulder bumped Miss Hastings. “Because you want him to find you.”
Miss Hastings turned a shade of pink which was a feat in their shadowed corner of the public room.
“Who is him?” Will Hastings twisted around in his seat. “The man dressed as King Henry the Eighth?” He turned back, scowling at his sister.
A frizzy-haired woman wearing a white mask approached the table, five cups of mulled cider clutched in both hands.
“Here you go, luvs.” She leaned in and set mugs on the table, stopping herself mid-bend. “Well now, is that a Braithwaite lad come home?” She straightened and, hip cocked, set a hand on the settle’s back near Livvy’s head. “Bless me, it is.”
Five hands reached for their cups. Jonas took his, a smile creasing his face.
“Molly Fowler?”
“The very same,” she said in her throaty voice. “But it’s Mrs. Molly Bainbridge now.” She jerked her head at the bar where Mr. Bainbridge ran a hand over his bald pate, eyeing a daunting row of tankards in need of filling. “Married to that one which makes me proprietress to this grand place.”
“That would make sense with your costume.”
She showed goose down angel wings stitched into the back of her gown. “You mean an angel, masquerading as a serving wench.” She laughed heartily, her gaze landing on his gold earring. “And you must be the pirate in black velvet setting all the female hearts aflutter. Our new serving maid, the shepherdess, says she’ll not be the same for the sight of you.”
Jonas grinned into his mug of mulled wine. Mrs. Bainbridge winked at the seat crammed with Livvy, Lady Rowena, and Miss Hastings.
“One of you fine girls could end his wanderer’s ways and see him leg-shackled.” She patted Jonas’s arm. “This round of drinks is on me and Mr. Bainbridge. Call it a welcome home.” And she shoved off, her angel’s wings bobbing.
Will Hastings raised his cup. “Let us drink to a good leg-shackling. It cannot happen fast enough to my sister.”
“You men get all the fun.” Miss Hastings snorted delicately and set the cup to her mouth. She barely swallowed her wine before raising her cup for a toast. “I say we drink to the ladies having fun tonight.”
Cups clinked and Miss Hastings raised her cup again. “And a toast for Miss Olivia Halsey who came down from her tower tonight. May one of Plumtree’s fine men rescue her once and for all.”
“I don’t need a man to rescue me. I like what I do in my family’s tower, thank you very much.”
“Dusting off old Roman sandals a farmer plowed up?” Will pulled a grim face. “No thank you.”
“You would say that,” his sister teased. “Because your shoes have a distinct odor.”
“Humph.” Hastings shrugged off the minor insult by downing more mulled wine.
“Making sense of what we dig up, studying them, and putting those discoveries into words appeals to me.” Livvy gulped her wine, quickly adding, “Helping my father, I mean.”
“I read your father’s last book, Miss Halsey. I found it quite fascinating.” This from Lady Rowena before she dipped into her cup.
Livvy, warmed by the compliment, met Jonas’s gaze across the table. He raised his cup in a silent toast to her skill with words.
Miss Hastings peered at her female bench-mates. “All this talk of the past does us no good, ladies. We are firmly in the present and desperately in need of fun and frivolity.”
Livvy fanned herself with her hand as if about to swoon. “I wouldn’t mind a night of flirtation with one of the fine gentlemen here.”
Lady Rowena giggled and clinked her cup with Livvy’s. “Why Miss Halsey, you are a divine creature.”
Jonas gulped his wine. Livvy never fanned herself a day in her life. Not the girl he knew. But, she was a woman now—a woman he had no claim over. Nor could he say how much she’d changed these ten years. A handful of days in Plumtree wasn’t enough to learn the woman she’d become.
“Careful, ladies. Remember who you are,” Will cautioned, giving his sister the stern eye.
“Oh, Will,” she cooed. “Be a good chaperone and fetch more mulled wine for us all.”
Jonas got up and Hastings scooted free of the bench. He sat down again as Miss Hastings planted both palms on the table. She bent forward like a conspirator, speaking to Lady Rowena and Livvy with a comical, red wine moustache at the corners of her mouth. Her gaze honed in on the tall Welsh archer.
“Mr. Fortham is mine.”
Jonas traced his cup’s handle, waiting for the dancing to start. He’d sweep Livvy into the fun. For now, he’d endure Miss Hastings’s mooning over the Welsh archer.
“There’s something very…” she sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. He flirted with me when he came to repair the gate at Hastings Hall. I was out for a ride and well…we had an interesting conversation.”
Jonas idly tapped his cup on the table.
“Then, I took my horse into the village to be shod. Mr. Fortham is quite…quite…”
“Handsome,” Lady Rowena supplied.
“Primal.”
Livvy? Jonas’s head snapped up. All eyes were on Livvy. She rolled her shoulders, one corner of her mouth curling like a freshly-sated courtesan.
“Mr. Fortham is a man of good character. He has that to recommend him,” she said, tilting her cup, inspecting the spice dregs at the bottom. “He is strong and capable in mind and body.”
Miss Hastings’s eyes narrowed. “Pray tell, Miss Halsey, when did you learn how strong and capable he is?”
“When he came to fix the door on Halsey Tower.” Livvy sipped the last of her mulled wine. “I thought common laborers were beneath you.”
“A dalliance isn’t out of the question. But, you can’t have entertained a flirtation with him. You’re promised to another man.”
“To whom?” Jonas blurted the question.
Three pairs of feminine eyes turned on him as if they’d forgotten he was there. At least two of them had. Livvy’s chin dipped. No, she hadn’t forgotten he was there. Jonas never pretended to have full knowledge of women. Far from it. He’d had many a conversation with his previous employer and friend, the Earl of Greenwich, about the mysteries of women. Their bodies were a map he could master. But a woman’s heart? Her mind? These were riddles better men than he should master.
Until Livvy.
Her brown eyes shuttered within the black lace as if she’d not answer. But, Miss Emma Hastings would. She supplied the answer to Jonas like a shark smelling blood in the water.
“Oh, didn’t you know? Miss Halsey is betrothed to a Mr. Alistair Haggerty of London.” Miss Hastings neatly pinned her rival for the blacksmith’s affection. Jonas’s gut clenched. The words delivered a hard blow. His fist curled on his thigh. He had no hold on her, but Livvy had the grace to wince.
“Here we are.” Will Hastings set five cups of mulled wine on the table.
Four hands grabbed a mug and each person took their fill.
“Mr. Bainbridge tells me they’ll clear the floor for dancing in five minutes.” Will made to sit down.
“Wait.” Jonas slid off the bench. He emptied his mug and set it down with a firm thunk. “I’ll leave you to your fun.”
“You’re leaving me to be the sole guardian of these three?”
Jonas tore off his mask, stung to the core. What did he expect after one kiss and a few visits to her tower? That Livvy would swoon for him? He shouldn’t have come here tonight and waited like a besotted fool for her. And he certainly shouldn’t have told her how she affected him.
“You’re a better man than me,” he said, dropping a shilling on the table. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”