Read Beckman: Lord of Sins for Free Online

his hands were full, Mrs. Hunt opened the door and preceded him into his sitting room. Once again, somebody had lit his fire, set his wash water by the hearth, and refilled the pitcher of drinking water. The room smelled good too, as if someone had freshened the lavender sachets hanging from the curtain sashes.
    The effect was pleasant and welcoming, and yet Beck wasn’t entirely comfortable with the notion that Mrs. Hunt herself had troubled over his comforts.
    “I’ve added to your burden,” he said, glancing around the room. “Just by being here, I make more work.”
    “But you lightened Gabriel’s load.” She lit the candles on his mantel and moved off to light some in his bedroom. “I’m surprised he allows it.”
    “He’s an independent sort. I also think there’s a bit of putting me through my paces going on.”
    “Maybe.” She stood in the door between the two rooms and offered him a half smile. “Do you blame him?”
    “Of course not.” Beck put down his basket of laundry. “I meant what I said, Mrs. Hunt, about making a list.”
    Her smile became a quarter smile, then an eighth. “Of course you did. The question is, when you’ve replaced the towels and rugs, as Gabriel terms them, then what?”
    “Then you have a livable property worthy of the Marchioness of Warne.” Beck was tired and not up to deciphering females’ moods.
    “Or you have a saleable property, don’t you?”
    This again? “You think I’d turn out three females and a man who has worked himself to the bone simply to add to my grandmother’s coffers?”
    Her chin came up in a very unservile manner. “We’re hired help, and you’re the son of an earl. We live in an age of clearances and enclosures, Mr. Haddonfield. The working man can riot all he wants over the price of bread, but the price of bread doesn’t change. You’re perfectly within your rights to work us nigh to death and then sell the place for a song.”
    Beck advanced on her, fatigue letting his temper strain its leash. “Firstly, any decision to sell would be made by my grandmother, whose generosity of spirit has been proven by her dealings with you. Secondly, my task is to put the place to rights, not sell it. It’s no more for sale now than it was the day you got here, Mrs. Hunt. Thirdly, I am a gentleman and would not leave you and yours to starve when you’ve served the family loyally under trying circumstances.”
    “I know better than to depend on any man’s word,” Mrs. Hunt said, her voice low and fierce as she glared up at him. “You mean what you say, now, Mr. Haddonfield, I’ll grant you that much. But if your grandmother should die or the earl redirect your task, you can’t stop the place from being sold.”
    Beck’s brows came down in a frown, and he realized with a start he was not dealing with an arrogant exponent of the working class, but rather, a very tired, frightened mother and widow.
    His second realization was that Mrs. Hunt employed a stage trick to make her presence more imposing: she remained always in motion. He’d observed her throughout the day, skirts always swishing madly. She dusted, she swept, she scrubbed; she beat carpets, boiled laundry, and bustled about, a rampage of cleaning on two feet. Standing this close to her, Beck saw she was in truth a slender woman of not much more than average height—and a tired slender woman at that.
    “I cannot stop my relatives from dying or selling your home,” Beck said, his tone much less belligerent, “but I can assure you they are honorable people, and when I convey to them the conditions under which you’ve labored, they will understand their debt to you, and to Polly and North. Mrs. Hunt—Sara—are you all right?”
    ***
    Mr. Haddonfield moved closer, close enough that Sara could catch a whiff of bergamot, an incongruous counterpoint to the roaring in her ears.
    “I just need to sit,” she managed. She felt the candle being taken from her grasp and then, in the next