Stranger in My Arms(68)

Some of them can’t be trusted any more than if they were wild animals set loose in the town. You can’t expect the Hartcups or Wyndhams or anyone else to take on such a responsibility.”

“Yes, I can,” she said obstinately, frowning into his sympathetic face.

“Hunter, what is to be done?”

“Wait for the new wing to the orphanage to be finished and additional teachers to be hired,” he said.

“I can’t wait I want the children out of prison immediately. I’ll bring them all here and take care of them myself if I have to.”

“What about Johnny?” Hunter pointed out evenly.

“How will you explain it when all your time and attention are devoted to a dozen other children and there’s none left for him?”

“I’ll tell him… I’ll simply say…” Lara stopped with a frustrated groan. “He won’t understand,” she admitted.

Hunter shook his head in the face of her obvious misery. “Sweet darling,” he murmured. “I would advise you to harden your heart just a little… but somehow I don’t think you can.”

“I can’t leave those children in prison for months,” she said.

“All right, dammit. I’ll see if I can do something, though I doubt I’ll have any more luck than you.

“You will,” Lara said, instantly hopeful. “You have a talent for getting people to do what you want.”

Hunter grinned suddenly. “I have another talent that I intend to demonstrate tonight.”

“Perhaps,” she said provocatively, and scooted from his lap.

Hunter became an unexpected ally, making calls, coaxing, bargaining, and bullying with all his considerable charm until he had found temporary homes for all twelve children. Having been the object of one of Hunter’s campaigns, although for a far different cause, Lara knew exactly how difficult it was for the townspeople to refuse him.

She would never regard him in the same way after their night together, the first time she had ever experienced pleasure and fulifilment in a man’s arms.

Even more surprising than the physical satisfaction had been the realization that she could trust him.

Hunter was a kind man, Lara thought with some amazement. Her husband, kind, not only to her but to the others around him… She didn’t know what had caused such a change, but she was deeply grateful for it.

Although he didn’t approve of her philanthropic meddling in other people’s lives, he seemed to understand it, and he indulged her as much as he thought reasonable.”

Hunter had always been busy, but his pursuits were far different from in the first years of their marriage. He had once been a standard figure at every hunt or sporting event, not to mention a visible fixture at gaming clubs. Lara suspected his old comrades were sorely disappointed to discover that Hunter had returned from India with a new sense of responsibility toward his dependents. He developed the Crosslands’ interests in shipping, trading, and manufacturing companies, and acquired a brewery that returned a steady profit each month. Taking an interest in the workings of his own estate, he paid close attention to the harvest and farming, and undertook to make improvements the tenants had long requested.

As a young man accustomed to privilege and filled with a sense of invulnerability, Hunter had once believed the world existed only to give him pleasure.

The only time he had ever been denied anything was when he had been confronted by Lara’s infertility, and he had handled it poorly. Now he seemed immeasurably older and wiser, taking nothing for granted, shouldering the responsibilities he had once done his best to avoid.

Not that Hunter was a saint… There was a touch of the rascal about him that Lara enjoyed. He was seductive, tricky, teasing, encouraging her to lay aside her morals and romp with him in a manner she would never have believed herself capable of. One evening he visited Lara’s bedroom with the stated intention of enjoying the ceiling mirror before it was removed by Possibility Smith and his assistants. Ignoring Lara’s mortified protests, he made love to her beneath their reflections, and laughed as she dove under the covers immediately afterward. He took her to a dignified musical evening and whispered outrageous passages from Indian love texts in her ear … accompanied her on a private picnic and seduced her beneath the open sky.

He was the husband she had never dared to hope for: compassionate, exciting, and strong. She loved him-it was impossible not to-although some tiny flicker of fear kept her from admitting it aloud. In time she would tell him, when she felt safe in doing so. Some part of her heart was waiting for him to prove himself, offer a signal or sign or key that would allow her to relinquish every last part of herself to him.

Lara covered herself in a large apron and stood at the corner of the kitchen worktable, crushing linseed in a small marble mortar.

Carefully she scraped the oily powder from the bowl and dropped the linseed into a cup of melted beeswax. It was an old family recipe for a poultice that would ease the gout-an affliction that had lately tormented a resident of Market Hill, Sir Ralph Woodfield. Although Sir Ralph was a proud man who hated to ask a favor of anyone, he had sent a servant over that morning to request a batch of the treatment.

Enjoying the fragrance of the cooling beeswax, Lara poured another half cup of linseed into the mortar and began to grind it with circular strokes of the pestle. The cook and two kitchen maids stood at the other end of the worktable, kneading great piles of bread dough and shaping it into perfect oblong loaves. They were all entertained by one of the maids’ cheerful warbling of a love song that was currently popular in the village. Her fingers plowed deftly into the dough, keeping time with the melody.