Page 53 of When the Scoundrel Sins

Kissing?He rolled his eyes. He’d done a helluva lot more than that.

Which was why he was out here in the fields with Angus Burns this afternoon, breaking his back mending walls, instead of inside the house with Robert, interviewing potential suitors. The last thing he wanted to do was find Belle a husband. Which was also why he’d marched straight back to the house after leaving her at the pond to swallow his pride and scratch out a letter to Sebastian, asking his brother to loan him the money necessary to purchase Glenarvon from the Church, should Bartleby not discover another viable loophole.

And after that morning’s encounter at the pond, he also needed to expel the frustration of being able to touch her and hear her throaty cry of pleasure, yet not be able to share in that release.

God’s mercy, she’d made his blood boil. So hot, in fact, that he’d very nearly carried her from the pond in his arms, placed her on the grassy bank, and taken her right there. Cold water be damned.

He grabbed up another stone and slammed it into position. What had stopped him from doing exactly that—theonlything—was that he would be obligated to marry her if he took her innocence. That’s what well-bred gentlemen did when they ruined ladies like Belle. Even a scoundrel like himself couldn’t escape that. And the last thing he wanted was marriage, knowing the grief that would eventually accompany it.

Nor was he willing to turn his back on the promises he’d made to his father and Asa Jeffers, which was exactly what he would have to do then. Because there would be no marriage of convenience, as Belle had proposed. No separation. Certainly no divorce. He was a Carlisle. The Carlisle men never abandoned the women who needed them, and she would never leave the borderlands. His future wasn’t here among rocky sheep pastures and patches of heather. It was waiting for him in America, where he could be free to make a name for himself. Where nothing would hold him back.

But for one breathtaking moment in the pond, when he’d been watching her beautiful face as the pleasure overtook her, he hadn’t been thinking about America or his promise to his father. He’d wanted nothing more than to remain right here. With her.

Growling angrily, he shoved the rock onto the wall and ground it into place with his shoulder.

“Ye tryin’ to mend that wall,” Burns piped up, “or smash them rocks t’ bits?”

Christ.His shoulders sagged as he realized what he was doing and stepped back from the wall. “Apologies.” He took a moment to catch his breath and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I was distracted.”

Distracted?A damned lie. He was a helluva lot more bothered than that.

Quinn tugged off his gloves and leaned back against the wall, more to gather his thoughts than to take a rest. Never before had an innocent captured his attention the way Annabelle had. Not only the way she looked, with that soft caramel-colored hair and those graceful movements, but also her sharp mind that kept him tantalizingly on his toes. He liked the way he felt when he was with her, a feeling no other woman had ever given him—not as the youngest son of a duke or a rake, but a man in his own right. Strong and competent. One deserving of her smiles. One capable of protecting her the way she deserved.

“We’ll be done ’fore long,” Burns assured him, popping the cork from a water jug and taking a long swig. “Only a few more of the big ones t’ place, an’ the others’ll fill in fast.”

Quinn glanced at the remaining gap and wasn’t so certain. “I know about the incidents of vandalism on the estate.” Quinn waved away Burns’s offer of a drink and jerked a thumb at the wall. “Was this another?”

Burns shook his head, took one last swallow of water, and corked the jug. “This here wall’s needed t’ be repaired fer a while now.” He laughed good-naturedly and slapped Quinn on the back. “Yer just the first Englishman we’ve had a-visitin’ who wasn’t smart ’nough t’ stay inside when there was work t’ be done!”

Quinn grimaced. Not smart enough, indeed. Apparently not about anything these days. Especially bluestockings.

“Tell me the truth about Glenarvon.” He stripped off his sweat-soaked work shirt and tossed it across the stones to dry in the sun. “Man to man.” He fixed the foreman with a look. “How’s Miss Greene doing running the estate?”

“The lassie’s doing fair, fer a woman.”

Quinn bit back a grin at that. Belle would have flayed the man if she’d heard that qualifier.

“She’s got the accounts in order, the repairs bein’ made, all the flocks an’ livestock tended to as they should be. It’ll ne’er make her rich, but she makes good work o’ it.”

He breathed a silent sigh of relief. It would have been unbearable to think she might choose marriage only to save a home she would end up losing anyway.

“She’s even managed t’ hold on through th’ lot of them incidents lately.” Burns wiped his forearm across his forehead to swipe off the sweat gathered there beneath the brim of his tweed cap. “But I’m right glad yer here now. I know th’ lass appreciates havin’ ye here, all the help an’ advice ye’ve given her. An’ ’specially as Sir Harold’s been pesterin’ her to turn over the runnin’ of Glenarvon to him even now, not wantin’ to wait ’til she inherits—fer that matter, since the bad luck began last year.”

Cold warning prickled at the back of Quinn’s neck. “You think Bletchley’s involved?”

Burns spat on the ground and shook his head. “At least attemptin’ to take a’vantage. After e’ery incident that man hurries o’er here, offerin’ to do just that—take it off her hands fer her, let him manage the property.” A sour expression darkened Burns’s weathered face. “I don’t trust him none, certainly not wi’ Glenarvon, an’ not ’round the lass.”

Quinn’s chest warmed with private vindication. If Angus Burns didn’t like Bletchley, then his own dislike of the man was justified. “She might very well end up having to marry—”

Alarm bells peeled across the fields. Shouts split the quiet afternoon.

Quinn shoved himself away from the wall and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he looked across the pasture at the small collection of buildings housing the shearing shed and the dairy, the barns, and other outbuildings where most of the estate’s day-to-day work was carried out. Men scrambled from the buildings and ran toward the last barn, while footmen poured from the house—

“The hay barn’s afire!” Burns shouted.

Christ!Quinn raced toward the barn, with Burns at his heels.

By the time they reached the barnyard, the men had organized themselves into a bucket brigade between the water troughs and the barn, with bucket after bucket passed hand to hand along the line and back. But the small amount of water they managed to pour onto the flames wasn’t nearly enough.