Free Beckman: Lord of Sins by Grace Burrowes

him.”
    “Then I can help Maudie milk the cows.” Beck was off to the back hall before Polly had a rejoinder for that too. He stood on the back porch, hearing the baritone of North’s voice from the woodshed across the backyard and the higher-pitched tones of Allie’s voice in reply.
    North emerged, carrying a large armload of wood. “If it isn’t the man responsible for the clearances.”
    “Good morning, Mr. Haddonfield,” Allie piped. Her load was much smaller, but her posture copied North’s exactly.
    “What clearances? And good morning to you too, princess.”
    “The twins are gone.” North paused to let Allie dump her wood into the wood box first. “Must have left after you reminded them of their options. Thank you, Miss Allie.”
    She curtsied and grinned. “I’m going to help Maudie.”
    “We’ll tell your mama,” North assured her, “and stay out of the stalls until we’ve mucked. You don’t have your boots on.”
    She waved that admonition aside and took off for the barn.
    Beck frowned at her retreating form. “Cheerful little soul.”
    “The women are all in good spirits this morning.” North dumped his load on top of Allie’s smaller offering. “Even Hildy seems to be smiling, which is unnerving from a lady uniformly out of sorts unless there’s a slop bucket in the offing.”
    “Maybe there’s a promise of spring in the air.” Beck did not comment on a man who was confessing to reading the moods of a breeding sow.
    “Maybe.” North straightened slowly and braced his hands low on his back. “And maybe the ladies were more uncomfortable with a pair of drunken wastrels on the property than I perceived, and for this I feel remiss.”
    Remiss was probably North’s term for wanting to beat himself silly. Beck savored that notion in the privacy of his thoughts. “Do you think it’s dry enough to risk a trip into the village today?”
    North glanced around, likely seeing a thousand chores that would not complete themselves. “For what purpose?”
    “To bring back a load of hay from the livery, to pick up the post, to ask about the twins, and to leave their severance at the posting inn. To lay in a few staples to tide us over until we can make it in to Portsmouth, to get the hell off this muddy patch of earth.”
    “Ah, youth.” North loaded a wealth of amused condescension in two syllables.
    “You’re at best a few years my senior,” Beck said. “Recall I’ve yet to see this thriving metropolis of a village.”
    “There’s a whorehouse, if that’s what you’re not asking.” North stopped on the back porch. “I’m told the ladies are clean and friendly, though it’s not at all what you’re used to.”
    “North…” Beck paused, because privacy was one thing, and North’s opinion of him was something else entirely. “You do not know what I’m used to, and I did not ask you for particulars on the vices available close at hand. I am not, nor have I ever been, plagued with the tendencies that make my brother nigh infamous.”
    “Your brother?”
    “Nicholas, Viscount Reston.” Beck walked over to the porch railing and leaned a hip on it. “He is rather a favorite with a certain stripe of female, with any stripe of female for that matter. For those of questionable virtue and reasonable discretion, he returns their appreciation… or he did. He’s bride hunting now, and one suspects this has curbed his enthusiasm for certain activities.”
    “He bride hunts while you rusticate. London’s loss is Three Springs’s gain. Shall we see to our breakfast?”
    From North, that amounted to a ringing endorsement of Beck’s chosen task, which North would, of course, serve up as casually as scrambled eggs on toast.
    ***
    “This is beautiful, Mr. St. Michael. Absolutely… I saw one like it in the villa of a Russian archduke near Sebastopol. It’s likely Persian and worth a great deal.”
    Tremaine St. Michael did not let his impatience show by gesture or expression,