Claiming His Defiant Miss. Bronwyn Scott

now it’s your turn. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you stay in Sussex with the family after the wedding?’

      ‘That should be obvious. Beatrice needs me. She can’t deliver a baby on her own.’ May fidgeted a little and looked past his shoulder out to the field. There was more to this than the loyalty of friendship.

      ‘That’s what doctors and midwives are for. Have you delivered many babies in the last five years, then? With a gun in one hand, none the less?’ Liam pressed. May wasn’t lying—May never lied, not even to spare a man’s feelings, so he had learned. But she wasn’t telling him quite the truth either.

      ‘This is the wilds of Scotland. Two women on their own can’t be too careful. I wasn’t expecting company, that’s all,’ May snapped. He realised it was as close to an apology as he was going to get for being greeted with a pistol.

      He arched a dark brow. ‘I disagree. No one carries a pistol when they’re not expecting anything. I think you were expecting something—trouble, perhaps?’

      ‘Trouble doesn’t follow me everywhere,’ she began.

      ‘No, it doesn’t. You follow it, as I recall. There was that incident with the oak tree, the rowboat, the cigars—need I go on?’

      ‘I was precocious in my younger years.’ Her cheeks burned with the admission. He shouldn’t have teased her. She would hate having her adolescence thrown in her face as much as he would.

      ‘I’d wager you are still precocious.’ His tone softened and he allowed himself a smile. It was dangerous to let himself entertain even a moment of nostalgia where May was concerned. ‘I always liked that about you, May. Never afraid of a challenge, which leads me to conclude that’s really why you’re here. You’ve followed your friend into exile perhaps, as you say, to help her birth this whelp, perhaps to thumb your nose at your parents and society. Perhaps a little of both. But, there is something more. Neither of those are a particular challenge to you.’ He was quiet for a minute, studying her, searching for the answer. He hadn’t ferreted out the real reason she was here. ‘What is Mistress Fields going to do with the child?’

      ‘Raise it. It’s what you do with children,’ May said too sharply. He’d hit pay dirt.

      ‘Hence the need for the pistol,’ Liam surmised with no lack of sarcasm. ‘She’s afraid her family will come and take the child from the home of a woman with only an errant husband to provide for her.’ With no man in the house, a protective, financially secure family would want to see a child raised in far safer circumstances. Assuming there was a husband at all—he had his doubts there, but no proof.

      ‘No one will take it,’ May said firmly, her eyes locking on Liam’s, her reckless stubbornness in full bloom. May thought she could hold off Beatrice’s family with a gun and the two of them could play house and raise the baby on their own. It was an admirable goal even if it was a bit over-innocent in its assumptions. Two women alone would be prey to all sorts of mischief. May didn’t know true danger. He never wanted her to know it.

      Something protective stirred in him, something he didn’t want to acknowledge. There’d been only trouble down that path last time he trod it. May Worth wasn’t for him. She was beautiful and headstrong, naïvely confident that she could overcome anything. That was what money and a good family could do for a person—create the innate belief that you were as close to immortal as one could get. There wasn’t anything you couldn’t conquer. He didn’t want the world to crush that out of May.

      They stood in silence, the wind picking up around them. May shielded her eyes and looked towards the empty road, Beatrice and her dubious husband forgotten. ‘You think he’ll come.’ She let out a deep breath.

      ‘Yes, I do. But I’ll be here, May. You needn’t worry.’ In that moment he wished it were all different; that he hadn’t been born a poor, Irish street rat, the unwanted son of a St Giles whore, or that he hadn’t aspired above his station, that Cabot Roan didn’t pose a threat to her, that he hadn’t had to come here and endure the exquisite torture of being in her presence. It was a moment’s whimsy only. All he had to do was remember how they parted and the anger would come rushing back, the resentment. In the end, class and wealth and privilege had all proven too big of a chasm to cross. When it had counted, she hadn’t wanted him. Even five years later, she still looked at him as if he was the biggest mistake she’d ever made.

      ‘I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for Preston.’ Perhaps if he defined the rules out loud they would serve as a clarification of the boundaries for both of them; a clarification they both needed if there was to be no repeat of their previous foolishness. That might be excused as the folly of the youth. But now? Now, there would be no excuse. They both knew better. ‘This is strictly business, May.’

      She glared. ‘I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear.’ She turned towards the cottage and this time, he let her go, pretending the rules would indeed succeed in preventing disaster from striking twice.

      Who was he kidding? The rules had never held any power over him, not where May was concerned. After all, despite her protests to the contrary, he’d seen her pulse beat fast at his nearness and his own thoughts had wandered towards nostalgia more than once. They were both in jeopardy here, rules or not. All it would take to shatter their fragile restraint would be for him to decide he wanted to try on that brand of foolishness one more time, just to be sure it didn’t fit.

       Chapter Four

      He’d looked at her like she was the biggest mistake he’d ever made! He wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been for Preston! He had made his feelings perfectly clear. May hacked at the feathery green tops of the carrots and began slicing with more ferocity than finesse. She threw the carrot pieces into the stewpot.

      ‘Toss, May.’ Beatrice leaned across the worktable in the kitchen and put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘We toss the carrots into the pot. We don’t hurl them. Especially when they’re Farmer Sinclair’s carrots,’ she added with a wry smile. May smiled back, apologetically.

      ‘Good. Now that I have your attention, tell me what’s wrong. Is this pique of yours entirely about Preston or is it something more?’

      ‘Something more?’ May snapped, reaching for another carrot to dismember. ‘Isn’t it enough my brother is lying wounded in an obscure farmhouse at the mercy of a treasonous villain and no one will take me to him?’

      Beatrice smiled patiently, years of experience in dealing with May’s hot temper and outbursts behind her. ‘It is enough. I am worried sick for him myself.’ Her hand went unconsciously to her stomach and rubbed it in a soothing, settling gesture. ‘I think the baby is worried about him, too.’

      She laughed a little, but May frowned. ‘Are you all right, Bea?’ Bea had struggled the last two weeks with swollen feet and the occasional contraction, and she was huge.

      Bea waved a dismissive hand. ‘We were talking about you. Don’t try to change the subject. You have a bad habit of doing that whenever the subject gets too hot.’ Bea reached for the mallet to hammer out meat for the stew. ‘Speaking of hot, May, Liam Casek is no iceberg.’ May didn’t miss the sly look Bea gave her. ‘Do you know him? I don’t recall Preston ever bringing him around.’

      ‘Bea! Shame on you for noticing. You’re about to give birth.’ May opted for a teasing scold.

      Bea gave her a sly smile. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t notice a handsome man.’

      May finished putting the ingredients in the stewpot and lifted it, trudging over to the large arched brick hearth and hanging the heavy pot over the fire. She wiped her hands on her apron before responding. ‘He’s not the sort to be brought around.’ How did one explain Liam Casek and how he’d somehow risen from a pickpocket to being one of the Home Office’s most prized agents. She wasn’t sure exactly what he did, but he worked with Preston and that carried some weight. Preston did