LITMIR.BIZ

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time she heard him laugh. ‘Oh, so you think I am a poacher, Miss Brabant? I see!’ The warmth in his tone had slid into teasing and Lavender was even more confused. Not only was this inappropriate, it suggested that he was completely heartless!

      ‘What else am I supposed to think?’ she countered angrily, wondering why the timbre of his voice was so attractive when his words were so much the opposite. ‘I heard a noise from the sack—and I saw it move! And why else would you be out after dark—’

      She watched in amazement as Barney crouched down on the path and loosened the string at the neck of the sack. Suddenly she did not want to see whatever poor, maimed creature was inside.

      ‘I pray you, put it out of its misery quickly,’ she said hastily, looking the other way. ‘How can you be so unkind—’

      ‘Putting them out of their misery was precisely what my father intended,’ Barney said dryly. ‘I fear that you have jumped to the wrong conclusions, Miss Brabant.’

      Lavender heard a tiny mewing sound and looked round sharply. Barney was easing something gently out of the sack, something soft, fluffy and with very sharp claws. Lavender saw him wince as the kitten sank teeth and claws simultaneously into his hand.

      ‘Oh, there are two of them!’

      ‘Yes, and not precisely grateful for my clemency!’

      Lavender stepped closer and Barney opened his fist to reveal the two tiny bodies. They were shivering a little, peering round with huge-eyed apprehension. Lavender put a hand out and tentatively stroked one tiny head.

      ‘Oh, how adorable! But—’ She looked up suddenly into his face. ‘The sack—you were going to drown them in the river?’

      ‘My father intended them for such a fate,’ Barney corrected her. He was stroking the kittens with gentle fingers and Lavender could hear their ecstatic purrs. ‘Their mother was a stray and he did not wish to encourage her, but my sister Ellen had grown much attached to the kittens and begged me to find them a good home. So I offered to take them away and my father assumed I would get rid of them.’

      Lavender shivered. ‘But what were you intending to do with them? Has someone offered to take them in?’

      For the first time, Barney looked a little shifty. ‘Not exactly. There is an old byre just up the path and I was intending to make a nest for them there and leave them overnight. I was just collecting bedding for them when you stumbled upon the sack! Then tomorrow, if I could, I hoped to persuade someone to give them a home…’

      Lavender raised her eyebrows. ‘That does not sound a very good plan! They might stray away and they can scarce be expected to catch their own food, you know!’

      ‘I brought some scraps of food and some milk with me,’ Barney said, his voice completely expressionless.

      Lavender found herself trying not to laugh. It seemed ridiculous that this man had been devoting himself so wholeheartedly to the welfare of such tiny kittens. Yet the little creatures evidently liked him, for they had subsided into blissful balls of fluff under the stroking of his hands. Lavender found her mind making a sudden and unexpected leap from the fate of the kittens to the caress of Barney’s fingers, and felt herself turn hot all over.

      ‘Do you have any butter with you?’ she asked, somewhat at random. ‘If you butter their paws they will be too busy washing them to think of straying.’

      Barney looked crestfallen. ‘I did not think of that. Do you truly think they might lose themselves in the wood?’

      ‘Cats are homing creatures,’ Lavender explained, glad to be able to speak with authority, ‘and they might try to find their way back to you. But they are so far from Abbot Quincey they could never make the journey! Why, they might fall in the river, or become exhausted, or be eaten—’

      ‘Miss Brabant, pray do not distress yourself.’ Barney sounded amused and rueful at the same time. ‘I am sure they need suffer no such injury—’

      ‘Well, but you cannot know that!’ Lavender said indignantly. She took a deep breath. ‘I have just the idea—I will take them back to Hewly with me and they may have a home there.’ The suggestion seemed to come from nowhere, and startled her almost as much as it seemed to surprise Barney. He stared at her through the dark.

      ‘You will? But—’

      ‘We are forever having problems with mice at the Manor,’ Lavender said, improvising hastily in order not to appear too sentimental. ‘The kittens will be the very thing to deal with them.’

      Barney looked at her. It hardly needed pointing out that the kittens were scarcely bigger than mice themselves.

      ‘They will grow,’ Lavender said defensively, as though he had spoken aloud. ‘With a little care—’

      She put out a hand for the sack, but Barney picked it up and slipped the cats back inside.

      ‘It is very kind of you,’ he said slowly. ‘If you are certain—’

      ‘Of course! And then you may tell your sister that they have gone to a good home!’

      Barney looked at her inscrutably. ‘And what will you tell your brother and sister-in-law?’

      ‘Why, that I found the kittens in a sack on the path, just as I did! It would not do to lie, and they know me well enough to know I would not just leave them there!’

      Barney swung the sack up. ‘I will escort you back to the Manor then, Miss Brabant.’

      ‘There is no need! And if anyone should see you—’ Lavender broke off, aware that he might misinterpret her words. She did not wish him to think that she thought herself above his company.

      Barney gave her a look, but he did not speak, merely standing back to allow her to precede him along the path. It seemed that her objections had been overruled. Lavender opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again.

      They went a little way in silence, then Barney said suddenly, ‘So you truly thought me a poacher, Miss Brabant?’

      Lavender found herself on the defensive. ‘Well, I was not to know! Why else would a man go creeping about the woods in the dark?’

      ‘There could be any number of reasons, I imagine,’ Barney said surprisingly. ‘I am disappointed that you hold so low an opinion of me, Miss Brabant! I hoped you might think better of me than that!’

      The last thing Lavender had expected was to find herself apologising. ‘Well, I am truly sorry, but you must allow me some justification. Besides, you made matters considerably worse by manhandling me—’ She broke off again. Perhaps it was not wise to remind him of that either. There was a pause.

      ‘Yes, I beg your pardon.’ She thought she could detect amusement in his tone again. ‘I believe that was purely instinctive, but I apologise for upsetting you.’

      Lavender had no intention of admitting that she had been disturbed rather than upset. His proximity and his touch had quite set her senses awry and she was still trembling slightly with the same strange awareness.

      They had reached the gap in the wall where the path to Hewly gardens cut across the fields, and she turned to him.

      ‘It would be better if you did not come any further, Mr Hammond. If anyone sees you they will know there is more to my tale than meets the eye.’ She took the sack from him. ‘Please assure your sister that I will take care of her kittens. Now I’ll bid you goodnight.’

      Barney stood back and gave her a half-bow, executed as neatly as any of the gentleman of society whom she had met. He then spoiled the effect by giving her a grin, his teeth flashing very white in the moonlight.

      ‘Goodnight, then, Miss Brabant. And thank you.’

      He had already melted into the dark as Lavender turned away to hurry across the fields to home. She found herself wanting to turn and watch him

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