Page 53 of Barely a Woman
Steadman regarded her, perhaps understanding her tactic. To his credit, he chose not to shy away. “It matters not how much land he owns when no tenant will work it.”
“He has no tenants?”
“And he never will because of what he did.”
“What he did?”
Steadman looked at her, certainty steadying his gaze. “He killed a tenant family.”
His claim was implausible at best and dubious at worst. Even lords failed to escape justice for outright killings. His next words came quickly as he apparently tried to stem her obvious stream of questions.
“As a result, he is unable to generate income from his lands. What monetary resources he has remaining he invested in this scheme to corner the wheat market.”
“But won’t he just take back the wheat when he finds it missing?”
“He will not. The place to which we will move the wheat is on the property of another lord of higher rank. Atwood won’t take it, and the other lord will not surrender it. The baron will file a court case, naturally. But by tying the case up in court long enough, the wheat store will molder, or the markets will collapse. Regardless of which comes first, he will go bankrupt before recovering a single shilling of his investment.”
As Steadman laid out his plan, his voice rose, and his eyes lit with fire. Yes—this was no ordinary administration of justice. He was too invested in Lord Atwood’s demise. His plan, though, left Morgan with deep misgivings.
“What about the farmers to whom we spoke?” She failed to hide her growing umbrage. “What about their children? Their farmhands? What becomes of them as the wheat rots in storage?”
He frowned. “These people are strong. They will survive. True justice sometimes requires great sacrifice.”
The callousness of his words stunned Morgan. They seemed so unlikely from the man she had come to know. She opened a gap between them, driven away by his blunt dismissal of those he had long served. Her anger flared as she repeated in her mind what he’d said. She glared at him until he blinked.
“Why are you so bent on vengeance against a man that you would allow children to go hungry? This does not sound like the Beau Monde Highwayman of legend and the Steadman I have come to know.”
For an instant, shame rippled across his features and his cheeks flushed. Then, before her very eyes, he replaced uncertainty with steel and lifted a finger at her. “You fail to understand. Lord Atwood must pay for what he did.” He expelled the words around the ragged edges of his voice. “Must, I tell you.”
“Why? Why must he pay so terribly? How could he have done what you claim?”
“He did do what I claim.” His voice rose in pitch as floodwaters reached the lip of the dam.
“How do you know?” She matched his stridence note for note. “How do you know he did what you claim?”
Steadman clenched his teeth before the dam broke. “Because Lord Atwood is my father, for God’s sake! I should very well know what he did!”
She withered in the blistering silence that followed his outburst. His father? Lord Atwood? “I thought you were associated with Lord Radnor? And Longford Castle.”
Steadman’s nostrils flared as he appeared to gather his runaway outrage. “They are my cousins on my mother’s side. I spent my summers there as a youth, happy to be away from home. And fromhim. My meeting with Lord Radnor was necessary to secure a place to store the grain.” He peered intently at Morgan, perhaps willing her to understand. “Baron Atwood is my father. I am his heir. And he is a monster who must suffer for what he did. I have waited fifteen years to see justice done, and I will not waiver now.”
Morgan lapsed into stunned silence. Steadman was truly a nobleman after all. The heir to a barony. And he was clearly consumed with destroying not only his father, but the rest of his family with him. Her chin fell as they walked. She wondered ifshe really knew him at all, and if all he had told her was, in some form, a lie.
***
Steadman immediately regretted divulging so much of the truth to Morgan. Her face was the very picture of bewildered disappointment as she walked along the road in ruined silence. He couldn’t help telling her, though, unmoored as he was. When he had kissed her the night before, the unyielding mettle within him had moved, rocked by a gale of new awareness. He had kissed many women in his life. Until that moment in the chapel, though, he had never plumbed the depths of what a kiss could mean. He had always known the blending of lips, the feel of body to body. Until Morgan, though, he had never experienced the blending of souls, the touch of presence to presence. His confession was one of aspiration—the hope that she would understand his desire for justice and the need for retribution by his hand.
As the silence between them stretched, he chastised himself for breaking his most sacred rule of never allowing his yearning for a woman to divert him from his mission. But now, he had broken that rule by letting Morgan slip through his fortress walls and then falling in love with her.
He blinked at the thought. Had he truly fallen in love with her?
Yes. Soundly and simply.
But what did that mean? Was he doomed? Her ongoing hurt provided ample evidence of how his fatal mistake would wound them both. Just when he began believing she might never speak to him again, she stopped in the road. When he engaged her eyes, he found confusion and disappointment, but also something more proactive. Indignation.
“Do you mean to tell me…” she said, “That you are so intent on making your father suffer that you are perfectly willing to pass that suffering on to your mother? Your sister?”
He looked away, unable to endure the fiery furnace of her eyes. “As I said before. True justice sometimes requires great sacrifice.”
