Burning Up

the shop.
    Sloat’s voice.
    Jack’s head shot around. Through the dirty windows, he could see his estate steward’s broad, round-shouldered back nearly blocking the view of the street. And beyond Sloat, at the center of a tightening knot of villagers, was a woman in a sky blue dress with a cloud of hair pale as moonlight and floating like thistledown.
    The fire in Jack’s gut shot to his chest. Morwenna.
    Dropping the money on the counter, he strode to the door.
    “I am not a thief.” Her voice rose above the crowd, clear and cool and edged with irritation like ice. “I offered to pay.”
    “With stolen coin,” Sloat blustered.
    “With gold, yes.” She drew her shawl more tightly over her elbows. “I thought he would prefer it to jewels. The other man said—”
    “And where does the likes of you get gold or jewels?”
    “Enough,” Jack ordered.
    The word dropped into the crowd like a stone, sending ripples through the square. The villagers eddied and ebbed away, leaving him a clear path and a clear view of Morwenna. She stood in the street, straight as a Viking maiden at the prow of her ship, her loose hair tousled by the wind.
    His heart slammed into his ribs. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered.
    A face like an angel , the baker had said. Yes. But the cool perfection of her features only offset the wicked awareness of those eyes. She saw him and a slight, very slight smile lifted one corner of her mouth.
    His breath stopped.
    Sloat, the great, fat idiot, was too intent on his target to understand he had lost command of the situation. “Answer me, girl. Where would you get gold?”
    She turned those wide, bright eyes on him. “I found it.”
    He sneered. “Stole it, you mean.”
    “Mr. Sloat.” Jack did not raise his voice, but any man in his battalion would have recognized and responded instantly to his tone. “You have no evidence of a crime, only of an offer to pay. Which I understand is more than you have managed these last six months.”
    His estate manager flushed. But he did not back down. “No honest woman would have such a coin in her possession.” He scanned the circle of witnesses before beckoning forward a dark, thin man in a shabby brown coat.
    Jack recognized the shopkeeper. Hodges? Hobson, that was his name.
    “Tell him,” Sloat said.
    The thin man fidgeted. “Well, she came in wanting some shoes, you see. I had some half boots ready-made. Not fine, but serviceable for a lady, and—”
    “The coin,” Sloat snapped.
    “Right.” Hobson looked once, apologetically, at Morwenna, before addressing Jack. “It was gold. And, er, old.”
    Jack held out his hand. “Show me.”
    “Er . . .”
    Morwenna thrust her chin at Sloat. “ He took it.”
    “For safekeeping,” Sloat insisted. “The coin is evidence. It must be preserved until this woman can be brought before a magistrate.”
    “Let me see,” Jack said.
    Sloat dug in his waistcoat pocket and abstracted his prize.
    Jack turned it over in his palm. Rather than the guinea he expected, the coin was roughly stamped on one side with a cross and on the other with two pillars. A Spanish doubloon, like the pirate treasure he used to dream of when he was a boy. He looked at Morwenna. “This is yours?”
    She shrugged. “As much as anyone’s.”
    Jack had a sudden vision of her confronting him in her cottage, the outlines of her body revealed through her loose white dress. I do not want your money, she had said. I laid with you for my pleasure.
    “She’s a liar as well as a thief,” Sloat said.
    Jack kept his hand from fisting on the coin. “I would not throw around public accusations of thievery if I were you. Go back to the hall. I want the household accounts for the past six months on my desk when I return.”
    Sloat wet his lips. “I only want to see justice done.”
    “So do I,” Jack said grimly. “The accounts, Mr. Sloat.”
    Sloat’s gaze darted around the circle of interested and unsympathetic faces. A soft catcall carried through the ranks of the villagers. A snigger. A hush. For months the steward had been the power here; it would take time to establish Jack as master of Arden Hall.
    Sloat delivered a jerky bow and stalked toward their tethered horses.
    The tension loosened in Jack’s shoulders. He held out the gold piece to Morwenna. “I believe this is yours.”
    “His now,” she said, with a nod toward Hobson. “He gave me shoes.”
    Jack glanced from her new boots to Hobson’s