Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress

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‘I—ouch!’ Meg dropped the needle and sucked her thumb. ‘Yes. But I will not arrive on the vicarage doorstep, begging to be taken back.’ Her voice held a hard edge he had never heard before, not even when she had been angry with him. But when Ross looked closely at her face all he could see was concentration as she whipped a section of torn hem into place.

‘Why not hire a reliable man, a Bow Street Runner, perhaps, to go and make enquiries?’ Ross asked. ‘That will put your mind at rest without you having to undertake the journey.’

She folded the shirt and added it to the pile, shaking her head. ‘No. I want to go myself, at once.’

‘But your in-laws, surely they will help you?’ Ross found he was becoming positively outraged over the fact that Meg was on her own. Which was ridiculous. She was an independent adult woman and what she did was no affair of his.

‘I had eloped,’ she said simply, although her eyes were dark with emotions that seemed to go far beyond her words. ‘And they blamed me for leading James astray.’ Ross felt a stirring of puzzlement. It was a long time since he had been in England, but surely the fact that she had married would have squashed the little scandal of a vicar’s daughter eloping.

‘They made their position very clear when I wrote to tell them what had happened,’ she continued with a shrug. ‘I couldn’t even bring them a grandchild. Now, of course, I am quite beyond the pale with everyone, although I am not sure whether it was sharing a tent with Dr Ferguson or soiling my hands by tending the wounded that most scandalised the ladies of the regiment. No, I must make myself a new life.’

The day passed slowly. It was hard to accept inactivity, to have the comparative silence of the ship after the bustle of camp and, perhaps most of all, the absence of duties to keep him focused on the here and now, to give some purpose to life. And without something to keep him occupied all he had to think about was the alien English world and its inescapable responsibilities and memories that waited for him.

Meg seemed to find plenty to keep herself busy, although he suspected their meagre combined wardrobes would not hold enough mending to occupy her for another day. She came and went, leaving him tactfully alone for half an hour at a time. He must get up tomorrow, whatever she said, and give her privacy. It must be hard, managing modestly behind that scrap of curtain. But she never once complained—not at the confined space, the gloom of the cabin, the insidious smell of the bilges. Or his dark mood.

Meg returned in the late afternoon to report heavier seas—which he could feel in the roll of the ship and the creaking that seemed to come from every part of it. ‘But the sun is shining and apparently we are making good time,’ she added as she worked on the last of his deplorable shirts. ‘There.’ She shook it out, looked at it critically, then folded it up. ‘You now have five shirts that are halfway decent. I’ll just put them back and then I will see what I can do with your uniform now it is dry.’

Ross found himself staring at the undeniably attractive sight of her rounded backside as she bent over the open trunk and shifted his gaze to the deck over his head. The lust he had felt when he had woken that morning to find her in his arms had not lessened and he was not going to add fuel to its flames by ogling Meg’s figure. It had been hard enough getting to sleep last night, with her warm in the bed next to him: tonight would be worse, now he knew how good she felt against him.

‘Oh! You have books!’ She was on her knees, staring into the bottom of the trunk. ‘Lots of them.’

‘Take one if you want to read.’ Someone might as well enjoy them.

‘May I?’ She was lifting them out before he could reply. ‘Gulliver’s Travels—I have always wanted to read that. Would you like one?’

‘No.’ Reading military tactics would be rubbing salt in the wound, the thought of classical texts made his head ache and poetry and fiction held not the slightest charm. He had carted those books with care the length and breadth of the Iberian Peninsula, had read them with passion whenever he could, and now he found he had not the slightest desire to see them ever again. The urge to discover all the literature he had spurned as a youth had suddenly left him. ‘Thank you,’ he added, aware that he was probably sounding like a lout and not really caring much about that either.

‘I’ll read to you.’ Meg opened the book carefully on her knees.

‘I want to sleep.’

‘You cannot possibly be tired and if you sleep now you will not rest well tonight.’ She sounded remarkably like his old nanny when he was five. Ross rolled his eyes and settled back, resigned to his fate.

‘Travels into several remote nations of the world in four parts by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships. Part the first, a voyage to Lilliput,’ Meg read. ‘My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons…’ Her tone deepened as she realised she was reading a first-person account by a man, and Ross closed his eyes, caught immediately by the fluency of her clear voice. Perhaps, after all, he would not sleep.

‘…and lie at my full length in the temple.’ Meg closed the book and sighed, revelling in the luxury of a book and the time to read it in. ‘Oh! Have I put you to sleep after all?’

‘No.’ Ross opened his eyes. ‘No, I was quite lost in the story you were recounting—you have the knack of reading aloud very vividly.’

‘Thank you.’ He almost smiled. Meg closed the book and set it aside, careful not to stare at Ross directly, as though the fleeting look of pleasure on his face was a wild animal she might scare away by confronting it. ‘I am agog to know what happens next, but that is the end of the chapter and time, I think, for dinner. I’ll send Johnny down with yours.’

It was more difficult to move about now the ship was well out into the bay and receiving the full strength of the swell. Meg found herself putting out both hands to fend off from each side of the passageway in turn and smiled to find herself staggering about like a drunk.

When she reached the stairs—companionway, she remembered to call it—she took a firm grip of the rail and then slipped as her foot skidded on the worn wood. Immediately a hand cupped her elbow and steadied her.

‘Ma’am. Have a care.’ There were two gentlemen standing behind her; one had reached to steady her.

‘Thank you, sir. I have not yet got my sea legs, I fear.’ He kept hold of her arm as they climbed and Meg glanced up at him, recognising his face. He and his companion were merchants, she had decided when she had seen them at breakfast. They certainly did not appear to have wives or families with them. Both men were well dressed, in their thirties, perhaps.

‘Thank you,’ she repeated when they reached the next deck where the food was being served, but it took a pointed glance at his hand before he released her.

‘Gerald Whittier, ma’am. And this is Henry Bates.’

‘Mrs Brandon.’ Meg began to feel uncomfortable at the way they stood so very close. She scanned the long tables between the hanging lanterns for Signora Rivera or some other lady. ‘If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I must organise dinner for my husband.’

‘Oh, yes, he is a cripple, is he not?’ Whittier observed. ‘We saw him being carried on board. Difficult for you, ma’am, being all alone with him in that state. Perhaps you would care to join us for dinner?’ His smile made her uneasily aware of the warmth in his eyes. ‘We would be delighted to entertain you.’

I am sure you would. ‘My husband, Major Brandon,’ Meg said with all the frost she could inject into her voice, ‘is not crippled, but wounded.’ She glanced up and down their immaculate civilian clothing. ‘My husband is an officer and a hero.’ Whittier flushed at the scorn in her voice, but stepped back as she swept past him.

There, the colonel’s lady could not have been so haughty. She found a seat between a clerk who had a book propped up on the table before him and a fat woman and her husband whose occupation she was quite unable to guess.

As she ate she kept a wary eye out for the two men, but, when they made no move to join her and took a table on the far side, she gradually recovered her equilibrium. Perhaps she had been over-sensitive and had read more than a somewhat unconventional invitation into Mr Whittier’s words. But she was still angry at the way he had described Ross.

‘Anyfink wot you want, mum?’ It was Johnny, standing at her elbow.

‘Yes, you may carry some food down to the major, if you will. I am not very steady on my feet in this sea.’

‘Wot would the major like, mum?’

‘Everything, and lots of it, he has a good appetite,’ she said, smiling at the boy. ‘And ale.’

‘He’s a big ’un, he is,’ Johnny said. ‘My ma would say she’d rather feed him for a day than a sen’night.’ He scurried off in the direction of the serving table.

Meg was so amused by that she decided to save it up to tell Ross. Perhaps she might tempt that elusive half-smile out again.

She lingered a little, then went up and out on to the deck to give Ross some more time alone. He was probably thoroughly tired of her company, although if he was up and about tomorrow he would probably find some congenial male passengers and would not need her efforts to entertain him. If he did, then perhaps it would prove her wrong about his dark, fatalistic mood. Perhaps, after all, he had merely been exhausted, in pain and bored.

She wandered up towards the bows and leaned her elbows on the rail. It was quiet on deck, most of the passengers apparently preferring the stuffy, poorly lit communal stateroom to the stiff breeze and salty air. The sea was liberating after years of heat and dust and danger. Somewhere out there beyond the darkening sea, where the vanished sun still made a glow on the horizon, were Bella and Lina. Would they be happy and well? Would they have found—?

‘Still alone, ma’am?’ It was Whittier, his friend Bates smirking behind him. ‘That won’t do, a young lady like yourself. You need some lively company; no wonder you don’t want to go back below to your wounded hero.’

‘I am alone, Mr Whittier, because I choose to be. Thank you, but I do not wish for company.’

‘Come now, there’s no need to be standoffish.’ They moved in close, far too close for comfort. The rail pressed into her back, no escape that way. Panic began to catch at her breath as she glanced around the deserted deck. Not even a deckhand was in sight. ‘We are much more fun for a lady like you than that cripple of yours below decks.’ Bates put his hand on her arm, his fingers hot through the cotton of the sleeve.

Where was their cabin? Could they bundle her down there without anyone realising? She looked around for a weapon and saw none. It was up to her; no one was going to save her this time.

‘Mr Bates, if you do not remove your arm, I am going to scream—very loudly.’ Someone, surely, would hear? The threat did not appear to alarm them. Still, she must try. Meg dragged down a deep breath, opened her mouth and—

‘But not as loudly as you will scream, Mr Bates, when I rip your testicles off and throw them to the sharks,’ said a cold voice from the shadows of the rigging. Ross. And sounding like Death. An hysterical giggle rose in her throat at the sight of the men’s faces as they swung round to confront the threat in the shadows.

Ross was wearing his stained, filthy uniform, his sword at his side and a pistol pushed into the sash. He looked as if he had just walked out of the swirling smoke and bloody carnage of the battlefield—or straight from hell. He looked, Meg thought, as she sagged back against the rail, big, dangerous and utterly wonderful—provided he was on your side.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Whittier demanded. ‘This woman is with us.’

‘This lady is my wife.’ For the first time, Meg saw Ross smile. And then wished she hadn’t. ‘I believe she expressed the desire to be left alone. Are you hard of hearing, perhaps?’ His sword ripped out of its scabbard as the men backed away. ‘Are you as attached to your ears as your friend is to his balls?’ He had them trapped now, pressed back against the rail with nowhere to go. It was time to intervene.

‘Major Brandon.’

‘My dear?’ It was hard not to be distracted by the warmth in those two drawled words.

‘The captain would dislike blood on his deck.’

‘So he would.’ There was a thoughtful silence while the sword point remained unwavering. ‘And the men work so hard holystoning it. Did these scum touch you?’

She knew what he meant and shook her head. ‘No, they were merely offensive.’

Ross kept the sword up while Meg and the two men eyed it like rabbits in front of a stoat. ‘Very well. You two—undress.’

‘What?’ Bates’s voice wavered between fear and incredulity.

‘You heard me. Every stitch. Avert your eyes, my dear. This will not be a pretty sight.’

Meg hastily turned her back. Amid sounds of spluttering indignation it was apparent that Bates and Whittier were obeying Ross. She could hardly blame them for giving in, not once they had seen his smile and looked into his eyes.

‘Now throw it all over the side. Good. And now, walk back to the companionway and down the stairs.’

‘But that’s the public saloon! And we’re stark naked!’

‘Yes, indeed. And hardly a vision to inspire an artist, I fear. Off you go. I’ll be right behind you.’

As he passed her, Ross murmured, ‘I thought I told you to avert your eyes, wife.’

Meg dragged her gaze from two pairs of pale, goose-pimpled buttocks retreating towards the companionway and laughed. ‘And, as always, husband, your judgement is entirely correct. I have never seen a more revolting sight.’

Chapter Five

Meg stayed where she was, listening as the outraged shrieks from below died down. Her knees felt wobbly now as her amusement ebbed away. That had been a nasty little incident and it had left her more shaken than she expected. Uneven, limping footsteps on the deck made her look up. ‘What happened?’

‘They snatched up platters from the serving table to cover their modesty so most people were spared the worst of it. But they won’t dare show their faces for the rest of the voyage.’ Ross stood close, looking down at her. ‘Johnny saw them follow you and came to me. Are you all right, Meg?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Meg began, then found her voice cracking. ‘No…not really. It is very foolish, I just feel rather…’

And then he stepped forwards, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. It was rather like being hugged by the bear she had compared him to, one smelling of river-soaked, badly dried cloth with a lingering whiff of gunpowder and smoke, but it was marvellously comforting. And utterly improper. Meg wrapped her arms around Ross’s waist and clung, her cheek pressed against the dark green broadcloth of his jacket, her toes bumping his boots. How long had it been since she had been hugged?