Читать книгу Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress - Louise Allen - Страница 13

Meg was staring at him as though he had said something strange. ‘Thirteen years,’ she repeated eventually. ‘But how long by road?’

Ross shrugged. He was not going to explain his choice of words. Until they had left his lips he had not realised what he was going to say. ‘Not far, although the roads are narrow.’ It was not miles that separated him from the place where he had been born, it was guilt and loss and the man he had become because of that.

‘And where is your home?’ Meg persisted. She was packing away her bag again, apparently engrossed in the task. But the question had not been casual.

‘I am going to a village some distance outside Falmouth, on the Roseland Peninsula.’ It was easier to answer her than to evade her questions. Social conversation seemed difficult, as though he were speaking in a foreign language that he had not quite mastered the grammar for. And yet he had never been an unsocial man, not until the last few months when the reality of his future had begun to close in around him as a duty as heavy as chains. A bullet in the leg had removed any last lingering illusion of choice that he could stay with his beloved Rifles. His fate was plain: go back to where he had been bitterly unhappy and take over the reins from a father he disliked while surrounded by the ghosts that would never leave him.

‘How lovely that sounds.’ Meg straightened up and scanned the cabin, apparently looking for trifling signs of disorder as she folded his new trousers, put away the towel and twitched the corner curtain into place. ‘I am looking forward to arriving in Falmouth. I have always wanted to see the West Country and the coast, ever since I found a ridiculous novel about pirates and smugglers in the charity box.’ She smiled, apparently amused at the memory of her youthful self. ‘I read it secretly at night, straining my eyes and filling my head with tales of adventure and secret coves.’

‘I was seventeen when I left,’ Ross said. ‘Hardly an age when the beauties of the countryside are of much interest. But I did explore caves and climb cliffs and learn to swim in the sea.

‘But escape and the army were all that had truly interested me then. I knew I could shoot better than anyone for miles around despite my age. I’d haunted the footsteps of my father’s head keeper Tregarne by day, and I sneaked out to spend nights with Billy Gillan, a poacher.’ He closed his eyes, recalling the thrill; it had not all been unhappiness. ‘I could bring down a pheasant or a pigeon and I could stalk game unseen and evade Tregarne’s men as easily as the crafty old rogue who taught me.’

‘It will be good to return to the peace of the countryside, then, to be away from war and noise and killing.’

‘No.’ The thought of the quiet, the lack of the purpose he understood, appalled him. ‘The Rifle Brigade was what I dreamed of, a chance to use and hone my skill. The countryside taught me, that is all.’ The thought of the silence and the memories made him shudder. Strange that he had never anticipated that, far from becoming hardened to death as he had expected, it would come to haunt him. Other young men started out shaken by their first experience of battle or of killing the enemy by sniping from cover. Gradually they became used to it, indifferent. But for him it seemed as though it was the other way around and the horror had grown, slowly, insidiously until he felt as though Death himself walked constantly at his shoulder and sighted along the barrel of his rifle whenever he took aim. But then he had left a legacy of death behind him in England.

‘I suppose young men are interested in other things,’ Meg agreed. ‘Do you have a large family waiting for you?’

‘No one.’ He said it matter of factly and was unprepared for the sadness that transformed Meg’s face.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘There is no need for you to be. My mother died eighteen months after I joined the army. My younger brother six years later. My father four months ago.’ Said flatly like that it betrayed no embarrassing emotion at all.

‘I have two sisters.’ Meg sat down and began to shake out his shirts, checking each for tears or loose buttons. Ross contemplated telling her that she should not be valeting him, but if she was busy it kept that clear gaze off his face and he could watch her, which was curiously soothing. ‘I am the middle one. Celina, the younger, is sweet and biddable and very good. Arabella, the elder, is practical and kind and sensible.’

‘Like you.’ It was a surprise to see her blush.

‘I had to learn to be practical.’ Meg tugged at a button and then apparently decided it was secure. ‘I used to be the dreamer, the romantic one. I was always in scrapes, always in trouble with Papa.’As he watched she put down the shirt for a moment and spread her right hand, palm up, looking at it as if seeing something that was no longer there. She shivered and picked up the sewing again.

‘But you married your true love in the end? Your childhood sweetheart, no doubt.’ How charming. How very romantic.

‘Yes.’ Meg nodded, her head bent over her sewing roll, apparently not noticing the sneer in his voice. ‘I eloped. Bella helped me, which was brave of her.’ She apparently found the cotton she was seeking and began to thread a needle, squinting at the eye in concentration. ‘But I am sure Papa would never guess she would do anything so dreadful, so I do not think she would have suffered for it. I do hope not.’

‘Suffered for it? Your father was very severe?’

‘Oh, yes, although it was usually me who got the whippings. Bella was too sensible to annoy him and Lina too timid. One thing that convinced me to go was that I was sure life would be much saf…quieter for my sisters with me not there to infuriate Papa.’

Safer, was what she almost said. And the tyrant whipped her? A young girl? It was his right, of course, in law. A father was lord of his household. He could still recall the bite of the switch on the numerous occasions when his own transgressions had been found out. Boys were always being chastised and he bore his father no ill will for that. But the thought of someone taking a switch to that slim frame, that tender skin, sickened him. What sort of man beat a woman? A girl?

‘And they are all right now? They have married, left home?’

‘I do not know. I wrote, often, but I never heard from either of them. I expect Papa stopped the letters.’

‘But that is where you will go as soon as we land?’

‘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.’