It was a remarkably pleasant, and novel, sensation, if he ignored the ache in his groin. His life had never been lacking in women to satisfy his needs, but he was not in the habit of spending the night with them. That was a reliable method of waking up to find the woman gone and with her, his money.
This woman, his temporary wife, was not after his money. She was a strange creature, expecting conversation and confidences as though their chance alliance was actually a real relationship, and yet not asking anything in return for saving his life and tending to him beyond her passage back to England.
Had he thanked her properly? He rather doubted it. Yesterday he had been feeling like the devil when he had arrived at the docks and had been in no mood afterwards to analyse whether he was actually grateful for having been fished out of the river at all.
Today…Today was time to get a grip on himself and stop kicking against fate. He was wounded, he was never going back to the Rifles, he would probably limp for the rest of his life and that life was going to be something utterly alien. He had run away from it when he was seventeen, but it was catching up with him fast now.
There was a tap on the door and he reached out, careful not to wake Meg, and unjammed the wedge from the latch. The door opened a foot and Johnny’s tousled head appeared. ‘Hot water, Major?’
‘Yes. Bring coffee and take awa
y the slops. Quietly, now.’ But Meg was awake. With a gasp she recoiled from him until she was tight up against the wall.
‘Wha—?’ Her eyes were wide, fixed on him with a mixture of shock and fear that was like a kick in the guts. Her lack of fear last night had obviously been an act; now, shocked awake, she was showing what she really thought of him. She looked terrified and she was drawing breath to scream.
‘The boy is here, my dear,’ Ross said, putting one large hand hard over her mouth, his body shielding her from Johnny. ‘I’ve asked him for hot water and coffee.’ She struggled against him and he tipped his head towards the door. ‘That’s all, boy, nothing else at the moment.’
He managed to hold her, one handed, until the latch clicked home, then she wrenched her head away and came at him with fists and nails. ‘You brute! You lying, lecherous—’
‘Hey!’ Ross swivelled round, ignoring the pain in his leg, and pinned her to the pillow with both hands. ‘Don’t you dare scream,’ he threatened. ‘What the devil’s the matter with you? I told you, I don’t force women.’
‘You said I would be safe,’ she panted. ‘You gave me your word and I wake to find you groping me, you—’
Ross slapped his hand over her mouth again, coming down on to his elbows over her as he did so. His leg hurt, he wanted his coffee and the blasted woman had called him a liar. Under him her body felt slight, soft, feminine, yet she was tensed to fight him even though he was crushing her.
‘Listen to me,’ he said between gritted teeth, his face so close to hers that he could have counted the lashes that fringed her wide, defiant eyes. Under his hand she was trying to find the purchase to bite his palm. ‘I do not lie. I do not break my word. I woke up and you were cuddled up to me, your arm was over my chest and I had one of mine around you.’ She stopped trying to bite. ‘And that is all. We had passed an uneventful night and if you take a moment to think you will find I managed to not ravish you.’
He had not thought it possible for her eyes to open wider, but they did, with such a look in them that he felt as though he had hit her. ‘Has someone…did someone hurt you?’ He took his hand away.
‘They tried.’ Her lids closed to cut off his scrutiny. ‘Three of them. I was trapped. I knew what they wanted, what they were going to do. James had only been dead two weeks.’
‘They tried,’ he repeated. ‘What happened?’
‘Peter—Dr Ferguson heard me scream. He took me back to his tent. The next day the news came that his lover had died. He was heartbroken. Beside himself. So I stayed.’
‘Just two weeks after your husband was killed?’ He did not make a very good job of keeping the judgemental tone out of his voice.
‘Peter’s lover was a man,’ Meg said, staring him out defiantly. ‘A young lieutenant.’
‘But that’s—’
‘A hanging matter at worst, a dishonourable discharge at best,’ she finished for him. ‘Peter was in too bad a state to be discreet. By staying with him I could cover things up—I told everyone he had a contagious fever. In a few days he could function again and his pallor and depression were put down to the illness.’
‘So you were never his mistress?’
‘No. But I was safe and so was he. We were protection for each other. Major Brandon, do you think you could get off me now?’
His legs bracketed hers, his groin and what he could feel was a fairly impressive erection was grinding into her in all the right…in the worst possible place and her breasts were flattened under his weight.
‘Hell!’ He rolled off to his side of the bed and sat up. For a few moments it had seemed so good to be that close to her. Beside him Meg sat up too, the sheet rumpling around her. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to stop you screaming.’
Meg put up both hands and pushed the loose strands that had escaped from her plait back from her flushed face. ‘I woke and didn’t know where I was. I didn’t recognise you at first.’
At least he was under no illusion what she thought of him as a man. Ross turned a shoulder to give her a little privacy as she slid from the bed. The rejection and fear on her face as she had stared at him told him all he needed to know about that.
‘You can credit me with controlling my wild animal passions, then.’ Easier to make a bitter joke of it.
Meg gave a little gasp, but when he looked at her she smiled and came back at him with the tart retort he was coming to expect from her. ‘If you can sustain wild animal passions after exhausting yourself saving that child, being half-drowned and having your wound probed and redressed, then I am full of admiration for your stamina, Major Brandon. I should have realised you were in no fit state to be any kind of threat to me, without needing your word.’