Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 1)

‘Animal passions,’ he repeated, looking even more saturnine than before. ‘Will-power. Right. You undress behind that curtain and I will get into bed. If you extinguish the lantern before you emerge you may pretend I am that large dame we have just met and I will pretend that you are.’

‘That might work,’ Meg conceded. She retreated to wrestle with hooks and eyes behind the screen. She could not decide whether Ross had a sense of humour or was being deadly serious. She pulled the gown over her head. ‘This is a momentary awkwardness, after all,’ she observed to the unresponsive silence in the cabin. ‘In the morning, after a good night’s sleep, we will hardly regard it.’

Ross lay in the gloom deliberately flexing his thigh muscles so the pain would provide a distraction from the ache in his groin. He shifted on to his side to ensure the evidence of the effect of that kiss was not visible through the thin sheet. What was the matter with him? He’d kissed the woman when she needed comfort and she had responded, that was all. He had not thought for a moment of it leading anywhere and he was certain Meg had not.

But it was easier to tell his mind that than it was for his body to understand. He was not an undisciplined adolescent, according to Meg. It was a good thing she could not see the proof that he was responding to her like a randy seventeen year old. He did not even have the excuse of a long period of abstinence; up to the eve of the battle he had kept any frustration at bay with the willing camp followers who were the army’s constant companions and sources of comfort. It occurred to him that he had been aroused by her since he met her.

The curtain flapped and the light went out. Even Meg’s soft huff of breath as she breathed on the wick was provocative. Her lips, soft and pink, would have formed a circle as she blew, pouting…

Stop it. Ross conjured up the fat woman’s round, rather foolish, features, her thin lips and her nondescript brown eyes, her inconsequential chatter. That was better. The sheet was tugged as Meg wriggled up from the bottom of the bunk into the space between his back and the wall. The narrow space. Wriggling. The image of the other woman vanished as the scent of warm female and plain soap reached him.

Ross controlled his breathing and resigned himself to a long night. He had lain still and endured silently when the surgeon dug the bullet out of his leg—once the shouting match over the man’s intention to cut the limb off had been won—he could endure this torture now.

But this was a stimulating kind of agony, he had to admit that, he thought as he resisted the urge to get out of bed and pace about on the deck. Meg Halgate was a frustrating, opinionated, infuriatingly commonsensical thorn in his side, but she was giving him something to think about besides his own woes. Eyes open in the darkness, Ross admitted that he had thought about little other than himself from the moment he had been carried off the field and into the surgeon’s tent, with the battle and his men entirely out of his hands and the future he had been trying to ignore inescapable in front of him.

He woke in the morning in exactly the same position as he had fallen asleep, which was a miracle. He had slept, he had managed to stay still and Meg had not unwittingly wrapped herself around his suffering body in the night. He felt, in fact, quite calm and in control of himself.

Ross turned over and found himself nose to nose with her. Her eyes were open, the dark pupils dilated. She looked nervous. His own reflection stared back at him. She had every reason to be uneasy. His feeling of calm control vanished, leaving him wanting nothing more than to reach out for her, take her, lose himself and the darkness in her softness and light. Bury himself in her, make her scream with needing him…

‘Good morning,’ she remarked with caution. ‘You slept well?’

‘I slept.’ He felt like a randy bear with a sore head. ‘I am getting up today.’ Let her protest, then they could argue to clear the air.

‘Of course.’ Meg slid down to the end of the bed and disappeared behind her curtain. ‘A little light exercise will help your leg now.’

‘Aren’t you going to wait for the hot water?’ Ross thought about his preferred form of exercise, then caught a glimpse of himself in the scrap of mirror she had propped up on the trunk to help her plait her hair. Now there was an effective antidote to lust. No wonder she was wary of him—Beauty and the Beast just about summed it up. Last night she had been frightened and needed some affection—that was all. The last thing a woman like her wanted was a maimed, ugly killer like him.

‘No. This is fine.’ There were sounds of splashing and the curtain billowed. Ross closed his eyes and endured. For some reason his body would not give up as easily as his mind. ‘I’ll get dressed and go up on deck until you are ready—if you come and find me we can take breakfast together.’

‘You do not want to check my bandages?’

‘Not unless the discomfort has become worse. But I can if you like.’

‘No.’ He had only asked so he had fair warning to get his unruly body under some sort of control before she laid hands on his bare flesh again. ‘No, thank you.’

They were both speaking as though that kiss had not happened. Perhaps that was for the best. He was not used to living with a woman, and he did not understand this one’s moods and the way she dealt with awkward situations. But Meg was used to living with men—two, at least. She had been a wife and a close companion, so perhaps she understood him a lot better than he understood her. Or thought she did. If Meg could see inside his head, she would take her bag and go and sleep on the upper deck for the rest of the voyage, he was quite certain.

Is he feeling any better or is he just learning to hide from me? Meg walked up and down the deck, pretending a lively interest in Signora Rivera’s children and their characters, fads and charms. José, who was being made to suffer for his accident, was held firmly by the hand and his constant whining had given Meg a headache half an hour since.

Ross, seated on a hatch cover, continued the systematic assault he had begun that morning on the pocket books of any of the male passengers who would play piquet with him. Fortunately he set low stakes—chicken stakes, one man had grumbled before proceeding to lose hand after hand. He had stopped complaining about the stakes after the second hand.

Winning did not, however, seem to please Ross any more than the sunshine on the waves, the occasional school of dolphins playing in the bow wave or the blue sky. His play was ruthless, efficient and merciless. Meg began to wonder if he insisted on the low stakes because he expected to be accused of cheating if he played for anything higher.

James had tried to teach her the game, but her incomprehension of the complex strategy involved would always drive him to frustrated irritation with his inability to drum even the essentials of discards into her head.

‘Repique,’ Ross called as the ladies’ strolling walk brought them past once again.

‘Your husband is an excellent player,’ the Spanish woman observed.

‘Indeed. I think piquet appeals to him because it is so strategic.’ Meg watched Ross’s narrow-eyed concentration. The good players in the regiment had been the strategists, she recalled, and the major was fighting each game as though he were commanding troops in battle.

Playing cards was never going to be a substitute for the army life he had lost. She only hoped that whatever challenges the home he seemed so reluctant to reach held for him, they would satisfy him. Somehow she was coming to doubt it.

Ross put down another winning hand and money passed between the two men before the merchant he had just trounced got up and walked off, trying to put a gracious face on his losses.

‘Excuse me.’ Meg recalled an excuse to remove herself from Signora Rivera and her grizzling son. ‘I must ensure the major takes his exercise.’

Ross looked up as she approached him and raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, my dear?’