‘Time for your walk,’ Meg said with wifely sweetness for the benefit of the nearby passengers. ‘Dear.’
‘I am not a lap dog requiring a stroll around the deck,’ he retorted, low voiced, as he gathered up the cards and his winnings.
‘More like a mastiff needing a run in the park or looking for a bull to savage.’ Meg maintained her smile. ‘Frequent gentle exercise is what that leg needs now; besides, if I leave you to clean out every mark on this ship we will find ourselves dropped overboard before we sight land again.’
‘You think I am prigging the cards, do you?’ Ross asked. But he put the pack in his pocket and got to his feet.
‘I am sure it is all your skill and there is no sleight of hand involved,’ Meg assured him, falling into step beside him and deliberately dawdling to restrict his limping stride. He needed to slow
down, control his impatience as he had controlled the need to take her last night. He had been aroused, however well he thought he could hide it. And that in itself was arousing her, an effect that unfortunately did not seem to be wearing off.
Meg reminded herself, yet again, that she could not afford an entanglement with a man she would never see again once they landed. For him it would be a matter of satisfying a physical urge. For herself, she did not think she could deal with it quite so simply. Perhaps it was her old, foolish romantic spirit again, but the thought of that intimacy without a mutual affection, without emotion, frightened her.
They got to the bows and were halfway back on the circuit that she had decreed was a suitable distance before she ventured another remark. Ross, she was certain, would maintain a stony silence for the rest of the voyage if she allowed him to.
‘What will you do when you return home?’
For a moment she thought he was not going to answer her. Then, two steps later, he said, ‘Learn to be a country landowner.’ He sounded less than enthusiastic, although the note of utter indifference to his own fate that had so worried her before was missing. It had been replaced with distaste, which she had to suppose was better.
‘Is it a big estate?’ It could be nothing very impressive, not if he had come into his inheritance four months ago and had not bought so much as a new shirt.
Ross shrugged. ‘Big enough for someone who doesn’t know the front end of a pig from a stook of corn.’
Pigs and corn sounded considerably less intimidating than town life and society, but then she had been brought up in the country. No doubt for a soldier it must seem both dull and difficult. Oh well, a small estate would give him plenty of leisure for recreation. He would hunt and fish, like all country gentlemen, find himself a wife—one who could manage without smiles or affection—and father a brood of dark, scowling children.
‘What?’ Ross enquired, catching sight of the amused twist of her lips. ‘You know the difference, do you?’
‘Certainly I do.’ Meg made for the hatch cover again, their walk at an end. ‘The stook of corn has more ears than the pig.’
She was brought up short by a crack of laughter. ‘Now what is it?’ Ross enquired as she turned, hardly able to believe her ears.
‘You laughed.’
‘You made a joke,’ he countered, once more poker-faced.
Perhaps, if he could remember how to laugh, she need not worry about Major Ross Brandon when they parted company in Falmouth.
Chapter Six
Ross leaned on the port rail of the Falmouth Rose and stared at Pendennis Castle in the early morning haze. At the shoreline the gun emplacements and Henry VIII’s old battery were all still manned, all still flying the Union flag. It would be a while before the commander of the castle felt confident enough that the peace would hold and he could pull back his men.
He was trying to find some sense of his feelings about this homecoming, but the sight of familiar shores from an unfamiliar angle was not much help. They had sailed into the Carrick Roads at dawn on the fifth day after leaving Bordeaux and he had been up to see it, to watch the steep, gorse-covered slopes of St Anthony Head slip past before the captain dropped anchor to wait for a pilot and the harbourmaster’s gig to come out to clear them to enter harbour.
It had not been any nostalgia that had driven him on deck, but the now-familiar discomfort of waking up next to Meg’s warm, slumbering body. She appeared to have no trouble sleeping in the same bunk, once she had recovered from her awkwardness over that embrace. That kiss. He wanted her and yet he wanted her gone. So you can wallow in your own misery again, he sneered at himself.
‘Coffee, Major?’ It was Johnny, bright as a button, grinning his gap-toothed smile.
‘Aye. Then take coffee and some hot water down to Mrs Brandon. Here,’ he added as the lad turned away, ‘I’ll pay you now.’ He counted out the three pence a day he had promised, then added a shilling on impulse.
‘Cor! A whole borde! Thank you, Major!’ Johnny thrust the mug into his hands and was away, not risking Ross changing his mind over the munificent tip.
Ross was still brooding when the anchor was raised and sail set again.
‘Home!’ Meg said beside him. She came to lean her elbows on the rail, her mug clasped between her hands. There was a cool breeze, without the heat of the sun in it yet. ‘Are you glad to see Falmouth?’
‘I’ve never seen it from the sea before.’ Ross avoided a direct answer. ‘When I left England I sailed from Portsmouth.’ Without any intention to confide he found the words spilling out of him. ‘I was terrified, but I was damned if I was going to show it. You should have seen me.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to conjure up the boy he had been. ‘A lanky seventeen year old with his hair in his eyes, feet I still had to grow into and filled with the terrible triumph of thwarting my father and all his plans for me.’ And guilt. But he was not going to talk about the guilt that rode him still.
‘So how did you get a commission? And you must have been so upset at leaving your mother, at least.’