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

‘Lifts your spirits just looking at that smile, doesn’t it, Mrs Halgate?’ They propped it on a window seat with the sun full on it. ‘Who do you think it is?’ She flicked her feather duster at the heavy frame.

To Meg the subject was quite plain—it was Ross at perhaps sixteen, long limbed, rangy, his hair over his eyes, his nose and chin too dominant in his young face. Where has all that joy gone? she wondered. Had his brother’s accident killed every trace of it?

‘It is his lordship.’ What it would it feel like to have those eyes smiling at her? ‘Come along, Damaris, we are going to take this downstairs.’

‘Hell’s teeth.’

The maids had finished their work in the study and departed, leaving Meg to hang the last of the charming amateur watercolours of the estate that she had found in the attic. At the sound of the voice behind her she jumped, bit her tongue and swung round, aware of a certain degree of apprehension. She was moving into Ross’s own rooms now and she was not at all sure how tolerant of interference he would prove to be in practice, whatever he said about change.

It was sunny enough to make energetic polishing warm work and Meg had pushed up the full-length windows on the west side of the study. Ross had entered simply by stepping over the sill from the terrace. He stood there, hands on hips, rifle slung over one shoulder, looking round.

The inner set of curtains had been removed from the windows to let in as much light as possible; the dark etchings had gone, replaced by the watercolours; a big vase of greenery stood on the hearthstone and old roses, dark red and crumpled like velvet, stood between reading lamp and standish on the desk.

It was the first time since the day she had arrived here, Meg realised, that she had been completely alone with Ross without the formal pretext of her reading to him and it felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving her breathless and light-headed. ‘You no longer look like a soldier,’ she said without thinking.

‘No?’ He frowned at, her but she found she was unsure whether it was displeasure or puzzlement.

‘No. You look like a country gentleman.’

‘That is what I am pretending to be.’

‘I do not think you are pretending,’ she said, making herself be bold. ‘This is your roots, where you belong. The things that went wrong when you were a young man, the things that made you unhappy, those do not change the fact that this is your destiny.’

‘Hmm.’ His mouth twisted into a sneer that was as much for himself, as for her, she suspected. ‘My destiny to be unhappy? Thank you, Meg.’

‘You can be happy if you let yourself be. I was happy, most of the time with James—there is always something to be happy about.’

As soon as the words left her mouth she realised how betraying they were. And so did he—she could see the questions in his eyes as she averted her head. After a moment, when she feared he would ask something she was not prepared to answer, he turned away and continued to scan the room.

Meg had left his brother’s portrait in place and Ross stopped, staring at it for a long time. ‘I wish I had been here when he died,’ he said eventually. ‘I wish I had been able to say goodbye. Did he think I had deserted him, I wonder?’

It seemed to be a rhetorical question, Meg thought, relieved that she did not have to answer that painful doubt. Now she waited with bated breath while Ross turned slowly to face the wall where his father’s portrait had hung. ‘What have you done with it?’ he asked at length.

‘I hung it where yours was.’ It had been gratifying to consign that arrogant face to the shadows of an obscure corridor. ‘I will bring it back if you wish, naturally, my lord.’ Remember your place, before you both forget it.

‘Don’t “my lord” me while we are alone, Meg.’ He was still staring at his own portrait. ‘Was I ever that young?’

‘Perhaps you still are, somewhere inside,’ she ventured, coming to stand beside him.

‘Ever the optimist, Meg?’ He turned and looked down at her and she smiled, shaking her head, trying not to show how his closeness affected her. He had been riding and he smelt of fresh air and green things and horse and leather. The strain had gone from around his eyes and she had to fight the urge to go up on tiptoe and kiss the tender spot at his temple where the blue veins showed under the skin and the soft hair feathered over the tanned skin.

To touch him would be to be overwhelmed by her feelings, the sensual longings that simply thinking about him evoked. And she must not give way to them—there was no future for a scandalously bigamous camp-follower and a baron except for a financial arrangement that took her independence and allowed Ross to have what he wanted without ever engaging his emotions. She wanted more from him than his lovemaking, and that, once she became his mistress, was all she would ever have.

‘You have a knack for making a house seem like a home,’ he said, just as the tension became unbearable.

‘I hope I am not making it feminine.’ His praise glowed warm inside her. Meg knew she should move away from him, but stayed anyway. Ross was so solid, so still. James had always fidgeted, always wanted to be moving, talking, finding something new. She had never felt entirely secure with her husband, yet for all her fears about Ross he was like a rock to cling to. ‘You must tell me if anything is not to your taste. But, of course, there will soon be all of your things around to give it your personality.’

‘I don’t think I have things, Meg. You know soldiers—we live out of a pack. One trunk if we’re lucky.’

‘Oh, yes.’ She looked at the desk with its tidy piles of ledgers and papers. It looked joyless, somehow. A task to be done, a duty carried out. ‘You will find things. A shell from the beach, a favourite little carving your fingers stray to when you are thinking, a book of poetry you browse through when you heart is heavy.’

‘Have you things?’ he asked, moving closer.

‘No. I lost them all with the baggage train at Toulouse.’ The tears welled up and she blinked them away hard. Ross made a wordless sound deep in his throat and she shook her head, defying him to weaken her further with sympathy. ‘Foolish things. A needle case Bella had worked, a tiny peg doll of Lina’s. A pressed leaf from a willow tree across the lane from the vicarage. A book of verse of my mother’s.’

‘Nothing of James’s? You do not wear a wedding ring.’

‘I pawned it.’ It had been easy, when it came to it, to barter that symbol of the marriage that had never been. She had to move away from this; it was too personal, it hurt too much. ‘Have you been riding around the estate again?’