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

‘Aye, I can see that.’ Tregarne nodded agreement. ‘You’ll call in tomorrow then, my lord? There’s a field of young beet with the tops being shredded by those darned pigeons. I could fancy a pie.’

Ross found the conversation had calmed both his anger, and his desire. There was Billy to worry about, but he’d think of something. As Ross crossed the hall on his way to the library he met Meg, just emerging from the door to the back stairs.

‘Mrs Halgate.’ Ross felt an unfamiliar sensation in his cheek muscles. He wanted to smile at her, although he was not at all sure why, infuriating woman.

‘My lord.’ She sounded just a touch wary.

‘I have come to the conclusion that I have no use for two gowns, a pelisse and some female undergarments. I suggest you keep them.’ Meg opened her mouth as though to speak, then closed it, her eyes intent on him. ‘Because you are not going anywhere just yet, are you, Meg Halgate?’ And then he did smile as he turned and took the stairs two at a time.

‘Ow!’ He reached the turn of the stairs and the half-landing, out of Meg’s sight, before the stab of pain in his leg brought him up short. Ross hopped a couple of steps and sat down at the foot of the next flight to wince and stretch his leg. That had been a damn fool thing to do, but the sudden attack of high spirits had made him act like a twelve-year-old. Which was ridiculous. The estate and all its problems had not vanished; there was Billy, just as much of a rogue as he’d always been, and now adding smuggling to the tally of his offences, at least one household full of simpering blonde damsels in pursuit of his title—and Meg.

Meg, with whom he had erred so badly she was talking about leaving him. Meg, who he was aching for and who he had to have. Somehow, if he could just fathom what she wanted. Meg. Ross leaned back against the stairs, closed his eyes and contemplated the things that were so desirable about Meg Halgate.

There were her blue-grey eyes and those long dark lashes. There were her curves. There was the way that one corner of her mouth dimpled slightly more than the other when she smiled and that tiny mole at the corner of her right eye. And the way she stood up to him and the wicked flashes of humour and the strange sensation that he was waking up from a long, nightmare-racked sleep and she had him by the hand and was teaching him to see and feel again.

‘My lord?’ said a voice from above him.

Ross tilted back his head, opened his eyes and saw Damaris, Meg’s redheaded maid, looking down at him.

‘Are you all right, my lord? I thought you must have fallen, but then I saw you were smiling. I can go round to the back stairs, only—’

‘No, that’s fine, Damaris.’ Ross got to his feet and stood aside to let her pass. I was just thinking.’ And dreaming.

Chapter Eleven

‘Mrs Halgate, ma’am?’

Meg blinked and found she was standing in the hall with a foolish smile on her face. He smiled! He smiled and he made a joke. Damaris was standing in front of her, looking worried. As well she might with the housekeeper behaving in such a hen-witted way.

‘Yes, Damaris? What is wrong?’

‘It’s his lordship,’ the maid hissed with a glance over her shoulder. ‘I found him sitting on the stairs, just at the landing, with his eyes closed and a big grin on his face. And when I asked him if he was all right, he said he was thinking. Seems an odd place for a gentleman to be thinking. Don’t they have studies for that?’

‘I believe that thought can strike a gentleman anywhere. Unlike we poor females who must do our work first and then think, if we have the leisure. Come along, Damaris, I’ve sure we have a lot to be doing.’ Only just at this moment, I cannot for the life of me remember what it is.

Damaris was looking doubtful. ‘We’ve done everything on the list for today, Mrs Halgate. Unless you was wishful to be making a start on the linen cupboard?’

The Housekeeper’s Guide was most insistent about the importance of maintaining an up-to-date register of the contents of the linen cupboard, with every item and its condition noted, and Mrs Fogarty’s linen list had a date of almost twelve months ago.

‘No, we will save that treat for tomorrow.’ She needed to read the relevant sections in the Guide first. Linen cupboards sounded straightforward, but there was sure to be some vital detail she must not miss.

‘I am going for a walk, Damaris. You may have the rest of the afternoon off.’

There, that’s another smile, she thought as she made her way to her rooms for a shawl and to change her shoes. At this rate the entire household would be beaming.

But what was making Ross smile? Meg walked round the side of the house and found a footpath leading in the direction of the sea. He had not enjoyed the visit from Lady Pennare and her daughters, so that could not be the cause. Then they had had that ridiculous row over her becoming his mistress. Men did not like being refused, especially about sex. James had never had any patience with her when she had let any reluctance show and he had positively sulked when she had her courses.

The path reached an old gate, just right for leaning on and thinking. Why refuse Ross when it made her feel this strange inside? She wanted him. It would be so good in his arms, she knew that. He might be big and fierce but he could be gentle. And he would know what he was doing. A smile tugged at her lips at the thought of Ross knowing what he was doing.

But it would be a financial transaction and that left her heart cold. What had Shakespeare said? ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action…’ and Ross meant more to her than that. Quite what, though, she was not certain. She had not felt like this with James and she had believed herself in love with him. But Ross, so much tougher and harder than James, made her shiver with both tenderness and desire, longing and lust. She would not surrender to him—but might she go to him, as an equal? Would that be worth the broken heart that would surely follow?

Too much thinking—she needed to walk. With a shake of her head Meg pushed the gate open and found herself in a lane, deep between grassy banks higher than her head, their slopes studded with wild flowers. She had noticed the flowers as they had driven here, but they had passed in a blur. Now she could stop and enjoy them individually. Bluebells in indigo profusion, primroses, the vivid magenta heads of ragged robin and sheets of wild garlic with nodding white heads.

Shuttlecock-heads of hart’s tongue fern were unfurling themselves and the soft leaves of foxgloves promised towering spikes still to come.

Enchanted, she strolled down the lane, stooping to examine trails of scarlet pimpernels and the blue bird’s-eye periwinkle and reaching up to pluck a spray of wild cherry blossom to tuck behind her ear.

When the lane petered out suddenly into sand she was right on a beach, a sandy half-moon between two arms of low brown cliff. The sea was breaking in tiny waves, smoothing the sand like well-ironed linen, and bisecting the half-moon was a tiny stream. It must be the stream that ran near Billy’s cottage.