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

‘Meg? Meg, sweetheart, what is it? Bad news?’

Ross. Ross calling me sweetheart. ‘I don’t know,’ Meg managed. ‘I don’t…I hope not. It is my sisters, they’ve vanished. Patrick Jago went to look for them for me, but they aren’t at home any more and no one knows where they’ve gone.’

Somehow she got the sobs under control and found a large square of white linen pressed into her hands. She buried her face in it and mumbled, ‘It is so long since I’ve seen them. And none of us was happy at home and now, not knowing…I don’t know what to do.’

‘Young Jago’s got a good head on his shoulders,’ Ross said. ‘He has only just started—give him time.’ He seemed to hesitate. ‘Perhaps it is a good thing you were unable to go yourself or you would have been stranded there with hardly any money, and no idea where to go next.’

Meg nodded, wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath. ‘Of course, my lord,’ she managed to say with careful formality. ‘I’m sure you are right and Mr Jago will find them.’ She had to believe it.

Then his arm came around her and she was pulled close into warm linen and broadcloth. ‘Hush, Meg. Never mind, “my lording”, me. There is no bad news, hold on to that.’

She should push him away, but his other hand was stroking her hair and he did not appear to mind that she was crying again into his shirtfront. ‘You should not,’ she managed to say. ‘Someone might see us.’

‘I am not leaving you to cry, Meg,’ Ross said, holding her tighter. ‘You gave me Giles again. You are driving me insane, but for Giles alone the whole of Falmouth can see us, for all I care.’

‘The house does you credit, Mrs Halgate.’ Perrott joined Meg on the upper landing as she caught her breath in the few minutes left before the first guests arrived. They leaned on the banisters and surveyed the hall below.

‘And his lordship does you credit,’ she countered, her voice low as she studied the dark head and broad shoulders that were all she could see of Ross crossing the hall.

‘He does, doesn’t he?’ The valet surveyed his employer with satisfaction. ‘It helps that he’s a military gentleman, they usually carry themselves well. And he’s fit. Not a spare ounce on him, I’d say, and good musculature,’ he continued with professional enthusiasm, apparently not noticing the warmth in Meg’s cheeks. ‘All that marching makes long muscles, not bulky ones. Makes his inexpressibles fit like a second skin.’

The thought of Ross’s thighs in fine knitted silk evening breeches had Meg turning to fuss with the flower arrangement. That half-hour on the terrace when she had cried in his arms and he had comforted her seemed like a dream now. The next day he had appeared to be engrossed writing letters in the intervals between inspecting the cottages on the estate, setting on a veritable army of men to repair them and continuing with his daily rides out with his steward.

His mood had seemed not so much grim as serious, she had thought, watching him pace across the hall between drawing room and library. Meg could only hope that he met a young woman for whom he could feel real affection and attachment.

And then she would have to leave, for she could not imagine staying at the Court with Ross wed to another woman. But she had kept busy, and outwardly cheerful. Sometimes she had not thought about Ross or her sisters for an hour at a time.

‘Any more news of your sisters?’ Perrott asked, jerking her away from uncomfortable speculation and back to the main anxiety in her life.

‘I have had one more letter from Jago, but he is not getting anywhere. They are definitely not at home and my father informed him that he had no daughters when Jago was making conversation with him when he called.’

‘Perhaps they both eloped?’

‘There is no gossip—it seems the villagers are keeping silent out of fear of my father’s anger.’

‘No news is good news, in my opinion. After all, if— forgive me—they had been taken ill or met with an accident at home and died, Jago would find out about that.’

‘That is true.’ Worrying over something you could not do anything about was not productive, she knew that. Instead, she went over the arrangements for the dinner party for the tenth time that day.

Heneage and Mrs Harris had thrown themselves into preparations for the event with enthusiasm and Meg had been caught up in it, finding to her relief that she now knew enough to fulfil her part.

The large dining room and long drawing room had been turned out, the gloomier paintings removed to the attics and the candelabra lowered for every tinkling crystal drop to be washed. The silver had been polished and the laundry maids attacked the yards of napery with soapwort and starch. Footmen had been set to clean windows on the inside while the gardening staff polished at the outside and Meg had turned the two largest spare bedrooms into boudoirs for the ladies to leave their wraps and to retire to during the course of the evening.

Now, as Heneage threw open the front doors and Ross walked back into the hall, Meg went to check on the maids. She could have watched, seen the guests arrive, but somehow she did not want to, although the maids were all agog and had had to be chased back to their stations. Once, as Lieutenant Halgate’s wife, she would have been an eligible guest for a dinner party like this; now she must think herself grateful to be able to attend to the comfort of the ladies.

It was clear, as the footmen led one chattering group after another up to the ladies’ retiring rooms, that no one was thinking of being fashionably late. They were all far too eager to see the new Lord Brandon presiding over his dinner table for that, Meg thought, half-amused, half-irritated by the prattle. She should have been attending to the married ladies, but the opportunity to size up the little flock of prospective brides was too much for her curiosity.

Ross had not been so obvious as to invite only those families with daughters, but even so, there were seven unmarried girls to fill the bedchamber with giggles and gossip as they prinked in front of the dressing-table mirror and the long cheval glass.

‘He isn’t at all handsome,’ Elizabeth Pennare remarked as she pinned up one of her elder sister’s curls.

‘Deliciously brooding, though,’ one girl Meg did not recognise countered. ‘Like a Byronic hero.’

‘And brave,’ another added. ‘He was a major, after all, and was wounded. I wish he was still wearing his scarlet uniform.’

The Rifle Brigade wears green, you ignorant chit. Meg helped Jenny fold evening cloaks away, her tongue between her teeth.

‘And rich,’ one of the Pengilly girls remarked. ‘Papa says he owns mines and fishing boats and a warehouse in Falmouth.’