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

Chapter Eighteen

‘Ma…marry you?’ Meg groped for the wine glass and emptied it in one gulp. It might as well have been water. She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Why?’

‘Because I think we would suit.’ Ross frowned, but remained remarkably calm in the face of this less than rapturous reception of his proposal. ‘I need a wife, we get on well together, and not just in bed. You had no other plans, had you?’

‘Other plans? Not plans like that, certainly.’ Meg gave herself a little shake. She was not dreaming, there was no need to pinch herself. ‘Ross, you do not have to marry me because you have made love to me and I turned down your offer to be your mistress. I was not a virgin, for goodness’ sake! You did not seduce me. Surely your sense of honour does not demand that you marry me?’

‘My honour be damned.’ He was becoming angry now. ‘Is a title, comfort, a home—and let us not forget the damn good sex while we are about it—not enough for you?’

‘Damn good…?’

‘You seemed to be expressing your enjoyment freely enough a while ago.’

‘Yes.’ Meg nodded. Her body still glowed and ached and tingled with the after-effects of this man’s lips and tongue and hands and…‘It is good,’ she agreed before her heated memories made her blush like a peony. ‘I was just taken aback at hearing it listed so frankly with the other benefits you offer.’ She managed a smile and saw the anger leave him as swiftly as it had come. ‘Have you not thought that you will fall in love one day, Ross? And then what will you think of the imprudence of marrying your housekeeper?’

‘I fell into lust with you. And then I fell into liking. Is that not a good basis for a marriage? If I was married to you, Meg, I would not be looking for young ladies to fall in love with, you should never fear that.’

‘You mean if your belly was full with a good plain dinner you would not be out looking for a banquet?’ She tried to joke while her brain was spinning. Marriage to Ross. A dream, a fantasy she had not even dared contemplate. ‘One day you would hanker for someone to love.’ And my heart would break.

‘I know you married for love before, Meg. I cannot give you that—the innocence of first love, the devotion of a young man off to war, pledging everything to you.’ She flinched and saw him register the reaction. ‘But we have much already, more than many couples going into marriage. I will never betray you, Meg. Not in thought and not in act. You have my word.’

She saw that he was serious and her certainty that she should refuse him, regardless of pain, faltered. But could she tell him the truth about James and watch his face change when he realised what she was?

Could she tell him that she had lived as his wife with a man who was already married, a man who had deceived her up to the day he died? That she had only discovered the truth when the will was opened and she found James Halgate had a wife that he had abandoned, the result of a foolish, drink-fuelled episode when he had left home to sow his wild oats in London?

Thank you for your honourable proposal, she could say. But my marriage was bigamous. I am ruined, I was already ruined, shunned by the ladies of the regiment, when I accepted Dr Ferguson’s protection. No. She found she could not say it. Even thinking of that shame and the betrayal and the shock brought tears swimming to blur her vision.

‘You have a title, a position in society.’ She tried for the rational arguments. ‘I am the second daughter of an obscure Suffolk vicar. I can bring you neither connections nor dowry.’

‘Have I given you the impression that I am hanging out for a rich wife or that I yearn to mingle with the haut ton?’ Ross enquired. His gaze was steady on her face, assessing, listening to what was below the surface of her words. He was an experienced officer, she must never forget that. He had years of talking to his men and hearing the truth under bravado and lies, confessions and prevarication.

‘No. You have not.’ But he had a strong sense of what was due to his name, an innate pride of lineage, a natural arrogance, whether he realised it or not.

‘Then come with me to London, Meg. Bring Damaris for respectability. Leave here as my housekeeper, coming with me to assess the town house. Think about it for as long as you need—and then come back as my wife.’

She must say no. It would cause enough talk hereabouts once word got out that Lord Brandon had married his housekeeper, but sooner or later the gossip would reach London and the ears of someone who knew what had been revealed in Spain. And then the story would come back to Cornwall with all the embellishments such a titillating tale was sure to attract. Ross was a proud man with a strong sense of duty that had brought him back here against all his desires and instincts. He would not tolerate his wife’s scandalous past being common knowledge.

Her choices seemed to be to refuse him without explanation or to tell him the truth and then refuse, for as a man of honour he would not withdraw his offer. But she must speak now, at once and put an end to this.

‘I must…’ The right words would not come. She tried again. ‘I must think about it.’ Where had that come from? It was not what she had meant to say. And yet there was this nagging feeling inside that somehow it could be all right, that somehow she could marry Ross. But how? Meg demanded of herself. How can it ever be right? And he doesn’t love me anyway, and I need to be loved, I cannot live with a man without love.

‘You will come with me to London while you think?’ Ross maintained his composure, his dark, harsh face as expressionless. He would not show hurt or rejection, even to her. Least of all to her.

You love him. Love will find a way. That was what Bella had said when she had helped Meg elope. ‘Yes,’ Meg said, recklessly following instinct, grasping the romantic dream. ‘I will come to London and we will take Damaris and we will see what you want to do with the town house. It is a long time since I was in London.’

‘Was that where you married?’

‘Yes. James got the money for a licence somehow and lied about my father’s permission. Look

ing back, he must have known Papa would not deny it if it were ever challenged, not with the scandal that it would bring.’ The clergyman must have guessed, she realised that now. The way he took the money James handed him, the sly smile as he slid it into the pocket of his threadbare cassock would have alerted a girl more worldly-wise than innocent Miss Margaret Shelley had been.

‘I did not see much of the town, though.’ Just a cramped and shabby inn room for their wedding night, the maze of narrow City streets. There had been a child selling oranges from a basket, brilliant against the grey stone as they passed on their way to the church and the inn sign had creaked all night outside their room. She had thought she was in heaven, there in James’s arms. She hadn’t known what bliss really was, had not known until she had lain with this man.

‘We can explore together. I have never been there. My parents did not believe in taking us up to London as children.’

‘Never? No, of course, if you ran away when you were seventeen you had no chance as a young man either. Will you take Perrott? He will enjoy sending you to tailors and hatters and bootmakers. But I expect you will disappoint him and refuse to be measured and fussed over.’

‘Perhaps not.’ Ross shot her an enigmatic look before getting off the bed. ‘A married man should be well turned out, don’t you agree?’