Auctioned Virgin to Seduced Bride (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 1.50)

‘Really?’ Laurel wriggled up against the pillows. ‘Didn’t they want to know why?’

‘I implied that I wanted the fun of taking clothes off you again.’ Patrick grimaced and held up a skimpy gold silk gown and a pair of fragile kid slippers. ‘This is what they brought. Not exactly the thing to wear to escape notice on the streets, but better than the rags of that shift and bare feet. You can use the shawl you found in here earlier, as well.’

He busied himself at the table and came back with wine and a plate with a chicken leg and some bread and butter. ‘When did you last eat?’

‘I don’t know,’ Laurel said ruefully as she reached for the meat, her mouth watering. ‘There was a rather ghastly pie at an inn where the stage stopped. Since then, I haven’t had much appetite. I tried to force something down because I needed the strength.’ Most of it had come straight back, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

‘How the devil did you get here, anyway? I know you wanted to go to Falmouth to find work and see Meg, but how exactly were you tricked into coming here?’ Patrick filled his own plate and came to sit at the foot of the bed.

‘I got off the stage at the Belle Sauvage inn and I was looking around to see if I could work out where to go for the next stage and this respectable woman offered to show me,’ Laurel said through a mouthful of bread and butter. ‘The next thing I knew I was bundled into a carriage with the blinds down.’ She swallowed, controlling the remembered panic. ‘I bit someone.’

‘Good,’ Patrick said, leaning over to fill up her glass. ‘I am sorry I shouted at you and said you were foolish. These people are plausible and ruthless—it was not your fault. So they brought you here and you saw me and thought the worst.’

‘I thought…’ Lie, don’t let him know you doubted him, something said inside her. But this was Patrick: she couldn’t lie to him. ‘I thought—just for a second—you had come to rescue me. And then I realised that was impossible. I thought you were one of them, one of the men who would… I am so sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. I understand,’ he said, his eyes meeting hers above the rims of their glasses. ‘You were angry with me. I was furious with you, too—relief, I suppose. For a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy you.’

‘You are the sort of man who will not give up. You would have done something.’ The red wine warmed her stomach and the food put strength back into her. She would need it, Laurel sensed. Her whole future hung in the balance. She was his—he had bought her. But she was no one’s slave, nor was he a man who would compel a mistress to stay with him, even one who had surrendered her virginity to him.

‘What is it exactly that you do? You don’t spend all your time hunting missing women, do you?’ She smiled at him. ‘You were incredibly discreet in Martinsdene.’

‘I’ve a small estate near Falmouth,’ Patrick said, looking into the depths of the wine as though he could see the scene. ‘It doesn’t bring in much, although I’m working to improve it. I’m a younger son, so I have no expectations. I want to enter government service and for that I need a patron and a reputation. I have been acting as a confidential agent for anyone of any standing in the area who’ll employ me. This case is proving more intractable than most,’ he added, his mouth grim.

‘You’ll solve it,’ she said. ‘You came to the mystery of the Shelley sisters late, that is all.’ He gave a complicated jerk of his head, half agreeing with her, half, she could tell, clinging to the high standards he had set himself. ‘You have your career all mapped out. You are a planner, aren’t you, Patrick Jago?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed, still staring into the wine. ‘Build up the estate, buy more land, employ a steward, impress some more patrons. I have it all worked out,’ he added as though mocking himself.

And find the right wife. The unspoken words seemed to hang in the air between them. That is not me, Laurel thought as her stomach gave a painful swoop. Orphaned daughter of the minor gentry without money or connections or the slightest influence. Ah, well, it has seemed like a fairy story from the beginning, complete with ogres and dragons and my white knight.

The clock struck four and she looked up, bemused by her thoughts. ‘Time to get out of here,’ Patrick said, standing up and reaching for his clothes.

‘Where are we?’ Laurel got up, too, and struggled into the flimsy gown. It was virtually transparent, but with the large shawl draped and tied it would pass.

‘An alleyway down the side of Almack’s Assembly Rooms. In the middle of fashionable St James’s,’ Patrick said, tying his neck cloth with a simple knot. ‘Very convenient for gentlemen squiring wives, daughters and sisters to the ton’s premiere marriage mart if they become bored with genteel dancing and lemonade.’ He shrugged into his coat and checked his pockets. ‘Eleven guineas. We’ll do.’

He led the way down to the main floor, then found the service stairs at the back. There were faint sounds coming up from below as some unfortunate kitchen underling made up the fire and filled the kettles for the new day. ‘I thought so,’ he murmured, his hand on the back door handle. ‘She’s left it unbolted to fetch in the coals.’ They slipped out and into the cold dawn light without incident.

‘Where are we going?’ Laurel huddled next to him as the sleepy hackney carriage driver Patrick had hailed in St James’s Square set off.

‘Back to my inn room. I’ll order breakfast and you can wait while I get money out of the bank. Then we’ll take the mail to Falmouth.’

‘You’ll take me to Meg?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘Oh, thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me—I have an ulterior motive. I want you with me.’

‘But why should you?’ she asked, her breath catching.

‘Because you belong to me in every way that matters,’ he said, his eyes steady on hers. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

‘Yes! But you hardly know me, Patrick.’

Patrick looked at the anxious violet eyes watching him from the shadows and read the uncertainty in them. No, his heart was not mistaken: she felt the same way he did.

‘Don’t you want to make an honest man of me?’ he asked. ‘You tie me to the bed head, you torment me with feathers, you do unspeakable things with an implement I am unwilling to put a name to and then you won’t come with me?’