Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 2)

‘Bella!’ The modish matron dropped reticule and parasol and launched herself at Arabella. ‘It is you! We’ve found you at last. Ross, see, it is Bella! You look so beautiful…’

She burst into tears. Bella burst into tears. Elliott skirted round the two women sobbing in each others’ arms and held out his hand to the other man. ‘Hadleigh.’

‘Brandon.’ The men shook and turned back to regard their wives.

Elliott thought vaguely about handkerchiefs and then decided he would wait for the emotion to subside a trifle. ‘How did you find us?’ he asked.

‘My wife was lining drawers and using a pile of newspapers that had mounted up while we were, er…otherwise engaged,’ Ross Brandon said. ‘She saw her sister’s name and there was no stopping her. We went to your Town house first, found the knocker off and Meg insisted on setting out immediately. She was too impatient to write and wait two days for a response.’

Bella turned, wreathed in smiles despite her tearstreaked face. ‘Elliott, it is Meg and she is Lady Brandon now!’

‘I rather gathered that,’ he said with a grin, holding out a handkerchief. ‘Shall we go in?’

‘I’ll just get the nurse-maid and the baby,’ Brandon said, going back to the carriage and helping a young woman with the baby asleep in her arms to alight.

‘Oh, how perfect.’ Bella hung over the infant. ‘Is it a boy? How old is he?’

‘Six weeks,’ Meg said. ‘Charles Mallory Ross Brandon.’

‘And my daughter is twelve weeks old. Come in…come in and see her, her name is Marguerite Rafaela Calne and she is beautiful.’ Bella towed her sister towards the door, talking non-stop. ‘But, Meg, it is so long, almost seven years. There is so much to tell—where shall we begin?’

It took almost three hours to learn the basic facts about the years they had spent apart. Bella wept again when she heard that Meg had been deceived into a bigamous marriage with James Halgate and then left destitute in Spain when he was killed in battle. She had encouraged her sister to elope with her childhood sweetheart and he had proved to have feet of clay. But if it were not for that tragedy Meg would never have met the man she was so obviously passionately in love with now.

The tale of how she had met Major Ross Brandon on the quayside in Bordeaux and nursed his wounds in return for her passage back and how they had fallen in love and married, defying scandal, had her flinging her arms around her brother-in-law’s neck and kissing him. He might look dour and frightening, but Bella soon realised he adored Meg and doted on his son and she was determined to love him in return.

It was more difficult to tell her own story, for she could not reveal the truth about Marguerite’s father to anyone, not even her sister. ‘I behaved very imprudently,’ she confessed, blushing. ‘And Marguerite was born seven months after the wedding.’

‘I think it very romantic,’ Meg said, beaming at Elliott. ‘It was love at first sight, was it not?’

‘Do you know,’ Elliott said, smiling at Bella, ‘it may well have been.’ She smiled back. No, she knew it had not been that, but somehow this was better: deeper and truer.

‘But what can have happened to Celina?’ Meg asked anxiously. ‘I know she ran away in June 1813 because Patrick Jago, my enquiry agent, found out that much.’

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‘All I know is that she went to an aunt I had never heard of, a sister of Mama’s. And, Meg, I am so sorry if this is a shock, but Elliott and I think that Mama did not die, as Papa told us, but ran off with another man.’

Meg was shocked, but less surprised by that suggestion than Bella had been. But then, Bella thought, her younger sister had seen a good deal more of the world than she. It was a comfort to talk about it though, to hold her sister as they grieved again for their mother. ‘We must advertise for Lina,’ she said. ‘We cannot give up. One day we will be reunited.’

‘Tired?’ Elliott asked as they finally went to their room. They had talked themselves to a standstill that evening and Meg and Ross had retired to bed, leaving young Charles tucked up in the nursery next to Marguerite.

‘I am too excited to sleep,’ Bella admitted. ‘I just want to cuddle and enjoy being so happy.’

‘Just cuddle?’ He raised one dark brow and a warm glow began to spread through her.

‘To start with,’ Bella said demurely. ‘Have I told you, Elliott Calne, just how much I love you?’

‘Possibly not for a few hours,’ he admitted, as he stood in the middle of the room and shed his dressing gown with his usual total lack of modesty. ‘I am open to being reminded.’

‘I feel I have a family at last.’ Bella removed her négligé and drifted closer, enjoying the heat in his eyes, the tenderness with which he reached out to draw her to him. ‘I have a husband who loves me, a beautiful daughter and now a sister again.’

‘Come here and cuddle me, then,’ Elliott said, his voice husky.

‘No,’ said Bella, standing on tiptoe to kiss the sensual curve of his lower lip. ‘No, I think I need to kiss you all over and tell you between each kiss how much I love you.’

‘That sounds an excellent plan,’ Elliott murmured, backing away until they fell on to the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. ‘Just so long as I can kiss you back. I may not have fallen in love at first sight as your romantical sister believes, but my conscience has never served me a better turn than when it told me to marry you, Arabella Shelley. I could not have found a wife I loved more if I searched the globe.’

And so she began to kiss him and their voices became murmurs and their touching became urgent and finally they lay entwined as the candles guttered and the room became dark and still and full of love.