Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress (22 page)

She waited until the service was over and the congregation got to its feet, then stood out in the aisle and threw back her veil.

‘Please, may I have a moment of your time?’ She pitched her voice to carry and they stopped talking. Heads turned, she saw some she knew, saw recognition dawn. ‘My name is Margaret Shelley and I am trying to trace my sisters. Can anyone help me? If you know anything, however insignificant it might be, I beg you to tell me. I will be at the Royal George until tomorrow. I would be so grateful if you—’

She had lost them. They were all still staring up the aisle, but not at her. The breeze from the open door caught at her veil as she turned. A big man was standing beside the font, his face expressionless under a shock of black hair. It needed cutting. Perrott should have…
‘Ross.’

Someone gasped, then the spell was broken as her
father emerged from the vestry, still in his cassock. ‘What is this? Margaret, you will leave this church immediately!’

‘This is not your house to order anyone from,’ Ross observed, his deep voice echoing around the stone walls in the shocked silence. ‘It belongs to a higher authority.’ Someone giggled nervously and the vicar turned a furious glare towards the sound. Ross ignored him, addressing himself directly to the congregation. ‘Miss Shelley has not received any reply to her question. As she said, we will be at the inn and will be most appreciative of any assistance you may give us.’

‘And who are you, to make a disturbance in this place?’ the Reverend Shelley demanded, striding down the aisle, cassock flapping around his legs.

‘I am Brandon,’ Ross said with the arrogance that always made Meg smile.
He is real,
she thought, grasping one of the poppy-head carvings at the end of the pew. And he was here. ‘And this lady, I trust, is about to consent to be my wife.’

‘I…’ He was here, talking of marriage after all that he had discovered about her, after all he had said? ‘After the last time we met, my lord,’ Meg said, finding her voice, forgetting their audience, ‘I was left with the impression that you had mistaken your feelings for me.’

‘I was not aware of the truth of them.’ His eyes were dark and intent on her face. ‘I had thought of a number of very good reasons why we should marry, but the fact that I love you had not occurred to me.’

‘You love me?’ A sentimental sigh from the verger standing a few yards away brought Meg to her senses.
‘My lord, we are not alone. We should discuss this…elsewhere.’
He loves me?

‘By no means. I feel the need to declare my intentions before witnesses.’ Ross thrust his tall hat and his gloves into the verger’s hands, walked forwards and went down on one knee in front of her, lifting her hand to his lips. The little church and all in it fell entirely silent, holding their breath, just as she was. ‘Margaret Shelley, will you do me the inestimable honour of becoming my wife? I love you with all my heart and soul.’

Someone burst into tears. Meg could hear her father spluttering, but all she could see was Ross’s smile, the passion in his eyes, the utter truth of what he said, written on his face.

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I will marry you, Ross Brandon. I love you too much not to.’

He came to his feet, her hand still in his, and drew it through his arm. ‘Then you have made me far happier than I ever deserve to be.’ He turned them both to face the vicar. ‘Do you wish to be married by your father?’

She looked across at her father, hoping against hope for the slightest softening, at least the faintest hint of approval or forgiveness, but there was nothing. ‘No,’ she said after a moment. She could not go back, only forwards. ‘I would like to go home. Home to Cornwall. And I would like to be married in our little church by dear Mr Hawkins, with Miss Hawkins playing the organ out of tune, with Lily as my bridesmaid and old Billy to give me away.’

‘And William can be best man.’ Ross laughed, his rare, rich, laugh that made her want to laugh too. ‘We
will go home tomorrow, my love.’ He looked round the church. ‘Thank you, my friends. If you can help my fiancée, we will be in your debt.’

‘A
ll it amounts to is that Bella was seen weeping in the woods, in a place known as The Dell, on a Saturday and came to church the next day looking wan and not her usual self and that was the last anyone saw of her. Oh yes, and was wearing no bonnet when she was seen crying,’ Meg said. ‘And everyone was adamant that there was no man courting Lina.’ She looked at the sheet of notes in Ross’s surprisingly neat handwriting that lay on the table in the corner of the inn’s public tap room.

They had been there all afternoon, where they could be easily found, had eaten their luncheon there, spoken to the parishioners who slipped in, mostly by the back entrance to avoid the vicar’s eye. It had been many hours, hours when she could not kiss him, touch him, ask him how he had found her or how his mistrust had turned to love. But they could exchange looks and the anticipation was sweet.

‘I think we must give up, my love,’ Ross said as he gathered up the sheets of paper. ‘I will leave our direction
with the landlord and promise a good reward for any more news he can gather. Here he comes now, with word of our dinner and the parlour I asked him for, I hope.’

It was snug and private and she went straight into Ross’s arms as the door closed behind them. ‘Oh, Ross. You truly love me? After what happened in London? After what you found out about me?’

‘Let me kiss you.’ He bent his head and took her mouth gently, passionately, a slow, lingering caress. ‘I feared I would never be able to do that again.’

Meg curled her arms around his neck and looked up into his face. His dark, smiling face. ‘When did you realise you loved me?’

‘When I thought I had lost you.’ Behind Ross the door opened, banged into his back. ‘That must be our dinner.’ Meg disentangled herself and went to sit at the table, trying to look as though she was not tingling from head to toe with his kiss. Jenny Wilkins bustled in and out until the table was laden and then stood back, gazed at them, gave a gusty sigh and took herself off.

‘Oh, Ross, Everyone is enjoying this so much, bless them.’ All except her father, of course. At least he could congratulate himself on being entirely correct about her. First she eloped with a married man and then she made a disgraceful scene in church.

‘But not as much as I am.’ Ross carved the chicken while he talked. ‘I thought I had lost you and I did not understand why I felt so bad. It wasn’t anger at you keeping your secret, it was a sensation I had never experienced before. And then I realised why I had been feeling like that for weeks.’

‘Weeks?’ Meg helped him to vegetables, feeling ridiculously
wifely as she did so. She wanted to be in his arms and in his bed, but first they must talk, and she was content to wait and anticipate.

‘Weeks. I just thought it was part of the confusion of coming back home again. Home,’ he repeated, savouring the word. ‘You made it a home for me, Meg.’

‘I changed a few pictures, picked a few flowers,’ she protested as he poured her wine.

‘No, I mean that by being there you made it a home. You brought life and warmth and love.’ His face was shadowed by more than the curtain across the window. ‘You accepted William. You cared, you took me out of my nightmares and made me stop thinking of death and killing and pain.’

‘When I saw you first,’ she admitted, ‘I thought you were Death. You looked so dark, so implacable, so utterly without hope to have or to give. And then you saved that child and you sheltered me and I knew I was wrong.’

‘I had lost hope.’ Ross cradled his wine glass in his hand and stared into the red depths. ‘All I could see was duty and guilt and living the reality of memories that haunted me and spending the rest of my life as a cripple.’

‘You left it all in the hands of Fate?’

‘And Fate turned out to be five foot five inches of brown-haired, grey-eyed female with a sharp tongue and a kiss that tastes of fresh raspberries.’ He looked up from his wine and his eyes were smiling. ‘And there I was picturing her as a wicked old hag with no teeth and a rusty pair of scissors waiting to snip the thread of my life at the worst possible moment.’

The silence was good between them, companionable
and healing. They would never have to make conversation, chatter of nothings, to break it. It was enough to be together, enjoying this honest food and drink.

But there were things that had to be said. ‘I did not tell you about James and our marriage that was no marriage because, at first, it hurt too much. No one ever asked me for the truth about it, how it had felt to run away with him, how our marriage had been. So I hugged that inside me and the more time passed, the harder it was to speak of it. I called myself Mrs Halgate because otherwise, who was I? Those five years had been…nothing.’ It was harder to say than she had imagined, even to Ross, who sat watching her face, his eyes soft with an emotion that made it hard not to cry.

‘It never occurred to me anyone would know who I was, down there in Cornwall. We met no one with army connections. I thought, as your housekeeper, I was safe.’

‘And then I asked you to marry me.’

‘And London—anyone might know the story there. And you are hardly nobody, despite your pretence of being just a country squire. One day you would want to take your seat in the Lords, do something that would make me an embarrassment to you.’ Realisation hit her. ‘What am I thinking of, saying
yes?
Nothing has happened that makes the scandal any less.’

‘Nothing except that I had hoped I had convinced you that I do not care that my romantic love once eloped and was misled by the man she trusted. I was angry and shocked by the story and I should have mastered those feelings before I spoke to you. Forgive me. Meg, with your permission I will see that the story is spread far and wide. You were young, impetuous and entirely
innocent. Anyone who shuns us because of that, we can live without. Anyone who criticises you will have to deal with me. I will be open, you will hold your head up and the gossips will see there is no sport to be had from us.’

‘You truly do not mind?’ His shoulders were reassuringly broad and strong when she got up and wrapped her arms around them from the back. His neck, where she nuzzled her mouth, needing the comfort of the scent and taste of him, was warm and his over-long hair tickled her nose.

‘I confess that were Lieutenant Halgate alive, poor devil, I would kick his sorry backside from here to Oporto. But, no, I do not mind.’ Ross twisted in his seat so she ended up on his lap. ‘Are you by any chance making advances to me, madam? With our dinner half-eaten and in broad daylight?’

‘You do not want to wait until we are married?’ The very thought was agonising. The proof that he would find it difficult indeed was reassuringly evident as she wriggled round on his lap to regard him anxiously.

‘It will be at least a month, six weeks, will it not? I would like a proper country wedding and that will take some planning. And you have your bride clothes to buy. I think we should be celibate, don’t you, Meg?’

He said it so solemnly that she was quite taken in for a moment, then the teasing sparkle in his eyes gave him away. ‘Ross Brandon, you are a very wicked man.’

‘I could be,’ he admitted. The room swooped and swayed as he got to his feet with her in his arms. ‘Shall we go and be wicked together?’

‘Yes, please.’ It was ridiculous how feminine and fragile he made her feel, carrying her up those stairs,
even when he bumped his head on the low beams and swore as he clouted his elbow on the rail. They were both laughing when he dropped her on the bed and went to turn the lock in the door, but as he turned back the laughter died away and she saw the same aching need in him that filled her own chest and made her throat dry.

Ross undressed with his eyes never leaving hers while she sat in the tangle of her skirts. She looked at his body in the evening sunlight that filtered through the thin old chintz curtains. ‘When they brought you on board and stripped your clothing off I did all the things I needed to do for a patient. You were another wounded man, a matter of damaged muscles and torn skin. And then I went to draw the sheet over your body and I found myself looking at you, shamefully aroused because you are so very male and so very beautiful. I was ashamed of myself, but I could not get the image out of my mind.’

‘And I fixed the feel of your body when I lifted you into bed in my memory and the heat and softness of you that night as you lay close to me,’ he confessed. ‘Undress for me, Meg.’

It was slow and languorous to slip out of each item of clothing, to toss them aside until she was naked for him. It felt good and powerful to see the effect she had on his body and watch him as he watched her, the heat and the tenderness mingling into an expression she thought never to see on that strong, harsh face.

She had plans for later, but she let him push her gently back on to the pillows, lay still, her hands fisted in the patchwork counterpane as he licked and kissed his way from ankle to knee, up the inside of her aching thighs to the wet, quivering, needy core of her.

Plans fled, thought dissolved into instinct and reaction as he kissed the intimate folds, used his tongue to lash her into frenzy and soothe her into whimpering yearning. He held her with those big, calloused rifleman’s hands, open to every sinfully loving thing he did, held her until she cried out and reached for him and he came to her, sinking into the heart of her, driving her over the edge into the swirling pleasure-filled oblivion.

He was still sheathed in her as she came to herself, still moving gently, just enough to send aftershocks of delight whipping through her. Meg tightened herself around him and he closed his eyes, off guard for a second as she twisted beneath him and came up straddling the narrow hips, her hands flat on his chest, her palms rubbing over the hard knots of his nipples.

‘You want to ride?’ He sounded interested, if rather breathless. He was hard as iron within her.

Oh, yes.
Meg rose and fell, slowly, by half an inch of exquisite torture. Up, down, gripping, teasing and then as the tendons in his neck became rigid and his head began to move on the pillow she rose higher, down harder, riding him, driving them both while he gripped her hips and gave her back every thrust so when she shattered again he was with her, crying out her name, pulsing his heat into her as he filled her with love and delight and promises.

‘For ever, Meg. For ever.’

The sun shone as they stepped out of the granite porch into the dappled shade of the churchyard. The waves in the creek lapped at the mossy edge of the greensward and the ancient tombstones that lined every path that wound down the little valley to the church
spoke of ages of families and community and love in this place.

And the community of their times was there in force, lining the paths, throwing rose petals and rice, clapping their hands and calling their names. At the point where one path led off to the ancient sacred springs there were girls with roses in their hair and garlands in their hands.

Meg paused and turned, one hand fast in Ross’s grip, and smiled at the guests following them. William, as smart as any London gentleman, bursting with pride as best man, Lily, serene and lovely with tears in her eyes and old Billy, startlingly clean and besuited with his dog at his side, its collar tied with flowers.

‘Our family, Lady Brandon,’ Ross murmured. Together they glanced up to where Giles lay under the flowery turf, then she turned again and threw her flowers up and over her head, aiming for Lily, thinking of rumours that she was courting. ‘Your sisters are with you in spirit. We’ll never give up on them.’

‘Not quite all of our family,’ she murmured back, bringing his hand down to rest on her belly. ‘Just all the ones you can see.’

‘Meg? A baby?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ She tucked her hand more securely into the crook of his arm as he stared at her, an incredulous smile spreading over his face.

‘Then let us go home and start filling that old house with love for her to come home to.’

‘Or for him,’ Meg pointed out as they began to climb to where the carriages waited.

‘For all of us,’ Ross said and stopped and took her face between his palms and kissed her until the cheers
of the guests sent the jackdaws spiralling into the sky in panic and Meg’s happy tears ran over his fingers like soft Cornish rain.