Pleasures of a Tempted Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

believed her. And Will’s gentle, friendly demeanor hadn’t hurt matters.
    The ship pitched gently over a wave, and Meg rose on unsteady feet. Not because she’d lost her sea legs, butbecause of the brutal nausea that still hadn’t faded. For a long moment, she just stood there, studying the space she found herself in.
    William Langley’s space.
    The bed she’d just left was larger than the cot she shared with Jake on the Defiant , and built into the corner of the large cabin. Beside the bed stood a counter with a recessed porcelain basin under built-in shelves holding folded white towels. A large navigation desk dominated the center of the room. Organized wooden bins bolted atop the desk contained rolled-up charts and other nautical tools.
    A cushioned bench chair was built against the back and far walls, partially encircling a fine mahogany dining table. Behind the chair on the wall opposite to Meg hung three small portraits. She stepped closer to study them.
    She’d seen the first one before. It was a painting of Will’s house in the English countryside, a pretty, small white Palladian mansion on the banks of the River Till. When he’d first shown her this picture, she had dreamed about living there after their marriage.
    She’d since learned that dreams never came true. Life threw at you the opposite of what you expected, the opposite of what you wanted. She suppressed a small snort and moved to the next painting.
    This one was of a ship—clearly a naval vessel. It looked like the one she’d seen anchored in the Thames just before she’d left London. Will’s naval ship.
    The third portrait was of a pretty, dark-haired young woman with two boys tucked near her skirts, the younger holding a small dog. That one, she was sure, was Will. She could see the amber glint in his eyes that he hadn’t lost as an adult. The older boy was probably Charles, alieutenant in the Army who’d died at Waterloo when Will was still a youth. The woman was Will’s mother, who’d succumbed to an illness shortly after Will had joined the Navy. His father, who wasn’t pictured, had died when Will was very young.
    Meg stared at the portrait for a long while, wondering who Will’s family was now. He’d lost his parents and only brother. Had he ever married? Did he have children and a wife waiting for him in England? The thought made something clench hard in her chest.
    There were certain things she was best off not knowing. She’d been aware of this truth for a long time. Years ago, she’d come to the conclusion that pining after Will, after her twin Serena and her other sisters, would only drive her to madness.
    As a woman placed in so many situations in which she’d found herself utterly helpless, she’d learned to focus on the present and on the few things in her life she could control. For the past several years, her reality had consisted only of Sarah and Jake.
    And now, even though Will had come back into her life—in a very odd way—Jake was still her priority. He was a little boy with needs only she understood, and above all, she loved him. She’d made Sarah a promise. She’d do right by them both.
    She turned as the door opened to see Jake enter, followed by Will and two other men. She smiled at Jake, whose mouth was covered with what appeared to be sticky orange syrup, and crumbs were scattered over the front of his soiled shirt.
    “From my recent experiences with children,” Will said in a low voice as he came to stand beside her, “I havelearned that promises of sweets from adults can go a very long way in winning a child’s affection.”
    She nodded. Had those recent experiences with children involved his own offspring? She tried to banish the thought, but she couldn’t seem to let it go, even though she knew it was ridiculous. It had been eight years. A very long time. It was natural that he’d have a family of his own by now.
    The two sailors walked in carrying steaming buckets of water, one of which