Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page B

tanned skin, or the roughness of her hands? Perhaps she just had an air of experience from the life she had led. She was not going to ask him.
    Meg tidied the dirty plates and spoons away into a pail and stood it outside the door for the boy. Then she wrapped the remains of the loaf up in its cloth, stoppered the ale and went to sit on the trunk, hands folded demurely in her lap.
    ‘Are you waiting for me to reciprocate with personal revelations?’ Major Brandon lay back against the planked wall, his big hands clasped, apparently relaxed. Yet he still exuded an air of barely controlled impatience. He must hate being cooped up in here with her.
    ‘What I told you were hardly revelations. But if I amto pretend to be your wife I should at least know your name and how old you are and where you were wounded.’
    ‘Ross Martin Brandon. Thirty. Battle of Toulouse. If you preserve some distance from the rest of the passengers, that is all you need to know.’
    ‘Thirty? You look older.’ She echoed his own remark, but he reacted as little as she had. ‘Why should I keep a distance from them? It is only sociable to talk and it helps pass the time.’
    He shrugged. ‘Nothing in common. Civilians.’ The word seemed to give him pain, for the corner of his mouth contracted in a fleeting grimace.
    Meg stared at his lips, then dragged her eyes away. His mouth was one of his better features. It was generous without being fleshy, mobile and expressive in the rare moments when he let his guard down. What would it be like to be kissed by that mouth? Would it slide over her skin, licking and kissing, or would it be brutal and demanding? But the mouth went with the man, and she had no desire at all to be kissed by Ross Brandon, however much some foolish feminine part of her quivered when she met those brooding eyes.
    ‘It is dark,’ he observed. Meg got up and picked her way to the small porthole. If she stood on tiptoe she could see out. There were distant lights from the shore.
    ‘We must have anchored. The motion of the boat is different. Shall I leave the porthole open?’
    He nodded when she turned to look at him, his face eerily shadowed now by the swinging lanterns. ‘Are you tired?’
    It was the first sign of any concern for her that he had shown. The tears swam in her eyes again. Yes, shemust be tired if she was so close to that weakness. Bone weary, if she was truthful. And frightened of the future. Damn him for being kind. Sparring with him was keeping her going.
    ‘Yes.’ She managed a smile. ‘It is such a relief to know I am going back to England that I seem to be quite drained.’
    ‘Nothing to do with hauling dead bears out of the river, setting this cabin to rights and doctoring me, then?’
    ‘Oh, no, Major Brandon. That is all in a day’s work.’
    ‘Call me Ross,’ he said abruptly. ‘If you would go and take the air on deck for a few minutes, I will get ready for bed.’
    Meg drew her shawl around her shoulders and went out. The euphemism produced a smile, despite a nagging discomfort at the thought of spending the night together in such enforced intimacy. She had tucked another pewter pot and a jug of water behind the curtain in one corner and she would just have to make do with that; she could hardly throw an injured man in his nightshirt out into the passageway while she undid her stays. There were some odorous little cupboards for the passengers’ use— heads, the sailors called them—but she could not undress in those.
    When she came back only one light was burning and Ross was lying on his left side facing the wall, the sheet pulled up to his shoulders. Ross. She moved past softly. I’m thinking of him as Ross.
    Meg wriggled out of her gown, unlaced her stays, took off shoes and stockings and let down her hair from its net at the nape of her neck. The water was cold, butrefreshing, and the simple fact of being clean was a source of pleasure. When she crept out in her petticoat and sat on the