Kitabı oku: «Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress»
Meet Meg, Bella and Celina—
three loving sisters, desperate to escape
the iron rule of their fanatical rector father…
One by one they flee the vicarage—
only to discover that the real world holds its
own surprises for the now-disgraced Shelley
sisters! How will they get themselves out of the
scandalous situations they find themselves in?
Can betrayed widow Meg learn to love again?
Will pregnant and abandoned Bella find the man to turn her blush of shame to the flush of pleasure?
And how will virginal courtesan-in-training Lina discover the meaning of true passion?
Find out in…
The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters
Three sisters, three escapades,three very different destinies!
Author Note
Welcome to the world of Margaret, Arabella and Celina Shelley. Brought up by a harsh and repressive father, all the sisters wanted from life was love—and by looking for it they found themselves branded as sinners and parted from each other.
Early nineteenth-century England was an unforgiving place for fallen women. Dreamy Meg, practical Bella and innocent Lina fought back against Society, and their own fears, to rebuild their lives and find their true loves, transforming themselves in the process.
This is the story of Meg, the middle sister. Dreamily romantic, she eloped with her childhood soldier sweetheart and found herself learning to be practical and realistic in the brutal world of the war-torn Iberian Peninsula. Now, alone and virtually penniless, she must find her way back to England—and her only hope is dark and brooding Ross Brandon, a man wounded in body and soul.
I hope you enjoy Meg and Ross’s journey as much as I enjoyed discovering it, and that you will rejoin the Shelley sisters to meet Bella in the next book in the trilogy.
Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress
Louise Allen
Louise Allen has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!
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Recent novels by the same author:
VIRGIN SLAVE, BARBARIAN KING
THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER*
THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM*
THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON*
THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST*
THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST*
THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST*
* Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
Praise for Louise Allen’s
Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER
‘Allen’s latest adventure romance
is a roller-coaster ride that sweeps readers
through Europe and into the relationship
between a very proper baroness and a
very improper spy. The quick pace and
hold-your-breath escape plans turn this love story
into a one-night read that will have you
cheering for the appealing characters.’
—RT Book Reviews
THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM
‘Allen’s daring, sexy and, yes, outrageous
spin-off of THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER
gently borders on erotic romance because of the
manner in which she plays out her characters’
fantasies (including a marvellous bear rug!) without ever losing sight of Regency mores.’
—RT Book Reviews
THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON
‘Allen continues her collection of novels
centring on the ton’s scandalous activities
with another delightful and charming
Ravenhurst story of love and mayhem.’
—RT Book Reviews
Prologue
July 1808
‘North Wales?’ Celina repeated blankly as Meg finished pouring out her news. ‘But that’s hundreds of miles away. We will never see you.’
‘That wouldn’t be so bad if we knew you were happy,’ Arabella ventured, ‘But Great-Aunt Caroline? She’s a recluse—’
‘She is mad as a hatter,’ Meg Shelley retorted, biting back the tears. ‘You only have to listen to those horrible letters she sends Papa. She is worse than he is.’ She reached out and took her sisters’ hands, wincing and letting go as the grip tightened on the livid weals across her palms. ‘I would rather be here with you both and be whipped every day, than go there.’
‘Perhaps if you promised Papa you would not read novels again?’Arabella suggested, picking up the worn shirt she was darning for the poor box and then dropping it back into the basket with a sigh. Meg felt the affection surge through her; at nineteen, her elder sister tried so hard to be dutiful, to do what was expected, despite constant carping and coldness from their father. How did she manage it? Meg wondered. Could she ever be as good, as submissive?
‘Or anything else but the Bible?’ she demanded. ‘If it is not books, it is going for walks, or trying to grow flowers, or talking to people or singing—I cannot do it. I cannot promise to stop thinking, stop doing everything that gives me any pleasure. I will go as mad as Great-Aunt Caroline. I don’t mind the housework and the laundry and the mending and the praying. I don’t mind working hard, but to be punished for wanting joy and beauty…’
‘And I don’t understand what he said about Mama,’ Celina said with a frown. ‘How can he say we all carry her bad, sinful, blood? Mama wasn’t a sinner.’
‘He has not been right since she died.’ Arabella glanced towards the door, as though expecting the Reverend Shelley, switch in hand, to stalk in at any moment. Meg shook her head impatiently. They had discussed this so many times, and still could not fathom what, beyond natural grief, had turned a naturally serious and strict father into an embittered and suspicious domestic tyrant.
‘He says Great-Aunt Caroline’s health is deteriorating and I must go and nurse her and be a companion. She could perfectly well hire a dozen nurses and companions, she is wealthy enough,’ Meg said. ‘It is just an excuse to punish me. We would all be better off in a nunnery.
‘You, Bella, are to look after him in his old age, you, Celina, will marry the curate—if he ever finds one dour and puritanical enough to suit him—but I am just a nuisance and, this way, he will be rid of me.’
‘But what can we do?’ Celina whispered. Meg shook her head. Celina was too sweet and too pretty for coldness and drudgery, but her seventeen-year-old sister always seemed unable to rebel.
All three glanced at the sampler hanging over the cold grate. Arabella had worked the first line, Margaret had stitched the second and Celina had managed the plain cross-stitch border. It was a favourite saying of the Reverend Shelley, one he fervently believed to be true.
Woman is the daughter of Eve—
She is born of sin and is the vessel of sin.
‘Is that a horse in the lane?’ Meg pushed open the window: any distraction was welcome. From high in the eaves of Martinsdene’s vicarage, the old schoolroom had a clear view down to the church and the village green.
‘Oh, don’t!’ Half-lying across the sill, Meg ignored the nervous plea from Celina. ‘You know how angry Papa was last time he saw us hanging out of the window, like common hoydens, he said.’
‘It is James!’ How very strange she felt inside. Was it love? It must be. ‘He’s come home at last and he’s in regimentals! He has joined the army as he said he would, despite Mr Halgate forbidding it. Oh, but he looks so handsome. Bella, don’t you think he looks handsome?’
‘James Halgate may look like Adonis…’ Arabella countered. Bella’s common sense was a predictable as Lina’s nervousness. Meg glanced back into the room. ‘And he might be a very pleasant and well-bred young man,’ her sister continued. ‘But you know Papa would never let him call and I shudder to think what would happen if you tried to get out to see James again. Remember before he went away? Papa had you locked in the attic for a week on bread and water. Really, Meg—’
Meg leaned out precariously and waved. ‘He must see me!’
Celina joined Meg at the window.
‘Look at him.’
Lina’s pretty mouth curled into a smile, but she glanced over her shoulder at the door before agreeing. ‘Oh, yes, he does look very fine. The Squire is going to be so proud of him. Surely he will forgive him for going off enjoying himself in London for almost a year?’
‘He has seen me,’ Meg whispered. Something inside her contracted, as though her heart had faltered for a moment. All those long nights dreaming about her childhood sweetheart, and now here he was and she still felt as she had when he had left. She was in love with him, she knew she was, and the fields of buttercups still stretched out in the sunlight where they had run hand in hand and exchanged soft, innocent kisses. Although perhaps, in retrospect, James’s had not been so very innocent.
Even as he reined in, taking advantage of the tall hedge to doff his shako and wave it to the two young women in the window, he was casting a careful eye around. Every one in Martinsdene knew the Reverend Shelley’s views on the upbringing of girls and how closely he guarded his three motherless daughters.
‘Now what is he doing?’ Celina wondered as James made gestures towards the stream that ran on the other side of the lane.
‘He means to leave a message in the old willow, just like we used to do before he went away.’ Meg clutched her hands to her bosom, although it did not stop her heart thumping. ‘He means to meet me.’ It was just like the fairy stories. Her knight in shining armour had come for her, he would scale the castle walls, cut through the hedge of thorns that surrounded her, carry her off to a lifetime of happy ever after.
Meg watched as the bay mare walked on down the lane and out of sight, then there was nothing to do but go back to the table. She kicked the mending basket out of sight.
‘Oh, Meg. Do you truly still feel affection for him?’ Arabella asked, her expression the familiar one of mingled sympathy and exasperation. ‘You know Papa will whip you if he finds out.’
‘I don’t care.’ Meg sank down on her chair, perilously close to tears again. It was not the thought of the switch. It hurt and was humiliating, but she went away in her head while she was beaten or lectured, off into her imagination. ‘If he would only treat us with some trust then I would not have to sneak out. I am eighteen, I know my own mind. And I love James. I always have. We are meant to be together. I love James and he loves me, so where is the sin in that?’
What was so wrong with love that it was classed with crimes like theft or murder? She had asked that once, when she was fifteen, and had hardly been able to sit down for a week.
‘Only in the defiance of Papa’s authority,’ Bella said, with a thoughtful frown. ‘Otherwise it is a perfectly eligible match, I am sure—for anyone else. Lina, would you be very kind and go and ask Cook if we might have some lemonade?’
There was something in Bella’s placid tone that had prickles running up and down Meg’s spine. Hope?
Bella waited until the door closed. ‘You are the one he punishes most, because you are such a dreamer, so romantic. And being shut away with Great-Aunt Caroline would be dreadful for you. If James truly loves you, means to marry you—then I’ll help, somehow. We mustn’t say anything to Lina, then she can swear she was ignorant, and I never do anything wrong—Papa will not suspect that I had anything to do with it.’
More than hope. A plan. A surge of feeling, of joy and anticipation and fear, and with it the realisation of loss. But this would not be like losing Mama. Bella and Lina would still be there, she would be with them again one day. ‘Bella, thank you! But to leave you both—’
‘In any other household but this we would have to part soon anyway, because we would become betrothed and move away. We will miss you, dearest, but it will be more tranquil without your constant friction with Papa, so perhaps Lina will become less nervous.’ Arabella reached for her hand, her own warm and strong. ‘And I want you to be happy. James will have to swear you have Papa’s permission for a licence, of course, but once you are married, even Papa is not going to object—think of the scandal if he did!’
‘It is a good match. Provided we are married there will be no scandal.’ Meg’s mind was racing. ‘James will be going overseas. I sneaked a look at Papa’s Morning Post yesterday and it says they are sending troops to the Peninsula. If he does go to Portugal, I will go with him. But—oh, Bella, it could be years before we see each other again!’
It felt like goodbye already, the fierceness of Bella’s hug. ‘It would be years if you are sent to Wales. I want you to be happy. Let us see if he proposes first. If he does, then love will find a way. Somehow.’
Chapter One
20 April 1814—Bordeaux
The breeze funnelling down the Gironde estuary from the sea was chill, Meg told herself, snuggling her shawl around her shoulders. And it was a long time since she had eaten much and the bag containing her pelisse was somewhere on the battlefield of Toulouse with an abandoned wagon train. That was all these shivers were, not fear.
A group of people were coming along the quayside, making for the England-bound ship moored further along. She put her shoulders back and her chin up. It was important to look respectable, competent and not at all needy. One of them, surely, would welcome a willing pair of hands to help on the voyage in return for her passage? That did not seem a very certain plan, but it was the only one she had now.
A tall gentleman with a lady on his arm, a valet and maid, a stack of baggage—they most certainly had no need of her. A plainly dressed middle-aged man with a valise in one hand, a clerk at his elbow. A businessman, no doubt. Then more luggage. The porters shoved a loaded cart to one side to reveal another passenger and shock had her stepping back in superstitious dread.
Death was striding—no, limping—along the quayside in the bright spring sunlight. For goodness’ sake! Meg took a grip on her nerves. He was a flesh-and-blood human being, of course he was. Just a man. But very much a man. He seemed to dominate the long quayside until there was nowhere else to look.
Tall and strongly built, clad in the dark green of the Rifle Brigade uniform, he was bare-headed, his sword at his side. His red officer’s sash was stained and blackened and, unusually for an officer, a rifle was slung over his shoulder. The right leg of his trousers had been slashed to allow for the bulge of a bandage just above his knee and flapped around the long black boot with each stride.
His hair was crow-black, a stubble beard shadowed his jaw and his dark eyes squinted against the sun beneath heavy brows as he scanned the quay with the intensity of a man expecting enemy sniper fire.
His scrutiny found Meg. She forced herself to look back indifferently, letting her glance slide across him. Her experience had taught her to size men up fast, a habit that was no longer one of life and death and which perhaps she should lose. Not that she had ever had to assess anyone who looked quite this dangerous.
Not only was this dishevelled officer big, dirty and obviously wounded, even cleaned up he would not be a handsome man. His big nose had been broken, his jaw was brutally strong, his expression grim and those dark eyes had a slant to them that was positively devilish under the thick brows. No wonder she had thought of Death when she first saw him.
Then he was past her, a porter following with a trunk and a few battered bags stacked on his barrow. Meg had heard yesterday that now that Napoleon had surrendered they were sending part of the Rifle Brigade straight off to America. But this man was obviously not fit for the rigours of that war; like her, he was heading back home.
To England, she corrected herself. Was that home? It was so long since she had seen it that it felt more alien than Spain. But it was where her sisters were and she had to find them.
More passengers. Forget the grim officer and focus on this group. In front was precisely the sort of person she had been hoping for: a well-dressed Spanish or Portuguese lady with three—no, four—children and a maid with her arms full of the fifth, a squalling baby. Meg fixed a respectful smile on her lips and stepped forwards to approach the harassed woman.
‘Whee!’ A small boy rushed past her, following his hoop as it bounced and clattered over the cobbles. How good to see a child happy and safe after so much death and destruction.
‘José! Mind that lady—come back here!’ The woman’s voice was shrill with an edge of exhaustion. She would welcome help, surely?
‘Signora, excuse me, but may I be of assistance?’ Meg asked in Spanish. ‘I see you have a number of children and I—’
‘José!’ There was a splash. Meg spun round to see no child, only the hoop teetering, then falling to the ground by the edge of the quay.
She picked up her skirts and ran. There might be a boat…She looked over the edge at the brown swirling water fifteen feet below her and realised that not only was there no boat, but that the tide was flooding out, the level was falling by the second and there were no steps down. She couldn’t swim in this, no one could. A small head bobbed up, then vanished again. She ran along the edge, trying to keep up with the child in the water. Where was everyone? Where was her pitiful French when she needed it to call for help?
Then a dark figure brushed past and launched into a long, flat dive that took him slicing into the river just behind the boy. ‘Aidez-moi!’ Meg shouted as men began to run to the edge of the quay. ‘Une corde! Vite!’
He had him. She was panting with the effort of keeping up, the need to somehow breathe for all three of them. The black head turned as the man struck out for the quay, the child in his grasp. But he was slowing, hardly making any way against the ebbing tide. It was the darkly sinister officer, she realised. With his bandaged leg, the heavy, painful limp, it was a miracle he could swim at all. Ahead she saw an iron ladder disappearing down the stone face of the quay and measured the angles with her eye. Would he make it to there? Could he make it to the edge at all?
The breath rasped raw in his throat; his right leg had gone from burning pain to a leaden numbness that dragged him down. Ross shifted his grip around the child’s chest and fought the muddy current, angling towards the sheer cliff of the quayside. Diving in with his boots on didn’t help. And only one leg was obeying him anyway.
The boy struggled. ‘Keep still,’ he snapped in Spanish. He wasn’t going to let this brat drown if he could help it. He’d seen too much death—caused too much death: he couldn’t face another. Not another child.
Then the sheer weed-slimed granite wall was in front of him without a single handhold up the towering face except perhaps…‘Boy!’ The child stirred, coughed. ‘See that metal ring?’ They bumped hard against the stone, the water playing spitefully with them as he tried to keep station under the rusty remains of a mooring ring. It was big, large enough to push the boy’s head and shoulders through.
‘Si.’ The brat had pluck. He was white with terror, clinging with choking force to Ross’s neck, but he looked up.
‘Let go and reach for it.’ He boosted the child up, the force of the lunge pushing him completely under the surface once, twice, and then the weight was gone. He surfaced, spewing water, and saw the boy half through the ring, wriggling into it like a terrified monkey. ‘Hold on!’ The child managed to nod, his little face screwed up with determination as he clung to the rusty metal.
But something was very wrong. Ross’s vision was blurring, his shoulders burned as though his muscles and tendons were on fire and his legs were too heavy to kick.
Hell. So this is it. Thirteen years of being shot at, blown up, frozen, soaked, half-starved, marched the length and breadth of the Iberian peninsula—we win the war and I die in a muddy French river. Everything was dark now. Ross tried to kick, tried to use his arms, more out of sheer bloody-mindedness than any real expectation that he could swim any further. Doesn’t matter. Didn’t want to go back anyway…Duty. I tried.
He hit something with the only part of his body that wasn’t numb—his face—put up his hands to fend it off and found himself clutching a horizontal metal bar. Hold on…Why? No point…
‘Hold on!’ The words echoed in his head, very close to his ear. In English. A female voice? Impossible—which meant he was hallucinating. Not long now. Someone took hold of him, gripped one arm, and the blackness claimed him.
When was he going to come round? Meg pushed her hair out of her eyes and stood up to pour dirty water into the slop bucket. Her soaked skirt clung unpleasantly to her legs, but that would have to wait. She had just the one other gown left and she was not going to risk ruining that. Time enough to do some washing and make herself respectable when she had dealt with her patient.
She stood back, hands on hips, and studied the man on the bunk with some satisfaction. It had taken four dockhands to get a rope round him and haul him out of the water, not helped by having to do it with Meg bent double, still hanging on to his arm, twined into the rusty ladder as the river surged around her knees. He was big; with him unconscious and soaking wet, it had felt like trying to shift a dead horse. She rubbed her aching shoulders at the memory.
The crew of the Falmouth Rose had not asked who she was when she walked up the gangplank in the wake of the men carrying his body on a hurdle. She was with Major Brandon and that, as she had gambled, was enough to gain admittance to the ship. Fortunately he had his name on his luggage, and she could read uniforms as easily as her prayer book by now—she had removed enough of them over the past eighteen months.
The men who had lugged him down to the cabin had been obliging enough to strip him for her, otherwise she supposed she would have had to cut his clothing off. It was dripping now, hung on nails that some previous occupant of the cabin had driven into the bulkhead, and he lay with just a sheet covering him from upper thigh to chest.
Meg had washed the scrape on his face where he had hit the ladder. Now she poured fresh water into the basin, opened the sturdy leather bag that sat beside her valise and took out scissors to cut away the sodden bandage on his leg. ‘Aah!’ The breath hissed between her teeth. This was battlefield surgery, rough and ready, and then he had neglected the wound. The edges of the messy hole in the side of his leg just above the knee were raw and puffy.
Lead had been dug out with more speed than finesse, and not very long ago by the look of it. No doubt he had been wounded at Toulouse. It was hard luck to take a bullet in the leg during the last battle of the war, almost within hours of the news of Napoleon’s surrender and abdication.
She would have expected them to amputate the leg—that would have been normal practice. One glance at the jaw of the man on the bunk suggested that perhaps he had refused; he looked stubborn enough. He must be either immune to pain or quite extraordinarily bull-headed to be walking with it like this. She suspected the latter. Perhaps the scowl was not natural bad temper but a way of dealing with agony. She could only hope so.
Meg sniffed the wound. It was infected, her sensitive nose told her that, but there was no sickening sweet smell of mortification. ‘Which is more than you deserve,’ she informed the unresponsive figure. ‘It is a good thing you aren’t awake because I am going to clean it up now.’
The leather bag with the initials P.F. had all its contents intact still. She supposed it was theft, taking Peter’s medical bag, but he was beyond using it now and she had seen no reason to leave it for looters. The surgeon had taught her well in the months she had shared his tent and worked at his side amidst the blood and the pain of the battlefield casualties, but neither of them had been able to do anything about his own sudden fever.
Now she washed her hands and studied the wound in front of her, trying to see it as a problem to be solved, not part of the unconscious man. She sponged and swabbed, then probed, first with her fingertips around the swollen edges and then into the wound with fine forceps, her lips compressed in concentration.
Eventually she sat back on her heels and flexed her tight shoulders. She had never learned to relax as a good surgeon should, now she would never have to. This was the last wound she would probe, thank God.
There was a satisfaction in viewing Major Brandon’s leg, neatly bandaged, and the jagged splinter of metal and several bone chips that lay on a swab. Now it might have some chance of healing, if he would only show some common sense and look after it.
Finally she let herself look at her patient. She had done what she could to clean him as she helped strip away his clothes, detached as a good nurse should be. Now he lay sprawled on his back. His chest and shoulders were tanned and the black hair that made a pelt on his chest and dusted his legs and arms only compounded the impression he gave of darkness. How old was he? It was hard to tell—those strong, harsh features made him look older than he probably was. Thirty-two?
Meg spread the sheet out to cover him from collarbone to toes now that she had finished working on his leg. It was warm in the cabin, even with the tiny porthole open, and she had to keep the lamps burning to see what she was doing, which added to the heat. He would not need a blanket, not unless he began to run a fever, but the thin sheet did little to conceal what lay beneath it.
Her gaze ran slowly down the long body and she found she was biting her lip. A heat began to build low in her belly and her mouth felt dry. He was a magnificent male creature, despite his harsh, forbidding face. All smooth, defined muscles, sculpted bulk, scarred skin she wanted to taste with her fingertips. Her lips. He was a patient and she should not be looking at him with those thoughts in her mind. Yet he was stirring feelings in her that seemed so much more acute, disturbing, than any she had felt before.
Surely after five years of living with James she had learned that sexual satisfaction for the woman was a fleeting thing at best? She had never wanted to touch him in the way that she wanted to touch this man, a way that had nothing to do with hoping for a comforting cuddle or the protection of a sleeping male body at night.
Meg gave herself a little shake. If he regained consciousness and made any sort of move to touch her in that way, she would probably flee screaming. Her intimate experience of men so far had not included anyone so big, so grim—so thoroughly frightening.
It took a while to tidy the cabin, pack the medical bag, dispose of the dirty water and soiled cloths. There would be just room to unroll blankets on the deck to sleep on and she created a tiny private space with a sheet across one corner and more of the convenient nails. She was used to living in tents and in huts; neatness had become second nature, settling in was somehow soothing. Meg paused, put her hands to the small of her back and stretched. What would her sister Bella say if she could see her now? Romantic, dreamy Meg with her sleeves rolled up, sorting out the practicalities of nursing a wounded man at sea.
The big man’s breathing seemed to fill the cabin and her consciousness. It was steady and deep despite the amount of water he had thrown up when they had dumped him on the quayside. His lungs would be all right, she felt fairly confident of that. There was no excuse to check his pulse or lay her head on his chest to listen. No excuse to touch him at all.
And then she realised he was awake. His breathing did not change, his eyelids did not flicker, but there was a personality in the cabin with her now. She put down the cloth she had been folding and watched his face. His nostrils flared, like an animal scenting the air. He had come round, not known where he was, or with whom, and he was warily assessing the situation before betraying that he was awake.
Interesting, she mused. That took a lot of self-control, a highly developed sense of self-preservation and a very suspicious nature. Then she remembered those watchful black eyes; he had stayed alive so far by using all those attributes.
Cautiously his right hand flexed on the mattress as though seeking an object.
Her self-control was less good than his, she found. ‘Good afternoon, Major Brandon. Would you like something to drink?’
His eyes opened then and she found it an effort to stare back, unflinching. ‘Where is my rifle?’ he demanded without preliminaries. When she did not respond he snapped, ‘Who are you, how do you know my name and where the hell are my clothes?’ He levered himself up on his elbows, swore as his leg moved, and looked round the cabin.
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