A Lady's Wish (3 page)

I leave you now with a final word, one of gratitude. You have been an excellent mother to our children. You were—despite all—an exemplary wife to me. I wish you every happiness and God’s blessings.

Yours,

Oliver Christopher Morgan, III

Patricia sat mute, her eyes prickling.

“Tricky? Are you all right?”

She blinked, sweeping her hand across her eyes and dashing away a pair of tears.

“Yes. Quite all right.”

“You
are
?”

She nodded, a little surprised at the truth of her words. His final thanks and blessing was more than she had ever had from him in life. It was far too late and far too little, of course. But she had learned quite early in their marriage that he had not been capable of expressing more. She no longer faulted him for it.

And now she could thank him for the opportunity he afforded her.

She folded up the pages and tucked them in her pocket. “I will ask Aunt Elsbeth to accompany me.”

Her sister gaped. “Will you do it, then?”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”

“But—” Callie sat forward. “But, Tricky, you haven’t any idea what he is sending you
to
. And for goodness sake it could be long gone by now!”

She tilted her head. “For a girl of usually high spirits, you are reacting to this rather oddly.”

“I suppose I am simply flabbergasted. I have never received a letter from a dead husband I did not like above half. I cannot imagine how you must feel right now.”

“I feel fine.” Better than fine. Tingling, in fact. She glanced at her work. She could not finish it tonight. Now she must pack for her journey. She stood up and untied her apron.

Callie leapt out of her chair. “I will go with you.”

Patricia’s brow creased. If she were going to do what she was considering, she could not very well have her seventeen-year-old sister in tow.

“You must remain here to comfort John and Ramsay in my brief absence.”

“They will have Nurse, and John’s tutor, and of course their horrid grandmother. And I am the only person who knows how to rub Aunt Elsbeth’s feet when they get the cramps. If you are going to take her as chaperone, you must take me too.”

“Hm.” She considered her sister’s bright eyes, bluer than her own and full of animation. Once she had been that same age, and she had met a man who made her head spin and heart stop. Calanthia did not know that, of course; Patricia had only ever told her diary of it. But after bearing the dowager’s company for nearly four years, her sister deserved a holiday too.

“All right.”

“Oh, Tricky, you are tremendous!” She threw her arms about her and squeezed. Patricia held the embrace, savoring the closeness.

Calanthia hopped to the door. “I am off to pack. Oh, I simply cannot wait to see Lady Morgan’s face pinch up like a prune when she hears about this!” She dashed from the chamber.

Patricia withdrew the letter and opened it again. The journey would require several days, just as it had nine years ago in the opposite direction—that journey commenced on the same day Oliver had asked her to be his bride, a full day after he had already signed the betrothal contract with her father.

But this time Patricia was not betrothed. And she was not to be married to one man while her heart longed for another. Upon this journey, she would not be weeping tears that for the next months seemed to have no end except when she hid them from her new husband.

On this journey she would be free. A respectable widow. A woman with a family, barely a penny in her purse, and an aching desire for an experience that would bring her to life again for a moment. Upon the road, a lady was bound to encounter at least one man willing to oblige her fantasy. A man to offer her a taste of passion for a single night, passion that would rekindle feelings she had only ever felt once.

This time, however, if she happened to come across a handsome gentleman who made her feel alive from the inside out, she would learn his name before he disappeared forever.

Chapter Three

“ ’T
is only a strain, mum.”

Rain fell in a mizzling shroud across the muddy highway and dripped off the brim of Patricia’s bonnet. Only two of the carriage horses still rested in their traces. The coachman had detached the leaders to walk them about. The left leader limped dramatically.

Patricia wrinkled her brow. “Only a strain?”

“Aye, mum. He’ll be better in a jiffy, I ’spect.”

“What is a
jiffy
precisely in this case, Carr?”

“Two days. P’raps three if I put a poultice on it right quick. I’ll know better in the morning, mum.”

She looked up the road, then in the opposite direction. Little could be seen but shadows of trees and the edges of fields hemmed in by stone fences. But according to Oliver’s letter, there should be an inn close by.

“Then we will drive to the nearest posting house and change them out before continuing,” she said bracingly.

“Could, mum.” Carr nodded. “If he could do it.”

“The horse is no longer able to pull the carriage?”

Carr shook his head and scratched beneath the brim of his high-crown hat. “ ’Fraid not, mum. Less you’d like him good for naught else again.”

“No, of course not.” She glanced at the complex harnessing. “Can you tie him behind and drive the others until we reach the posting house?”

“No, mum.” He looked chagrined. “Begging your pardon.”

“Hm.” She took a deep breath and released it upon a puff. “Then we must simply wait for help to happen by.”

“I could ride on ahead?” He looked doubtful.

“No. That would leave us quite unprotected. We will wait it out.” She dusted the rain from her cloak and climbed back into the carriage. Within, Callie’s blue eyes sparkled with curiosity and Aunt Elsbeth’s prominent gray orbs looked pleasantly smudgy as usual.

“The lead horse has suffered a strained fetlock.” She patted Oliver’s maiden aunt’s hand. “But you needn’t worry. Help will be along shortly and we will be on our way to a nice cozy inn before we know it.”

“Dear me, Patricia.” Aunt Elsbeth’s thin, tripping tones were somewhat musical. “You do say the oddest things.”

She laughed. “But it is true, Aunt Elsbeth.”

“I daresay that farm will do well enough for the afternoon.” The elderly lady bobbed her head, a tangled mass of silk flowers jiggling in reds, blues and yellows atop her bonnet, crinkles at the edges of her mouth.

Patricia peered out the window. “Did you see a farm, then?”

“Oh, no, my dear. Not for months now.”

Patricia flicked her gaze to her sister. Calanthia grinned and rolled her bright eyes, then tucked her hand in Aunt Elsbeth’s elbow.

“Auntie, tell us at what distance we sit now from that farm, if you will.”

“We are a quarter mile past it, I should say.”

Callie cuddled closer to the elderly lady. “And what are they serving for dinner today at the farm?”

“Mutton stew.”

“There, Tricky. We shall have mutton stew in short order. Shall we walk? Although it would be a great deal more diverting to remain here and be accosted by a highwayman, I suspect. I have heard such bandits are excessively roguish.”

Patricia tried not to smile. Aunt Elsbeth would meander, and Callie would play, just as they did at home in London. They seemed content enough, despite the cold creeping through gloves and shoes.

“Mum,” Carr called from without. “Rider’s coming along.”

She opened the door and poked her head out.

“Does it look like a highwayman, Tricky?”

“I am not perfectly familiar with the physical attributes of highwaymen, sister, but I shall ask him. If he replies in the affirmative I will inform you directly.”

“Splendid!”

The rider neared. Unfortunately for Calanthia, he looked unexceptionably like a gentleman, in an elegant caped greatcoat and brimmed hat, a saddle pack behind him. His handsome horse loped along the muddy road with ease. Patricia set her foot upon the step.

“Ask him about the farm,” Callie chirped.

Patricia grinned and climbed out into the drizzle.

“He has slowed his horse to a walk, Auntie.” Callie peeked out and narrated for Aunt Elsbeth within. “Oh, bother. He is dismounting. That is certainly not the action of a bandit. He is very tall and walks with great confidence, but he brandishes no pistol. How disappointing.”

“Calanthia,” Patricia whispered, “be still.” She adopted a gracious smile and turned to the gentleman walking toward the carriage. “Good day, sir. I wonder if we might prevail upon you to . . .”

She got no further.

He halted as her speech did, four yards away.

Her breathing stopped.

His eyes widened for an instant. Green eyes. She knew this even across the space between them now.

She knew it from her memory.

It was
he
. Tristan. After nine years.

But she must be wrong. This man’s face was not the same as in her memory. In the pale light of the misty day his skin appeared tanned. A firm jaw and smooth cheeks flanked not smiling lips and a long straight nose, but the hard line of a mouth and a nose at least once broken.

His lips parted slightly, as though he might speak. Then he removed his hat and bowed with military precision. His hair was as she remembered it, nearly black although very short. He straightened and replaced the hat, obscuring in shadow once more the dark, rich emeralds that had once gazed at her with thorough longing.

“Good day, madam. May I be of assistance?”

Patricia could not find her voice.
His
was the same, only altered slightly, deepened by the breadth of his chest which seemed wider. His shoulders as well. The years had rendered the youth a man.

“Tricky,” her sister whispered and poked her in the kidneys.

Patricia knew not how she managed to curtsy. Her breaths would not return to her compressed chest and her entire body felt shaky. She had not until this moment realized that she never expected to see him again. For months she had dreamed. For years she had wondered. But she never truly believed she would, convincing herself that her young, hungry imagination had invented him.

But England was not such a large place after all. She had been a fool.

“Thank you, sir.” Her voice sounded odd and stiff, the rain dulling sounds all about. “We have horse trouble and cannot continue to the inn ahead.”

“There is a farm not a quarter mile behind,” he said without hesitation, winning a titter from within the carriage. “I will ride back and return with an alternate conveyance. Does your coachman carry a pistol?”

There was no gracious solicitation here, no hint of recognition beyond that first brief pause. Only attention to necessity.

“I believe so. Carr?”

“Yes, mum.” Carr pulled aside his coat to reveal the butt of a weapon.

“See that you use it if necessary.” He spoke with complete authority, as though accustomed to giving orders. He turned and remounted. “I will return shortly.” He bowed from the saddle, circled his horse about and with a smacking of hooves in mud, set off at a canter.

Patricia pressed a hand to her chest, to force breath into her lungs or to still her pounding heart, she hardly knew.

Tristan
. The man over whom she had cried a thousand tears. Come to life. Appearing upon a rainy road in the middle of nowhere.

“He has gone to fetch us another carriage, Auntie,” she heard Calanthia say cheerily. “And you will not believe it when you see him—he is
very
handsome. I daresay we should be stranded upon the road more often if such gentlemen will appear to rescue us.”

T
here was no carriage to be found at the farm, of course, only a wagon without covering. But it must suffice. Afternoon was fast waning and the rain would darken the road before the sun set. So it was on land, just as on the sea.

Nik commandeered the wagon and the farmer to drive it. In a lengthy exposition the farmer explained his eldest son’s inability to drive now on account of an injury involving a bale of hay, a pitchfork, an overly feisty cow, and a pretty dairymaid.

“Females,” the farmer spat. “Always a female, ain’t it, sir?”

Always a female, indeed.

Nik had sailors as loquacious as the farmer aboard his ship; he did not mind the chatter. Indeed, he welcomed it. Anything to force his mind into a semblance of order resembling the order that had reigned in his life for eight years since he ran away to the Navy because of a woman. The woman stranded upon the road before him now.

You must join the Navy and become a great ship captain! You will be the scourge of Napoleon’s fleet.

She was entirely altered. Her cheeks, once rosy as a ripe peach and dimpled, were now hollowed and pale, rendering her chin more angled and casting shadows beneath her eyes. Her hair, then as multifaceted as autumn leaves and shining in the sunlight as it slipped out of its ribbons, now disappeared in a tight knot beneath her sober bonnet. And her mouth, lips he remembered as the sweetest, softest dusky rose, and full enough to drive a man mad imagining them upon him . . .

She had smiled until she recognized him. Then her smooth cheeks and sensuous lips had gone pale as a specter’s.

If Nik needed any sign to confirm that she remembered him and had no desire to meet him again, he now had that sign. His chest felt tight and he felt like a reckless, uncertain youth still. A war hero brought down finally by a woman’s blank stare.

But it was merely confirmation of what he had suspected even then.

From the moment he had first caught a glimpse of her that morning, her hair sparkling in the early summer sunshine and elegant dress caressing her young curves, he’d known he was not good enough for her. He had never been good enough for anything, as his father and elder brothers never hesitated to remind him. Never intelligent enough, never disciplined enough, never talented enough to merit praise or even much attention other than censure. He was nothing more than a careless wastrel. That she had laughed and smiled and allowed him to kiss her had not changed that, no matter how he wished otherwise. By the end of that golden day he had determined that in order to win her he would make something of himself. It would be that simple.

But she had not met him the following morning as planned, and she could not be found. So he had gone to war to make something else entirely of himself.

He spurred his mount onward. The carriage appeared in the gray ahead, the horses sodden in their traces. After a full day in the saddle, Nik was tired and sore. But if Jag’s instructions and his own memory were correct, the route offered an inn not five miles distant. With the wagon, it might be reached before nightfall.

She came out of the carriage and peered down the road behind him.

“Ah. What good fortune.” She clasped gloved hands before her. She was still slender, the curve of her shoulders and rise of her breasts barely discernable beneath her cloak. “Thank you, sir.”

“A wagon?” A young lady poked her bright head through the doorway. “How singular!”

He bowed. “I fear the options were limited, ma’am. It was either this or the donkey cart. I dared to decide for you.”

The girl giggled, dimpling up in a manner so familiar—so gut grabbingly familiar, so emblazoned in his memory—he knew she must be a relation. He shifted his gaze to the lady he had not been able to forget in nine years, then wished he had not.

Her blue eyes—eyes he had lost himself in once before—were trained upon him, thick-lashed and wide, cornflowers set in a face too lovely to be real. Lovely, not because he remembered it glowing with youthful innocence and desire. Not because that face had not changed, for it had. But because now, as then when he had first seen her in the crowd at the festival and lost his breath, she was to him the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld.

He could not deny it to himself. He did not even wish to.

“It will do splendidly, of course,” she only said. “Carr, it will be dark within an hour. Will you be comfortable remaining here with the carriage and horses until help can be sent back?”

“ ’Course, mum. Don’t you be worrying on me.” He nodded her along then began unstrapping the luggage from the top of the vehicle.

Nik extended his hand for the girl inside and she jumped down lightly.

“This is a most provident adventure!”

“Mishaps upon highways in the rain and mud cannot be considered anything but, ma’am.”

“You are quizzing and we are hardly known to one another!” Her eyes twinkled. “Oh, Tricky, I am quite glad he was not a highwayman after all. You are not, are you, sir?”

“Not for years now.”

“Then I am terribly disappointed we did not encounter you earlier in life.” She giggled, all silly girlish glee. Not like that other girl he remembered as though it were yesterday. That girl had laughed freely, but with quiet grace. Her eyes had sparkled but her lashes allowed only a glimmer of that joy to shine forth. She had been fervent yet modest, and she had not directly told him her feelings that day, an omission which he noted far too late.

She stood now silent, watching them.

An elderly lady appeared in the door and he assisted her down.

“Young man, you must see to that scar now or it will pain you in old age.” She patted his shoulder, released him, and wobbled toward the wagon.

The girl’s eyes danced. Nik lifted a brow. She stifled another giggle. The farmer tugged his cap and Nik assisted the elderly lady onto the seat. With a wide grin the girl climbed over the low rear slat into the back of the cart.

“I have not ridden in the back of a wagon for years,” she exclaimed in pleasure, arranging her skirts across the sodden hay.

He turned his attention to the lady at his side. “I regret that you must ride in one now.”

A wagon is not a suitable conveyance for a lady.

He offered his hand. She did not look at him, but placed her gloved fingers upon his palm, and after nine years he touched her again.

It was not the heart-stopping madness he had experienced when on a sparkling May Day she had entwined her fingers with his and the sweet, soft caress of her skin set him afire. This touch—deliberate and steady—gave nothing. No uncertainty. No familiarity. No suggestion that she might find this meeting awkward, confusing or daunting. While to him the very weight and shape of her fingers took his breath.