Pleasures of a Tempted Lady (17 page)

“You hadn’t been gone long, but I already missed you, Meg. I didn’t know if I’d see you again; if I’d die at sea or in a battle; if I’d eventually lose you to some other man before I felt myself worthy of asking for your hand in marriage.

“I was depressed because you’d left, and I despaired of ever seeing you again. Stratford was also feeling low, though his depression ran to deep shame, because it was his fault you’d gone to begin with, his fault that Serena was ruined, and his responsibility for shunning her. In our mutual despondence, we became friends. I learned that despite what he’d done, Stratford loved your sister. His own actions had filled him with such indescribable regret, I found myself doing whatever I could to help him.

“He and I began to devise a plan whereby he would sail to the West Indies, where he would beg your sister’s forgiveness and ask for her hand in marriage. However, before he could make good on his plan, word came that your sister had been lost at sea.”

Meg flinched. If not for her own mother’s machinations, Will would have heard the truth—that Meg had been lost at sea, not Serena. Lord Stratford would have gone to Antigua and married Serena long ago. Both of them would have been spared many years of unhappiness.

Not for the first time, Meg was glad her mother wasn’t here. She couldn’t bear to be in the woman’s presence after what she’d done to all of them.

“When Stratford heard of her ‘death,’ ” Will continued, “he lost his mind with grief. He blamed himself and considered himself a murderer. Guilt tore him apart. He fled London and went to Bath. I accompanied him there, determined to watch out for him, to ensure he didn’t do anything foolish.”

Will downed the rest of his brandy. When he looked at her again, his eyes were shining. “He did behave foolishly in Bath. But I was even more foolish.”

Meg clutched the arms of her chair and stared at him, unable to speak.

“There was a young woman at the inn where we’d found lodgings. Her name was Eliza Anderson. We thought she was a barmaid.”

Abruptly, Will rose and went to fetch himself more brandy. Meg waited, staring at the place he’d vacated, not moving, not speaking.

When he returned, sitting heavily on the sofa, he continued. “She wasn’t a barmaid, though. She was the daughter of a local magistrate. She’d climbed out the window of her bedchamber to meet her friends at the tavern.

“Stratford and I had been drinking steadily for the entire evening, and we were both quite drunk. After we watched her and the barmaids sing a song, Stratford pulled her aside, and—” He stopped abruptly.

“And what?” Meg’s voice was steady, quiet.

“He propositioned her. On my behalf.”

Meg blew out a breath.

“She was young and wild, and she wanted to get out of Bath and go to London. She thought Stratford and I might be the means for her to do that.”

He drank most of his brandy in one gulping swallow
and continued. “They gestured to me, and I staggered over to them. She took my hand and led me upstairs.”

Will popped up off the sofa again, and Meg jerked in surprise at his abrupt movement.

He pushed both hands through his hair. “I didn’t realize where I was, what I was doing, until the next morning, when I woke up beside her.”

Meg moved her hands from the chair arms, certain she’d scratched permanent marks into them, and clasped them in her lap, looking down at them.

“You believed I lived,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he choked. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. The most foolish, the most cowardly. The most unforgiveable.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

He stumbled to her and dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m not a rake, Meg. I’m no scoundrel. I don’t pursue loose women. I never touched another woman after Eliza. The following morning I knew how deeply I’d erred, and vowed to myself I’d never repeat the mistake. And I didn’t.” He swallowed hard. “Meg, there is only one woman in the world I ever wanted to have children with, and that woman is you.”

She just stared at him. It was impossible to just blithely forgive him on that statement. She couldn’t.

Her tone was cold. “You have said you planned to marry me at that time. Yet you bedded someone else. How long had I been gone?”

He looked down, away from her. “Less than four months.” His tone was flat.

She tightened her clasped hands, and they both sat in
silence for several minutes. Finally, she asked him, “What do you want from me?”

He looked up at her. “Surely you know the answer to that?”

“No.”

“Your forgiveness. Not today. I know it’s far, far too much to forgive in one day. But I want—I hope—that you will give me the chance to prove myself to you.”

She stared at him, unable to answer, but as if she had responded, he nodded and rose to his feet.

“Where is she now?” she asked. “Thomas’s mother?”

He groaned softly. “My foolishness didn’t end that night. Not completely.”

“Tell me what happened. I want to hear it all. Why didn’t you marry her?”

Marrying her would have been the right thing to do. The
Will
thing to do.

Standing before her, he clasped his hands behind his back.

“We left Bath early the morning… after. But a few days later, I came to my senses. If word had spread, and I was sure it had, because most of the people in the tavern had seen us, I would do what I could for her. Short of marriage.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t, in good conscience, give her that. At least not yet. Because”—he licked his lips—“I wasn’t sure about you. For all I knew, you could have been with child. We’d…”

She raised her hand, because she couldn’t bear for him to remind her of the night they’d lain together just before she’d left London. Both of them—or so she’d thought—had been so bound by duty and honor, that night had meant everything. At least it had to her. Obviously it had meant far less to him.

“Yes, well—” Will cleared his throat. “I couldn’t very well propose to Eliza when I didn’t know your… status.” He flinched at his own awkward usage of the word.

“I knew you would be devastated by what I’d done. But you were so beautiful, so lovely inside and out, that I knew you could do better than an inconstant bastard like me. Once I heard from you and assured myself that you were not with child, I planned to offer for Eliza. Even though she didn’t love me, and I’d make a poor husband to her. It was to be my penance for what I had done.

“I went to Stratford and told him my plan, but he was adamantly against the idea. He, more than anyone else, knew how much I loved you. Knew how much my mistake had destroyed me. He’d made a terrible mistake, too, you see, with your sister.

“Stratford formed a new plan.
He
would return to Bath and take responsibility for Eliza. In a state of utter weakness and cowardice, I agreed.”

Meg looked up at Will. His face was flushed a deep red, and his eyes still shone. His hands were still clasped behind his back as he stood before her, head bowed.

“He didn’t find Eliza in Bath,” Will continued. “But he continued to search for her, even after I went to sea. He finally found her in a workhouse, several months gone with child. Her father had thrown her out as a wanton whore and she had gone to London, where she’d quickly run out of funds.”

Something constricted in Meg’s chest. “Oh, Will.” The story seemed to get worse and worse.

“Stratford provided for her and Thomas for several years, until a year and a half ago, when Serena discovered them by accident. By then, Stratford had grown very close
to them both, and he remains so. But your sister needed to know the truth—that the child wasn’t Stratford’s, and it was then that I finally, belatedly, took responsibility for them and acknowledged Thomas as my own.”

“What about Eliza?”

“We’ve come to an agreement whereby we each care for Thomas half the time. He arrived just this morning, and he will remain with me for the rest of the Season.”

“You did not marry her,” Meg mused. “Even believing I was dead.”

“No. Although… I asked.” He closed his eyes and continued. “I felt it was the honorable thing to do. She knew all about you by then, and she said no. She won’t marry a man who doesn’t love her and who she cannot love. When Thomas was an infant, she might have done so, for his protection, but now, it’s too late. Thomas is seven years old, and he knows full well what he is.”

Will didn’t say it, but Meg knew he was thinking it:
a bastard.

Will opened his eyes. “So there it is. He is my son, he is a good child, and he has brought a little happiness into my life. I continue to provide for Eliza, and I will do so for as long as she has need of my support.”

“I see,” Meg said quietly.

“I know you might disapprove of me continuing to support my one-night mistress, but I feel it is the proper thing to do. The only way I can compensate for my mistakes in some small way.”

Meg shrugged. “Why should it matter to me what you do with your mistress, Will? I have never had any real claim over you.”

Oh, but wasn’t that the truth? Everything she’d felt for him, everything she’d thought she’d known of who he was, was false. She rose from the blue chair, no longer feeling comfortable here surrounded by all these things that resonated of Will.

“I think it’s time for Jake and me to go home.”

Chapter Eleven

T
he following night, Lord Stratford invited Will and Mr. Briggs over for dinner. Meg wasn’t looking forward to the evening at all. Nevertheless, she hadn’t told him not to come. As much as her reasoning mind told her to push him as far away as possible, for some reason, when it came to her speaking the words of rejection she knew she must say to him, they just wouldn’t emerge.

After she’d hurriedly dressed for dinner and left Jake in the kitchen, which had become his favorite room of the house—he loved to gaze at the motions the servants made of chopping and kneading, and he even enjoyed watching the scullery maids scrubbing the dishes—she knocked on the door to Serena’s dressing room.

“Who is it?”

“It’s…” Meg hesitated, then said, “me.” The servants knew who she was and who Serena really was, and Serena promised that they were trustworthy, but she still had a
difficult time saying her name was Meg when the world knew her sister by that name.

“Come in,” Serena called.

Meg opened the door to find her twin standing before a tall looking glass with her red-haired maid standing behind her, tugging on the strings to her stays. Serena glanced over her shoulder at Meg. “I’m getting fat,” she announced. “This thing is tighter every day.”

“Nonsense,” Meg said. Serena possessed healthy, womanly curves, but no one would consider her fat. Her weight was ideal, a weight Meg wished to be. On Caversham’s ship, food had always been simple and often scarce. Here, the heavy, richly seasoned foods the earl’s cook made weighted Meg down and made her feel out of sorts, but she’d tried to eat and had managed to put on a few pounds.

“Besides,” she added, “you are with child. Gaining weight is inevitable, you know.”

“But not this early on,” Serena said with a groan.

Meg reached for the strings from the maid. “May I help?” she asked, suddenly feeling shy. She and Serena had dressed each other from the time they could walk. But now, it seemed… awkward. Serena had someone else to do it for her.

Serena’s gray eyes flitted toward her. “Of course,” she said quickly. “You may go, Flannery. I will call for you if I need anything else.”

“Yes, my lady.” With a shy smile in Meg’s direction, the maid exited from the room.

Meg worked on Serena’s stays in silence. She managed the strings with practiced ease—she’d spent many an hour helping Sarah with her stays, too.

“Is something wrong?” Serena asked after a few minutes.

“What makes you say that?”

Serena’s grin was wry as she looked at her sister in the mirror. “You don’t make it a habit of coming into my room while I’m dressing.”

Meg felt even more awkward. Her hands stilled on the strings. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Should I go?”

“You should not.”

Looking down, Meg tugged on the strings one final time, then began to tie them. “Remember how we used to help each other dress?”

“Of course I do. How could I forget?”

“I don’t know. It was so long ago, it all feels like a dream. It doesn’t even seem real anymore.”

“Oh, it was real.”

Meg turned to fetch Serena’s petticoat, which was lying over a nearby chair. As she helped her sister into it, she said, “I came… Well, I wanted to ask you something about Will.”

Serena nodded, but her shoulders stiffened. Serena had been rather tight-lipped when it came to Will. It was obvious that she and Will cared about each other, but Serena rarely spoke of him in Meg’s presence.

“What about him?” The petticoat settled around Serena’s shins, and she reached for her blue silk dinner dress hanging from the nearby clothes press.

“Why didn’t you tell me about his boy?” Meg couldn’t help the edge of despair that colored her tone.

Serena’s empty hand dropped. Slowly she turned to face Meg. “You know about Thomas?”

“I do.”

“Did he… tell you about him? Introduce the two of you?”

“Yes.” Meg gazed down at the Persian carpet cushioning her feet. “Both.”

“I’m glad.”

Meg didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she clenched them at her sides as she looked back up at Serena. “Why didn’t you tell me about him sooner? Why did you let me find out… that way?” The words seemed to be emerging faster than she could control them. “How could you have let me continue on so long blind to the fact that Will has a child?”

Serena sank into the chair her petticoat had been lying over. “Oh, Meg. I am sorry. I just… it was his secret to tell you… or not. It wasn’t for me to reveal such a thing to you.”

“I didn’t want to hear it from him, Serena.”

“I’m sure you didn’t want to hear it at all.”

Meg gave her sister a bleak look. Serena sighed. “Meg… surely you see it. He is devoted to you. He still looks at you the same way he used to.”