Pleasures of a Tempted Lady Page 3

  “I am happy for you,” she said quietly, meaning it.

  “Thank you.” His gaze lingered on her face and then swept lower. Feeling suddenly shy, she resisted the urge to cover the front of her bodice with the blanket.

  He frowned a little. “This is… difficult, I’m afraid. I’ve no lady on board to assist you with your needs.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve no need of help, but thank you for the thought.”

  “We haven’t any clothes, nor have we the convenience of a bath for you. I’m very sorry.”

  “That’s quite all right.” Once Caversham had had a bath for her, Sarah, and Jake, but he’d had it thrown overboard before Sarah died. The bathtub had been one of the many things he’d blamed for causing Sarah’s fever. Meg hadn’t had a bath in months, but she’d become adept at bathing herself with a cloth and basin.

  “All I can offer you is fresh, warm water.”

  “We’d appreciate that.” Her body was covered in salt and grime, and so was Jake’s. Squeezing a wet cloth over her face might help clear her muddled brain.

  “I might be able to find some clothes for the boy.” He tapped his fingers on his chin. “Guernsey, one of my sailors, is a dwarf and about the same height but a mite wide, I daresay. We’ll have to cinch his belt.”

  She glanced down at Jake. His cherubic face was streaked with dirt, and his shirt was so soiled it was impossible to tell that it had once been white. She gave him a mock-stern look. “You were sleeping in the bilge again, weren’t you?”

  He nodded, and Meg sighed. Jake had been fearful of sailing in the small jolly boat, and whenever a bit of a wave splashed over the bulwark, he had squeaked in terror and dived into the bilge. The child was born at sea and had spent most of his life there, but despite the fact that his knot-tying abilities were as good as some sailors’ four times his age, she had never known a soul less suited to be a sailor.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t any clothes for you, though.” Captain Langley—no, he was and always would be Will to her—gave her a rueful smile. “In fact, I believe you’re the first lady to ever step foot on the Freedom.”

  “The Freedom,” she repeated, liking the sound of the ship’s name on her tongue. “I’m honored to be the first woman aboard. But about the clothes, I’ll manage.” She thrust aside the counterpane that still covered her lap, swung her legs off the side of the bed, and when the dizziness faded and she was certain of her balance, she took stock of her dress. It was truly a disaster—her skirts were torn and streaked with dirt and grease, and the lacy overdress covering her bodice was in shreds. It was a near-hopeless cause, really.

  By the look on his face, Will had come to the same conclusion. His brow furrowed. Then he met her eyes and said, very softly, “I don’t want any man to see you like this.”

  She was too stunned by the words to point out the fact that it was likely that most of his crew had seen her in even worse condition when they’d brought her aboard.

  “I’ll find something,” he added.

  It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel shy. It was like the Meg of eight years ago, the Meg she’d thought long dead, was rising from a very long slumber.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  Will reached out for Jake’s hand. “Come along, lad. We’ll find some hot water and some clothes for you.”

  Jake clutched Meg’s arm and stared at Will, who gave him a kind smile. “Do you know what I had the cook bake today?”

  Jake looked at Meg, then back to Will.

  “Peach pies.” Will winked. “He swears they stave off scurvy, but I just like the crust and the sugar sauce. Do you like peach pie?”

  Jake nodded, and to Meg’s surprise, he slowly reached out to take Will’s hand.

  “Good,” Will said. “We’ll give your mama some time alone, but we’ll return directly, all right?”

  Jake nodded again.

  Meg winced. Your mama.

  Well, in a way, it was true. She was all Jake had now, and she’d make good on her promise to Sarah. She’d be a mother to him, no matter what.

  “Come along.” Will glanced at Meg. “We’ll talk more later. For now, I think it’s most important for you to get cleaned up and feeling better.”

  Will led Jake out to the deck. Meg stared at the door for a long moment after it closed behind them. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Jake go off with a stranger so easily. Usually, and for good reason, it took him weeks to warm up to a person.

  Then again, Jake trusted Meg like he’d never trusted another soul, and she’d told him that Will was a good man. He’d 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, but because 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, a lieutenant 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 have learned 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 they poured into the basin. They diligently kept their eyes averted, making her wonder if Will had ordered them not to look at her.

  Will handed her the clothes for Jake, then he held up a pair of trousers and a clean white linen shirt that looked like they would fit a small adult. “I probably shouldn’t even offer these, but they look as though they might fit, and perhaps offer more… coverage than the dress.”

  She took them gratefully. “They will, thank you. And if you have a needle and thread, I can mend the dress.”

  He looked relieved. “Yes, of course. I’ll have them brought straightaway.”

  The men hurried out of the room without glancing in their direction, and Jake wandered over to the basin to draw his fingers through the water.

  “I’ll leave you to your toilette, then,” Will said. “Afterward, I’ll have some food brought. If you’re hungry, that is.”

  “Yes. Thank you again.” Despite the fuzzy head and the nausea, she felt half starved. She’d eaten very little in the past few days. They hadn’t had the time to steal much from the Defiant before they’d escaped, and she’d given most of it to Jake.

  “And then we’ll talk,” Will said, his voice low.

  He’d ask questions, demand details about why she and Jake had been sailing alone in a jolly boat in the middle of the Irish Sea. And after saving her and assuring her safety, he deserved answers.

  The question was, could she manage to tell Will all the lies she’d planned to tell?

  Chapter Three

  Will stood on the stern of the Freedom, barely registering the sun as it slipped behind the layer of clouds and fog that separated the horizon from the sky. He fought to keep his feet stationary on the deck, to prevent himself from striding back into his quarters and demanding answers.

  Meg intended to go to Ireland. Why?

  There was so much Will didn’t understand. Why wasn’t she looking for her family, for her sisters? And Ireland, of all places? He knew her father was Irish, but her mother’s people, the branch of her family with the most connections, were in England. As were her sisters.

  When he’d known her, Meg had adored her four sisters. Now, she didn’t even speak of them, and when he’d brought them up, she’d grown vague and distant.

  Meg was different. Changed. More reserved, more guarded than she’d been before. She’d grown up. Her innocence of so many years ago had vanished. As his own had.

  She was still so damn beautiful. The differences between her and her twin, Serena, were subtle. They were almost completely identical in looks, except Serena had been in society for over a year now, and her skin had lightened and her body had filled out. Meg was thinner but not frail, and she had obviously been outdoors more—the splash of freckles across her nose had become more pronounced rather than faded, like Serena’s had. Her hair, too, was a shade lighter than her sister’s, bleached by the sun.

  Personality-wise, the years of separation had seemed to bring them closer rather than further apart. Eight years ago, Meg had been the shy, demure one. He still saw that sense of shyness in her—that tendency toward reticence and to blush and look away when something embarrassed her. But she was a woman now, and it was clear to him that she had a goal she didn’t intend to stray from.

  What was that goal?

  Will wasn’t the sort of man who demanded answers. He always bided his time and waited. Hadn’t he, just this morning, chided Briggs for his impatience?

  But, God, he wanted answers. He needed them.

  And he wanted to look at her again. To touch her and make sure she was real and not some extended fantastical dream.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, welcoming the image of the little boy who’d refused to speak but wouldn’t remove his grip from Will’s hand as he gorged himself on peach pie.

  Meg obviously loved her son. Perhaps the boy was at the root of her change. With a son to protect, she would fight for his needs now; when before she was so easygoing he’d had to remind her to ask for what she really wanted rather than constantly allowing other people to make her choices for her.

  “Changing course, eh?”

  Will opened his eyes to see that Briggs had come to stand beside him.

  “Yes. I intend to take Miss Donovan”—how was it that he didn’t know whether that was still her name?—“to her family in London. She and I will disembark in Plymouth. You’ll replenish our supplies, and then I want you to continue to the search for the smuggler off the coast between Falmouth and Penzance.”

  Briggs merely raised a brow at this information, and Will continued, “I’m leaving you in command of the Freedom, Briggs. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t sink her.”

  Briggs’s lips twisted. “If you’re worried I’ll sink her, perhaps you shouldn’t leave me in command.”

  Will chuckled softly. “I’m not worried. You know I trust you.” As a sailor, he trusted Briggs more than anyone. Will could count the number of gentlemen he trusted on one hand, and Briggs was among them—even though his first mate wasn’t technically a gentleman.

  Briggs was a middle son in a long string of Briggses. A hard worker but entirely ignored by his family, he’d struggled through the ranks of the Navy on his own. After his near-fatal injury in the battle of Gramvousa two years ago, he’d gone home to recover, but his parents had both died since he’d joined the Navy, and he was politely turned away at his brother’s door and given the excuse that the house was full.

  He’d returned to London, where Will, having just left the Navy himself, took him in, helped him heal, and hired him into his fledgling shipping company.

  Briggs looked out over the gray waves, his face etched in severe lines, his scar wind-reddened. Will couldn’t fathom what weighed so heavily on Briggs’s mind, but Will himself was still engaged in the battle to refrain from rushing back to Meg.

  After a moment, Briggs asked, “How is it that you know Miss Donovan, Captain?”

  Will hesitated. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about. But Briggs was a trusted friend, and the truth of Meg’s identity would be common knowledge soon enough. In any case, it was better that Briggs learned it from him than someone else.

  “I intended to marry her eight years ago.”

  Briggs cut him a look of astonishment. “That woman?”

  “That very one.”

  Briggs let out a whistling breath. “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story,” Will warned.

  Briggs shrugged. “We’ve got all night, haven’t we?”

  They didn’t, really. Soon, enough time would have passed that Meg and Jake would have completed their toilette and he could bring them their dinner. He slid a glance toward Briggs.

  “Her twin sister is the Countess of Stratford.” That would probably confuse the hell out of Briggs, but it would also bring to light the monumental nature of Meg’s reappearance into the world.

  Briggs was silent for a moment, but Will watched as his lips slowly turned down into a frown. Finally, Briggs said, “I see two impossibilities in that. The first is that, if I recall it right and if the gossip is correct, the Countess of Stratford’s twin perished some years ago. Second, isn’t the countess’s given name Margaret? How is it possible for twin sisters to have the same name?”

  “I told you it’s a long story.”

  “Perhaps you should tell it from the beginning, then.”

  Standing there, with the cold breeze ruffling his hair and the waves slapping against the hull of his ship as it forged toward England, Will told Briggs all of what had happened between himself and the twi
n sisters whose lives had become inextricably entwined with his own, Meg and Serena Donovan.

  Well, he told Briggs almost the entire story. He left out those moments—so many of them—that would always be for him and Meg alone.

  “Meg and her twin sister came to England eight years ago,” he began. “They were raised on a sugar plantation in the West Indies, but their father had died some years earlier, and their mother sent them to London for a Season with the hope they’d find husbands. Meg and I… grew very fond of each other.”

  He hesitated, trying to calm his pounding heart. Even now, speaking of that time made his blood heat and surge through his veins. Taking a deep breath, he continued. “During the same period, Serena made the acquaintance of Stratford. While Meg and I tried desperately to be discreet, Serena and Stratford put little thought into discretion. In the middle of the Season, they were caught in an… ah… extremely compromising position at a ball, and a tremendous scandal ensued.”

  Briggs frowned. “I’m not part of all that beau monde stuff and nonsense, but even I recall that scandal.”

  Will tightened his fingers over the gunwale. “Serena and Meg were sent back to Antigua in disgrace. On their journey home, Meg fell overboard and was lost at sea. But since they were perfectly identical and since Serena’s reputation was ruined beyond repair, their mother believed that if Serena took on Meg’s identity, she might still be able to find a proper husband. Everyone knew of Serena’s disgrace, and Mrs. Donovan felt that if Serena didn’t become Meg, her future was in true peril.”

  Briggs’s lips parted in shock. “And she agreed? To steal the identity of her twin?”

  Will gave a grim nod. “Eventually. She wasn’t offered much of a choice. By the time Serena learned about it, her mother had already sent news of ‘Serena’s’ death to England. Serena herself was placed in a thorny situation—if she told the world the truth, she would compromise her family’s reputation. However, it was difficult for her to pretend to be Meg, whose personality was very different from her own.”