Louise Allen Historical Collection (22 page)

Ross made no attempt to engage any of the young ladies in conversation and completely ignored the sulky youth, instead drawing both the married ladies into the discussion of the rebuilding of the nearby church tower.

Mr Pengilly got up and slouched over to the window next to where Meg waited behind the tea things, ready to refresh cups or pass biscuits. Seventeen, with aspirations to dandyism, she decided after a fleeting glance at his towering collar-points and the exaggerated cut of his lapels. He shifted restlessly, walking close behind her. One hand settled firmly over her right buttock, the fingers closing to squeeze.

Meg bit back the instinctive gasp of outrage and stepped back, her heel making contact with his toes before she put all her weight on that foot. With a muffled oath he jerked away and everyone turned to look at them.

Meg put all the concern she could into her voice despite her cheeks burning with indignation and embarrassment. ‘Mr Pengilly, I do apologise! Did I step on your toes? I had no idea you were so close.’

‘You—’ He was furious, as flushed as she must be, then Meg saw him catch Ross’s eye and he subsided. ‘The slightest touch. It was nothing.’ He flung himself into a chair on the far side of the room and turned what he doubtless thought was a brooding Byronic profile to them all.

The two parties left together after rather more than the normal half-hour, which probably meant it was a success, of sorts. Ross came back and shut the door with an emphasis that sent the curtains flapping in the sudden draught before she could reach the bell to ring for the tea things to be cleared.

‘I’m surprised those were the first gentlemen to call,’ she remarked, her attention on the unstable arrangements of biscuits.

‘I’m meeting them as I’m riding round with Tremayne,’ Ross said curtly. ‘What the devil was that puppy Pengilly about?’

‘He put his hand on my…behind me. So I trod on his toes.’

‘And was Jago flirting with you?’ Ross picked up a biscuit as he passed the table and ate it whole in one snap. ‘He was holding your hand.’

Those biscuits were looking extremely attractive to a woman who wanted to sink her teeth into something—or up-end the plate over Ross Brandon’s raven-black head.

‘He is a nice young man who realised that I was upset when I was giving him a letter for my sisters and he held my hand for a moment to comfort me,’ she said calmly, as though addressing a short-tempered hound.

‘What was there to be upset about?’ He frowned at her. ‘He will find them for you, I am sure.’

‘You insensitive gommuck!’ Oh, yes, that was a very fine word. Suddenly very weary of controlling her feelings, soothing his, Meg shoved Ross hard in the middle of his chest. He rocked back on his heels, but did not shift his position. ‘I haven’t heard from them in years, I do not know if they are well and happy—or even alive! I want to just rush up there, not send a stranger.

‘I love my sisters. How would you feel if you came back to England after all those years abroad and had no idea what had happened to Giles? Am I not allowed to feel any anxiety or to cling for a moment to someone who shows me a sympathetic, smiling face?’

‘I am sorry,’ Ross said, his teeth still gritted. ‘I saw him with his hands on you and something…I should know you better. It was not rational,’ he added doubtfully.

‘He is a nice person, he makes me feel secure. I have confidence that he will help me.’ His hands were heavy, trapping her shoulders in a grip that had only to tighten to crush her bones. ‘What is the matter with you?’

‘He touched you. They both did. It made me angry and now I have alarmed you.’ He stroked his fingertips down her flushed cheek. ‘I am sorry, Meg.’

‘I can take care of myself.’

‘Can you? Have you any idea what you want?’ Her heart was slamming against her ribs and she had no idea whether the vibration running through her was her own body or his, trembling.

‘Yes, I want you. We both know that. But it is not…not…’ Meg wrestled for the words to explain her confused feelings. ‘I will not sell myself to you, Ross Brandon.’
Tell me you love me
, she thought hopelessly.
I know you will break my heart, but love me…

Denying him seemed the hardest thing she had ever had to do, harder than facing the shocked and scandalised faces of the ladies of the regiment after James had disappeared, harder than pretending she was another man’s lover only weeks after being labelled a sinful adulteress, harder by far than it had been at the time to elope, heedless and innocent in the July dawn, leaving her sisters behind her. But she just did not think she had the strength to cope with the inevitable pain.

‘Then give yourself.’ She was in his arms, carried against his broad chest as he strode towards the sofa, before she could catch her breath. ‘Take me,’ Ross said as he went down on to the broad satin seat with her tumbled in his embrace.

H
is mouth was hard and demanding and utterly ruthless on hers. It asked no questions, for he knew what he was doing, where he was going and he was no more prepared to discuss it with her, Meg thought as she tried to find the strength and the will to fight him, than he would have discussed his orders with his men.

On the terrace she had gone willingly into his arms and now he was not going to give her the opportunity to explain or argue or reason with him.
I want you
, she had said just now and he was taking her at her word.

Ross’s weight was on her, his hands were at her breast, then at her waist, then, as lawn and cotton slid over her skin, on her thigh with her skirts rumpling up under the pressure of his fingers. And his mouth never left hers, capturing her gasps, her moans, her protests that were as much at her own response as at his onslaught on her.

She was losing herself in him, in his heat and in the scent of him, his strength, his masculinity. The reasons why she should say no to him were slipping away from her like mist under the first rays of the sun and all that was left was the delicious, aching torment of wanting and touching and being touched.

Ross’s hand found the soft mound at the junction of her thighs, cupped it, wringing a moan from her lips that had him raising his head to look down into her face. His eyes were black, intense, deep with arousal and emotion and everything female in her responded to that look.

‘Ross…’

‘Mine,’ he said hoarsely, burying his face in the angle of her neck, his teeth rasping over the quivering flesh, nipping at the tendons with a delicacy that his strength belied. ‘You are mine. I will not have other men touching you.’

The possessiveness shocked Meg’s eyes open. She stared over Ross’s disordered hair at the table still laid out with the tea things, at a display of jade bowls. They were in the Salon, on the sofa, in broad daylight and her entire body was flooded with feelings so overwhelming, so thrilling, that they were almost painful. This was the truth of what she felt for him, of what he made her feel. This was not for a tumble on the sofa, this was something else entirely, something precious and wonderful and utterly terrifying. ‘No. Ross, stop! Someone could come in at any moment, we are in the Salon, for goodness’ sake—’

‘Then come up to my bed.’ He raised his head and fixed her with a look that spoke of raw sensuality and need. ‘You are mine and you know it.’

‘I am not yours.’
Not yet, not like this.
Meg realised that his fingers were still laced into the intimate, damp, tangle of curls, still sending quivering darts of lust through her belly and down the inside of her thighs. ‘Stop it, take your hand off me… Let me go!’ She wanted him so much it was an almost physical pain as he left her, thrust himself off the sofa and stood staring down at her, baffled desire and anger etched on his face.

‘Come to my bed, Meg,’ he repeated.

‘No. You think I am yours and I tell you I am not. I am no man’s.’ She dragged her skirts down, almost panting with reaction, the words all wrong because of the one she dare not use to him, her agitation emerging as anger when all she wanted was to sob out her feelings in his arms. ‘You are so strong—’

‘You think I would force you? Was I forcing you just now?’

‘No! I mean your personality is so strong. You command, you demand, you expect obedience. You expect to get what you want. And I must stand up to you or I will go down like wheat before the scythe and I will hate myself for it. And I will hate you,’ she flung at him as she got to her feet and went to the looking glass, her fingers desperate amongst pins and lace to order her hair and set her cap back on her head.

‘You own this house, this land, your title. But you do not own me.’ The long hair pins hurt her skull as she jammed them back. A good pain, a deserved one. ‘My father owned me, my husband owned me—now nobody does. You pay my wages,’ she told him in the mirror, his face a stark reflection over her right shoulder, ‘and for that you get my services as a housekeeper.’
I love you and I need you to love me too, or my heart will break and I am too weak to bear it.
And she was too weak to say the words and face his rejection, the truth that he wanted her body and that was all.

‘You would deny yourself?’ he said softly, moving up until he stood directly behind her, speaking to her reflection as she had to his. ‘Just to keep me in my place?’

‘No, that is not why.’ Meg whirled to face him, refusing to move aside when he stood his ground, however much her knees were trembling. She could not say what she felt and the frustration was making the words tumble out heedlessly as she snatched at excuses. ‘
Mine
, you said. I am not one of your fields or coppices for you to put a fence round and nail a
No Trespassing
sign to.’

‘You are saying I am jealous?’ Ross laughed, a short, mirthless sound.

‘I am saying you are territorial and possessive, my lord. You are beginning to fill your father’s shoes very well.’

That was unforgivable, she knew it as soon as the words left her mouth. Ross had confided in her about his relations with his father, had given her a glimpse of what the late Lord Brandon had been and how he had scarred the boy whose dark eyes stared at her from the man’s face. Now she had told him he was turning into that person.

Perhaps his deep reluctance at coming back was not only sadness at what he had lost or the guilt that had tormented him over Giles’s death, but fear of becoming the man his father was. The thoughts flashed through her mind even as his expression began to change, to close against her, every emotion masked behind the harsh bleak face she had recoiled from at first sight on the dockside.

‘I…I am sorry, Ross.’
What have I done? No… undone. All the peace that his meditation by Giles’s grave had given him dissolved into anger.

He held up a hand for her silence. ‘No. Don’t say anything.’

Somehow Ross got himself out of the Chinese Salon before he started to shake. The pain in his wounded leg was a nauseating ache. He must have knocked it when…when he had lost his mind, picked up his housekeeper and began ravishing her on the sofa in an unlocked room in broad daylight.

He had to get out of the house before he either went back in there, dragged her upstairs and finished what he had begun or—

‘My lord!’

‘Heneage, are you unwell?’ Ross put out a hand to steady the butler who had walked round the corner without seeing him and was now white to the lips. How old was the man? Was his heart affected?

‘I am quite well, my lord. Forgive me—it is just that I did not hear you and you looked, for a moment, so like his late lordship when he was displeased that I was quite taken aback.’

Ross stood there in his own hall, all the surging frustration and anger and misery of his childhood building up in him like a fermenting wine bottle that was ready to blow. He had schooled himself never to show those feelings, never to give his father the satisfaction of seeing how effective his disapproval, his punishments, his scowling anger were at withering his son’s heart. He had fought back with insolence and disobedience and that, in part, was why Giles’s accident happened.

‘I am sorry I gave you a shock, Heneage. You are not seeing ghosts.’
But I am.
‘I am going out. My apologies to Mrs Harris, but I will not be in for dinner.’

‘Very good, my lord.’ The butler was recovering his colour. ‘Shall I send round to the stables for your horse, my lord?’

‘No, I’ll saddle up myself.’ Ross paused with one foot on the bottom stair on his way to pull on a pair of breeches and topboots. The thought of waiting patiently for even ten minutes was intolerable. He had to get out of the house, away from Meg. Away, if that were possible, from himself.