Pleasures of a Tempted Lady

by Jennifer Haymore

  “Good afternoon, Thomas,” Meg said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  Jake just stared at Thomas, who turned in Will’s arms and stared back.

  “How old are you?” she asked him.

  He flicked a glance at Meg before returning his gaze to Jake. “Seven,” he said sullenly.

  “I see.” Seven? Good Lord… Will had gotten a woman with child not long after she’d fallen overboard, then. Pain lanced through her, but she kept herself steady, doggedly keeping her gaze off Will. “Jake, darling, can you tell Thomas how old you are?”

  Jake didn’t move from his position on the sofa. Meg knew he wouldn’t answer, so she answered for him. “Jake is six years old.”

  “Hullo,” Thomas said.

  Jake frowned at him, and Meg smiled at Thomas. “Jake hasn’t known very many other little boys,” she explained.

  “Why not?” Thomas asked.

  “He’s been on a ship most of his life. There were no other boys there.”

  Thomas looked intrigued. “A ship? I like ships.” He glanced at Will. “My papa is the captain of a ship.”

  Jake scowled.

  “He says someday I will be a captain, too. Right, Papa?”

  “That’s right,” Will said. “If that’s what you wish to be.”

  The way he looked at the boy with such a gentle expression—it made something clench deep inside Meg. Once, she had believed she’d be the mother of Will’s children. But this handsome child was proof that that wasn’t to be.

  “Papa bought me a fleet of model ships to play with, and big tubs that I sail them in,” Thomas said. “Would you like to play with them with me?”

  Jake’s expression didn’t change, and he didn’t answer.

  “Where are your ships?” Meg asked Thomas. It was miraculous that she was managing to hold a conversation, because the gears in her mind felt like they were whirring at a thousand miles an hour.

  “They are upstairs, in my bedchamber. Papa created an entire ocean for them up there!”

  Meg raised a brow at Will. “Well, that’s something I’d certainly like to see. May I join you?”

  “All right.”

  “Jake, would you like to see Thomas’s ships?”

  Without breaking his frown, Jake nodded.

  They all went upstairs, Thomas leading the way. When he opened the door to his bedchamber, both Jake’s and Meg’s eyes widened. “Goodness!” Meg exclaimed. “It is like an ocean.”

  A wide, deep trough ran along two of the walls. Several small replicas of ships floated in the calm waters. One looked very similar to the Freedom.

  Will cleared his throat and gestured toward one end of the trough. “There is a drain leading from the bottom to the sewer. We drain and fill it often to keep it clean.”

  “It’s amazing,” Meg said. What little boy wouldn’t love to have such a wonderful toy?

  Jake pulled away from her and strode to the Freedom replica with purpose in his step. Cautiously, he reached out and touched one of the canvas sails. “Freedom,” he whispered.

  “Yes!” Thomas exclaimed. “That’s my papa’s newest ship!”

  Thomas went to stand beside Jake, and as he began to point out the features of the Freedom, Meg watched Jake relax. Even though her pulse still fluttered unevenly and unshed tears stung behind her eyes, something inside her softened. Jake needed to make friends.

  Will and Meg stepped back and watched the boys as they grew more comfortable with each other. After about a half hour, when Jake was captaining the Freedom and Thomas another of the ships, Will murmured, “Shall we return to the drawing room?”

  Meg hesitated. Jake was likely to panic if he found himself alone in a strange place without her, yet he seemed more than happy at the moment. “Jake,” she said, interrupting his order to his imaginary sailors to haul up, a command he’d heard thousands of time in his short life, “would you mind very much if Captain Langley and I returned to the drawing room?”

  “I want to play,” he said.

  “You may continue to play, but we’ll be downstairs. All right?”

  “You’ll be here?”

  “Yes, I’ll be here in the house. Just downstairs.”

  “All right,” Jake said simply, and went back to his maneuver.

  Meg nodded to Will, and they returned downstairs. As they neared the drawing room, a maid intercepted them and told them that luncheon was ready.

  “Do you think the boys are hungry?” Will asked.

  “I think they’re likely to play till sundown without one twinge of hunger.”

  “Why don’t we eat first, then have a maid bring a tray up to them?”

  “That sounds fine,” Meg said.

  Will nodded, then opened the dining room door for her. He held out one of the chairs for her to be seated in, then he took the chair beside it, at the head of the table.

  The servants quickly cleared away the two extra places that had been set, and Meg registered the fact that Will had planned to eat with the children. She knew from experience that many upper-crust families segregated the children and the adults at mealtimes, and she’d never understood that practice. Her family in Antigua had always eaten together—it was something their father had been adamant about.

  “How can ye be a family in truth,” he’d ask in the Irish brogue all of them had loved, “without discussin’ yer day at the table?”

  Their mother hadn’t complained about this practice, because it gave her the opportunity to teach her daughters excellent table manners, a task she took very seriously. After their father died, their mother had become stricter and she’d grown even more convinced that her daughters needed to be raised to be aristocratic ladies. Nevertheless, eating together as a family was one practice she’d never abandoned.

  The meal was light: a mix of breads, cheeses, and two soups to choose from. As had become their practice, they ate in silence. Meg wanted to speak. There was so much she wanted to say, to ask… And perhaps it made her a shrew, but there were certain accusations tumbling around in her mind, and she had to bite her tongue not to snap them out at Will.

  “You must have many questions,” Will said quietly. He wasn’t eating, she realized, just watching her with sad eyes.

  She jerked her head up to face him and swallowed hard. “I do.”

  He pushed away his plate. “I should have told you sooner, but it never seemed the right time. We’ve had so many other things to discuss, to work out. But I couldn’t keep him a secret from you, Meg.”

  “I can tell you’ve been a wonderful father to him. He seems like a very well-adjusted child.” Each word felt caustic on her tongue.

  “No. I have been a very poor father. I didn’t see him at all until a year and a half ago.” He looked down at the table. “I’ve been attempting to make it up to him ever since.”

  “Ah.” She supposed that explained the extravagant ship models and ocean upstairs.

  “Fortunately, though, he had a good fatherly role model to look up to before I came into his life. Stratford.”

  Meg’s eyes went wide. “My brother-in-law?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is the child’s mother?”

  “I should tell you the whole story, from the beginning.”

  She nodded.

  “I fear it will make you hate me.”

  The food suddenly felt like a lump of coal in her stomach. She was unable to answer, unable to guarantee that she could never hate him. Could one love someone and hate them at the same time? Perhaps, she thought. If she could name the contradictory feelings roiling inside her right now, those two words might appear.

  She, too, pushed away her plate.

  Will sighed, seemingly resigned. “Come into the drawing room with me?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice as thin as her composure.

  He helped her from her chair and then followed her to the drawing room. She took one of the blue armchairs, avoiding the sofa because she didn’t want to risk
him sitting beside her.

  From the first moment she’d recognized him after all these years, she’d tried to distance herself from him. First it was for his own safety, and she’d failed with that. Then it was because she felt they were strangers to each other after all the time that had passed. Now, she realized she didn’t really know this man, and perhaps she never really had. The Will she’d known had been so constant. Never—not for one second—would she have second-guessed his fidelity.

  Before he sat, Will poured two brandies and handed one to her. She took it but set it on the small carved wood table beside her chair without taking a sip.

  Nursing his own brandy, he began to speak.

  “After you left London with Serena eight years ago, I was due to go to sea with the Navy. However, at the last minute it was discovered our ship required repairs and our departure would be delayed by at least a month.

  “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.

&
nbsp; “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.