A Lady's Wish (2 page)

His gaze shifted across the chamber. As a younger son without prospects, profession, or wealth, he had not been welcome at clubs like this. Now he had the funds to match men like Alex Savege at the gaming tables any day he wished.

He did not particularly wish it. And he did not wish a wife, either. Not yet. Not until he finally rid himself of asinine memories and foolish regrets. Ashford’s offer was preferable to enduring his six-month-long furlough in the state he’d spent the past fortnight. The viscount had named an April 1 sailing date. Nik would accept that offer. Until then this treasure hunt would fill the time.

The fifteenth of March. Less than a fortnight. And the destination—the Shropshire Hills—where, on a sparkling May Day he had met a girl whose name he never learned. A girl he had laughingly called Isolde, after the heroine in the medieval play performed that day at the festival. Foolish devil-may-care youth that he had been, he’d told her to call him Tristan.

Tristan and Isolde, lovers who defeated all obstacles to be together until fate tore them apart.

Now, still he could not forget her. And again it was driving him mad.

He drew a long breath. He must move on with his life. Perhaps a visit to that place after so long would serve him as eight years upon the ocean had not. Perhaps seeing that tiny village again in the gray dripping rain of March rather than beneath the early summer sun would knock him into finally admitting that she had in fact been what he always feared.

Simply a dream.

Chapter Two

T
he prong would not budge.

Lady Patricia Morgan pressed her ribs into the edge of her worktable and squinted her eyes in the lamplight, as though such wiggling would make the tiny metal protrusion obey. Her breaths came tight and focused, her brow creased. But no matter how she prodded with the tip of the needle-thin pliers, the filigree of gold would not move across the tiny diamond’s girdle.

“You wish to remain in that little divot of a flaw I did not see until it was too late, don’t you?” she muttered to the recalcitrant prong. “But you will see, I will . . . Ah . . .” The pliers grasped just so, and she felt the certainty of it in her fingertips. “Oh . . .” Her breaths came quick and short, her teeth clenching. “Oo . . .”

“Tricky! A letter has arrived for you from Oliver’s solicitors.”

The pliers slipped, glancing off Patricia’s thumb with a scrape of skin. Glaring at the delicate band of gold and diamonds fixed in the ring clamp, she reached for a cloth and enclosed her thumb in it.

“Thank you, Calanthia. You may leave it on the table.” She glanced at her younger sister then returned her attention to the array of tools beside her. She hadn’t any smaller pliers, and this particular ring would not bear anything larger.

“Didn’t you receive a letter from them only last week?” Calanthia set the envelope at Patricia’s elbow and plopped down in the soft chair beside her stool. There was not space in the chamber for more than the three pieces of furniture and her work chest. But she needn’t any more space in which to make the rings. Only solitude.

Solitude was hard-won in the Morgan household.

“Your nephew’s estate requires a great deal of managing.” She ran her fingertips through her tools, trusting. They often found what they needed best when she allowed them to feel their way naturally. “How happy I might have been as a tinker’s daughter.”

“Don’t say that near the dowager. She despises tinkers.” Calanthia twirled a short strand of shimmering carroty hair between her fingers. “She despises all tradesmen. A man from the butcher’s came around the other day and she nearly took a strap to him, though I haven’t any idea what the poor fellow could have said to send her flying into the boughs like that.”

That they had not paid their bills in a month and he would cease delivering to the stylish London townhouse of young Sir John Morgan if his mother would not deliver some coin in return.

“My mother-in-law is of a sensitive nature.” Her fingers paused. The Swiss file! She would shave the nasty little prong into submission.

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Not now, dear.” She set the file to the ring. It would be tricky . . . “And please, Callie, do not let Lady Morgan hear you calling me that again. She believes it is beneath me.”

“But you don’t. May I open it?”

“Be my guest.” It was probably time Calanthia understood the straits in which Patricia’s sons were now. Poor handling of Oliver’s funds by his former solicitors while he served in Spain had depleted the estate. Only now, after three and a half years of careful planning and the dedicated work of a new steward, was it returning slowly to order.

A pinch established itself between her shoulders and worked its way up her neck.

She had hoped to remain in London until funds would come from the countryside. But this news of the butcher boded ill. They must soon remove again to the remote estate upon which Oliver had sequestered her for five years, until he perished in Spain and she had been free to move to London as she had long desired.

She glanced at Calanthia unfolding the pages and her heart caught. Her energetic young sister filled the house with good spirit. But Patricia could not afford to bring her out into society as she deserved. Callie must go live with their brother, Timothy, and his wife. She could not very well throw out Oliver’s nasty mother or dear old maiden aunt, after all.

She returned her attention to the ring. The diamonds were barely chips. But they were all she could afford.

It would be the last one. This she must also give up, her single passion other than her sons. Her only passions since she had relinquished any hope of ever experiencing any other sort of passion. The sort of passion of which she had once dreamed.

The pinch became a pain.

“Mama! Mama! Ramsay has bit me again!”

Two small tempests exploded into the room, carrot-headed like their aunt and entirely unlike Patricia’s brown hair, knocking her table and sending her tools flying.

“I did not! John is lying!”

“I am not.” Her eldest son, six and full of the consequence due a baronet and in perfect imitation of the father he had barely known, drew himself up to his slender height and lifted his chin. “Mama, I will not have this insub— insubnordention in my house. You must send Ramsay off to school at once.”

“Beast!” Ramsay banded his little arms about her waist and buried his face in her smock.

Setting down the file, she stroked her hand over her younger son’s soft curls and took a thoughtful breath, the ache in her head intensifying. She looked into her elder son’s pale eyes and spoke softly.

“John, I believe you may find it more effective to address insubordination with mercy and education about right behavior rather than threats of exile.” She bent to speak over Ramsay’s head. “And you, Ramsay, will discover that if you cease attacking your brother with your teeth he will love you more greatly and not wish to see you gone.”

“But he—” came muffled from her waist. “He said that— that tall man with the red waistcoat was to be our new papa, and I do not like that man.”

“Hm. I see.” Patricia returned her gaze to her eldest. “John, why did you tell your brother that?”

“Grandmamma said it. She said a lady with two sons must have a husband and that Lord Perth is to be our new papa.”

Pain leapt right over Patricia’s brow and down behind her eyes.

“Well, your grandmother likes Lord Perth, that is true. But I have no plans for him to become your new papa. If I should even begin considering it, however, I will consult with you first.” She kissed Ramsay’s curls. “Will that suit you?”

He lifted his head, his cheeks ruddy and damp. “Yes, Mama. Thank you, Mama.”

“And you, John?”

“Yes, Mama. I beg your pardon for telling an untruth.” But his face was too severe, too serious for a boy of six. He wished for a father. He had told Patricia this many times, from nearly the moment he could speak. Uncle Timothy was not enough, he once confided. He wished for a papa of his own.

“Now then, Nurse must be looking for you to put you to bed. I shall be up in a trice to tuck you in.” She kissed her younger son on the top of his head and stroked her fingertips along John’s cheek. The boys turned and stumbled through a quintet of fat little tawny dogs pushing into Patricia’s workroom. Her mother-in-law appeared where her sons had been. Arrayed in bronze taffeta with a spray of black feathers jutting from a bandeau, with yet another pug in her arms, the Dowager Lady Morgan took in the scene with a pinched nose.

“You missed another exemplary musical fete, daughter. And what have you accomplished in its stead?” She flicked a hand toward the tools scattered upon the floor. “Trinkets for worthless tarts.”

“They are not trinkets, Mother.” She bent to retrieve the tools. “They are wedding rings, and the girls who receive them through the foundling hospital are not tarts. They are brides.” Poor brides. But poverty was something the Dowager Lady Morgan would never understand. Even were Patricia to show her the pile of bills upon her escritoire, her mother-in-law would sniff and say that ladies did not pay bills.

Oliver had said the same thing in his letters from Spain. And his worthless solicitors had taken advantage of that. Now, of course, she simply
could not
pay bills.

“Was there something you wished, Mother?” She picked up the last of her tools, scratched a pug beneath its tiny ear, then began lining up the pliers neatly.

“Lord Perth has suggested to me that if you were to show him more encouragement he would not be adverse to making you an offer.”

Patricia pivoted on her stool. “He suggested that to you? How remarkable.”

“I told him he should not look for encouragement from a lady, only modesty. But he seems uncertain of your intentions.” She pursed her thin lips. “What are they, Patricia? To leave your sons fatherless indefinitely?”

She swallowed tightly. “My intentions are not Lord Perth’s particular business.”

“You are an ungrateful girl. I always told my son that.”

Patricia swiveled back to face her work, her palms damp. “Your son knew that well enough all on his own.” A chubby little dog bumped against her ankle and it felt far too comforting, warm and affectionate and alive. “Is that all, Mother? I have quite a bit of work left to finish tonight.”

The dowager sniffed pointedly, fingers stroking the pug in her grasp. “Ladies do not work.”

Patricia’s megrim spiraled. “This lady does.” She plucked up the pliers. “Good night, Mother. Sleep well.”

The rustle of fabric and pattering of twenty little paws signaled the dowager’s departure. Patricia set the pliers to the diamond anew, her chest and throat tight. But it was no use. Her hands were no longer steady.

Out of financial necessity she would cease this work she loved and her mother-in-law would declare victory. She would send Calanthia to their brother’s house and lose the last ray of unrelenting sunshine in her life. She would move the rest of her family to the country where their company would be limited, with only sweet senile Aunt Elsbeth to defray the effects of the dowager’s daily disparagements. She would do it all if she must.

But she would not marry a man she did not love. Not again. Not even for the sake of her sons. She had done so once to suit her family. She had long since promised herself she would never do so again.

Instead, inside her where she was most wicked, another idea sparked. An idea she had dreamt for months but hadn’t had the courage to think through entirely. A shameful idea that made her heart race and head dizzy to truly consider now.

She would have an affair. She would experience passion.
With a man
.

The very thought of it swept the megrim quite away.

Married ladies occasionally talked, and Patricia had come to understand that it was possible for a lady to feel more than pain or boredom during the marriage act. Lately her mind had fixed upon that tantalizing notion until she was frantic for a taste of that something else. Perhaps it was the desperate straits she had fallen into, or the sameness of her life every day despite her troubles.

She needed a holiday. She needed
passion
. She wanted laughter and desire and to feel freely alive again. She certainly would not feel it with Lord Henry Perth, a fine gentleman in his stiff, stoic English sobriety. Just like Oliver. But if she must wed again eventually, would it be so wrong to live a little—for even a day,
a night
—before that?

She breathed a silent sigh.

It was pure fantasy, of course. In London where she lived the portrait existence of a proper widow, if she were found out it could be disastrous. She had her sons to consider, and Callie whose introduction into society the following year must not be tainted by gossip.

Perhaps even more to the point, true ladies did not indulge in fits of passion or even excessive affection. Her mother had taught her that, and Oliver reinforced it. In those first months of marriage she had been so unhappy. But after that, even when she tried to give him warmth, all he had ever wanted of her was one thing, and even that he had done without feeling. No warmth at all. No passion. Finally she had given up trying. When he purchased a commission and headed off to war, they had both known why.

But all men were not like Oliver. Some were passionate. She had kissed a man of that sort once. On one perfect day she had tasted heaven.

She positioned the pliers at the diamond’s girdle anew. Her hands were steady again, her breathing even. Merely indulging in thoughts of her fantasy calmed her.

“Tricky?” From her place sunk in the chair, Calanthia’s voice was unusually soft.

“What is it, dear?”

“This is not a letter from Oliver’s solicitor.” She lifted a round gaze. “It is a letter from Oliver himself.”

Patricia’s hands stilled upon her tool.

“From Oliver
Morgan
? My husband?”

“Read it.”

A top sheet of engraved stationery from Oliver’s solicitor included one line only:
1 March 1816. Dear Lady Morgan, I am instructed to deliver this to you at this time. Yours &c., Harold Glover
. The other page was written in Oliver’s familiar, passionless script, but peculiarly thin and uneven. It was dated three days after the Battle of Salamanca in which he was wounded. The day before his death.

25 July 1812

Salamanca, Spain

Lady Patricia Ramsay Morgan

Lowescroft

Bradford, England

My dear wife,

You are no doubt wondering what I must say to you at this final moment. I have never been demonstrative, and rest assured I will not become so now upon the eve of my death. For I am quite certain that I shall die shortly. My wound is grave and the doctors are not optimistic.

Before I leave you to this present world a widow, however, I must enjoin upon you a final task. I ask it of you for the sake of our sons to whom I have been a poor father. I offer one caveat before I continue: if you are once again wed—and more happily this time, I pray—do not read this letter. Rather, throw it into the grate and allow the flames to consume it. For in this case I have no more authority over you, and your new husband has all that I have already lost. But if you are not yet wed again, I beg of you, do as I request. It is a last wish from a husband who should have been a better one to you but who knew not how.

Not long ago I caused to have buried in the ground in England an object of great value. Its retrieval will ensure our sons’ future happiness. Recall the home of your distant cousins at which we became betrothed. You must go there to retrieve the object, but you must do so within a fortnight of receiving this letter.