Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress (17 page)

“It’s not your fault.” She toyed with the damp handkerchief in her lap. “Your proposal did come as a surprise, but it was lovely. I should never have taken on the way I did. It was good of you to want to do right by me, whatever your reasons.”

Did she truly believe that’s all there was to it? Thinking back over his clumsy, unromantic proposal, Simon decided he could hardly blame her.

“I don’t think I explained my reasons very well. Or perhaps I could not bring myself to recognise them for what they are.” Even talking about it like this, glimpsing the truth, sent his heart into a fast, shallow beat, as if he were about to take the deadliest risk of his life.

“I should not have spoken that way about your father.” He offered the apology as he tried to work up
the nerve to say something he had not been able to admit to himself, let alone her. “I suppose I needed to find some other reason you would refuse me. Besides the most obvious one, I mean—that you don’t…care for me.”

Was it cowardly of him, hoping to solicit a declaration of her feelings before making one of his own? Perhaps, but the terrible power of love frightened him more than any physical threat.

Bethan did not leave him twisting in doubt. “I
do
care about you, Simon! You’re the finest man I’ve ever met.”

Her words had the pure, sweet ring of sincerity. And when she lifted her face to meet his gaze, he could not deny the glow of admiration and affection that shone in her eyes. At the same time, he sensed a lurking secret shame that troubled him.

Fearing his suspicion made him unworthy of her praise, Simon tried to make light of it. “You haven’t met many men, have you?”

“Enough to know I’d have to go a long way to find one better. You weren’t so far off the mark in what you said about my father. I think part of me still doesn’t believe I’m good enough for any man to want to spend his whole life with. The more I care for you, the harder it is for me to believe I’m half worthy to be your wife.”

Was that the secret shame he’d glimpsed, the one she hid behind blunt-spoken bravado? Yet again Simon reproached himself for suspecting something worse. He must stop making her pay for the betrayal of those other women.

“Good enough—of course you are!” Suddenly it was more important for him to defend her from the spectre
of self-doubt than to protect himself from rejection or betrayal. “You’re honest and loyal and kind. You swept into my life like an Indian monsoon after the parched season, with warm rains that brought everything inside me back to life.”

As he spoke, her shoulders heaved and she lifted his handkerchief to her eyes again. Simon hoped they were happy tears. He never wanted to be the cause of her shedding any other kind.

“It means so much to me, to hear I’ve helped you.” She fumbled for his hand and gave it a fierce squeeze. “You’ve helped me, too, though I didn’t know how much until just now. You make me feel as if I’m worth protecting and giving pleasure.”

“But I made you doubt your worth in other ways, didn’t I?” Simon pulled her close until her head rested against his chest. “By wanting you as my mistress instead of my wife. By pretending I felt only desire for you when it was so much more than that.”

He heaved a sigh from the murkiest depths of his soul. “You must believe none of that was any reflection on you. I was only trying to protect myself from being betrayed again. If you must measure your value by my actions, consider how you won my trust. After the life I’ve had, you must see what a special woman it took to make me risk my heart again.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Bethan whispered. She sounded as frightened of the risk as he was.

“Why don’t you say ‘yes’ to my proposal? I promise you I am making it for the only reason that truly matters.” He strove to keep even the slightest hint of hesitation from his voice. “Because I love you.”

In the silence that followed, his words hung naked and vulnerable.

“I
want
to say yes,” Bethan murmured at last. “You have no idea how much. But there’s something I need to work out for myself first.”

What did she need to work out? Was it something he already knew about or something she’d kept secret? Whatever it was, Simon hoped she would confide in him.

Did Simon realise she hadn’t told him what she was doing at Dr Moncrieff’s house? Perhaps he’d forgotten about it or thought he knew. Perhaps he didn’t care.

Over the next several days, Bethan tried to sort out her feelings and decide what to do next. One of the hardest parts to wrestle with was her grief and guilt over Hugh’s death. She knew his fate had been decided many months ago, before she’d ever dreamed of coming to Singapore. Yet she could not escape the haunting sense that her brother was dead because her faith had wavered, because she had stopped wanting so desperately for him to be alive.

It helped her understand Simon’s guilt about the fate of those female passengers on the
Sabine.
Such feelings might defy reason, but that did not lessen the heavy burden they placed upon the heart. The last thing she wanted was to add to the burden Simon already carried.

The only thing that made her hesitate to accept his proposal was the fear she might do something to turn him against her and lose his love. He’d placed her on such a high pedestal it would be far too easy to fall, damaging their marriage beyond repair. The only worse thing she could imagine than being abandoned by a
husband was continuing to remain in a marriage after love and respect had gone. Was that why Carlotta had fled into the night to meet her death?

How would Simon react if he discovered she had already fallen off his dangerously high pedestal? If he found out that the woman he’d praised for her
honesty
and
loyalty
had been deceiving him from the moment they met, could he ever forgive her betrayal of his hard-won trust? Especially when her deception had all been to protect a mutineer, the kind of man he hated above all others.

Her anxious heart argued that Simon need never know what she’d done. The
Dauntless
mutiny was long past and forgotten by most people. Doctor Ellison had promised to keep her secret. Finding out how she’d lied to him would only hurt Simon, who had been hurt too much already.

Against all those sound, self-serving reasons stood the troublesome conviction that if she continued to keep her secret from him, their marriage would be built upon a lie. How could anything with such a flawed foundation hope to stand the test of time? She must find the courage to tell him and hope he could find the compassion to forgive her.

Then, one evening, she overheard Simon telling Rosalia a bedtime story. “This ivory fan belonged to your mama. She brought it from Macau when she came to Penang. That is where we met and got married. It’s where you were born. The fan was given to your mama when she was a little girl by
her
grandmother, Rosalia Alvares.”

“Rosalia—just like me!”

“That’s right. You were named after her. I think your mama would want you to have this.”

Bethan could scarcely believe her ears. Simon was talking about his late wife, a subject he’d spent the past few years trying to avoid at all costs. For Rosalia’s sake she was delighted, aware how much the child longed for any connection to the mother she’d never known.

“Thank you, Papa. But why did Mama go to Penang? And how did we come to Singapore?”

From where she was listening, Bethan sensed Simon’s hesitation. Somehow, he managed to overcome it. “That is a rather long story, but if you would like to hear it, I suppose we could begin it tonight…”

“Oh, yes, please, Papa! You tell even better stories that Bethan and Ah-Sam.”

“High praise, indeed.” Simon gave a warm chuckle. “Very well, then. Your mama left Macau with her uncle, who was her guardian. He was taking her back to Lisbon to marry a man she had never met. Your mama was afraid she would not like this man and she did not want to leave the Orient, where she had lived all her life…”

Bethan marvelled at the way Simon told the story to his daughter, leeched of the poisonous bitterness she’d heard when he confided in her. This version sounded as if it might have happened long ago to someone he barely knew. For Rosalia’s sake and perhaps his own, Simon was trying to make peace with the painful events of his past.

Seizing upon that fragile wisp of hope, Bethan crept back down the hallway and wandered out into the garden, which was shrouded in the long shadows of nightfall. If Simon could begin to break free of the blight cast upon him by past betrayals, perhaps there was a chance he could understand and forgive her deception.
Unlike Carlotta, she had never meant to hurt him—she’d only been trying to protect her beloved brother.

Pacing up and down the garden path, Bethan muttered under her breath, practising the words she would use to tell Simon the truth at last. Now and then she glanced towards the veranda, hoping he would appear soon, before her nerve failed her.

As she passed the rhododendron bush, Bethan thought she heard footsteps behind her. Thinking it must be Simon, she turned to greet him.

But before she could, rough hands seized her and pulled her behind the bush, out of sight of the house.

One strong, calloused hand clamped tightly over her mouth while her captor ordered in a harsh whisper, “Not a peep or you’ll regret it!”

I
t hadn’t been easy at first, talking to Rosalia about her mother, dredging up so many painful memories. But once he’d begun, Simon did not regret it.

The rapt expression on his daughter’s small face was well worth the effort. Recalling how much he’d missed and mourned his mother at that age, he wished he had not kept Rosalia in the dark about hers for so long. He’d tried to justify his actions by pretending he was protecting her from the sordid truth about Carlotta. Bethan had made him see he’d been trying to spare his own feelings more than the child’s.

He had so much to make up to Rosalia and he would do it, no matter what it cost him. He was making a start tonight. Though the exquisitely carved ivory fan was a priceless heirloom, Simon sensed that the story about her mother was far more precious to Rosalia. For that reason, he forced himself to step back from his bitter feelings about his late wife and relate the account of their meeting and marriage as though he’d been a disinterested observer.

To his surprise, the effort rewarded him with some unexpected insights. For one thing, he recalled how young Carlotta had been when they first met. Afflicted with the wilful selfishness of youth, she’d also fallen victim to the destructive indulgence often accorded beauty. She had made mistakes. But then again, so had he.

The worst of those was that he’d never truly loved her. He’d been captivated by her fiery beauty and compelled to rescue her. Perhaps it had eased his lingering guilt over the
Sabine
mutiny. Or perhaps he’d needed to see himself through her eyes as the heroic knight, so he could feel worthy of a woman’s love.

Reluctant to tarnish that shiny mantle, he’d never confided in her the hurts and regrets that made him only human. Without trust and honesty, the desire and protectiveness he felt for her had never ripened into anything deeper. When she’d betrayed him, it was his pride that had suffered, not his heart.

Could he blame Carlotta for turning to another man when she lacked a true connection with her husband? The perfect hero might make a fine subject for romantic fancies, but such a man could not be easy to live with day in and day out. When she’d repented her mistake and tried to correct it by coming to Singapore with his child, begging another chance, he’d done the honourable thing without an ounce of true forgiveness in his heart. How long had he expected her to stay when it was clear he despised her and would never relent?

“Tell me what she looked like, Papa?” Rosalia clutched the fan in one hand and Simon’s fingers in the other—two precious links to the mother she’d never known.

“Like you,
querido.
” For the first time ever, Simon
used the Portuguese endearment with his daughter. “Beautiful as a midnight garden full of red roses. She had wide brown eyes and long lashes. One look from them made men want to scale mountains and swim oceans for the favour of her smile.”

He wasn’t certain he could praise Carlotta’s character so lavishly. But if their daughter asked, he would try to recall every single good thing he could about his late wife. He braced himself for more questions, but none came. When he glanced down at the child, her wide brown eyes were closed.

Simon sat for a while, stroking her hair, while the love he’d denied them both for too long washed over him. When he was certain she would not wake, he slipped his fingers from her slack grip and grazed her forehead with a kiss. Then he extinguished the lamp and backed out of the nursery with soft steps.

Eager to talk to Bethan, he looked for her in the sitting room, then the dining room. He wanted to tell her how much more clearly he saw his past, thanks to her. He wanted to make certain she knew how much he loved and needed her. Perhaps if he admitted all the mistakes he’d made with Carlotta, it would help her overcome the foolish notion that she was somehow less than worthy of him.

Next he checked the veranda, but she was not there either. Could she be waiting in his bed, perhaps? The possibility brought a smile to Simon’s face as a briny breeze wafted from the sea to caress his cheek.

Then something else rose from the garden below that made his body tense—the sound of furtive whispers. Could a party of outlaws be hiding among the bushes,
their faces blackened with soot, waiting for his household to retire for the night so they could launch an attack?

Keeping a tight rein on his mounting alarm, Simon retreated into the house. He rushed to his dressing room and loaded a pistol with swift, practised movements.

Heading down the stairs a few moments later, he met Ah-Ming. Her eyes widened when she spotted the weapon in his hand.

“It’s only a precaution,” he assured her. “Please go sit with Rosalia until I get back. Have you seen Bethan?”

The housekeeper replied with a tight little nod. “Just before dark, she went out to the garden.”

Perhaps the voice he’d heard was only Bethan talking to herself. Simon tried to calm his fears with that thought, but it did not work. Without another word, he stole out the front entrance. When Jodh started to speak, Simon pressed a finger to his lips.

“I thought I heard someone in the garden,” he whispered. “But it may only be Miss Conway. If I need your help, I’ll call.”

Continuing on his way, he circled the stables and slipped into the back garden. He could hear the voices more clearly now. One belonged to Bethan.

The other was a man’s.

Had the outlaws captured her? Simon’s blood boiled with the desperate urge to rush to her rescue, pistol blazing. But he could not risk her safety.

Instead, scarcely daring to breath, he edged toward the voices, alert for every whispered word. Bethan didn’t sound frightened, but then again she always underestimated risks. Perhaps she hoped to charm her way out of trouble again.

“Can you…hands…some money?” the masculine voice demanded. It didn’t sound like a native English speaker, but not Chinese, Malay or Indian either.

“Isn’t there some other way?” asked Bethan.

“We won’t get far without money,
cariad
,” replied the man. “This gentleman can spare it by the look of his fine house.”

“He can, but I hate to—”

“You want to get away, don’t you and start a new life? That’s why you came out here, wasn’t it, so we could do that? There’s an American ship at anchor out in the roads and there’s no love lost between them and the English. If we can reach that ship with passage money, they’re bound to take us. Then we can make a fresh start in America—I hear it’s a grand place.”

Simon clenched his lips together to keep a groan from escaping. He felt as if he’d stumbled into the middle of a nightmare, reliving the wretched events of four years ago. Though he hadn’t actually heard Carlotta plotting to run away with her lover, he knew it must have sounded just like this.

“It’s too dangerous for you here.” Bethan’s voice fairly ached with loving concern, which made Simon writhe because it was for another man. “You must go now! Head down to the beach and wait for me there. Once everyone’s asleep, I’ll come find you and we can decide what to do.”

Every word out of her mouth struck Simon a vicious blow. For, unlike his late wife who had only trampled his pride, Bethan Conway had the power to tear his heart to pieces and leave it bleeding in the sand. Like a fool, he had given her that power.

Even now she had such a hold on him that he wanted to deny what he was hearing, find some innocent explanation for it, no matter how far fetched. The sense of caution he had muzzled for far too long finally threw off its gag. It reminded him in the harshest possible terms of all the warning signs he’d refused to heed, all the petty suspicions that taken together would have pointed to something like this.

How Bethan must have laughed at him behind his back for all the secrets he’d confided in her, the trust he’d placed in her and his daft belief that she was honest and true. Still Simon taxed his imagination to make excuses for her.

“All right, then,” whispered the man Simon longed to throttle with his bare hands—if only he wasn’t afraid to make an even bigger fool of himself by breaking down and begging Bethan to stay. “But think about what I said, will you? If you can lay hands on enough money, we can be off this very night. The longer we wait, the greater chance there is that something will go wrong.”

Footsteps moved towards the garden gate and the sound of their voices faded until Simon could not make out a word of their parting. Peering out from behind the hibiscus bush, he spied their shadows locked in a tender embrace. He could not ignore the evidence of both his eyes and ears, no matter how much he wanted to.

Bethan was just like all the others. Worse, in fact, for she had pried into his secret weaknesses and preyed upon them. And she had made him a willing accomplice in his own deception.

As her brother slipped off into the night, Bethan bolted the garden gate and slumped against it, gasping for breath
as if she’d run a mile. In the past few days, her heart had been pulled so hard in so many different directions she wondered that it had not been torn to pieces.

First grief and guilt over Hugh’s ‘death’ had blighted her hope for a new life with Simon and his daughter. Then her shame over deceiving Simon and her fear that he might never forgive her had clashed with her conviction that he deserved the truth, even if she did not deserve his trust. Just when she’d begun to see her way clear through that tangle, the events of the past half-hour had made her heart a battleground again.

Terror had ripped through her when she’d been seized in the darkened garden. But her assailant’s next words, after ordering her to keep quiet, had made her want to shout for joy.

“It’s me, Bethan—Hughie. What in the name of heaven are you doing in Singapore?”

For an instant she wondered if her mind had conjured up a vision of her brother because she could not bear to have her long search for him end in failure. Then the hand covering her mouth slipped down to give her chin an affectionate tweak. It was a fond gesture she recalled so well from her childhood.

“Dearest brother!” she whispered in Welsh, tugging her arms free to throw around him. “Is it really you? After Ma passed on, I came here looking for you, but I was told you were dead.”

“I came close enough.” He returned her embrace. “And I’d just as soon the rest of the world believes Hugh Conway is gone for good. As far as anybody else in Singapore knows, I’m a convict labourer serving a sentence for thievery.”

“Convict?” Bethan drew back from him a little.

“I walked right past you the other day on the street. You’ve grown up so much since I left Llanaled, I might not have recognised you if that man hadn’t called out your name. Once I found out where you were staying, I’ve come here every evening, hoping to catch you alone.”

“What about the
Dauntless
?” Bethan wasn’t certain she could bear to hear, but she had to know. “How did you get away? You didn’t harm anyone, did you? I’ve heard terrible stories of what goes on in mutinies.”

“So have I,” Hugh muttered. “And I didn’t want any part of that, I swear. The mutiny wasn’t planned. It just…happened, like a pot on the hob that boils over. I can’t say I’m sorry about the captain—a proper tyrant he was. But the officers and passengers didn’t deserve to be harmed.”

A sickening lump in the pit of her stomach eased for the first time since Simon had told her about the
Sabine
mutiny.

Simon! She couldn’t let him find her brother here.

“I tried to give the others a chance,” Hugh went on in a desperate rush, as if he’d been waiting three long years to tell someone the truth of what had happened. “I unlocked the hold where they were being kept, then I slipped overboard. I knew I’d be a dead man no matter which side won, so I took my chances with the sea instead. She almost had her way with me, but not quite. I don’t know how the fire started on the
Dauntless
, but when I heard about it afterwards, I was afraid it might be my fault. Perhaps if I’d left things alone, or if I’d stayed aboard instead of thinking only of my own skin…”

“Hugh, please,” Bethan managed to get a word in
when his voice trailed off, “I’m glad you saved yourself, but you can tell me the rest later. Right now you need to get away from here before someone sees you.”

“We
both
need to get away,” Hugh replied. “Can you get your hands on some money?”

Perhaps she could, but it would mean stealing from Simon. “Isn’t there some other way?”

“We won’t get far without money,
cariad.
” Hugh seemed to sense her misgivings. “This gentleman can spare it by the look of his fine house.”

“He can, but I hate to—” She’d been deceiving Simon for weeks, her conscience sneered, why did she balk at thievery?

“You want to get away, don’t you, and start a new life?” her brother pleaded. “That’s why you came out here, wasn’t it, so we could do that? There’s an American ship at anchor out in the roads and there’s no love lost between them and the English. If we can reach that ship with passage money, they’re bound to take us. Then we can make a fresh start in America—I hear it’s a grand place.”

“It’s too dangerous for you here. You must go now!” It wasn’t only fear for her brother’s safety that made her beg. She needed time to think. “Head down to the beach and wait for me there. Once everyone’s asleep, I’ll come find you and we can decide what to do.”

“All right, then,” whispered Hugh. “But think about what I said, will you? If you can lay hands on enough money, we can be off this very night. The longer we wait, the greater chance there is that something will go wrong.”

Bethan knew her brother was right about that, yet she
couldn’t bring herself to promise what he asked. Instead she tugged him towards the gate, telling him how happy she was to have found him at last. That was partly true.

“Be careful out there.” She hugged her brother tightly, wishing she did not have to be parted from him again so soon.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he murmured. “I’m anxious to hear
your
story about how you got from Llanaled all the way to Singapore.”