to feel hot, bothered and definitely panicky. If he decided to force her, she could not hope to stop him. She was not certain she really wanted to stop him, and that was the worst thing of all. It must be his size, she thought. She was frightened at going back and she wanted to cling to him.
‘It was what was worrying you, was it not? Best to have it out of the way.’ Ross seemed completely unembarrassed by the discussion.
Shameless man, Meg thought, lingering fears of rape retreating. Which left the thought of willingly lying under him, the pair of them naked, about to make love.
‘Understand this,’ he continued when she did not respond. ‘I will not lie in a bed while a woman has to make do with the floor. If there was only room for one, then I would take the floor. As it is, it is ridiculous for one of us to be uncomfortable.’
‘You might be comfortable like this. I can assure you, I am far from being so.’ He was hot. And so close that one of them only had to take a deep breath for their bodies to touch. The disturbing pulse she had been attempting to ignore became insistent.
‘I give you my word, you will be safe.’ He sounded irritated now. Obviously she was keeping him from his sleep with her worries and scruples. It was a mercy he could not read her mind.
‘While we are awake, of course I trust your word.’ Not every officer was a gentleman, but her instincts were telling her that this one was. ‘But when we are asleep we might…touch.’
‘Meg, have you been following the drum with not one, but two, men for the past five years or have you been locked up in a vicarage?’
That was so near the knuckle she almost gasped, but the question was obviously rhetorical. The major lay down again, turned on to his right side with his back to her and gave every indication of falling immediately asleep.
If she lay with her elbows tight against her sides, her legs straight, rigid as a board in her half of the bunk, she could pretend they were not both in the same bed. Eventually, when he showed no signs of leaping on her, she turned over cautiously so her back was to him. Their buttocks touched. Recoiling, she tried the other side so she faced him. That was better, she could curve her body now to avoid his.
But what she could not avoid was the scent of him, she realised once she had managed to relax sufficiently to breathe. Man. He’d had as good a wash as he could under the circumstances and had got rid of the worst of the river water and the grime and sweat of his journey, but in a way that was even more disconcerting. There wasn’t a great deal of distraction from the natural scent of hot male. She bit her lip and tried not to fidget. Tried, very hard indeed, not to remember what it was like to be held, just held, in strong arms for a while. Safe, secure, trusting.
Not that James had ever been trustworthy, exactly, even at the start of their scandalous runaway marriage. But he had been strong and young and handsome and, when it was no trouble, kind to her. And often fun. At least, he had been fun while things went his way. His sense of humour did not hold up well, she soon discovered, under adversity.
But she had believed herself in love with him when she married him; she had made promises, even if he had been lying to her all the time. Despite the pain of the memory Meg felt her limbs grow heavy as sleep began to fog her mind. She gave a little shuffle back to press tight against the wall and drifted off, exhausted.
Ross half-woke to find himself lying on his back on a bed that was moving. A ship. Yesterday’s events began to present themselves, still confused, to his memory. The child, the river, a woman’s voice.
He stretched out his legs, opened his eyes and came fully conscious as a jolt of pain stabbed down through his right knee. Several things were apparent all at once. It was daylight, the ship was under way again and beside him was not his rifle but a warm, sleeping, woman.
In fact, it was amazing she had not been the first thing he had been aware of. Her head was on his shoulder, her right arm was across his chest and she was snuggled up close down the length of him. At some point he had got his arm round her while they slept so she was cradled in a way that was positively possessive. She was so tight against him that he could feel every swell and dip and softness of her body. His became instantly hard.
It was a remarkably pleasant, and novel, sensation, if he ignored the ache in his groin. His life had never been lacking in women to satisfy his needs, but he was not in the habit of spending the night with them. That was a reliable method of waking up to find the woman gone and with her, his money.
This woman, his temporary wife, was not after his money. She was a strange creature, expecting conversation and confidences as though their chance alliance was actually a real relationship, and yet not asking anything in return for saving his life and tending to him beyond her passage back to England.
Had he thanked her properly? He rather doubted it. Yesterday he had been feeling like the devil when he had arrived at the docks and had been in no mood afterwards to analyse whether he was actually grateful for having been fished out of the river at all.
Today…Today was time to get a grip on himself and stop kicking against fate. He was wounded, he was never going back to the Rifles, he would probably limp for the rest of his life and that life was going to be something utterly alien. He had run away from it when he was seventeen, but it was catching up with him fast now.
There was a tap on the door and he reached out, careful not to wake Meg, and unjammed the wedge from the latch. The door opened a foot and Johnny’s tousled head appeared. ‘Hot water, Major?’
‘Yes. Bring coffee and take away the slops. Quietly, now.’ But Meg was awake. With a gasp she recoiled from him until she was tight up against the wall.
‘Wha—?’ Her eyes were wide, fixed on him with a mixture of shock and fear that was like a kick in the guts. Her lack of fear last night had obviously been an act; now, shocked awake, she was showing what she really thought of him. She looked terrified and she was drawing breath to scream.
‘The boy is here, my dear,’ Ross said, putting one large hand hard over her mouth, his body shielding her from Johnny. ‘I’ve asked him for hot water and coffee.’ She struggled against him and he tipped his head towards the door. ‘That’s all, boy, nothing else at the moment.’
He managed to hold her, one handed, until the latch clicked home, then she wrenched her head away and came at him with fists and nails. ‘You brute! You lying, lecherous—’
‘Hey!’ Ross swivelled round, ignoring the pain in his leg, and pinned her to the pillow with both hands. ‘Don’t you dare scream,’ he threatened. ‘What the devil’s the matter with you? I told you, I don’t force women.’
‘You said I would be safe,’ she panted. ‘You gave me your word and I wake to find you groping me, you—’
Ross slapped his hand over her mouth again, coming down on to his elbows over her as he did so. His leg hurt, he wanted his coffee and the blasted woman had called him a liar. Under him her body felt slight, soft, feminine, yet she was tensed to fight him even though he was crushing her.
‘Listen to me,’ he said between gritted teeth, his face so close to hers that he could have counted the lashes that fringed her wide, defiant eyes. Under his hand she was trying to find the purchase to bite his palm. ‘I do not lie. I do not break my word. I woke up and you were cuddled up to me, your arm was over my chest and I had one of mine around you.’ She stopped trying to bite. ‘And that is all. We had passed an uneventful night and if you take a moment to think you will find I managed to not
