A Marquis in Want of a Wife by Louise Allen

Author:Louise Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-08T18:28:29+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Prue woke to find the sun setting and Dawn Ghost battling into a confused and choppy sea.

‘Is it a storm coming?’ she asked the ship’s boy who brought them tea strong enough to take the glaze off the mugs.

‘Oh, no, ma’am. This is nothing to worry about. We’re just meeting the Channel here, so it gets a bit rougher, you see, what with the North Sea hitting the Channel head-on, as it were. That’s Margate over there—you can see the lights. We’re going to round the North Foreland, then things will calm down, don’t you fear. Then we slip down to Ramsgate harbour, all safe and sound.’

‘I will take Jon down for his feed,’ Maud said, getting to her feet while Prue held the baby. ‘There we are, nice and steady now. It’s all very well, my lady, now and again for a novelty, but I wouldn’t want to be doing this with a baby every day of the week.’

‘It has rocked him to sleep, though,’ Prue said. ‘He hasn’t been fretting over his teeth so much.’

‘That’s the sea air, I expect, my lady. We’ll all sleep well tonight.’

Prue wriggled into a comfortable position to watch Ross, who was standing near the foremast, spyglass in hand, as rock-steady on the pitching deck as he was on the terrace at home.

Home? she thought. I suppose it is now. My home, our home. That brought a warm glow to her insides which were, she realised, quite happy now, even on the rougher water.

Ross looked content, easy in his skin. This was the real man, not the captive inside the smart clothes, tied to his desk with endless decisions to make about leases and crop rotations. Perhaps she could encourage him to employ a really efficient secretary, someone with a good understanding of land management, then he could spend his time doing what he so clearly loved.

She was glad he had asked her to come on this journey and to make it by sea. She was beginning to come to know him now, perhaps to understand him better. She could not have imagined him opening up, confiding the story of his first marriage, before now.

Perhaps it was not that he was coming to trust her more, she thought, with a sudden dip in her confidence. Perhaps it was simply that he was happy and relaxed at the wheel of his ship so he found it easier to tolerate her.

Poor little Jon, she thought. The child of that unhappy marriage, of that calculating, selfish woman.

And I should not judge, she reproved herself. I do not know what might have made her like that.

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