It was then that Samuel chanced a look at her, and saw to his horror that she was cringing away from him, and she had that beaten down and oppressed look that he had seen when she was ordered about by her Great Aunt.
Confusion, hurt, they were mingled in her blue eyes, and Samuel hated himself for being so harsh with her. But how could he help it? It was becoming all too easy to fall for her soft kindness, that special Maggie way that she looked at him and made him want to melt all over.
And she would not look at him if she knew the truth. She would never look at him again if she knew the truth, perhaps would fear him, and he could never live with that.
But…but if he looked carefully, did he already see something like suspicion in her gaze? Did she already suspect, could she even now be planning to ask him that dreadful question that he simply could not deny: that he was accused of a terrible crime?
Sam rose from the bed and sighed deeply. “I apologise, Maggie. I am tired, I am not myself. I…I will sleep on the chaise longue tonight.”
“But Sam,” Maggie protested, moving across the bed towards him. “Your place is here, by my side, in our bed!”
“Your bed,” he corrected, hating himself for the two syllables, and laid himself down on the chaise longue facing away from her.
Neither of them spoke another word that night, but Samuel lay there, awake for what seemed like hours. It was difficult to fall asleep when you were busy hating yourself, but it became impossible when you were also hating your inability to trust the woman that you had, accidentally perhaps, but now irrevocably fallen in love with.
8
The sun was barely shining, but Margaret had been awake for hours. Sleep had eluded her, and when she finally saw the slight cracks in the darkened sky, she had pulled on a gown and come here, her new favourite place on the ship, the stern.
Her eyes looked out to where they had been, the frothing waves behind them the only trail back to England. Back to home, a London that she knew. She would never see it again, never see her one friend Adena again.
She would have to write to her, and tell her that she was married. She, Margaret Berry! Adena would hardly believe it. She could still hardly believe it herself.
Margaret swallowed, and tried to replay their conversation from the night before over and over again in her mind, looking for the hints, the tells, anything that might reveal something new in her exhausted mind.
“And now it is time for both of us to take our pleasure. My God, Maggie, I never thought…you are made for pleasure, Maggie, and I will make it my mission to give it to you.”
There was a storm coming on the horizon. Clouds hung heavy in the sky, and the waves beneath them looked choppier, more menacing.
“Well, hello there, mermaid.”
The voice was soft and deep, and Margaret smiled despite herself. She turned around slowly and saw her husband Sam there, but she could not keep the smile there for long.
“We will be arriving in Marseille by noon, so the captain tells me,” said Sam with a smile. “We will be Monsieur and Madame Brown within hours.”
His words echoed in her ears but she could not attend to them. Her eyes fell to the deck, and she took a depth breath.
“I-I need to ask you something,” she said in a rush.
His steps moved forwards towards her but Margaret stepped away from him, almost unconsciously, pinning herself to the ship’s railings.
Sam stopped, and frowned at her as she raised his eyes to him. “When have you ever been afraid of my touch, Maggie? Afraid of me?”
Everything inside her was desperate for her to stop, but she could not. That niggle that had entered her head the day before had now sunk into her heart, and she could not be rid of it until she asked the question that she feared would break them apart. But if it did, if it was true…
Margaret swallowed, and clasped her shaking hands together. “Sam, I…I have to ask this.”
He was staring at her with genuine concern, confused, perhaps about why she was acting so strangely. “Ask me anything, Maggie, but I have told you before. No more questions about my past, you know how I feel about that.”
She nodded, but knew that she would be betraying that trust almost immediately. Taking a deep breath, she looked into his eyes.
“You are very…very polite, Sam. Samuel.”
Sam stared at her, and then laughed. “That is hardly a question, Maggie.”
“Very polite,” she said, no smile breaking across her face. “You are courteous, and comfortable in all manners of company. You are almost too well-bred, one may say. Perhaps more well-bred than the name of Brown suggests.”
If she had thought that Sam would respond to this, she was sorely mistaken. He just looked at her, his hazel eyes fierce in the glowing dawn, and as much as she looked she could not see what was truth within those hazel pupils.
“You tell me not to ask questions,” she whispered, now unable to take her eyes from him. “But there is only one topic that has been forbidden between us, is there not? And it is not about your past, or…or so I thought.”
Margaret hoped that he would deny it, that he would have an explanation, something, anything to remove the fear and doubt that was seeping into her heart. But instead, he nodded.
With fear now wrapped around her heart, she breathed, “The murderous earl.”
“I am an emigrating earl,” snapped Sam, all pretence gone. “Nothing more, nothing less, Maggie. Just an earl looking for a different life.”
Margaret gasped, clutching the rail of the ship as though frightened she would fall. “You…you do not deny it?”
“What do I have to deny? Of what am I accused?” He stared at her belligerently, striding away from her and then turning back to her without allowing her to speak. “I have naught to deny save the murder of Stephen, which I swear to you I did not do. But deny that I am an earl? I cannot, and I will not. I am an earl, and there it is.”
A flash of lightning hit the water miles away from them as the storm that had threatened started to break.
Margaret found that her voice had gone, and her lungs did not seem to be working properly as she gasped in a weak voice, “You are an earl.”
“As my father was before me,” said Sam wryly. “Though God knows who will be earl hereafter.”
She almost laughed, it seemed so absurd. Margaret Berry, married to an earl? “Now that you say it, how could I have been so foolish not to see it? Every inch of you speaks of nobility, the way you carry yourself, the way that you look at others, so tall, so well mannered, packed to the hilt with the good breeding of the aristocracy.”
Sam rolled his eyes as he said bitterly, “You sound almost surprised.”
“But you have been accused…Sam, you have been accused of a terrible crime!”
“Which does not make me guilty!” He sighed heavily as he leaned over the rails of the ship, and Margaret found that she was still clutching the railings for dear life.
“But…murder,” she whispered. “Sam, you are wanted for murder.”
Sam’s head drooped as the rain broke a few miles off the portside. “I did no harm to Stephen, but ‘tis foolish for me to deny that the Peelers have been searching for me for a while. Completely innocent though I am, they do not seem to be interested in the truth, just about the quickest and most convenient form of justice.”
He tilted his head to face her, and a smile finally broke across his lips. “It actually feels right, better that you know now. I knew that I could trust you, Maggie.”
His hand reached for hers but before she could say anything, before she could even think, she gasped and stepped away from him, fear in her eyes.
Sam faltered, his hand outstretched but closing on nothing but air.
“Sam – Samuel…my lord,” she stammered. “You are an accused murderer, and I met you but four days ago. For all I know, a man died at your hands!”
A great weight forced itself into his chest and Samuel almost staggered, a
s though he had been physically wounded. He stared at Maggie in shock, unable to wrap his mind around what she had just said, unable to ignore the fear in her blue eyes.
“Maggie,” he managed to breath. “Maggie, no.”
But she took another step away from him, and her eyes darted around the deck as though looking for a way to escape from him, and it crushed his heart as though an anvil had been forced across his chest.
Everything that he had feared, everything that had held him back from telling the truth before, it was all coming alive before his eyes. The fear in her face, the terror in her expression as she gazed at him…he had known, had he not, that telling her the truth of his identity would cause her to shy away from him?
But how could he lie? This woman, this chit of a thing when you first glanced at her, had utterly captured his heart. What he had thought was ice had, in the end, only needed a warm soul to melt him, and Maggie had done just that. She was everything, all that he cared about now, more than his own safety.
It had felt wrong to lie to her. But now he would have to pay the price.
Samuel swallowed, and tried out his voice again, desperate to convince her. “No one has ever felt pain at my hands, let alone my friend Stephen.”
“If I do not know you,” Maggie whispered, looking terrified, “how can I trust you?”
Without saying another word she started to walk back to the cabins, crossing the deck as quickly as possible, but Samuel could not let her go without fighting for her, fighting for whatever it was that they were to each other.
His heart was not crushed now. Instead, it was breaking.
“Maggie, please listen to me,” he begged, following her. “Consider me as you have known me these days, these days that you have been wed to me, Maggie. Have I ever lied to you?”
“How could I possibly tell?” Maggie spluttered, coming to an abrupt stop and staring at him, wide eyed. “How would I know that you were lying?”
“I am not,” Samuel said with a smile that tried to win her heart. “I have always been honest with you Maggie, as honest as I could be. I wanted a marriage of convenience, and what did I tell you at the time? I said that I was looking for respectability, that was all that I wanted.”
Tears sprung into her blue eyes and it broke him to see them, but he had to keep going, he had to explain, to convince her that he was no murderer.
“That was how it started,” he continued hastily, “but it has changed, I have changed, my heart has changed! Everything is different now, you must see that. I thought…I thought that your heart was changing too.”
His eyes had caught hers in his fierce gaze, and for a moment she seemed to soften, and a smile danced across her lips as she started to nod ever so slightly, and then a harshness fell across her features once more.
“You will be hunted all your life for this crime, whether you did it or not,” Maggie whispered, as they stood in the middle of the deck with the storm approaching. “Whether you are innocent or not, you cannot prove it.”
A smile crept across his features. “No one will suspect Mr and Mrs Brown.”
Maggie’s eyes widened with shock and he immediately knew that he had gone too far. Was this the moment that he lost her?
“Assuming that you are with me, still,” he said quickly, “and I hope by God you will be. You will be, will you not Maggie?”
There was a wonderful, glittering moment when he was not sure what she was going to say, but there was the chance that she could respond positively. Perhaps she would throw herself into his arms, perhaps she would smile and say that of course she would. Perhaps she would say that it was all a test, and she believed him after all.
Samuel’s stomach lurched and his heart sank as Maggie started to cry.
“Our marriage is built on a lie,” she said through silent tears. “Even your name is a lie.”
“But so much of what we feel – ”
Interrupting him with a laugh through her tears, Maggie shook her head slowly. “I do not even know what your real name is.”
He swallowed. Never before had he been reticent to use his title, but it stuck in his throat now like a bone he could not stomach.
“Samuel,” he said quietly. “Earl of Kincardine.”
It sounded hollow and false in his mouth, and bile was tasted on his tongue as Maggie laughed a little hysterically.
She brushed away the tears almost angrily as she said with a sardonic smile, “Does that make me the Countess of Kincardine, by any chance?”
Samuel nodded. “And the Baroness of Pryden, actually. ‘Tis a dual title family inheritance.”
Maggie laughed, and shook her head. “I am sorry, Samuel. Or my lord, which I think is the way that I address you now. I would not know. Earls and barons were not the type of company I kept before I boarded this ship, and now you are telling me that I am a countess?”
He took a step towards her, and she did not retreat, and hope fluttered in his chest. “You are, but what matters to me is that you are you, Maggie, and that we are together. All I – all I want is for us to be together. The Browns. Safe in the south of France, hidden away. An emigrating earl that needed to disappear because he was falsely accused, and his countess who….who loves him.”
It took great strength to say those words, and they seemed to echo in the empty deck, repeating and repeating. For the first time in his life, Samuel felt uncomfortable in the gaze of another person.
Maggie shook her head finally. “I am no countess, Samuel, and you will never again be an earl. The emigrating earl before me may just be a man on this ship, a plain man, but beyond this ship is the real world. And in that real world, you have been accused of a terrible crime. That is not something you can escape from just by changing your name and marrying a poor innocent woman for your own gain.”
“No, Maggie, it was not like that – Maggie!”
But she had gone, and Samuel was left with nothing but the memory of her face and the terrible pain in his heart that, once again, he had lost everything because of the false accusation of murder. Little had he known, when he had lost his title, wealth, respectability, and good name, that losing Maggie Berry would hurt far more.
9
It was the last gown to be placed carefully into the trunk, but Margaret could not bring herself to do it. It did not feel real, this placing of her belongings away while Sam sat on the edge of the bed, watching her. The bed where, just hours before, they had lost themselves once more in wild abandon, enjoying the pleasures of each other’s bodies.
“Is there anything that I can say,” he said quietly, “to keep you? To stop you from leaving me?”
His words cut into her heart, but Margaret would not allow the tears to come, she would not. Any emotion revealed now would only make it harder to leave him, and leave him she must. The Adelaide had docked, and the place where she thought she would start her married life was now to be the port where she left him.
She took a deep breath, and laid the gown down into the trunk. “I am still your wife. We shared vows, and I will not look at another man for the rest of my life. I-I do not think that I could, Samuel. Not in that way.”
By the uncomfortable shift, she knew that he had registered the use of his full name once more, but she had to harden her heart. He could not be Sam to her now.
“But Maggie – ”
“Margaret,” she interrupted, turning to look at him briefly before moving away to pick up and roll a ribbon that was beside the bed.
Samuel said nothing, and his silence hurt her more than she expected. Her desire for him, her desire for him to fight for her, and her fear that he could indeed have committed such a terrible crime, it was all tangled together and she could not separate them. She did not even know what she wanted him to say.
“I cannot stay with you now,” Margaret said quietly, winding the ribbon around two fingers. “Not when…when I cannot know for certain whether you are innocent or not. You have to understand.”
W
hen he did speak, it was in a broken voice. “I had hoped that you would have learned to trust me now.”
Her very soul twisted in pain, but the niggle of doubt remained.
“This murderous earl, ‘tis nothing but gossip and hearsay, nonsense from those who wish that their lives were more exciting. I forbid you to speak of it, Maggie, do you hear me? I forbid you to speak to me about this murderous earl.”
Margaret swallowed. “I simply do not know.”
There was nothing else to do in the cabin now, the small room where most of their marriage had played out. All five days of it. Of course, they would hardly divorce, but their time together was now cut short. They could not possibly be what they had been to each other again.
She walked around the bed and knelt down, but before she could lift up the trunk, it was already rising in the air.
Samuel smiled wryly at her. “The least I can do for my wife is carry her heavy trunk.”
Without waiting for an answer, he strode out of the cabin. Margaret bit her lip. Was this right? Everything in her gut told her that Sam – Samuel – was a good man. Had he ever harmed her, showed violence towards her, towards anyone on the Adelaide?
No. But had he lied? Had he kept secrets, and hidden truths? Had he mistrusted her?
Yes, and she could not ignore it. Her life to this point had been filled with mistrust and irritation, with her parents disappointed in her looks and accomplishments, and her Great Aunt’s constant criticisms on person, manner, and deeds.
But they had been honest. Always honest. Sometimes too honest, but the truth was always open. She did not want to spend the rest of her life with a man who could not be honest with her, and Sam…
Margaret let out a deep breath. Here she was, standing in an empty cabin, when the decision really had been made for her. He would not tell her the truth about the murder accusation, save that he was innocent, and that was not a marriage really. A piece of paper was not enough for her.
Ravishing Regencies: The Complete Series: A Steamy Regency Romance Boxset Page 68
