Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress

by Deborah Hale

  “It’s all right, Papa.” Rosalia patted his arm with reassuring sympathy. “I’ll take care of you.”

  A lump rose in his throat and a strange sense of peace stole over him. This didn’t feel like either of the times Carlotta had left him. There was sadness and regret, but no rancour, no bitterness.

  “I know you will.” He pulled the child on to his sound knee and wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll look after each other.”

  They sat like that for a while as Ah-Ming packed up the medicine chest and bore it away.

  “Would you like to play a game, Papa?” Rosalia asked. “I could fetch the cards and board for Dou Shou Qi.”

  Was she trying to provide him with an amusing distraction from his sadness? A fresh surge of love for his daughter provided balm to his aching heart. “An excellent idea. Only try not to beat your old father too badly, will you?”

  Rosalia did not scamper off to the nursery at once in search of the game. Instead she moved to the veranda railing, staring out toward the sea. “That’s very odd.”

  “What is it, querido?”

  “That tongkang is not going back to the river as it should. It’s coming this way.”

  That couldn’t be right. Simon rose and joined his daughter at the railing.

  “See.” She pointed to a boat that was now only a few yards away from shore.

  If the lightermen weren’t careful, their tongkang would end up beached.

  Then someone jumped overboard into the waves, landing waist deep in the water. Simon blinked his eyes. Was that knock on the head making him see things?

  “It looks like Bethan.” Rosalia confirmed the amazing impossibility. “You didn’t tell me she would be back so soon.”

  In the distance the American ship was hoisting sail. Bethan could not possibly reach it again before it weighed anchor.

  “Let’s go meet her!” Rosalia caught Simon’s hand. “If you think you can manage,” she added in a solicitous tone.

  He tweaked her nose. “I’m not quite an invalid yet.”

  Together they hurried downstairs, through the garden and across Beach Road. Bethan was just staggering ashore when they reached her. Her hat had blown off, sending her auburn curls in a mad tumble around her shoulders. Her sodden skirts clung to her slender legs in the most fetching manner. More than ever, she reminded Simon of Venus emerging from the sea.

  “Bethan!” Rosalia pelted toward her, flinging her arms around Bethan’s waist. “What made you come back so soon? Did you forget something?”

  “No, cariad.” Bethan caught Simon’s eye over his daughter’s head. Her sparkling gaze told him the endearment was meant for him as well. “I came back because I remembered something.”

  “What was it?” Rosalia asked the question that was foremost in her father’s thoughts.

  Bethan bent and pressed a kiss to the crown of the child’s dark head. “How much I care about you both.”

  “We care about you, too.” Rosalia glanced back at Simon. “Don’t we, Papa?”

  Too overcome to do more than nod, Simon hoped his eyes were more eloquent. He could almost feel them sparkling with delight as he drank in the sight of her.

  The child gave Bethan a fierce squeeze, then danced away. “I’m going to find seashells for you and Papa.”

  She raced off down the beach.

  Without his daughter’s immediate presence, an uneasy silence fell between them. Simon was reluctant to break it for fear he might shatter the spell that had summoned Bethan back to him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “This?” He reached up to touch the bandage. “A little excessive attention from my young physician.” He nodded toward Rosalia.

  “I see,” she murmured in her clear lilting voice. “Well…I want to…thank you for what you did for my brother. I know how hard it must have been for you. I can never begin to re—”

  Simon’s heart sank. “That isn’t why you came back, is it, to repay a debt you feel you owe me? I don’t want you as a slave out of gratitude. I want you free to love me as I love you. I know I’ve given you plenty of cause to doubt my feelings—”

  “And I’ve given you plenty of cause not to trust me. Still, you must believe me when I say it wasn’t gratitude that brought me back.”

  “What then?” He could guess, but until he heard it from her own sweet lips, he did not dare build his hopes too high.

  “For the reason I told Rosalia.” She unclasped the locket from around her neck, opened it and handed it to him. “Also because I realised my father was wrong and I didn’t want to repeat his mistake. He shouldn’t have left my mother when things started to go wrong in their marriage. He should have stayed and tried everything he could to make it work.”

  She drew closer to him, until she was near enough to embrace, if only he raised his arms. But she wasn’t finished and he wanted to hear her out.

  Bethan waved her hand toward the American ship, its sails catching the breeze. “I believe true love isn’t meant to be all smooth sailing any more than the rest of life is. There will be squalls and pirates and mutinies. But if we keep sailing and don’t abandon the ship, we’ll share plenty of adventures and we’ll always have a safe harbour.”

  What could he add to that? It summed up everything he hoped they would have together in the years ahead. Words were not adequate to convey what he wanted to tell her. So, instead, Simon let his gaze, his embrace and his kisses speak for him.

  Joy washed over them in powerful, warm waves as they stood on the beach, wrapped in each other.

  They did not draw back until Rosalia ran toward them. “Look! I found two limpet shells just alike—aren’t they pretty?”

  “They’re lovely, querido.” Keeping one arm around Bethan, Simon drew his daughter into their embrace. “One for each of us.”

  “Look what happens when I put them together?” Rosalia held up the shells to show them. “They make a heart!”

  Like the sun emerging after a sudden shower, Bethan’s eyes beamed with love for them both. “Then I think we’ll have to keep them together, won’t we, Simon?”

  Lavishing his daughter and wife-to-be with the warmest, most enduring smile his lips had ever given, Simon nodded. “Always.”

  Epilogue

  February 1844

  “So this is what Singapore looks like twenty-five years on.” Ford Barrett, Lord Kingsfold shook his head in disbelief.

  Having just returned from a ride around town, the three Vindicara partners sat in the grand saloon of the elegant London Hotel enjoying a drink. Ford, his wife Laura and their four children had come to Singapore to help celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding.

  “Wouldn’t recognise the place, would you?” said Hadrian Northmore, who had returned here with his family a few years ago. “You won’t see many of the old attap houses outside the Malay kampongs. We’ve got a racecourse and a proper theatre. There’s even talk of starting a cricket club.”

  “Some things haven’t changed, though.” Simon lifted his glass. “Trade is as brisk as ever and the arrack is still first rate.”

  Simon was delighted to have his partners and their families all together for this celebration. In the early days of their partnership, he had often felt on a lower footing than Ford with his aristocratic blood and Hadrian with his forceful personality. Today he knew himself to be every bit their equal, for he was the luckiest and happiest man in the world.

  “I’ll drink to that.” Hadrian bolted a tot of the potent drink that would have made most men’s eyes water. Then he leaned back in his chair with an appreciative sigh. “I must say, I had no idea when I started Vindicara how the firm would grow. My nephew Lee tells me he’s not interested in going into politics the way I planned for him. He wants to start up a branch of the company in Hongkong.”

  “Speaking of politics,” said Ford, “you’ll be pleased to hear that shortly before we left England my brother-in-law, Lord Ashbury, introduced a mining refor
m bill in Parliament that will keep women and children out of the collieries. I sincerely hope it is law by now.”

  “That news is long overdue—” Hadrian’s voice grew husky with emotion “—but it could not be more welcome.”

  For years a fierce opponent of employing children in underground mines, he now looked like a man who’d realised the dream of a lifetime. Some of the boys he’d sent from County Durham to work in Singapore now held positions of authority within Vindicara and other firms. A few had started their own businesses with great success. One such ambitious young man was married to Simon’s daughter, Rosalia, with a baby on the way.

  “There they are.” A woman’s clear lilting voice rang out as Bethan marched into the room with Lady Kings-fold and Mrs Northmore. “Didn’t I tell you we’d find them here, Artemis? Drinking to old times over a bottle of arrack.”

  “Have you forgotten, my love?” Artemis Northmore snatched the glass out of her husband’s hand, a feat the bravest of men might hesitate to dare. “We have an appointment to get our picture made.”

  The new art of photography had recently taken Singapore by storm. The hotel’s proprietor had a lucrative side business creating daguerreotype portraits.

  “Forgive me, pet.” Hadrian rose from his chair and offered his wife an apologetic kiss that was not altogether chaste. “We forgot the time. Ford was just telling us that young Ashby has gotten a mining reform bill before Parliament at last.”

  “What marvellous news!” Artemis Northmore gazed into her husband’s eyes in a moment of sweet intimacy.

  Lady Kingsfold needed only to cast a significant glance and her husband put down his glass. “Monsiuer Duplessis says he has never attempted a picture of such a large group.”

  Simon did a quick count in his head. There would be twenty of them altogether. Could everyone manage to stay still during the exposure time? He wasn’t certain his fourteen-year-old sons, Hugh and Hadrian, had ever stayed still that long.

  Bethan must have been thinking the same thing, for she caught his eye and grinned. “You’d better come at once. The children are already getting restless.”

  “Very well, cariad.” Simon rose and offered her his arm. She looked positively radiant today with her hair done in two cascades of ringlets, wearing a gold-coloured gown with a full skirt and lace bertha that showed off her bare shoulders.

  Leaning closer, he whispered, “I heartily approve of these new fashions from Europe.”

  To demonstrate, he grazed his lips down her neck.

  “Enough now,” she chided him. But he could hear a breathless tremor in her voice that never failed to rouse him. “If the twins catch you at that again, they’ll fall about pretending to retch and get grass stains all over their new trousers.”

  “Besides,” she whispered, “we’ll soon be grandparents. We shouldn’t be carrying on that way.”

  “In a pig’s eye!” Simon was tempted to kiss her into a puddle of molten desire then and there. “You look far too young and beautiful to be a grandmother. And I intend to carry on like this for as long as I can tempt you to join me.”

  “In that case…” Eyes twinkling with mischief, she reached up under the tails of his coat to run her hand over his backside. “I reckon we’ll be at it for a very long time indeed!”

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  First published in Great Britain 2010

  Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Deborah M. Hale 2010

  ISBN: 978-1-408-91648-3