'My father agrees too, which is why he traveled to Kildrummy Castle when he inherited it. We couldn't live there, however, and we were very lucky. Oliver manages Kildrummy Castle. Actually now it is as much his home as it is ours. Did you know that Oliver was one of my uncle Ryder's first Beloved Ones?'
'Yes. Your uncle Ryder found him trying to pull himself out of an alley so he could beg for food. His leg was badly broken, you see, and he couldn't walk.'
'My uncle took care of him until he was eighteen, and then he went to Oxford. He was going to be my uncle Douglas's steward, but the instant he saw Kildrummy Castle, he fell in love with it. Oliver is very smart and married my uncle's daughter, Jenny. You met Jenny and Oliver at the wedding. They are very happy.'
Meggie shook his sleeve. 'Now, my lord, when will you thank me for last night? When are you going to sing my praises? Tell me you have never experienced such a woman as I? Goodness, Thomas, I laid you lower than a slug.'
'I don't like the sound of that. You do know that you're ignorant as a stick,' he added, and lightly touched his palm to her the underside of her breast. 'But I have high hopes.'
Meggie didn't move, became still as a statue and looked up at him, not saying a word. Then she leaned forward, pressing her breast into his palm. Thomas's breath hitched. He saw one of the sailors coming and regretfully dropped his hand to his side. 'Yes,' he said, 'lower than a slug. Now, let's think about the pleasure I gave you. Meggie, the look on your face when I kissed you.'
'Well, I love to kiss you. You make my mouth tingle.'
'No, not on the mouth, Meggie.'
He laughed when she turned even redder, none of it from windburn.
He couldn't help himself. He smiled down at her, at the loose hair pulled from beneath her bonnet, whipping against her face. 'If I hadn't pleasured you, would you have shot me after you felled me?'
She pursed her lips and he knew, knew all the way to his boots, that she was giving this due thought. Finally she said, 'Well, that's a real possibility. Who knows what you would have demanded to do? Our wedding night was memorable, but I wouldn't precisely say that it was a memory that I will cherish when I am an old woman. Yes, I might have shot you.'
She was so likable, so damned open and giving. Not a reticent bone in that ever so white body of hers. Her body. No, he wouldn't think about that, not now, not on board a wildly rocking boat.
He looked out over the billowing wave that would slap the side of the boat in another instant. He waited, put his arm on hers to keep her steady, and felt the taste of the water in his mouth from the wild spray.
He said after a moment, 'My mother lives at Pendragon.'
'I shouldn't be surprised,' she said slowly, 'but you hadn't told me where she was living. Remember I asked you if your mother would come to our wedding, and you just shook your head and said something about her being ill.'
'That is true. She was ill, just like your grandmother. As a rule she dislikes leaving Pendragon. When I was five, she took me to her brother's home, to Pendragon. I was raised there.'
'I look forward to meeting her,' Meggie said.
Thomas said not another word.
They turned into Cork Harbour within the hour, where the water was much calmer because of the long curving mole that broke the storm's might.
A mother-in-law, Meggie was thinking. She hadn't given the actual flesh-and-blood lady much thought until now that she was going to meet her in a very short time. She thought of her grandmother Lady Lydia and spent a good five minutes praying hard.
Chapter 20
SO YOU ARE my son's new wife.'
'Yes, ma'am.' Meggie smiled as she stepped up to the older woman, who looked a great deal like Thomas, from her dark hair and eyes to her olive complexion. Her mother-in-law, something she'd never had before, someone who was now more a part of her life than her own parents. If Thomas's mother hadn't come to their wedding because of ill health, she certainly looked as fit as a topform racing cat to Meggie.
Best to begin the way she meant to go on. Meggie gave her a big smile, oozing with respect and goodwill, and offered her a curtsy only a duchess deserved-a royal duchess.
Her mother-in-law said, after looking her up and down, 'From my son's letter, I thought you would look much better. You are not presentable. You are wet. Perhaps even on the frowzy side. The feather on your bonnet is drooping badly.'
'Mother, as you can see, both Meggie and I are soaked to the skin. Just before we managed to steer into the harbor, a big wave struck the port side of the boat. Even Pen got wet, and I can assure you that he wasn't happy about it. I will take Meggie to our bedchamber now so she may change.'
'My son wrote that you have your family's eyes.'
'Yes, my lady,' Meggie said. 'They're the Sherbrooke eyes.'
'Blue as a summer sky,' Thomas said, and Meggie, inordinately pleased with this remarkable male offering, turned to him and gave him a dazzling smile. 'Thank you,' she said.
'I'm not a 'my lady,' ' Thomas's mother said, her voice all sharp, 'not since Lord Lancaster divorced me. But now he's dead, so I suppose I can now be a dowager countess since my son is the new earl.'
'I see nothing at all amiss with that,' Meggie said, then just couldn't prevent herself asking, 'Thomas really wrote to you about my Sherbrooke eyes?'
'Among other things, as, for instance, the amount of your dowry, which is quite adequate. A healthy dowry goes far in assuring a young bride's reception. He might have remarked upon things that aren't quite so adequate, I cannot remember.'
Thomas rolled his eyes. She was his mother and he knew her well, and now he rather wished that-well, forget it. She would never change.
She continued after just a moment of the blank silence, 'However, none of this is here nor there for the moment, young lady. Now, as to the other, you may continue to call me my lady.'
'I'm sorry, my lady, that you were ill and could not come to our wedding.'
'That is nonsense. I am never ill.'
Thomas had known from the age of ten that a lie, one with meat on it that promised consequences if discovered, always came to light, and the perpetrator always came to a bad end.
'But why then didn't you come?'
'Meggie,' Thomas said. 'Let it go.' He squeezed her hand. Deep water, she thought, and nodded.
'It is nearly teatime,' the dowager countess said, and pulled out a monocle and placed it against her right eye.
It was a rather frightening sight. She said, 'Bring her back then, Thomas.'
Meggie thought that her mother-in-law could have spoken to her rather than through her. Not a very good beginning.
'I believe we will both be ready for some tea in a short time,' Thomas said, and turned to Meggie.
She said, 'Yes, my lady, I will be delighted to be brought back for tea.'
Meggie said not another word as she trailed Thomas out of the large, cold, dismal drawing room with its tattered furnishings and thick heavy draperies that tightly covered all the windows. What a dreadful room.
'My mother is perhaps a bit eccentric,' Thomas said, not looking at her.
'Maybe she should meet my grandmother,' Meggie said, not dropping a bit of her good cheer. 'I will probably be able to tell you in a week who would win that battle. I was rather hoping that since she believed my dowry was adequate, I would be treated better.'
'Perhaps it wasn't entirely ill health that kept her away from our wedding.'
To his surprise and relief, Meggie giggled. 'You were trying to save my feelings, and so you told me a very blameless lie.' She sighed. 'You did it well, but still, you were caught out. I always am as well. I don't suppose
