Page 63 of Miss Dauntless
She expected remonstrations, lectures, philosophy—if Harry was alive, cavorting with Marcus was adultery, a sin, if not a crime.
Tremont regarded her with an odd, slight smile. “You’re sure, Matilda?”
“Yes.” Everything—heart, mind, and what honor a woman could claim—supported that answer. “Yes, and yes, and yes again.”
“So be it.” He took her hand, led her to the steps, and straight up into his sitting room. “We might be late for our appointment.”
“The weather has made traffic abominable.”
“I’m sure it will, but I try not to tell white lies to spare my dignity. If I’m late because I failed to keep track of the time, I would rather say so, or simply apologize for the lapse, and save the lying as a last resort. Shall I undo your hooks?”
“Please.” Matilda stood by the fire and gave him her back. “Do you think your papa is looking down from heaven, knowing when you’ve been naughty?”
“As a boy, I did. Now, Papa holds the place of a benevolent angel, hoping I don’t disappoint him. Do you ever wonder what sort of father your Harry had?”
What an odd question. “He might not know who his father is.” Matilda held still a moment longer while Marcus untied her corset strings.
“Where was Harry when Tommie was conceived?” He slipped his arms around her waist and embraced her from behind.
Matilda scoured her memory for an answer, because there was one. In another of their many spats, Harry had taunted her with proof he could offer publicly that he had not fathered Tommie.
“Harry was in Bristol, looking in on an old chum. He had a lot of old chums whom he looked in on when it suited him to avail himself of their hospitality. I think Sparky Lykens was an old chum in truth, hailing from Harry’s birthplace. I met Sparky a time or two. Not an elderly man, but he had elderly mannerisms. He suffered an injury while taking the king’s… shilling.”
She extricated herself from Tremont’s embrace and faced him. “The limping man is probably Mr. Lykens. Harry turned to him when nobody else would put up with him.”
“When he needed an accomplice he could trust. The name is very helpful, Matilda. We’ll pass it along to the men, and if this Sparky character served in Spain, somebody will know him or know of him. The name is unusual, and that helps too.”
“Spartacus,” Matilda said. “That’s why I recalled it. Not a moniker the common folk are likely to foist upon a child.”
“Who is Tommie named for?”
“Doubting Thomas, the apostle my father approved of least.”
Tremont drew her into a hug. “The apostle gifted with the most rational nature. I do love you.”
Matilda hugged him back and then yielded to the temptation to cling. Marcus was handsome and fit and in every way an attractive specimen, but his physical appeal was an afterthought—literally.
The true measure of the man was in the intangibles. He had pondered whether he could commit murder on Matilda’s behalf and rejected the notion. A lesser person would not have faced that question seriously and thus would have preserved an excuse to commit the crime in the heat of the moment.
Tremont had used the excuse of the heat of the moment—the explanation—at Waterloo. He would not allow himself to use it again. His moral rigor, his sense of accountability, refreshed Matilda’s hopes as all of Harry’s ill-gotten coin never had.
“I love you too, Marcus. Please take me to bed.”
Tremont was barely acquainted with Matilda in the erotic sense, and yet, he knew precisely how the encounter she sought should go. He must give her intense pleasure, to be hoarded up against the possibility of equally intense and far more protracted pain.
He had considered refusing her request, but for what purpose? To quiet some cowardly nattering in his head about adultery and the letter of the law? The law said Harry Merriman was dead, so how could allegations of adultery be brought?
“Why is the right thing not the fair thing?” he muttered, pulling his shirt over his head. “Right by whose standards? The right thing to do is supposedly to offer one’s life in the defense of the crown. The fair thing would be for Fat George to sell his art collection and at least pay for a few cannon instead of burdening John Bull with that expense.”
“You are vexed,” Matilda said, taking his shirt and folding it neatly over the privacy screen.
“I am hoist on my own petard. I have prided myself on enjoying logical puzzles and moral conundrums. At this moment, logic and honor are no comfort.”
Matilda had emerged from the privacy screen wearing her chemise and Tremont’s favorite night-robe, a quilted blue going shiny at the elbows. Her hair was in a single dark braid over her shoulder, and the sight of her, ready for bed and for bedding, was both delight and torment.
To never again behold her thus, to know that Harry Merridew had that honor… That wouldn’t be fair or right or honorable, but it was all too possible.
“Love is a comfort,” Matilda said. “When I was at my worst, early in my marriage to Harry, we’d be spatting about his philandering or the coalman’s bill, and I’d despair. What had I done, marrying that scoundrel? Then Tommie would give me a kick,”—she put a hand on her belly—“and I would be fortified. No matter what nonsense Harry dished out to me, I was free of my father, and I had dodged ruin. For Tommie, I would make a go of the situation.”
