Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Margaret sighed. It was all she could do not to breathe out too loudly. Her mother had always decried her ability to make noise in a room, and had raised her to be quiet. Silent, even. Unheard.
But it did not matter here, in her favourite chair, on the deserted deck of the Adelaide.
Since she had been the only one there for nigh on an hour, her eyelids closed gradually, basking in the warmth of the sun.
A salty warm breeze blew across her face, tugging gently at her hair, carefully pinned underneath her bonnet.
She opened her eyes lazily and shifted in her seat, the wedding ring on her finger clinking quietly against the chair. The sun had gone down mere minutes ago, and liquid light seemed to be pooled on the horizon.
“And then I told him…”
A door just to her left opened briefly, allowing the laughter and merriment of the dining hall to seep out onto the deck.
The captain had offered her his arm for the meal, but Margaret had found herself quite content on the deck, and relished the time that she could now spend with herself – not at the beck and call of another, not critiqued and criticised for imagined slights. Just herself.
Her eyes closed against the shimmering light on the ocean, and Margaret sighed happily.
“And why is my beautiful wife not displaying herself downstairs?”
An indulgent smile broke out on Margaret’s lips, and as she opened her eyes once more she saw a dashing figure in a closely fitted jacket standing in the shadows.
Samuel’s head was slightly tilted, and there was a knowing smile on his face – as though he had known her for years, had memorised her ways, instead of marrying her just the day before.
“I have no wish to adorn every room that you are in,” she replied with a flicker of bravery, and was almost astonished at the saucy words that she had spoken.
She could feel heat rise to her cheeks, but she did not look away from him.
He was her husband now. There was no place for shyness, even if they had agreed not to share a bed.
Samuel did not seem to take her words amiss. Instead, laughing and taking a step towards her, he said, “That is more like it. Margaret, I would hear you speak like that every day, each day with a little more of yourself.”
He dropped languidly into the seat beside her, and Margaret saw with a wry smile that everything he did seemed to reek of elegance.
How was it that some people were so much more comfortable in their own skin?
She had always found herself to be plain, awkward, and uncomfortable, but Samuel… he radiated confidence.
She would have said that it was something that one was born with, one saw it so often in the nobility, but then Samuel was just a common man.
His hand reached out to hers and squeezed it, and Margaret almost gasped aloud as she felt the sensation all over her body.
“Th-thank you,” she said awkwardly, trying to cover up the moment of astonishing warmth that he had caused. “I must thank you, Samuel, for…well, everything that you have done for me these last two days.”
Her gaze fluttered upwards towards his face, a little hesitantly, and she blushed to see his startled expression.
“That I have done?” Samuel shrugged as he leaned back in the seat, and Margaret marvelled again at his cheekbones, the sardonic smile that never seemed too far from his face that cast his features in such a handsome light. “Do tell, wife dearest, for I am afraid I do not follow you at all.”
Margaret swallowed. She had undoubtedly spoken more in the last twenty four hours than in her entire life combined, and yet still she was not accustomed to being listened to.
“I have…well, I have never known such comfort as you have given me,” she tried to explain awkwardly, finding it far easier to turn her attention to the fading light rippling on the sea than at the hazel eyes that seemed to be piercing her as she spoke.
“To wake up and rise when I want, to eat when I want – or not at all – to do what I wish with my time…it is truly a joy to have been gifted with such freedom.”
Margaret chanced a glance back at Samuel, and blushed to see that his eyes had not wavered from her for a moment. She swallowed. “Thank you. I-I am grateful.”
For a moment, she thought she had gone too far in attempting to express herself, so rarely had she done it. Samuel did not move, did not speak, but simply stared at her.
A prickling heat of discomfort started in the pit of her stomach, and started to radiate up to her neck when Mr Brown – Samuel, she must remember to think of him as Samuel – started to shake his head slowly.
“My dear lady, ‘tis I who should be thanking you,” he said quietly, his deep voice filled with…what was that emotion? “Here you are, safe under the protection of your Great Aunt, on a journey to the delights of the Continent, and what did you do?”
Margaret smiled nervously, unsure what he meant. “What did I do?”
Samuel laughed again, and waved his hands expressively. “Maggie, you agreed to marry a man that you barely knew! You accepted as your husband a man that you knew nothing about! Do you not think that I should be the one on bended knee thank you, Maggie?”
There was something wonderful about the way that he said ‘Maggie’, and it made her blush once more, thankfully hidden in the darkness of falling evening.
It sent a shiver up her spine and made her stomach twist in a way that was not unpleasant.
No one had ever called her Maggie before, and if it had been anyone else she would have shied away, asked politely but coldly that they desist. But not Samuel.
She had the feeling that somehow, if Samuel asked her to lie down and close her eyes, not knowing what was going to happen next, she would do it.
A brilliantly hot sensation hit her. Samuel had taken her hand, but instead of squeezing it, he was holding it. Almost caressing it.
It made her want to tear all her clothes off and go dancing in the rain.
“And yet,” Margaret said delicately, her eyes flickering to his own and trying to bite down her desire to lean forward and kiss him, to see whether he would kiss her back, “I still know very little about you, Samuel Brown. Even after a full day of marriage.”
She had hoped that the jest, if you could call it a jest, would lighten his heart, even make him smile. She so desperately wanted to make him smile, but his reaction was quite the opposite.
Samuel dropped her hand and turned away from her, crossing his arms and gazing silently out to sea.
The silence seemed to grow between them as the night fell darker, and Margaret could only just see the outline of his face now in the murky gloom – but she did not need to see any more to know his reaction. Berating herself silently as she did was not enough to bring joy back between them.
Why should someone not have their own secrets?
Why was she so desperate to pry into Samuel’s past?
True, if they had been truly in love…Margaret had to swallow and try to prevent her heart from fluttering, it would be different.
She would expect to know all, but they? They were just two people who needed another option, an alternative.
She would certainly not like to spill all her secrets, share all that she was with someone that she had just met.
Her fingers found the thin band of gold that encircled the fourth finger of her left hand, and twisted it round. An unbidden smile graced her lips.
“Where did you manage to find a ring on a ship in the middle of the ocean? I mean, why did you bring your mother’s wedding ring on this journey – did you think you would need it?”
The question, like the smile, had been unconsidered and arisen naturally, and Margaret was surprised to find that the unguarded question was enough to break through Samuel’s silence.
He gave a laugh, though it was slightly stilted. “Oh, you know. It was just something that I happened to have on me at the time. You know how these things happen.”
A rush of something that tasted of tin rushed through her body, and Margaret was surprised to find, upon a moment’s reflection, that it was jealousy. Had Samuel been engaged before, then – or even married before?
“Is that what you were running away from?”
Her question had been quiet, but Samuel’s head jerked round and he asked roughly, “Who said that I was running?”
“N-No one,” stammered Margaret, her heart beating quickly now but not to excitement, but fear. “I just th-thought you had been unlucky, perhaps. In love, I mean. Perhaps you had had your heart broken, and…and she had given you this ring back, and that is why you were…were travelling to…”
Her voice trailed off as hot embarrassment closed her throat, but her genuine fear of rudeness seemed to have convinced her husband that she had meant nothing serious by her question.
She watched Samuel’s shoulders relax, and tried not to think of the hand that he now had lazily lying on the arm of his chair. Just inches from her own, and if she was just brave enough, she could –
“I apologise for my wild response,” Samuel said with a deprecating smile. “I am not such good company as I think you may have believed when you accepted me as your husband yesterday. And in a way, I suppose that I am running.”
Margaret found her breath caught in her throat. She had known it, she had seen some sort of sadness just hiding behind his eyes.
“Running from sorrow,” he breathed with a hint of melancholy. “Running from grief, you could say.”
She watched him, watched him as he became lost in his own thoughts, his own mind. It was almost a full minute before he shook his head slightly, turned to look at her, and smiled at her serious consideration.
“As I am sure you can understand, I have no wish to speak of it,” he said lightly. “I…well, I was raised in a home that taught young boys to hide their troubles and continue on. ‘Tis a lesson I learned well, and I am unsure whether I can unlearn it at the ripe age of one and thirty.”
Margaret nodded and without a second thought, reached out to take his hand. As soon as she had done it, she was uncommonly aware of the larger hand in her own, in the strength of his fingers.
A sudden rush of desire for him swelled in her, and she bit her lip at the overwhelming nature of it, the need, the hunger for him. Where had it come from? What had started such a delightful and wicked thought, when all they had done no more than hold hands?
It took less than a second for her mind’s eye to treat her to a wild and delicious image, that of Samuel Brown kissing her, kissing her passionately, his hands entwined in her hair, and his strong shoulders forcing her against a wall and she clutching at him, clinging onto him for dear life as his tongue –
“Is anything the matter?”
Margaret’s eyes snapped open. When had they drifted shut? Instead of a delectable dream Samuel, the real man was seated beside her, leaning forward now in concern for her.
She knew that her cheeks were flaming red, but in the almost pitch black deck, merely lit by the light of candles through windows, she thought that she was safe from his discerning eye.
“No, nothing at all,” she breathed, and tried to smile as her heart continued to thump against her chest. “I…I hope that you can find what it is that you are looking for in the south of France.”
Samuel squeezed her hand, and Margaret tried not to imagine that strong and certain hand running up and down her body. Really, where were these wanton thoughts coming from, a lady had no business thinking of such things!
“And why,” he whispered in his dark voice, not taking his eyes from her, “do you think that I have not already found it?”