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scruples. It was a mercy he could not read her mind.
    ‘While we are awake, of course I trust your word.’ Not every officer was a gentleman, but her instincts were telling her that this one was. ‘But when we are asleep we might…touch.’
    ‘Meg, have you been following the drum with not one, but two, men for the past five years or have you been locked up in a vicarage?’
    That was so near the knuckle she almost gasped, but the question was obviously rhetorical. The major lay down again, turned on to his right side with his back to her and gave every indication of falling immediately asleep.
    If she lay with her elbows tight against her sides, her legs straight, rigid as a board in her half of the bunk, she could pretend they were not both in the same bed. Eventually, when he showed no signs of leaping on her, she turned over cautiously so her back was to him. Their buttocks touched. Recoiling, she tried the other side so she faced him. That was better, she could curve her body now to avoid his.
    But what she could not avoid was the scent of him, she realised once she had managed to relax sufficiently to breathe. Man. He’d had as good a wash as he could under the circumstances and had got rid of the worst of the river water and the grime and sweat of his journey, but in a way that was even more disconcerting. There wasn’t a great deal of distraction from the natural scent of hot male. She bit her lip and tried not to fidget. Tried, very hard indeed, not to remember what it was like to be held, just held, in strong arms for a while. Safe, secure, trusting.
    Not that James had ever been trustworthy, exactly, even at the start of their scandalous runaway marriage. But he had been strong and young and handsome and, when it was no trouble, kind to her. And often fun. At least, he had been fun while things went his way. His sense of humour did not hold up well, she soon discovered, under adversity.
    But she had believed herself in love with him when she married him; she had made promises, even if he had been lying to her all the time. Despite the pain of thememory Meg felt her limbs grow heavy as sleep began to fog her mind. She gave a little shuffle back to press tight against the wall and drifted off, exhausted.
    Ross half-woke to find himself lying on his back on a bed that was moving. A ship. Yesterday’s events began to present themselves, still confused, to his memory. The child, the river, a woman’s voice.
    He stretched out his legs, opened his eyes and came fully conscious as a jolt of pain stabbed down through his right knee. Several things were apparent all at once. It was daylight, the ship was under way again and beside him was not his rifle but a warm, sleeping, woman.
    In fact, it was amazing she had not been the first thing he had been aware of. Her head was on his shoulder, her right arm was across his chest and she was snuggled up close down the length of him. At some point he had got his arm round her while they slept so she was cradled in a way that was positively possessive. She was so tight against him that he could feel every swell and dip and softness of her body. His became instantly hard.
    It was a remarkably pleasant, and novel, sensation, if he ignored the ache in his groin. His life had never been lacking in women to satisfy his needs, but he was not in the habit of spending the night with them. That was a reliable method of waking up to find the woman gone and with her, his money.
    This woman, his temporary wife, was not after his money. She was a strange creature, expecting conversation and confidences as though their chance alliance was actually a real relationship, and yet not asking anything in return for saving his life and tending to him beyond her passage back to England.
    Had he thanked her properly? He rather doubted it. Yesterday he had been feeling like the devil when he had arrived at the docks and had been in no mood afterwards to analyse whether he was actually grateful for