💋 The Widow From Bath Who Borrowed Husbands Mills & Swoon Short by Sarnia de la Maré

The Widow Who Borrowed Husbands

In the polite districts of Bath there existed a woman whom respectable matrons referred to only in whispers.

Mrs Arabella Devereaux.

A widow of three years, excellent posture, alarming wit, and a reputation for borrowing husbands the way other ladies borrowed shawls.

Not permanently, you understand.

Just for an evening.

Arabella herself considered the arrangement perfectly civilised. A husband, she reasoned, was a dreadful thing to own outright — expensive, noisy, and inclined to develop opinions.

But borrowing one occasionally?

Delightful.

Her system was admirably organised. Thursdays were reserved for supper companions. Saturdays for dancing partners. Sundays, naturally, for philosophical discussions about the nature of love, which most gentlemen agreed were best conducted near a sofa.

The wives of Bath, however, were less appreciative of Arabella’s intellectual curiosity.

“She is dangerous,” declared Mrs Hardwick at the Pump Room, clutching her smelling salts with theatrical urgency.

“Why?” asked a younger lady.

Mrs Hardwick lowered her voice.

“Because she makes the men laugh.”

This, as every married woman knows, is the most dangerous trick of all.

The situation might have continued indefinitely had Captain Nathaniel Graves not returned from the continent.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Recently decorated for bravery.

And, most inconveniently, completely immune to flirtation.

Arabella encountered him at a musicale and immediately recognised the problem.

He did not stare.

He did not blush.

He did not attempt to compliment her shoulders, her eyes, or her scandalously confident posture.

Instead he looked at her with calm amusement and said:

“Mrs Devereaux, I have been warned about you.”

“How efficient of society,” she replied smoothly. “And have they advised you to run?”

“No,” he said.
“They advised me to guard my heart.”

Arabella laughed.

“My dear Captain, that is entirely unnecessary. I never keep them.”

Over the next fortnight something deeply inconvenient occurred.

Captain Graves refused to be borrowed.

He attended dinners, conversed charmingly, and escorted elderly ladies to their carriages — yet whenever Arabella attempted her usual game of glittering seduction, he simply observed her with that infuriating half-smile.

“You enjoy this,” she said one evening.

“Very much.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said calmly, “you are waiting for someone who will not leave at midnight.”

Arabella raised an eyebrow.

“How perceptive.”

“And how wrong.”

But for the first time in three years, she did not borrow a husband that evening.

Instead she walked home beside the one man who seemed entirely unwilling to be temporary.

At the edge of her garden gate he paused.

“You could marry again,” he said gently.

Arabella studied him.

“And lose my excellent reputation?”

He smiled.

“I suspect it would improve.”

She leaned closer, eyes glittering.

“Captain Graves… what are you proposing?”

“Nothing, yet, a gentleman never assumes too early.”

“How disappointing.”

“Let's say, I am merely conducting reconnaissance.”

Arabella laughed, the sort of laugh that made men think of intimacy.

“Well then,” she said softly, “you may borrow me tomorrow evening.”

The Captain bowed and kissed her gloved hand pulling her body towards him. She felt the rising power in his stiff loins and gasped. The thought of him inside her was almost too much to bear. She gasped again, lips wet and opening, like her heart.