Someone to Cherish by Mary Balogh

Eighteen

Harry had occasionally thought about having a proper wilderness walk back here, something with a grotto and follies, lookout points where there was something to look out upon, flowering shrubs, perhaps even a viewing tower, since the woods back here were not on enough of an elevation to provide any awe-inspiring vistas over the surrounding countryside.

But then he would come here and find that he liked the unspoiled beauty and seclusion of it all just as it was. The branches of the trees met overhead in places and bathed the rough path in a soft, verdant glow while not completely obliterating the sky. Sounds were muted here, except for birdsong, which seemed magnified. There was always a distinctive smell of greenery and soil. And while for most of the year the predominant color was green, at present there were carpets of bluebells among the trees. He always felt a million miles from civilization when he came here. Far from battle and slaughter and mayhem. And nightmares. And the annoying feeling that so often assailed him these days that he ought to do something with his life. He did not have to do anything here. He could just be.

Perhaps that was the best and most enduring of lessons one could learn from life.

The gardeners did a decent job of keeping the path clear of the inevitable debris caused by changing seasons, of removing large stones that popped to the surface from time to time as though from nowhere to trip the unwary, of clipping back low-hanging branches and undergrowth that forever tried to encroach upon the path.

Lydia’s dog found a lot here to be sniffed at and yipped at. There were plants to be smelled and tree trunks to be marked and all sorts of rustlings and snapping of twigs as unseen wildlife went about its business. And since they were in no hurry, Harry stopped every time Snowball did. He was still holding Lydia’s hand. He had taken it in his almost without thinking after he had disentangled the dog’s lead a while ago. And she had not pulled it away. After a few moments he had laced his fingers with hers. It felt natural for her to be with him here, as though their friendship had somehow grown in the weeks since they had officially put an end to it.

They had not spoken for several minutes, another sign, surely, that they were friends at least. He felt no discomfort with the silence between them and could feel none in her. Only a heightened awareness.

Danger time, he warned himself. But perhaps it was already too late. No. It was already too late. But he did not have to act upon personal feelings, did he?

Snowball was yipping at a robin that had dared to land on a tree branch just overhead in order to sing a little song. It stopped and flew away, perhaps to find a more appreciative audience elsewhere. The dog gave the edge of the path a good sniff before moving on, her nose still to the ground. Not that her nose was ever far from the ground, of course, her legs being so short they were almost nonexistent. She looked for all the world like a snowball rolling along the path, attached bizarrely to a lead.

Harry turned his head to smile at Lydia and realized how close to each other the narrowness of the path had forced them. Their arms were straight at their sides, their fingers entwined. Their shoulders touched. Her face was partially shaded beneath the brim of her bonnet. But a shaft of sunlight slanted across her nose and mouth—that lovely wide, inviting mouth he had noticed as soon as he started to notice her at all. Her eyes were gazing directly into his own.

He kissed her.

And she kissed him back.

Both of them with closed mouths. As though they were nothing more than friends.

But did friends kiss each other on the mouth?

He glanced around before backing her against the trunk of a tree on her side of the path and looping the dog’s lead over a low branch. He set his hands against the trunk on either side of Lydia’s head and leaned his body against hers. She closed her eyes briefly, and he both saw and felt her inhale slowly. She made no attempt to push him away.

“Lydia,” he murmured.

And he closed his eyes and found her mouth with his own—open this time. He slid one arm about her shoulders and the other around her waist, and moved his tongue over her lips until she parted them and he could touch the soft, moist flesh within and reach his tongue into her mouth when she opened it.

He had never been in love before. He had thought he was a few times in the long-ago past. He had had women, especially during his military years. He had liked and respected them all, without exception. But it had never been love.

Not like this. At some time in the last month or so, when he was not paying attention, or perhaps on that one particular night when he had been, she had become all in all to him. The woman he wanted above all others. The reason for his restless depression during the past few weeks, when he had avoided passing her cottage and going to church or anywhere else she might be while all the time she had been gone.

“Lydia,” he murmured again against her lips.

Her arms were about him. Her body was pressed to his, all the way down to their knees. She was slim, pliant, warm, lovely, and he throbbed and yearned for her. He moved one hand down behind her hips to press her more firmly against his erection.

He wanted her. As he had wanted her every day since the last time. As he would surely want her every day for the rest of his life. Not just with this urgent sexual need but in every way he could imagine. God, he wanted her.

“Harry,” she murmured. A few moments later she said it again, but with more awareness. “Harry.” She had got her hands between them and was exerting enough pressure against his chest to make him aware that she wanted him to step back. Yet she was not pushing hard or looking either upset or angry. Her eyes huge and dreamy, she gazed into his, surely with a longing to match his own.

He slid his hands to her hips, took a half step back, and forced himself to smile at her.

“You see,” she said, “I thought we could be lovers and have some pleasure together. It was totally naïve of me. For when it happened there was far more than just simple pleasure. There was a whole explosion of physical sensations and powerful emotions. It was very foolish of me not to have understood that before it happened.”

But how could she not have realized it? She had been married. For a number of years. To a man with whom she had admitted to having fallen headlong in love. Surely she had learned that any sexual relationship would bring with it more than just simple pleasure. Unless … He had been fishing earlier when he had asked why she had not had children. And for a moment, before giving him a noncommittal answer, she had frozen.

“There was all the terrible carnality,” she added.

Terrible?Its literal meaning was arousing terror. Did she mean it literally? Had he brought her terror rather than pleasure that night? And carnality? She had not expected it? She had expected only a superficial sort of pleasure?

“I want to be free, Harry,” she told him as he dropped his arms to his sides and took another half step back from her. “It is what I decided after Isaiah died, and I have not wavered in that decision since then.” Her frown deepened. “It would be foolish to waver now just because of all this turmoil. I will not be forced into doing something I do not want to do.”

He held out his arms to the sides. “You are free, Lydia,” he said, though his heart—or something else inside him— was heavy as he spoke the words. “You do not have to let yourself be bullied by Mrs. Piper and her followers. And you certainly will not be bullied by me.”

Snowball was yipping and bouncing and straining on the lead, frantic to give chase to whatever wild creature was cracking twigs somewhere among the trees on the other side of the path. Lydia turned away from him and unwound the dog’s lead from the branch and continued along the path with her.

Harry fell into step on Lydia’s other side, his hands clasped at his back. Love could not be either grasping or possessive if it was to be worthy of the name, he told himself. Yet it took every ounce of his willpower not to pour pleas and persuasion into her ears. She had chosen freedom and independence after her husband’s death, and she had remained steadfast in that choice ever since, even though she had admitted to occasional loneliness and the dream of taking a lover—him. Even though she had actually done so. Once.

They walked in silence again. But a little farther along there was a wooden seat on one side of the path, the only one on the whole walk. The gardeners always did a good job of keeping it reasonably clean and free from both rot and moss. There was a gap in the trees ahead of it and something of a view diagonally across the eastern corner of the house to the summerhouse in the near distance and an edge of the village beyond it and a bit of countryside beyond that. It was a pleasant place to sit in the summer, either with a book or without.

Lydia stopped by it, though she did not move around it to sit down. Instead she grasped the back with both hands, the dog’s lead still in one of them.

“You asked me why I do not have children,” she said.

He ought not to have asked.

“You do not owe me an explanation,” he said.

And suddenly he did not want to hear of disappointments stretching over months and years or of barrenness or—worse—of miscarriages. He was about to change the subject and point out his cousin Jessica, who was approaching the summerhouse with Gabriel and Abby and Gil. But she resumed speaking before he could do so.

“I did not have children,” she said, “because there was never any possibility of its happening. Ever.”

He closed his mouth. What the devil was that supposed to mean? It means exactly what you think it means, Harry. He had not been imagining things that night.

She was staring downward, her eyes directed at the ground in front of the seat. If she had noticed there was a view from here, she was showing no awareness of it.

“He told me he loved me,” she said. “Before we were married, that is. And after too, a number of times. All the rest of his life, in fact. I believe he meant it. Isaiah did not tell lies. It was just not the sort of love I thought he meant. He explained to me on our … on our wedding day. Wedding night, actually. He wanted me to be more than a wife, he told me, that burning ardor in his eyes and his voice that had so attracted me. He wanted me to be his helpmeet. It was the word he always used of me after that. He wanted us to be servants of the Lord together. He wanted us to devote our time and energies, the pledge we had made to each other that morning, our whole lives, in service to the Lord. If there was one thing he admired about the Roman faith, he told me, it was the celibacy of its priesthood. But he believed that actually our priesthood could be even better than that because it could have both a man and a woman, both the male and female sensibility, in service together as a married couple.”

Good God.

“He wanted us to dedicate ourselves to a celibate marriage,” she said. “In fact, he had decided that we would.”

There were a few moments of utter silence. Well, not quite. That robin, or perhaps one of its mates, was singing its heart out from somewhere among the trees not far off. A distant shriek of children at play rose from the front of the house.

“He did not discuss this with you before your marriage?” he asked. “Even though it was something that would drastically affect the whole of your life?”

“Isaiah never discussed anything,” she said. “He decided and then he told. With all people and in all things. He spoke and acted out of … love and devotion to God. He spoke what he firmly and sincerely believed. But he would not brook opposition. He never had to. No one ever argued with him. It was because of his … charisma.”

“You did not argue?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” she said. “I was young and naïve. I had grown up under the benevolent despotism of my father and brothers. I had that very morning—on my wedding day, that is—vowed to honor and obey the man I had married. The man I loved with my whole heart. And I do not think I fully grasped at the time what it would mean. When I did, I … Well, one did not argue with Isaiah. I thought he must be right. I tried to make his vision of life and service my own. I thought my … longings were mere selfishness. Even sin.”

She lowered her chin and wept.

Harry took the lead from her hand and wound it about the lower bar along the back of the seat. He took Lydia in his arms and pulled free the ribbons of her bonnet. He tossed the bonnet onto the seat and held her face against his shoulder.

Good God and good God, and were there no other words?

Good God!

He had not been mistaken. She had been a virgin.

He kissed the top of her head and turned his own to rest his cheek against her hair.

“Lydia,” he murmured. “You are free now. You are free, my love.”

Suddenly he could understand her absolute determination to remain that way, never again to surrender her freedom to a man, even one who professed to love her. Even to one she loved. Especially to one she loved.

She had thought it possible to take a lover and enjoy simple, uncomplicated pleasure with him. It was totally naïve of me, she had said.

Ah, Lydia.

He buried his face in her hair and had to swallow several times to prevent himself from weeping with her. She fell quiet after a while but made no immediate attempt to move away from him.

“I wanted a child more than anything else in the world,” she said at last into his shoulder.

He rocked her in his arms.

“Or thought I did,” she said. “But I have discovered that I want freedom more.”

Pointless to tell her she could have both. With him. In order to discover that with him she could be as free as she was now—more so, as she would not be hemmed in by the rigid code of behavior imposed by society upon a widow who lived alone in an English village—she would need to take a colossal leap of trust.

In him.

But why should she trust him? He was a man.

“I am so sorry.” She drew back from him at last and fumbled in a pocket for a handkerchief. She dried her eyes, blew her nose, and put the handkerchief away before looking up at him. “I must look a fright.”

“Well, let me see.” He tipped his head to one side and regarded her critically. “Red eyes. Red cheeks. Shiny red nose. Flattened hair. Yes, you do.”

She smiled, and then laughed. “At least you are honest,” she said.

“Always,” he told her. “With you, always, Lydia. Your hair is flattened and untidy. You look beautiful.”

“Not always honest,” she protested, laughing again.

“Yes,” he told her. “Always. I am sorry I pried. But I am not sorry I know.” I am glad he is dead. He stopped himself from saying it aloud, but he thought it quite explicitly and without guilt. “There will be love for you. The sort of love you were denied when you were younger. There will be love, Lydia. And trust. And freedom. And surely children. But not yet. Not until you are ready.”

He handed her her bonnet. He watched while she drew it on and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. The dog seemed to have fallen asleep in a slant of sunlight.

“You are a kind man, Harry,” she said, looking at him again. “Have you always been?”

“Ask my sisters,” he said. “The answer is no anyway. I was a very selfish young man. While my mother and my sisters donned black and dutifully curtailed all their social activities after my father died, unworthy as he was of even a day of mourning, I donned a token black armband and proceeded to sow some very wild oats. Every ne’er-do-well and sycophant in London was my best friend. I was the Earl of Riverdale and a very wealthy man. I often wonder how I would have turned out if the truth of my birth had not been discovered and I had not been suddenly stripped of everything. I believe I might have become a worthy successor to my father. Sometimes what seem to be the worst things that happen in our lives turn out actually to be the best.”

“I think character runs deeper than circumstances, Harry,” she said. “I think you must always have been a decent, caring man—and boy. I think kindness is something that is an inherent part of you. You were very young when it happened.”

“Twenty,” he said. “Is that an excuse?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is. Forgive yourself.”

“Your face is back to normal,” he told her. “It is still beautiful, though, so you need not worry.”

She laughed again. “You are also very absurd,” she said.

“I like to see you laugh,” he told her, and shrugged. “This is probably a stupid question. But would you like to come and meet my grandmothers? They may still be outside. If not, they will probably be in the drawing room, since neither likes to admit to the need of an afternoon sleep. Not during family gatherings anyway. And not when they have each other to compete against. They know what has happened to you. They know I offered for you and you refused. They did not turn their heads to stare at you when we passed earlier, but I am sure they were very well aware of you.”

He was surprised to see that she was giving the question some consideration.

“Yes,” she said. “I would like it. Thank you.”

He ought not to have been surprised. Lydia had backbone, by Jove.