Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

11

There was a degree of tiredness at which one was bone weary yet beyond feeling sleepy.

It was a point Flavian had reached by the time he drove himself through the village of Inglebrook in the middle of the evening. There was no light in the cottage. They must be in bed already. He could not remember when he had last slept, though he had taken a room at the same inn both going and coming and had certainly lain down on the bed on both occasions. He remembered hauling off his boots and wishing for his valet.

He should drive straight to the stables, abandon his rig—or rather Ralph’s—to the care of Vince’s grooms, go up to his room, and collapse on the bed without summoning his valet, who was probably still sulking anyway over the unexpected five-day holiday he had been given.

There were lights blazing in the drawing room windows, he saw as he was approaching the house. That was not surprising, of course. It was not that late, even though it was dark outside already.

There were two unfamiliar gigs outside the stable block. Ah, visitors. Another reason why he should go straight to bed. He would have to change and wash and shave even to appear before his friends and their ladies, of course, but he would have to make a more special effort for visitors. And he would have to smile and be sociable. He was not sure he could smile. It sounded like too much of an effort.

He would not sleep either, though, he suspected. He felt wound up like a child’s spinning top. And the closer he had come to Middlebury, the madder his whole errand seemed. What the devil had possessed him? It was too late to ponder that question now, however. He had gone and he had returned, and if he had wasted his time, then there was nothing he could do about it now.

He nodded to the footman on duty in the hall and directed the man to send his valet up to him. Perhaps a wash and a shave and a bit of sociability would make him properly tired and enable him to sleep tonight.

Who were the visitors? he wondered.

He found out half an hour later when he sauntered into the drawing room, quizzing glass in hand. Vincent was sitting by the fire with Imogen and Harrison, his neighbor and particular friend. George was standing beside the fireplace, one elbow propped on the mantel. Harrison’s wife was seated at one card table, as was the vicar. The vicar’s wife and Miss Debbins were at another. Ben, his wife, Ralph, and Lady Trentham made up the two tables. Lady Darleigh was carrying two drinks to the vicar’s table. Hugo was standing behind his wife’s chair but was conversing with Mrs. Keeping, who stood beside him.

She was wearing a very modest, almost prim blue gown, which had surely never, ever been even remotely fashionable. He suspected its color was slightly faded too. Her hair was ruthlessly tamed, with not a single strand fallen loose by accident or design to tease the imagination.

She looked utterly delicious.

Short as he had been of time in London, he had nevertheless looked about him quite deliberately at the ladies. There had been some real beauties among them, and others who had made themselves seem beautiful or at least alluring by what they wore and how they wore it. He had been quite unenchanted by every single one of them.

It had been most alarming.

He met her eyes for a heartbeat before Lady Darleigh spotted him at the same moment George and Imogen did.

“Flavian!”

“Lord Ponsonby!”

“You are back, Flavian,” Imogen said, coming toward him, both her hands extended. She turned her cheek for his kiss as he dropped his quizzing glass on its ribbon and clasped her hands.

“I h-had to return Ralph’s curricle and horses,” he said, “or he would have borne a g-grudge for the next ten years or so. He is t-touchy that way.”

“I would have taken your carriage instead, Flave,” Ralph said, looking up from his cards. “No carriage seats have any right to be so plush and cozy.”

“Do let me fetch you a drink and something to eat,” Lady Darleigh said after everyone else had greeted him—with one or two exceptions. “Are you cold? Do move closer to the fire.”

He went to squeeze Vincent’s shoulder and tell him how good it felt to be back among all his friends again. He exchanged a few words with George and Harrison, he spoke with Hugo for a minute or two, and then he went to stand beside Mrs. Keeping, who had moved to look intently over her sister’s shoulder as though it was she who was playing the hand.

She pretended not to notice him. It might have been a convincing performance if every muscle in her body had not visibly tensed as he approached.

“Far from being cold in here,” he observed to no one in particular, though all except one person close by was involved in the card game, “it is actually overwarm. Quite b-boiling with heat, in fact.”

No one either agreed or disagreed.

“And although d-darkness has fallen,” he persisted, “and it is still only M-March, it is not a cold night, and there is not a breath of w-wind. It is perfect for a stroll on the terrace, in fact, p-provided one wears a warm cloak.”

It was Miss Debbins who answered. She looked over her shoulder, first at him and then at her sister.

“Take mine, Agnes,” she said. “It is warmer than yours.”

And she returned her attention to her cards.

Mrs. Keeping did not react at all for a moment. Then she turned to look at him.

“Very well,” she said. “For a few minutes. It is warm in here.”

And she turned to precede him from the room. He had to move smartly in order to open the door for her.

And here he went again. Acting from sheer impulse before he had prepared himself properly or composed any pretty speech or gathered any rosebuds or their March equivalent. And with a mind befuddled from lack of sleep. Would he never learn?

He suspected that the answer was no.

She asked the footman in the hall for her sister’s cloak, and she and Flavian stood side by side, not touching, not looking at each other, while it was fetched. He took it from the footman’s hand and draped it about her shoulders, but before he could touch the fastenings, she very firmly buttoned the cloak herself.

The footman had moved ahead of them and was holding open the door.

Flavian hoped the Survivors, their wives, and all the guests were not lined up at the drawing room windows, looking down at them. It might as well be daylight. The moon was more or less at the full, and every star ever invented was beaming and twinkling down from a clear sky.

But, no, not a single one of them would even peep from a window. They were far too well-bred. But he would wager there was not a one of them who had not noticed and drawn his own conclusion. Or her own conclusion.

Mrs. Keeping kept her hands very firmly inside her cloak as he indicated the terrace that ran along the east wing of the house.

*   *   *

All Agnes had been able to think of when he had walked into the drawing room, looking immaculate and immaculately gorgeous, was that she ought to have worn her lavender. On balance she preferred the blue, but it was primmer than the lavender.

How stupidly random and trivial one’s thoughts could sometimes be. As if his coming into the room had not turned her world on its head.

“Did you m-miss me?” he asked.

“Miss you?” she said, her voice surprised and brittle—she would surely be booed off any stage and perhaps even helped off with a rotten tomato. “I did not even realize you were gone until someone mentioned it today. Why should I miss you?”

“Quite so,” he said agreeably. “It was mere v-vanity that made me hope you had.”

“I would imagine,” she said, “it is your friends who have missed you, Lord Ponsonby. I thought this annual gathering of the Survivors’ Club meant more to any of the seven of you than any fleeting pleasure that might draw you off for a few days to enjoy yourself elsewhere.”

“You are angry,” he said.

“On their behalf,” she told him. “And yet, even now that you have returned, you are not spending time with them. You have stepped out here with me instead.”

“Perhaps you are one of those f-fleeting pleasures,” he said with a sigh.

“Much of a pleasure I am to you,” she said tartly, “when you can go away for five whole days without a word in order to indulge some other whim.”

“You are a whim, Agnes?” he asked her.

“I am not what took you away,” she told him. “And I am Mrs. Keeping to you.”

“But you are,” he protested. “You are Mrs. K-Keeping to me. As well as Agnes. And you are what took me away.”

Her nostrils flared. And her steps slowed. She had been setting a cracking pace. With a few more steps they would be beyond the terrace and beyond the end of the east wing, and setting off across the lawn leading to the eastern end of the wilderness walk. She had no intention of walking in any wildernesses with Viscount Ponsonby.

“I am scarcely hard to avoid, my lord,” she said. “It is not as though I put myself deliberately in your path every hour of every day. Or ever, in fact. You did not need to go away for five whole days in order not to see me.”

“Counting, were you?” It was his lazy, slightly bored voice.

“Lord Ponsonby.” She stopped walking altogether and turned toward him. She hoped he could see the indignation in her face. “You flatter yourself. I have a life. I have been too busy—too happily busy—to spare you a thought. Or even to notice that you had gone.”

His back was to the moon. Even so, she could see the sudden grin on his face—before she took a sharp step backward and then another until the wall was behind her and there was no farther to retreat. He advanced on her.

“I did not know you could be p-provoked to anger,” he said softly. “I like you angry.”

He lowered his head toward hers, and she expected to be kissed. She even half closed her eyes in expectation.

“But I did need to go away,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper of sound and breath, “so that I could come back.”

“On the assumption that absence makes the heart grow fonder?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Does it?” he asked her. “Are you fonder of me now than you were f-five days ago, Agnes Keeping?”

It was hard to speak with the proper indignation when one had a man standing so close that one could feel his body heat and when, if one moved one’s head forward even an inch, one’s mouth would collide with his.

“Fonder implies that I was fond to start with,” she said.

“Were you?”

He was a rake and a libertine and a seducer, and she had always known it. How dare Dora aid and abet him by offering her own cloak because it was warmer than Agnes’s? Dora ought to have leapt to her feet and forbidden him to take her sister one step beyond the door of the room.

Agnes took her hands away from the wall behind her and braced them against his chest instead.

“Why did you go?” she asked him. “And, having gone, why did you come back?”

“I went so that I could come back,” he said, and he covered the backs of her hands with his palms. “What sort of wedding would you prefer, Agnes? Something g-grand with b-banns and all sorts of time to summon everyone who has ever known you and all your relatives s-stretching back to your g-great-grandparents? Or something quieter and more intimate?”

That weak thing happened with her knees again, and she licked dry lips.

“If it is the f-former,” he said, moving his head back just a little so that he could look down into her face, his eyelids lazy, his eyes keen beneath them, “then there is all the t-trouble of deciding upon a venue. St. George’s on Hanover Square in London would p-probably be the most sensible choice because one can invite half the world, and a g-good half of that number already has a town house there or knows someone who does, and the other half will have no bother in f-finding a good hotel. If it is elsewhere—your f-father’s home, mine, here—one has all the h-headache of deciding where everyone will stay. If it is the l-latter—”

“Oh, do stop,” she cried, snatching her hands away. “There is to be no wedding, so it does not matter which type I would prefer.”

He ran the backs of his fingers lightly along her jaw to her chin and up the other side to cup her cheek.

“In five d-days with nothing much to do but drive a curricle,” he said, “I did not compose an affecting marriage proposal. Or even an unaffecting one, for that matter. But I do know that I w-want you. In bed, yes, but not just there. I want you in my life. And p-please do not ask your usual question. Why is the h-hardest question in the world to answer. Marry me. Say you will.”

And suddenly it seemed ridiculous to say no when she ached to say yes.

“I am afraid,” she said.

“Of me?” he asked her. “Even at my worst, I n-never physically hurt anyone. The w-worst I did was fling a glass of wine in someone’s face. I lose my t-temper at times, more than I did before, but it does not last. It is all just sound and fury—am I quoting s-someone again? If I ever yell at you, you may f-feel free to yell b-back. I would never hurt you. I can safely promise that.”

“Of myself,” she said, fixing her eyes on the top button of his coat and leaning her cheek a little into his palm despite herself. “I am afraid of me.”

He gazed deeply into her eyes. It was strange how she could see that in the darkness.

“Even tonight,” she said, “I was angry. I am angry. I had no idea I was going to be, but it has happened. You play with my emotions, though perhaps not deliberately. You find me and talk with me and kiss me and then—nothing for days, and then it all starts again. You made me promise five days ago that I would not say no, and then you left and gave me no chance to say either yes or no. You did not tell me you were going away. You did not need to, of course. I had no right to expect it. And now I have a premonition that this is what marriage with you would be like, but on a grander scale. Life as I have known it for years, including the five years of my marriage, would be turned on its head, and I would not know where I was. I could not stand the uncertainty.”

“You fear passion?” he asked her.

“Because it is uncontrolled,” she cried. “Because it is selfish. Because it hurts—other people if not oneself. I do not want passion. I do not want uncertainty. I do not want you yelling at me. Worse than that, I do not want me yelling back. I cannot stand it. I cannot stand this.”

His face was closer again.

“What has happened in your life to hurt you?” he asked her.

Her eyes widened. “Nothing has happened. That is the point.”

But it was not. It was not the point at all.

“You w-want me,” he said, “as much as I want you.”

And his eyes blazed with a new light.

“I am afraid,” she said again, but even to her own ears her protest sounded lame.

His mouth, hot in the chill of the late evening, covered hers, and her arms went about his neck, and his about her waist, and she leaned into him, or he drew her against him—it did not matter which. And she knew—ah, she knew that she could not let him go, even though she was afraid. It was going to be like stepping off the edge of a precipice blindfolded.

He had said nothing about love. But neither had William. What was love, after all? She had never believed in it or wanted it.

He raised his head.

“We could marry tomorrow,” he said. “I was thinking of the d-day after, but that was when I did not expect to s-see you until the morning. And the vicar is here at the house. I could have a word with him tonight. We could marry tomorrow morning, Agnes. Or would you rather that g-grand wedding in St. George’s? With all your family and mine in attendance.”

She braced her hands on his shoulders and laughed, though not with amusement. She was more afraid than ever before in her life. She was afraid she was about to do something she would forever regret.

“There is the small matter of banns,” she said.

He flashed a grin at her.

“Special license,” he said. “I h-have one on the table beside my bed upstairs. It is why I went to L-London, though it struck me when I was on the way there that I c-could probably have got one somewhere closer, maybe even Gloucester. I am not v-very knowledgeable on such things. No matter. I managed to avoid everyone I know except an uncle, who was not to be avoided by the time I s-spotted him. He is a g-good fellow, though. I informed him that he had not seen me, and he raised his glass and asked who the devil I was anyway.”

Agnes was not listening.

“You went to London to get a special license?” she asked, though he had been perfectly clear on the matter. “So that you could marry me here without the benefit of banns? Tomorrow?”

“If it were done,”he said, “then ’twere well it were done quickly.”

She stared at him, speechless for a moment.

“Macbeth was talking about murder,” she said. “And you missed when ’tis done in the middle—If it were done when ’tis done . . . Those words make all the difference to the meaning.”

“You have this disturbing effect upon me, Agnes,” he said. “I s-start spouting p-poetry. Badly. But—’twere well it were done quickly. I stand by that.”

“Before you can change your mind?” she asked him. “Or before I can?”

“Because I want to be s-safe with you,” he said.

She looked at him in astonishment.

“Because I w-want to make l-love to you,” he added, “and I cannot do it before we are m-married, because you are a v-virtuous woman, and I have a rule about not seducing v-virtuous women.”

But he had said, Because I want to be safe with you.

Yet she was afraid of not being safe with him.

“Lord Ponsonby—” she said.

“Flavian,” he interrupted her. “It is one of the m-most ridiculous names any parents could possibly inflict upon a son, but it is what my parents d-did to me, and I am stuck with it. I am Flavian.”

She swallowed.

“Flavian,” she said.

“It does not sound so b-bad spoken in your voice,” he said. “Say it again.”

“Flavian.” And, surprisingly, she laughed. “It suits you.”

He grimaced.

“Say the rest of it,” he said. “You spoke my name, and there was m-more to come. Say the rest.”

She had forgotten. It had something to do with whether they would be safe together or not. But—safe? What did it mean?

Tomorrow. She could be married tomorrow.

“I think my father and my brother would find it an inconvenience to travel all the way to London,” she said. “Especially for a second marriage. Do you have a large family?”

“Enormous,” he said. “We could fill two St. George’s and still allow for s-standing room only.”

It was her turn to grimace.

“But what will they all say?” she asked him.

He threw back his head, his arms still about her, and—bayed at the moon. There was no other way of describing the sound of triumph that burst from him.

“Will say?” he said. “Not would say? They will be as cross as b-blazes, all s-seven thousand and sixty of them, at being denied the fuss and anguish of having a say in my w-wedding. Tomorrow, Agnes, if it can be arranged? Or the day after tomorrow at the latest? Say yes. Say yes.”

She still could not understand. Why her? And why the complete turnaround from the time, not long distant, when he had told her he would never have marriage to offer anyone? What sort of attraction did she hold for a man like Viscount Ponsonby?

Because I want to be safe with you.

What could those words possibly mean?

She slid her hands behind his neck again and raised her face to his.

“Yes, then,” she said in exasperation. “You will not take no for an answer anyway, will you? Yes, then. Yes, Flavian.”

And his mouth came down on hers again.