Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

4

Vincent was still in the music room when Flavian opened the door quietly and stole inside. He was at the pianoforte, playing something with plodding care. The dog cocked his ears and had a good look without lifting his head and decided the intruder was no threat. The viscountess’s cat—Squiggles? Squabble? Squat?—had commandeered one side of the sofa. Flavian lowered himself to the other side, but the cat was not content with simple symmetry. It padded across the cushions, paused to give him an assessing look, made its decision, and took up residence on his lap, a big, curled-up blob of feline warmth. There was nothing to do with one’s hands but stroke him between his ears.

Flavian had had pets galore as a boy, none as a man.

The plodding stopped, and Vincent cocked his head to one side.

“Who came in?” he asked.

“Me,” Flavian told him vaguely and ungrammatically.

“Flave? Stepping voluntarily into the music room? While I am in it, practicing a Bach fugue at considerably less than half speed so that I can get the notes and the rhythm exact?”

“Squeak? Squawk? S-Squid? What the deuce is the name of this cat?” Flavian asked.

“Tab.”

“Ah, yes, I knew it was something like that. Tab. He is going to be l-leaving cat hair all over my breeches and coat. And he is quite unapologetic about it.”

Vincent turned on the stool and looked almost directly at him in that disconcerting way he had of seeming very unblind.

“Blue-deviled, Flave?” he asked.

“Oh, not at all,” Flavian assured him, waving a hand airily toward the pianoforte, though Vincent would not see it. “Play on. I thought I might c-creep in here without disturbing you.”

Fat chance. Vincent, who for a few months after his near-encounter with a cannonball on the field of battle had been as deaf as he was blind, could now hear a pin drop at a hundred yards—on thick carpet.

“This has something to do with last night?” Vincent asked.

Flavian set his head back and gazed at the ceiling before closing his eyes.

“Play me a lullaby,” he said.

And Vincent did and brought him near to tears. Flavian liked to tease Vince about his playing, especially on the violin, but really he was quite good and getting better all the time. There were a few minor accuracy and tempo issues, but the feeling was there. Vince was learning to get inside the music, to play it from the inside out.

Whatever the devil that meant.

And what in the name of thunder was enchanting about an unfashionably clad, not particularly young, not obviously beautiful woman, who was idiotic enough to stretch out on the grass of a meadow so that she could see the world as daffodils saw it, and then did not have the sense, when interrupted, to hop to her feet and run like the wind for home?

She really was quite ordinary. She was tallish and slender with hair of a nondescript brown and unimaginative style. Her face was pleasing but hardly the sort to turn heads on a crowded thoroughfare—or in a half-crowded ballroom. He would surely not have noticed her at that autumn ball if Lady Darleigh had not asked him to dance with her so that she would not be a wallflower. And what had that request said about Mrs. Keeping? He would not have noticed her on the village street the day before yesterday if it had not been nearly deserted. He would not have noticed her this morning if she had not been . . . lying among the daffodils.

Looking all willowy and relaxed and . . . inviting.

Devil take it, she was not ordinary.

He ought not to have kissed her. He did not make a habit of kissing respectable females. There were too many dangers involved. And this particular respectable female happened to be the friend of his hostess here at Middlebury Park.

He ought not to have kissed her, especially in his present mood, but he had.

And actually, in retrospect, he knew she had one feature that was definitely out of the ordinary, and that was her mouth. He could have lost himself on it and about it and in it for the rest of the morning and beyond if a bird had not squawked quite unmelodically from a cedar branch and broken his concentration—and if she had not pressed her hands against his shoulders at the same moment.

Dash it all, he should not have kissed her. He would not have noticed her mouth if he had not touched it with his own. And now he craved . . .

Ignore it.

She ought not to have been there at all, trespassing on private property. Though she had told him, had she not, that she had permission, and she was the viscountess’s friend. He had been speechless with rage when he first spotted her. He had walked all that way because he needed to be alone, and there was a damned woman there before him, taking a nap in the middle of the morning and looking damnably picturesque as she did so. He had almost turned on his heel and stalked away before she saw him.

It was, of course, what he ought to have done.

But he had paused first in order to assure himself that she was not dead, even though it was perfectly obvious that she was not. And then he had just stood there, thinking, like a nincompoop, of fairy tales. Of Sleeping Beauty, to be precise.

Anyone who believed his head had mended while he was at Penderris needed his own head examined.

He had told her, in so many words, that he would go back there tomorrow. If she was wise, she would barricade herself inside her house tomorrow and every day thereafter until he was long gone from Gloucestershire.

Would she be foolish enough go back?

Would he?

There had been sunshine and springtime and daffodils all about her. . . .

“Flave.” The voice spoke softly.

“Huh?”

“I am sorry to wake you,” Vincent said. “I could tell from your breathing that you were sleeping. But it seemed ill-mannered to leave you alone here without a word.”

He had been sleeping?

“I must have d-dozed off,” he said. “R-Rude of me.”

“You did ask for a lullaby,” Vincent reminded him. “I must have played it better than I thought. I expect Sophie has gone to the lake by now. I should join her and the others there, but I am going to steal half an hour or so in the nursery instead. I don’t suppose you would care to come with me?”

Flavian was comfortable where he was. The cat was warm and relaxed on his lap. He could easily nod off again. He had not slept much, if at all, last night. But Vince wanted to show off his infant. He would not say it in so many words, of course. He knew very well that infants bored most men.

“Why ever not?” Flavian said, sitting up while the cat got to his feet, jumped down from the sofa, and went to stand by the door, its back arched, its tail pointing straight at the heavens. “Does he look like you?”

“I have been told he does.” Vincent grinned. “But, if memory serves me correctly, babies look simply like babies.”

“L-lead on, Macduff,” Flavian said, cheerfully misquoting.

And who would have imagined, he thought later, that he would spend a good hour of this particular morning, which he had started in such a . . . savage mood, in the nursery with a baby who looked like a baby and with the child’s father, who behaved toward his son for all the world as if he were besotted? And that Flavian would actually feel soothed by the experience? And that he would read through two children’s books written by Mr. and Mrs. Hunt—Vincent himself and his wife—and illustrated by the latter? And that he would chuckle over the stories and pictures with genuine delight?

“These books are p-priceless, Vince,” he said. “And there are more to come, are there? Whatever gave you the idea of having them published? And how did you go about it?”

“It was Sophie’s idea,” Vincent told him. “Or, rather, it was Mrs. Keeping’s. Have you met her? She is the sister of Miss Debbins, our music teacher. She and Sophie are as thick as thieves. Mrs. Keeping took one look at the first story, which Sophie had written out and illustrated, and remembered that she had a cousin—her late husband’s cousin, actually—in London who she thought would like it. She sent it to him, and it turned out that he is a publisher and did indeed like what he saw and wanted more. So we are famous authors, and you really ought to bow down in homage before us, Flave. He wanted to publish the stories under just my name—Mr. Hunt—to protect Sophie’s sensibilities. Can you imagine anything more asinine?”

Yes, Flavian thought. Yes, he had met Mrs. Keeping three times. Once at the ball last October, once on the village street two days ago, once in the daffodil meadow beyond the cedars this morning. And he had kissed her, dash it all.

“I have j-just salaamed three times,” he lied. “It is a pity you couldn’t s-see me, Vince. I looked suitably worshipful.”

“You were on your knees when you did it, I hope,” Vincent said, his hand stroking over the almost bald fair head of his son.

He would not go back tomorrow, Flavian decided as he turned to the window to watch Ben make his slow, ungainly way up from the lake with the aid of his canes, the viscountess beside him, while Lady Harper walked ahead of them with Hugo’s wife. Ben was laughing at something Lady Darleigh was saying, and the ladies were looking back, smiles on their faces, to discover what the joke was.

Everyone at this particular gathering was so damnably happy.

Len had been dead for a year, and they had not spoken in more than six years before that. They never would now. Velma had been left with a daughter and was returning home to Farthings.

Mrs. Keeping had laughed when he told her he was going to write a sonnet about meeting her among the daffodils.

She should always laugh.

*   *   *

Sophia came calling during the afternoon, Viscount Darleigh with her, as well as Lord and Lady Trentham and Lady Barclay.

Lord Trentham was a fierce-looking giant of a man, his wife a small, exquisitely pretty lady who smiled a great deal and was warmly charming. It seemed odd, considering the fact that he was one of the Survivors, that it was she who walked with a heavy limp. Lady Barclay was the one female member of the club, having been present, Sophia had explained to Agnes, when her husband was tortured and killed in the Peninsula. She was a tall lady of marblelike beauty, though she had kind eyes.

Viscount Ponsonby had not come with them.

“Miss Debbins,” Viscount Darleigh said to Dora after they had all drunk tea and conversed on a number of topics, “I have come to beg you to save my guests from the exquisite agony of having to listen to me play on the harp or violin for longer than a few minutes at a time. I must offer them music, but my own leaves something to be desired, despite the fact that I have you for a teacher.”

“And mine would please no one but a doting mama if I were eight years old,” Sophia said.

“Will you come to the house tomorrow evening as our honored guest?” the viscount asked. “To play for us, that is?”

“And to dine first,” Sophia added.

“You would be doing us a singular favor, ma’am,” Lord Trentham said with a frown. “Vincent has punished us with his violin during previous years and set cats to howling for miles around.”

“The trouble with your teasing, Hugo,” Lady Barclay said, “is that those who do not know you may not understand that you are teasing. You play remarkably well, Vincent, and are a credit to your teacher. We are all, including Hugo, exceedingly proud of you.”

“We will, nevertheless,” Lady Trentham said, “be delighted to hear you, Miss Debbins. Both Sophia and Vincent speak highly of your skill and talent on the pianoforte and on the harp.”

“They exaggerate,” Dora said, but there was a flush of color in her cheeks that told Agnes she was pleased.

“Exaggerate? I?” Lord Darleigh said. “I do not even know the meaning of the word.”

“Oh, will you come?” Sophia begged. “And you must come too, Agnes, of course. Our numbers of ladies and gentlemen will be equal at the dinner table, for once. What a dream come true that will be as I arrange the seating. Will you come, Miss Debbins? Please?”

“Well, I will,” Dora said. “Thank you. But your guests must not expect too much of me, you know. I am merely competent as a musician. At least, I hope I am competent.”

Dora, Agnes knew as she smiled at her, would be over the moon with excitement for the next day and a half. At the same time, she would probably suffer agonies of dread and self-doubt and have a disturbed night. It would worry her that she must play for a group of such illustrious persons.

“Splendid!” Viscount Darleigh said. “And Mrs. Keeping? You will come too?”

“Oh, she must,” Dora said hastily just as Agnes was opening her mouth to make some excuse. “I will need to have someone to hold my hand.”

“But not while you are playing, it is to be hoped,” Lord Trentham said.

“But of course Agnes will come too,” Sophia said, clapping her hands. “Oh, I shall so look forward to tomorrow evening.”

She got to her feet as she spoke, and her fellow guests rose too to take their leave.

No one seemed to notice that Agnes had not given an answer. But it was not necessary to do so, was it? How could she possibly refuse? It was an evening for Dora, and she knew that, though her sister would suffer in the anticipation of it, it could also be one of the happiest evenings of her life.

How could she, Agnes, spoil it?

“Oh, Agnes, dearest,” Dora said as soon as they had watched their visitors walk away along the village street, “ought I to have said no? I really cannot—”

“Of course you can,” Agnes said, slipping her arm through her sister’s. “Imagine, if you will, that they are all just ordinary people, Dora—farmers and butchers and bakers and blacksmiths.”

“There is not a single one of them without a title,” Dora said with a grimace.

Agnes laughed.

Yes, and one of them was Viscount Ponsonby. Whom she really ought not to want to see again. Her only previous experience with combating churning emotions had come last October, and she’d found it neither easy to deal with nor pleasant. And on that occasion he had not even kissed her.

One would expect to have learned from experience.

*   *   *

George had been having the old nightmare again, and with increasing frequency. It was the one in which he reached out to grasp his wife’s hand but could do no more than brush his fingertips against hers before she jumped to her death over the high cliff close to their home at Penderris. At the same moment he thought of just the words that might have persuaded her to return from the brink and live on.

The Duchess of Stanbrook really had committed suicide in just that way, and George really had seen her do it, though he had not in reality been quite as close. She had seen him running toward her, heard him calling to her, and disappeared over the edge without a sound. It had happened a mere few months after their only son—their only child—was killed in Spain during the wars.

“Has the dream been recurring more frequently since the wedding of your nephew?” Ben asked.

George frowned and thought about it.

“Yes, I suppose it has,” he said. “There is a connection, do you suppose? But I am genuinely happy for Julian, and Philippa is a delightful girl. They will be a worthy duke and duchess after my time, and it seems there will be issue of the marriage within the next few months. I am content.”

“And that very fact makes you feel guilty, does it, George?” Ben asked.

“Guilty? Does it?”

“We should call it the Survivors’ guilt,” Ralph said with a sigh. “You suffer from it, George. So do Hugo and Imogen. So do I. You feel guilty because the future of your title and property and fortune have been settled to your satisfaction, yet you feel your very contentment with that somehow betrays your wife and your son.”

“Do I?” The duke settled an elbow on the arm of his chair and cupped his hand over his face. “And have I?”

“Sometimes,” Hugo said, “you feel wretched when you realize that a whole day has passed, or maybe even longer, without your thinking even once about those who did not live while you did. And it almost always happens just when you are at your happiest.”

“I do not believe a whole day has passed yet,” George said.

“A day is a long time,” Imogen agreed. “Twenty-four hours. How can one turn off memory for that long? And would one wish to? One thinks one does until it happens for a few hours.”

“This is precisely what I mean,” Ralph said. “It is guilt pure and simple. Guilt over being alive and able to forget—and smile and laugh and feel moments of happiness.”

“If I had died, though,” Vincent said, “I would have wanted my mother and my sisters to live on and have happy lives and to remember me with smiles and laughter. Not every day, however. I would not have wanted them to be obsessed with remembering me.”

“One good way to forget,” Flavian said, “is to fall off your h-horse and land on your h-head after someone has shot you through it and then have someone ride over you. Behold the blessing of my poor memory: no g-guilt whatsoever.”

Which they all knew to be a lie.

But if he had died, he would have been quite happy at the notion of Velma’s marrying Len—his betrothed and his best friend, respectively. At least he thought he would have been happy. Except that no one could be happy when he was dead. Or unhappy either, for that matter.

Anyway, he had not died—but it had happened anyway. Velma had come and told him. Len had not. Perhaps he had decided against it when he heard what happened after Velma came. Perhaps he had judged it best to keep his distance.

Now Len was dead, and they had not spoken in more than six years while he still lived. And Flavian felt guilty about it—oh, yes, he did, unfair as it seemed. Why should he feel guilt? He was not the one who had done the betraying.

Usually these late-night sessions made them all feel somewhat better, even if they solved nothing. Flavian did not feel better the next morning, however. He had gone to bed feeling as if he had leaden weights in his shoes and in his stomach and in his soul, and he woke up with one of his headaches and deep in one of his depressions.

He hated them more than the headaches—that feeling of dragging self-pity and the fear that nothing was worth anything. It was the one shared mood the Survivors’ Club had all fought against most fiercely during those years they had spent together at Penderris. Bodies could be mended and made to work again, at least well enough to enable the person inside them to live on. Minds could be mended to the degree that they worked efficiently again for the one who inhabited them. And souls could be soothed and fed from an inner well of inspiration and from an outer sharing of experience and friendship and love.

But one never quite reached the point at which one could relax and know that one had made it through to the other side of suffering and could now be simply content, even happy, inside a balanced mix of body, mind, and spirit.

Well, of course one did not. He had never been quite naïve enough to expect it, had he? Surely, even when he had been head over ears in love with Velma, and she with him, and they had become betrothed at the end of those brief weeks of his leave and had expected a life of happily-ever-after, surely even then he had not believed it to be literally possible. After all, he had been a military officer, and there had been a war to fight. And his brother, David, had been dying.

Why the devil had they got betrothed and even celebrated the event at a grand ball in London the night before he set off back to the Peninsula, while David was at Candlebury dying, and Flavian had come home for the express purpose of being with him? And why had Flavian gone back to war when the end for his brother had obviously been near and he was about to be landed with the responsibilities of the title and property? He frowned in thought, trying to remember, trying to work it out, but the trying merely made his head thump more painfully.

The sun was shining from a clear blue sky again, he could see, and the daffodils beckoned. Or, rather, the enchantress among the daffodils beckoned. Would she be there? Would he be disappointed if he went and she was not? Would she be disappointed if she went there and he did not? And what did he intend if he did go? Conversation? Dalliance? Seduction? On Vince’s property? With the viscountess’s friend? He had better stay away.

Ben, Ralph, George, and Imogen were going riding. They expected to be gone all morning, since they were going beyond the confines of the park.

“Will you come with us, Flavian?” Imogen asked at the breakfast table.

He hesitated for the merest moment.

“I will,” he said. “Vince is taking Hugo and the l-ladies over the wilderness walk, and it sounds alarmingly s-strenuous. I will come with you and l-let my horse do all the exercising.”

“What I am going to do,” Vincent said, “is show everyone what they cannot see because they have eyes.”

“The boy has taken to talking in riddles,” George said, looking at him fondly. “Yet, strangely, we know just what you mean, Vincent. At least I do.”

“I am even going to sacrifice my morning’s practice in the music room,” Vincent said.

“He p-put me to sleep there yesterday morning,” Flavian said.

“With a lullaby, Flave,” Vincent protested, “for which you asked. I would say I was singularly successful.”

Flavian chuckled.

“Oh,” Lady Darleigh said, her hands clasped together at her bosom, “I am so looking forward to this evening, and I am quite certain you will all be vastly impressed, even though some of you spend time in London and must attend all sorts of concerts with the very best performers.”

This evening?

“I do believe,” Lady Trentham said, “that Miss Debbins was pleased to be asked, Sophia. What a delightful lady she is. And her sister too.”

Miss Debbins? She was the music teacher, was she not? And her sister was . . .

“I am probably as far from being a connoisseur of music as it is possible to be,” Lady Darleigh said. “But I do believe that talent in any artistic field is unmistakable when one encounters it. And I believe Miss Debbins is talented. You will all be able to judge for yourselves this evening.”

“Miss Debbins is to play here?” Flavian asked.

“I did not tell you?” the viscountess asked him. “I am so sorry.”

“He was not listening,” Hugo said.

“Perhaps he was not present when I announced it.” Lady Darleigh beamed at Flavian. “Miss Debbins is going to play for us this evening, as well as anyone else of our number who can be persuaded to entertain the rest of us. She will be coming for dinner too. For once we will have an even number of ladies and gentlemen at the table.”

Even numbers. Flavian did the calculations in his head, but they did not add up. Unless . . .

“Her sister will be coming too,” Vincent said. “Mrs. Keeping. We are fond of her, are we not, Sophie, not least because she is the one who made it possible for us to become world-famous authors.”

He chuckled, as did everyone else—Flavian included.

The devil, he was thinking. He had just resisted the temptation to stride off in the direction of the meadow and the daffodils. Yet he was to meet her again after all today. Here. She was coming to dinner.

Well, at least tonight she would not be surrounded by little trumpets of sunshine fallen from the sky.

And if he was not very careful, he was going to find himself penning sonnets after all. Shudderingly awful ones.

Little trumpets of sunshine, for the love of God.

But his headache suddenly seemed to have eased.