Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

9

He made light conversation as they walked back down the street and turned through the gates to Middlebury. And she was ready enough to contribute her mite. It was better than silence, she had probably decided.

They fell silent, though, after he had drawn her off the drive to walk among the trees. He took a diagonal path, though there was no walking a straight line in the woods, of course. They came out close to the lake, as he and George had done yesterday. She looked inquiringly at him. No doubt she had expected they would walk out to the cedar avenue and beyond again.

“Have you been across to the island?” He nodded in its direction.

“No, I never have.”

He led her toward the boathouse.

Seated in the boat a few minutes later while he rowed, she looked out across the water and then directly at him. She looked rather pale, he thought. Her cheeks looked slightly hollow, as though she had been ill or had not slept well—as she very probably had not. For someone who was supposed to be worldly-wise, he had bungled yesterday’s proposal abominably. It would have helped, he supposed, if he had known he was about to make it.

He wanted to say something. She looked as if she wanted to say something. But neither of them spoke. They were like a pair of bashful schoolchildren just discovering that the opposite sex meant more than just people dressed differently from oneself. She shifted her gaze to the island, and he looked over his shoulder to make sure he did not crash against the little jetty there. He busied himself tying up the boat and helping her out, and he took her to look inside the little temple folly as though this were a mere sightseeing outing.

It was a pretty shrine, complete with finely carved chair and altar and rosary and stained glass.

“I believe it was built for a former viscountess,” Mrs. Keeping told him. “She was Catholic. I can just picture her sitting alone here in quiet meditation.”

“With her beads clicking piously between her fingers, I suppose,” he said. “Rowed herself across, d-did she? I have my doubts. She probably b-brought a hefty, lusty footman with her.”

“A lover, I suppose.” But she laughed softly as she moved past him back to the outdoors. “How you would destroy the romance of the place, Lord Ponsonby.”

“That depends,” he said, “upon your d-definition of r-romance.”

“Yes, I suppose it does.” She looked back at him. “Where is everyone else?”

“Tramping and riding about the f-farms,” he said. “Lady Darleigh and Lady Trentham are at the h-house.”

“Why did you not go too?” she asked. “I suppose you have an estate and farms of your own. You are surely interested. And they are your friends, and this is a special gathering. Why did you not go with them?”

“I w-wanted to see you instead,” he said. “And I had t-told you I would come.”

She walked back behind the folly, and he followed. There was a stretch of grass there, sloping down toward the water. It was completely secluded. The temple would hide it from the house side of the lake. Trees growing down to the banks of the lake and overhanging them hid it from prying eyes on the other three sides.

She stopped halfway down the slope.

“Why?” she asked.

He stood with his back against the folly and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I m-made you what was probably the most inept m-marriage proposal in h-history yesterday,” he said. “I c-came to make amends.”

She turned her head to look back at him.

“Why?”

Did all women ask why when a man proposed marriage to them? But he had trapped himself now, idiot that he was, by his failure to speak up sooner. He could hardly sink in picturesque elegance onto one knee before her now and draw some flowery speech out of the empty recesses of his mind. He would get grass stains on one knee of his pantaloons, anyway.

And why the devil did he want to marry her? He had had all night to work it out, but his thoughts had flitted among any and every subject on earth except that one. He had even slept. Had he been so incapable of focusing before his injuries? It was hard to remember. And had it always been hard to remember?

He stared at her from beneath half-closed lids, and she waited for his answer, her eyebrows raised, her hands clasped at her waist. She looked picturesque and wholesome and . . . safe.

Good Lord! He had better not tell her either of those last two things.

What she looked like was the end of the rainbow. No—ghastly image. She bore no resemblance whatsoever to a pot of gold—crass stuff. Ridiculous image. She was like that dream everyone dreams of something that is always just out of reach but perhaps attainable if only . . .

He swore under his breath, tossed his hat down onto the grass, sent his gloves in pursuit of it, and strode toward her. His hands closed about her upper arms and yanked her against him.

“Why else would I want to m-marry you but to be able to d-do this and more whenever I want, night or day?” he said between his teeth before kissing her hard and openmouthed.

He expected her to push him away, and he would have allowed her to do it. He had no right. . . . She ought to push him away. Instead she somehow slid her gloved hands up between them and cupped his face with them and gentled the kiss.

He drew his head back a little, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against hers beneath the brim of her bonnet. He could not have made a worse ass of himself or insulted her more if he had tried. He had just told her he wanted to marry her for sex and nothing else. He had grabbed her and kissed her like a randy schoolboy who had never even heard the word finesse.

“Let’s sit down,” she said with a sigh, and she released him and sat on the grass before removing her gloves and setting them beside her.

He sat next to her, draped his arms over his knees, and stared out over the water to the trees at the other side.

“Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “you do not even know me.”

“Then tell me,” he said.

“Oh, you know the bare facts,” she said, “and there is nothing much to add. I have not lived a life of high adventure. I am gently born on both my mother’s and my father’s sides, but there is no whisper of aristocracy in our bloodlines. We are ordinary people. I was married to William Keeping for five years.”

“The dull dog,” he said.

She rounded on him.

“You did not know him,” she cried. “And I would not tolerate disrespect of him even if you had. I miss him. I miss him dreadfully. There is gaping emptiness here.” She patted a hand to her bosom.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. Maybe there had been some passion after all.

“My father’s second wife was one of our neighbors too,” she said, “the widow of his particular friend. I was and am happy for them, though I was eager enough to marry and move away after they wed. Dora had left, and our home just did not seem the same any longer. Since I came to live here, I have involved myself in community and church activities whenever I feel I can be useful. I read and I paint and I darn and embroider. I have a modest competence from my late husband on which to live. It is quite sufficient for my needs. Sophia—Lady Darleigh—is my closest friend, not because of her grand title but because of who she is. I have never been ambitious. I am not now. The idea that I might marry a viscount does not make my heart palpitate with delirious hope. I am perfectly happy with my life as it is.”

He was glad of that last sentence.

“I think y-you lie, Mrs. Keeping,” he said.

She looked cross.

“You asked,” she said, “and I have told you. There is very little to tell. But you do not know me for all that. Facts tell only a small part of the whole story of who a person is.”

“You are not p-perfectly happy,” he said. “No one is except m-maybe for brief moments. And you admitted once before that you are n-not fully contented. P-Perhaps there is marriage and motherhood in your f-future, you told me, and your voice was w-wistful when you said it. But you d-did not know who in this neighborhood was likely to offer. I am offering.”

“Why?” She frowned at him. “You could have any woman you wanted. Any lady of rank and fortune. And beauty.”

“You are beautiful,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” she surprised him by saying, and her chin came up and her cheeks warmed with color. “But not in any way that might attract a man like you, Lord Ponsonby.”

She was determined to see him as a libertine.

He smiled and regarded her lazily.

“Is there a c-correct answer to your why?” he asked her. “If I give it, will I w-win the prize?”

She shook her head slowly. “I would be mad to marry you,” she said.

“Why?” Now it was his turn. “Is it over m-me you have been losing sleep?”

“I have not been—” she began, but he had set a hand behind her neck and moved purposefully toward her.

“Liar.”

He kissed her and then raised his head. She gazed back into his eyes and did not complete her interrupted sentence. He untied the ribbon bow beneath her chin and tossed her bonnet to the grass on top of her gloves.

And he kissed her again before unbuttoning his coat and then her cloak at the neck. He slid his hands into the warmth beneath it and drew her to him inside his coat.

Sometimes, he thought, there was something more erotic than naked flesh.

He reached his tongue into her mouth, held her head steady with one hand, and circled one of her breasts with the other. It was small, firm, uptilted above her stays. Not voluptuous. Just . . . perfect.

When one of her hands cupped his cheek, he withdrew a few inches. Her eyes were bright with tears.

“Do you w-want me to—” he began.

“No,” she said, her mouth slanting, open, over his.

She was on the grass then, on her back, and he was half over her, bracing himself above her with his elbows, his hands on her breasts, one of his legs nestled between hers, his mouth moving over her cheeks, her temples, her eyes, her ears, and back to her own. His erection was pressed to her hip.

He moved himself more fully over her, his hands moving down her sides and beneath her to cup her buttocks. He nestled and rocked against her between her thighs, the layers of their clothing separating them. He wanted nakedness then. He wanted to explore her heat with his hand, and he wanted to put himself there and press inside her. He wanted to claim her body for his own.

And he would be safe.

Strange thought—and it was not the first time it had popped into his head like an alien thing.

Safe.

Safe for whom?

And from what?

He set his face in the hollow between her shoulder and neck and willed his heartbeat to a more normal rate.

“W-Would you stop me?” he asked, raising his head at last and looking down at her. “Would you h-have stopped me?”

It was probably an unfair question. But he did not think she would have.

He moved off her and lay beside her, the back of one hand draped over his eyes. He breathed as deeply and as silently as he was able, bringing his body under control.

“I lost my v-virginity when I was sixteen,” he told her. “I have not been celibate since then, except for the three years I spent at P-Penderris Hall. But I do not b-believe I am a rake. And I do believe that any solemn vow f-freely given ought to be binding in honor, including marriage vows.”

She sat up and clasped her arms about her knees. One lock of her hair had come loose from the knot at her neck and lay along the back of her cloak, shiny and slightly wavy. He raised one hand and ran the backs of his fingers along it. It was smooth and silky. She hunched her shoulders but did not move away from him.

“I just accused you of not knowing me,” she said. “But I do not know you either, do I? I have made assumptions, but they are not necessarily true. But I do know that you hide behind a mask of careless mockery.”

“Ah, but the question is, Mrs. Keeping,” he said, “do you w-want to know me? Or do you wish to c-continue undisturbed with your placid, blameless, not quite happy but not entirely unhappy existence here? I may be d-dangerous to know.”

*   *   *

Agnes got to her feet and moved to the water’s edge. But it was not far enough. She walked along the shore until it bent away to her right. She stood still and gazed sightlessly across at the west bank and the trees that overhung it. He did not follow her, and she was thankful for that.

He had been lying right on top of her. For a minute or two all his weight had borne her down into the grass. He had been between her thighs. She had felt him. . . .

Only their clothes had stopped them.

And she had wanted him. Not just the being-in-love sort of wanting. Not just the desire for kisses. She had wanted him.

She had never wanted William—which was just as well, she supposed, since she had not had him very often. Once a week, as a regular routine, for the first year or so, then at less frequent intervals, and finally, for the last two years, not at all. She had never denied him his rights when he had claimed them, and she had never shrunk from their encounters or found them particularly unpleasant. But there had been a certain relief, a certain feeling of freedom, when he had stopped coming to her—except that she would have liked to have had a child. The friendship and affection between them had endured, though, and the comfortable sense of belonging. He had often told her how fond he was of her, and she had believed him. She had been fond of him too, though, if she was honest with herself, she would have to admit that she had married him only because home had no longer felt quite like home with Dora gone and her father’s new wife in her place, with the strong likelihood that her mother and sister would come to live with them soon—as they had.

She had wanted Viscount Ponsonby as she had never wanted her husband. She could still feel the tenderness of physical longing in her breasts and along her inner thighs. And it frightened her—or at least it disturbed her, if fright was too extreme a word. But it was not too extreme. She was terrified of passion, of wanton abandon.

Her thoughts touched upon her mother, but she pushed them firmly away, as she always did when they threatened to intrude.

She continued along the shore until she could see the house across the water. He was sitting on the jetty close to the boat a short distance away, one knee raised, an arm draped over it, the picture of relaxation and well-being—or so it seemed. He was watching her approach.

I do believe that any solemn vow freely given ought to be binding in honor, including marriage vows.

Considering the fact that she had fallen in love with him last autumn and again this spring, she should be over the moon with happiness that he wished to marry her, especially in light of those words. Why was she not? Why did she hesitate?

I may be dangerous to know.

Yes, she felt that it was so. Not that she feared him physically, despite the violent rages he had admitted to and the leashed energy she sensed lurking beneath the often sleepy-seeming exterior. Those rages had happened at a time when he had been all locked up inside his head as a result of his war injuries. He was past that stage now. A slight stammer, sometimes a little worse than at other times, was not enough to frustrate him to the point of violence. But—she feared the danger that was him.

He represented passion, and she feared that almost more than anything else in life. Violence came from passion. Passion killed. Not the body, perhaps, but certainly the spirit, and all that had most value in life. Passion killed love. They were mutually exclusive things—a strange irony. It would be impossible to separate the two with Viscount Ponsonby, though. She would not be able simply to love him and keep herself intact. She would have to give all and . . .

No!

He got to his feet as she came closer. He had her bonnet in one hand. He looked lazily into her eyes as he fitted it carefully over her hair, and she stood like a child, her arms at her sides, while he tied the ribbon in a bow beneath her left ear. She looked back into his eyes the whole time.

Would you stop me? Would you have stopped me?

He had not insisted that she answer, and she had not done so—which had been cowardly of her. Would she have stopped him? She was not at all sure she would. Indeed she was almost certain she would not have. Her heart had sunk with disappointment when he had stopped. And why had he stopped? A rake would surely not have done so.

Her gloves, drawn from a coat pocket, materialized in one of his hands. He held one out and then fitted it onto her fingers. He did the same with the other glove, and she half smiled.

“You would make an excellent lady’s maid,” she said.

His eyes gazed keenly into hers from beneath heavy eyelids.

“I would indeed,” he said. “This is a mere foretaste of the services I would provide.”

“I could never afford you.” She laughed softly.

“Ah,” he said, “but I would not exact payment in coin. You can afford the payment I would demand, in abundance. In superabundance. Ma’am.”

Her knees almost buckled. And there was surely not as much air on this side of the island as there was on the other.

The corners of his mouth lifted in that wicked half smile of his, and he offered one hand to help her into the boat.

They were on the other shore and he was handing her out of the boat when she became aware that Sophia and Lady Trentham were strolling toward the lake from the direction of the house. Sophia was carrying the baby, bundled up warmly in a blanket.

Whatever would she think?

But whatever she thought, she was smiling as she called out to them.

“You have been to the island,” she said. “It is the perfect morning to be outdoors, is it not?”

She looked more searchingly at Agnes as she came closer with Lady Trentham. The viscount was putting the boat away in the boathouse.

If only one were able to control one’s blushes!

“I have never been there before,” Agnes said. “The little temple is more beautiful than one expects, is it not? The stained glass makes the light inside quite magical. Or perhaps mystical would be a more appropriate word.”

“Sir Benedict rowed Samantha and me over there a couple of weeks ago,” Lady Trentham said. “I agree with you, Mrs. Keeping. And that stained glass window gives me ideas for our park.”

“Dora has gone home?” Agnes asked.

“She praised me and scolded me in equal measure.” Sophia laughed. “By some miracle I played all the notes of last week’s piece correctly, but I played with wooden fingers. It is the very worst censure your sister can possibly deal out to one of her pupils, Agnes, and it is quite devastating when she does it. And thoroughly deserved on this occasion. I have not been practicing as conscientiously as I ought.”

She lifted a corner of the blanket and smiled at her son’s sleeping face.

“She would not stay for a cup of coffee,” she continued, “and Gwen and I decided to come out without stopping for one either. The sunshine was too inviting.”

Viscount Ponsonby came out of the boathouse, and all eyes turned his way.

They had not exchanged a word in the boat on the way across. Agnes did not know whether he was finished with her now or whether he would renew his addresses. There was less than a week remaining. . . .

She had a sudden premonition of how she was going to feel on the day all the guests left Middlebury Park. Her stomach seemed to sink like a leaden weight all the way to the soles of her shoes, leaving nausea and near panic behind in its place.

He smiled.

“I was not in the m-mood for writing letters after all,” he said. “It was too late to g-go with everyone else, and there was no one in sight in the house except for a few f-footmen, who did not look as if they would enjoy being engaged in c-conversation. I took myself off to the v-village to see if Mrs. Keeping would take p-pity on me, and she did.”

“Come up to the house and have coffee with us,” Sophia said, smiling at Agnes.

“But you have just come outside,” Agnes protested.

“Not so,” Lady Trentham told them. “We walked through the formal gardens before coming down here.”

“Come,” Sophia said.

Being sociable was the last thing Agnes felt like doing, but none of the alternatives appealed to her either. Dora would be back home and would expect to know where her sister had been. And even if she could get away from Dora after a brief explanation and retreat to her room, she would have her thoughts to contend with again, and they would not be happy company for a while.

“Thank you,” she said.

“And now I face a dilemma,” Viscount Ponsonby said. “Three l-ladies and only two arms to offer.”

Sophia laughed.

“How a child who is not yet two months old can weigh a ton, I do not know,” she said, “but that is precisely what Thomas does weigh. Here, my lord, you may carry him to the house, and we three will find our way unassisted.”

He looked almost comically alarmed. He took the blanket-wrapped bundle—Sophia gave him no choice—and held it as though terrified he would drop it.

Lady Trentham linked her arm through Agnes’s, and Viscount Ponsonby looked down into the baby’s face.

“Well, my l-lad,” he said, “when the l-ladies do not want us, we men band together and talk about horses and races and boxing mills and . . . well, the interesting stuff. Yes, you may well open your eyes—b-blue like your papa’s, I see. We are about to indulge in a heart-to-heart chat, just the t-two of us, and it would be ill-mannered of you to nod off in the m-middle of it.”

Sophia laughed again, and Agnes could have wept. There was surely nothing more affecting than seeing a man holding a baby and actually talking to it. Even if it was not his own, and he had not chosen to hold it and probably wished himself anywhere else on earth than just here, holding his friend’s infant.

He tucked the child into the crook of his arm and made off across the grass, leaving the path to the three of them.

“Agnes,” Sophia said, her voice low, “does he have a tendre for you? What a sensible man he is, if he does.”

“I have a soft spot for him, I must confess,” Lady Trentham said. “But then, I do for all of them. Hugo is so very fond of them, and they have all suffered dreadfully.”

Agnes wondered about Lady Trentham’s limp, which did not seem to be a temporary thing. Wondering kept her mind off the events of the morning so far. Well, almost, anyway.

He still wanted to marry her—perhaps.

He had kissed her again. And more than just kissed her.

But he had not once expressed any fondness for her. Only a desire to bed her, to use his own language.

“I still have not seen any of your paintings, Mrs. Keeping,” Lady Trentham was saying, “even though we have been here longer than two weeks. May I see some of them if I walk into the village one day before we leave? Sophia says you are very talented.”

He had reached the house ahead of them and was sitting on one of the steps outside the front doors, the baby on his lap, head outward, one of his hands spread beneath it. He was still talking.

Agnes swallowed and hoped she had muffled the gurgle of unshed tears in her throat.