Only a Kiss by Mary Balogh

14

Imogen had chosen not to go up to the hall for dinner even though Aunt Lavinia had sent a brief note again, assuring her that she would be welcome, that she was always welcome, as she knew, and did not need to wait for an invitation. And, she had added, there were two more guests—Cousin Percy’s gentlemen friends from London.

Imogen liked all these people who had come to shatter her peace at Hardford, but she was finding the noise and bustle a little overwhelming. She was very thankful indeed for her own house, even if she must expect it to be invaded frequently during the daytime until everyone left.

She wondered if he was finding it overwhelming too. But they were of his world, and his world was a busy, noisy place, she guessed, with little room for quiet introspection. Perhaps he was enjoying their company and had forgotten all about that night when he had asked if he might retreat here occasionally.

But she remembered the book of Alexander Pope’s poetry on a table beside his chair in the library—and his double first degree in the classics. And she remembered something he had said just before asking if he might come here—I think I came to Cornwall in the hope of finding myself, though I did not realize that until this moment. I came because I needed to step away from my life and discover if from the age of thirty on I can find some new and worthwhile purpose to it.

But he had not been allowed to step away from his life for long. It had caught up to him here.

She stayed up later than she ought, though the morning visit with the older ladies and the afternoon down on the beach with a group of exuberant youngsters had tired her. She could not settle to reading, which might have relaxed her. She thought of writing to her mother, but decided to wait until morning, when she would be wider awake. She crocheted but could not admire what she did. She went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and ended up baking a batch of sweet biscuits and then washing up after herself. She crocheted again and petted Blossom, who was always fascinated by the fine silk thread and the flash of the crochet hook.

And finally she admitted that she was waiting for him to come and it simply would not do. She was allowing her peace and hard-won discipline to be shattered. She would go to bed, have a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow take herself firmly in hand. This would not do.

She put her crochet away and got to her feet, remembering as she did so that she had not eaten any of the biscuits she had baked or made any tea after boiling the kettle and measuring the tea leaves into the teapot. It was too late now, though. And she was neither hungry nor thirsty. She reached for the lamp, glancing at the same time at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was ten minutes past eleven.

And that was when a knock sounded at the door, causing her to jump and Blossom to open her eyes.

Imogen picked up the lamp and went to open the door. It did not occur to her to be cautious about doing so.

For a dreadful moment they just stood looking at each other, one on each side of the door’s threshold. A draft of cold air came in from outside. The lamp, lighting his face from below, made him look taller and a bit menacing, especially as he was neither smiling nor speaking. But she knew in that moment that she wanted him, that there was really no decision to make—or if there was, then she had already made it. And she knew too that it was not just that—oh, she might as well think of it as sex—that made her desire him. It was not just sex. It was . . . more than that. That was what made it a truly dreadful moment.

And then he was inside and had said that about not having come expecting to sleep with her—had he really said it aloud and not shocked her beyond words? And she had acknowledged that he had come to seek refuge and led the way into the sitting room. Hector was already seated beside the chair on which she had been sitting all evening, the chair where he always sat when he was here.

Always?

How many times had he been here? It seemed as if he had always been here, as if that chair had always waited for him when he was not, as though when she sat on it she was drawing comfort from the fact that it was his.

This combination of tiredness and a late night was playing strange and dangerous tricks with her mind.

He waited for her to seat herself on the love seat and then sat down himself. He had left his coat and hat out in the hall, she noticed. He was still unsmiling. He must have left his armor of easy charm out in the hall too.

“You must have been about to go to bed,” he said. And then he did smile—a bit ruefully. “That was not the best conversational opener, was it?”

“I am still up,” she said.

He looked about the room and at the fire, which had burned low. He got up, as she remembered his doing last time, picked up the poker to spread the coals, and then piled on more from the coal scuttle beside the hearth. He stayed on his feet, one forearm resting on the mantel. He watched the fire catch on the new coals.

“What if I had?” he asked her.

Strangely, she knew exactly what he was asking, but he elaborated anyway.

“What if I had come expecting to sleep with you?”

She considered her answer.

“Would you have tossed me out?” He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder.

She shook her head.

They gazed at each other for a few moments before he poked the fire again to give it more air and resumed his seat.

“Is it possible for people to change, Imogen?” he asked her.

She felt a little lurching of the stomach at the sound of her name on his lips—again.

“Yes,” she said.

“How?”

“Sometimes it takes a great calamity,” she said.

His eyes searched her face. “Like the loss of a spouse?”

She nodded slightly again.

“What were you like before?” he asked.

She spread her hands on her lap and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers—something she tended to do when her mind was agitated. She released the fabric and clasped her hands loosely in her lap.

“Full of life and energy and laughter,” she said. “Sociable, gregarious. Tomboyish as a girl—I was the despair of my mother. Not really ladylike even after I grew up. Eager to live my life to the full.”

His eyes roamed over her as if to see signs of that long-ago, long-gone girl she had been.

“Would you want to be that person again?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Have you read William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“It is impossible to recapture innocence once it has been exposed for the illusion it is,” she said.

“Illusion?” He frowned. “Why should innocence be more unreal, more untrue, than cynicism?”

“I am not cynical,” she said. “But no, I could not go back.”

“Can experience and suffering not be used to enrich one’s life rather than deaden or impoverish it?” he asked.

“Yes.” She thought of her fellow Survivors. They were in a vastly different place in their lives than could have been predicted eight or nine years ago, but five of them at least had risen above the suffering and forged lives that were rich and apparently happy. Perhaps they would not be so happy now if they had not had to go through that long, dark night of pain and brokenness. Disturbing thought.

“You are in some ways fortunate, Imogen,” he said softly, and her eyes snapped to his. “How can one, at the age of thirty, learn from the experience of nothing but empty pleasure and frivolity?”

“And love,” she said fiercely. “Your life has been so full of love, Lord Hardford, that it is fairly bursting at the seams with it. Even that dog loves you, and you love it. It is not unmanly to admit it. And your life has included a period of intense learning about two of the greatest civilizations our world has known. You may have largely wasted the years since you left Oxford, but even that experience does not have to be for nothing. No time is really wasted unless one never learns the lessons that it offers.”

He had sat back in his chair and was regarding her with a half smile on his lips. “You are expending passion over a wastrel, Lady Barclay?” he said. “What lessons?”

She sighed. She had allowed herself to become rather wrought up. But he was not a wastrel. A week or so ago she might have believed it, but no longer. He might have lived the life of a wastrel, but that did not make him one. He was not defined by what he had done or not done in the past ten years.

“Perhaps in recognizing how one ought not to live, one can learn how to live,” she said.

“It is that easy?” he asked her. “I should turn overnight, you think, into a worthy country gentleman, a Cornish country gentleman, and bury myself for the rest of my life in the back of beyond with my crops and my sheep and the ugly dog I have supposedly come to love? Breeding heirs and spares and hopeful daughters? Loving my wife and helpmeet and cleaving only unto her for as long as we both shall live?”

And she laughed. Despite the almost unbearable tension that his words had begun to build, he had also created an image that was just too absurd.

His eyes smiled—oh, goodness!—and then his lips.

“You are really quite stunning when you laugh like that,” he said.

That sobered her. But she had been having exactly the same thought about him and his smile.

“It gives a glimpse into the person you say you were and the person you were meant always to be,” he said. “Can you not be happy again, Imogen? Will you not be?”

She smiled, found that she could not see him clearly, and realized that her eyes had filled with tears.

“No, don’t cry,” he said softly. “I did not mean to make you unhappy. Will you come to bed with me?”

She blinked away her tears. And her self-imposed exile from her own life seemed suddenly pointless. Wasted time—between eight and nine years to match his ten.

He had asked a question.

“Yes,” she said.

And he got to his feet and came toward her. He reached out a hand. She looked at it for several moments, a man’s hand, a hand that would touch her . . . She placed her own in it and stood. He had not left much room between himself and the love seat. She put her arms up about his neck and leaned into him as his own arms came about her, and their mouths met.

It was a very deliberate thing, she decided. It was not seduction, and it was not unbridled temptation. It was not something for which she would feel guilt, something she would regret. It was something she wanted and would allow. No, nothing as passive as that. It was something for which she would step back into life, something to which she would give herself unreservedly, something she would allow herself to enjoy. But not alone. Together. It was something they would enjoy together.

Just for a brief while. A short vacation from the life she had imposed upon herself and must live until the end.

She drew back her head and looked into his eyes, which were very blue even in the dimness of the lamplight.

“I do not expect forever,” she told him, “or want it. I do not expect you to come back here in the morning out of any sense of guilt to offer me marriage. I would say no if you did. This is just for now. For a little while.”

His eyes smiled again before his mouth followed suit. It was a devastating expression and quite unconscious and therefore unpracticed, she guessed. She was seeing him, or at least a part of him, as he really was.

“If I were to offer forever, I would be a fool,” he said. “No one has forever in his possession. Take the lamp, and I will set the guard about the fire.”

She turned to lead the way upstairs. Blossom was padding off to her bed in the kitchen.

“Stay,” she heard him say to Hector.

*   *   *

A fire had been lit in the bedchamber. A few of the coals, now turned almost to ash, still glowed faintly red. The room was not exactly warm, but it was not frigid either.

She set down the lamp on the dressing table, lit a candle, and extinguished the lamp. Immediately the light was dimmer, more intimate. It was a pretty room, not small, but given a cozy effect by a ceiling that followed the slope of the roof on one side and a square window that reached almost to the floor. She drew the curtains across it—pretty white curtains with a bold flower pattern in pastel shades to match the bedcover. He did not usually notice such things, but he suspected they had been chosen, even if unconsciously, to suit Imogen Hayes as she had been before the death of her husband.

Percy stood inside the door, his hands clasped behind him, savoring the strangeness of the moment. This was not seduction on his part or even skilled persuasion. She was fully acquiescent. There had not even been any flirtation. This was a new experience for him and he was not sure what to expect. That was a new experience too.

She lifted her arms, facing away from him, and began to remove the pins from her hair. He moved then to stride toward her.

“Allow me,” he said.

She lowered her arms without turning.

Her hair was warm and thick and shining in the candlelight. It was also absolutely straight and reached almost to her waist. It would be a maid’s nightmare, he guessed, when the fashion was for curls and ringlets and waving tendrils. It was glorious and several shades of blond. He combed his fingers through it. There were no tangles that would need a brush.

Her crowning glory, he thought on a foolish flight of clichéd fancy and was glad he had not spoken aloud.

He turned her by the shoulders. She looked years younger with her hair down, and she looked twice as . . . No, she could not possibly look more desirable to him than she had downstairs, telling him earnestly that his time during the past ten years had not been wasted, eyes filling with tears when he had asked if she would allow herself to be happy again.

He would make her happy. No, perhaps not that. Good sex was not synonymous with happiness. He would give her good sex. It was the only thing of value that he could give. No experience was ever wasted, she had said. Well, he had plenty of that.

He smiled at her. She did not smile back, but there was a softness and an openness to her that he knew was deliberate. She was allowing this, both for him and for herself. She had chosen him, he thought in some wonder. There must have been other men in more than eight years, other candidates more worthy than he. He knew of a couple right here in this neighborhood. But she had chosen him—just for now. For a little while.

Perhaps because she knew he would go away as soon as his family left? Perhaps because she knew there was no chance of permanence? He was not a permanent sort of man. Or perhaps because she really did not want permanence but merely a brief affair with good sex.

Did it matter why she had chosen him? Or why he had chosen her?

He reached behind her and undid the fastenings of her dress. He drew it off her shoulders and down her arms. It slid to the floor to pool about her feet. She was not wearing stays. He had realized that downstairs earlier. She did not need them. He kneeled down, removed first one slipper and then the other, rolled her silk stockings down over her calves and off her feet. Her legs were long and well shaped. He stood. She was wearing only her shift, which barely covered her bosom and reached not quite to her knees.

He drew a slow breath and reached for the hem, but her fingertips came lightly to his wrists.

“I would be uncomfortable,” she said.

With her own nakedness? He nodded. He would make her comfortable when they were on the bed. There was no hurry. Experience had taught him that, and he was glad tonight to be experienced, though his mind did not even touch upon all the women with whom he had acquired it.

For tonight there was only her. Imogen. A bit of a clumsy name, he had thought at first. Now he thought it perfect for her. Individual. Strong. Beautiful. Imogen.

He did not have any inhibitions about his own nakedness. He undressed while she watched, setting his clothes on a chair beside the window. And he did not stop when he came to his drawers, his last remaining garment. He removed them, then came back to her and cupped her face with his hands, and brushed his lips across hers. He was almost fully aroused, but she was no virgin to become vaporish at the sight. She had seen a man in his desire before.

“I knew you would be as beautiful without your clothes as you are with,” she said, sounding almost resentful.

“I am sorry if I offend you.” He smiled. “And I will wager you are as beautiful without yours as you are with too. A man does not necessarily like to be described as beautiful, you know.”

“Not even when he is?”

Her shoulders and her arms, he noticed, were pebbled with goose bumps.

“But I leave you cold, do I?” He moved his hands down to her shoulders and drew her against him. “I must be losing my touch.”

“I very much doubt it,” she said, her hands—her cold hands—spreading over his chest.

“Come,” he said, leading her to the bed and throwing back the covers. “Let me warm you up.”

It did not take long. Not that he did all the warming. She had decided that she would let this happen, he had already realized, but there was nothing passive about the letting. She was going to make it happen, and abandoned herself to passion as soon as her back encountered the mattress. He doubted she even realized when her shift was peeled off over her head or that they had left the candle burning. She kissed him as though she would never have enough of him—just as he kissed her, in fact. And when his hands and his mouth explored every inch of her, teasing and arousing as they went, her hands and mouth were busy on him. They did not need either a fire in the hearth or blankets on the bed. They created their own roaring furnace of heat and desire and passion.

When his hand went between her legs, she opened and lifted to him. She was hot and wet to his fingers, and his thumb caressed her to an almost instant cresting and release. She sighed out loud and rolled into him, relaxed for the moment but unsated. Her mouth found his.

“Percy,” she whispered against his lips.

It tipped him over the edge—just that, the sound of his name on her lips.

He drew her beneath him, slid his hands under her as she lifted her long legs and twined them about his, and went hard into her. Experience almost let him down then. He almost went off in her like a randy schoolboy. She was hot and moist and welcomed him with a slow, firm clenching of inner muscles.

It took him a few moments to control himself while he held deep in her, in a near ecstasy of pain.

And then they made slow, deliberate, exquisitely satisfying love. He had never before thought of sex with that particular euphemism. There was no love involved with having sex. It was purely, earthily, wondrously physical. But with her—with Imogen—sex was more than just that. Not love, but . . . But there was a deficiency of language.

It was strange how the thoughts were present in his mind even while his body was fully concentrated upon the sex act. Or upon making love. Or whatever the devil . . .

Then her inner muscles clenched as he thrust but did not unclench as they had done for the past several minutes in perfect rhythm with his withdrawals. And it was not just the inner muscles. Her whole body was taut and straining and lifting harder against his. He pressed deep again and held still. And . . .

Good Lord. Heaven help him . . . Good Lord.

He had been going to wait for her to climax and then continue toward his own release. But there was some sort of explosion that happened simultaneously inside his head and in his loins—and in her too.

And sometimes there was no experience to draw upon.

And absolutely no vocabulary.

He lay spent and heavy and panting on her, and she panted beneath him, all relaxed and hot and sweaty, and what had happened to all her goose bumps?

“Sorry,” he murmured, disengaging from her and rolling off her and reaching down to pull the bedcovers over them. “I was squashing you.”

“Mmm.” She rolled into his side, all soft woman and warm, silky hair.

Maybe she had the same problems with vocabulary.

“Thank you,” he murmured. He was sinking fast into warm, comfortable oblivion.

“Mmm,” she said again. Very eloquent.

He shifted position, slid an arm beneath her neck to cup her shoulder with his hand.

“Do you mind if I sleep here for a little while?” he asked her.

“No.”

He was sliding deeper, as he guessed she was, when a trot-trot-trotting sound was followed by a great warm lump of something landing heavily on the bed and worming its way between their legs.

“Damned dog,” he muttered, but he was too sleepy to apologize for his language or to order the damned dog to get down and leave a man alone with his lover.

*   *   *

Imogen awoke when warm lips closed briefly over her own. She kept her eyes shut for a few moments. She did not want to disturb the dream. She knew it was not a dream, that it was real, but she half wished it were just a dream, something for which she need not bear responsibility.

But she only half wished it.

His face was above her own. She could see him quite clearly. The candle was still burning. She had no idea what time it was, how long they had slept. The dog, she realized, had gone from between them.

“I should take myself off back home,” he said, “before any of the servants are about.”

He looked predictably gorgeous, his dark hair disheveled, his eyelids sleepy, his shoulders bare. He was in her own bed with her, she thought foolishly. They had done that together, and it had been wonderful. If there was to be guilt, she was not going to feel it yet. Or at all. She had quite consciously decided to do this, to enjoy it and him. She slid her hands over his shoulders, cupped the sides of his neck, rubbed her thumbs over the underside of his jaw.

“You need a shave,” she said.

He smiled slowly, that genuine, devastatingly attractive smile that began with his eyes.

“Are you afraid of whisker burn, Lady Barclay?” he asked.

“No.” She found herself smiling back at him. “You are leaving, are you not, Lord Hardford?”

“Yes,” he said. “After.”

“After?”

“After I have said a thorough good-bye,” he said. “No, that sounds too final. After I have said a thorough farewell. May I?”

She drew his face down to hers in reply.

“Let me do it,” he murmured against her lips as he moved over and onto her between her thighs and came into her, hard and ready and deep. “Relax.”

It was not what she had intended but . . . well, he was the expert.

It was delicious beyond words—to lie open on her back, all her muscles relaxed, even the inner ones that ached to close about him. To feel the hard, steady rhythm of his lovemaking into the soft heat of her body. To surrender. To receive and give nothing in return except her surrender. It was against her very nature to be submissive. It was something entirely new to her.

It was . . . well, it was delicious beyond words.

And, totally surprisingly, she shivered into release—but release from what?—after a few minutes. He felt it and held still and firm in her until she was finished, and then he continued until he was done and she felt the hot gush of his release deep inside.

For a moment—ah, foolishness indeed!—she wished she was not barren. But she let the thought go and enjoyed the full weight of his body relaxing onto her.

She could hear the dog snuffling in his sleep from somewhere in the room.

What was it going to be like, she found herself wondering as she stared up at the slope of the ceiling, after he had gone? Not just from her house tonight, but . . . after he had gone from Hardford and Cornwall, perhaps never to return.

He inhaled deeply and audibly and lifted himself away from her and off the bed. She watched him get dressed. He turned to watch her as he did so. He was totally unself-conscious about his body, she realized. She desperately wanted to pull the blankets up from her waist but did not do so. It would be absurd to cover herself out of embarrassment in light of what they had done twice in the past few hours.

“When I seek refuge here again,” he said as he pulled on his coat, “I will be quite happy with conversation and perhaps some tea. And I will not have a temper tantrum even if you turn me away altogether. I do not want you to think that I will come here in the future only to bed you. I do not want to think of you as my mistress. You are not that.”

“But how disappointing,” she said. “I was looking forward to negotiating with you on the size of my salary.”

“What?” he said. “Half a roof is not enough?”

“Ah, but both halves actually belong to you,” she reminded him, “as does the house beneath them. You have said so yourself. You became very lord-of-the-manorish and quite obnoxious, in fact, when you said it.”

“Did I?” He tipped his head to one side and looked at her with a lazy smile—another new expression. “But I do not own the woman inside the house, do I? Nor do I wish to. You may turn me away whenever you choose, Imogen, or ply me with tea, or bring me to bed.”

And there it was. The real man. The real Percy Hayes, Earl of Hardford, all artifice stripped away. A decent, principled man, whom she liked. Oh, too tame a word. She liked him enormously.

“You can bring my dog to bed too if you wish,” he said, “to cuddle between us after.”

She laughed.

His head tipped a little farther to the side.

“Imogen,” he said, “let yourself do that more often. Please?”

But he did not wait for an answer. He strode toward the bed, kissed her firmly on the lips, and pulled the blankets up to her chin.

“I know you have been longing to do that for the last ten minutes,” he said. “Stay there. I will see myself out. That key I saw hanging beside the door in the hall is not the only one you possess, is it?”

She shook her head.

“I will take it, then,” he said, “and lock the door behind me. I will not also unlock it at any time to let myself in, though. That will be by invitation only after I have knocked. Good night.”

“Good night, Percy,” she said, and saw a flicker of something—desire?—in his eyes before he turned away.

“Come along, Hector,” he said. “This is a time when you definitely must follow along at your master’s heels.”

Imogen listened to their footsteps descending the stairs—he had not taken the candle with him—and the front door opening and then closing. She heard the scrape of the key turning in the lock. And she set the heels of both hands over her eyes and wept.

She did not know why. They were not tears of sadness—or joy.