Only a Kiss by Mary Balogh

18

The ladies had taken possession of the library and the ballroom again. Imogen, Beth, and Meredith, at last sighting, were writing invitations. A couple of the uncles had gone off with Knorr to watch as part of the park wall was rebuilt without mortar. Leonard and Gregory had walked to Porthmare with Alma and Eva to deliver some invitations and visit some new acquaintances. Uncle Roderick and Cyril had taken Geoffrey down onto the beach again.

Percy was riding along the top of the valley with Sidney and Arnold.

“If I were you, Perce,” Arnold was saying, “I would turn a blind eye. You say nothing specific has happened since you came here to compel you to act.”

“Apart from one soggy bed, one sooty floor complete with dead, sooty bird, and one window curtain designed to keep out the light even of the sun on midsummer day, no,” Percy admitted. “Nothing of which I am aware.”

“You will be gone from here soon, Perce,” Sidney said. “And I doubt you will be back soon. There is not much here for you, is there? Apart from the widow, that is.”

That drew Percy up short—and his horse too. “The widow?” he asked, frost in his voice.

Arnold’s mount pranced about as he reined it in. He was grinning. “The last of us staggered off to bed just before three last night,” he said. “One of your uncles remarked that you were wiser than the rest of us and must have taken yourself off to bed after walking with the dog. Sid and I took a brief peek into your room. Fire crackling, nightshirt spread over a chair before the blaze, bedcovers turned neatly down, no Percy.”

And the thing was, Percy thought as he contemplated dragging both men from their horses and banging their heads together, that they fully expected him to grin back, confess to his whereabouts at that ungodly hour, and make some bawdy boast about his newest conquest. They had every reason to expect it. It was what he would normally do. What was so different this time?

Could it be that he was different? That he had changed, or, since a change of character did not happen overnight or even over a hundred nights, that he was changing? Devil take it, he needed to leave this place.

He looked down to the valley, peacefully green, the river flowing through it, the village farther back toward the sea.

“I will be leaving soon,” he said. “And I doubt I will ever come back. It is the damnedest backwater.”

And yet he felt disloyal saying so—disloyal to Lady Lavinia, to the Quentins and Alton and even Wenzel, to the vicar and the physician and the Kramer ladies and the sturdy fisherfolk. And there was Bains with his bandy legs and broken spirit, and Crutchley, who might have some voluntary involvement with smuggling or who just might be the victim of intimidation. There was that half cellar below his house that might be stuffed with contraband or awaiting a new shipment. There was . . . Imogen.

How long had he been here? Two weeks? Three? It was no time at all. A mere blink of the eye. He would forget it all in another blink once he was away from here.

He would forget her.

They continued their ride.

He could not recall regretting any of the liaisons he had had with women. He had ended most of them himself, but never because he had regretted starting them. He liked having affairs. They were mindless mutual enjoyment with no commitment or responsibilities attached.

He already regretted what he had started with Imogen.

He would forget her, though. She was leaving here herself a few days after this infernal ball. He would be gone before she returned.

It was just dashed stupid of him to have fallen in love. He presumed that was what had happened to him. Certainly he could not explain his feelings any other way. He did not like being in love one little bit.

“He does not want to talk about the widow, Arnie,” Sidney said.

“I have come to the same conclusion, Sid,” Arnold agreed. “But I would ignore the smuggling if I were you, Perce. Everyone else does. You are not going to stop it anyway. Those revenue men never can. And you must admit, they are a humorless lot. It is a pleasure to see them hoodwinked.”

“And you must admit, Perce,” Sidney added, “that brandy that comes into the country by the back door, so to speak, always seems to taste better than the legal stuff. It costs a lot less too.”

The whole world was in agreement, it seemed, that it was best to ignore what was going on under everyone’s nose. Who was he to become a crusader? It had never occurred to him to be one until he came here. Having a conscience and acting upon it made him seem suspiciously like his old studious self—out of tune and out of step with all the rest of the world. A killjoy. A poor sport. An idiot.

“Quite so,” he said. “There are supposed to be some old tin mines over there on the other side of the valley. I’ll find out exactly where and get up a party to go exploring one day.”

And the conversation moved away from both smuggling and his affair.

*   *   *

By the end of the morning the invitations had all been written. Imogen allowed her spirits to be seduced by a sense of family as the older ladies flitted in and out of the library and the younger two chattered between invitations.

Mrs. Hayes and her sister and sister-in-law often had disagreements, a few of them quite heated. But they never seemed to bear a grudge, and somehow they always found a compromise over a disputed plan for the grand party. The young cousins too, she had noticed on previous occasions, frequently squabbled among themselves, but always ended up giggling or guffawing. The twins sometimes avoided their older sister quite deliberately, but once she had seen them sitting on either side of her on the pianoforte bench while she picked out a melody, each with an arm about her shoulders. Mrs. Hayes’s brother seemed to prefer the company of his daughter and grandson to that of anyone else, but he was perfectly amiable when he was in company, and had even invited Mr. Cyril Eldridge, who was no blood relation, to walk on the beach with him and the little boy this morning. The other two older gentlemen were often discussing current affairs with each other and growing quite heated in their disagreements, but they also seemed ultimately content to agree to disagree.

Imogen suddenly missed her brother—and her mother in far-off Cumberland. Family—that deep sense of connection as opposed to a mere dutiful visiting and letter writing—was something she had given up with everything else five years ago. She was not entitled to the warmth and comfort it provided—or to the bickering and the laughter.

She felt a bit as though her heart had been in cold storage for a long time and was gradually thawing. She could not allow it to happen completely, of course, but for the next week and a half she would perhaps allow herself to relax a little. She would put herself back together when she was at Penderris, surrounded by her friends. She would ask for their help if she needed it, though just an awareness of their love and support would probably be sufficient. She would do it, though. She had never been much lacking in willpower.

In the meantime, she would now permit herself some enjoyment. It seemed a long age—another lifetime—since she had last enjoyed herself.

If only she had been able to have a child or two with Dicky, she thought as she left the hall to return home and drew her cloak more closely about her against the chill of a colder day. Geoffrey was coming across the lawn, one hand in his grandfather’s, the other in Mr. Eldridge’s, and she could hear the chant of their three voices, “One, two, three, j-u-u-m-p.” The two men lifted the shrieking child high between them on the last word.

Imogen did not often regret her barrenness. What was the point? And it would have changed everything if she had been fertile. She would not be standing here now, smiling wistfully at a child who had not even been born when Dicky died. Who knew what she would have been doing? It was foolish even to think of it.

Percy was approaching from the stables with his two friends and Hector frolicking along beside them—yes, actually frolicking. The child, seeing them, abandoned the other two gentlemen and went racing off to be lifted high and spun around and deposited astride Percy’s shoulders. A burst of laughter and a high-pitched shriek and giggle ensued when Percy’s tall hat was knocked off and he insisted upon bending to retrieve it himself, deliberately almost spilling the little boy over his head as he did so.

There was a general exchange of pleasantries as everyone approached the house.

“The invitations are all written, are they, Lady Barclay?” Mr. Galliard asked.

“They are,” she told him. “We are all agreed that we cannot expect quite the sort of sad squeeze we might have hoped for if this were a London ball during the Season that we were planning, but the ballroom should be quite creditably filled.”

“Hard luck, old chap,” Mr. Welby said, clapping Percy on the shoulder and lifting Geoffrey down to play with Hector.

“One must always look on the bright side,” Percy said. “How lowering it would be if I could expect no more than my own family members and two friends already assembled here, huddled in one corner of the ballroom pretending to enjoy my belated birthday ball. I am not at all sure it is a good idea to let Heck kiss you, Geoff, my lad.”

“Are you on the way home, Lady Barclay?” Viscount Marwood asked her. “Do allow me to escort you, ma’am.” And he offered his arm together with what seemed like a mischievous grin.

“And since you are in possession of two arms, ma’am,” Mr. Welby said, bowing to her with a courtly flourish, “do allow me to escort you too.”

Imogen laughed and dipped into a deep curtsy. “Why, thank you, gentlemen,” she said, taking an arm of each. “I was warned just yesterday that there might be wolves.”

“Plural,” Percy said. “At least three of the beasts, or so I have been told. I had better come too.”

And they set off, the four of them, across the lawn in the direction of the dower house with a continuation of the silly, mindless banter—in which Imogen joined. She found herself almost wishing someone would suggest the one-two-three-jump game. And then, when they came to her house, Percy opened the gate with a flourish, she stepped inside, he closed it, and the men took turns, the foolish idiots, raising the back of her hand to their lips and assuring her that she had brightened their day and made the fact of the hidden sun quite irrelevant.

She stood at the gate, watching them walk away, Hector trotting along behind. They were still talking, still laughing, and she realized she was smiling—and realized too that it was an unfamiliar feeling. And then she was blinking back tears—yet again. Another unfamiliar feeling.

Percy turned his head briefly before they disappeared from sight behind a tree and smiled at her. And she was still smiling herself, tears notwithstanding.

Oh, goodness, oh, goodness—she was so very deeply in love with him.

And it was all her own fault. She had no one to blame but herself.

*   *   *

“You have my permission,” she said, “to use my key at night—to let yourself in as well as out. Then I will not have to wait up, wondering if you are coming or not, for you will not always be able to come, will you?”

He backed her against the wall of the hallway and kissed her openmouthed. It was closer to half past twelve than to midnight. He had half expected to find the dower house in darkness and had not known if he would knock on her door anyway. Her key had been burning a hole in his pocket.

“I am sorry,” he told her. “I could not get away any sooner. We had a visitor.”

“I know,” she said. “Mr. Wenzel, was it not? He brought Tilly and Elizabeth Quentin here and went to the hall rather than return home and come back for them later. But I am glad you came.”

“So am I.” He rubbed his nose across hers.

She was wearing her ancient fossil of a dressing gown again, and he marveled at the fact that she had not titivated herself for her lover, as every other woman with whom he had been intimate had always done. Her hair was tied at the neck again, though it was draped loosely over her ears and back tonight. Her lips were slightly parted, the upper one with its engaging lift. Her eyes were . . . open. He still had not thought of a better word than that. Her hands were resting on his shoulders, pushed beneath the capes of his greatcoat.

Deuce take it, but I love you.

He gazed into her eyes, frozen for a moment. He had not spoken aloud, had he? But he heard no echo of the words and saw no shock in her face.

“Are you inviting me in?” he asked.

“Are you not already in?” she said. “But where do you wish to go? Upstairs? The sitting room?”

It ought to have been obvious. It was almost half past midnight and they were new lovers.

“The sitting room,” he said. “But no tea, thank you. I have drunk enough of the stuff since the arrival of my family to sail away on. Even poor Wenzel was plied with it twice this evening.”

She picked up the lamp so that he could set his outdoor things on the chair and led the way into the sitting room. Was he mad? Or going senile? It was the middle of the night, there was a wide, comfortable bed upstairs, she was willing to welcome him into it and into her, she looked as delicious as the cake and the icing and the cream filling all in one despite the fact that she had not titivated herself or perhaps because of it—and he had chosen the sitting room instead?

“I am surprised he did not stay here instead of calling on us,” he said.

“Mr. Wenzel? With Tilly and Elizabeth, you mean?” she asked. “He never does. Nor does Sir Matthew when it is his turn to bring them. We like to discuss our books just among ourselves.”

“A reading club?” he said.

“We have been meeting monthly for the past three years,” she explained as she set down the lamp on the mantel and reached for the poker. But it was already in his hand, and she sat down on the love seat while he stirred the coals and put on a few more. The animals had settled comfortably close to the heat. “We all read the same book or set of poems or essays and then discuss them over tea and biscuits or cake. We enjoy that one evening of the month immensely.”

“And what was it tonight?” he asked as he straightened up.

“Just one poem, though a longish one,” she said. “William Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.’ Have you read it? One of my friends, one of my fellow Survivors, lives in Wales, though his home is on the western side of it rather than in the Wye valley in the east. I went there with George last year for his wedding.”

“George?” That was not jealousy flaring in him, was it?

“Duke of Stanbrook, owner of Penderris Hall,” she explained. “A sort of cousin though a closer relationship than yours and mine. He is another of the Survivors.”

“The one whose wife jumped off a cliff?”

“Yes,” she said.

He wished he had not remembered that particular detail. The man had also lost a son to the wars and must be as old as the hills. Percy tried to remember him from the House of Lords but without any success. Perhaps he would recognize him if he saw him.

He eyed the empty chair beside the fire and went to sit on the love seat. He turned and scooped her up and set her on his lap with her feet on the seat beside them. She was on the tall side, but she wriggled downward—heaven help him—until she was snuggled against him, the side of her head on his shoulder. She inhaled audibly.

“I love the way you smell,” she said. “It is always the same.”

“Mingled liberally with sweat on two recent occasions,” he said.

“Yes.” She laughed softly.

“And I love the sound of your laughter,” he said. And if he had met her for the first time today, he realized, or even yesterday, it would not even have occurred to him to think of her as the marble lady. He wondered if she was falling in love with him, or if it was just the sex.

It was not just the sex, though, was it? If it were, then they would be upstairs now, naked on her bed, going at it.

For a moment he felt almost dizzy with alarm. That was what they really ought to be doing.

“I am not much given to laughing,” she said.

“And that,” he said, “is why your laughter is so precious. No, correct that. It would be just as precious if you laughed frequently. You used to?”

She inhaled and exhaled, but she had not tensed up, he noticed.

“In another lifetime,” she said. “I like your friends.”

“They do not have two brain cells between them to rub together,” he said fondly.

“Oh, but of course they do,” she said. “I might have said that of you if I had seen you only with them. Sometimes we need friends with whom we can simply be silly. Silliness can be . . . healing.”

“Are you ever silly with your friends?” he asked her.

“Yes, sometimes.” He could feel her smiling against the side of his neck. “Friendship is a very, very precious thing, Percy.”

“Are we friends?” Now where the devil had that infantile question come from? He felt foolish.

She raised her head and looked into his face. She was not smiling.

“Oh, I believe we could be.” She sounded almost surprised. “We will not be, though. We will not know each other long enough. It will be enough that we are lovers, will it not? Just for a brief spell. That is all either of us wants. I shall not try to cling to you when it is over, and that is a very firm promise.”

He felt as though someone had dropped a very large iceberg down the chimney and doused the fire and all memory of it.

Yes, that was all either of them wanted. That was all he wanted—a vigorous and pleasurable sexual liaison while he was living out here in a social desert.

Why, then, were they sitting in her sitting room?

He drew her head back to his shoulder. “Would you be surprised to know,” he said, “that smuggling is still active in this area? Even on this land?”

There was a lengthy silence. “I would not be terribly shocked,” she said eventually, “though I know nothing of it.”

“Nothing of the involvement of any of the servants here?” he asked her. “Or whether their involvement is voluntary or forced? Nothing of the use of the cellar at the hall for the stowing of contraband?”

“Oh.” She paused. “Definitely not that. With Aunt Lavinia and Cousin Adelaide in the house? Is it true?”

“Both the inside and the outside doors leading into one half of the cellar are locked, and both keys are missing,” he told her. “No one is trying hard to find them, for apparently that area was shut off to keep the damp from the rest of the cellar.”

“Oh,” she said again. “I thought—I hoped—it had all ended with my father-in-law’s passing and even before that when I moved here.”

“I have been advised,” he said, “by everyone to whom I have spoken, to leave well enough alone, to turn a blind eye, to let sleeping dogs lie and so on. The trade will go on, I am told, and no one is really hurt by it.”

She was silent. What the devil had induced him to raise this topic of conversation to a lady, and at something close to one in the morning? He glanced at the clock. It was five to.

“Who is harmed by it, Imogen?”

“Colin Bains was,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He was such a bright, eager boy,” she told him. “He worshiped Dicky. He so much wanted to come to the Peninsula with us.”

“Your husband was quite vocally opposed to the smuggling?” he asked.

“He was,” she said. “But he could not persuade his father that there was anything so very wrong with it. On the surface there was not and is not. There is a little loss of revenue to the government and a lot of enjoyment of superior luxury goods—particularly brandy by the gentlemen, of course. But I think what we see and know is the veriest tip of the iceberg, and what we do not see is ugly and vicious. Even the visible tip can be nasty. He received threats before we went away.”

“Bains?”

“No, Dicky,” she said. “There were two letters, one threatening his life, one mine. They were written in a childish, nearly illiterate hand, and his father laughed at them. But Dicky was already in the process of purchasing his commission. We never knew if the threats were serious or not.”

Good God. What if they had been? What if they had been very serious indeed?

Good God.

“Oh,” she said, “I have been such a coward. I have known nothing lately because I have chosen to ask no questions and not to look out my windows late on dark nights.”

He lifted her chin with the hand that was about her shoulders. “I beg your pardon, Imogen,” he said. “I do beg your pardon for raising this topic with you. Forget I did. Keep on knowing nothing. Promise me? Promise.”

She nodded after a moment. “I promise,” she said, and he kissed her.

“I am feeling too lazy even to come upstairs with you tonight,” he said, laying his head back against a cushion. “Have you ever made love on a love seat? It sounds like a logical place to do it, does it not?”

“It would not be long enough,” she said, “unless we were uncommonly short.”

“Shall I show you?”

“It sounds . . . uncomfortable,” she said, but she was half smiling back at him.

“Not at all,” he said. “What are you wearing beneath your dressing gown and nightgown?”

“Nothing.” Her cheeks turned a little pink.

“Perfect,” he said. “I, on the other hand, need to make a few adjustments. I could hardly leave the main hall clad only in my nightshirt.”

He lifted her off his lap and set her down beside him while he undid the buttons at his waist and lowered the flap of his breeches and parted the folds of his drawers. And he reached for her again, his hands going beneath her garments to lift them out of the way. She came astride him, braced herself on her knees, and set her hands on his shoulders while she leaned slightly back and looked down. She watched—they both did—while he put himself inside her and drew her downward with his hands on her hips until he was fully embedded. Her muscles slowly clenched about him.

“Oh,” she said.

Oh, indeed. He was enveloped in wet heat and the agony of full desire.

He kept a firm grasp on her hips and lifted her partly away from him so that he could work her with firm upward strokes. And she rode him with a bold rhythm that matched his own, and he wanted it never to end, and he needed to end it now, and he would continue with it forever because it was the most exquisite feeling in the world and she felt it too and they must end now but they must prolong the pleasure just a little longer.

He did not know for how many minutes they made love. He did not know which of them broke rhythm first. It did not matter. They finished together, and it was like—ah, that old cliché, though it had never had any meaning for him before now—it was like a little death.

It was . . . exquisite. He was going to have to invent a vocabulary all his own, since the English language was often totally inadequate to his needs.

When he came more or less to himself, she was relaxed on him, her knees hugging his sides, her head on his shoulder, her face turned away from his, and she was sleeping. He was still buried in her, still slightly throbbing. The cat was on the love seat beside them. Hector was draped across one of his shoes.

He had never felt more relaxed in his life, Percy thought.

And never so happy.

He was too relaxed even to be alarmed at the thought.