Mary Balogh (60 page)

“Mary,” he said, and he kissed her mouth, tasting her, memorizing the taste, “this is good-bye. You know that, don’t you? After tomorrow you will no longer be plagued by me. And it is a promise I will keep this time.”

The smile held on her face. Her eyes looked back into his.

“Tell me something,” he said. It was something he would rather not think of, but reality was reality. “Is there any chance I might have got you with child?”

She flushed, though she did not look away from him. She appeared to be thinking. “Yes,” she said.

He swore.

“Such language,” Mary said.

“Listen, Mary,” he said. “If it is so, then you must write to me. Promise? I will come to you in London and marry you. I’m sorry about it. I know it would be a dreadful fate for you, but the alternative would unfortunately be worse. Promise that you will write? I would find out anyway.”

“I would write,” she said after a lengthy pause.

“The rain is stopping,” he said. “Even so, it is bound to be hours before the others will attempt to drive home. The thought is tempting.”

“Yes,” she said.

The look in her eyes and the warm languor of her body told him that she was still amorous after the storm, as she had been in his scarlet room after Vauxhall. The temptation was almost overwhelming. One more time. She was willing. Just one more time.

He kissed her.

One more time. One more chance to plant his seed in her at a time when she was likely to conceive.

He drew his head away, eased his arm from beneath her head without looking into her eyes, and sat rather hastily on the side of the bed.

“Lord,” he said. “Wet clothes or the Roman toga. Which is it to be? If I stagger out of here tripping over the hem of the toga, the servants are bound to be lined up outside your door all prepared to enjoy the show.”

He walked naked across the room, aware of her eyes on his back, and looked with some distaste at the heap of his clothing, still quite unmistakably wet. His pantaloons were a little apart from the rest. They were damp. Damp and chilly. He drew them on and pulled a face.

“Just what I need to cool my ardor,” he said. “The storm has passed. I don’t believe it will return. You will be all right, Mary?” He looked back to see that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a blue silk dressing gown. Her face was flushed and her dark curls adorably rumpled.

“I will be all right,” she said.

“Good night, then.” He opened the door resolutely after scooping up his wet clothes, stepped through it, and closed it behind him without allowing himself the luxury of a glance back.

S
HE HAD STOOD
at the window for a long time gazing out into the darkness. Even the final distant flashes of lightning with no sound of thunder had passed. The rain had completely stopped. Soon perhaps the carriages would return, unless the rain had been heavy enough and had lasted long enough to make the roadway slippery with mud.

He had wanted her as his mistress. His bedfellow. His plaything. But he had changed since that time. He had just lived through a turbulent emotional time and it seemed that the rift with his family was healed, and with it all the bitterness and guilt that had blighted his adult life. He was different and seemed to want to make the changes permanent. He no longer wanted her as his mistress.
His reluctance to make love to her earlier had been proof of that. She feared that perhaps she really had seduced him.

However it was, there was nothing to suggest that perhaps he would want her as his wife. He liked her, he had said even when he was making love to her. Liked, not loved. Clearly he found her attractive. But attraction was not love. He would marry her if she was with child, he had told her. But that did not mean that he would marry her willingly, that he wished to do so.

Better to leave things as they were, she thought. Better that than to embarrass him by hinting that she loved him, that perhaps, after all, she wanted a future with him. But not a future as a mistress. As a wife. Perhaps he would feel honor-bound to offer for her if she hinted at any such thing.

But what if his reluctance, his admission only of liking, his good-bye, were all motivated by his belief that she wanted none of him? What if at last he was doing something noble in his life?

What if they lived apart for the rest of their lives because of a misunderstanding? Because neither had the courage to speak the heart’s truth? The thought was unbearable.

And so she must risk the hint, she decided, and stood at the window and went through all the arguments yet again—for surely the dozenth time.

But her decision was the same again at the end of it all, and she could not bear to wait until the morning, when she knew she might see everything differently, when the harsh voice of reason might silence her. If her love was to stand a chance—and if she was to risk rebuff and humiliation—then it must be done now.

She turned resolutely from the window and moved toward the door. But she had taken no more than three steps before a swift tap on the door heralded its opening
and he stepped inside as he had done earlier. But this time he was wearing a brocaded dressing gown, its blue color several shades darker than her own.

He closed the door behind his back.

“I am a very poor risk, you know, Mary,” he said. “Unreliable. Totally undependable. No one would be willing to wager on me. If there were a bet on me in one of the betting books at the clubs, there would not be a single taker for me. Only hordes against. The chances that I will ever make anything meaningful out of my life are slim, to state the case optimistically. You would have to agree with me, wouldn’t you?”

She swallowed and said nothing.

“Anyone would be a fool to trust me and take me on,” he said.

“Edmond,” she said, “I was on my way to your room. Why have you come back here? What are you trying to say?”

“I am going home, Mary,” he said. “Home to Willow Court. To stay. I know almost nothing about it except what I learned in the few weeks before I came here. I know nothing about crops and tenants and drainage and rents and all that. But I intend to learn. I am going to become that very dull English type—a country gentleman. So boring that within a year everyone will snore at the mere mention of my name.”

He flashed her a grin and she tried to smile back.

“The house is unbelievably shabby,” he said, “and the garden, too. I don’t have any ideas about houses and gardens. All I know is that they look shabby and unlived-in and uncozy. They need a woman’s touch.”

Mary licked her lips.

“And the house needs children,” he said. “Noisy, laughing, mischievous children with muddy feet and jam-smeared mouths.”

“Edmond,” she said, “I love you.”

But he rushed on with what he had come to say. “I cannot offer any evidence that my determination to change will really bring about change,” he said. “Perhaps I will fail miserably, Mary. Perhaps it is all so much dreaming. I would not envy any woman who was decent and kind enough to give me a chance. She would be likely to end up hurt and disillusioned. I think that must be right, don’t you? Any woman would be a fool.”

“Edmond,” she said, “I love you.”

“But it is up to you,” he said, rushing on. “I am going home, Mary, and I want you to come with me. You would have your home in the country and your children, if I am capable of begetting them. And a husband who would try to love you always as he does today and would try to give you a good life. Will you come? I am sure you would be well advised to say no.” He paused and looked at her fixedly. “
What
did you say?”

“I love you,” she said.

“It’s the thunderstorm,” he said. “It does make you a little … strange, Mary, you must admit.”

“Then you will have to take a risk, too,” she said. “Will I mean it tomorrow and next week and next year and twenty, thirty, forty years from now? The whole future is a risk. That is the excitement and wonder of life. When do you want me to come?”

There was incomprehension in his eyes. “You are saying yes?” he asked. “After everything I have done to you? After all the aversion you felt for me in London?”

“I was afraid,” she said. “I was afraid that I would love where there could be only lust in return, and even that for only a short time. Edmond, I want that home in the country more than I can say. And those children. Plural? Oh, I hope so. And I want all of it with you. Not with anyone else. Only with you.”

He laughed. “And I pictured myself hurrying out of this room two minutes after entering it,” he said, “with
a flea in my ear and a slap on the cheek and perhaps a slipper at my rear end. But I had to come, Mary. I could not risk losing you only because I was afraid to ask for you. You will marry me?”

“Yes.” She came across the room to him and set her hands on his shoulders. “When, Edmond? Please soon. Oh, please soon.”

“One month from now,” he said. “At the very worst, our first child must be no less than an eight-month baby. We can say he was born early and hope he does not weigh twelve pounds. Was tonight really a bad time for you, Mary—or a good time?”

“I think the worst—or the best,” she said.

“Was it, by Jove?” he said. “Is it?”

“Yes.” She slid her hands beneath the silk collar of his dressing gown and reached up to kiss him beneath one ear. “That means it will also be the best on our wedding night, Edmond. But speaking for myself, I have no objection to an eight-month baby. None at all.”

“You aren’t trying to seduce me again, by any chance, are you?” he asked her, setting his hands at her waist and arching her body in against his. “You have a shocking tendency to do that, you know, Mary.”

“Edmond.” She wrapped her arms tightly about his neck and raised her face to his. “You said you always want to love me as you love me today. Tell me how much you love me.”

“I’ll write a poem about it tomorrow, if you wish, love,” he said. “In Latin. For tonight would you not rather that I showed you?”

She thought for a moment and then smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Love me, Edmond, and make me an eight-month baby.”

“God in his heaven, woman,” he said. “Is that an invitation or is it an invitation?”

“It is an invitation,” she said against his mouth. “Love me.”

“With all my heart,” he said. “And that other, too, Mary.”

He kissed her and steered her backward to the bed. And he proceeded with slow thoroughness to do both simultaneously.

G
WENDOLINE
G
RAYSON
, L
ADY
M
UIR
,
HUNCHED
her shoulders and drew her cloak more snugly about her. It was a brisk, blustery March day, made chillier by the fact that she was standing down at the fishing harbor below the village where she was staying. It was low tide, and a number of fishing boats lay half keeled over on the wet sand, waiting for the water to return and float them upright again.

She should go back to the house. She had been out for longer than an hour, and part of her longed for the warmth of a fire and the comfort of a steaming cup of tea. Unfortunately, though, Vera Parkinson’s home was not hers, only the house where she was staying for a month. And she and Vera had just quarreled—or at least, Vera had quarreled with
her
and upset her. She was not ready to go back yet. She would rather endure the elements.

She could not walk to her left. A jutting headland barred her way. To the right, though, a pebbled beach beneath high cliffs stretched into the distance. It would be several hours yet before the tide came up high enough to cover it.

Gwen usually avoided walking down by the water, even though she lived close to the sea herself at the dower house of Newbury Abbey in Dorsetshire. She
found beaches too vast, cliffs too threatening, the sea too elemental. She preferred a smaller, more ordered world, over which she could exert some semblance of control—a carefully cultivated flower garden, for example.

But today she needed to be away from Vera for a while longer, and from the village and country lanes where she might run into Vera’s neighbors and feel obliged to engage in cheerful conversation. She needed to be alone, and the pebbled beach was deserted for as far into the distance as she could see before it curved inland. She stepped down onto it.

She realized after a very short distance, however, why no one else was walking here. For though most of the pebbles were ancient and had been worn smooth and rounded by thousands of tides, a significant number of them were of more recent date, and they were larger, rougher, more jagged. Walking across them was not easy and would not have been even if she had had two sound legs. As it was, her right leg had never healed properly from a break eight years ago, when she had been thrown from her horse. She walked with a habitual limp even on level ground.