Only Enchanting (15 page)

They proceeded on their way in silence. She would not break it, and neither, it seemed, would he—until, that was, they came within sight of the gates. The duke and Dora had already turned onto the village street.

Viscount Ponsonby came to a sudden halt, and Agnes of necessity stopped beside him. He stared broodingly at the ground a little way ahead of them before turning his head and looking at her.

“I think, Mrs. Keeping,” he said abruptly, “you had better marry me.”

She was so shocked that her mind stopped functioning. She stared back at him, and thought began to return
only as she watched the unusual openness of his countenance revert to the heavy-lidded, mocking-mouthed expression with which she was more familiar. Almost as if he had pulled a mask back into place.

“That was p-poorly done of me, by Jove,” he said. “I ought at least to have g-gone down on one knee. And I ought to have l-looked s-soulful.
Did
I look soulful?”

“Lord Ponsonby,” she asked foolishly, “did you just make me a marriage proposal?”

“It
was
poorly done,” he said, wincing theatrically. “I did not even m-make myself clear. F-Forgive me. Yes, I asked you to m-marry me. Or, rather, I told you, which w-was not at all the thing. A man of my age ought to know better than to b-behave with such g-gaucherie.
Will
you m-marry me, Mrs. Keeping?”

He was stammering rather more than usual.

She slid her hand free of his arm and noticed for the first time the pallor of his face, the dark shadows beneath his eyes as though he had had a sleepless night or two.

“But why?” she asked.

“Why would you m-marry me?” He lifted one eyebrow. “Because I am h-handsome and charming and titled and w-wealthy and you have conceived a
t-tendre
for me, perhaps?”

She tutted. “Why do
you
wish to marry
me
?”

He pursed his lips, and his eyes mocked her.

“Because you are a virtuous woman, Mrs. Keeping,” he said, “and marrying you may be the only w-way I can b-bed you.”

She felt her cheeks grow hot.

“How absolutely absurd,” she said.

“That you are virtuous?” he asked. “Or that I want to t-take you to bed?”

She clasped her hands, raised them to her mouth, and stared at the ground before her feet.

“What is this all about?” She looked up at him then and kept her eyes steady on him. “And, no, you will not get away with looking at me like that. Or with making a foolish reply, like saying you wish to . . . to
bed
me. Or with making me a marriage offer as though it were some sort of jest and then scurrying away to hide behind your mask of mockery and cynicism. That is
insulting
. Did you intend to insult me?
Do
you intend it?”

He had grown paler.

“I did not mean to offer you an insult,” he said stiffly. “I b-beg your p-pardon, m-ma’am, if it is insulting to b-be offered the p-position of V-Viscountess P-Ponsonby. I b-beg your p-p-pardon.”

“Oh,” she cried, “you are impossible. You have deliberately misunderstood me.”

But he was standing as straight as the military officer he had once been, his booted feet slightly apart, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes hooded, his mouth in a straight line. He looked like a stranger.

“I am not insulted that you wish to marry me,” she said, “only that you will not tell me why. Why
should
you wish to marry me? I am a twenty-six-year-old widow with neither noble birth nor fortune to recommend me and no extraordinary beauty either. You scarcely know me or I you. The last time we met, you assured me that you would never offer marriage to any woman. Yet today, suddenly, after making no attempt to see me for a week, you blurt out a proposal, or what I take to be a proposal—
I think you had better marry me.
”

His posture relaxed slightly.

“I ought to have written a s-speech and m-memorized it,” he said and smiled at her with such dazzling charm that she almost took a step back. “Though my m-memory has been lamentable since I was knocked on the h-head.
I might have forgotten it. I m-might even have forgotten that I meant to propose.”

She stood her ground.

“What you will surely remember tonight, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “is that you escaped a nasty fate this afternoon.”

He tipped his head slightly to one side.

“
You
would be a n-nasty fate, Mrs. Keeping?”

Oh, she would not succumb to his charm.

“My sister and His Grace will be wondering where on earth we are,” she said.

Lord Ponsonby offered his arm and, after a small hesitation, she took it.

“I am curious,” she said as they turned onto the street. “When exactly did you conceive the idea of marrying me?”

All the mockery was firmly back in his face.

“Perhaps when I was born,” he said. “P-Perhaps the idea of you, the p-possibility of you, was there with my v-very first intake of breath.”

Despite herself, she laughed.

“You think I exaggerate,” he said.

“I do.”

“I shall go back to M-Middlebury,” he said, “and write that s-speech—if I remember. I may even compose it in blank verse. You will p-permit me, if you will, to call on you in the m-morning.
If
I remember.”

Dora and the Duke of Stanbrook were standing outside the garden gate, looking their way. Although the street was deserted, Agnes guessed that more than one neighbor lurked behind more than one window curtain, watching. And she could not feel any indignation against them, for that was exactly what she and her sister had done on the day the guests arrived at Middlebury Park.

“Very well,” she said, and there really was no time to say more.

The gentlemen bowed and took their leave, and Dora preceded Agnes into the cottage.

“How very kind it was of them to escort us home,” Dora said as she removed her bonnet and handed it with a smile to the housekeeper, who offered to bring them tea. “No, thank you, Mrs. Henry. We have just had some. Unless Agnes wants more, that is.”

Agnes shook her head and led the way into the sitting room.

“His Grace talked to me all the way home,” Dora said, “just as if I were a person worth conversing with.”

“You have recovered from your terror of him, then?” Agnes asked.

“Well, I suppose I have,” Dora said, “though I am still in awe. I feel as dazzled as if I had met the king himself. I hope the viscount was as polite with you. I never quite trust that young man. I believe him to be a rogue—a handsome, charming rogue.”

“The secret is not to take him at all seriously,” Agnes said lightly, “and to let him know that one does not.”

“Are not all the ladies delightful?” Dora said. “I
did
enjoy myself, Agnes. Did you?”

“I did,” Agnes assured her. “And I think Sophia’s illustrations get better and better.”

“And the stories funnier,” Dora agreed.

They chattered on aimlessly about their visit, while Agnes held a cushion to her bosom and wished she could escape to her room without her having done so being remarked upon by her sister.

What
on earth
had that been all about? He could not possibly want to marry her. Why had he asked her, then? And she could not possibly want to marry him. Not
really,
not beyond the realm of fantasy.

But how could she live on now, after he was gone, knowing that she might have married him even though it had been perfectly obvious that he had blurted out his proposal without any forethought whatsoever?

What had possessed him?

Would he come tomorrow, as he had said he would—
if
he remembered? What would he say? What would
she
say?

Oh, how was she to stop her heart from breaking?

8

T
hey did not talk while they were still on the village street. After they had passed between the gates, George turned off the driveway without hesitation to thread his way among the trees. Flavian followed, but under protest.

“Have we not w-walked far enough this afternoon but m-must now take a long way home?” he complained.

George did not answer until the trees thinned out slightly and they could walk side by side.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“About what?”

“Ah,” George said. “You must remember to whom you are speaking, Flavian.”

To George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, who had once traveled all the way from Cornwall to London in order to fetch a raving, violent lunatic who had bumped his head in Spain and knocked everything out of it except the compulsion to hurt and destroy. Who had somehow, over the next three years, given each of his six main patients the impression that he spent all his time and care upon that one. Who had assured Flavian soon after his arrival at Penderris that there was no hurry, that there was all the time in the world, that when he was ready to
share what was in his mind, there would be a listener, but that in the meanwhile violence was unnecessary as well as pointless—he was loved anyway just as he was. Who found a doctor patient and skilled enough to coax words out of Flavian at last, to provide strategies for relaxing and stringing words together into whole sentences, to help him deal with his headaches and his memory blanks as an alternative to simply panicking and lashing out.

George was the one who knew the six of them perhaps better than they knew themselves. Sometimes it was a disconcerting realization. It was also endlessly consoling.

But who knew George? Who offered
him
comfort and consolation for an only son killed in battle and a wife dead by her own hand? Were his recurring nightmares
all
that he suffered?

“L-letters,” Flavian said abruptly as they came out of the trees close to the lake. “I w-wish they had not been invented.”

“From your family?” George asked.

“Another one from Marianne,” Flavian said. “It was not enough to write to t-tell me that she was going to Farthings to call on V-Velma. She then had to write again to inform me that she
had
called. And my m-mother had to write to give me her version of the s-same visit.”

“They were all pleased to see one another, were they?” George asked.

“They were always t-terribly f-fond of her, you know,” Flavian said. “She was always sweetness itself. And they thought I t-treated her badly, though they do concede I knew no better. I did treat her badly too. I threw the contents of a g-glass in her face once, just as I threw a whole glass at you. It was w-wine. And in her case I did not miss.”

“You were very ill,” George said.

“They s-supported her decision to b-break off with me and marry Len instead,” Flavian said. “They seemed to think it was a f-fine thing for the two of them to do because he had always been so close to me—a man doing something n-noble for his best friend and all that. They thought it was all some sort of romantic t-tragedy. It is a pity Shakespeare was not still alive to wr-write about it. They wept oceans apiece over her at the time, and then they s-sent for you by s-special messenger when I behaved badly and reduced the drawing room to k-kindling.”

“You were very ill,” George said again. “And they did not know what to do for you or with you, Flavian. They had not stopped loving you. They heard I took in the most desperate cases, and they sent for me. They prayed I could perform a miracle. They did not stop loving you. But we have spoken of this many times before.”

They had, and Flavian had come to believe it was true—to a certain degree.

“They want me to b-believe,” he said, “that V-Velma loved me—all the time, without ceasing, even while she was m-married to Len. And that Len knew it and encouraged it and l-loved me too. It is all a b-bit distasteful, is it not? N-Nauseating, even? And s-surely not true? I h-hope it is not true.”

“Is that what Lady Hazeltine told your mother and sister?” George asked. “Perhaps they thought it would comfort you to know that those two always remembered you with tenderness.”

They were walking past the boathouse. Flavian alarmed himself and even made George jump when he slammed the edge of his fist against a sidewall, making it boom like a great gun and causing splinters of wood to shower off it.

“God damn it,”
he cried. “Does
no one
know
anything
?”

“Do you still love her?” George asked quietly into the
silence that ensued. Always quietly. He never rose to passionate outbursts.

Flavian picked a splinter out of the side of his hand and pressed his handkerchief to the little bubble of blood that appeared there.

“I just asked Mrs. Keeping to marry me,” he said.

George did not exclaim in disbelief. It was virtually impossible to shock him.

“Because of your letters?” he asked.

“Because I w-want to marry her.”

“And did she accept?”

“She w-will,” Flavian said. “I f-forgot the roses and the bended knee this time. And I forgot to c-compose an affecting speech.”

They strolled along beside the lake.

“I danced with her at Vince’s h-harvest ball last autumn,” Flavian explained. “And I have met her a few times back there.” He jutted his chin in the direction of the trees on the other side of the lake. “There is a meadow, and it is full of d-daffodils at the moment. She was trying to paint them. I met her there.”

“And the attraction is that she is very different from Lady Hazeltine, is it?” George asked.

Flavian stopped walking and looked out over the lake before closing his eyes.

“I can find peace with her,” he said.

He had not planned the words. He did not
know
why he was drawn to Agnes Keeping. He had not thought beyond the obvious—that he wanted to bed her, though he could not really understand that either. She was very different from the females with whom he usually slaked his sexual appetites. Sexuality was not the first thing one noticed about her.

But why did he say he could find peace with her? He did not believe peace could be found in any woman. Or
at all, in fact. Peace was not for this life, and he was not sure he believed in any other.