Only Enchanting (26 page)

Good Lord, yes, that must be true. Flavian had never worked it out before. George must have been only seventeen or eighteen when he wed. Appallingly young.

Imogen’s attention was on her empty plate.

“Do not look for romance from me, Flavian,” she said. “It will not happen. Ever again. By my own choice.”

She had removed her hand, but he took it again in his own and raised it to his lips.

“Life will be k-kind to you yet, Imogen,” he said.

“It already is.” She looked into his eyes and favored him with one of her rare smiles. “I have six of the most wonderful friends in the world—and all of them handsome men. What more could any woman ask—even if they
are
showing an annoying tendency to fall in love with and marry other ladies?”

He smiled back and caught Agnes’s eye across the table. She was still looking flushed and tumbled. He closed one eyelid in a slow wink, and she flushed brighter and half smiled before returning her attention to Lady Darleigh and Lady Trentham.

He wanted her again and found himself wondering what sex in a closed carriage bumping and swaying over English roads would feel like. Cramped and uncomfortable and dangerous and very, very good, he suspected. Perhaps he would put his theory to the test later.

But now everyone was rising from the table. It was time to leave Middlebury Park and one another. It was that most dreary day of the whole year. Except that this year he would not be leaving alone. This year he had a wife to take with him.

And his mother to face in Candlebury, when he got up the courage to go there. And Marianne.

And Velma.

He was glad he had not eaten any of the kidneys. He felt slightly sick to his stomach as it was.

*   *   *

Everyone was leaving at the same time in a flurry of carriages and horses and grooms and voices and laughter—and tears. Everyone hugged everyone else and held the hug for several long moments. And Agnes was included in it.

They were different from yesterday’s hugs. Yesterday she had been a bride, and people always hugged brides. It was almost an impersonal thing.

Today she was hugged, and today she hugged back because in a way she was one of the group—the Survivors’ Club and their spouses.

She had never been an emotional sort of person, not since her early childhood, anyway. She was not the sort who went about touching others, beyond the occasional social handshake. She rarely hugged anyone, and people rarely hugged her. Normally she shrank from such contact. Just as she had shrunk somewhat from the physical contacts of her first marriage—though only ever inwardly, never outwardly—and had been relieved when they dwindled in frequency and finally came to an end.

Last night she had been consumed by an intense physical passion, and this morning she gave hug for hug to people she scarcely knew, except for Sophia. And she felt a bond, a warmth about the heart, a fondness that defied reason and common sense.

She felt fully alive for perhaps the first time ever. Oh, and deliriously in love, of course, though she would not let her mind dwell upon that, or her heart. She was Flavian’s wife, and for now that would suffice.

She touched her fingers to the back of his hand as they drove away from the house and circled about the formal flower parterres to join the driveway between the topiary gardens and on toward the trees and the gates. And he took hers in his own and held it warmly, though he did not look at her or say anything. She knew that it was impossible for her to understand fully the ties that bound that group of seven. They went deeper than the bonds of family, though, she knew.

But the good-byes had not all been said.

Dora was standing in the garden outside the cottage,
watching the carriages go by, smiling and raising her hand as each slowed and farewells were exchanged through opened windows. She was still smiling when Flavian’s carriage stopped and his coachman descended from the box to open the door and set down the steps. Flavian got out and handed Agnes down, and she was enveloped in Dora’s arms, the gate between them. For a few moments neither of them spoke.

“You look beautiful, Agnes,” Dora said when they broke apart. Which was a strange thing to say when her sister was wearing a traveling dress and bonnet she had worn a thousand times before. But she repeated the words with more emphasis. “You look
beautiful
.”

“And do I look b-beautiful too, Miss Debbins?” Flavian asked in his languid, sighing voice.

Dora looked him over critically.

“Well, yes,” she said. “But you always do. I would not trust you an inch farther than I could throw you, though. And you had better call me Dora, since I am your sister-in-law. Flavian.”

He grinned at her and opened the gate to catch her up in a tight hug.

“I will t-take c-care of her, Dora,” he said. “I p-promise.”

“I will hold you to it,” she said.

And then Agnes hugged her again, and she was being handed back into the carriage, and the door was being shut with a decisive click, and the coachman was throwing her trunk and other bags into the boot, and a few moments later the carriage rocked slightly on its luxurious springs and moved forward. Agnes leaned close to the window and raised a hand. She watched her smiling, straight-backed sister until she could not see her any longer, and even then she kept her hand raised.

“I lived there for scarcely a year,” she said, “yet I feel as if my heart were being ripped out.” Which was
perhaps not a very complimentary thing to say to one’s new husband.

“It is your s-sister you are leaving behind, Agnes,” he said, “not a village. And she was once more your m-mother than your sister. You will see plenty of her, though. When we go to Candlebury Abbey to live, we will have her come to s-stay with us—for as long as she l-likes. She can stay with us f-forever if she w-wants, though my guess is that she would p-prefer her independence. But you will see l-lots of her.”

Agnes sat back in her seat, her face averted, but he set an arm about her shoulders and drew her against him until her head had nowhere to go but onto his shoulder. He pulled free the bow beneath her chin and tossed her bonnet onto the seat opposite with his hat.

“Good-byes are the most wretched things in this w-world,” he said. “Never say good-bye to me, Agnes.”

Almost, she thought,
almost
he was telling her that he really cared. But he quickly ruined that impression.

“I have been w-wondering,” he said on a familiar-sounding sigh, “how possible or impossible and how s-satisfactory or unsatisfactory it would be to have sex in the carriage.”

Was she expected to
reply
? Apparently not.

“We would not wish to be s-seen, of course,” he said, “though there is something mildly t-titillating about imagining the expressions on the faces of stagecoach passengers as they p-passed by. There are perfectly serviceable curtains to cover the w-windows, however. As to s-swayings and bouncings, my coachman will scarcely notice them if we are on a n-normal stretch of road. We will try it sometime this afternoon. I b-believe the experience will rival for pleasure that of r-rolling around on a bed large enough for ten.”

“Is pleasure all you think about?” she asked him.

“Hmm.” He gave the question some thought. “I sometimes think about hard l-labor too, the kind that has one damp from one’s exertions and panting for air. And I sometimes think of the near pain of holding b-back from going off like a firecracker that will not wait for the main show or like a schoolboy who has never h-heard of self-control. And sometimes I think about the p-propriety of waiting until evening before having marital r-relations with my wife, who might consider it improper to have them in the daytime. Except at half past five o’clock in the morning, that is, when she shows no r-reluctance at all or spares not a single thought to p-propriety.”

Agnes’s shoulders shook. She would not laugh. Oh, she
would
not. He ought not to be encouraged. But he was holding her shoulder and must know she was either laughing or suffering from the ague. She gave up the struggle to stay silent.

“You are
so
absurd,” she said, laughing out loud.

“No!” He shrugged his shoulder so that he could look into her face. His eyelids, as she had expected, were half-lowered over his eyes. “I thought I was m-maybe one of the world’s great lovers.”

“Well, I would not know, would I?” she said. “Though I daresay you come pretty close.”

His eyes opened wide suddenly and his face was filled with laughter, and her stomach performed a complete cartwheel inside her.

“You would not dare,” she said. “Do
that
in
here
in broad daylight, I mean.”

He leaned back in the seat again and tipped his head sideways to rest his cheek against the top of her head. And she realized that he had prattled on about absurdities in order to take her mind off the parting with Dora, and perhaps to take
his
mind off the parting with his friends.

“Agnes,” he said a few minutes later, when she was feeling a bit drowsy and thought he might have dozed off, “
never
issue dares to your husband if you even suspect for a moment that you may be a poor loser.”

Oh, he was
serious
. It was scandalous and horrifying and undignified and . . .

She smiled against his shoulder but did not answer.

*   *   *

Flavian had written to Marianne a week or so ago. In the letter he had informed her when he expected to arrive in London. But he had said nothing about going down to Candlebury for Easter, and he had said nothing about bringing a wife with him. How could he? He had not even known at the time that there was going to be a wife.

He wrote to his mother from the inn where they spent the first night of their journey. It was only fair to warn her. He informed her that he had married by special license, his bride being Mrs. Agnes Keeping, widow of William Keeping and daughter of Mr. Walter Debbins of Lancashire. He made a special note that she was a particular friend of Viscountess Darleigh of Middlebury Park. He was taking her to London for a short while but would bring her to Candlebury for Easter.

His mother would not be pleased, and that was surely a gigantic understatement. But there was nothing she could do about it now that the deed was done, and she would understand that, given a day or two of reflection. And practicality and good manners would of course prevail. By the time she was presented with Agnes, she would be gracious and impeccably good mannered at the very least. How could she not be? Agnes was the new mistress of Candlebury Abbey.

It gave even Flavian a jolt to realize the truth of that fact. Time had moved on. David had been pushed back
a little further into history. So had his mother. She was now the
Dowager
Lady Ponsonby.

The carriage drew to a halt outside Arnott House on Grosvenor Square late in the afternoon of the third day of their journey, only an hour or so later than he had predicted.

He did not move for a few moments after the coachman had opened the door and set down the steps. He would have been quite happy to extend the journey by a few days. He was in no hurry to move on to the next phase of his life after this brief, mindlessly delightful honeymoon.

He had not for a moment regretted his impulsive marriage. The sex was the best of his life, both what had happened each night in decent beds and what had happened three separate times in the carriage—
especially
what had happened there, in fact. As he had expected, it had been extremely difficult and horribly cramped and uncomfortable and earth-shatteringly satisfying.

Agnes would not admit it. She had remonstrated with him each time, both before and after. But each time she had been unable to hide the passionate pleasure she got from copulating inside a carriage on the king’s highway.

That was one thing about Agnes. She was the very proper lady in public. She could have passed for a prim governess any day of the week. But in private, with him, she could be transformed into hot, uninhibited passion. Steam rose around them when they coupled.

He could not get enough of her and wondered whether he ever would.

But the honeymoon—if a three-day journey could be called that—had to end, and here they were outside his London home, and the door of the house stood open, and there was nothing to do but get out and proceed with the future. At least he had brought her here first. At
least he would have her to himself for a few days longer. And there was novelty and appeal in the thought of his familiar home with the unfamiliarity of a wife to share it with.

His butler bowed stiffly, welcomed him home, and glanced warily at Agnes.

“My wife, Viscountess Ponsonby, Biggs,” Flavian said.

Biggs bowed again, even more stiffly and warily, and Agnes inclined her head.

“Mr. Biggs,” she said.

“My lady.”

And then the great cannon boomed, and the shell dropped at Flavian’s feet and exploded in his face. Or so it seemed.

“Her ladyship, your mother, is upstairs in the drawing room, my lord,” Biggs informed him, “awaiting your arrival.” He looked as though he might say more, thought better of it, and shut his mouth with an almost audible clacking of teeth.

His mother?
Here?
Waiting for him? And if she was here, then so, almost certainly, was Marianne. They had not stayed at Candlebury after all. But was it possible for them to have come in response to his letter? He had written it only two nights ago. Or . . . did they
not know
?

Almost certainly it was the latter, he realized. Biggs had clearly not known, and servants always knew what their employers knew, and often they knew it first.

Good God! He closed his eyes for a moment, appalled. And for that same moment he considered turning and doing an ignominious bolt, dragging Agnes with him. He turned to her instead and offered his arm. She was looking as pasty of complexion as he felt.

“Come up and m-meet my m-mother,” he said with what he hoped looked like a reassuring smile. “Come and g-get it over with.”