The Incurable Matchmaker

by Mary Balogh

  "You don't even wish for more," she said, looking up at him and frowning. "You are saying what you think I expect to hear."

  "Diana." She could still not fathom the direction of his mockery—inward or outward. ''You cannot make a romantic lover of me, my dear. Or a noble character. I want you. In bed, do you understand? And I mean to do Everything in my power during the next two weeks to have you there. Nothing else. No romance."

  "If you wish to succeed," she said, searching his eyes but finding no clue there, "you go about it in a strange way. You deliberately try to give me a disgust of you. It seems almost as if you want me to reject you. As if you wish to be saved from yourself."

  One corner of his mouth lifted. "If you knew just how much more base my designs are even than I have admitted to," he said, "you would pack your trunks and leave here today, Diana."

  And then he grinned, and Diana lowered her hands to his shoulders.

  "Now," he said. He put a hand firmly against one side of her face and turned her head, drawing it to rest below his shoulder. "I have bared my 'soul to you and admitted to a fondness for my family and my property and people. It is your turn. What do you want of life, Diana Ingram?"

  She closed her eyes. "I want to marry again," she said after a short silence. "Eventually. To someone I can love with my whole being. To someone who will make the universe explode around me."

  She waited to hear his laughter, to feel it beneath her ear. But there was none.

  "Was your marriage to Teddy not good?" he asked quietly. His fingers were stroking through her hair at the side of her head.

  "Yes, it was very good." She turned her head slightly so that her cheek was against his lapel. She breathed in the smell of him and wondered what on earth they were doing holding a conversation thus. She and the Marquess of Kenwood. "I loved him dearly. He was very kind to me. For months after his death I did not know how I was to live on. And it was so unnecessary. He would not stop pushing himself after he caught the first chill, even though the weather was particularly inclement. And he never did have a strong constitution—he was very ill for a whole year as a child. I still miss him. There is a loneliness and an emptiness where he was."

  He did not say anything for a while, but continued to hold her within the circle of his arms and smooth his hand across the side of her head. She felt him swallow. "But he did not make the universe explode," he said.

  "No."

  "Well, if he did not," he said, "and if you have had no lover, who the deuce did you think I was, then, Diana?" His arms tightened when she would have broken away.

  "I did not think you were anyone," she cried.

  He lowered his head to look into her flushed face. His own was amused. ''I believe you speak the truth,'' he said. "You were drugged and you were dreaming. Was I the one who was to make it explode for you, Diana? I think it might well have happened, you know. But such is only a momentary sensation, the result of a particularly good sexual experience, not a lifelong state. There is no such thing as the love you are looking for. It is only in your dreams."

  "If that is so," she said—she did not know what her free arm was doing about his neck again, holding his face close to her own—"then I think I would prefer my dreams to your reality, Jack."

  His eyes flickered at her unintentional use of his name. "But in the meantime," he said, "there is the loneliness and the emptiness to be dealt with."

  His lips touched hers again, but she drew back. "Do you mean mine or your own?" she asked.

  His eyes gazed into hers for a long moment before he lifted his head. "Touché Diana," he said, the amusement back. "That would be telling, my dear. I fear that this romantic atmosphere is going to be severely marred soon by the rumblings of my stomach. And if circumstances do not allow us to satisfy one of our appetites, we might as well wander back to the river and satisfy another. Agreed?"

  He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her in some amusement when she pushed away from him, brushed at the creases in her light muslin dress, and stooped down to retrieve her bonnet.

  "Agreed," she said briskly. "I think the hour my mother-in-law spoke of must be almost over."

  He held out an arm to her and bowed elegantly. "And I believe we have put it to admirable use," he said. "The countess would be proud of us if she knew. Though I am sure she will guess when she sees us emerge from the greenery looking flushed and pleased with ourselves."

  "Oh," she said, "I will be looking no such thing."

  "Perhaps I used the wrong pronouns, then," he said. "I see that I should have said 'me' and 'myself.' However it is, I am sure the countess will draw the most satisfactory conclusions, as will everyone else."

  "But nothing has happened," she said.

  His raised eyebrow only increased her indignation. "What?" he said. "A kiss is nothing? My kiss is nothing? I am devastated. I am sure the countess would expect no more than that, of course. Or anyone else for that matter. Except old Ernie. And perhaps Lester. But we certainly kissed, Diana. You are very good at it, too, if I may be permitted to say so. You do not clamp your lips and your teeth together as if the treasures beyond must be guarded at all costs. I seem to recall that you were just as generous with another part of your body, though of course my own stupidity prevented me from reaching those treasures beyond. Very lamentable."

  "You are despicable," she said, flushing, "and you really are no gentleman."

  "Ah, this is better," he said. "I admire you vastly with flashing eyes and stubborn chin, Diana. It promises well for the explosion of a certain universe on a certain much-wished-for occasion."

  "Well, it certainly will not happen with you, sir," she said tartly. "If you may be certain about anything in your future, it is that."

  "Ah, Diana," he said in that caressing voice that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck feel as if they were standing on end,' 'I would not count on that if I were you.'' He was laughing at her again. She hated it when he did that. It made her feel that he knew something about her that she did not know. As if she had a smudge at the end of her nose that she did not know about. She lifted a hand and brushed at her nose self-consciously.

  * * *

  Diana went to sit beside her mother-in-law, who was instructing a couple of footmen on the distribution of the food. The Marquess of Kenwood strolled over to join a larger group.

  "Well, Jack," Lester said with a wink and something of a leer, "are you five hundred guineas the richer yet?"

  "If I am," Lord Kenwood said,' 'you will not be the first to know, Lester, my boy."

  His relative laughed, and the marquess moved on.

  "I am sure Mama was vastly relieved to see you emerge from the woods with Diana when she left here with Thomas Peabody," Claudia said to him with a smile. "I think she thought for a moment that all her plans had gone awry."

  "Ah," the marquess said, "she has discussed the matter with you, then?"

  "Of course not," she said. "All her matchmaking schemes are a closely guarded secret from everyone except Papa. She does not realize that the whole world knows when she has decided to bring two people together, and it would be a shame to disabuse her, would it not?"

  "Indeed," he said, "and to disappoint her. But I am afraid she will be disappointed on this one occasion."

  "Perhaps," she said. "But I am far more doubtful about Ernest and Angela."

  ''Do you fancy him as a brother-in-law twice over?" Lord Kenwood asked with a grin.

  "That is quite beside the point," she said. "The question is, does he want her for a wife? I believe she has doted on him since she was fourteen and he seemed like a very dashing young lord. Unfortunately, I think he saw her as a very troublesome child whom it was quite beneath his dignity to entertain."

  "Hm," the marquess commented.

  He chattered on with the larger group, reclining indolently on one elbow on the blanket, sucking on the end of a blade of grass, and resisting with all the power of his will the urge to jump to his feet and str
ide off through the trees alone.

  He felt rather as if he were suffocating. And he was beginning to wonder in earnest if he were sickening for something. How could he have so mismanaged the past half hour? He had had her entirely to himself in the most opportune surroundings he could possibly imagine. He had a wager to win within two weeks with a woman who was as attracted to him as he was to her. He might have spent the time bringing her several steps closer to surrendering to that attraction, several steps closer to winning his five hundred guineas for him.

  Yet somehow he had completely mishandled the situation. He had never done anything like it before.

  He had held her and kissed her, yes. He might have taken the embrace almost as far as he wanted. There had been no resistance in her. Indeed, she had come to him quite willingly and had put herself against him and her open mouth against his with every appearance of total surrender.

  But he had made nothing of the moment. What was the matter? Had he not desired her? He could not think of anyone more desirable than Diana Ingram. What was it, then?

  Somehow he had been unable to empty his mind, as he usually did at such moments, and feel only woman. He had held her close against him, kissed her with warm, open-mouthed intimacy, been fully aware of how slim and shapely and desirable she was, smelted the fragrance of her hair as he remembered it from the inn, and—and what?

  And had not been able to rid his mind of the knowledge that she was Diana Ingram, that she had been married to Teddy Ingram and had suffered a cruel bereavement at a young age, that she had a quick wit and high ideals, that she was attracted to him but unwilling to give in to that attraction, that she had a sweet soprano voice, that she had begun to penetrate aspects of his life that he always kept strictly private from women, and to suspect that there were some people and some things in his life that he valued. And that it would be mean and paltry to upset her life, as he surely would, with an affair that would be quite temporary and entirely physical.

  He had wanted to kiss her just as he had kissed her, with warmth and awareness, with affection even, and without passion. He had not even wanted to bed her at that moment. He had wanted to hold her, to be with her, to to—.

  Damnation! He was beginning to like Diana Ingram. And not just to like her in the way he must like all his women if he was to derive any pleasure from them. He was beginning to like her as a person, quite apart from his physical attraction to her. Almost as he liked his mother and Frances and Hester.

  How could he seduce a woman he liked, bed her in order to win a wager that was written into the betting book at White's?

  How could he do that to any woman? What the devil could have possessed him to become a part of something quite so vulgar and tasteless? He would kill—he would quite surely kill anyone who did something like that to Hester.

  There was loneliness and emptiness without Teddy, she had said. He had news for her. There was always loneliness and emptiness.. It was part of the condition of living.

  Mine or your own? she had asked when he had suggested taking away those feelings with a kiss.

  Hers, of course. She was the one who was lonely. He had learned long ago how to cover up the

  essential emptiness of his life. He could take it away for her if she would let him.

  Could he?

  "Jack." Lady Knowles leaned toward him as everyone around them burst into laughter following another of her husband's humorous stories. "Whoever she is, she is a fortunate lady. You should be forced to wear a dark shade over your eyes at all times, you know. No man should be allowed to have eyes like yours."

  He smiled lazily up at her and removed the blade of grass from between his teeth. "Ah, but then I would not be able to see the ladies around me," he said. "I should have to feel them with my hands. I imagine that might occasion some shrieks and slaps."

  "Perhaps not as many as you think," she said, patting his arm. She sighed. "Oh, Jack, if I were only twenty years younger."

  "Ah," he said, "but then I am not interested in twelve-year-olds, ma'am."

  He grinned and winked at her as she tutted and gave his arm a playful shove.

  He wished he were in London. He wished he could get away from the oppressive atmosphere of this house party even if only for a few hours. Where would he go? To one of his clubs? Play cards and get pleasantly drunk? Reel home and let Carter, impassive yet stiffly disapproving, put him to bed?

  Find some woman he knew? Fanny, Lady Brewster, perhaps? Sally? Some woman he had not had before? Spend the night learning new ways of being pleasured by some new courtesan and sharing his own expertise with her? Make love with all his energy so that he could sink finally into peaceful oblivion?

  Devil take Diana Ingram! What was it to him that she had been happy with Teddy? That she had loved him? That he had been kind to her? What did it matter that she had not known how to go on living after his death? That she was lonely without him? What did it matter that she was in search of a more powerful love? There was no such thing as love, not beyond the sort of affection one felt for one's family, anyway.

  What was it to him that she wanted a love that would make the universe explode, as she put it? She was a foolish, naive girl for all that she must be three-and-twenty at least and for all that she had been a married woman for four years. She lived in dreams. He could work her to the height of physical passion so that the stars would eventually shatter around her. But a few minutes later she would be herself again. Nothing would have changed permanently. Even making love could not change the universe.

  Women and their romantic notions! And Diana Ingram was the worst of them. She could look at him with her beautiful gray eyes, and touch him with her soft, shapely body, and kiss him with her warm mouth, and he was almost willing to believe that perhaps she knew something that he did not know.

  He was going to have to make a decision. Either he must leave Rotherham Hall, make some excuse to take him back to town, or he must concentrate his mind and his expertise on bedding Diana.Ingram. Once he had done so, he could forget about her and return to himself again. He could prove to himself that beneath him on a bed she was really no different from any other woman—no more and no less pleasurable to possess.

  He would prefer to leave. He would far prefer it. For some reason that he could not fathom, or did not care to try to fathom, he wanted to run a million miles from Diana Ingram.

  But of course he could not leave. It would be extremely ill-mannered to do so. There was this infernal conceit in the evening. And the main event, the earl's birthday with all its attendant celebrations, was still five days away.

  So he was trapped.

  The Marquess of Kenwood sat up to take a plate from a footman and look over a large platter of cold meats and bread rolls.

  It seemed that there was no choice, then. He must return to the chase that he had faced with such relish little more than a week before. And that he still relished. He wanted Diana Ingram very badly, the wager notwithstanding.

  He looked across to where she sat, between the earl and the countess, smiling glowingly at the former.

  ''Te he he, quoth she/Make no fool of me!" That damned song. It had been running through his head for three days. "Men I know have oaths at pleasure/But their hopes attained/They bewray they feigned/ And their oaths are kept at leisure."

  Well, sweet Kate, he thought grimly, still staring at Diana, at least I have made no oaths to her. She knows what I want of her. When she gives it to me, it will be of her own choosing and with full knowledge of the consequences. I need feel no guilt. She is no green woman.

  She caught his eye across the width of three blankets and raised her chin with that stubborn little lift that he was beginning to recognize as characteristic of her. He raised one eyebrow and smiled.

  Oh, yes, she was irresistible. He was going to enjoy the continued pursuit of her. He deliberately let his eyes travel down her body until she flushed and looked sharply away. Her lips were compressed in annoyance.

 
His smile became a grin before he turned his attention to his food and his nearest companions.

  12

  The Countess of Rotherham had sent out invitations several weeks before to friends and neighbors for miles around to attend the grand dinner and ball in honor of the earl's sixty-fifth birthday. Replies had been promptly returned, the overwhelming majority of them acceptances.

  Three days before the event, however, the countess became anxious. Had she sent out the invitations too soon? Would everyone have forgotten? Had any of the prospective guests changed their minds? Although her husband, her two sons, and her two daughters-in-law all assured her that no one in his right mind would forget such a lavish entertainment in the country, nothing would do but for her to repeat as many of the invitations as possible.

  "Ernest," she said, when everyone had settled at the breakfast table, "you shall ride to Mr. Pierce's, dear, and make sure that he and his good wife will be coming with Simon and Miss Pierce. And you can call on the Flemings afterward. Take Angela and Beatrice and Allan with you. Clarence, you and Claudia shall call upon Sir Frederick Huntingdon and the Salmons. Diana and Nancy will go with you, and Lester and Jack. Hannah and I will drive into the village."