by Mary Balogh
She was not going anywhere.
• • •
Luke went back to church for the christening of his daughter. He walked up the winding stone path from the carriage with Anna, his eyes on the baby in her arms, gloriously splendid in the family christening robes. Only when he was inside did he lift his head and look about him.
He was surrounded by family, by his and Anna’s. And he had his own family within reach of his arms—his wife and his daughter. He tried to remember his aversion to marriage when he lived in Paris and his reluctance in London to take a bride—until he set eyes on Anna and the decision had seemed to be taken out of his hands.
He was not sorry. He held the thought in his mind, weighed it, considered it while the service went on about him, largely unheard. But he could find no fault with it. He was not sorry.
Yet another thought nudged at his consciousness but was kept ruthlessly at bay. The family was not complete. There were two other members of the family outside. Outside in the churchyard. His father and George.
George. How could you do it, George? I loved you. You were my hero.
Joy stirred as water was poured on her head, and began to protest. Her father looked down at her and smiled, his heart aching with a love that was almost painful.
• • •
He went back to church the following week for the wedding of his sister-in-law to Will. It was easier the second time. This time the event did not concern his own family—only Anna’s and Henrietta’s.
The wedding breakfast was held at Bowden Abbey. It was a dazzling and gay and noisy affair that extended well into the afternoon. Agnes—quiet, timid little Agnes, whom Luke had scarcely noticed during the year she had spent at Bowden Abbey—glowed with happiness and gazed at her new husband with open adoration. Will, smart and clearly uncomfortable in satin full-skirted coat and embroidered waistcoat and buckled shoes and bag wig—all purchased with Luke’s aid—was preening himself and looking fondly back at her.
Agnes and Will were to spend their wedding night and the night following at Wycherly before setting out on their wedding journey the day after. The new tenant of Wycherly, Colonel Henry Lomax, was to take up residence there within the week. But before the wedding day ended, there was to be a ball at Bowden Abbey. Guests from the neighborhood returned home to dress for it while family and friends at the house relaxed for a few hours before dressing.
Luke and Anna spent the time in the nursery, though Anna left early to go to the ballroom to make sure that everything had been prepared to her liking. It would be the first full-scale ball they had attended since they were in London, Luke thought. There had been a certain magic about the balls there. Yes, there really had. He wondered if any of it would be recaptured tonight.
• • •
Luke dressed for the ball in burgundy and gold, new clothes he had had made in Paris and sent from there. Although he had made concessions to English country fashions for daytime wear, he still did not trust English tailors and was frequently pained by their creations as worn by men of his acquaintance. His eyes strayed to an upper shelf when he had finished dressing and he pursed his lips. Should he? But his neighbors would be scandalized by the sight of patches and cosmetics on his face. And since when had he cared what his neighbors thought? His Parisian days seemed long in the past. However, as he turned to Anna’s dressing room to lead her downstairs, he paused with his hand on the knob and smiled. Ah, yes. If his guests were shocked into a collective apoplexy, then that was their problem. At least Theo would be amused. And Anna too.
He turned back to search for his ivory fan—he had already dismissed his valet. He slipped it into a pocket.
Anna was dressed in a deep pink open mantua over wide hoops, with silver embroidered robings and stomacher. There was lace at her cuffs and edging her cap. Her hair was carefully curled and powdered. She smiled dazzlingly at him as she rose from her dressing stool and dismissed her maid.
“Madam.” He took her hand in both of his and bowed over it. “Your beauty quite robs me of breath.”
“And you, your grace,” she said, her eyes sparkling at him, “have been shopping in Paris again. ’Tis not fair to the other gentlemen who will be at the ball. They will be dressed according to the fashions of the English countryside.”
“But then, madam,” he said, “I have never followed any fashions at all. I have my tailor’s word for it that the design of this coat and waistcoat are three months in advance of what even Parisians are wearing.”
“You have forgotten your fan, alas.” She smiled.
“Not so, madam.” He drew it out of his pocket and touched the end of it lightly to the tip of her nose. “Shall we join our guests?” He made her a courtly bow and offered his arm.
He was not falling in love, he told himself as they descended the stairs together, her arm along his sleeve. He was surprised that he had even thought of his reaction to her appearance in those terms. It was just that she was gorgeously dressed and looking her most beautiful and that he was on familiar territory with her. He wondered if she would flirt with him this evening as she had used to do in London and hoped that she would. And he wondered if they would take flirtation to its natural conclusion at the end of the evening.
He turned his head as they descended the stairs and looked at her with hooded eyes. Her lips were parted and her eyes were shining. She looked like a girl about to attend her first ball.
• • •
It was one of those magical nights that Anna would remember afterward with bitter nostalgia. There had been dances at Bowden and at the homes of some of their neighbors since she and Luke had come there, but nothing on the scale of this ball. The chandeliers were bright with myriad candles and the ballroom was laden with spring flowers from the gardens and other blooms from the hothouses. Their perfume made the ballroom smell like an indoor garden. And there was a full orchestra in the minstrel gallery.
Her whole family was there, and all of them happy. Agnes, the new Lady Severidge, seemed lit from the inside with excitement and happiness and nervousness. Even Emily was in the ballroom, seated beside Charlotte, whose husband pronounced her unable to dance because of the interesting state of her health. Emmy gazed about her with bright and wondering eyes, but eyes that nevertheless grew even brighter on the occasions when Ashley came to her for a few minutes at a time and talked to her, an indulgent, brotherly smile on his face.
But what made the evening magical for Anna was that Luke played with her again the game of flirtation they had always played in London. Although they danced the opening set together, their position as host and hostess of the ball forbade them to spend any more of the evening in each other’s company. It might have been a disappointing fact but was not. Anna danced all evening with a variety of partners. So did her husband. And neither neglected to converse with their partners or to circulate among their guests between sets. And yet they contrived to look at each other almost constantly, Anna with bright smiles, Luke with deceptively lazy eyes.
And she shamelessly used her fan, fluttering it when she caught his gaze across the room, raising it to her nose when she had his full attention. And he used his, waving it indolently before his face as his eyes did shameful things to her body.
It was ridiculous, she told herself several times in the course of the evening. If they were observed—and Luke’s appearance tonight, more gorgeous than he had yet appeared in the country, doubtless ensured that they were—they would be thought to be out of their wits. They had been married for almost a year. They had a two-month-old child in the nursery upstairs. And yet they were flirting with each other as if they had just met. It was ridiculous. And wonderful beyond imagining.
“Faith, child,” Lady Sterne said to her at one point in the evening, linking her arm through Anna’s, “whose wedding day is this, pray? I vow that anyone who was not sure would swear it was yours and Harndon’s.”
Anna flushed. So someone really had noticed. “Aunt Marjorie—” she began.
But her godmother squeezed her arm and interrupted her. “It does my heart good, child,” she said. “I promoted the match. Theodore and I between us. But I have worried about it. You were set against marriage. Harndon was set against it. It does my heart good, I vow, to see the two of you so deep in love.”
Oh, it was not quite that way, Anna thought wistfully. There was love on one side, and flirtation and perhaps a little affection on the other. But even that fact was not allowed to dim her enjoyment of the evening.
After supper, before the dancing resumed for another couple of hours, the bride and groom left for Wycherly, William’s carriage streaming with ribbons that Ashley and a few of the other young men of the neighborhood had attached to every conceivable projection. Everyone spilled out of doors to give them a rousing farewell.
Anna hugged a rather tearful and clearly nervous Agnes and then a blushing and hardly less nervous William. He would not have been her choice for Agnes, she thought, but clearly it was a love match. Her second sister was safe and headed for happiness. Her vision blurred as Agnes was assisted into the carriage by her new husband, and she felt a small hand creep into her own—Emily’s—at the same moment as a larger, warmer hand came to rest on her shoulder—Luke’s.
Perhaps neither of them realized fully just what it meant to her to have her brother and sisters safely established in life. Perhaps both of them thought that her tears resulted from mere sentiment. She squeezed Emmy’s hand and smiled at her husband.
And then the dancing resumed. Anna stole away to give Joy her night feed, but was able to dance the last two sets, one with Ashley and the other with Lord Quinn.
“Egad,” Lord Quinn said, “I will never forget that night when I had three lovely ladies to escort and only two arms. And now two of those gels are wed and have deserted me.”
“But not Aunt Marjorie, Uncle Theo,” she said, smiling.
“Zounds, no,” he said, chuckling. “You are in the right of it there, lass.”
Anna had the very improper suspicion that her godmother and Luke’s uncle enjoyed a relationship that was somewhat closer than mere friendship.
And then the ball was over, far too soon, it seemed, though it had extended well past the normal hour for such entertainments in the country. Luke and Anna saw all their outside guests on their way and bade good night to their houseguests and then returned to the ballroom to commend their servants on a job well done and to direct them to go to bed and leave the cleaning up until morning.
Everyone else had gone to bed long before Anna finally climbed the stairs, her arm on Luke’s. There was a tension between them. Surely the night could not be at an end. She did not want it to be over. Not yet. She wondered if only she felt the tension.
But he paused outside her dressing room and bowed over her hand as he had done at the start of the evening.
“You are tired, Anna?” he asked.
Oh, yes, but not too tired. “A little,” she said, smiling at him.
“I promised you privacy and freedom,” he said, “for another two months.”
“Yes.” She scarcely heard her own whisper.
“Do you wish me to honor my promise?” he asked, his eyes looking very keenly into hers.
“No.”
He raised her hand to his lips. “I may come to you in a short while?”
She nodded and he opened the door of the dressing room. Penny was waiting inside. Anna stepped in without another word or a backward glance. Drawing breath into her lungs took a conscious effort.
• • •
Except for her wedding night Anna had always waited naked for her husband. She wore her nightgown tonight and felt as nervous as a bride. She spared a brief thought for Agnes, but Agnes would be a wife by now. And she loved her William and he her. All would be well with them.
She stood at the window and turned to watch Luke when he tapped on her dressing room door and came inside. He was wearing a blue silk dressing gown. His hair had been brushed free of powder and had been left to fall free about his face and shoulders in long, dark waves. She was glad he did not follow the fashion to shave his head and wear a wig. She loved his hair.
“Anna.” He took her hands and squeezed them. “You will be thinking me a devil of a nuisance keeping you up later than late.” And yet his eyes wooed her.
“No,” she said. She did not even try to hide the naked love and longing in her eyes.
He drew her hands down against his sides so that she had to take a step forward. She touched him from breasts to hips to thighs. She could feel that he was already aroused. He set his mouth, opened, over hers and parted her lips with his tongue. It had been such a long time. Ah, it had been so long.
“I have missed you,” he said.
“And I you.” The touch of his tongue had sent raw desire shooting downward into her breasts and into her womb.
“It was to be for duty and pleasure, this marriage of ours,” he said. “There has been too much of duty and too little of pleasure lately, Anna.”
“Yes.” She longed for a third dimension to be added to their marriage. She longed for him to talk of love. But he wanted pleasure of her, and it was enough. She had feared that perhaps he would not look for it with her ever again.
“Will it give you pleasure to be kept awake and hard at work until dawn?” he asked her, his eyes gazing lazily into hers. “Or will the pleasure be mine alone?”
He was wooing her with words. By now he must know her answer beyond any doubt. But words could be as erotic as lips or hands or body. That downward stabbing of desire had reached her knees. “It will give me pleasure,” she said. “I never did mean for you to go away entirely, Luke. I never meant that. My bed has felt empty.”
He kissed her again, pushing his tongue inside her mouth for a few moments. “Perhaps, madam,” he said, “we should lie down on it and discover if it feels more occupied tonight.”
“Yes, your grace.” She smiled at him.
It felt simply filled and wonderful. They both agreed to that after the first swift, lusty coupling. The bed really did not feel empty at all any longer, she admitted to him after the second skilled, agonizingly slow yet thoroughly satisfying lovemaking to which he subjected her. It was an infinitely more comfortable bed than his own, he told her after the third leisurely, almost languorous joining of bodies and sharing of pleasure—warmer and softer.
“I could be persuaded to spend all my nights here for the next fifty years or so,” he said, his breath warm against her ear. “And some of my afternoons too.”
She sighed sleepily against his throat. “How might you be persuaded?” she asked.
“By your promising to spend those nights and those afternoons here with me,” he said.
“So it is not just the bed?” she said. “’Tis the woman in it too?”
He blew into her ear. “I believe ’tis entirely the woman, madam,” he said. “You might have a straw pallet dragged in here and I would be none the wiser, provided the woman was the same.”
She chuckled. It was the closest he had come to a declaration of love, and probably the closest he would ever come. But it was enough. They had loved the night away, giving and taking pleasure. She would be fortunate to snatch an hour of sleep before it was time to feed Joy again. But she would not exchange a few hours of deep sleep for what they had just shared.
She loved and she felt almost loved in return. She felt safe and warm and drowsy in her husband’s arms. Perhaps part of him could not let go of the past, but she was giving some pleasure to his present. And perhaps she feared the future, but there was love and the illusion of security in the present.
It was enough. For now it was enough.
“Good night and good morning, my duchess,” he murmured into her ear.
“I am asleep,” she muttered.
“Ah,” he said and bit her earlobe until she wriggled, protesting sleepily, out of reach of his teeth.
She had descended too far into sleep to hear his chuckle.
21
COUNTRY living could sometimes be monotonous even when neighbors made the effort to be sociable and to both host and attend various entertainments. The main problem was that one tended to see the same faces wherever one went.
The return of the Duke of Harndon with his new bride and her sister had brightened the summer and autumn months at Bowden. Then the christening of their daughter and the marriage of Lady Agnes Marlowe to Lord Severidge added excitement to the spring, bringing as they did a whole host of fashionable guests to Bowden.
And then, just when the neighborhood might have expected a return to rather dull normality, the new tenant arrived at Wycherly. Colonel Henry Lomax was a single gentleman—a point of interest to the single ladies of the neighborhood and their parents. And he was a retired army colonel and thus could be expected to bring with him many stories of adventure and gallantry. After he had been in residence at Wycherly for a day, Colonel Lomax began receiving a steady stream of callers and a warm welcome.
Luke and Anna were among the first to call, together with the dowager and Henrietta. It seemed strange, Henrietta remarked as they descended from the carriage and she looked up at the house, to be coming to Wycherly as a visitor when it had been her childhood home.
One group of neighbors was already in the drawing room with the colonel. But he rose to greet the new arrivals with a warm charm. He was a tall, slim man in his late forties, still handsome. He was fashionably dressed in brown and cream, his bag wig neatly powdered.
“I am honored indeed,” he said when the introductions had been made and he had favored his new visitors with a deep bow. “But, Harndon, ’tis unfair, I vow. Most dukes of my acquaintance are allowed only one duchess apiece. Yet you have three, all equally lovely.” His smile crinkled his eyes attractively at the corners and revealed white and even teeth. Everyone gathered in the room laughed at the witticism.