by Mary Balogh
“I would not expect it,” she said.
“Do you hope it is not so?” he asked.
There was a lengthy pause. “No,” she said softly.
“Neither do I,” he said. “But if it is not so now, it could be so next month or the month after.”
“Yes,” she said. And he waited for her to make the final decision. He had surely made his own wishes clear. “Kenneth, come home with me.”
“For the summer?” he said. “For always?”
“We do not have to make that decision now,” she said. “We can say it is for the summer or until Christmas or—whenever. Do you want to come?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then come.” She set her free hand near her other on his arm and tipped her head to rest briefly on his shoulder. “You can see the fountain and the flower beds and the other changes I have made. We can walk on the cliffs and sit in the hollow. We can run on the beach. We can—”
“Make love in the baptistry,” he said, interrupting her. He smiled at her. She had sounded excited, lighthearted.
“Yes,” she said, her voice soft again.
“We will give it a try, then,” he said, “for the summer. And if we find that it will not work, and if you are not with child, then we will make different plans when the summer is over.”
“Yes.”
“But for now, we will not think of that,” he said.
“Autumn is a long way away,” she said. “Oh, Kenneth, the trees in the park are always so beautiful in the autumn.”
“I have almost forgotten what they look like,” he said. “This year I will have to see them again.”
“Yes,” she said. “When will we leave? I can scarcely wait.”
“Tomorrow?” he suggested. “Can you be ready that soon?”
“Yes, tomorrow,” she said. “By this time next week we will be home at Dunbarton.”
Together. They would be home together—for the summer and perhaps the autumn. Perhaps until Christmas. Perhaps, if there was a child, forever.
It would be painful to dream again. But he was dreaming again. And there was pain.
23
LIFE seemed almost ominously tranquil after they had arrived home in Cornwall. They stopped quarreling. At Dunbarton they resumed their separate duties, which occupied them for much of each day. They visited and entertained their neighbors, often together. They spent a part of each night together in Moira’s bed before sleeping separately. It might have seemed that they were slipping into something resembling a happily ever after—or a contentedly ever after, at least.
Except that it seemed to Moira as if she lived with constantly bated breath. Nothing had been settled. They had agreed to extend the trial period of their marriage; that was all. She was with child again, of course. After three weeks there was little doubt of that. But the outcome of that might be no different from the last time, though she felt none of the ill health she had felt then and was eating and sleeping well. If she miscarried this time, would she tell him that she did not wish to see him ever again? Would he be eager enough to take her at her word?
No, she knew she could never again say that to him—not unless she had been severely provoked. But would he go anyway? Had he suggested coming to Cornwall merely because her answers to his questions had shown him the very real possibility that she had conceived again? Sometimes she thought there was more to it than that. Most of the time she thought so, but she was afraid to believe too deeply. She tried to guard her heart against future pain.
If she carried her child through to term and if the child lived, he would stay with her. But she did not want his staying to depend upon those facts alone. She did not want him to stay just for the sake of the child. She wanted him to stay because of her.
Sometimes she despised herself for having grown so dependent upon him, for having come to love him so unconditionally, so uncritically. Sometimes she fought against her dependence—often in a quite irrational manner.
They were to call upon her mother one afternoon. They had arranged it at breakfast. Because the weather was glorious after almost a week of gloomy fog and drizzle, they had decided to walk to Penwith Manor in order to make a full afternoon’s outing of the visit. There had seemed to be a silent communication between them too. It happened often and had Moira wondering if she imagined it or if their thoughts really did intermingle at times. On this occasion they had both thought of the hermit’s hut a short distance from the road down to the valley. They had both thought of stopping there on the way back from Penwith. It was one of the things he had mentioned during that walk by the Serpentine. They would make love in the baptistry, he had said.
They had never made love during the daytime. Apart from that first time, they had never made love anywhere but in Moira’s bed. There was something distinctly arousing about the thought of making love on a summer afternoon in the hut, the door left open to the sunshine and the breeze. They would be able to see down into the valley to the river and the waterfall.
But the depth of her feelings for him frightened her. “Perhaps,” she said to him during luncheon, “you have other, more important things to do this afternoon than visiting, Kenneth. There is really no need for you to accompany me to Mama’s.”
“Is there not?” His eyes surveyed her rather lazily. Had his eyes changed? Had they become softer, dreamier of late? Or did she imagine it? “You would prefer to have a private tête-à-tête with her, Moira? Complain to her of all my sins when I am not there to defend myself? I suppose your complaints would fall on fertile ears.”
She bristled. “I would imagine that Penwith must be one of the places you least like to visit,” she said, “and that Mama must be one of the people you least like having to converse with.”
She realized, with some surprise, what she was doing. She was trying to provoke a quarrel with him. It was almost as if she felt safer when they quarreled, as if she was then better able to guard her heart.
He raised his eyebrows and she knew from his suddenly haughty expression that he was accepting the bait. “Indeed?” he said. “You believe that we have identical sentiments about each other’s mother, then, Moira?”
“With the difference,” she said, “that your mother has been openly unkind to me.”
“Oh, I think not,” he said with an impatient wave of one hand. “My mother likes to be in control. She has very definite ideas of what is expected of a countess. She merely tried to take you under her wing. She hoped—foolishly—to mold you into being the sort of countess she has always been. She did not mean to be unkind.”
“I beg to differ with you,” she said. “You say it was a foolish hope because I am incapable of being a proper countess?”
“A proper countess,” he said curtly, “does not quarrel with every word her husband utters and twist it into a meaning he did not intend merely because she derives perverse enjoyment from irritating him.”
“I have irritated you?” she said. “All I intended to do was release you from a potentially tedious afternoon by offering to go to Penwith alone this afternoon.”
“And you may do so, ma’am,” he said. “As you suggested, I have other, more important things to do than sit with a mother and daughter who would far prefer to be alone together. I shall order the carriage brought around for you.”
“I will walk,” she said.
“You will, of course,” he said, “do as you please. Take your maid with you.”
She had no intention of doing so and would have said so except that she realized that she had pushed him far enough. If she expressed this one extra defiance, it would be just like him to insist. How dreary it would be to have to walk all the way to Penwith and back with her maid trailing her. How dreary it was going to be to walk alone. Why had she done it? She had so looked forward to the afternoon, and now singlehandedly she had spoiled it.
“What will you do?” she asked.
His eyes were no longer soft and dreamy when they looked into hers. “Something far more congenial to me than what I had originally planned, you may be sure, ma’am,” he said.
She hated being called ma’am. How ridiculous when she was his wife, when they enjoyed such knee-weakening intimacies each night, when she was with child by him. But she would not tell him how she hated it. Then he would never call her anything else.
“Then I am glad I had the foresight to suggest it, my lord,” she said, smiling brightly. She was behaving just like a silly child. She had goaded him to irritation and now resented it. She had deliberately ruined her own afternoon and now wanted to indulge in self-pity and throw all the blame upon him.
And it was all for nothing. There was no way, she realized with a flash of uncomfortable insight, of guarding the heart.
* * *
HE went striding off along the top of the valley until he reached the cliffs. He turned to walk along the top of them, his eyes on the jutting rocks and the faded green of the coarse grass rather than on the sea below, sparkling in the sunshine. He felt thoroughly irritated and irritable. Nelson, unaffected by his mood, raced on ahead of him, circled back to trot by his side for a few yards, and went racing on again.
He had been settling quite comfortably into domestic bliss. He had been happy to be back, to be at work again, to be feeling useful again. He had been happy to see that his wife was competent and enthusiastic in the performance of her own duties. He had been enjoying the social life of the neighborhood, limited as it was. He had been contented with the knowledge that there was no further decision to make, that he would be staying at Dunbarton. He had visited his wife’s bed every night, including the nights they had spent on the road. It was perfectly clear that she must be increasing.
While their only real personal contact with each other happened in her bed and was entirely sexual in nature, he had felt a closeness between them, the sort of harmony that he expected of a marriage. He had assumed that they would both relax into it and allow all those factors that had driven them apart just to fade away into the past. He had expected that they would never be confronted and that they need never be.
It had been a foolish expectation and a foolish hope. How could one expect peace and tranquillity with Moira? She had created a quarrel out of nothing at luncheon and he, like a puppet on a string, had quarreled. No one had ever been able to manipulate him. He had been known as a stubborn boy and as a man with an iron will. It infuriated him that a woman could do what no one else had ever done—and could do it with such ease.
Sometimes he hated her. This afternoon, he hated her.
Two of the Misses Grimshaw were strolling toward him on the arms of two of the Meeson sons. He had to roar at Nelson to sit when the elder sister screamed at his enthusiastic barking, but he realized even as he did so that the scream had been prompted entirely by the golden opportunity Nelson had given the lady to cower close to her escort and engage in a graceful fit of the vapors.
He stood with the two couples for a few minutes, discussing with them the weather and the health of Lady Haverford and the Grimshaw and Meeson parents. He continued on his way even further irritated. All four of them had been patently in awe of him, even frightened by him. Most people were frightened of him, he thought, scowling. It could not be just his title and his property and wealth. It must be something in his manner, something he had deliberately cultivated during his years as a cavalry officer. There were distinct advantages to seeing hardened soldiers almost literally quaking in their boots every time they caught his eyes upon them. It was rather more disconcerting to provoke the same reaction in one’s neighbors.
Moira was one of the few people not afraid of him—not one whit. Kenneth scowled. Perhaps he should see to it that she developed a healthy fear of him. But the thoroughly silly thought only had him scowling more ferociously. It would be an impossible thing to accomplish, for one thing. For another, he would not be able to abide having to live with a docile Moira.
He chuckled suddenly and found his good humor unexpectedly restored. A docile Moira—a flat mountain, a hot iceberg, a dry ocean, a flying pig. He amused his thoughts with other combinations of an equal impossibility to a docile Moira as he made his way back to Dunbarton across country.
His wife’s maid was in the hall when he went inside. For more than one reason she had no business being there. He rather suspected that the presence on duty of a certain handsome footman explained the matter. He raised his eyebrows as he looked at the bobbing, embarrassed girl.
“Her ladyship is back home already?” he asked her. He knew very well even before she answered that her ladyship was not.
“Oh, no, my lord,” her maid said. “Her ladyship has gone to Penwith, my lord.”
“Ah,” he said. “And whom did she take with her, pray?”
“Her ladyship went alone, my lord,” she said.
It was as he had known as soon as he spotted the girl, of course. It was what he should have expected even before he saw her. Had he not instructed Moira to take her maid with her? Had he really expected her to obey him? Was he still that naive? She had always wandered alone, of course—when she was a girl and earlier in this year. But she was his wife now, and by God she would not be so careless of her own safety merely for the sake of defying him.
“Thank you,” he said curtly, and turned to leave the house again. The footman, he saw, was standing near the open door looking like a wooden soldier. He might have felt amused had he not been in such a towering rage. He went back to the stable for Nelson, who greeted him with as much ecstasy as he might have shown if they had been separated for a month.
* * *
MOIRA was walking back home along the valley. Despite the bright sunshine and the heat, despite the lush greenery of trees and grass and ferns and the sparkling blue of the river, and despite the fact that she had had a good visit with her mother, she felt depressed. There would be a strangeness, an awkwardness, a coldness, between her and Kenneth this evening, and she did not know how it was to be dispelled. They had no engagement for this evening. They would be alone together. Should she apologize? But it went so very much against the grain to apologize to Kenneth of all people. Besides, he had made that thoroughly disagreeable remark about her complaints to her mother falling on fertile ears. As if she would ever speak even the whisper of a negative comment about him to Mama. She had more pride than to do any such thing.
And then she stopped dead in her tracks. But the momentary and purely habitual wave of panic immediately gave place to smiles and she stretched out her arms to Nelson, almost inviting him to gallop right up to her, jump up on her, and half bowl her over. She laughed and hugged him and turned her face away.
“Nelson,” she said, not for the first time, “you do not have the sweetest breath, you know.”
She felt suddenly happy and lighthearted. Where Nelson went, Kenneth could not be far behind. He had come to meet her. She looked eagerly ahead and, sure enough, there he was in the distance, standing in the middle of the bridge. It was just where he had stood that other afternoon in January when he had asked if she was increasing and she had said no. That seemed a lifetime ago. She went hurrying forward, smiling brightly as she went. She was almost running by the time she reached the bridge and turned onto it.
Cold gray eyes watched her from a cold, unsmiling face.
“Doubtless,” he said, “you have been walking too fast for your maid to keep up. Shall we wait for her, ma’am?”
It was instantly clear to her that he knew very well she had come alone. It was equally clear that he had come, not to meet her, but to scold her. He was furiously angry. They could have a glorious quarrel if she so chose—if she so chose. It was almost too good an opportunity to miss.
She continued to smile. “Don’t scold,” she said. “I am deeply, abjectly apologetic. I
will never disobey you again.”
His nostrils flared and his eyes cooled off several more degrees. “You choose to mock me, ma’am?” he said so quietly that Moira felt a small flicker of alarm.
She tipped her head to one side and assessed her physical danger. Her smile softened and she took the three steps that would bring him within reach. She set the fingertips of one hand against the lapel of his coat. “Don’t scold,” she said again. “Don’t scold.”
He was not going to give in easily. “Can you give me one good reason why I should not, ma’am?” he asked.
She shook her head. “None,” she said. “I cannot think of one good reason or even one weak reason. Kenneth, don’t scold.”
She had him puzzled, she could see. She was puzzled herself. She had never before failed to take advantage of a looming quarrel. But she had admitted to herself earlier that the heart was not to be guarded. And her heart was singing—and crying.
“I do not give commands for the sake of exercising power over you, Moira,” he said. “Your safety is my concern and my responsibility.”
“Is it?” She smiled at him.
“You are in a strange mood,” he said, frowning. “When the great guns used to fall silent in battle, our flesh would crawl with fear because we would know that the real attack was about to begin.”
“Is your flesh crawling with fear?” she asked.
But he merely continued to frown at her.
She thought of something suddenly and grinned at him. “Oh, Kenneth,” she said, “I must tell you. You will be wonderfully diverted.” She laughed at the mere thought of it.
He had one elbow resting on the parapet of the bridge. But she noticed that his other hand covered hers, holding it against his lapel.
“Mama had a letter from Sir Edwin,” she said. “Oh, Kenneth, when he was in London he made the acquaintance of a great and gentle heiress—his words—who is going to need a gentleman of wisdom and experience and a man of solid principle and humble worth—I do wish I could remember his exact words. It is quite unsatisfactory merely to paraphrase the words of Sir Edwin. Anyway, she is going to need such a gentleman, presumably as a husband, when she completes her year of mourning for her papa—coincidentally at almost the exact time that Sir Edwin completes his for his mama. It seems, Kenneth—you will be amazed—that Sir Edwin judges himself to be just the man for the task and that he has persuaded his great and gentle heiress of the same happy truth by explaining to her that the Earl of Haverford, master of Dunbarton, one of the finest estates in Cornwall, is his kinsman by marriage and his dear friend besides, and that his mother was a Grafton of Hugglesbury—in that order, Kenneth. Are you not vastly relieved?”