by Mary Balogh
“Vastly,” he said. “I might have hurled myself from this bridge in mortification had he put it the other way around.”
“The outcome of all this,” Moira said, “is that it is unlikely Sir Edwin will wish to take up permanent residence at Penwith in the foreseeable future. He will be greatly honored if Mama will continue to live there as—oh, listen to this, Kenneth—as the widow of the late lamented Sir Basil Hayes, and as the mother-in-law of the Earl of Haverford, master of—Do I need to finish?”
“So we are not after all to have him as a neighbor?” Kenneth asked. He was grinning.
“Can you contain your disappointment?” she asked.
“It will not be easy.” He threw back his head and laughed. “But life is a series of disappointments to be overcome. I shall try my best.”
They laughed together for several moments until the laughter faded and they looked self-consciously at each other.
“Have I teased you out of the mopes?” she asked at last.
“I was not in the mopes, Moira,” he said. “The very idea! I had good reason to be angry. What you have done is divert my anger. Very clever of you.”
She smiled at him. “Why did you come?” she asked.
“To give you a good tongue-lashing,” he said. “To blister your ears with my displeasure.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “Why did you come?” She had discovered in London, at Vauxhall, that she had a skill she had not even suspected before then. She had the ability to flirt in the most outrageous manner. And she had discovered that flirting could be marvelously exciting when one saw it take effect—and marvelously arousing too. She took a step closer and set her other hand on his other lapel. She looked very directly into his eyes and whispered. “Tell me why you came.”
“Minx,” he said. “Do you believe I do not know what you are up to? I will not scold you, then. Are you satisfied? My anger is all gone.” He drew breath sharply. “You had better not start what you are unprepared to finish, ma’am.”
She had found the one spot in the center of his throat that was not covered by his cravat and neckcloth. She had set her lips against it. She could not quite believe that she could be so brazen—in broad daylight in the outdoors when he had not first taken the initiative.
“I am always prepared to finish everything I start,” she said, kissing the sensitive spot between his jaw and his earlobe. “And to work thoroughly at every part of the task that comes between start and finish. Everything worth doing is worth doing well, you know. Is that not a piece of marvelous wisdom?”
“Moira,” he asked, his voice low to match her own, “are you making love to me?”
“Am I doing so poorly that you have to ask?” she said. She touched the tip of her tongue to his earlobe and he jerked.
“Minx!” he said again. “I assume you do not intend for this to be taken to its natural conclusion in the middle of a bridge. Might I suggest the baptistry?”
“You might.” She drew back her head and smiled at him. “This is why you came to meet me, is it not?”
“You started this,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head. “If you had not been standing here on the bridge, there would have been nothing for me to start, would there? Tell me this is why you came.”
“Not to scold you but to love you?” he said. “Have it your way, then.”
“I intend to,” she said. “Always. For the rest of my life.” This, she thought, was what must be meant by burning one’s bridges behind one. She was opening herself to rejection and pain. She did not care. There was no way of protecting herself, anyway.
“You are going to have a battle on your hands, then,” he said, “for the rest of your life. But not this afternoon. This afternoon I am in accord with you. Come.”
He set an arm firmly about her waist so that she had little choice but to do the same to him. She pulled off her bonnet and held it by the strings so that she could rest the side of her head against his shoulder. They walked thus up the steep road toward the hilltop in the shadow of the trees until they left it not far from the top in order to cross the hillside to the hermit’s hut.
He stood outside the door with her before they went inside. He drew her against him and kissed her deeply. It was the first time in nine years, she realized, that they had kissed outside of her bed—except beneath the mistletoe and at their wedding. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her head.
“Yes,” he said, lifting his head and looking down at her. “This is why I came, Moira. To love you where I loved you first. To set right all that was wrong on that occasion. But to tell you with my body that I am not sorry it happened. To tell you I am glad it happened. Come and make love with me, then.”
“Yes,” she said. And she told him with her eyes and with the one word that what he had said had been spoken for both of them.
“And afterward,” he said, reaching behind him for the handle of the door, “we will talk, Moira. About everything. We will talk.”
“Yes,” she said as he opened the door and led her inside.
24
THEY made love in a band of warm sunshine from the open door of the hut. There was little fear of discovery by a chance wanderer—Nelson sat in the doorway, gazing down into the valley. He would give them ample warning, Kenneth assured her as he lay back on the narrow cot, adjusted his clothing, and raised her dress as he took her astride him. Besides, he said, setting his hands on her hips, positioning her, and bringing her down firmly onto him, almost no one ever wandered in the hills.
“Come,” he said, reaching for her shoulders and bringing her down over him. His hands moved in her hair and it all came cascading over her shoulders and about his face. He reached over to set her hairpins on the floor. “Ah, my beautiful Madonna. Ride me, then.”
It was not a new position to her. She loved it, as she loved all the positions he had taught her. She loved the freedom to move, to set the pace and the rhythm, to indulge the illusion of mastery. She knew it was only illusion. She had learned—he had taught her and perhaps she had done some of the teaching too—that there was no mastery in a truly satisfying sexual experience, but only mutual giving and taking.
She rode him, but he did not lie passive beneath her. He moved with her, and his thumbs hooked the low neckline of her dress beneath her breasts so that his fingers could work with agonizing skill at her nipples.
A loving was always new. And yet there was a familiarity too by now. She knew that excitement would build until it reached a point of mindless pleasure and pain, beyond which was nothing and everything and perfect bliss. She had learned to sense the moment when the sharp ascent to climax would begin. And eventually, after a long, energetic building of sheer pleasure, she could feel it approaching. Soon, now, there would be the straining and the frenzy. But not just yet. And he knew it too, though she knew that the physical progress to fulfillment was a little different for him. He could read her body’s responses as well as she.
He spoke to her just before the moment, raising his hands to cup her face, holding it so that she gazed down into his eyes. “I love you,” he told her. “I love you so much it hurts.”
She hovered between thought and physical sensation. He smiled at her. “I love you too,” she said. “I have always loved you.” She smiled back at him.
But he had not intended an interruption to their lovemaking, only something to heighten and intensify it. His hands came to her hips and held them firm, stopping her movements while he drove up hard into her. Ascent, achievement of the summit, and descent happened all simultaneously in one shattering, terrifying, glorious burst of light and warmth and physical release and love. She was aware of crying out, but she was aware, too, of hearing his cry mingled with her own. She felt heat gush deep inside. She was half aware of Nelson woofing beside the cot before retiring to the door again and lying down there.<
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Some time later, she turned her head to nestle more comfortably on Kenneth’s shoulder while he straightened her legs on either side of his own. She loved it when he did not immediately disengage from her. She loved the feeling of union. She sighed and felt relaxed from the topmost hair on her head to her toenails.
She did not sleep. The feeling of utter well-being was far too precious to be wasted in sleep. Kenneth slept for a while. She reveled in his relaxed warmth, in his quiet, even breathing. He had not said it just as a sexual thing, she thought. It had not been said just because he had been reaching the end of a good bedding. He often spoke to her during lovemaking, sometimes with a question or a request, sometimes with an appreciative comment for what she was doing, sometimes with erotic words that were all part of the process of arousal. He had never spoken of love. Not until this afternoon. And this afternoon the words had been spoken very deliberately and had been planned too. He had chosen the very last moment before everything was lost in sensation. He had chosen that moment so that what they had shared right afterward had been not only sex but also love. Both combined in perfect marital union.
She was glad she had spoken the words back to him. She had never been able to as a girl. She had always been afraid of the final commitment, the full baring of her soul. She was still afraid, but she was learning that fear must not be allowed to rule her life. Someone had told her that recently. She could not remember who.
“Were you sleeping?” He kissed her forehead.
“No,” she said.
There was a companionable silence. His fingers were massaging her head. “Are you feeling well this time?” he asked at last.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I feel full of health and well-being. I feel quite different from last time.” It was the first time either of them had referred to her pregnancy.
“Are you afraid?” His lips were against her forehead again.
“Yes,” she said.
“I wish I could offer some consolation,” he said. “I wish I could assure you that all will be well. I cannot. I am terrified too.”
“But I will not give in to fear,” she said. “I will live my life boldly. If I have a child, I will consider myself the most fortunate of women. If I have children, I will wonder what I have done to deserve such happiness. If I have none, I will remember all the other blessings of my life—oh, yes, and grieve too. But I will not give in to fear.”
He chuckled. “That is a familiar phrase,” he said. “It was something of a motto with Rex, Nat, Eden, and me. We had a reputation for madness and recklessness, you know. Someone once called us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the name stuck. But we were not bold because of madness or superior courage or insensitivity. We were bold because we refused to give in to fear. We used to say it in chorus together.”
“Well, then,” she said, “we will not fear because I am with child, Kenneth.”
“Except,” he said with a sigh, “that I cannot ride into battle for you, can I? I have to wait and watch you do all the suffering—for a child I have begotten in you. You humble me, Moira, and render me helpless. That should delight you.”
She smiled but said nothing for a while. She did not want to win mastery over him any more than she wanted to be mastered by him. “But I need you,” she said. “When there is pain, and even more when there is sorrow, there can be terrible loneliness. But if there is someone there . . . Kenneth, when I was miscarrying, you stayed with me even though Mr. Ryder told you to leave. You were pale and you had tears in your eyes. You begged me not to die, not to leave you. You called me your love. I did not imagine it, did I?”
“No,” he said. She felt him draw a deep breath. “I would have died for you if it would have helped. Cheerfully.”
She swallowed. She had not imagined it, and yet the very next morning she had told him she never wanted to see him again. He had seemed so very cold. Had he merely been unhappy, uncertain, waiting to take his cue from her? Could she have had him for comfort during that dreadful week and the weeks that had followed his leaving? Human communication was a terrible thing; it so often gave off false messages or else broke down altogether.
She lifted herself off him without looking into his face. There was the momentary pang of regret, as there always was, as she felt her body disengage from his, but she did not stop. She pulled up her bodice, straightened her skirt, pushed her feet into her shoes, flicked her hair behind her shoulders, and stepped outside into sunlight and heat. She lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. And then she stepped off the slightly worn path to sit on the grass of the hillside and look down into the valley, her arms clasped about her knees. Nelson settled beside her with a satisfied sigh, his head on his paws.
She had another lesson to learn, she realized. She had to learn to be dependent. A marriage was a mutual dependency, not a double independence. She had to learn to accept his love, his care, his need to protect—even if it meant taking a maid with her when she went out without him. She had to learn to sense his fears and his occasional feeling of helplessness—and to watch his tears. She had to learn to accept his love. Love was not something just to give. It had to be received too, even at the expense of some independence.
But she loved him. And he loved her. Oh, God, how she loved him. She lowered her forehead to her knees.
* * *
HE did not know if he had said something or done something to offend her. He followed her outside half fearfully. But she was seated on the grass close to the hut and she lifted her head from her knees when he sat down beside her, and she smiled at him. It was a soft, warm smile. He set one hand against the nape of her neck. Her hair was warm and silky between his palm and her flesh.
“The decision is made, then, Moira?” he asked. He was no longer fearful of her answer or in any doubt of his own. “We will stay together no matter what? Because we wish to? Because we love each other?”
“And because we are married,” she said. “Because marriage is the new challenge of our lives. I do not suppose there is really such a thing as living happily ever after, is there?”
“Fortunately, no,” he said. “How boring it would be, Moira. No more quarreling. I do not believe either of us could stand it.”
She laughed softly. “No,” she said. “It sounds quite horrid. Yes, my lord and no, my lord or yes, ma’am and no, ma’am.”
He chuckled with her. “We will stay together and meet the new challenge, then,” he said. “Just promise never again to try to kill me.”
“Silly,” she said. “You must have known that the pistol was not loaded. You knew how I felt about guns. I do not even know how to load one. It is amazing I was even holding it by the right end. Was I?”
“I was referring more to the four thugs you sent after me three days later,” he said. “They thrashed me within an inch or two of my life, you know. I believe my father’s steward came along in the nick of time. But no matter. Doubtless you thought yourself severely enough provoked. And it is all long in the past now.”
“Kenneth.” She had turned her head to look him very directly in the eyes. Her own were wide. “What thugs? What thrashing? What are you talking about?”
He felt a sudden doubt, one he had never felt before this moment—perhaps because he had never wanted to doubt.
“The one I succeeded in felling confessed it,” he said, “after we had restored him to consciousness with a pail of water over the head. He said you had sent them as punishment for what I had done to Sean.”
“But what made you believe I had any power over them?” she asked, all very obvious amazement.
“They were your brother’s men,” he said. “Your men.”
“Sean’s? Mine?” Her brows had snapped together into a frown. “I did not—I do not even know who any of them were,” she said. “I doubt even Sean knew. They were all disguised or had their faces blackened that night. Sean we
nt with them that once as a lark, because he could never resist an adventure. And I found out from one of the servants and went after him to try to stop him before he was caught. I took that gun with me. Kenneth, I had nothing to do with those men. Sean had very little to do with them. It was his first time, and it all turned out disastrously for him. Because you did not wait to talk to us the next day after we had calmed down and could have talked rationally.”
“They told me you were part of the gang,” he said. “Sean told me.”
“I do not believe you,” she said. But she held up a staying hand. “No, I do believe you. But you must have misunderstood him. He would not have said that. It was not true.”
He understood everything with a sudden and sickening clarity. He got to his feet and stood looking down at the waterfall, his back to her. “It was revenge,” he said quietly. “By God, it was revenge. I had turned him over to my father and destroyed his plans to elope with Helen and gain her fortune. And so he destroyed what was most precious in my life. He destroyed my love for you.” He drew in a deep breath. “He must have persuaded them to say you had set them on me.”
“No, Kenneth,” she said. “It was someone else, someone who had a grudge against all of us. It was not Sean. He was rather wild and reckless, it is true, but there was no evil in him. He loved me; he was your friend; he was in love with Helen.”