by Mary Balogh
He turned his head to look down at her. By God, she believed what she said. It might have been as well, he thought, to leave the past where it was. Somehow they had overcome it and had learned to love again. She could have been left with her memories of her brother intact. But it was too late now. Their own new love would be damaged if he did not continue—and perhaps if he did.
“Moira,” he said, “Sean was the leader of that smuggling gang. He had gathered together all the most ruthless cutthroats in this part of Cornwall and was honing them into a dangerous and murderous band of smugglers. I should have spoken up before I did. A memory of friendship held me back—and my fear of losing you.” He laughed mirthlessly. “He did not love Helen. He wanted her money. There are children in this part of England who are Sean’s. Not all of their mothers went to him willingly. Your father, I believe, had set aside a decent portion for you and your mother. I believe, too, that it was spent in payment of your brother’s debts. This information came directly from Sean when there was still some semblance of friendship between us. I betrayed him, Moira. I have never denied that. But he betrayed us all. And he avenged himself on me by ensuring your permanent unhappiness.”
She had returned her forehead to her knees. Did she believe him? Was everything now ruined—again? Part of him wished they had never opened this topic. Part of him knew that it had been inevitable. If it had not happened now, it would have happened at some time in the future.
“He was a brave officer,” he said. “He was one of those soldiers whose fame extended beyond his own regiment. He asked nothing of his men in the way of bravery or exposure to danger that he was not prepared to share with them. I am surprised I had not heard of his death until you told me. I have no doubt that he was in the thick of battle when it happened, doing his duty.”
She kept her head down.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I can tell that you believe me. I should have left you with your memories of him intact.”
She shook her head and lifted it. She looked rather weary. “No,” she said. “I will not stop loving him. One does not, you know. He was my brother. And he did die bravely. He went forward into gunfire to drag back a young private soldier who had been wounded. He succeeded before he died. The private survived. Sometimes people really do redeem themselves.”
“And us?” he asked fearfully after a pause. “Has this conversation spoiled everything, Moira?”
“No.” She shook her head. “You know now that I was not one of those smugglers. Have you really thought it all these years? And you know that, apart from threatening you with an unloaded pistol—which was not a very nice thing to do, anyway—I never did anything to try to harm you. I said everything that I had to say in that short, screaming quarrel we had the day after Sean was arrested.”
“And you know, perhaps,” he said, “that I did what had to be done, for any number of anonymous people, for my sister, and even for you. I wanted to release you from that band of smugglers before you were caught and transported. I did betray your trust, Moira, for without your having told me, I would not have known about Sean and Helen and would not have gone on to discover for myself that their plans extended to an elopement. I have never quite forgiven myself for betraying you, but I did what I thought I had to do, even knowing that I would lose you. I made a choice—and I believe I would make the same one if it was to be made again and feel the same guilt after making it.”
“If only you had told me,” she said.
“I was not feeling kindly disposed toward you, Moira,” he said. “Besides, we did not talk to each other during that one meeting we had. We yelled. We both yelled. Neither of us listened.”
She got to her feet and came to stand beside him. She took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together, and rested the side of her head on his shoulder. “What a wonderful sense of release,” she said. “Since going to London, since falling in love with you all over again, I have allowed my thoughts to roam over all our dealings together, even back to childhood, when I worshiped you and you were unaware of my existence. But there was always that one series of events that my mind had to skirt around—and always the thought to be suppressed that somehow you were to blame for Sean’s death.”
He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head.
“I will be able to accept his death better now,” she said. “He had a chance to redeem himself when he might as easily have been in transportation—and deservedly so. He was given the chance, and he took it and used it well. Was it you who suggested enlistment rather than transportation to your father?”
“Yes,” he said.
She lifted her head and smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said. “I love you.”
“How I longed to hear those words when we were very young,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It is the loveliest thing in the world to be told, Moira.”
“And the most frightening thing in the world to say,” she said. “One feels that one is giving away a part of oneself and leaving oneself open to pain and rejection.”
“And to joy,” he said, smiling. “I will never knowingly hurt you, my love, and I will never reject you. I will argue with you and scold you and quarrel with you—and love you all my life.”
“Will you?” she asked. “Promise?”
“On all counts?” He grinned at her. “I promise. Faithfully.”
“And I,” she said. “I promise always to love you.”
“And to quarrel with me?” he asked.
“Yes, and that too.” She laughed.
“Good,” he said. “It is sure to be an interesting life, then.”
He wrapped an arm about her waist and drew her closer against his side. They gazed downward over the tops of leaf-laden trees to the bridge and to the river and the waterfall, blue and sparkling in the sunshine. He could not imagine a lovelier place on earth in which to live—with his first and his only love.
They turned their heads at the same moment, smiled at each other, and closed the small distance between their mouths. Nelson heaved a sigh of deep contentment and proceeded to doze.
Dear Reader,
For a number of years many of you have been telling me that you have read and loved Irresistible, Book 3 in the Horsemen trilogy, but cannot find the other two books. I know as a reader myself how annoying that can be when a series is involved, but yes, they have been out of print and it has been beyond my power to bring them back. That has now changed, to my great delight, and, almost twenty years after they were first published, all three books will be out again in 2016 with gorgeous new covers. Indeed, when I first saw the cover of Indiscreet, Book 1, I loved it so much that I told my editor I wanted to live in the cottage. Both she and my agent said they would join me there for tea and scones. Perhaps you will drop by too and enjoy the three stories, as I know readers did in the past.
If you are familiar with my recent Survivors’ Club series, you will note the contrast in my treatment of men (and one woman) returning from war. There I chose to concentrate on the wounds, both physical and psychic, that the Napoleonic Wars caused my main characters. In the trilogy, however, I chose to tell the stories of four young cavalry officers (two of them are combined in Book 3) who have returned from war unscathed and eager to enjoy life to the full and forget about responsibility for a while. Life intervenes for them all, of course, and leads them through adversity to romance and the sort of happiness they had not anticipated. I hope you will enjoy reading or rereading their stories in these lovely new editions.
Mary Balogh
TURN THE PAGE FOR A LOOK AT THE FIRST BOOK IN MARY BALOGH’S BELOVED HORSEMEN TRILOGY,
INDISCREET
AVAILABLE NOW FROM SIGNET ECLIPSE
DESPITE herself, Mrs. Catherine Winters, widow, found that she glanced far more often than she normally did through the front windows of her little thatched cottage at the southern end of the village st
reet, and that she listened with heightened senses for the sound of approaching carriages. She loved her back garden more than the front because of the fruit trees with their branches hanging over the lawn and the shade they offered in the summer and because the river flowed and gurgled over mossy stones at the end of the garden. But she found herself more often than not in the front garden these days, watching the crocuses come into bud and a few brave shoots of the daffodil bulbs push through the soil. Though she would have scurried indoors fast enough if she really had heard carriages coming. She did so one morning only to find that it was the Reverend Ebenezer Lovering returning in his one-horse cart from a visit to a nearby farm.
She had mixed feelings about the return of the family to Bodley. The children would be happy. They had been longing for weeks for the return of their mama. She would come laden with gifts when she did come, of course, and spoil them for weeks, so that their classes would be disrupted. But then, children needed their mother more than they did lessons of any description. Catherine gave them music lessons at the house twice a week, though neither child had a great deal of aptitude on the pianoforte. Of course, they were young. Juliana was only eight years old, William seven.
Life was marginally more interesting when Mr. Adams and his wife were at home. Occasionally Catherine was invited to the house for dinner or for a card party. She was aware of the fact that it happened only when Mrs. Adams needed to even numbers and was one female short. And she was very aware of the condescension with which she was treated on such occasions. Even so, there was something treacherously pleasant about the opportunity to dress her best—though her self-made clothes must be woefully unfashionable by town standards, she was sure—and to be in company with people who had some conversation.
And Mr. Adams himself was always amiable and courteous. He was an extremely handsome gentleman and had passed on his looks to his children, though Mrs. Adams was rather lovely too. But Catherine had learned to avoid his company at the house. Mrs. Adams’s tongue could become decidedly barbed if the two of them fell into conversation together. Foolish woman—as if Catherine’s behavior had ever indicated that she was interested in dalliance of any kind.
She was not. She was finished with men. And with love. And with flirtation. They had brought her to where she was now. Not that she was complaining. She had a pleasant enough home in a pleasant enough village and she had learned how to occupy her time usefully so that the days were not unbearably tedious.
She was glad that the family was returning—partly glad. But they were bringing houseguests with them—plural. Viscount Rawleigh she did not know. She had never met him and never heard of him before she came to live at Bodley-on-the-Water. But there were to be other guests, doubtless people of ton. And there was the chance that she might know one or more of them—or, more to the point, that at least one of them would know her.
It was a remote chance, but it filled her with unease.
She did not want the peace of her life disturbed. It had been too hard-won.
They came in the middle of one brisk but sunny afternoon when she was standing at the end of her front path, bidding farewell to Miss Agatha Downes, spinster daughter of a former rector, who had called on her and taken tea with her. It was quite impossible to scurry back inside so that she might cower behind the parlor curtain and observe while remaining unobserved. All she could do was stand there, without even a bonnet to shield her face, and wait to be recognized. She envied Toby, her terrier, who was safe inside the house, barking noisily.
There were three carriages, if one discounted the baggage coaches, which were some distance behind. It was impossible to see who rode in them, though Mrs. Adams leaned forward in her seat in the first of them in order to raise one hand and incline her head to them. Rather like a queen acknowledging her peasant subjects, Catherine thought with the humor that carried her through all her encounters with Mrs. Adams. She nodded her head in reply to the greeting.
There were three gentlemen on horseback. A quick glance assured Catherine that two of them were strangers. And the third was no threat either. She had smiled at Mr. Adams and curtsied to him—something she always avoided doing whenever she could with his wife—before something in his bearing and in the cool, unsmiling, arrogant way he looked back at her alerted her to the fact that he was not Mr. Adams at all.
Of course, Mr. Adams had a twin—Viscount Rawleigh. How humiliating! She could feel the color rising hotly to her cheeks and hoped that he had ridden on far enough not to have noticed. She also hoped it would seem that her curtsy had been in general acknowledgment of the whole group.
“My dear Mrs. Winters,” Miss Downes was saying, “how gratifying it is that we happened to be outside and so close to the road when Mr. Adams and his dear wife and their distinguished guests returned home. It was most agreeable of Mrs. Adams to nod to us, I am sure. She might have stayed back in the shadows, as I am certain she was inclined to do after the tedium of a long journey.”
“Yes,” Catherine agreed, “traveling is indeed a tiresome business, Miss Downes. I am sure they will all be thankful to be at Bodley House in time for tea.”
Miss Downes stepped out through the gateway and turned in the direction of home, eager to share what she had just seen with her aged invalid mother. Catherine looked after her down the street and saw in some amusement that everyone seemed to be out of doors. It was as if a great procession had just gone past and everyone was still basking in the glory of having seen it.
She was still feeling mortified. Perhaps Viscount Rawleigh would have realized the mistake she had made in singling him out for her curtsy—and her smile. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, other people in the village had done the same thing. Perhaps some of them did not realize even yet the mistake they had made.
His looks were almost identical to Mr. Adams’s, she thought. But if first impressions were anything to judge by—and she judged by them even though she realized that she was perhaps being unfair—he was quite different in character. This man was haughty and lacking in humor. There had been a coldness in his dark eyes. Perhaps it was a difference that twenty fateful minutes had wrought. Lord Rawleigh had all the consequence of a title and a large fortune and a rich and vast property to live up to.
She hoped she would not have the embarrassment of meeting him again. She hoped that his stay at Bodley would be of short duration, though it was altogether probable that he had not even noticed her more particularly than anyone else in his regal progress along the street.
AND DON’T MISS THE FINAL BOOK IN THE HORSEMEN TRILOGY,
IRRESISTIBLE
AVAILABLE FROM BERKLEY SENSATION IN DECEMBER 2016
EARLY the following morning a lady sat alone at the escritoire in the sitting room of her home on Sloan Terrace, brushing the feather of her quill pen across her chin as she studied the figures set out neatly on the paper spread before her. Her slippered foot smoothed lightly over the back of her dog, a collie who was snoozing contentedly beneath the desk.
There was enough money without dipping into her woefully meager savings. The bills for coal and candles had been paid a week ago—they were always a considerable expense. She did not have to worry about the salaries of her three servants—they were taken care of by a government grant. And of course the house was hers—given to her by the same government. The quarterly pension money that had been paid her last week—the coal and candle bills had been paid out of it—would just stretch to pay off this new debt.
She would not, of course, be able to buy the new evening gown she had been promising herself or the new half boots. Or that bonnet she had seen in a shop window on Oxford Street when out with her friend Gertrude two days ago—the day before she had been presented with this new debt.
Debt—what a sad euphemism! For a moment there was a sick lurching in her stomach and panic clawed at her. She drew a slow breath and forced her mind to deal with practicalities.
Sophia Armitage sighed aloud. It was two years since she had had a new evening gown. And that, even though it had been chosen for her presentation at Carlton House to no less a personage than the Regent, the Prince of Wales, was of the dullest dark blue silk and the most conservative of designs. Although she had been out of mourning, she had felt the occasion called for extreme restraint. She had been wearing that gown ever since.
She had so hoped this year to have a new one. Although she was invited almost everywhere, she did not usually accept invitations to the more glittering ton events. This year, though, she felt obliged to put in an appearance at some of them at least. This year Viscount Houghton, her brother-in-law, her late husband’s brother, was in town with his family. Sarah, at the age of eighteen, was to make her come-out. Edwin and Beatrice, Sophia knew, hoped desperately that they would find a suitable husband for the girl during the next few months. They were not wealthy and could ill afford a second Season for her next year.
But they were kindness itself to Sophia. Although her father had been a coal merchant, albeit a wealthy one, and Walter’s father had resisted her marriage to his son, Edwin and Beatrice had treated her with unfailing generosity ever since Walter’s death. They would have given her a home and an allowance. They wanted her now to attend the grander events of the Season with them.
Of course, it could do them nothing but good to be seen in public with her, though she did not believe they were motivated by that fact alone. The truth was that Walter, Major Walter Armitage, who had fought as a cavalry officer throughout the war years in Portugal and Spain, always doing his duty, never distinguishing himself, had died at Waterloo in the performance of an act of extraordinary bravery. He had saved the lives of several superior officers, the Duke of Wellington’s included, and then he had gone dashing off on foot into the thick of dense fighting in order to rescue a lowly lieutenant who had been unhorsed. Neither of them had survived. Walter had been found with his arms still clasped protectively around the younger man. He had been in the act of carrying him to safety.