The Arrangement: Number 2 in series (Survivors' Club)

by Mary Balogh

  And she felt his hands slide away from beneath her.

  She kept her eyes on his face. She did not sink. And she did not need his hands. She would never allow herself to need them. Or him, except in a purely material way, for she would starve without his support. But not in any other way. She might want, but there was a difference between wanting and needing.

  She could float alone.

  She could live alone.

  He floated beside her, his hand occasionally touching hers, and she looked up at the sky. It was a vast, deep blue, with a few puffs of white cloud.

  So relaxed. So beautiful. With a dull ache in the throat.

  She turned her head to look at him, swallowed a mouthful of water, and scrambled and splashed her way to her feet. The water came to her chin. They must have floated outward. There was a moment of near-panic as she coughed and waded closer to the shore, drawing him by the hand.

  “You must have floated on your own for all of five minutes,” he said. “Well done. Once you can float, you can learn to swim in a trice.”

  “Not today, though,” she said. “Allow me to bask in the triumph of one mighty achievement at a time.”

  “I am going to swim,” he said, and he turned back into the water and began to swim away into the lake with powerful strokes.

  Sophia, standing knee-deep and watching, could almost feel his pleasure.

  But how was he going to find his way back, foolish man? He did not have Mr. Fisk beside him today.

  She left the water and wrapped a towel about her shoulders. But she did not sit down or take her eyes off him. She shaded them with one hand against the sun.

  17

  For several minutes Vincent knew what a bird or a wild animal must feel like when it escaped from its cage. He expended all his pent-up energy on the exercise, reveling in his freedom and the power of his own muscles and the cool wonder of the water.

  It was a euphoria that did not last, of course. For even though at first even the absence of Martin added to his exuberance, it did not take him long to realize how reckless he had been.

  Where was he exactly? How was he to get back to the island? He had no idea how far he had swum or in which direction.

  He stopped swimming and trod water. He could not feel the bottom. The temptation was to panic. But panic was not going to do him any good, and this was not like the familiar attacks that assaulted him out of nowhere and for no discernible reason. This was a potential panic based upon reality. It was something under his control.

  The comforting thought flashed through his mind that at worst he could swim until he collided with a bank. He would not know where on the bank he was, but he could at least climb out and wait for someone to find him. It was not as though no one knew whereabouts he was.

  But poor Sophia would be stranded on the island.

  He would feel an idiot—at the very least.

  “I am here,” Sophia’s voice called from what seemed a considerable distance away.

  The trouble was that outdoors it was not so easy to know exactly where a voice was coming from, especially when it was some distance away.

  “Here,” she yelled.

  He chose a direction and swam.

  “To your left,” she called and he adjusted his course.

  It took a while. But she guided him in with a voice that gradually diminished from a yell to a volume not far above a speaking voice.

  “You ought to be able to touch the bottom now,” she said at last. “Wade to your left. I am here.”

  She did not come to get him. He was thankful for that.

  Had he frightened her? He would wager he had.

  When his feet were on firm, dry ground, she threw a towel about his shoulders.

  “Oh, I do look forward to the day when I can swim even half as well as you,” she said. “It must be the loveliest feeling in the world.”

  And yet there was a slight tremor in her voice.

  “Thank you for guiding me in,” he said. “Without you, I might have landed on the far bank and wandered off to the most distant corner of the park.”

  “I did not fancy rowing myself home,” she said. “Though it is actually lovely back there, Vincent. I thought there were only trees beyond the lake, but they must have been planted for pictorial effect, so that they would reflect in the water. Beyond them are more lawns and an alley and summerhouse. There is more space than anyone would know what to do with. Though I have an idea.”

  There was still a tremor in her voice. She knew he had been in potential trouble. And she could neither have come to his rescue nor run for help.

  “Oh?” he said as he toweled himself dry. “What?”

  “I am not going to tell you,” she said. “It is a secret. A surprise. Maybe just foolishness, though I think it can be done.”

  “I hate surprises when I have to wait to know what they are,” he told her.

  She laughed. She had sat down on the grass, he realized. He spread his towel and stretched out beside her.

  “I am sorry, Sophie,” he said after a minute or two.

  “Sorry?”

  “For causing you anxiety,” he said. “For forcing you to keep an eagle eye on me while I was out there frolicking. It was irresponsible of me. It will not happen again.”

  “Oh, you must not make such promises,” she said. “You may feel obliged to keep them. I know just how you felt.”

  “Do you?” He turned his head her way.

  “Some people climb impossible mountains,” she said. “Some people go exploring impossible places. And they do it for no better reason than that they simply cannot ignore the challenge of danger or of attempting the seemingly impossible. Sometimes you cannot resist the urge to be free of your sightlessness or at least to push it to its limits.”

  “Perhaps,” he said meekly, “I simply wanted to swim.”

  “Oh. So much for my fine speech.” She laughed.

  Martin would not have made excuses for him. He would have called him a string of names, none of them complimentary—and he would have meant every one of them.

  He felt good after the exercise, though—a different sort of good from what he always felt after a session in the cellar. And he felt drowsy. He could smell grass and water. Birds were singing at a distance, probably among the trees on the far bank. There were insects chirping and whirring closer at hand. Somewhere a bee droned.

  Life at its sweetest.

  Fingers, warm and feather light, moved damp hair back from his forehead. He lay very still until they were gone again. She was sitting rather than lying beside him. She must be looking down at him.

  Marrying her had been a good move, he realized. He was always able to relax with her. He enjoyed their conversations. He loved her humor. He was comfortable with her. He liked her. He believed she liked him. He enjoyed having sex with her.

  How foolish they had been to imagine that dreams conceived when they were both single and none too happy would survive a marriage that was bringing them a great deal of contentment.

  He hoped those dreams were well and truly dead and would never be referred to again.

  He turned his head her way and reached out a hand. It encountered her bare knees, and he realized that she was kneeling up beside him and looking down at him.

  Why?

  “Sophie,” he said.

  She took his hand in both of hers.

  Something blocked out the sunshine on his face and she kissed him.

  If there was a sweeter mouth to kiss than Sophia’s, he could not imagine it. He wound his arms about her, and she collapsed down half over him and spread her hands on his shoulders. They kissed warmly, lazily for a while, their tongues exploring, their teeth gently nipping. Enjoying each other.

  “Mm,” he said.

  “Mm,” she agreed.

  “I suppose,” he said, “every gardener in my employ and a few of the indoor servants for good measure are lined up about the perimeter of the lake enjoying the show?”

/>   “Not a single one,” she said. “They would have to hack their way through the jungle across from us and we have the folly behind us.”

  “We are quite private, then?”

  “Yes.” Her lips were touching his. “Quite private.”

  He reached down to remove his drawers, but she was kneeling up beside him again, and her fingers went beneath the band and pulled them downward for him. He lifted his hips, and she slid them all the way off.

  When had she grown so bold?

  She bent over him and kissed his navel. She moved her lips upward, kissing him as she went until she kissed his lips again.

  Mm indeed!

  “The ground would not make a soft mattress for your back, Sophie,” he said. “Come on top of me.”

  He was very unadventurous, he realized with a little twinge of shame. Their lovemaking had never seemed routine or monotonous. Every encounter had been different from every other. Yet she had always lain on her back. He had always come on top of her. He would never win any prizes as one of the world’s most innovative lovers.

  He drew her over him, and she lay on him, small and sweetly warm and smelling of lake water and summer heat. He kissed her again and moved his hands down over her bottom to grasp her upper thighs and spread her legs on either side of his own. Her shift was not a long one. She wore nothing beneath.

  She bent her knees and raised herself onto them. She lifted her body too so that she was kneeling astride him.

  He felt rather as if someone must have dropped a few more logs onto the sun to make its fire blaze higher. He felt as if he had relinquished some control, and he hardened into further arousal, if that was possible. He bent his own knees and slid his feet up the grass. He set his hands on her hips to position her.

  But she was already touching him, the fingers of both hands moving over him so lightly that he thought he might well go mad. He tipped back his chin, pressed his head into the grass, and let her lead the way.

  She drew him into position against herself, and she came down onto him in one firm, smooth motion. He almost disgraced himself and came in her without any further ado.

  She made a low sound deep in her throat.

  She lifted herself off almost to the brink and came down again—and repeated and repeated the motion until she was riding him with firm, sure rhythm. She was working inner muscles into it too, and after a few moments she rotated her hips in time with the ride.

  This was Sophie?

  If he ignored the near pain of being so fully aroused, and he did ignore it for a while, the pleasure was exquisite. She was hot and wet and pulsing about him.

  He pushed into her descents and withdrew to her ascents and matched her move for move until he felt her break rhythm, felt that she was reaching for something she did not know or understand. He grasped her hips more firmly and drove upward and withdrew and drove and held. She tensed and cried out and came all to pieces about him. And he drove again with reckless energy until he followed her into that glorious state of sexual release.

  She was still up on her knees. He moved his hands to her waist and brought her down to lie on top of him. He straightened her legs on either side of his. He threaded his fingers through her hair and held one side of her face against his shoulder.

  Good God!

  “Happy?” he asked her.

  “Mm,” she mumbled against his shoulder.

  He rather believed they had both dozed off when he woke up to feel less than comfortable.

  “Sophie?”

  “Mm?”

  “We are horribly hot and sweaty, are we not?” he said.

  They were quite slick with wetness. Even her shift was clammy.

  “Mm.”

  “Up, then, woman,” he said, “and lead me to water.”

  He splashed her when they were waist deep, and she splashed him back. She had the advantage, of course, because she could see what she was aiming at. On the other hand, he was able to swim beneath the water and clip her behind the knees so that she fell under and came up sputtering.

  He slapped her on the back and wrapped an arm about her shoulders.

  “Do you plan to survive?” he asked her.

  “If I can ever stop coughing,” she said, and coughed again. “Did I swallow the whole lake?”

  “I can’t tell,” he said. “I can’t see.”

  “But you can feel.” And her left foot got him behind his own knees when he was least expecting it, and he made the personal discovery that she had not, in fact, swallowed the whole of the lake.

  She was laughing—really quite gleefully—instead of commiserating when he came up.

  Miss Debbins was quite a miracle worker. After two music lessons and an hour a day of practice between times, Sophia was able to make sense of the lines and symbols and little notes with their variously feathered tails on a sheet of music. More important, she was able to reproduce the sounds of those notes on the keyboard of the pianoforte and even play with two hands. That seemed impossible to her at first, when each hand was expected to play something different, but it was possible even though she was playing but the simplest of exercises.

  Moreover, Miss Debbins had the patience to help Vincent improve on the harp to the point at which he could play some simple melodies without making a single mistake.

  The playing of music would never be her first love, though, Sophia soon realized. She persevered because she could and because she was so lacking in the accomplishments expected of any lady. And because a musical instrument created sound, lovely, harmonious sound if it was played properly, and sound was of such importance to her husband.

  Her first love could never bring him joy, except that he did enjoy her talking about it. Her first love would always be sketching. Miss Debbins had brought back with her from her brother’s house a younger widowed sister, who was intending to live permanently with her. And Agnes Keeping was a painter. She worked primarily with watercolors, and her favored subject matter was wildflowers. Sophia found her work quite exquisite, and Agnes marveled over Sophia’s caricatures and laughed with delight over her story illustrations, especially when she read the stories to go with them. Sophia was careful to explain that the stories themselves were joint efforts with Vincent, except for the original dragon and mouse story, for which he was the sole author.

  “What a gift you and your husband have,” Agnes said. “It is actually a shame that only Lord Darleigh’s nieces and nephews ever see these pictures and hear these stories. And they will be returning to their own homes within the week, you say? These little books of yours ought to be published.”

  Sophia laughed, pleased.

  “I have a cousin,” Agnes said. “Well, actually he is my late husband’s cousin. He lives in London. He— Well. I will write to him, with your permission. May I?”

  “Of course.” Sophia closed her books. Agnes had not explained why the cousin might be interested in them, and she did not ask. She left the original Bertha and Dan story with Agnes when she returned home.

  Agnes became her first real friend.

  And the ladies of the sewing group became her first friendly acquaintances even though Sophia felt quite intimidated by the fact that they all, without exception, were far finer needlewomen than she. Actually, though, it seemed to her that that very fact endeared her to them, for they were all eager to help her and teach her and praise her efforts, and she did indeed improve under their expert guidance. She even started to enjoy plying her needle.

  Vincent had been right in what he had said that afternoon when they had rowed to the island, she came to realize. Everyone needed friends of their own sex.

  He had started to make definite friends among their neighbors. Mr. Harrison, a married gentleman no more than a few years older than Vincent—his wife was a member of the sewing circle—took him fishing one day with a few other gentlemen, and somehow they all devised a way for him to fish quite effectively. And Mr. Harrison had started to come to the house every few days to read th
e papers to Vincent, and the two of them would sit afterward, discussing politics and economics.

  It was not, however, as if she and Vincent had drifted apart. They often sat alone together in their private sitting room in the late evenings, and they sometimes walked out together or practiced together in the music room. Once they went riding together, though they were not alone that time. The head groom hovered near Sophia, and Mr. Fisk rode beside Vincent. It was a lovely memory, though, because Vincent had been happy and carefree, and she had been exhilarated by her own daring, even though Vincent had told her if they crawled any more slowly they would be moving backward.

  Sophia was returning on foot one afternoon from a sewing session when she saw Mr. Fisk striding alone from the stables toward the house. He had probably been watching the training session with Shep back in the paddocks. Mr. Croft was coming over every day now that the dog was nearly trained, and he and Vincent were growing more and more accustomed to each other and more and more able to move about as one harmonious unit. The only thing Sophia had found a trifle disappointing at first was Mr. Croft’s firm directive that the dog was never to be considered a family pet, that he was never to be petted by anyone except Vincent or encouraged to follow anyone about or to sit with anyone except him.

  It made perfect sense, of course. If the dog was easily distracted, then he could not be trusted to be Vincent’s eyes at all times and under all circumstances.

  Mr. Fisk nodded his head in Sophia’s direction and would have hurried into the house before she came up to him.

  “Mr. Fisk,” she called. “Please wait.”

  She never knew if he liked her or not. She was a bit frightened of him, if the truth were told, though not in any physical sense. He would never harm her or talk disrespectfully to her. But old habits of mind did not die easily. Of course, he was deeply attached to Vincent, and he had definitely not thought her a worthy bride for his master and friend at first. She did not know if he still felt that way. It did not matter—except that, of course, it did.

  He raised his eyebrows and stopped walking.