Only Beloved

by Mary Balogh

  She had convinced herself over and over down the years that the absence of it from her life did not make her less happy or less fulfilled as a person or a woman. And of course she had been right. She would not have lived out her days as half a woman if he had never come to offer her marriage. But, oh, the delight of last night’s discovery and the . . . the sheer joy of knowing that it would happen again and again in the future.

  She was a married lady. In every sense—the wedding yesterday, the consummation last night.

  It was not just the act itself that had been wonderful, though. He had been wonderful. He had been considerate and respectful of her awkward inexperience. He had extinguished the candles before joining her in bed, and he had not completely removed her nightgown but had only raised it to her waist and then lowered it after they were finished. He had removed his own nightshirt, but only after the room was in darkness. He was still naked beside her now. Along the side of her right arm she could feel the bareness of his chest, warm and lightly dusted with hair. He had also been patient. Ignorant as she was, she had sensed the restraint he had imposed upon himself as he prepared her with warm, skilled hands and a gentle, alluring mouth. And he had held the bulk of his weight above her while it was happening. He had eased his way slowly inside her. She was not sure he had thus saved her from any of the pain, but he had perhaps prevented some of the shock of the unfamiliar stretching and penetration there. Even after he had entered her fully, he had proceeded cautiously, she had sensed, until he was finished and she felt a liquid gush of heat deep inside.

  Ah, yes, it had been both painful and shocking. It had also been—oh, by far—the most glorious experience of her life.

  Despite herself her thoughts went back to their wedding, the day she had expected to be the happiest of her life. It had not been, of course, but upsetting as it had been for her, it must have been very much worse for him. That man—the Earl of Eastham—had been his brother-in-law and yet had accused him of murder. Why? And why so publicly and on just such an occasion? It had been somehow horribly reminiscent of another occasion when someone—her father—had spoken out with a public denunciation and changed her life forever. Was it pure spite on the earl’s part because his sister’s widower was marrying again?

  She could not ask. Even though he had said last night that he ought to have talked openly about the incident with his guests and friends during the day and discussed it fully with her when they were alone, he had not then proceeded to do just that. He had brought her to bed instead.

  She was suddenly aware that she could no longer hear his breathing beside her. She turned her head to find herself being regarded with sleepy, smiling eyes.

  “Dora,” he murmured.

  “George.”

  He chuckled after a few moments. “Well, that was a profound conversation.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. She was only half joking. A name—a first name—was a powerful thing. Her heart had yearned toward him last night when he had called her by name for the first time. Calling him by his name seemed very personal and intimate when he was . . . the Duke of Stanbrook, whom she had thought of as some sort of remote, unattainable figure of nobility for well over a year. Yet now she was his wife. She was in bed with him. They had made love. He was George.

  “I like waking to see you there.” He closed his eyes and inhaled. “My bed has been very empty, Dora.”

  Since his first wife’s death? But she did not want to be thinking that particular thought. And it did not matter. That was then. This was now.

  “So has mine,” she told him. Oh, she had not realized how very empty it had been.

  He opened his eyes again. “Do you like waking up to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “This conversation grows more profound by the moment,” he said, and they smiled at each other and then laughed. It felt very good to laugh with him. She very much hoped there would be light and laughter in their marriage as well as the companionship and intimacy he had spoken of when he offered for her.

  She wondered if he would talk to her today about yesterday and what might have provoked that incident. She knew nothing about his first marriage, about his first wife, about his son. She knew nothing about his heart. She would be going to Penderris Hall with him soon, where he had lived for almost twenty years with them. She had not thought of it that way before. Would she sense their residual presence? Would she be able to be all in all to him? Would he be able to be all in all to her?

  Foolish, foolish questions. Their marriage would be what they made of it. They had agreed upon companionship, friendship, and intimacy, and those things had sounded very good indeed to her. They still did. She must not begin to yearn for all in all or happily-ever-after or those other romantic, fairy-tale things a girl might dream of.

  His hand was resting lightly upon her abdomen, over her nightgown.

  “You are undoubtedly sore,” he said. “I will restrain myself for a night or two while you heal, but I want you here in this bed with me, Dora, tonight and every night. I hope it is what you wish too?”

  “It is.” She turned her head and rested a cheek against his shoulder—oh, goodness, he smelled so masculine and so good. He nestled his head against the top of hers and Dora felt she could quite easily swoon with contentment.

  Yes, it was enough. This was enough, this quiet happiness with the man she had married yesterday and slept with last night.

  She nodded off to sleep again.

  10

  George escorted Dora across the square to her sister’s house the following morning. They took the shortcut through the little park at the center of the square, but it turned into more of a long-cut since she had to stop several times to look at the flowers and comment appreciatively upon how they were arranged in their beds. She took particular note of the bed of roses and leaned over one dark red bud to cup it gently between her hands. She breathed in the scent of it and turned her head to glance up at him.

  “Could anything in the whole universe be more beautiful or more perfect?” she asked him.

  Actually he could think of one thing, and he was looking right at it—and he was not looking at the rosebud nestled within her slim, sensitive musician’s fingers. She was wearing what he guessed was one of her new dresses, a somewhat smarter version of what she usually wore. The dusky pink color was a bit of a surprise, though. He suspected that Agnes or one of the other ladies had talked her into being a little more daring than usual. It shaved a few years off her age—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it lent some of the bloom of youth to her real age. She was clearly not trying to look like anyone she was not.

  “Yes,” he said. “Something could.”

  “Oh?” She straightened up and looked a bit indignant. “What?”

  “Well,” he said, “if I tell, then I will feel remarkably foolish, as though I had mistaken myself for a young sprig of a sighing lover with stars shining in his eyes.”

  He watched the indignation fade and give place to understanding. “Oh,” she said, “how very silly.”

  “You see?” He gestured with one hand. “I am considered silly even when I do not tell. So I will. That little straw bonnet you are wearing is every bit as lovely as the rose.”

  She gazed at him for a moment longer and then burst into delighted laughter—and there went a few more years from her age.

  “You, sir,” she said, “have no powers of discrimination.”

  He suspected that he was grinning—unusual for him. “I would have to disagree with you, ma’am,” he said, “most adamantly.”

  He offered his arm and they resumed their short walk to Arnott House. They did not speak again, but George felt warmed by the brief, foolish exchange. It was a huge relief to have got past that ghastly awkwardness of yesterday and to be relaxed and comfortable together today, as he had dreamed they would be from the start. This morning he wa
s filled with hope again for the future. And it was a lovely morning again. There was warmth in the air and the whole of summer to look forward to.

  He reveled in the thought that she was his wife, his lover as well as the woman to whom he was legally bound for the rest of their lives. The consummation had been sweet despite her awkwardness and the restraints he had imposed upon himself for her sake. It had been . . . perfection itself.

  They were going to Arnott House so that Dora could take her leave of her father and Lady Debbins as well as of her brother and his wife, who were all setting out on their separate ways home. One carriage already stood outside the doors and two footmen were loading a trunk and numerous other packages and hatboxes onto it. There was a bustle of activity inside the house too as both couples prepared to leave, but everyone turned as one when George and Dora entered the hall unannounced. The men proceeded to look speculatively at George while the ladies hugged Dora. There was a great deal of sound and laughter.

  “The drawing room is spilling over with l-ladies,” Flavian told George with a theatrical look as he ran the tip of one forefinger beneath the high points of his shirt collar. “The Survivors have gone to Hugo’s and are expecting me to bring you there if I can drag you away from your bride. We had better go. I have a strong suspicion that we will not be wanted here after the travelers have left. Mere men and all that.”

  George grinned at him.

  “It is more a case,” Agnes said, turning her attention away from her family for a moment, “of us not being wanted there, Flavian. Hugo assured Gwen, of course, that she absolutely must not feel that she was being driven from her own home, but then Vincent arrived and informed her that he had just delivered Sophia to our door. It is the wives of the Survivors, among others, who are in the drawing room, Dora. Significantly, the husband of the only female member is not here, but I daresay that is a good thing for poor Percy.”

  Sir Walter and his wife were leaving, and attention focused upon them again. George shook his father-in-law by the hand and kissed the cheek of Lady Debbins. He watched as Dora also shook her father’s hand until he covered hers with his free hand and said something to her that George could not hear. She set her hand on his shoulder then and kissed him on the cheek. It was not an effusive goodbye. Neither was it a cold one. She shook her stepmother’s hand, and they exchanged smiles.

  More than ten minutes passed before a second carriage bore the Reverend Oliver Debbins and his wife on the way back home to their children. Those goodbyes included prolonged hugs between brother and sister and sisters-in-law. Agnes too showed greater warmth toward them than she had toward her father and his wife.

  That broken marriage so many years ago had caused much lasting pain, George thought.

  “You will not mind if I go to Hugo’s for an hour or so?” he asked when the carriage had departed. He had taken Dora’s hand in his and was gazing into her eyes. There were tears there, though they had not spilled over onto her cheeks.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I would not subject you to a drawing room full of ladies, especially the morning after our wedding.” She blushed.

  “Quite so,” he said.

  Five minutes later Flavian’s curricle drew up outside the doors and they drove away. The members of the Survivors’ Club always spent time alone together whenever they could. They had done so almost daily during the three years when they were all living at Penderris Hall, and they had continued to do so most nights during their three-week annual reunions and whenever circumstances threw them together between times. They spoke openly and from the heart about the progress they had made, about their triumphs and setbacks, and about anything else that was of deep personal concern to one or other of them. They had become almost like seven segments of one soul while at Penderris, and they had remained closely bonded.

  Nevertheless, George had always felt a little different from the others. For one thing, Penderris was his home. For another, he had suffered no personal injury in the wars. He had never been to the Peninsula or to Belgium, where the Battle of Waterloo had finally put an end to Napoleon Bonaparte’s ambitions. He had shared less of himself than the others had. He had been better at listening. He had always seen it as his role to be the strong one, the comforter, the nurturer. He even thought he had been something of a father figure to Vincent and Ralph, who had been very young when they came to him.

  Now, this morning, he suspected as he sat silently beside Flavian, he would be the focus of attention. Yesterday must be accounted for. Sympathy, understanding, and aid would be his for the asking. He was feeling remarkably uncomfortable. For what he had never shared with these closest of friends could never be shared. There were . . . secrets that were not his to divulge.

  Hugo lived at some distance from Grosvenor Square in a house that had been his father’s. The late Mr. Emes had been a successful, prosperous businessman with no pretensions to gentility. Hugo had been awarded his title—Baron Trentham—after leading a particularly vicious but successful forlorn hope in the Peninsula. But then all forlorn hope attacks were vicious by their very nature. They were always made up of volunteers who knew that in all probability they would die.

  George and Flavian were the last to arrive. The others were gathered in the sitting room, variously drinking coffee and liquor. The only nonmember of the club was Percy, Earl of Hardford, Imogen’s husband, though he got to his feet when George was ushered into the room.

  “I do not belong here,” he said. “I have no intention of staying.”

  “You might as well sit while you are here,” Hugo said. “You are perfectly welcome to stay if you wish, Percy, but you certainly need to be here for a while.”

  Percy sat again, and attention turned to George.

  “We expected you a little earlier,” Ben informed him as George poured himself a cup of coffee and then took a seat. “Up late this morning, were you, George? After a late night, perhaps? And not too much sleep?”

  “The duchess was looking remarkably r-rosy when George brought her across to Arnott House, I could not help but notice,” Flavian added. “Of course, the sun was shining, and some might say the walk across the square is a l-lengthy and somewhat strenuous one, but even so . . .”

  George sipped his coffee with a steady hand. “Off limits, you two,” he said. “Cut line.”

  “I think, Flave,” Ben said, “it was almost definitely a late night and not too much sleep.”

  “One can but hope, Ben,” Flavian said with a sigh as he sat down with a glass of something in his hand.

  “About yesterday, George,” Ralph said.

  It was evident that he was referring not to the day in general, but to one specific segment of it.

  George sighed and set his cup down. “I must thank you and Hugo,” he said, “for removing Eastham with the minimum of fuss, Ralph. And you for keeping him removed, Percy. How did you do it?”

  “I can be quite persuasive when I want to be,” Percy said with a grin, “and very discreet too. There was no riot in Hanover Square when you emerged from the church, you may have noticed. No rotten tomatoes or eggs flying about your head or anyone else’s. The man wanted to talk when I expressed some sympathy for his cause. I invited him to a tavern with whose reputation I am familiar. He did not have a chance to do much talking, however. It was most unfortunate, but we were caught up in a brawl no more than a couple of minutes after we arrived. It was quite unclear who started it. I escaped with my face and my wedding finery intact and hoofed it back to Hanover Square in time to accompany Imogen to the wedding breakfast. Eastham, I understand, was not so fortunate. I believe his face and person suffered some slight damage.”

  “How did you know,” George asked rather stiffly, “that his story would not have been worth listening to?”

  “I do not doubt,” Percy said, still grinning, “that it would have been interesting to listen to, George. But worthwhile? Har
dly. Imogen would have me believe that you are on the side of the angels in all things and are perhaps even one of their number in human disguise. Murder does not seem quite in your style. However it is, I am done here. Alas, I promised the dog who adopted me the day I met Imogen and has been unwilling to unadopt me ever since a walk in Hyde Park, and if I fail to show up he will gaze reproachfully at me when I do with his bulging eyes and make me feel like the lowest, most heartless of mortals.”

  “Oh, Percy,” Imogen said, “you know very well that you dote upon Hector.”

  “I think, Imogen,” Vincent said, “Percy is trying to withdraw tactfully to leave us to ourselves.”

  “Oh, I understand that,” she said, laughing.

  “I am off, then,” Percy said. “Thank you for the drink, Hugo.”

  And he sauntered from the room and closed the door behind him.

  George cleared his throat.

  “I assured my wife last night,” he said, “that there was absolutely no truth in Eastham’s accusation. I give you all that same assurance now.”

  “Well, that is a great relief, I must say, George,” Ralph said. “We have known you for not quite a decade, so naturally when a stranger turned up in St. George’s yesterday to accuse you of murder without a shred of evidence, we believed him without question and lost all faith in you.”

  “You did not really expect us to have any doubts, did you, George?” Imogen asked.

  Vincent had leaned forward in his chair and was looking right at George in that uncanny way he had. “I believe you may have saved my life all those years ago at Penderris, George,” he said. “I know you saved my sanity when I was still deaf as well as blind. I would not believe you guilty of murder or any violence against another person even if you were to stand up now and tell us you were. Not that you would. You are not a liar any more than you are a murderer. I would not believe anything ill of you. I would die for you if such a melodramatic thing were ever called for.”