Only Beloved

by Mary Balogh

  Her eyes remained on his as he gazed steadily back at her and knew with some amazement that she spoke the truth. But why amazement? He had married her so that he would have a lifelong companion, someone of his very own who would stay. But . . . she had said “because I could never wish to leave you.” He had never been offered such a priceless gift. How could he dare accept it without clinging desperately to it?

  “I hope,” he said, “I never give you cause to regret that promise.”

  “The Earl of Eastham must have loved your wife very dearly,” she said.

  His fingers curled into his palms again. He felt a twinge of pain as one of his fingernails penetrated the skin. What—?

  “His sister must have been very dear to him,” she said. “Only that would explain his going to London and interrupting our wedding as he did. He must have been very upset to learn that you were about to remarry. It was not at all well done of him to react as he did. Indeed, it was shockingly bad of him. But when emotion gets the best of us, we can all behave badly. Perhaps it would be best to give him the benefit of the doubt and forgive him. I daresay he deeply regrets what he did so impulsively. May I write to him? Or would that merely cause him more pain?”

  He inhaled sharply and let the breath out more slowly. “I would very much prefer you did not, Dora,” he said. “You may very well be right. He was fond of Miriam and she of him. He had a hard time believing she could have killed herself. It was easier, I suppose, to believe that I had pushed her, especially as he and I had never particularly liked each other.”

  “Did you forbid him to visit your wife here?” she asked, her frown returning, her voice troubled. “And did you refuse to allow your son to visit his grandfather and uncle at their home?”

  Oh, Lord!

  “Never the latter,” he said, “and not always the former. When I did, there were reasons. We did not have a happy marriage, Dora, Miriam and I. We were forced into marrying when I was seventeen and she was twenty. My father was dying and for some insane reason wanted to see me married before he went, and her father thought it was high time she took a husband. I met her for the first time when I proposed marriage to her—in the presence of her father and mine. I met her for the second time at our wedding the following day—the marriage license had already been procured.”

  “She was beautiful,” Dora said.

  Ah, Mrs. Parkinson really had filled her ears. He wondered what the other ladies had been doing while the woman had been tête-à-tête with Dora. Surely Mrs. Yarby would not have allowed such talk to go on unchecked in her drawing room if she had heard it.

  “Incredibly so,” he said. “She was one of the most perfectly beautiful women I have ever set eyes upon.” But not one-tenth as beautiful to him as his second wife. The words would have sounded forced and false if he had spoken them aloud, though.

  “Did you purchase your son’s commission and have him sent to the Peninsula against her wishes?” she asked.

  He felt a sudden wish to have Mrs. Parkinson’s neck between his two hands.

  “Against hers, yes,” he told her. “But not against his.”

  “I am so sorry,” she said. “That he died, I mean.”

  He drew a deep breath and held it for a while before letting it go. “I sometimes think,” he said, “that Brendan had neither the wish nor the intention of returning alive from the Peninsula. And that is the burden I must bear upon my soul for as long as I have breath in my body, Dora. Perhaps now your questions are at an end.”

  He got to his feet and left the room without looking back.

  It was many hours later before he went to bed. Indeed, he had half expected dawn to be showing on the eastern horizon when he made his way back along the headland. But it was still dark after he had thrown off his clothes and made his way into his bedchamber. He expected to find the bed empty. But she was curled up in the center of it, fast asleep, one arm flung across his half.

  He stood in the darkness, gazing at her for many moments before moving her arm carefully aside and lying down beside her. He gathered her into his arms and pulled the covers over them both as she snuggled up to him, grumbling incoherently in her sleep. He nestled his cheek against the top of her head, closed his eyes, breathed in the warm, comforting scent of her, and slept.

  * * *

  Dora had fallen asleep fearing that she had ruined her marriage with her inquisitiveness. George had made it very clear on several occasions that he would allow no intrusion into his memories of his first marriage, but she had pried anyway. And it was no consolation that she had done so not just out of curiosity but out of a conviction that he needed to talk about the past, to exorcise some of the demons she was sure lurked there. And oh, there had been evidence that she was right.

  I sometimes think that Brendan had neither the wish nor the intention of returning alive from the Peninsula. And that is the burden I must bear upon my soul for as long as I have breath in my body.

  Whatever had he meant?

  But she would never know. He would never volunteer the information, and she would never ask again.

  She fell asleep fearing for her marriage but woke up some time after dawn to find herself snuggled, as usual, in his arms. When had he come in? She knew he had gone outside, but she had made no move to follow him. She had not heard him return, but she was so glad—so glad—he had come home.

  “If it was not quite barbaric,” he said softly against the top of her head, “I would be quite happy to boil Mrs. Parkinson in oil.”

  It was so unexpected that she exploded into laughter against his naked chest and raised her face to his.

  “It is barbaric,” she agreed. “Did you know, though, that I just adore barbarians?”

  His eyes smiled into hers. His hair was disheveled, the silver all mingled with the dark. He needed a shave. He looked gorgeous.

  “I am deeply sorry about last night,” he said. “But never let that woman sow doubts in your mind, Dora. I chose you consciously, and I chose even more wisely than I knew at the time. You are beautiful to me, and you are attractive, and both qualities encompass your appearance and your character and mind, and your very soul. Not for one single moment have I regretted going into Gloucestershire to find you again and claim you for my own.”

  She smiled at him and bit her lip at the same time. His words made her want to cry. But he looked troubled despite his words, and she could see he had not finished.

  “My first marriage was difficult and unhappy,” he said. “I had my friends and Miriam had hers. Mrs. Parkinson was one of them, though she was a very young lady in those days. I purchased Brendan’s commission not just because he begged it of me and certainly not because his mother was adamantly opposed, but because I thought it was right for him—the only right thing. His death will weigh heavily upon me for the rest of my life, as will his unhappiness before he died, but I am not weighed down by guilt.”

  She gazed into his face as he spoke. He was giving her facts, she thought, facts that throbbed with emotion, but he had a tight leash upon that. Ah, George. There was so much more he was not saying.

  “And that something else you have wondered about,” he continued. “That absence in the gallery of a painting of my own family. My life was unhappy for many years, Dora, miserably, irrevocably unhappy. I had no wish to have it immortalized in paint for future generations to gaze upon. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps all those other portraits hide secrets that only those pictured there knew of. Perhaps it was not my call to deprive future generations of thirty years of family history.”

  He closed his eyes, and she heard him swallow. She spread a hand over his chest, but what could she say? Bland words of comfort or reassurance would be worthless. All she could do was be here with him. He opened his eyes again and smiled at her.

  “My life is happy now,” he said, and she bit her lip again to hold back the tears, “and I am co
ntent that all the world see it, both now and in the future. There will be a portrait after all of my family. You are my family, Dora.”

  She rested her forehead against his chest.

  “Have I answered your questions?” he asked. “Are you content?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Oh, there were a thousand more questions she could ask, for what he had told her was really like the tip of an iceberg, she suspected. Why had his marriage been such an unhappy one? Irrevocably unhappy, he had called it. But he was such a kind, accommodating man. She would ask no more, however. If he wanted her to know more, then he would tell her. In the meanwhile all she could do was try to make him less unhappy with his second marriage. And that would not be difficult. My life is happy now, he had said. She must trust that he meant it, that he felt it, that he would always feel it.

  “I mentioned appearance, mind, character, and soul,” he said. “Did I also mention that I find you sexually attractive?”

  She tipped back her head, pursed her lips, and frowned in thought before shaking her head. “No, you did not.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but I do. I find you sexually attractive, Dora.”

  “Do you?”

  “You do not believe me?”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “you had better show me what you mean.”

  And they smiled slowly at each other and oh, she loved him, loved him, loved him.

  He showed her, taking all of fifteen minutes to do it. She lay in his arms again afterward, warm, a bit sweaty, a little bit breathless, and tried to remember her impression of him last year, when they had met at Middlebury Park. He had been handsome certainly, though a bit austere, kindly and charming too, confident and self-assured, the consummate gentleman and aristocrat, a man without troubles or needs, a man upon whom the sun must always have shone. In her dreams she had made a sort of fairy-tale prince out of him.

  The real man was very different, far more vulnerable.

  Far more lovable.

  He was sleeping again, she could tell from his breathing. Soon enough so was she.

  * * *

  “Ah,” George said while they were looking through their letters at the breakfast table the following morning, “Imogen and Percy are back in Cornwall. It seems they hosted a grand ball themselves and invited every member of his family to the third and fourth generation—Percy’s words—with the warning that it was their farewell to London until at least next spring and there would be no point in anyone’s organizing any further parties in their post-honeymoon honor. One has to be firm with one’s doting relatives, he declares.”

  “I do like Percy,” Dora said.

  “I was appalled when I first met him,” George told her. “He seemed rude and blustering and bad-tempered and about as unsuited to Imogen as it was possible to be. It did not take me long to realize that in fact they are perfect for each other. Ah, I must read you this.”

  And he read a paragraph full of complaint over the fact that Lady Lavinia Hayes’s menagerie of canine and feline scruffs had noticeably increased in size since he was last at Hardford even if she did try to keep them hidden in the second housekeeper’s room—and still no one had been able to explain to Percy why that particular room was so named.

  “Lady Lavinia,” George explained, “is the elderly sister of the last earl and has lived at Hardford all her life. She takes in strays of both the animal and human variety. You have not seen Percy’s dog, have you? Have I described it to you before? According to Percy, it was the ugliest and scrawniest of the lot when he first went to Hardford, and it attached itself to him like glue despite his horrified and vigorous discouragement. He professes still to be exasperated that it follows him everywhere, but it is perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain that he adores it.”

  Dora laughed.

  “You have another letter from Mrs. Henry?” he asked.

  “She is back living in the cottage at Inglebrook,” she told him. “She is working for Mr. and Mrs. Madison, the new music teacher and his wife, and is enjoying their children, though she misses me. She could hardly say otherwise, though, could she, when she is writing to me.”

  “But she would not write at all if she were not missing you,” he said

  “Oh, dear, listen to this, George,” she said. “The Corleys are complaining about him to anyone who will listen. Mr. Madison has informed them that they are wasting their money and their daughter’s time and trying his patience to the limit by insisting that she continue her lessons. Apparently I was far more appreciative of Miranda’s superior talents, but—oh, goodness!—that was because I had a musical ear while ‘some people’ do not.” She put the letter down with a shake of her head. “Oh, the brave, foolish man. I simply must hear Sophia’s version of this. She will surely write to tell me.”

  She looked up and joined in George’s laughter. He reached out and covered one of her hands with his own.

  “Your other letter is from your mother?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She had been saving it for last. She always felt a turmoil of unexamined emotions when she saw the familiar handwriting on the outside of a letter and thought of her mother and remembered that visit in London. Dora broke the seal and read what was written in the careful hand within. “There is nothing very startling. They have been to a card party with a few friends. They went for a long walk in Richmond Park one afternoon and had a picnic there on the grass. They have been working in their garden, both of them. They have not been able to keep the wilderness at bay with only one gardener employed there, but that very fact makes their flower garden more precious to them. There are flowers to nurture and weeds to banish.”

  She stopped there and bit her upper lip hard. She bent her head forward over the letter.

  “Dora?” George’s hand was upon hers again. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she assured him, swiping at her tears and fumbling with the handkerchief he pressed into her hand. “How foolish of me! It is just that she says the weeds may bloom in the wilderness with her blessing, but not in her flower beds. It is just exactly what I always said of my garden at Inglebrook. I— Oh, forgive me. How silly.” She dropped the letter to her plate and spread his handkerchief over her eyes.

  He waited while she dried her eyes and blew her nose and lifted her head to give him a rather watery, red-eyed smile. Then her gaze turned to the windows.

  “It looks as if today will be as lovely as yesterday,” she said. “Today I am not going visiting. Perhaps we can go down onto the beach later. I have a yearning to take off my shoes and stockings and paddle in the water. Is it childish?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But children are wise, spontaneous creatures and we would do well to imitate them more often than we do.” He was silent for a moment, gazing at her. “Dora, let us invite your mother and her husband here.”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “To stay?”

  “Well, it would hardly be practical,” he said, “to invite them for tea one afternoon, would it?”

  She gazed mutely at him.

  “Let us invite them for a couple of weeks,” he said, “or a month. Or longer if you wish. I believe you long to know your mother again, and perhaps Sir Everard Havell is not quite the villain you have always supposed him to be. Let them come. Get to know them.”

  “You would not mind?” she asked him. “Perhaps they would not be well received here.”

  “Of course they would,” he said. “They are the mother and stepfather of the Duchess of Stanbrook, are they not? The in-laws of the duke? I am sure you know by now that we can count on our neighbors to receive them accordingly. Write to your mother after breakfast, while I write to Imogen and Percy. Tell her I will send the carriage for them. We can do some entertaining while they are here. You would enjoy that, would you not, now that you have met most of our neighbors and exchanged courtesy calls with them?”

/>   “You have never done much entertaining here?” she asked him.

  “Not on any grand scale,” he said, “and not much on a small scale either. But . . . times have changed and I am happy to change with them. Would you enjoy hosting dinners, perhaps a few parties?”

  “A ball?” she said.

  He looked surprised for a moment and then smiled at her. “Why not?” he said. “Poor Briggs will have an apoplexy. Or perhaps not. He is fond of complaining that he is underworked.”

  “Oh, but I will help him,” she said, her hands clasped to her bosom.

  “You have a world of experience at organizing grand balls, I suppose?” he said.

  “How difficult can it be?” she asked him.

  His grin persisted. “Perhaps I will be kind enough,” he said, “not to remind you of that question at a later date.”

  She gazed earnestly at him then, remembering suddenly what had started all this.

  “George,” she said, “are you sure about inviting Mama and Sir Everard?”

  “I am perfectly sure,” he said, serious again. “But what about you, Dora? It must be as you wish.”

  “I am so afraid,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Since I called on her,” she explained, “I have dreamed that something I thought irrevocably broken could perhaps be mended again—slowly and cautiously. At a distance. What if she comes here and I discover that it is impossible? It will be like losing her all over again.”

  He got to his feet, reached out a hand for hers, and drew her up into his arms.

  “I truly do not believe that will happen,” he said. “But if you wish to let matters remain as they are, then that is how they will be. Do you want to think about it for a day or two?”