Only Beloved

by Mary Balogh

  “She is with child?” Dora sat up abruptly and threw back the bedcovers. “I thought she was barren.”

  “So did she,” he said. “Apparently you were both wrong.”

  “Oh, goodness.” She began counting on her fingers. “Agnes, Imogen, Chloe, Sophia, Samantha. Me.”

  “One wonders, does one not,” he said, “what is wrong with Hugo? I shall have to write and ask him. Though they do have young Melody.”

  “Imogen and Percy must be ecstatic. Oh, I must write. It is to them you are writing?” Dora crossed the room barefoot to look briefly over his shoulder—he was writing to them—and to pick up Agnes’s letter. It felt fatter than usual. But that, she soon discovered, was because there was another letter folded within it addressed to their mother. It was the first of its kind, Dora was almost sure, though she remembered Agnes’s saying she would inform her mother when the baby was born. She looked quickly at her own letter. But Agnes had not delivered early. She was still feeling large and ungainly and breathless and generally cross whenever Flavian patted her largeness and looked pleased with himself. She was also feeling excited and a bit apprehensive, and since she could not steal Dora herself, then she was going to try to steal their mother away from Penderris instead. She hoped Dora would not mind too terribly much, and she hoped her mother would be willing to come.

  “I must have buried memories from early childhood,” she had written. “Although I cannot bring any specific details to mind, I have a general feeling of safety and calm and comfort whenever I think of our mother. Was she like that, Dora? Or is it just you I am remembering?”

  “Agnes has written to Mother,” Dora said, holding up the folded letter. “She wants her to go to Candlebury Abbey for her confinement.”

  “Oh, she will go,” George said. “But you will miss her.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But they intended returning home within the next week anyway. They have been happy here, I believe, but they have their own lives, as we all do.”

  “There will be no walk today,” he said, nodding toward the window. “It is a good thing Philippa and Julian are to stay longer. The roads will be muddy. It is to be hoped our other guests will be able to get safely home.”

  It was still raining heavily, and blowing too, judging by the rattle of the window. It was a reminder that autumn was upon them and that winter was not far off.

  “Perhaps it will ease up later,” she said. She still desperately wanted to take that walk she has spoken of last night, and the sooner the better, before she lost her nerve. For the very thought of it made her knees turn weak and her heart start thumping. Then she caught sight of the clock on the mantelpiece. She had forgotten about those overnight guests. “I must get dressed and go downstairs. Whatever will everyone think of me?”

  “What your husband thinks,” he said, “is that you look rather delicious.”

  She shook her head at him and clucked her tongue as she made her way to her dressing room.

  * * *

  The rain eased after luncheon and then stopped. But only just. Dark clouds hung low and the wind still blew in gusts. It was, in fact, a thoroughly unpleasant afternoon, cold and damp and cheerless and best spent indoors. Nevertheless, a group of people left the warmth and shelter of Penderris Hall for the outdoors early in the afternoon, all of them bundled up against the chill as though it were January already. George and Dora led the way, and then came Sir Everard and Lady Havell, Philippa and Julian, and Ann and James Cox-Hampton. All of them had been assured that they must not feel obliged to come, especially the Cox-Hamptons, who had merely called to inquire into Dora’s health. All had come anyway, as grim and purposeful as the weather itself.

  They might, George thought, have waited for a more auspicious day on which to expose themselves to the cliffs and the beach, but then this outing was not about pleasure. Quite the contrary. Dora had hovered close to the south-facing windows all morning when she was not seeing overnight guests on their way, fretting over the rain, imagining it had stopped long before it actually did, and considering going out even if it did not stop.

  “What are boots and rain capes for, after all,” she had asked at one point of no one in particular, “if one never goes outside in the rain?”

  No one had been able to think of a decent answer. Or, if anyone had, no one had said what it was.

  Dora had wanted to come out—or needed to, rather—and so all of them had come. She was, George thought, that precious to everyone. She had almost been murdered yesterday, and no one was willing to leave her far out of their sight today. Everyone was ready to pamper her every wish.

  They strode first along the driveway Ann and James had driven over half an hour or so ago, their feet crunching on wet gravel. It seemed safe enough, as though they were all on a stroll to the village. The wind buffeted them from behind, though it would cut into them as though to rob them of breath as soon as they turned in the opposite direction. And turn they would, for they were not going to the village, of course. Dora was retracing the route she had taken yesterday. Before they reached the park gates they veered off to their right, toward the cliffs, and then turned right again to walk along the path that ran roughly parallel to the edge for a few miles until it descended a gentle slope to provide an easy access to the beach a couple of miles or so west of the house.

  They would not walk that far, though.

  George drew Dora’s arm firmly through his own and clamped it to his side. He held her hand with his free one. Julian moved up on her other side while Sir Everard offered his free arm to Philippa. Julian would have taken Dora’s other arm, but she would have none of it.

  “Philippa needs your arm,” she told him, “and Sir Everard does not need two strings to his bow. It might make him conceited.”

  Even now she could make a joke that set them all to laughing, though none of them, George guessed, were feeling very amused. Yesterday’s events were still much too raw in all their minds. Julian and Havell had been out here with him yesterday afternoon, and their wives had doubtless heard all the details. Dora had told Ann, he believed. He had told James. This was madness.

  But it was a necessary madness, it seemed. Necessary to his wife. Dora would not even allow him to take the outside of the path, which would have been the gentlemanly thing to do even under ordinary circumstances. She insisted on taking it herself. He was feeling a terror to rival yesterday’s even before they reached the part of the path that skirted the fall and the slight promontory beyond it. She stopped when they reached that and drew her arm free of his. She stepped off the path and onto the grass, which must be slippery from all the rain. George clasped his hands behind his back and fought the almost overwhelming urge to grab her and haul her back to safety. Though she was not unsafe. She was nine or ten feet from the edge.

  Everyone else had come to a stop on the path and stood in an unnatural silence. George wondered if they were all holding their breath, as he was doing.

  “It is beautiful,” Dora said. The wind blew her words back to them. “Nature can seem very malevolent at times, even cruel, but really it is devoid of feeling or intent. It just is. And it is always beautiful.”

  After which strange little speech she turned and stepped back onto the path and took George’s arm again. She smiled with what looked like genuine amusement.

  “Everyone is so very silent,” she said.

  “If the wind were not so noisy, Dora,” James told her, “you would hear all our knees knocking.”

  “And our teeth chattering,” Julian added.

  “Poor Everard is afraid of heights,” Dora’s mother said.

  “I do not suppose,” Philippa said, “any one of us is actually in love with heights. It would be foolhardy. But you are quite right, Aunt Dora. This is beautiful—the scenery and the weather. Wild but beautiful.”

  “And safe,” Havell said. “It really is safe. The path
is not really muddy, is it? I thought it might be slippery, but there are too many small stones. And it is not as close to the edge as I remembered.”

  “If you all keep on talking now that you have finally started,” Dora said, “you may even convince yourselves that you would rather be out here enjoying the walk than drinking tea by a cozy fire in the house.”

  “Tea?” James said. “Not brandy?”

  “I am going down onto the beach,” Dora told them. “But no one must feel obliged to come with me.”

  Everyone did, of course.

  George had used this particular descent all his life. So had everyone else at the house. Why go two miles to the easy access when this was so much closer to the house? All his fellow Survivors with the exception of Ben with his crushed legs had used it regularly. It was steep and needed to be treated with respect, but it had never been considered dangerous. However, Dora had almost died here yesterday, and Eastham actually had. Today they all picked their way down with more than usual caution until they were standing safely on the beach.

  It was not difficult to choose a direction, since to their left stones and rocks and pebbles jutted out into the water and offered a rough passage around a bend to the harbor below the village, invisible from where they stood. That was the route by which the body had been taken yesterday. To their right was a beach of golden sand, bordered on one side by tall cliffs and on the other by the sea stretching apparently to infinity. The tide was on the rise, though it was still some distance away. It was rough today. Waves were breaking into foam well before they encountered the beach, and were tumbling in, one after the other, each one climbing a little higher up the sand before subsiding beneath the next. Farther out, the water was slate gray and foam flecked.

  They walked along the beach a short way, all of them silent again, but Dora did not stop below the small promontory upon which she had stood yesterday, nor did she look up. None of them did. Some distance away from it she stopped and turned toward the sea, drawing her arm from his as she did so and lifting her face to the wind.

  It was a signal for them all to relax.

  “I will bet, Julian,” Philippa cried suddenly, grabbing up her skirts and breaking into a run, “that I can race you to the water’s edge.”

  Julian looked at the rest of them as she streaked away. “I have to go in pursuit,” he said. “She did not say what she was betting.”

  And he was off after her at an easy lope. She looked back to see if he was following, shrieked when she saw that he was, and flew onward.

  “Children, children,” James said, laughing and shaking his head.

  “I wish, Dora,” Ann said, “that I had my sketchbook with me, though it would probably blow away in the wind, would it not? I would love to capture you as you are right at this moment. ‘Woman Triumphant,’ or something like that but not so pretentious.”

  “I will not suggest that you try to race me, my love,” Havell was saying to his wife. “But shall we?”

  They began a sedate stroll toward the incoming sea.

  Dora smiled at Ann. “With red, shining nose and windblown hair beneath windblown bonnet?” she said. “‘Woman Cold and Windblown’?”

  Ann laughed. “I shall sketch you from memory and show you when I see you next,” she said. “Or I shall hide it from you and swear I never did it. Some of my efforts are not for sharing.”

  “But very few,” James said loyally.

  Dora took George’s arm again. “Let’s go closer,” she said.

  “Have some ghosts been blown away?” he asked her when they were out of earshot of anyone else.

  She nodded. “Events come and go,” she said, “but this remains.” She indicated the landscape about them with a sweep of her free arm. “And it is beautiful, George. After my cozy little cottage in its picturesque village, I wondered if I would regret having to live in starker surroundings close to the sea. And when I first came to Penderris, I wondered even more. Everything—the house, the park, this—was on such a vast scale. But I have grown to love it, and I will not allow an . . . event to spoil it all for me. It is an event that is in the past. Though not quite, is it? There will be an inquest?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “In the village. You will not be expected to testify, Dora. Neither will I, I suppose, but I will.”

  “Sir Everard and Julian will?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “And your mother wishes to testify.”

  “Ought I?” she asked.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “Will Sir Everard admit to having tripped the earl?” she asked.

  “I did suggest that he need not do so,” he said. “It would be quite credible that the man lost his footing and fell unassisted. But Havell insisted upon telling the truth last night and he will repeat it tomorrow.”

  “George,” she said, “he is a good man.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I do not want to be talking about this,” she said.

  Julian and Philippa were dashing along close to the edge of the water, shrieking and laughing like a couple of children. Julian had just stooped down and scooped up a handful of water and flung it in her direction. Lady Havell was selecting some seashells and brushing the sand off with her glove before placing them gently in one of Havell’s capacious pockets. He was grinning at her. Ann was standing with her back to the water, looking back at the cliffs. She was pointing out something to James, using both her arms in great sweeping gestures.

  “Like a party of staid elders, standing here while the children frolic,” Dora murmured. And then a little louder, “I am not ready to be a staid elder yet.”

  She kicked off one of her shoes, used his shoulder for balance while she pulled off her silk stocking, and then moved to the other foot.

  “What exactly do you have planned?” he asked her, though actually it was rather obvious.

  But she only laughed, gathered up her skirts with both hands, and dashed the few remaining feet to the water. George, torn between amusement and dismay—but he was not a staid elder either, was he?—went after her.

  She splashed into the water until it was above her ankles. That was all well and good since she was holding her skirts up closer to her knees, but did she not know anything about the nature of waves, especially when the tide was incoming and especially on a rough day? Apparently not. A wave broke over her knees and splashed her to the chin. She gasped and laughed with what sounded like sheer delight.

  “Oh, goodness,” she said, sounding again for a moment like the spinster music teacher she had been, “it is cold.”

  “I am not sure you are telling me anything I had not already guessed,” he said, glancing down ruefully at his boots and then wading in after her—only ankle deep, it was true, but there were other waves heading relentlessly their way. “You are going to lose your footing if you are not very careful. You are mad.”

  He looked at her and laughed just as foam and water broke over her upheld hems again and over the tops of his boots.

  “I am not,” she protested. “I am alive. You are alive.”

  She looked at him with eager, sparkling eyes. Her cheeks were shining red. So was her nose. The brim of her bonnet was flapping out of shape in the wind. Tangled tendrils of dark hair were blowing about her face and down her neck. The hems of her dress and cloak were dark with wetness and the rest of her had not fared much better. He had never seen her more vibrant or beautiful, George thought as he noticed a particularly strong wave rise beyond her. He snatched her up into his arms, but the wave broke over them both, soaking them from the waist down and splashing their faces and making them both gasp with the chill of it. For a moment he staggered, but he managed to regain his footing.

  “Alive, yes, and mad too,” he said, laughing and tempting fate by twirling about with her while she clung to his neck and—giggled.

  “O
h.” She shrieked as another wave attacked them and he beat a hasty retreat to the shore.

  But he did not immediately set her down on her feet. He gazed into her face, and she gazed back.

  “It is good to feel youthful again,” he said, “and alive.”

  “And cold and wet and lacking all dignity,” she said, smiling fondly at him.

  He could almost see his reflection in the tip of her nose.

  He set her down on her feet and noticed that Ann and James were no longer gazing back at the cliffs and the Havells were no longer picking shells. Julian and Philippa were standing a short distance away, hand in hand. All of them were staring at him and Dora.

  “Yes, we are mad,” George said in his best ducal tone, “and wet.”

  “And alive,” Dora said, bending to pick up her shoes and stockings. “Most of all, we are alive. And cold. Whose foolish suggestion was it that we come outside this afternoon?”

  “When we could be drinking . . . tea in the drawing room,” James said mournfully.

  Dora smiled dazzlingly at him.

  * * *

  Dora did not attend the inquest at the village inn the following morning. However, she had sat down the evening before and written a brief statement of what had happened, both at Penderris and at her wedding. She had omitted some details of what the Earl of Eastham had said to her, of course, but she had included enough to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that he had intended to kill her and her unborn child in revenge for what he imagined had happened to his sister, the first Duchess of Stanbrook, when she had thrown herself over the cliff.

  Philippa did not go either since she had nothing to add to what Dora’s mother would say regarding their meeting with the earl in the village and really did not want to go. She remained at Penderris with Dora and Belinda. Dora’s mother did not want to go either, of course, but she was determined to make it clear to all that her daughter’s meeting with the earl had been entirely at his suggestion.

  It was an event, Dora told herself, just as the scene out on the cliffs had been. It was an event that would soon be in the past, never to be forgotten but to be put firmly aside. She would not allow the Earl of Eastham to exert any power over her, even from the grave. Perhaps in time she would even be able to find it within herself to pity him.