by Mary Balogh
“It’s home,” he said, tightening his clasp on her waist as if he half expected her to take a step forward and disappear forever from his grasp.
“Perhaps that is the very reason why I cannot remember it,” she said. “It is too close to me, too personal. Unlike London and the wars. I know of those but I cannot place myself in relation to either. Almost as if I were a disembodied spirit.” She looked down at her feet. “I really do have substance, don’t I?” She laughed.
“I would have to say a definite yes to that,” he said, “if I think back to last night. There was nothing disembodied about you then.”
“It was wonderful, wasn’t it?” she said. “My only memory of our making love. As if it were the first and only time.”
“We will have to pile up more such memories for you in the nights to come,” he said.
“Mm. Yes, please,” she said, laying her cheek against his shoulder and laughing softly. “I think there are some advantages to a memory loss, Christopher. Not many, it is true. But it is as well to be able to look on the bright side, I suppose. To me our marriage is an idyll. A honeymoon. You can remember all the troubles and you know that even now everything is not perfect between us but that there is something to be worked out when I remember. But for me there is only perfection—your gentleness and patience with me since I woke up with a headache like an erupting volcano. And last night. And now this afternoon. I am having the honeymoon that we seem not to have had when we were first married.”
He turned his head and found her lips with his again. “Do you want to go down to the beach?”
“Is it possible?” she asked. “Do we hold our noses and jump?”
“There is a path,” he said, laughing. She was totally distracted for a moment by the sight of his face lit up with amusement, of the laugh lines at the outer corners of his eyes, of his white and even teeth. It was only then that she realized he rarely smiled. “If you are good, I shall lead you down it.”
“How good do you want me to be?” she asked.
But he merely smiled at her again, took her hand, and led her off to their right.
She felt frightened again suddenly—a feeling that she could not escape entirely, it seemed, a feeling that leapt at her every few hours whether she tried to keep it at bay or not. There was something between them. All was not as wonderful as it seemed. But she was not going to give in to fear or gloom. They would solve whatever the problem was. They had done it at the start of their marriage and they must have done it since. They would do it again. After all, was not that what life and relationships were all about?
In the meanwhile, since she had no choice in the matter anyway, she would accept her loss of memory and enjoy the unexpected honeymoon it had brought to their marriage. She did not know much about herself, but she knew enough to understand that life did not have unlimited happiness to offer even to the most fortunate of people. Happiness had to be seized when it was available and enjoyed to the full. Only so could one endure the miseries and hardships that were also one’s lot in life.
She grasped his hand a little more tightly.
Christopher knew that he had complicated his life quite hopelessly.
Whether she regained her memory or not, he had got himself into a mess. He could not keep her ignorant forever. Sooner or later he was going to have to tell her the whole truth. And at any moment she might remember it all for herself.
His life had been complicated in another way too. He had never intended to become involved with Elizabeth again. Oh, he had wanted to prove his innocence to her, yes, partly for pride’s sake and partly to punish her, to show her what she had lost through her lack of trust. But he had been convinced that he hated her, that he wanted nothing more to do with her.
And yet now he was very involved with her again and not at all sure whether to try to extricate himself if it were possible to do so or to grasp the moment and enjoy what chance had offered him.
It seemed that he was doing the latter without ever having made a firm decision to do so. The temptation was too great—the temptation to forget the past as she had been forced to do and seize the pleasure of the present. There was a great deal of pleasure to be derived from Elizabeth’s company, he was discovering.
For this afternoon at least he was going to live the fantasy—if he could. This evening he would decide how best to proceed.
“It is easy to stumble on these rocks,” he said, turning to her when they reached the bottom of the steep path from the cliff top to the beach. And he swung her up into his arms and carried her over the shifting stones and pebbles down onto the sand of the beach, where he set her on her feet again.
“Was that an excuse?” she asked, and her eyes laughed up into his.
“An excuse?”
“To hold me in your arms,” she said.
“I was merely being a gentleman,” he said, making her an elegant bow. He knew that she was drawing answering smiles from him. He ought not to smile, he knew.
She laughed again. It was almost a giggle and he was reminded of the eighteen-year-old Elizabeth he had known—very often laughing when she was not worrying over something.
“Do we now walk sedately along the beach?” she asked. “Is that what we usually do?” But her eyes were dancing with merriment, and she caught up her cloak and dress suddenly so that she would not trip over them and turned without warning to run away from him. “I’ll race you to the water’s edge,” she threw back over her shoulder.
The tide was out as far as it could go. Beyond the band of soft sand beneath the cliffs, the beach was flat and hard where the water covered it at full tide. He waited for her to reach the hard sand before taking off after her. And he watched her incredulously. This was Elizabeth as she had become? Carefree despite the great burden of her affliction? Had she gained so much strength of character over the years?
He let her stay ahead of him until they were close to the edge of the water and she was convinced she was going to win the race. She looked over her shoulder, her cheeks flushed from the wind and her exertions. She was laughing. And then with a few yards left to go, he scooped her up into his arms again and continued on until his boots bogged down in the spongy sand at the water’s edge.
“You are not going to throw me in, are you?” she asked, clinging to his neck, laughing.
“You would make a lovely splash,” he said. “And you did lose the race. I think I will.”
“But you won’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“For two reasons,” she said. “You would be splashed too and I would make too cold and soggy an armful afterward.”
“Maybe I would not want to get close enough to find out,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you would,” she said.
“Would I?”
“Yes.” Her eyes were on his lips, and then she nuzzled her face against his neck, kissed him below his ear, and nipped his earlobe with her teeth.
He took a few steps back onto firmer sand and set her down on her feet. “You have convinced me,” he said, kissing her firmly on the lips, darting his tongue into her mouth, and deciding regretfully that it was neither the time nor the place.
They each set an arm about the other’s waist, she laid her head against his shoulder, and they strolled along the beach, keeping close to the edge of the water, talking nonsense or, more often, keeping to a companionable silence.
Almost as if it were all real, he thought. Almost as if the past could be wiped out with a single knock on the head. Almost as if he could forget too.
“Christopher,” she asked finally, “why do we not have children?”
The slight breathlessness of her voice told him that the question had been in her mind for some time, that it was one that bothered her. He could think of no immediate answer to give. The question had taken him totally by surprise. Because I have been in Canada and America for seven years and you have been in England?
“Have there been any?” she asked. “Any stil
lbirths or miscarriages? Or deaths?”
“No,” he said. “None.”
“Ah,” she said quietly. “I have hit a raw nerve again, haven’t I? It is something that has saddened us? I have been unable to give you an heir or other children.”
He closed his eyes tightly. “It doesn’t matter, Elizabeth,” he said.
“I have you. You are all I need.”
“You must have said that many times over the years,” she said sadly. “And I must have been as hard to convince all those times as I am now. I cannot be all you need. And perhaps you cannot be all I need.”
They had stopped walking and he had turned her into his arms.
Their lighthearted mood had disappeared. “It is something we have never allowed to cloud our happiness,” he said. “And we must not allow it to now. Anyway, it could still happen. You are still young.”
He turned cold inside. It was something that had not even crossed his mind the night before. He had always felt it safe to assume that women knew how to take care of themselves and prevent conception.
But Elizabeth would not know. And three times the night before he had filled her with his seed. He wanted to ask her where she was in her monthly cycle, but it was not a question he could ask under the circumstances. Besides, she would not know.
“Oh, Christopher,” she said, gazing up into his eyes, “there is so much I do not know. There must be so many layers to our lives and to our relationship. So many complexities. And all I can see is the topmost layer—the icing but not the cake. But icing can taste too sweet and too sickly without the cake to go with it.”
“These days have been too sweet?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Have they? But then a honeymoon is meant to be sweet. Can we start again, Christopher, if my memory never comes back? Or will we always be haunted by a past I cannot remember?”
“Let’s take it one day at a time, shall we?” he suggested, tightening his arms about her. “One hour at a time? The past is gone whether it is remembered or not, Elizabeth, and the future is all ahead of us and may never come. But today is ours. And today we are together and love each other. Don’t we?”
God help him, he thought, he was not consciously lying.
“Yes.” She turned her head to set her cheek against his shoulder, and closed her eyes. “Yes, we do. I have spoiled the afternoon, haven’t I? We were so very carefree and foolish. Kiss me again.” She raised her face to him and smiled.
“So that all the world can line up on top of the cliffs and watch us?” he said. “Shame on you.”
She looked up to the cliff top and laughed. “The world must be busy doing other things,” she said. “You see? There is no one there. But as you wish—take me somewhere more private and kiss me.”
“There is a sizable cave beneath the cliffs,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “A smugglers’ cave?” she asked, and her eyes sparkled.
“With chests of forgotten treasure left behind?” he said. “Alas, no. Merely a lovers’ cave.”
“Ah,” she said. “This sounds good.”
He turned to walk her up the beach, rather more briskly than they had been strolling. He and Nancy had used the cave countless times as children for games of smugglers and pirates and sometimes house and school. They had always felt shut off from the world when inside it, though the mouth was wide and only a large boulder several feet in front of it prevented it from being quite open to the beach.
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, rounding the boulder and stopping at the entrance to the cave. “Yes, a lovers’ cave indeed. Do we come here often? Do we make love here?”
“Actually,” he said, “we never have. We have been too decorous, maybe, and too sensible. We will be horribly covered with sand if we make love here—and we have a perfectly serviceable bed only a mile away. Of course ...”
“Of course,” she said, smiling up at him and setting her hands on his shoulders, “there is plenty of water at Penhallow with which to wash the sand away.”
“You completed my thought for me,” he said, grinning at her and undoing the clasp of his cloak and spreading it on the soft dry sand of the cave floor.
This was Elizabeth, his mind told him, openly propositioning him, smiling at him enticingly, wanting him. Her eyes were growing dreamy with desire. She had changed so much, though whether the changes had come before or after the bump on the head he could not be sure.
He drew her into his arms, tossed her cloak aside, and laid her down on his, lifting her skirt to her waist as he did so. He knelt beside her and removed her shoes and stockings and her undergarments. He was going to make love to her again, he thought. For the fourth time in twenty-four hours. He was going to spill his seed in her again.
He closed his mind yet again to guilt and to fear of the very possible consequences.
“Didn’t we come here to kiss?” she asked as he adjusted his own clothing and lifted himself over her. She positioned herself so that she cradled him between hips and thighs.
“Yes,” he said, bringing his mouth to hers. “That too.”
She sighed against his mouth and sucked inward on his tongue as he came into her body without more foreplay. He moved in her, marveling at the fact that she was wet and ready for him.
He could hear the calling of the gulls and the roar of the breakers as he loved her, heralding the fact that the tide was on the turn. He could smell the sea, and he could taste its saltiness on Elizabeth’s lips. And sand, he discovered, even dry and soft sand, made a hard enough mattress and did not yield to the thrustings of his body. He had to cushion her with hands cupped beneath her buttocks. He could feel sand gritty against his knees and against the backs of his hands despite the cloak he had spread beneath them.
And yet it was all wonderfully erotic. The moist heat in which he was sheathed, the soft shapeliness of her body beneath his, her warm and searching mouth. He willed himself not to come too soon. But she was moving to his rhythm, and her legs had twined themselves about his, and her hands had found their way beneath his shirt and were raking at his back. And she was moaning.
“Yes,” she was whispering into his mouth. “Yes. Oh, yes, yes. Please, yes.”
She came without any coaxing on his part, exploding about him, clinging to him, crying out. He held her close, letting her enjoy her climax and relax into the lethargy that followed it before bringing his own pleasure to completion. She lay relaxed beneath him and held him with arms and legs while he did so.
“If that is your way of kissing,” she said a long time later, after he had moved to her side, “I like it. And I can see why it needed more privacy than the water’s edge.”
She was smiling and totally at her ease with him despite the broad daylight and the fact that her clothes were either off altogether or bunched up above her waist. She was totally trusting, he thought, believing implicitly that they had been married and intimate together for seven years.
How could he put an end to it now that he had allowed it to start?
How could he tell her the truth after they had lived for a night and a day as man and wife? After he had put her in danger four times of having to bear his child? More to the point, perhaps, how could he bear to end it now that he had started it?
“I suppose we should make ourselves respectable and see if we have enough energy left to climb up that path again,” he said against her ear.
“Mm,” she said, a sound that was more a purr than anything else.
“Have we really never made love here before, Christopher? How slow we have been. It was wonderful. I don’t want to leave yet. Is there any hurry?”
“No,” he said, settling his cheek against the top of her head. No, there was no hurry. Soon enough reality was going to break in on their idyll. “No. We can stay here forever if you want.”
“Mm,” she said with a sigh of contentment.
They did not fall asleep, but they lay in a state of pleasant languor, her hand circling his chest
lazily beneath his shirt, his own brushing over her hip and her buttock and the top of her leg.
“Christopher,” she said at last, “let’s always remember the magic of these days when I have regained my memory—do you notice how I so positively say when and not if? Whatever difficulties there have been or will be, let’s remember that it can be like this between us. Shall we? I know we need everyday problems and difficulties to enable us to grow, but we also need times like this. Times to show us that nothing matters really except being together and loving each other. Life is so precious and love is so precious. Let’s make a pact that we will always remember.”
“Pact,” he agreed, but her words chilled rather than warmed him.
She turned her face up to smile at him. “Kiss me again,” she said, but the sparkle of mischief in her eyes told him that she was asking for more than a mere meeting of mouths.
His hand moved around her leg to her inner thigh and upward to the moist heat and the core of her femininity.
“If you insist,” he said and watched her eyes grow dreamy with passion as his fingers began to work on her with the experience of years, preparing her for penetration again.
And his seed again.
Chapter 9
Martin had not received any positive encouragement from his inquiries along the docks and wharves of the Thames. But then there was no positive discouragement either. Two ships had arrived from America within the past two weeks, none from Canada. The one ship had carried no passenger by the name of Christopher Atwell, and no Earl of Trevelyan either. The second ship had needed extensive repairs, and the crew had been disbanded until it was needed again.
Even the captain had left his ship, apparently to visit his mother-in-law in Portsmouth.
Martin sent Macklin in search of Captain Jamie Rice in Portsmouth, and proceeded to wait with growing impatience for the return of his servant. The Bow Street Runners in the meantime had turned up nothing, as Martin had expected. They appeared to be involved in a long and pointless search for a carriage and horses no one had witnessed.