The Wood Nymph

by Mary Balogh

  “Poor little boy,” she said, her eyes suspiciously bright as they looked into his.

  He laughed. “I am not trying to spin a tragedy,” he said. “It was a lonely childhood, yes, but there were compensations. I loved my grandfather and I believe he loved me. Even his refusal to let me out of his sight came, I think, from a fear that he would lose the one link with life that had come to him in his old age. It was a very secure childhood. It was not until long after he died and I decided that I should venture out into the world that I realized how ill-equipped I was to become a part of it.”

  “Where did you go?” she asked.

  “To London first,” he said. “I found life hard there. It is not easy for me to meet and converse with new people. I find myself frequently tongue-tied.”

  “Yet you can talk to me,” Helen said.

  He smiled and took her hand in a warmer grip. “Yes, little wood nymph, I can talk to you,” he said, “because I know you are not sitting in judgment on my conversation and my manners. I always used to feel the same way with . . . with someone else.”

  “With a lady?” she asked.

  “I had one good friend, too,” he said, not answering her question. “He was everything I am not: charming, at ease in any company, never at a loss for words. He helped me a great deal.”

  “Why have you come here?” she asked.

  “I wanted a little peace and quiet, wood nymph,” he replied. “I thought to find it here. Maybe I am more like my grandfather than I care to admit.”

  “Have you found it?” she asked. “The peace and quiet, I mean.”

  His eyes wandered over her face for a while before he answered. “To a degree,” he said finally. “I have met you, Nell, and with you I feel I can relax. I can forget that there are such things as balls and assemblies and dinner parties and afternoon visits to be made.

  You do not realize how fortunate you are not to have to worry about such things.”

  She smiled. The moment for her great revelation seemed to be slipping farther into impossibility. His hand left hers and reached up to cup the side of her head. His thumb stroked her cheek.

  “I have missed you, Nell,” he said softly. And he meant it. He knew that he should not mean it, that he should even now be making an effort to remain aloof from her. But the magic was there, as it always was when he was with her. She sat so quietly and earnestly listening to him, this girl who was very beautiful despite the shabbiness of her dress and the untidiness of her hair. Desire was rising in him and he did not have the will to quell it.

  “I have missed you too,” she said, and she turned her head so that her lips were against his palm.

  Mainwaring was lost. His hand slipped through her hair to cup the back of her head and his other hand reached for her shoulder and pulled her close. Ah yes, her lips were as he remembered them, soft and warm, eager to part beneath the persuasion of his tongue, her mouth sweetly responsive to his invasion. He could feel her firm, unfettered breasts against his coat and her fingers in his hair.

  But this time he wanted to be quite sure that she had as much pleasure as he. He laid her back against the grass and lifted her dress to her breasts and over her head and free of her arms. He removed her undergarments. He took his coat off and rolled it beneath her head before removing the rest of his clothes. She was beautiful, breathtakingly so. He gazed with wonder at her, not even touching her for a while. And he noticed that she gazed unashamedly back. Nell. His lovely Nell.

  He touched her only with his hands, exploring her breasts and her small waist, her inner thighs, and he watched the color mount in her cheeks, and her lips part. When he touched her in more intimate places, she closed her eyes and tipped back her head. She clutched the grass on either side of her. He watched her, his own desire under rigid control, his hand learning with slow patience to arouse her for his entry.

  When she looked at him once more and reached up her arms for him, he finally took her, and the taking was infinitely sweeter for the knowledge that their passion was shared. Her hips reached up and found his rhythm, and by very instinct he paced himself to the tension of her body. He knew, he felt, when that tension was ready to give way, and finally, gratefully, he pressed all his weight down on her and drove his own release into her soft and yielding warmth. He heard her cry out and was aware that his own voice had been mingled with hers.

  Mainwaring lifted himself off her and drew her into the shelter of his arms. Her body was warm and damp and still shaking with the aftermath of passion. He kissed her closed eyes and her mouth, feeling relaxed and sleepy. He smiled dreamily when she looked up at him, her own face flushed and drowsy.

  “Oh, William,” she said, “I do love you so.” And she smiled into his eyes, turned her head more comfortably into his shoulder, and slept.

  William Mainwaring lay taut and wide awake beside her. God, what had he done? Were those words merely spoken in the aftermath of a satisfactory coupling, or had she meant them? Oh, God, no, he thought, and put his free hand over his eyes. He could not have done that to her, could he? He had not put someone else in the same position that he had been put in the year before.

  He wanted to wake her, ask her what she had meant. She could not love him, surely. She was just a country girl, he a wealthy gentleman. She must have realized from the start that there could never be any real relationship between them. Surely she had known that the best they could hope for was a mutually satisfactory summer of physical passion. They were mere words she had spoken; they must be. He continued to hold, her in his arms while she slept.

  But when she woke and looked up at him, her smile was so bright and trusting, her eyes so full of tenderness, that his heart felt like lead inside him. What sort of havoc was he about to wreak in another human’s life? He kissed her with a hopeless tenderness.

  “I must leave, Nell,” he said.

  Her smile faded somewhat. “So soon?” she asked. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Next time, little wood nymph,” he said, kissing her lightly on the nose and sitting up to dress himself.

  “I had something to tell you,” she said, reaching for her own clothes. Her voice sounded a little forlorn.

  “Then say it.” He smiled around at her as he buttoned his shirt.

  “No,” she said hesitantly. “It is something I find difficult to say. I wanted to tell you when you were holding me.”

  He laughed and pulled her to her feet. “I really must go, Nell,” he said. “Next time I shall hold you and you shall make your big confession. Will that please you?”

  “I suppose so,” she said uncertainly, and she put her hands on his chest and raised her face to be kissed.

  He took her face between his hands and looked down into her trusting eyes so full of . . . love. God, but he hated himself. He kissed her briefly and very gently on the lips and turned and left her without another word.

  Helen was left with an almost empty feeling, which she did not understand. He had come, and seeing him again had made her realize that she loved him far more than she had thought. It had felt so lovely to sit beside him on the bank of the stream, holding his hand and listening to him talk. No one ever seemed to want to talk to her. People were impatient of her strange ideas, her intensity about subjects that did not matter to them. But William had seemed to want to talk to her, and he had talked about himself. He had seemed relaxed, though he had said that he found it difficult to converse with other people. He had made her feel unusually wanted.

  And he had made love to her again. She could not have imagined any experience more wonderful. She had loved it the first time, knowing herself possessed by the man to whom she had given her heart. But this time he had done indescribably wonderful things to her body, arousing excitement and longings of which she had not suspected herself capable. And then he had carefully and thoroughly satisfied all those longings. When she had curled against him and slept, she had felt as if they were united forever, as if they could never again be two separ
ate entities.

  Why, then, was she here alone, and he on his way back to Graystone? She looked around her. Everything seemed to quiet and so . . . almost inanimate without William there to share it with her. He had to go, of course, just as she had to go home. It was absurd to expect otherwise. She tried to shake off her mood. Tomorrow he would come back again and they would talk and love. He would remember that she had something important to say to him, and finally she would be able to unburden herself of her secret.

  He had seemed to be almost in a hurry to leave. But, of course, perhaps he really did have something important to do. It was quite possible that he had a dinner appointment and would have to get ready early for it. Yet surely he could have spared a few more minutes when he knew that she wanted to speak to him. Nonsense, she told herself. If she had really pressed the point, he would have listened.

  Had he said he would come back tomorrow? Had he said anything about seeing her again? He had said he would hear what she had to say the next time, but he had not said when that next time was likely to be. Absurd to worry about that. They had met enough times, and knew each other well enough that they no longer had to make definite arrangements to meet again. He knew that she came here very often in the afternoons. He would come tomorrow, or at worst the next day. Had he not said that he had missed her? And had not his lovemaking shown a very definite regard for her?

  Helen turned around with sudden impatience and pulled her dress over her head again. She tossed it down on the grass and jumped into the stream. The water reached to her waist, and she gasped with the shock of its coldness against her heated flesh. Then she took a deep breath and plunged beneath the surface, trying to wash away her uneasiness along with the dried sweat of summer heat and an afternoon’s passion.

  CHAPTER 7

  I t was really a crime that one did not get up early every morning. William Mainwaring thought as he drove his curricle along dusty country roads, expertly maneuvering it around bends that would have taken an inattentive driver quite unawares. There was a quiet and peacefulness about the early morning that was not there later in the day. The sun was still quite low on the horizon, and a haze still settled over everything, promising heat again later. But for now, the air was fresh and cool. He felt almost cheerful for a brief few minutes.

  If only he did not feel quite such a failure. It seemed to have become his fate in life to be constantly running away. When he had left Scotland a few short years before, he had thought he was running to life, a life that had passed him by for the whole of his youth. But what had the adventure brought him? Last year he had fled from Elizabeth as soon as her husband made it clear to him that he would not easily leave her go. And he had left London just a short while ago, convinced that he would be happy again in a country setting.

  And now here he was again, running back to Scotland because of a little wench whose parents could not afford to buy her a dress that fit or shoes for her feet. Would he ever find a place where he belonged? Had he merely been unfortunate in his relationships, or was there something wrong within himself? He sighed. His housekeeper in Scotland would be surprised to see him. He would probably throw her into fits. His grandfather’s old housekeeper had survived him by only a couple of years, and Mainwaring had hired this woman shortly before his departure for London. He assumed that the household was running smoothly, but he did not know how the woman would react to his unexpected arrival.

  His decision had been made the evening before after a great deal of soul-searching. He had tried to shrug his mind free of Nell. She was, after all, a creature of no social significance. She had given herself to him entirely of her own will, and she had been foolish enough to fall in love with him. She could not expect anything more of him than some money with which to buy herself decent clothes. Or perhaps she hoped that he would set her up as his mistress. Such arrangements were not at all uncommon. But really he owed her nothing. He could salve his conscience quite easily by going to her the next day and giving her a bag of coins. It was as easy as that.

  The trouble was that it was not at all that easy. He had never been able to think of people solely in terms of class. It had appalled him in his time in England to notice with what indifference, even contempt, the people of his class could treat their servants. And women always suffered the most. He had been at one houseparty when he had literally bumped into a maid one morning as he left his room. She had been sobbing into her apron, but would not answer his queries. She had merely rushed past him. Later in the morning, the other members of the party, all male, had roared with appreciation as one of their number had described in graphic detail his rape of the girl the night before. Mainwaring had left the house the same day.

  No, he could not dismiss Nell from his mind merely because she was of a lower class. She was a creature of intelligence and sensitivity, he knew, and a woman of deep feeling and passion. If it was true that she loved him, she would suffer when she knew that he did not return her feeling, that he had no intention of making of their relationship anything more than it was at present. She would be hurt, perhaps permanently scarred.

  And he knew very well how she would feel. The same thing had happened to him the year before. And there was no worse feeling in this world, he believed, than to know that one’s love was bestowed where it was not returned and that there was no hope of any change. The one difference was that Elizabeth had been far more honest with him from the start than he had ever been with Nell. He had fallen in love with Elizabeth, knowing full well that she did not love him. She had never encouraged him, never given away physical favors except that one kiss after he had finally persuaded her to marry him.

  He had behaved deceitfully and dishonorably with Nell. Although he had never spoken words of love to her, with his body he had led her to believe that he loved her. He had taken possession of her body twice, taken the privilege of a husband, even though he had had little doubt the first time that she was a virgin. It was no consolation to him that the vast majority of men of his class would have done the same without the merest qualm of conscience. He was not other men. He was himself, with his own very strict code of conduct and his own very tender conscience. She had every right to love him and feel secure in the expectation that he returned her love.

  As he sat in his library alone, not even a drink in his hand to dull the edge of his guilt, Mainwaring felt very ashamed of himself. He had not forced her, it was true. She had made her own decision to allow him to possess her. But he could not excuse himself with such thoughts. He should never have allowed himself to touch any woman unless he was prepared to offer his heart as well as his body.

  What was he to do? He could not continue the affair; that much was perfectly clear to him. He would not offer her compensation in the form of money or gifts. He would feel it insulting, and he had a strong belief that Nell would feel doubly hurt if he tried. It would be like offering her payment for services rendered. He would be making a whore of her.

  What, then? Mainwaring sat for a long time, an elbow resting on one raised knee, staring into an empty fireplace, wondering whether he should marry the girl. The possibility would not have occurred to most men in his position. Even to marry a governess or the daughter pf a cit would have been beneath the dignity of any but those very much in love or very much in debt. But to marry a little nobody who did not seem even to possess a pair of shoes would have seemed downright laughable. And why marry a wench who gave freely outside the marriage bed?

  But to William Mainwaring it was a very serious problem. He cared not a fig for social convention. It mattered not to him that if he married Nell, half the drawing rooms in the country would be closed to him. He had no particular wish to enter those drawing rooms. The only questions that did occupy his mind were whether or not he should marry her or whether marriage to him would be the best solution for Nell.

  There was really little doubt about the first question. He owed her marriage. He had perhaps taken away her chances of making a decent marriage
with any other man. At best, he had placed her in danger of being very severely punished by a future husband who would discover that he was not the first to use her. He could have paused at that point and made the firm decision to make Nell his wife. He would not suffer unduly from the marriage, even if his own happiness mattered in this decision. He liked her and found her attractive. What would it matter to him if he did not love her? It was not as if he expected someday to find a bride whom he could love.

  But it was the second question that he pondered long. If she did love him, Nell would be happy to marry him. Her life would change a good deal. Suddenly she would be able to have all the things she had only dreamed about. And he would enjoy spending money on her, seeing her childlike delight in the gifts he could give her. Yet was it certain that marriage to him would bring Nell happiness even if he could disguise the fact that he did not love her? Even if their social life was restricted, her life as his wife would be vastly different from anything she had known. And must he assume that the change would be all for the better? She would find the adjustment a painful process no doubt. She had no training whatsoever for that life she would have to lead.

  Marriage was for a long time. All else notwithstanding, it would not take Nell long, sensitive as she was, to realize that his feelings for her in no way matched hers for him. He would not be able to pretend for a lifetime.

  And it was on this point that the whole decision hinged. Would the unhappiness of being married to someone one loved but who did not return that love be worse than that of being completely abandoned? A year ago he had pleaded with Elizabeth to marry him, even though she still loved Robert. He had enough love for both of them, he had assured her. And he had believed passionately what he had said. Now he was not so sure. If Robert had divorced her, and if she had married him, would it be torture now to be here with her, seeing her every day, loving her by night, knowing that her heart was somewhere off with her first husband?