At Last Comes Love

by Mary Balogh

  “Papa!” he cried as he came. “Papa!”

  He did not have far to run. Duncan had not slackened his pace. He bent down and swung the child into his arms, spun him in a circle, and held him tight. The boy’s arms were wrapped about his neck.

  Margaret stopped some distance away.

  “Papa,” the child was saying over and over again into the side of his neck.

  Duncan turned his head and kissed him.

  “I thought we would never get here,” the boy said in his high, piping voice. “I was a trial to Mrs. Harris—she told me so. Mr. Harris slept most of the way. He was snoring. I thought you would not be here. Mrs. Harris said you might not be. She said we might race you home. I thought maybe you would never come and I would never see you again and I would not have a papa. But you are here. And now Mrs. Harris will tell you all the bad things I have been doing, and you will frown and tell me that I have been unkind, and I will be sad. Don’t be cross, Papa. Please don’t.”

  And he lifted his head, spread his little hands over Duncan’s cheeks, and kissed him on the lips.

  “I won’t ever be bad again,” he said, all wide, innocent eyes and wheedling tone, “now that I am home and now that I am with you again.”

  “I daresay,” Duncan said, “you have been driving poor Mrs. Harris to distraction with all your prattling, have you, imp?”

  “Yes, I have,” the child admitted, and patted Duncan’s cheeks before wriggling to be set down. His eyes alit upon Margaret. “Who are you?”

  “Not a very polite question, Tobe,” Duncan said, taking his hand. “I would have told you if you had waited a moment. This is Lady Sheringford, my new wife. Your new mama.”

  “No,” the child said, shrinking against Duncan’s side, trying to hide behind one of his legs. “Not my mama. I don’t want a mama. We don’t need her, Papa. Send her away. Now.”

  Margaret made a slight hand gesture when Duncan would have spoken, his brows knitting together.

  “Of course I am not your mama, Toby,” she said. “I am your papa’s wife, that is all. You fell out of a tree a little while ago and bumped your forehead, did you not? Your papa told me. Do you still have the mark there?”

  He leaned against Duncan’s leg and circled one finger about his forehead.

  “I think it’s gone,” he said. “But it was the size of an egg. Two eggs.”

  “I wish I could have seen it,” she said. “My brother fell off a horse once when he was about your age or a little older, but the lump on his head was certainly no bigger than one egg. He used to get cuts and bruises all over too—and scabs.”

  “I have a scab on my knee,” Toby said. “Do you want to see?”

  “I am sure—” Duncan began.

  “Oh, yes, please,” Margaret said, stepping closer. “How did you get it?”

  “I was trying to catch Mrs. Lennox’s cat,” he said, bending to pull up his breeches and roll down his stocking to expose one knee. “She never lets him out, and when he does escape, he will not let anyone pet him because he is not used to people. I had my hands on him, and then she stuck out her broom and I tripped over it.”

  “Nasty,” Margaret said, and bent closer to look at the dried scab that covered his kneecap. “Did you bleed?”

  “All over my breeches,” he said, “and they were not even old ones. Mrs. Harris had to scrub them for an hour to get it all out. And then she had to mend the hole. She said Papa would have paddled my bottom if he had been there.”

  “It sounds to me,” Margaret said, stepping back as the boy bent to roll up his stocking again, “as if perhaps it was Mrs. Lennox who deserved to have her bottom paddled.”

  He shrieked with surprised laughter and reached for Duncan’s hand again.

  “Is this really home, Papa?” he asked. “Forever and ever? No more moving?”

  “This is really home, Tobe,” Duncan assured him.

  “And you are not going away ever again?”

  “Ever is a long time,” Duncan told him. “But we are going to live together here, you and I and—” He glanced at Margaret but did not complete the thought. “Come and see your room. And I expect you are hungry. Cook, I hear, has been baking some special cakes just for you.”

  Toby climbed the steps at his father’s side, his hand clasped in his. But he stopped before they reached the top and looked back at Margaret.

  “You can be my friend if you want,” he said.

  “Can I?” Margaret asked. “I’ll think about it and give you my answer tomorrow or the day after.”

  “All right,” the child said, and disappeared through the door.

  Blond delicacy beside dark strength.

  A garrulous, active, mischievous child, who was quite innocent of all the ugliness that had surrounded his birth and early years.

  Now he was home.

  They all were.

  She could be his friend, Margaret thought as she entered the house more slowly. He had already disappeared upstairs with Duncan.

  She smiled. It was better than nothing.

  And she and Duncan were going to fall in love.

  Would they succeed?

  21

  DUNCAN spent the rest of the day with Toby. He had tea with him, showed him the schoolroom, which was part of the nursery, and the toys and books that had been there from his own childhood, and he took him outside to show him the river and the wide lawns to the west of the house, where they would play cricket and other games that needed wide open spaces. He took him to the stable block to see the horses and the puppies in the far stall, jealously guarded by their mother, a border collie. And no, Toby might not take one of them into the house—though Duncan did not doubt he would be coaxed and wheedled until he consented to allow one to be adopted, once the animal could be taken from its mother without crying all night in the nursery and keeping everyone awake.

  He had dinner in the nursery and suggested that they invite Toby’s new friend to join them there.

  “But she is not my friend yet,” Toby pointed out. “She said she would let me know tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps she does not like me. Do you think she does, Papa?”

  “I think,” Duncan said, “she will like you a little bit more if you invite her to dinner. We gentlemen have to be crafty where ladies are concerned, Tobe. If we are always polite and considerate and include them in our various activities, they will usually be our friends.”

  “What does considerate mean?” Toby asked. When Duncan told him, he nodded and agreed that Maggie really ought to be invited to dinner.

  After the meal, Duncan spent an hour listening to Toby’s much-embellished accounts of the adventures he had narrowly survived in Harrogate before telling him a few stories and tucking him into bed for the night.

  “Sleep tight,” he said, kissing the child on the forehead. “Tomorrow we will play again.”

  “You will be here, Papa?” Toby asked. “Promise?”

  “I promise.” Duncan smoothed a hand over his soft fair curls.

  “And we can stay here, Papa? For always? Promise?”

  “Maybe not for all the rest of our lives, Tobe, unless we want to,” Duncan said. “But for a long, long time. This is home, a place to play and grow up in, a place to come back to whenever we go somewhere else for a little while. A place to belong.”

  “Together,” Toby said. His eyelids were growing heavy. “Just you and me, Papa.”

  “Yes,” Duncan said. “You and me. And perhaps my wife, your new friend—if she decides to be your friend, that is. I think she might, though. She was pleased to be invited to dinner, was she not?”

  “It was kind of us to ask her. We will do it again,” Toby said, yawning hugely and closing his eyes. “Am I safe now, Papa? Nobody will come and take me away, as Mama always used to say?”

  “You are as safe as safe can be,” Duncan assured him, and sat where he was until he was sure the child was asleep.

  He hoped he had spoken the truth. Devil take it, but he
hoped so. Perhaps after all he should have kept Toby’s identity a carefully guarded secret. But no, Maggie was right. The time for secrecy was over. Except that there were still secrets—heavy ones, which perhaps he ought to have divulged with the others. But Laura had always been adamant that for Toby’s sake, and hers, the truth must never be told. And he had promised her over and over again …

  Did a promise extend even beyond the grave?

  Should loyalty to a new spouse supersede all else?

  His life had been defined for five interminable years by secrets and the certain disaster that would result if they were uncovered. It was not easy to shake himself free of those years. It was not always easy to know what was the right thing to do—or the wrong.

  Especially as it was an innocent child who would suffer if he were to make the wrong decision.

  Had he already made it?

  What would happen if he went downstairs now and told the whole truth to Maggie? But he feared he knew the answer. She would persuade him that it was in everyone’s best interest that the truth be told openly at last, that nothing good ever came from secrecy and subterfuge.

  The very idea that she might talk him into agreeing with her made his stomach churn uncomfortably. There was far too much risk involved.

  He sighed and stood up, touching his fingers to Toby’s hand before tucking it beneath the covers.

  He had not forgotten the strange conversation he had had with Maggie down by the river just before Toby arrived with the Harrises. In fact, it had been very much on his mind ever since.

  He had no idea where the words had come from. Or the idea behind them. Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift.

  He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic.

  He was not, though.

  He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still—and always—safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business.

  For receiving meant opening up the heart again.

  Perhaps to rejection.

  Or disillusionment.

  Or pain.

  Or even heartbreak.

  It was all terribly risky.

  And all terribly necessary.

  And of course, there was the whole issue of trust …

  He found her in the drawing room, working at an embroidery frame, something he had not seen her do before. She looked up and smiled when he entered the room.

  “Is he asleep?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Maggie,” he said, “I am sorry he was so rude when he arrived.”

  “You must not be,” she said. “He was not deliberately ill-mannered, only honest in the way of young children—and very frightened. He saw me as someone who could take you away from him. I was touched when he told me I could be his friend.”

  “It was inspired,” he said, “to tell him you needed to consider the matter and would give him your answer another time.”

  She laughed.

  “He is a sweetheart,” she said.

  “And a little devil,” he said. “He almost toppled into the river looking for fish when he had been here scarcely two hours—after I had told him not to lean out beyond the edge of the bank.”

  She laughed.

  “But I did not come here to talk about Toby,” he said.

  She rested her hand holding the needle on her embroidery and looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and somehow fathomless in the candlelight.

  “Didn’t you?” she said.

  “I will spend time with him each day,” he said, “because I must and because I wish to. And of course I must spend time about estate business just as you will go about the business of the house. There will be visitors soon, I do not doubt, and calls to return. But there must be time for you and me.”

  She looked down at her work and with the forefinger of her free hand traced the silk petal of one embroidered flower.

  “To fall in love,” he said.

  She looked up at him.

  “Can it be done so deliberately?” she asked.

  “How else are we to do it?” he asked in return. “Let us not call it falling in love. Let us call it courtship instead. There was no time for it before we married, but it is not too late for it now. Is it?”

  “But courtship is a one-way thing,” she said. “A man courts a woman.”

  “Let us be rebels, then,” he said. “Court me too, Maggie, as I will court you. Make me fall in love with you. I will make you fall in love with me. There will be magic.”

  Her eyes filled with tears suddenly, and she bent her head to thread her needle into the cloth and set it aside.

  “Oh,” she said, and her voice sounded a little shaky, “that is it, is it not? The grand dream. There will be magic.” She looked up at him again. “Will there be?”

  “The moon is almost full,” he said, “and the sky is clear. The stars are a million lamps. Let me fetch you a shawl and take you outside. What setting could be more conducive to romance?”

  “What indeed?” she said, laughing softly. “Go and fetch a shawl, then.”

  Ten minutes later they were at the bottom of the flower garden and stepping onto the humpbacked wooden bridge that crossed the river. They stopped halfway across it to gaze down into the water, which gleamed in the moonlight. She held the ends of her shawl with both hands, and he had his hands clasped at his back.

  He was thirty. So was she. The first flush of youth had passed them both by, ending abruptly for him just before his twenty-fifth birthday, leached gradually out of her after the death of her father and the departure of her lover and his ultimate faithlessness.

  They had both given up on romance.

  There was no scene more romantic than this. The evening air was cool but not by any means cold. He could smell the flowers and hear the water gurgling beneath the bridge. And he was in company with a beautiful woman who was his lover as well as his life’s companion.

  “Turn your face to me,” he said.

  She did so, and they gazed into each other’s eyes for a while until they both smiled.

  He bent forward and rubbed his nose against hers before kissing her softly on the lips.

  “I think,” he said, “it is possible to start again, don’t you? Life, I mean. It cannot possibly be intended that we simply acquire experience upon experience like a lot of excess baggage to carry about with us until we stagger into middle age and old age beneath the impossible weight of it all. We must, as we grow older and wiser, be able to allow all the … all the pain to seep out of our bones and our souls so that we can start again. Do you think?”

  “I thought it was a matter of will and discipline,” she said. “I thought the past was gone—off my shoulders, out of my life, until I had a letter from Lady Dew a few months ago telling me that Crispin was a widower and that he was back in England with his daughter and asking about me and wanting to see me again. I have used my will again since then, and discipline.”

  “But to no avail?” he asked.

  “I married you,” she said. “I did it for a number of reasons, none of them consciously to do with Crispin. But he was one of the reasons. I wanted to forget once and for all. I wanted to stop loving him—or rather, I wanted to stop fearing that I would love him again. I don’t want to. I want the pain to go away. I want to start again. I want to love you. Oh, Duncan, I already do. But I want…”

  “The magic,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He took one of her hands in his, laced his fingers with hers, and crossed to the other side of the bridge with her. They strolled along the avenue in silence, and it seemed to Duncan that she did not feel the awkwardness she had felt last evening. He felt that together the
y were allowing the cool quiet of the night, the moonlight and the shadows, to pour into their souls and heal them.

  After a few minutes he released her hand and wrapped one arm about her waist. A moment later she wrapped her arm about his. Inevitably, her head came to rest on his shoulder.

  Desire for her hummed pleasantly in his veins.

  He was at peace, he realized.

  “Duncan,” she said without raising her head, “I have just realized that I am happier than I have been in years.”

  “Are you?” he said.

  “I am here in this lovely place,” she said, “and it is where I belong. And I am with a man I like and admire and with whom I have … pleasure. A man with whom I am embarking upon a courtship, a romance.”

  “There is a summer house at the end of the avenue,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can see it.”

  “Be prepared,” he told her. “I intend to kiss you silly when we reach it.”

  She laughed and lifted her head to look into his face, her eyes shining with merriment.

  “I would think the less of you if you did not,” she said. “But be warned. I intend to give as good as I get.”

  And he laughed too, throwing his head back, and felt more carefree than he remembered feeling in years.

  They released their hold on each other and joined hands, their fingers laced.

  He had intended lighting the lamp that he hoped was still kept ready in the summer house as it had always used to be. But there was enough moonlight streaming through the windows on all five sides of the structure that artificial light was unnecessary.

  There was a leather sofa there as well as two upholstered chairs and a round table in the center. They sat together in one of the chairs, she on his lap, her arms about his neck, his about her waist.

  “This is what every girl dreams of,” she said, “being taken somewhere lovely and moonlit and quite private by a handsome gentleman.”

  “Girls dream such wicked dreams?” he said, rubbing his nose across hers.

  “Oh, not wicked,” she said. “Romantic. Girls dream of kisses to make their hearts beat faster and their toes curl up inside their slippers. They dream of heaven blossoming like a perfect rose in the center of their world.”