“Yes.” She sighed. “I have not looked forward to Sophia’s growing up. If I had known that it would lead to this sort of complication, I think I would have looked forward to it even less.”
“Shall we go down?” he said. “Are you hungry?”
“I suppose so,” she said, shrugging.
“I have had some of the trees cut back from the river bank down there,” he said, pointing down the north side of the hill. “Those very old ones. Unfortunately, they kept shedding ancient branches and sometimes whole trunks into the water and caused flooding. It seemed sad at the time, but actually the cutting back has made for a pleasant walk or ride. Would you like to see?”
“Yes,” she said. “Have you made many changes, Marcus? I remember that you used to accuse your father of being quite unprogressive.”
“The ravings of a younger man who had not yet learned to appreciate tradition,” he said. “It is a good thing, perhaps, that most men are older when they eventually inherit. I have far more sympathy with my father than I used to have. Take my arm, Olivia. This section is steeper than it looks. Yes, I have made changes, of course, but nothing to destroy the character of the place.”
“What others have you made?” she asked.
A WHOLE HOUR passed and several of the guests, having finished their picnic tea, had already ridden back to the house before the earl and his wife came strolling around the bottom of the hill and began the climb to the remains of the feast.
“Oh, dear,” the countess said as if suddenly recalled to the present, “we have been neglecting our guests dreadfully, Marcus.”
“They do not look neglected,” he said. “In fact, I would say they look remarkably well fed. Is that Hathaway stretched out fast asleep? And several people are actually beaming down upon us—most notably Sophia. And Rose. Are you hungry yet, Olivia? I could eat a bear.”
“And I forgot to have bear patties packed in the hamper,” she said without stopping to think. His comment and her reply had been common ones during the years when they were living together.
“Cucumber and cheese and chicken will have to do instead, then,” he said. The old reply again.
Olivia felt a heavy ball of panic lodged deep in her stomach. Their plan must not be allowed to work too well. The plan was for public appearances for Sophia’s sake, not for private exchanges.
SOPHIA AND LORD Francis rode off together, Cynthia and Sir Ridley Bowden a little behind them.
“What did you mean,” Sophia said accusingly when they were on horseback and on their way, “talking about our first child like that in front of Mama and Papa. I could have died of mortification.”
“Or of burst blood vessels in your head,” he said. “To say you turned scarlet, Soph, would be to understate the case. I was merely following your lead, that’s all. You are the one who started talking about Christmas and New Year and all that sort of sentimentality.”
“Inviting them for Christmas and a christening are two entirely different matters,” she said. “I scarce knew where to look. In one year’s time or less indeed. What a disgusting idea. I would rather …”
He held up a staying hand. “We are not going to have to go through all this toad and frog and snake business, are we?” he said. “Have done, Soph. The thought of infants and nurseries actually is enough to make me run all the way to Brazil without stopping or even noticing the ocean, so you need have no fear. Especially if you were to be the mother.”
“And that is just like you, too,” she said indignantly, “to give me such a very ungentlemanly setdown. I would rather be childless to my dying day than have you father my children. So there.”
“They were an hour alone,” he said, “out of sight of the whole company. And looking quite pleased with themselves and the world at the end of it, too. Very promising I would have to say, Soph. Another few days like this and we will be able to put an end to this charade before the wedding guests start to arrive.”
“Do you think so?” she said. “They did look almost like an ordinary married couple, did they not, Francis? But how are we to know that they will stay together after we have put an end to all this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “You will have to ask them, I suppose, Soph. You are their daughter, after all.”
“Oh,” she said, “how can I go up to them and ask if they are going to remain together?”
“Ask them one at a time,” he said.
“I suppose so.” She frowned. And then she smiled radiantly at him. “The Christmas idea might work, though, Francis, even if this does not,” she said. “There is no time quite like Christmas for love and families and peace and warmth and everything else that is wonderful. If we can get them to come to us for Christmas, they surely will remain together afterward. Don’t you think?”
“Christenings sometimes have the same effect, too,” he said dryly. “Soph, I am coming more and more to the belief that you are either the wickedest schemer it has ever been my privilege to know or that you are a case for Bedlam. I rather lean toward the latter.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” she said, mortified. “It will just have to happen this month, then, won’t it?”
“And sooner rather than later would be good for my peace of mind, too,” he said. “Promise me one thing.”
“What?” she asked, looking at him.
“That after this you will consider yourself fully revenged for all those nasty things I did to you as a boy,” he said. “That we will shake hands and go happily on our separate ways.”
“But you agreed quite freely to this,” she said. “I never agreed to all those horrid tricks. Don’t tell me that you are having second thoughts, Francis, and wish we had never started all this. You are, aren’t you?”
“Who? Me?” he said. “Having second thoughts? Why ever would I do that, Soph, when I am having so much fun? And when I am in imminent danger of being dragged off to the altar just so that we can have your parents for Christmas? It has never once occurred to me to have second thoughts or to give in to an attack of acute anxiety.”
Sophia looked doubtful. “Well, then,” she said, “why are you talking about shaking hands and going our separate ways? If we do that, Mama will go home before she and Papa have realized that they cannot live without each other and I shall never marry because I will be finally convinced that no good can come of marriage. Do you want to be responsible for those two disasters?”
Lord Francis sighed. “When you get back to Bedlam, Soph,” he said, “ask them to reserve a room for me, will you? There’s a good girl. I am going to be needing it soon.”
Sophia clucked her tongue and spurred her horse to a canter. Lord Francis shook his head and went after her.
7
THEY REALLY DID NOT NEED THE DISTRACTION OF the ball less than a week after the announcement of the betrothal, the duchess said. There was so much to do without all the preparations for that. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the earl had organized the ball several weeks before and that his servants were quietly and efficiently carrying out all the work that was to be done. She seemed equally oblivious to the fact that various competent persons had taken over the preparations for the wedding and that everything was progressing smoothly.
As His Grace commented to the earl and countess one afternoon when Her Grace had finally been persuaded to rest in her room for an hour on the understanding that the world would not collapse about her if she did so, her mind must not be disabused. She was entirely happy being in a panic about nothing.
Besides, the duchess had assured everyone, herself included, the ball was entirely necessary as an official celebration of the betrothal.
The countess and Sophia, accompanied by Lord Francis, were to go to London for a few days the following week in order to be fitted for wedding clothes and bride clothes. Olivia had mixed feelings about the approaching journey. So many years had passed since she had been to town. And yet, she had always loved it there. Her come-out Season had been magi
cal.
The duchess kept her busy most days about real and imagined preparations for the wedding. And there were guests to entertain. She grew accustomed to being the hostess at Clifton, to spending hours in company with her husband, behaving for Sophia’s sake as if theirs was a real marriage. And it was a worthwhile effort. Sophia glowed and was utterly happy.
And yet, there was the need to spend time alone. For fourteen years she had been a very private person, bringing up a daughter, having a circle of good friends, participating in the social life of her neighborhood, and yet being essentially alone. She had grown accustomed to the life.
She needed time to think. Time to regain her equilibrium, her sanity. Sometimes she found herself almost forgetting that things were not as they seemed. Sometimes she found herself seating herself next to her husband or speaking to him or even seeking him out when there was no real need to do so. She had strolled beside him throughout one afternoon walk, for example, and had realized, only after they had returned home, that she need not have done so since Sophia and Francis had gone with a few other young people to the village.
And there were the mornings, two of them, when he had mentioned at the breakfast table that he must ride out about estate business for a few hours and she had asked him privately afterward if she might accompany him. She had always done so when they had been together. She did not want to be merely the lady of the house, she had always said. She wanted to be part of his world. She wanted to understand the workings of his land. She wanted to be able to talk meaningfully with her husband about the things that really mattered.
It was training that had stood her in good stead during the intervening years. Although Marcus remained in close communication with his steward, he never came home and had learned to trust her with the day-to-day decisions concerning Rushton.
And so she rode with him about Clifton and enjoyed those mornings more than she had enjoyed anything else for a long time. She watched and listened and asked him questions and made comments. They scarcely stopped talking during all the hours they were gone. During those hours, she had not once felt any awkwardness with him, or any strain from their long separation and the knowledge that it would resume once Sophia was safely married. It had seemed quite like old times. They had felt like friends. Friends and comrades.
Dangerously like.
She needed some time to herself. And she found it not in her rooms, where she could in all probability have gone undisturbed, but in the hidden garden. It became almost a regular part of her day to steal away there for an hour in the afternoons. Only one rainy day had kept her away.
She would sit in the rock garden, merely thinking or dreaming, her eyes feasting on the beauty and color of the flowers, her nose drawing in the heady scent of the roses. Or sometimes she would take her book and read. Sometimes she stretched out on the grass beneath the shade of one of the trees and watched the clouds float across a blue sky and let the peace of nature seep into her very bones. Once, she fell asleep.
It was like a place apart, a dream world, a little heaven on earth. Not Clifton, not Rushton, not the past, not the present. Not of this world at all.
She never bolted the door behind her, but she always hoped that no one else would discover the hidden garden. It would not be the same once someone else had been there to exclaim on its beauty. Except one person, of course. She went there each day to escape from him—not so much from his physical person as from the influence he was beginning to have over her emotions. And yet, of course, she took him there with her, for it was there he had first kissed her. It had been their garden—Marc’s and Livy’s. Two different persons.
She fought against the knowledge that in reality they were still the same people.
She was sitting there on the afternoon of the ball, rather than resting in her room before getting ready, as the other ladies were doing. The sun was hot again and the sky cloudless, as it had been so often recently. She was beneath the shade of a weeping willow tree, beside a bed of hyacinths. She was wishing that the remaining three weeks until the wedding would pass by quickly. And she was wishing that time would stand still.
She did not know what she wished, she thought, smiling ruefully at the contradiction in her mind and reaching out to touch a purple bloom.
And then the arched door opened and she looked up to see him come inside. She was not surprised. She had been expecting him.
Had she? Certainly she had not consciously done so. If she had, then surely she would have sought out privacy elsewhere. Had she wanted him to come? Onto magical ground like this, no part of the real world. Did she want him there?
He leaned against the door as he shut it behind him and she knew, although she could neither see nor hear it happening, that he had bolted it. She had expected it. Wanted it?
“You are not resting?” he asked her, strolling toward her along the path and around the sundial.
“Yes,” she said. “Here.”
He smiled and stopped below her. She was sitting on a rock on a level with his shoulders. “You come here every day, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
It was a dream world indeed. He stood there looking up at her, his eyes roaming over her face, her hair, her body. And she looked at him, at the man he had become while she had not been there to observe the gradual changes. Neither seemed to feel the embarrassment of silence or the need to say anything.
Surely he was more handsome now than he had been. Or perhaps it was just that she was looking at him through older eyes that demanded more than a slender, good-looking boy. There were lines in his face—not wrinkles exactly—but lines of maturity and character. Lines that revealed that he had some experience of life. And his silvering hair was unexpectedly attractive. It was as thick as it had ever been.
His shoulders were broader, and his chest, too. And yet his stomach was flat and his waist and hips still slim. He was not showing his age in increased flabbiness as Clarence was doing. Clearly he looked after himself, as he had always done. The muscles of his calves showed that he walked and rode a great deal. She wondered if he still liked to spar at Jackson’s boxing saloon when he was in town.
When he reached out his arms to her, she did not hesitate to set her hands on his shoulders and lean forward so that his hands could grasp her by the waist and lift her to the ground in front of him. He held her above him for a few moments and she looked down into his upturned face.
It was inevitable. It was what she had known for days was going to happen. Had she? The conscious thought had not crossed her mind. But she had known it. She had been coming to the hidden garden and she had known that he would eventually come there, too. It was their garden, after all, and it was still as lovely and remote as it had been when they shared their first kiss. It was the one thing in their world that had not changed.
He lowered her slowly, sliding her along his body until her feet touched the ground. And then he lowered his head and kissed her.
She could only feel shock at the sameness and the difference. He was Marc as he had always been, bending her body to his, his height arching her head back. And so familiar that the years instantly rolled back. There were no years. Only Marc and her and the rightness of their being together. He was the only man who had ever kissed her or touched her in any way intimately.
And yet so different. He had used to kiss her with parted lips. They had always enjoyed the warmth and intimacy of kisses. She had liked to curl against him on a sofa or on his lap, indulging only in kisses, without any particular thought to going to bed. It had been a warm and wonderful form of communication.
But he had never kissed her openmouthed as he was kissing her now, his mouth wide over hers, his tongue pushing up behind her lip and creating strange vibrations against the soft flesh there.
And then his face was above hers and they were looking at each other again, exploring each other’s eyes this time. And he was lowering his head and pecking light kisses on her temples and cheeks. She ran
the back of her fingers softly over his jaw, her elbows up over his shoulders. His jaw was smooth. He must have shaved very recently.
They had always been able to look into each other’s eyes without embarrassment and had laughed together once after two friends had told them that they hated to sit opposite each other at table when alone because doing so forced them to look into each other’s eyes as they talked. She had laughed about it with Marc, and the two of them had tried it, sitting opposite each other at a small card table, their elbows touching on its top, their chins cupped in their hands, trying to stare each other down. They had laughed and occasionally leaned forward to exchange brief kisses, but succeeded in staying where they were for half an hour before they had been called away to some unremembered task.
They looked at each other now until he wrapped one arm about her shoulders and the other about her waist, drew her close against him, and kissed her again.
And this time the unfamiliarity was total. He slid his tongue all the way into her mouth until she felt filled with its firmness and heat, and withdrew it as slowly before pushing inward again. And she realized, as her knees almost buckled under her, what act he was simulating and then had no more time for thought. Only for reaction.
She had never felt desire before, a strange truth in light of the fact that their five years together had been ones of almost daily intimacy, and that she had always—with the possible exception of their wedding night—enjoyed their couplings. She had enjoyed them because they always gave him such pleasure and because there was joy in being so intimately possessed by the man she loved more than anyone else in the whole world. If asked, she would have said that she felt both desire for and fulfillment with her husband.
But she knew now, beyond the realm of rational thought, that she had never felt desire before. Never this raw throbbing from her mouth to her throat to her breasts to her womb and lower. A throbbing and an insistent longing to be possessed. Never this uncontrolled need to have his body fill her and give her peace.
Mary Balogh Page 9