“Don’t kill yourself with remorse, Livy,” he said. “Guilt can eat away at you and destroy the future as well as the past. I know. I lived with guilt for years until someone persuaded me that divine forgiveness has to be accompanied by forgiveness of self. You told me last summer that you had forgiven me. Have you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then forgive yourself, too,” he said. “Mine was the greater sin, Livy.”
“All the lost years,” she said sadly, tears in her eyes.
“We have lived through them,” he said. “And they are gone. All we really have is the present and as much of the future as has been allotted us. And at present, I am with my wife and my son and I am feeling almost entirely happy. I will be totally happy if my wife can assure me that the three of us will be together for the future, too.”
“Marc,” she said, “I never for a moment stopped loving you. I never did. And last summer—I loved you so very much. When you said he had taught me passion, it was of yourself you spoke. I had never got over missing you or wanting you.”
“Don’t upset yourself,” he said, drying a spilled-over tear with his thumb. “We were both living under a misunderstanding last summer, and both nobly freeing the other for what we thought a deeper attachment. But last summer, we loved, Livy. Whichever of those lovings started Jonathan was a loving indeed.”
“It was the one in the hidden garden,” she said. “The first one. I already suspected the truth before I left Clifton.”
He smiled. “I am glad it was that one,” he said.
“You cannot know,” she said, “how I hoped and hoped and tried not to hope at all.”
“Livy,” he said, “tell me in words what I think I am hearing but am too afraid to be quite sure of. Are we together again? Are you taking me back? Are we going to bring up Jonathan together? Are we going to piece together an old spoiled relationship and make something perfect of it again?”
She took his hand, which had been stroking the hair from her face, and brought his palm against her mouth. She felt hot tears squeeze their way past her closed eyelids.
“I have wasted so many weary years,” she said. “I don’t want to waste another moment, Marc. Stay with me forever.”
“And ever,” he said, leaning carefully over her and kissing her mouth. “Is our son and heir trying to break up a tender moment?”
The baby was fussing and squirming. He suddenly contorted his face, opened his mouth wide, and yelled out his need for food and attention.
“My other man needs me,” she said, turning and slipping her hands beneath the baby and lifting him. His crying did not abate. “He needs a dry nappy and my breast in that order. Marc?”
He laughed down at her.
“It is either you or Matilda,” she said. “I don’t think I have the strength yet.” She laughed back at him.
“I don’t think male hands were made for this task,” he said, crossing the room to fetch a clean nappy. “You never made me do this for Sophia, Livy.”
“Then it is high time you learned,” she said. “I must say I am rather out of practice myself. Let us see what we can accomplish together.”
They had done a great deal of laughing and cooing, and the baby a great deal of crying before the clean nappy was successfully, if somewhat inexpertly, in place and Olivia, propped against a bank of pillows, stopped the crying with her breast.
“Oh,” she said, looking down in wonder at her baby and smoothing one hand over the soft down of his dark hair, “I remember this feeling. Oh, Marc, I am a mother again when I thought only to have the comfort of being a grandmother. How wonderful!”
“Oh, Lord,” he said, “I am not much of a father, am I? Sophia is here, Livy, and Francis. She was all ready to come roaring in here, bringing all the dust of travel with her, but I ordered her to freshen up and have some tea and Francis hauled her away. I promised to be back for her within ten minutes. That must be well over half an hour ago.”
“Sophia is here?” she said. “Oh, what a glorious day this is turning into. I shall see her, as soon as this hungry little babe has finished sucking. Will you go and tell her that, Marc?”
“Yes,” he said, taking his seat on the bed again close to his newfound family and gazing down at them as if he would never have his fill. “In just a moment, Livy. How I envy my son.”
She looked up at him and laughed softly. “Your turn will come,” she said, “if you will but give me a couple of months.”
“I’ll wait,” he said. “But my love does not depend on just that for nourishment, Liv. I have what I want most in the world right now at this moment—my wife with our son at the breast right before my eyes, and our daughter under the same roof. What greater happiness could there possibly be?”
She smiled at him the dreamy smile of a woman suckling a baby.
SOPHIA CLOSED THE door to her mother’s bedchamber a little more hastily than she had opened it. She turned a blushing face to her husband.
“We cannot go in,” she said, “and I am very glad that it was I who peeped and not you, Francis.”
“Good Lord,” he said, “what is going on in there? She has just given birth, has she not?”
“She is nursing the baby,” she said. “And Papa is sitting on the bed watching. And neither of them looked embarrassed.” Her color flamed even higher.
He placed one hand beneath her chin and raised it. “What a strange combination of boldness and prudery you are, Soph,” he said. “What is she supposed to do—hide away in the darkest corner of the nursery and blindfold the baby?”
“No,” she said, “but I would have thought she would at least be embarrassed.”
He tutted. “All those things we do in the dark,” he said, “and that draw such satisfying sounds of pleasure from you, Soph, would cover you with confusion if I could just persuade you to leave a candle burning one of these times, would they not? And yet nothing different would be happening. I could describe your body to you in the minutest detail, you know. Do you think your father does not know what your mother’s breasts look like—and feel like and taste like for that matter?”
“Don’t,” she said. “You are trying to make me uncomfortable, as usual. He has dark hair, Francis.”
“The baby?” he said. “Nice change of subject, Soph.”
“And Papa was sitting close,” she said. “And they were smiling at each other. Not at the baby, but at each other. What do you think that means, Francis?”
“It means that they were smiling at each other, I suppose,” he said. “But you are fit to bursting with some other interpretation, I can see. You tell me, then.”
“They are together again, that is what,” she said. “And how could they not be? You see, it must have happened last year, Francis. It must have, if she has had a child. But they were too stubborn then to admit that they could not live without each other. But now the baby has brought them together and they will stay together and live happily ever after. That is the way it is, I will wager.”
“Wagering is not ladylike, Soph,” he said, “and I would not wager against such a theory anyway. It sounds altogether likely. We had better find something to amuse ourselves with while we wait for the heir to Clifton to finish his port and cigars. Could I interest you in a little sport in our rooms? That inn bed last night must be where the spare coals for the fire are stored.”
“Francis!” she said.
“I know,” he said, sighing, “it is broad daylight. But we can pretend we are in China, Soph. I imagine it must be dark down there.”
“I would blush all the way to my toes,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “That is what I want to see. Well, if it is not to be that, we must go off somewhere and have our daily quarrel. We have not had it today and the day has been dreadfully dull.”
“It has not!” she said indignantly. “Do you call arriving in Rushton and seeing Papa again and finding that his note really meant what it said and discovering that Mama had a
lready had the baby and that I am a sister and you a brother-in-law—do you call that all dull?”
Lord Francis yawned loudly, steering his wife in the direction of their rooms.
“I see how it is,” she said hotly. “My family means nothing at all to you. You have always had brothers, and now you have sisters-in-law and nephews and nieces. You do not know what it is like to grow up alone, with even one’s parents living apart. You do not know what it is like to long and long for a brother or a sister. You think all this is dull?”
“It begins to get more interesting,” he said, closing the door of their sitting room behind them.
“And now it seems that at last Mama and Papa are back together again,” she said, “something I have dreamed of for years and years and something we schemed to bring about last year. Now it has happened, and you call it dull, Francis? Or beginning to get more interesting?”
“Very much more interesting,” he said, taking her face between his hands and running his thumbs across her lips.
“And don’t think you can kiss me now and all will be well,” she said. “You have done that every day of our married life and I have always been foolish enough to give in to you. But this is my family you are calling dull. My mama and papa and brother. It is me you are calling dull. Stop it!”
He was feathering kisses on her mouth.
“This is all very, very, very interesting,” he said.
“Stop it!”
“Fascinating.”
“Don’t.”
“Indescribably gloriously wonderful.”
“Don’t start doing that with your tongue,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because it always weakens me,” she said severely. “I want an apology from you.”
“You have it,” he said. “Abject, servile, groveling apologies, Soph.”
“You make a mockery of everything,” she said, her arms creeping up about his neck.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “One thing I don’t make a mockery of, Soph. Two. My feelings for you and what is inside you. We had better not break the news right away, by the way.”
“Why not?” she said. “I cannot wait.”
“They might find it a little bewildering,” he said. “All on the same day becoming parents and learning that in six months’ time they are to be grandparents. We had better wait a day or two at least.”
“My brother is going to be an uncle in six months’ time,” she said. “I wonder what his name is, Francis.”
“Do you think you could wonder in a supine position?” he asked. “I think you are going to have to get over this maidenly aversion to daylight, you know, Soph. And I’ll tell you why. I have every intention of doing what your papa is doing now, when you are doing what your mama is doing now.”
“You would not,” she said. “I would die of mortification.”
“ ‘Here lies Lady Sophia Sutton,’ ” he said, “ ‘who passed from this life, at the age of nineteen years, of mortification when her husband gazed at her naked breast with an infant attached.’ Do you think it would make a suitably affecting epitaph? Churchyard viewers would weep pailfuls when they passed by it, don’t you think?”
Sophia giggled.
“Ooh,” he said. “Not good. Not good at all, Soph. You are supposed to be clawing at my eyes by now so that you would not notice that I have walked you through to your bedchamber and am laying you back on your bed. Let me think of something quickly to revive this quarrel.”
“You do not really mean to, do you?” she asked as her head touched the pillow.
“Look at your naked breast in naked daylight, or make love to you at a time when I don’t first have to search for you in the darkness?” he said. “Both, actually, Soph.”
“Just kiss me,” she said, stretching up her arms to him. “That will be enough for now, Francis. Doubtless Papa will be coming for us soon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I have locked all the doors. We can tiptoe along to your mother’s room again in half an hour’s time and nobody will be any the wiser about what we have been up to. Now, let’s see if I have been making love to a woman all these months or to a crocodile or worse.”
“Don’t be horrid,” she said. “Don’t look!”
“Mm,” he said. “It is all woman so far. Of course, one never knows what the next inch of fabric removed might reveal. This is most interesting. I am sorry I ever called the day dull, Soph.”
“Oh,” she said. “I shall die. Don’t look so deliberately, Francis, and with that odious twinkle in your eye. I would like to blacken it for you. I really would. You are the most horrid man I have ever known. I should never have married you. I should have married a toad before considering marrying you. I should have …”
“Eels, snakes, rats, buffaloes, elephants,” he said. “I would not advise elephants, though, Soph. Too heavy. Especially when you start swelling as you will soon. Mmm. All woman after all, my love. And sure enough, blushing all the way down to the toenails. I love every rosy inch of you, you know, and shall proceed without further ado to prove it to you.”
“I hate you,” she said. “I really do.”
He grinned at her. “Enough quarreling for one day,” he said. “Time to kiss and make up, Soph. Tell me that you love me.” And he lowered his head to hers.
“Mm,” she told him.
“Good enough,” he said.
The Notorious Rake
1
THE THUNDERSTORM WAS ENTIRELY TO BLAME. Without it, all the problems that developed later just would not have happened. Without it she would never in a million years have taken him for a lover.
But the thunderstorm did happen and it raged with great ferocity for all of two hours, seeming to circle London instead of moving across it and away. And so all the problems developed.
Because she had spent the night with him.
Because of the thunderstorm.
She had never been afraid of storms as a child. While her elder sister had gone racing into the comforting arms of their nurse at the first distant flash of lightning, she had always raced for the nearest window and flattened her nose against it to enjoy the show until the storm got closer and she had been warned away from her perch. And then she had sat in the middle of the room, waiting in eager anticipation for the next bright flash and counting the seconds until the crash of thunder told her just how close the storm was.
It had never occurred to her to fear storms until she was in Spain with her husband during the Peninsular Wars, camped out in wet and muddy misery with the rest of his division. Lightning had struck so close to their tent that it had killed the four soldiers in the very next one to theirs. She had screamed and screamed in Lawrence’s arms, returning to sanity only when shouting voices beyond their canvas shelter had indicated that tragedy had struck with the lightning, though miraculously it had missed them.
She had been calm then in the face of death. But ever after that, storms had paralyzed her with terror. And Lawrence was no longer there to comfort her. He had been killed more than seven years before.
Mary Gregg, Lady Mornington, had accepted an invitation from her friend Penelope Hubbard to make up a party of eight to Vauxhall Gardens to listen to a concert and to enjoy the beauty of the pleasure gardens. The party had been organized by the new wife of one of Mr. Hubbard’s friends, and the lady had found herself with an uneven party of seven at the last moment. She needed another lady, whom Penelope had promised to provide.
Mary really ought to come, Penelope had said. She had been down lately and was in danger of becoming a hermit. A rather ridiculous fear in Mary’s estimation, since she still held her almost weekly literary evenings and never refused an invitation to an entertainment that promised stimulating conversation.
But she had been down. Dreadfully down. Marcus had met his wife again after a fourteen-year separation and had fallen in love with her again—not that he had ever stopped loving her. Mary had always known that. He had neve
r made a secret of the fact. Just as she had never made a secret of the fact that she had loved Lawrence and still grieved for him.
But she and Marcus had been close friends for six years. They had not been lovers, though it seemed to be the general belief that they must have been. But now they could no longer be friends, just because they were of different genders and he was hoping for a reconciliation with his wife. Mary was finding the emptiness in her life hard to bear. She had not realized quite how much he had meant to her until he was gone.
Yes, she was very down. And so she accepted Penelope’s invitation even though the prospect of an evening at Vauxhall did not appeal to her a great deal. It appealed even less when she discovered who one of the other guests was. Lord Edmond Waite! She could not understand why Mrs. Rutherford would have invited such a man.
Lord Edmond Waite, youngest son of the Duke of Brookfield, was everything that Mary most despised. He was a libertine and a gamester and a drunkard—and a jilt. She did not know the man, of course, and she was willing to concede that rumor and gossip were not always reliable sources of information. But not everything she had ever heard of him could be untrue, she thought. And she had never heard any good of him. None. It was said that he had been all but betrothed to Lady Dorothea Page, that they had been intended for each other since her infancy. And yet he had gone running off with Lady Felicity Wren, if rumor was correct, and had in his turn been jilted when she had married Mr. Thomas Russell. Lord Edmond was not held in high repute by the ton. Only his wealth and rank ensured that he was still received at all. And not everyone received him even so.
Mary did not relish the thought of spending an evening with a party that included Lord Edmond in its number. But she had no choice except to make a scene and go home. Good manners prevented her from doing that. She set herself to avoiding him and conversing with the other members of the party.
Mary Balogh Page 24