Mary Balogh

by A Counterfeit Betrothal; The Notorious Rake

  “That is easily said,” Leila said, “but it is more difficult to do. When children are crying and they are one’s own children, one feels constrained to comfort them.”

  “Then one is merely making a rod for one’s own back, if you will forgive my criticism, ma’am,” Lord Goodrich said. “Children must be taught fortitude.”

  “I am not sure that fortitude can be taught in that way,” Mary said quietly. “The fear of storms is a dreadful thing and one must remember that there is something very real to the fear.”

  “Nonsense!” Lord Goodrich said. “Pardon me, Mary, but I must disagree most strongly. A little healthy thunder and lightning never did anyone any harm.”

  “It killed four soldiers in the tent next to my husband’s and mine in Spain,” she said. “Since then, I have not taken storms so lightly.”

  “In fact she is driven into a blind terror by them.”

  Mary looked up at Lord Edmond, who was lounging against the wall in Lady Eleanor’s drawing room, his arms crossed over his chest. He was half smiling down at her in a manner that suggested that they shared some very personal secret. It did not soothe her indignation to remember that they did indeed. But only the day before he had declared quite seriously that she must absolve him of ever having shared any personal knowledge of her with anyone else.

  “I have seen it happen,” he said.

  Mrs. Bigsby-Gore was playing determinedly on the pianoforte for several dancing couples, Lady Eleanor having been persuaded by the young people to have the carpet rolled up so that they might have an evening of informal dancing.

  “Yes,” Mary said, lifting her chin. “I am afraid of storms. I can sympathize with your children, Mrs. Ormsby.”

  “Mary.” Lord Goodrich squeezed her shoulder. His tone was teasing. “You should be ashamed of yourself. You cannot spend the rest of your life quivering at the approach of a storm just because you once had the misfortune to be close to men foolhardy enough to get themselves killed by one. What were you and they doing in tents during a thunderstorm anyway?”

  “Trying to keep dry,” she said more tartly than she had intended. “We were bivouacking, Simon. Camping. We were part of an army on the march.”

  “And the army could do no better for you?” he said. “That is quite shameful. Surely there must have been buildings available. Your husband was, after all, an officer. You ought not to have been subjected to the unpleasantness of being so close to those deaths.”

  “I do agree that the four poor devils who did not survive the storm should have had the good taste to die elsewhere,” Lord Edmond said. His voice, Mary noticed, was heavy with boredom. “As for Mary’s fears, Goodrich, you should perhaps thank providence for them. She likes to be held tightly. Ah, very tightly.”

  Mary’s eyes blazed at him briefly. How could he! But she was aware of Leila Ormsby’s and Doris Shelbourne’s discomfort at the suggestiveness of his last words.

  “I know it is a foolish fear,” she said. “I do my best to conquer it and almost succeed if I am safely inside a large building. But, anyway.” She smiled brightly at Doris. “I hope your prediction does not come true after all, Mrs. Shelbourne. I hope that one morning—a long time in the future—we will awaken to good English drizzle and find that our glorious summer has disappeared quietly in the night.”

  Fortunately, Sir Harold Wright arrived at that moment to ask her to dance and she got gratefully to her feet.

  She glanced at Lord Edmond several times while she danced. He continued to stand against the wall, watching her, that half smile on his lips. She did not like it. It looked malicious. And he had proved himself to be malicious. What possible reason could he have had for saying what he had about her behavior during storms? The comfort he had given her at Vauxhall was almost the only kindly memory she had of him. And now he had tarnished that.

  She felt very cross with herself. She realized suddenly that ever since the day before, and especially since her talk with Lady Eleanor that morning, she had been looking for redeeming points in him. She had been looking for something to like, something to excuse the way she felt about him physically. Despite everything, she had been trying to change her opinion of him.

  It was foolish in the extreme, she realized. Perhaps he had been very different once upon a time—undoubtedly he had. And perhaps the fault for what had happened to his life was not entirely his own. Perhaps he was to be pitied. But those facts did not excuse him for present obnoxious behavior. They did not make him more likable or more worthy of respect.

  For the past day she had allowed feelings to obscure judgment. But she had not liked his contribution to the conversation on storms. She had not liked it at all. And she would not forget again, she decided.

  She was standing with the viscount and the Reverend and Mrs. Ormsby later in the evening when Lord Edmond touched her shoulder.

  “Waltz, Mary?” he said. “Mrs. Bigsby-Gore is playing one, I hear. And you dance it awfully well, I remember. Though the last time we danced it, I believe we did not spend the whole time, er, dancing. However, there is, alas, no balcony outside the drawing room here, and no large concealing potted plants on the nonexistent balcony.” He smiled.

  The viscount drew breath to make a reply. He was going to make a scene, Mary thought, in front of the reverend and his wife.

  “Thank you,” she said quickly. “It would be pleasant to dance, my lord.”

  She hoped that her smile was as arctic as it felt.

  13

  IT WAS NOT BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION A ball. There was merely a lady seated at the pianoforte, her playing making up in enthusiasm what it lacked in finesse. And merely a few couples dancing about the cleared floor of the drawing room, while others stood or sat about watching or conversing. It was certainly too confined an atmosphere for a quarrel.

  Mary schooled her features to bland amiability. “You have just surpassed even yourself in vulgarity,” she said.

  “Have I, by Jove?” he said. “Thank you for saying so, Mary.”

  Still that half smile, she noticed. She would have liked—oh, yes, she really would—to slap it from his face. “What do you mean,” she said, “by suggesting that you have held me tight during a thunderstorm and dallied with me behind a potted plant?”

  “Suggested?” His eyelids drooped over his eyes and he looked down to her lips. “Suggested, Mary? If I remember correctly—and I am quite, quite sure I do—I held you very tightly indeed during a certain storm. I do not believe I could have been closer to you if I had tried. The female body is capable of only a certain degree of penetration, you know.”

  Her eyes widened as she willed herself not to flush. “You are disgusting,” she said. “Perhaps you would like to return to the group and repeat those words there. You missed a grand opportunity to sink a few degrees lower in public esteem. Better still, perhaps you would like to stop the music and make a public announcement. It is too delightful a detail to share with only a select group.”

  “Smile, Mary.” His voice drawled annoyingly. She hated men who drawled. There was such affectation involved. “Unless you want the world to witness your indignation, that is.”

  She smiled. “If I were just alone with you for a single minute,” she said, “I would have your ears ringing before I was done with you. Be thankful, my lord, that we are not alone.”

  “Thankful?” he said. “I could dream of no greater bliss. But it would have to be for longer than a minute, Mary. Considerably longer. Even on a certain tabletop, I believe it took me longer than a minute. Smile!”

  Mary smiled. “I choose to end this conversation,” she said. “We will dance in silence, if you please.”

  “You may credit me with some sense of propriety,” he said. “You may safely trust me not to make public the fact that we have enjoyed the ultimate intimacy together. No, no, close your mouth. You have just expressed your desire to dance in silence. You need not say ‘Enjoyed!’ with all the venom and hauteur that you planned
. You did enjoy it, Mary, much as you may wish now that you had not. There is no point in denying it. I was there, if you will remember.”

  She clamped her teeth together and smiled.

  “ ‘As if I could possibly forget,’ ” he said. “You see? I am even supplying your side of the conversation. Mary, what sort of an ass would ask you what you were doing in a tent in Spain in the middle of a thunderstorm when he knew you were with Wellington’s army? I almost asked him myself, but I remembered your objection to my use of that particular word in your salon.”

  “You will leave the name of my fiancé out of this conversation—no, out of this monologue, if you please,” she said.

  “ ‘Ass’ is more suitable than his name anyway,” he said. “Is he good, Mary? Rich he certainly is, if rumor is correct on the matter. Have you slept with him? I believe I have asked you that question more than once, but you have never answered it. Have you?”

  She gave him a glance of cold contempt before looking away to smile vaguely at the room at large.

  “Do you sleep with him here?” he asked. “If not, perhaps you would care to leave the door of your bedchamber unlocked, Mary. Is it ever locked, by the way? What I mean is that I could come to you at night and you could explore the full extent of this attraction you claim to feel toward me.”

  She drew in her breath slowly.

  “Was that an indication of assent?” he asked. “Tonight, Mary? We could do together all those things we did in a certain scarlet room. And there are far more things I want to do to you and with you, and far more things that I want you to do to me.”

  “I am betrothed.” They were the only words she was capable of at that particular moment.

  “That will not worry me,” he said. “I will not think about it while we are about our business. I am not quite the three-in-a-bed type, but I believe I can learn to share you, provided I have you alone in bed when it is my turn.”

  “Does this particular tune go on and on forever?” she said. “Will it never end?”

  “Oh, it will,” he said. “Patience, Mary. The night will come. And I will come with it. All you need is a little patience.”

  She looked fully at him and forgot the need to smile. “I have been a fool,” she said. “An utter fool. For the past day I have been trying to convince myself that if you were human once upon a time you must still be so deep down. But you are not. You spoke yesterday to arouse my pity, did you not? So that I would climb into your bed to comfort you.”

  “I have never wanted your pity, Mary,” he said. “Anything and everything but that.”

  “I despise you now more than ever,” she said. “We are all ultimately responsible for our own words and actions, my lord. Perhaps circumstances cause major changes and stresses in our lives, and perhaps we can be excused for crumbling beneath the weight of those circumstances—for a certain time. But the real test of the strength of our characters lies in our ability to go forward with our lives unbroken, to rise above circumstance. I lost a dear husband in all the useless cruelty of war. I found his body myself. He was naked on the battlefield after the local peasantry had completed their stripping and plundering of the dead and wounded. My husband, who had died for their freedom. You are not the only one to have suffered.”

  For a moment he gazed into her eyes, his face drained of all color and expression. But only for a moment. He sneered.

  “I suppose your point is that you have greater strength of character than I,” he said. “Well, I will not argue the point, Mary. You are undoubtedly right. But I will wager that I have had greater pleasure from life than you.”

  “Pleasure!” she said. “That is all that matters to you. Pleasure! Not pride or honor or joy or happiness. Just pleasure.”

  “You see?” he said, drawing her to a halt with a firm hand at her waist. “While your mind was otherwise occupied, the music came to an end after all. Time does pass, you see. Tonight, Mary?”

  “I will not lock my door,” she said, looking steadily into his eyes. “I will not cower behind locked doors. But if you set so much as a finger on the knob outside my door, my lord, I shall scream so loudly that even the most distant groom will come running. And if you believe that I am afraid of the scandal that would be caused, then try me.”

  He smiled and raised her hand to his lips. “Fascinating,” he said. “Has she told you any of these stories of Spain, Goodrich? Thank you for the dance, Mary.”

  “Simon.” She smiled up at him as he came up beside her and set an arm protectively about her waist.

  “All the rest of the dances this evening are mine, Waite,” the viscount said. “I believe my meaning is clear?”

  “I always hate that question,” Lord Edmond said. “It is quite impossible to say no, and yet one feels remarkably foolish saying yes. One always wishes one could think of some witty reply. Ah, I do believe my aunt is calling me. If you will excuse me, Mary? Goodrich?”

  And he sauntered away to quite the opposite corner of the room from where Lady Eleanor was deep in conversation with Sir Harold and Lady Cathcart.

  “I warned him,” the viscount said. “I went out of my way to do so quite privately and civilly so that there need be no public unpleasantness. But such a man is quite impervious to the decencies, it seems. He did not repeat any of his vulgarities while you danced with him, Mary?”

  “No,” she said. “He was quite civil, Simon.”

  But in truth she seethed and she mourned. Seethed at his outrageous behavior that evening, far outstripping anything else she had suffered from him since their acquaintance began. And mourned for a love that had been born and struggled for existence, only to die just when it had seemed that perhaps it would survive and grow after all. And she castigated herself for even allowing that love conception and birth when it was a hopeless and an undesirable thing. For once something had been born and died, it had existed. It had been a part of one’s life and must be forever a part of one’s memory and therefore a part of one’s very being.

  She had loved him for a day. For a day she had let down her guard and loved him.

  And dreamed. She had allowed herself to dream. Foolish, foolish woman.

  Deny it as she would, she had allowed both to happen. For a day. For a permanent part of her life.

  HE HAD PROBABLY given her a sleepless night, he thought as she came rather late into the breakfast room the following morning. Her face looked pale and a little drawn. She had probably lain awake waiting for the sound of his hand on the doorknob. And of course, being Mary, she would have scorned to lock the door merely so that she could sleep without fear.

  If only she knew how long he had lain awake fighting the temptation. Part of him had wanted to go and had rationalized his wish. If he went and she screamed as she had promised to do, then there would be a dreadful scene and he would be forced to leave. He would have his excuse to return to Willow Court, to be done with her once and for all.

  And if he went and she did not scream—and he did not think she would—then they could renew their argument. He could find more and more outrageous words to disgust her. He could try to seduce her. Perhaps he would even succeed. He believed he had enough power over her physically that she would succumb to his caresses if he set about the seduction with enough determination. Either way, her hatred of him would be intensified once it was over and she had returned to her senses. His goal would be accomplished.

  If he went and she did not scream, then he would have one more chance to talk with her privately, one more chance to touch her, perhaps to kiss her. Perhaps to make love to her.

  Perhaps to impregnate her.

  The thought had put an abrupt end to his dreaming. He had remembered that she wanted children, that she felt herself almost too old to begin a family, that Goodrich was unwilling to saddle himself with yet another family—seven children, it seemed, were quite enough for him. And strangely, Lord Edmond had thought, he himself had wanted children, too, while she had talked to him—children by her
body, children to make her happy, and himself, too. He had never thought of children except in terms of an heir. He had never wanted children.

  He had stayed away from her and resigned himself to a sleepless night and imagined her sleepless, too. He watched her now the following morning pick up a plate and fill it from the dishes on the sideboard. Though “fill” was not quite an accurate word. The plate was almost as empty when she sat down—as far from him as she could find an empty chair—as it had been when she picked it up.

  “Another sunny day,” Andrew Shelbourne said. “Is this England? Can it be England?”

  “It can be and is,” Lady Eleanor said firmly. “I put in a special order for another week of fine weather during my prayers last Sunday. So everyone can relax and enjoy it. Such prayers are always answered, are they not, Samuel, my dear?”

  The Reverend Ormsby grinned. “I cannot answer for God,” he said, “but for myself, I would consider it quite uncivil to ignore such a prayer.”

  “It seems that God is a civil gentleman,” Andrew said.

  “Even so,” Doris said after the general laughter had died away, “I am not sure that we should be venturing as far as Canterbury today. Fourteen miles.” She frowned. “It would be a treacherous journey in a storm, and a storm is going to be the inevitable outcome of this long spell of heat, mark my word.”

  “Doris is going to be thoroughly disappointed if she proves to be wrong,” her husband said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “And my children will be worse than disappointed if she is right,” Leila Ormsby said with a sigh. “Especially if I am from home. Should we perhaps stay, Samuel?”

  The Reverend Ormsby laughed. “We might be at home forever, Leila,” he said. “They will have their nurse in the unlikely event that the weather does break in the course of the day, and a whole army of other servants in the house.”

  “And me, too, dear,” Lady Eleanor said. “I will be unable to come to Canterbury, I am afraid, though I love it above all places on this earth.”