Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

  “I have not been there,” he said.

  “What?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “I am the world’s worst coward, Rache,” he said. “I stayed in Bath, making excuses every day to wait one more hour or one more day. I could not face them until I had remembered everything or at least enough that I would not just stand there like a mindless dolt after knocking on the doors of Lindsey Hall and asking if anyone there knew me.”

  She tipped her head to one side and reached for his hands, without thinking.

  “And have you remembered?” she asked him.

  “A reassuring amount,” he said. “More and more each day, in fact. I have no more excuse not to go to Lindsey Hall. And I want to go almost more than I want to do anything else in this life.”

  “But you came here instead?” She looked inquiringly at him.

  “I turn weak at the knees,” he said, flashing her a grin again, “at the thought of going there, of presenting myself to Bewcastle and any other member of my family who happens to be there, and of announcing to them that their brother has come back from the dead. I think one of the worst experiences of the past week was discovering from you that they had held a memorial service for me—a funeral, except that there was no body. To be treated as dead when one is still alive—no, I cannot begin to explain how it feels.”

  She squeezed his hands more tightly.

  “I cannot go there unless you come with me,” he said. “Now, is that not a totally unmanly thing to say? The old Alleyne Bedwyn would not have said it or felt it. He was an arrogant, devil-may-care, independent, rather hard-edged man. I have changed since his days. I cannot do this without you, Rachel. Come with me?”

  “To Lindsey Hall?” Her eyes widened.

  “If for no other reason,” he said, “then because you are the one who saved my life, Rache. Bewcastle will want to thank you. If you do not go there, he will come here, I daresay, and that would be a daunting experience for you. He is as high in the instep as it is possible for any aristocrat to be.”

  His grin, she realized when he flashed it again, did not denote amusement. He needed her. He desperately needed her.

  “I will come,” she said, “if Uncle Richard says I may.”

  “He has already said it,” he told her, “and Bridget has agreed to accompany us—but only if you agree of your own will. I can do this alone if I must, Rachel. Of course I can. But I would rather do it with you.”

  He raised one of their clasped hands to his lips, and she smiled at him.

  “One thing you ought to know,” he said, “is that I am not married, Rachel. There is no wife, and there are no children. There is no betrothed, no romantic attachment at all.”

  Her gaze slipped from his, and for the first time a painful hope was born in her. Why had he come back? Why was it so important to him that she accompany him to Lindsey Hall? Was it just because she had saved his life?

  “I want to hear about everything you have done during the last five days,” he said. “Is it possible that it has been only five days? It seems like an eternity. And I want to tell you everything I have remembered in that time. I want to tell you who I am. Will you walk with me?”

  She nodded and took the arm he offered and wondered if the sun had somehow affected her mind. Could this possibly be happening? But his arm was solid beneath her hand and she could feel his body heat all down one side. If she chose, she could close her eyes and rest her cheek against his shoulder.

  He was real, and he was here. And he was not married.

  They did not take any conscious direction. They went around the house and strolled along the back lawn, which had been cut since that first morning when she had ridden across it with him, though daisies and buttercups and clover bloomed gaily again.

  She told him about the journey home and about the past few days because he seemed genuinely interested. He looked down into her face as she talked, and laughed when she told him about riding alone and taking the boat out.

  “I hope,” he said, “you are as proud of yourself as I am of you, Rache. You have turned yourself into an intrepid country lady.”

  She was rather proud of her accomplishments.

  “But I have still not perfected the art of standing on a horse’s back on one foot twirling hoops,” she said.

  “It has to be a galloping horse,” he told her, and they both laughed.

  But he did most of the talking, because there was so much she wanted to know, and so much he was eager to tell her.

  The Duke of Bewcastle was a powerful man, aristocratic hauteur bred into his very bones. He ruled his world like a despot, and yet he never had to raise anything more violent than his eyebrows and his quizzing glass in order to enforce his will. His name was Wulfric. The second brother was Aidan, a former cavalry colonel who had married last year and settled on the land with his wife and their two foster children. Then there was Rannulf, usually called Ralf, who looked like a Viking warrior and was married to a gorgeous redhead—Alleyne’s own words. Freyja—the name he had overheard in Bath—was his elder sister, a formidable spitfire married to the Marquess of Hallmere, who somehow seemed able to handle her without having to throttle her every day of their lives. Then there was Morgan, the youngest of them all, only eighteen years old.

  “She is the lady who was waiting for me at the Namur Gates,” he explained. “The lady of my recurring dream. Her chaperon had not taken her away from Brussels when the battle loomed, and they had allowed her out to tend the wounded on the day Waterloo was fought. I had promised Bewcastle to keep an eye on her even though she had not gone to Brussels under my care. I was desperate to get back to her.”

  “What was your regiment?” Rachel asked.

  “Ah,” he said, “I ought to have started with that. I am not a military man. I was going to be a diplomat. I was attached to the embassy at the Hague, under Sir Charles Stuart. I was sent to the front with a letter for the Duke of Wellington and was carrying a reply back with me—the infamous letter of my dreams. I have changed so much, Rachel. I could not go back to that life now even if I were to be offered the whole embassy.”

  It had taken him five days to remember, and even now there were gaps and blanks in his memory that puzzled him and kept him struggling for total recall.

  “But what I am missing the most,” he told her, “is feelings, if that is the right word. I know all these things about myself and my family and my life dispassionately, rather as if they are things I have learned about someone else. I have a feeling of disconnection, as if I do not quite belong to it all. I feel almost embarrassed about going back, as if I will need to apologize for not having died after all.”

  He took her hand from his arm and clasped it instead, lacing their fingers as he did so.

  “And look,” he said, “we have walked all the way out to the trees and I have hardly allowed you to squeeze a word in. What sort of gentleman am I not to observe the niceties of polite conversation?”

  “This is not a polite conversation,” she said. “I am your friend, Alleyne. I care about you.”

  “Do you?” He smiled at her. “Do you really, Rache? I have been pretty self-centered lately, though, haven’t I?”

  “With good reason,” she said. “But it only seems that way to you because you have been alone with your own thoughts and returning memories for five days. Before that you concentrated upon helping me even if we did go about it in a thoroughly misguided way. And then you were my champion when we found Nigel Crawley. I sometimes think I should be ashamed to feel a thrill at the memory of you knocking him down and drawing blood from his nose, but I am not.”

  “Shall we walk through to the cascades?” he suggested.

  It was very warm among the trees. But the sun was in such a position that the rock on which they had sat before was in shade. They sat on it again, Alleyne lounging on his side, Rachel with her knees drawn up and her arms clasped about them.

  “I was born to wealth and power, you know,” he said
. “It is not necessarily a good thing, though I suppose it is infinitely preferable to being born to debilitating poverty. I am independently wealthy even now. I would not have to do a hard day’s work in my life if I chose not to. I was a restless, aimless, careless, cynical man with no deep feelings for anyone or anything. I do remember that about myself. And yet I knew there was an emptiness in my life. I thought of going into politics but went into the diplomatic service instead. I suppose it seemed more adventurous.”

  “But you will not go back,” she said.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I belong on the land. I know that now. Strange—I can remember now that Ralf discovered that too last year when he went to stay and then to live at our grandmother’s. Good Lord, I have just remembered her—my mother’s mother. She lives in Leicestershire—a little bird of a woman. And Aidan discovered it too when he decided to retire from the cavalry and live with Eve in the country. Maybe once we learn to strip away the trappings of wealth and power, that is what we Bedwyns are at heart—a family devoted to the land, to the basics of life and contentment. And love.”

  He was staring into the water, Rachel could see, his eyes half closed. She wondered if the time would come when she would be alone again and would sit here remembering today. Or if . . .

  His eyes were on her.

  “That is it, of course,” he said, but he did not say it as if he had just made the discovery. He spoke as if he had thought this through before but had only now worked it into his full understanding of himself. “It is love that makes all the difference. One might say that losing my memory was the best thing that ever happened to me, since it totally disconnected me from my past and gave me the chance to start again, to make the same sort of mistakes again, and to learn the proper lessons from them this time. But they are lessons I have been able to learn because there has been a new dimension to this new life of mine, one I have never experienced before, and one that has made all the difference to me.”

  Rachel rested her cheek on her knees and kept her eyes on him.

  “It has always been a tradition with our family,” he said, “that we tend to marry late but that when we do so we marry for keeps and for love. Fidelity within marriage is expected of even the most rakish of us. I watched it happen last year to Aidan and Ralf and Freyja, and I was somewhat incredulous and somewhat skeptical. I really did not understand. Now I do.”

  Rachel hugged her legs a little more tightly while he smiled directly into her eyes.

  “I know you are enjoying the first real freedom of your life, Rachel,” he said. “And for the first time you are in the milieu that is yours by right of birth. You owe me nothing—quite the contrary. And though love centers upon one person when it also qualifies as being in love, it is not a possessive or a dependent thing. I do not want you to feel trapped or pity-bound. If I must live without you, I will. Even if I must go to Lindsey Hall alone I will. Ah, there is that dimple again. Have I said something funny?”

  “No,” she said, “but you really do talk too much, Alleyne. You must have caught it from Sergeant Strickland.”

  He laughed and she gazed at him, amazed that a man who was so very handsome and charming, who had lived a life of privilege and power, his every whim catered to, women doubtless falling all over their feet for one of his smiles—it amazed her that such a man could be so unsure of himself with her that he was babbling.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes?” He raised his eyebrows and immediately looked arrogant.

  “Yes, I will marry you,” she said. “And if you now tell me that that was not what you were leading up to at all, then I will jump in the river and allow it to carry me out into the lake and oblivion. Was it what you were about to say?”

  She gazed at him in horror then, her cheeks aflame, just as if the sun were beating down on their heads.

  He laughed again, sat up, took her face in his hands, and kissed her.

  “No,” he said, “but it is not a bad idea, is it?”

  She shrieked and pushed at his chest.

  He cupped her chin in one hand and kissed her again.

  “In fact,” he said, “it is downright brilliant, Rache. Will you marry me, my love? You are my love, you know. You are my new life, and though I could live it without you, I would really rather not. Will you marry me?”

  She pressed her mouth against his.

  “Is that a yes, Rache?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He drew back his head and smiled at her, but totally without mischief this time. What she saw in the depths of his eyes took her breath away. She set a hand that was curiously trembling against the side of his face.

  “I love you,” she said. “I could live a contented and productive life here at Chesbury alone except for my uncle and my friends if I had to. But I would really rather you lived here with me, my love.”

  They gazed at each other with wonder and the beginnings of laughter.

  “I spoke to your uncle before I came out looking for you,” he said. “We will have the first banns called next Sunday, Rache, and think of some tale to tell the locals. We will set Strickland and the ladies to dreaming up something suitably hair-raising and convoluted. But it will be a month before we can celebrate our nuptials and I can carry you off to a respectable bridal bed. Can you wait that long?”

  She shook her head and bit her lower lip.

  “Good girl,” he said, one hand against the back of her head. “Neither can I.”

  He kissed her again and brought her over on top of him as he lay back on the warm stone. It probably was not the most comfortable bed in the world—in fact, it undoubtedly was not—but they scarcely noticed any discomfort as they lost themselves in the sensual pleasure of making love.

  And yet it was not quite a mindless encounter either. Rachel was very aware that just a few hours ago she had been telling herself that she could learn to be content without him, that perhaps in a couple of years she would be able to see him again without feeling too much pain. And she was very aware too of the heat of the day, of the rushing sound of the cascades, of birds singing.

  They made hot, hungry, swift, lusty love. And afterward they lay side by side, warm and panting and relaxed, his arm beneath her head as they gazed up at the treetops and occasionally turned to smile at each other.

  “How did you know I was alive?” he asked her.

  “I touched you,” she said. “I touched the side of your face and felt a slight warmth. And then I touched your neck and felt a pulse.”

  “You gave me life,” he said. “New life. I said from the start, did I not, that I had died and gone to heaven and found a golden angel waiting for me there.”

  “But that was the second version,” she reminded him. “In the first one you had died and gone to heaven and found it was a brothel.”

  He laughed and rolled over on top of her and kissed her breathless again.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  ALLEYNE HAD DECIDED UPON MORNING AS the best time of day to return to Lindsey Hall. Bewcastle was most likely to be at home then—if he was at home at all, that was. But it was late August, and he was unlikely to be in London.

  They had stayed the night at an inn several miles away, since Alleyne did not want to be recognized, and so they had to leave soon after breakfast, he and Rachel. Bridget remained behind at the inn.

  It was late in the morning of a lovely sunny day when their carriage approached the house. He felt a stab of recognition as soon as they entered the straight driveway with its elm trees lined up like soldiers on parade on either side. Setting his head close to the window, he could see the great house up ahead, and before it the circular flower garden with the fountain at its center.

  He wished then that he had not eaten any breakfast. It sat uneasily in his stomach. It would not take much, he thought, to make him turn around and flee, never to return. It was really quite absurd, this reluctance to come home, to show himself to Bewcastle. It was as if he felt that because they had h
eld a memorial service for him he ought to remain dead.

  What he ought to have done was write to Bewcastle first, as Rachel had wanted him to do back in Bath.

  And then he felt her hand warm in his own and turned his head to smile at her. Bless her heart, she did not say a word. She merely looked back at him with eyes so filled with love that he felt suddenly calmed. His old life was beginning to close about him again—the carriage had turned to circle around the fountain—but here was his new life beside him, and nothing could ever be the same again. Nothing and nobody could mean more to him than Rachel.

  He vaulted out of the carriage as soon as it had drawn to a halt and the coachman had opened the door. He turned and handed Rachel down and tucked her hand beneath his arm. But he did not have to knock on the great double doors. They opened back, and Bewcastle’s butler stepped out and to one side with great dignity and a deep, reverential bow and a look on his face that was almost, but not quite, a smile. And then he looked up and directly at Alleyne.

  The half-smile vanished, his face turned sallow, and his jaw dropped.

  “Good morning, Fleming,” Alleyne said. “Is Bewcastle at home?”

  Fleming had not been Bewcastle’s butler for the past fifteen years for nothing. One could almost have counted the seconds—there would not have been more than ten of them—while he recovered from his silent shock. In the meantime, Alleyne was leading Rachel up the steps and into the great hall.

  “Not at present, my lord,” Fleming said.

  But Alleyne had come up short just inside the doors. The great medieval hall, which had been one of his first returned memories, was being set for a banquet. Servants were bustling about, setting out dishes, arranging flowers, straightening chairs. More than one stopped to gawk at him until a silent signal from Fleming sent them scurrying back to work.

  “His grace is—” the butler began.

  But Alleyne held up a staying hand.

  “Thank you, Fleming,” he said. “He will be home soon?”