Only a Kiss

by Mary Balogh

  “Beth went visiting with my mother and my aunts and Lady Lavinia,” Mr. Eldridge explained as they set out along the cliff path. “They must have been horribly squashed in the carriage. Meredith stayed back to play with young Geoffrey when he wakes from his afternoon nap. My father and my uncles went off with Percy to look at sheep. He was actually soliciting their advice. It scarcely bears thinking of, Lady Barclay. Percy interested in farming? Next he will be talking about settling here. Oh, I beg your pardon.”

  “Because I might be offended that the very notion of someone’s wanting to settle here appalls you, Mr. Eldridge?” she said. “I am not offended.”

  “It is only,” he said, “that I cannot imagine Percy being contented here for long. He only came because he said he would when he was colossally bored and colossally drunk on his birthday, and Percy never likes to go back on his word. I’ll wager he was already planning to leave here when Aunt Julia decided to come and bring us lot with her. I’ll wager he just about had an apoplexy.”

  He was not far wrong, Imogen thought with an inward smile. But—colossally bored. And colossally drunk. And this was the man she had kissed voluntarily and with some pleasure last night? The man she had come to like? And the man with whom she was still half considering having an affair?

  It was nothing she did not already know or guess about him, though. He was also a very intelligent, well-educated man, and a man who had somehow lost direction about ten years ago and not found it since. Would he find it? Ever? Here, perhaps? She hoped not here. Please not here. She might perhaps allow herself a little reprieve in company with him, but it could not be prolonged.

  “Is this it?” one of the Herriott brothers—Leonard?—was calling from a little way ahead along the path.

  “It is,” Imogen called back. “The path looks a bit daunting, but you will see that it zigzags to minimize the steepness of the descent, and it is really quite wide and firm underfoot.”

  “I claim Gregory,” one of the twins said. “He has a sturdier arm.”

  “Meaning I am fat, Alma?” Gregory Herriott said.

  “Meaning that you have a sturdy arm,” she said—and giggled. “And I am Eva.”

  “No, you are dashed well not,” he said. “Not unless you changed frocks with your sister after luncheon.”

  There was a burst of laughter from the other three.

  Imogen stepped forward to lead the way down.

  If he had not been colossally drunk on his birthday, perhaps it would not have occurred to him to come to Cornwall—ever. He had neglected it quite happily for two years. All this might not be happening if he had not got drunk. But if he had not, then she would still be at the hall herself now, waiting for the roof to be replaced on the dower house.

  She would not go up to the hall this evening, she decided. She could not be expected to go there every night, after all.

  May I escort you home every night? he had asked last evening after their kiss. He had asked it to make her laugh—and he had succeeded.

  But she must not make a reality of that joke.

  When had she last laughed before he came here, though? She had done it at least twice since that she could remember.

  Oh, she did like him, she thought with a sigh as she allowed Mr. Eldridge, quite unnecessarily, to move ahead of her and help her down onto the beach.

  She abandoned herself to an afternoon of frolicking by the sea.

  * * *

  Percy spent the morning with his family, though his mother and aunts went out for a walk, declaring their need for some air and exercise after several long days of travel. He suspected they would take the direction to the dower house and pay their respects to Cousin Imogen if she was at home.

  Percy enjoyed the morning, taking everyone on a tour of the house and out to the stables—to see the kittens, of course—and playing billiards with some of the cousins, talking over coffee. He enjoyed a luncheon with brisk conversation, and he enjoyed an afternoon spent with his uncles, showing them about the farm, discussing with them some of his plans and some of Knorr’s.

  And it was a pleasure to return to the house to the discovery that there had been two more new arrivals. Sidney Welby and Arnold Biggs, Viscount Marwood, had indeed made the journey. There was much hand shaking and back slapping and noise and laughter—and that was when only Percy and they and Cyril were involved.

  Once Welby’s and Marwood’s arrival was announced, the uncles and male cousins were pleased, and Percy’s mother and aunts and Lady Lavinia delighted. The female cousins were dizzy with excitement that there were two young, personable gentlemen who were not their cousins staying at the house—one of them with a title. If they had twittered and giggled before, they soared to new heights now.

  Dinner and the evening spent in the drawing room were occasions of such collective amity and glee that at one point Percy felt he could gladly step outside and bellow at the moon or some such thing. He might have done it too if there had not been the possibility that he would be overheard.

  He did not know how it was possible to love one’s family and friends and enjoy their company and feel grateful for them all—and yet to feel so constricted and constrained by them too. What was it about him? Whatever it was, it was a quite recent development. It had come with his thirtieth birthday, perhaps, this feeling that it was not enough to have everything, even family, even friends, even love.

  It was the realization that there was a vast emptiness within that had gone unexplored his whole life because he had been too busy with what was going on outside himself. He felt like a hollow shell and remembered Lady Barclay’s asking him if there was anything within the shield of charm he donned for public viewing.

  He had joked about it, told her he was charm through to the very heart. He was not sure his heart did anything more than pump blood about his body. Except that he did love. He must not be too harsh with himself. He loved his family.

  “You have gone very quiet again, Percy,” Aunt Edna remarked.

  “I am just enjoying the fact that you have all come such a distance for my sake,” he told her. And the thing was that he was not lying—not entirely so, anyway.

  He wanted his peace and quiet back.

  What?

  He had always avoided both as he would the plague.

  The gathering began to break up after the tea tray had been removed. Some of the older generation as well as Meredith went off to bed. A few of the cousins were going to the billiard room and invited Sidney and Arnold to join them. A couple of the uncles were going to withdraw to the library for a drink and a look at the reading choices.

  “Come with us, Percy?” Uncle Roderick suggested.

  “I think I am going to get a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Stretch my legs before I lie down.”

  “Do you want company, Perce?” Arnold asked.

  “Not necessarily,” he said.

  His friend bent a look on him.

  “Right,” he said. “The outdoors by the sea on a February night does not really call to me, I must admit. Enjoy your . . . solitude?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Billiards, Arnie?” Cyril asked, and the two of them went off together in pursuit of most of the other young people.

  Percy stepped outside after donning his greatcoat and gloves and hat and then deliberately going and fetching Hector from the second housekeeper’s room, though why he bothered he did not know. The dog would surely have found a way of following him anyway. His name would more appropriately be Phantom rather than Hector.

  It was a little before eleven o’clock. It was not too late for a stroll before retiring for the night. It was too late, far too late, to make a social call. But what about a call of necessity?

  May I seek refuge here occasionally? he had asked her.

  He could not possibly call on her at eleven o’clock at night. It would seem he
had come for one thing only.

  And would that be true?

  His steps took him to the right outside the front doors and around the path that led past the dower house. Would he walk on past, though?

  He would let her decide, he thought, or, rather, her lamp or candles or whatever she used to see in the dark when she was not sleeping. If her house was in darkness, he would walk on by. If there was light within, he would knock on her door—unless the light came from an upstairs room.

  There was light in the sitting room.

  Percy stood at the gate for what might have been five minutes until his feet inside his shoes—he had not changed into boots—turned numb with cold and his fingers inside his gloves tingled unpleasantly. Even his nose felt numb. He willed the light to move, to proceed upstairs, to give him the cue to move away and go home.

  And he willed it to stay where it was.

  Hector had given up sitting at his feet. He was lying there instead, his chin on his paws. He was beginning, Percy thought, looking down at him in the dim light of the moon, to look almost like a normal dog. Which was just as well, since he seemed to be stuck with the mutt. And, annoyingly, he felt love begin to creep up on him.

  Damned dog.

  The light stayed where it was.

  Percy opened the gate and closed it quietly behind him after he and Hector had stepped through. He did not want to signal his arrival. There was still time to escape. He lifted the knocker away from the door, hesitated, and released it. It made a horrible din.

  Lord, it was probably after eleven by this time.

  The door opened almost immediately, long before he was ready.

  And he said nothing. Not only could he not think of anything to say, but it did not even occur to him that perhaps he ought to say something.

  She did not say anything either. They stared at each other, the lamp she held in one hand lighting their faces from below. It took Hector to break the spell. It must have occurred to the dog that the warmth inside the house was preferable to the cold outside. He trotted in and turned, as if by right of ownership, into the sitting room.

  She stood to one side, mutely inviting Percy inside.

  “It is not exactly what it seems,” he said as she closed the door. “Late as it is, I have not come here expecting to sleep with you.”

  He never knew quite what happened to his tongue when he was in her presence. He had never spoken with any other lady as he very often seemed to speak to her.

  “You have come to take refuge here.” It was not a question. She turned to look at him with calm eyes and face. “Come, then.”

  And she led the way into the warmth of the sitting room.

  14

  Imogen had chosen not to go up to the hall for dinner even though Aunt Lavinia had sent a brief note again, assuring her that she would be welcome, that she was always welcome, as she knew, and did not need to wait for an invitation. And, she had added, there were two more guests—Cousin Percy’s gentlemen friends from London.

  Imogen liked all these people who had come to shatter her peace at Hardford, but she was finding the noise and bustle a little overwhelming. She was very thankful indeed for her own house, even if she must expect it to be invaded frequently during the daytime until everyone left.

  She wondered if he was finding it overwhelming too. But they were of his world, and his world was a busy, noisy place, she guessed, with little room for quiet introspection. Perhaps he was enjoying their company and had forgotten all about that night when he had asked if he might retreat here occasionally.

  But she remembered the book of Alexander Pope’s poetry on a table beside his chair in the library—and his double first degree in the classics. And she remembered something he had said just before asking if he might come here—I think I came to Cornwall in the hope of finding myself, though I did not realize that until this moment. I came because I needed to step away from my life and discover if from the age of thirty on I can find some new and worthwhile purpose to it.

  But he had not been allowed to step away from his life for long. It had caught up to him here.

  She stayed up later than she ought, though the morning visit with the older ladies and the afternoon down on the beach with a group of exuberant youngsters had tired her. She could not settle to reading, which might have relaxed her. She thought of writing to her mother, but decided to wait until morning, when she would be wider awake. She crocheted but could not admire what she did. She went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and ended up baking a batch of sweet biscuits and then washing up after herself. She crocheted again and petted Blossom, who was always fascinated by the fine silk thread and the flash of the crochet hook.

  And finally she admitted that she was waiting for him to come and it simply would not do. She was allowing her peace and hard-won discipline to be shattered. She would go to bed, have a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow take herself firmly in hand. This would not do.

  She put her crochet away and got to her feet, remembering as she did so that she had not eaten any of the biscuits she had baked or made any tea after boiling the kettle and measuring the tea leaves into the teapot. It was too late now, though. And she was neither hungry nor thirsty. She reached for the lamp, glancing at the same time at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was ten minutes past eleven.

  And that was when a knock sounded at the door, causing her to jump and Blossom to open her eyes.

  Imogen picked up the lamp and went to open the door. It did not occur to her to be cautious about doing so.

  For a dreadful moment they just stood looking at each other, one on each side of the door’s threshold. A draft of cold air came in from outside. The lamp, lighting his face from below, made him look taller and a bit menacing, especially as he was neither smiling nor speaking. But she knew in that moment that she wanted him, that there was really no decision to make—or if there was, then she had already made it. And she knew too that it was not just that—oh, she might as well think of it as sex—that made her desire him. It was not just sex. It was . . . more than that. That was what made it a truly dreadful moment.

  And then he was inside and had said that about not having come expecting to sleep with her—had he really said it aloud and not shocked her beyond words? And she had acknowledged that he had come to seek refuge and led the way into the sitting room. Hector was already seated beside the chair on which she had been sitting all evening, the chair where he always sat when he was here.

  Always?

  How many times had he been here? It seemed as if he had always been here, as if that chair had always waited for him when he was not, as though when she sat on it she was drawing comfort from the fact that it was his.

  This combination of tiredness and a late night was playing strange and dangerous tricks with her mind.

  He waited for her to seat herself on the love seat and then sat down himself. He had left his coat and hat out in the hall, she noticed. He was still unsmiling. He must have left his armor of easy charm out in the hall too.

  “You must have been about to go to bed,” he said. And then he did smile—a bit ruefully. “That was not the best conversational opener, was it?”

  “I am still up,” she said.

  He looked about the room and at the fire, which had burned low. He got up, as she remembered his doing last time, picked up the poker to spread the coals, and then piled on more from the coal scuttle beside the hearth. He stayed on his feet, one forearm resting on the mantel. He watched the fire catch on the new coals.

  “What if I had?” he asked her.

  Strangely, she knew exactly what he was asking, but he elaborated anyway.

  “What if I had come expecting to sleep with you?”

  She considered her answer.

  “Would you have tossed me out?” He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder.

 
; She shook her head.

  They gazed at each other for a few moments before he poked the fire again to give it more air and resumed his seat.

  “Is it possible for people to change, Imogen?” he asked her.

  She felt a little lurching of the stomach at the sound of her name on his lips—again.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Sometimes it takes a great calamity,” she said.

  His eyes searched her face. “Like the loss of a spouse?”

  She nodded slightly again.

  “What were you like before?” he asked.

  She spread her hands on her lap and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers—something she tended to do when her mind was agitated. She released the fabric and clasped her hands loosely in her lap.

  “Full of life and energy and laughter,” she said. “Sociable, gregarious. Tomboyish as a girl—I was the despair of my mother. Not really ladylike even after I grew up. Eager to live my life to the full.”

  His eyes roamed over her as if to see signs of that long-ago, long-gone girl she had been.

  “Would you want to be that person again?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Have you read William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience?” she asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “It is impossible to recapture innocence once it has been exposed for the illusion it is,” she said.

  “Illusion?” He frowned. “Why should innocence be more unreal, more untrue, than cynicism?”

  “I am not cynical,” she said. “But no, I could not go back.”

  “Can experience and suffering not be used to enrich one’s life rather than deaden or impoverish it?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She thought of her fellow Survivors. They were in a vastly different place in their lives than could have been predicted eight or nine years ago, but five of them at least had risen above the suffering and forged lives that were rich and apparently happy. Perhaps they would not be so happy now if they had not had to go through that long, dark night of pain and brokenness. Disturbing thought.