Only a Kiss

by Mary Balogh

  Deuced embarrassing, actually. What the devil had possessed him to divulge that particular detail from his inglorious past? A twenty-year-old male virgin, no less.

  “I wish you had not told me,” she said. “I would have preferred to cling, at least in part, to my original impression of you.”

  “Oh, cling away,” he said. He removed his arm from about her and sat forward in order to drink his tea before it turned quite cold. “I very soon became the man you think me, Imogen—and you do not know the half of it. That old innocent who was once me has long faded into ancient history.”

  “Of course he has not,” she said. “We are made up of everything we have ever been, Percy. It is the joy and the pain of our individuality. There are no two of us the same.”

  He set his cup down and looked at her over his shoulder.

  “The world will be very glad there is only one of me,” he said.

  “But you have told me far more than the fact that you were still a virgin at the age of twenty or so,” she said. “And it is something else that probably no one else knows. Your image of yourself has taken a severe battering during the past ten years. Your life has become unbalanced, perhaps because the first twenty years were almost unalloyed happiness and diligence and security. You were both fortunate and unfortunate in that, Percy. And now you feel insecure and a bit worthless and not even sure that you like yourself. You need to find balance, but do not know quite how.”

  He stared at her for several moments before getting abruptly to his feet, dislodging poor Hector again as he did so. He busied himself with poking the fire and putting on a few more coals.

  “But not many of us ever do know quite how,” she continued quietly into the silence, and he had the feeling she was talking more to herself than to him. “Life is made up of opposing pairs—life and death, love and hatred, happiness and misery, light and darkness, and on and on to infinity. Finding balance and contentment is like trying to walk a tightrope between all those opposites without falling off on one side or the other and believing that life must be all light or all darkness, when neither one is the truth in itself.”

  Good Lord! What was it about late, late-night conversations?

  “You and me,” he said, turning fully to face her. “Another pair of opposites.”

  The cat was on her lap. She was stroking its back and ears, and it was purring, its eyes closed in ecstasy. He was envious.

  “I do beg your pardon,” she said. “How presumptuous of me to try analyzing your life and preaching at you.”

  He set one foot on the hearth and rested one arm along the mantel. What was it about her? Her hair was scraped back so severely from her face that it almost made her eyes slant. Her shapeless dressing gown was belted about her waist like a sack. She had just been haranguing him like a prissy governess.

  And he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any other woman.

  She was not even particularly feminine—not in a frills and lace and powdered, fragrant, swelling bosom sort of way, anyway. She was not lisping and big-eyed and worshipful with a head stuffed full of fluff.

  Devil take it, was he describing the sort of woman whose bed he usually sought?

  She was . . . What was the word Sidney had used earlier—or yesterday, to be precise? Formidable. That was it. She was formidable. That fact ought to repel him. Instead it attracted. Ah, another pair of opposites—attraction and repulsion.

  “You and me,” he said again. “But there has been no balance tonight, Imogen. It has been all me, as is only right for a domineering male lover.”

  She smiled at him—and the uncomfortable suspicion grew again that he was falling in love with her. Something unfamiliar was happening to him, anyway, something that was attacking his gut. And it was not just the desire to take her to bed and have his way with her until they were both panting with exhaustion. It was what was left beyond the sexual desire that was unfamiliar and unidentified—unless that was being in love. He hoped not.

  She should never smile.

  She should always smile.

  He felt as if he were on her balancing scale of opposites.

  “Yes, lord and master,” she said.

  He pointed a finger directly at her.

  “It will be your turn next time,” he said. “You have stripped me naked, Imogen, and I do not mean just abovestairs in your bedchamber. I will strip you next time—and I do not mean just abovestairs in your bedchamber.”

  He smiled at her even as her own smile faded.

  “Not tonight, though,” he said. “I have a valet to consider. No matter what I say to him, he will insist upon waiting up for me. He will be sitting in my dressing room at this very moment, without a fire, without a light, like patience on a monument. It is time I went home.”

  She lifted the cat gently off her lap and set it down beside her—the animal thanked her with an indignant meow. And she stood and brushed cat hairs from the ancient velvet of her dressing gown and looked up at him.

  He closed the distance between them and kissed her, his arms about her. There was no desire, though, to take her back up to bed, and that in itself was a bit unnerving. There was only the warmth of embracing a woman with whom he was becoming increasingly comfortable, even if she did harangue him when she could get him alone at two in the morning.

  She saw him on his way, holding the lamp aloft with one hand to light the path to the gate and clutching her dressing gown to her throat with the other. He looked back after closing the gate behind him and tried to convince himself that she did not present the most appealing sight he had ever seen in his life.

  The sooner he left here after this infernal ball, he thought, the better it would be for his peace of mind. He touched the brim of his hat with one gloved hand and turned away.

  18

  The ladies had taken possession of the library and the ballroom again. Imogen, Beth, and Meredith, at last sighting, were writing invitations. A couple of the uncles had gone off with Knorr to watch as part of the park wall was rebuilt without mortar. Leonard and Gregory had walked to Porthmare with Alma and Eva to deliver some invitations and visit some new acquaintances. Uncle Roderick and Cyril had taken Geoffrey down onto the beach again.

  Percy was riding along the top of the valley with Sidney and Arnold.

  “If I were you, Perce,” Arnold was saying, “I would turn a blind eye. You say nothing specific has happened since you came here to compel you to act.”

  “Apart from one soggy bed, one sooty floor complete with dead, sooty bird, and one window curtain designed to keep out the light even of the sun on midsummer day, no,” Percy admitted. “Nothing of which I am aware.”

  “You will be gone from here soon, Perce,” Sidney said. “And I doubt you will be back soon. There is not much here for you, is there? Apart from the widow, that is.”

  That drew Percy up short—and his horse too. “The widow?” he asked, frost in his voice.

  Arnold’s mount pranced about as he reined it in. He was grinning. “The last of us staggered off to bed just before three last night,” he said. “One of your uncles remarked that you were wiser than the rest of us and must have taken yourself off to bed after walking with the dog. Sid and I took a brief peek into your room. Fire crackling, nightshirt spread over a chair before the blaze, bedcovers turned neatly down, no Percy.”

  And the thing was, Percy thought as he contemplated dragging both men from their horses and banging their heads together, that they fully expected him to grin back, confess to his whereabouts at that ungodly hour, and make some bawdy boast about his newest conquest. They had every reason to expect it. It was what he would normally do. What was so different this time?

  Could it be that he was different? That he had changed, or, since a change of character did not happen overnight or even over a hundred nights, that he was changing? Devil take it, he needed to leave
this place.

  He looked down to the valley, peacefully green, the river flowing through it, the village farther back toward the sea.

  “I will be leaving soon,” he said. “And I doubt I will ever come back. It is the damnedest backwater.”

  And yet he felt disloyal saying so—disloyal to Lady Lavinia, to the Quentins and Alton and even Wenzel, to the vicar and the physician and the Kramer ladies and the sturdy fisherfolk. And there was Bains with his bandy legs and broken spirit, and Crutchley, who might have some voluntary involvement with smuggling or who just might be the victim of intimidation. There was that half cellar below his house that might be stuffed with contraband or awaiting a new shipment. There was . . . Imogen.

  How long had he been here? Two weeks? Three? It was no time at all. A mere blink of the eye. He would forget it all in another blink once he was away from here.

  He would forget her.

  They continued their ride.

  He could not recall regretting any of the liaisons he had had with women. He had ended most of them himself, but never because he had regretted starting them. He liked having affairs. They were mindless mutual enjoyment with no commitment or responsibilities attached.

  He already regretted what he had started with Imogen.

  He would forget her, though. She was leaving here herself a few days after this infernal ball. He would be gone before she returned.

  It was just dashed stupid of him to have fallen in love. He presumed that was what had happened to him. Certainly he could not explain his feelings any other way. He did not like being in love one little bit.

  “He does not want to talk about the widow, Arnie,” Sidney said.

  “I have come to the same conclusion, Sid,” Arnold agreed. “But I would ignore the smuggling if I were you, Perce. Everyone else does. You are not going to stop it anyway. Those revenue men never can. And you must admit, they are a humorless lot. It is a pleasure to see them hoodwinked.”

  “And you must admit, Perce,” Sidney added, “that brandy that comes into the country by the back door, so to speak, always seems to taste better than the legal stuff. It costs a lot less too.”

  The whole world was in agreement, it seemed, that it was best to ignore what was going on under everyone’s nose. Who was he to become a crusader? It had never occurred to him to be one until he came here. Having a conscience and acting upon it made him seem suspiciously like his old studious self—out of tune and out of step with all the rest of the world. A killjoy. A poor sport. An idiot.

  “Quite so,” he said. “There are supposed to be some old tin mines over there on the other side of the valley. I’ll find out exactly where and get up a party to go exploring one day.”

  And the conversation moved away from both smuggling and his affair.

  * * *

  By the end of the morning the invitations had all been written. Imogen allowed her spirits to be seduced by a sense of family as the older ladies flitted in and out of the library and the younger two chattered between invitations.

  Mrs. Hayes and her sister and sister-in-law often had disagreements, a few of them quite heated. But they never seemed to bear a grudge, and somehow they always found a compromise over a disputed plan for the grand party. The young cousins too, she had noticed on previous occasions, frequently squabbled among themselves, but always ended up giggling or guffawing. The twins sometimes avoided their older sister quite deliberately, but once she had seen them sitting on either side of her on the pianoforte bench while she picked out a melody, each with an arm about her shoulders. Mrs. Hayes’s brother seemed to prefer the company of his daughter and grandson to that of anyone else, but he was perfectly amiable when he was in company, and had even invited Mr. Cyril Eldridge, who was no blood relation, to walk on the beach with him and the little boy this morning. The other two older gentlemen were often discussing current affairs with each other and growing quite heated in their disagreements, but they also seemed ultimately content to agree to disagree.

  Imogen suddenly missed her brother—and her mother in far-off Cumberland. Family—that deep sense of connection as opposed to a mere dutiful visiting and letter writing—was something she had given up with everything else five years ago. She was not entitled to the warmth and comfort it provided—or to the bickering and the laughter.

  She felt a bit as though her heart had been in cold storage for a long time and was gradually thawing. She could not allow it to happen completely, of course, but for the next week and a half she would perhaps allow herself to relax a little. She would put herself back together when she was at Penderris, surrounded by her friends. She would ask for their help if she needed it, though just an awareness of their love and support would probably be sufficient. She would do it, though. She had never been much lacking in willpower.

  In the meantime, she would now permit herself some enjoyment. It seemed a long age—another lifetime—since she had last enjoyed herself.

  If only she had been able to have a child or two with Dicky, she thought as she left the hall to return home and drew her cloak more closely about her against the chill of a colder day. Geoffrey was coming across the lawn, one hand in his grandfather’s, the other in Mr. Eldridge’s, and she could hear the chant of their three voices, “One, two, three, j-u-u-m-p.” The two men lifted the shrieking child high between them on the last word.

  Imogen did not often regret her barrenness. What was the point? And it would have changed everything if she had been fertile. She would not be standing here now, smiling wistfully at a child who had not even been born when Dicky died. Who knew what she would have been doing? It was foolish even to think of it.

  Percy was approaching from the stables with his two friends and Hector frolicking along beside them—yes, actually frolicking. The child, seeing them, abandoned the other two gentlemen and went racing off to be lifted high and spun around and deposited astride Percy’s shoulders. A burst of laughter and a high-pitched shriek and giggle ensued when Percy’s tall hat was knocked off and he insisted upon bending to retrieve it himself, deliberately almost spilling the little boy over his head as he did so.

  There was a general exchange of pleasantries as everyone approached the house.

  “The invitations are all written, are they, Lady Barclay?” Mr. Galliard asked.

  “They are,” she told him. “We are all agreed that we cannot expect quite the sort of sad squeeze we might have hoped for if this were a London ball during the Season that we were planning, but the ballroom should be quite creditably filled.”

  “Hard luck, old chap,” Mr. Welby said, clapping Percy on the shoulder and lifting Geoffrey down to play with Hector.

  “One must always look on the bright side,” Percy said. “How lowering it would be if I could expect no more than my own family members and two friends already assembled here, huddled in one corner of the ballroom pretending to enjoy my belated birthday ball. I am not at all sure it is a good idea to let Heck kiss you, Geoff, my lad.”

  “Are you on the way home, Lady Barclay?” Viscount Marwood asked her. “Do allow me to escort you, ma’am.” And he offered his arm together with what seemed like a mischievous grin.

  “And since you are in possession of two arms, ma’am,” Mr. Welby said, bowing to her with a courtly flourish, “do allow me to escort you too.”

  Imogen laughed and dipped into a deep curtsy. “Why, thank you, gentlemen,” she said, taking an arm of each. “I was warned just yesterday that there might be wolves.”

  “Plural,” Percy said. “At least three of the beasts, or so I have been told. I had better come too.”

  And they set off, the four of them, across the lawn in the direction of the dower house with a continuation of the silly, mindless banter—in which Imogen joined. She found herself almost wishing someone would suggest the one-two-three-jump game. And then, when they came to her house, Percy opened the g
ate with a flourish, she stepped inside, he closed it, and the men took turns, the foolish idiots, raising the back of her hand to their lips and assuring her that she had brightened their day and made the fact of the hidden sun quite irrelevant.

  She stood at the gate, watching them walk away, Hector trotting along behind. They were still talking, still laughing, and she realized she was smiling—and realized too that it was an unfamiliar feeling. And then she was blinking back tears—yet again. Another unfamiliar feeling.

  Percy turned his head briefly before they disappeared from sight behind a tree and smiled at her. And she was still smiling herself, tears notwithstanding.

  Oh, goodness, oh, goodness—she was so very deeply in love with him.

  And it was all her own fault. She had no one to blame but herself.

  * * *

  “You have my permission,” she said, “to use my key at night—to let yourself in as well as out. Then I will not have to wait up, wondering if you are coming or not, for you will not always be able to come, will you?”

  He backed her against the wall of the hallway and kissed her openmouthed. It was closer to half past twelve than to midnight. He had half expected to find the dower house in darkness and had not known if he would knock on her door anyway. Her key had been burning a hole in his pocket.

  “I am sorry,” he told her. “I could not get away any sooner. We had a visitor.”

  “I know,” she said. “Mr. Wenzel, was it not? He brought Tilly and Elizabeth Quentin here and went to the hall rather than return home and come back for them later. But I am glad you came.”

  “So am I.” He rubbed his nose across hers.