Someone To Love

by Mary Balogh

  She surprised herself by laughing. “You are so absurd,” she said.

  He tipped his head to one side and looked down at her, that suggestion of amusement still in his eyes. But he did not say anything. He proceeded to remove his pantaloons and his drawers.

  She was twenty-five years old and a total innocent. She knew what a man looked like only because on one visit to the bookshop in Bath she had leafed through a volume about ancient Greece and come across pictures of sculptures of various gods and heroes. She had been both shocked and fascinated and had thought how unfair it was that the male physique was so much more attractive than the female—though perhaps she had thought that only because she was looking through female eyes. She had put the book back on the shelf with a guilty glance around to see that she was not being observed, and had never looked again.

  Avery was more beautiful than any of those gods and heroes, perhaps because he was real flesh and blood. He was perfection itself.

  He set one knee on the bed beside her and braced his hands on either side of her as he swung across to straddle her. With his knees he pressed her own together and moved his hands over her again. He lifted her breasts in the cleft between his thumbs and forefingers and set the pads of his thumbs over her nipples. He rubbed them in light circles and pulsed lightly against them until she felt such a raw . . . something that she closed her eyes and lifted herself closer. His mouth came to her shoulder, across to the hollow between it and her neck, to her throat—open, hot, wet. And he was down on her then, the full length of his legs clamping hers tightly together while his hands moved beneath her and down to cup her bottom while he rubbed himself against the tops of her legs and she could feel him hard and long and alien.

  He moved his mouth to the other side of her neck and along her shoulder as one of his hands came between them and his fingers worked their way between her tight thighs and down into folds and depths until one finger came right inside her to the knuckle and she stiffened with mingled shock and embarrassment and longing. His legs pressed more tightly against the outsides of hers. She could hear wetness as he moved his finger, drawing it out, sliding it in again.

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” he said, his mouth against her temple.

  He raised his head to look down at her as his hands hooked beneath her legs and drew them wide and wrapped them about his own as he came between. He moved his hands beneath her again to lift and hold her. She felt him hard and hot where his finger had been, and then he came into her with one firm thrust. His eyes watched her while shock, pain, and something beyond words or thought engulfed her. He held still and deep in her while her mind and body grappled with a new reality and the tension went gradually out of her.

  “Ah, my poor Anna,” he murmured. “So hot, so beautiful. There was no way not to hurt you, you see. But only this time. Not next time or ever again. It is my promise to you.”

  She touched him. She set her hands on either side of his waist—hard, firm muscled, so unlike her own. And she moved them to his back, along the column of his spine, down to rest lightly over tight buttocks. He drew slowly out of her, muscles relaxing beneath her hands, and she did not want to let him go. And then the muscles tightened and he came in again, hard and firm and deep. He turned his head to rest beside hers on the pillow and took some of his weight onto his elbows and forearms, though his chest pressed against her breasts and his shoulders held hers to the bed. He moved into her and out of her with a firm, steady rhythm. There was sound—a wet suck and pull, a slight squeak of the bed, labored breathing, laughter from a distance down the street. There was sensation, weight pinning her to the bed, heat, the slight coolness of air coming through the window and finding its way through or past the curtains, the hardness of him inside her, smooth, wet, not quite painful. She did not want it to end. She wanted it to go on forever.

  Forever lasted a long time and no time at all. The rhythm broke and he pressed hard into her until there was no deeper to come, and while he murmured something unintelligible against her ear, she felt a gush of liquid heat inside and knew that it was finished. His full weight relaxed down onto her then and she wrapped her arms about his waist and untwined her legs from about his to set her feet flat on the bed. After a few moments he sighed against her ear, withdrew from her, and rolled off her to recline beside her, his head propped on one hand.

  “Wedded and bedded,” he said. “Anna Snow no more or even Anastasia Westcott. My wife, instead. My duchess. Is it such a terrible fate, Anna?”

  There was something very like wistfulness in his voice.

  “No,” she said, and she smiled. “My duke.”

  He got off the bed then, picked up one of the keys he had dropped onto the dressing table, unlocked the dressing room door, and went inside. He came back a few moments later, a small towel in his hand. He locked the door again and got back into bed, drew the upper sheet and one blanket over them, and slid an arm beneath her shoulders to turn her onto her side facing him. He slipped the towel between her thighs, spread it, and held it gently against her before removing his hand and leaving the towel where it was. It felt soothing. He arranged the covers over them and drew her closer. Within moments he was asleep.

  How could he possibly sleep? But she supposed it had not been nearly as momentous for him as it had been for her. She did not want to think of other women, but she did not doubt there had been many. He was thirty-one years old, and he did not seem like the sort of man who would deny himself anything he wanted. The thought did not trouble her, she realized. Not as it applied to the past, at least.

  She had hardly slept last night. Indeed, she would have believed she had not slept at all if she had not kept waking from bizarre dreams. She had been up well before dawn. She had been in Hyde Park with Elizabeth before there was full daylight by which to see. She had lived through all the terror and strangeness of that duel. Then she had returned home and, instead of dropping back into bed, had had an early breakfast with Elizabeth and then written a long letter to Joel. After that there had been her wedding and then the visit of her family and now the consummation of her marriage. Could all that possibly have happened within so short a time?

  Exhaustion hit her rather like a soft mallet to the head. And also the knowledge that she was warm and comfortable, that her body was against his, that the soft sound of his breathing was both soothing and lulling, that she was . . . happy.

  She slept.

  Twenty

  “It is good to have you home again, Lizzie,” Alexander said at dinner that evening. “I have missed you. Mama has too.”

  “It does feel good,” she admitted, “though I enjoyed my weeks with Anna. I like her exceedingly well.”

  Their mother was regarding Alexander with slightly troubled eyes. “Do you mind dreadfully, Alex, that she has married Avery?” she asked. “You more or less offered for her yourself yesterday, and I believe she might have been persuaded to accept if he had not been there.”

  “No,” he said, picking up his glass of wine and leaning back in his chair. “I do not mind, Mama. Netherby saved me from the temptation to persuade Anastasia to take the easy way out of both our problems.”

  “But you are a little sad anyway?” she asked.

  “Maybe a little,” he admitted after hesitating for a moment. “But only for a despicable reason. I could have restored Brambledean to prosperity without having to cudgel my brains further over how it is to be done.”

  “You do yourself an injustice,” she said. “You would have been good to Anastasia too. I know you better than to believe you would have cared only for the money and not for the bride who brought it to you.”

  “I am going to have to marry for money anyway,” he said. “I have come to that conclusion. Brambledean cannot recover from years of neglect as Riddings Park did, just with some hard work and careful economies. But I have the title and dilapidated property to offer a rich wife in return.”


  “Ah,” she said, reaching out to pat his free hand on the table. “I did not expect ever to hear you bitter or cynical, Alex. It hurts my heart.”

  “I do beg your pardon, Mama,” he said, setting down his glass in order to cover her hand with his own. “I feel neither bitter nor cynical. I am merely being realistic. I owe prosperity to those who are dependent upon me at Brambledean. If I can offer it through marrying a wealthy bride, then so be it. A bride does not have to be distasteful merely because she is rich, and I would hope that I need not be distasteful to her merely because I have an earl’s title. I will expect to hold her in affection and to work tirelessly to win hers.”

  His mother sighed, drew her hand free, and returned her attention to her food.

  “Do you resent what Avery has done, Alex?” Elizabeth asked. “I know you have never liked him.”

  He frowned in thought. “I believe I have revised my opinion of him recently,” he said. “I— There is more to him than he allows the world to see or chooses to allow the world to believe. Part of me is horrified for Anastasia even so. He cannot possibly value her as he ought or treat her with anything but careless indifference. She will surely regret her impulsive decision to marry him just because he offered to take her to see grandparents who would have nothing to do with her after her mother died. I fear she will soon be very unhappy.”

  Elizabeth tipped her head to one side and looked curiously at him. “But—?” she said.

  “But I have the strange feeling,” he said, “that I may be completely wrong. I have known Netherby since we were both boys at school. Yet I discovered aspects of him . . . recently that I did not even begin to suspect.” He glanced at their mother. “It is possible, even probable, that I have never known him at all. And yes, I still resent him for that, Lizzie, and could never, I think, call him friend. How can one be a friend to someone who has chosen to make himself unknowable? Yet if I ever needed . . . help, I believe I would not hesitate to turn to him. Beyond my fear for Anastasia lies a certain suspicion that she will be happy after all and that perhaps he will be too. Though one cannot quite imagine Netherby happy, can one?”

  “Oh, I can,” their mother said. “His eyes sometimes give him away, Alex, if one looks closely enough. He has a certain way of looking at Anastasia . . . Well, I do believe he is in love with her. And she is in love with him, of course. What woman would not be if he turned his attention on her and informed her in that strange way of his that she could be his duchess if she chose and then whisked her off the very next day with a special license and two witnesses to marry her? Lizzie, was it a very romantic wedding?”

  “I believe it was, Mama,” Elizabeth said, her eyes twinkling. “I think it was perhaps the most romantic wedding I have ever attended. Cousin Louise would have had an apoplexy, not to mention Cousin Matilda—Anna wore her plain straw bonnet and forgot her gloves.”

  She laughed, and her mother clasped her hands to her bosom and beamed with delight. Alexander leaned back in his chair and smiled fondly from one to the other of them.

  * * *

  Anna had thought she was traveling in great comfort when she came to London in the chaise Mr. Brumford had hired, with her small bag containing most of her worldly possessions and Miss Knox for companionship. What a difference a few weeks had made. She traveled back west in a carriage so opulent that even the lamentable state of English roads could not seriously disconcert the springs or make the seats seem less than plushly comfortable. This time there was so much baggage that a separate conveyance was coming along behind, together with a valet and a maid.

  For companionship she had Avery, who asked her about her education and told her about his own, who conversed with her about books and art and music and politics and the war. He told her about Morland Abbey, his home in the country, hers too now, a house with character surrounded by a vast landscaped park complete with follies, a wilderness walk, a lake, shaded alleys, and rolling lawns dotted with ancient trees. He was sometimes serious, sometimes outrageously funny in his own peculiar way. He talked a great deal, and he listened just as much, his head usually turned toward her, his eyes regarding her in their characteristic lazy but attentive way.

  Often they did not talk at all but watched the landscape passing by beyond the windows. Occasionally they nodded off to sleep, his head wedged into the corner beside him, hers burrowed between his shoulder and the back of the seat. Sometimes he held her hand and laced their fingers. If they had been silent too long, he would tickle her palm with his thumbnail and smile lazily when she turned her head.

  They traveled at a far more leisurely pace than she had on that other journey. Whenever they stopped to change the horses, he always stayed out in the yard to look over the replacements, often with a pained expression because this journey had been planned in too much of a hurry to allow time to send his own horses forward to the various staging points. Then he would join Anna for refreshments or a full meal, always in a private parlor, even when it seemed the inn at which they stopped was full to overflowing. They were treated with a deference often bordering upon obsequiousness that amazed Anna, though she realized that Avery was so accustomed to it he did not even notice. His coat of arms was, of course, emblazoned on both doors of their carriage, and his coachman and footman and two outriders were dressed in a distinctive livery. There could be no missing their passage west. Even if he had been alone, though, and without all the trappings, Anna suspected that everyone would still have known at a single glance that he was no ordinary gentleman but a distinguished member of the Quality.

  They stayed two nights on the road in the very best of accommodations with the very best service. They were presented with a seeming banquet each evening, walked for a couple of miles afterward since the days of travel allowed no chance for exercise, and then went to bed, where they made love, slept deeply, and made love again in the early dawn.

  Anna fell more deeply in love. But no, that was not quite accurate, since she had probably been in as deeply as it was possible to get even before they left London. On the journey she began to love him as she got to know him more—his intellect, his knowledge and opinions, his obvious love of his home, his brand of humor, his way of making love. Though there was no single way about that. Every time was different from the time before and the time after.

  They were in what some people referred to as the honeymoon stage of their marriage, of course, and she had too much good sense to expect it to last indefinitely. But, forced into each other’s company as they were for the first two and a half days of their marriage, a certain ease had developed between them. They could sit in silence without embarrassment. They could doze in each other’s company. More important, something of a friendship was surely being built, and that perhaps would carry into the future so that they could be comfortable together even when the passion died—as surely it would.

  An ease of manner in each other’s company and a friendship would be enough in the years ahead. And—oh, please, please—children. He had actually referred to them on the day of their wedding. And he must, of course, want sons, an heir. No, she told herself firmly when once or twice doubt teased at the edges of her mind, she had not made a poor decision. She was happy now. In the future she would be content to be content. She smiled at the thought.

  “A penny for them, my duchess,” Avery said. They were somewhere south of Bristol, not far from the end of their journey. It always amused her to be called that—or aroused her if he said it in bed.

  “Oh,” she said, “I was thinking that I could be contented with being contented.”

  He looked pained. “You cannot, surely, be serious,” he said. “Contentment, Anna? Bah! Utter blandness. You were not made for any such thing. You must demand blissful happiness or grapple with deep misery. But never contentment. You must not sell yourself short. I will not allow it.”

  “You intend to be a tyrant, then?” she asked him.<
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  “Did you expect anything less?” he asked her. “I shall insist that you be happy, Anna, whether you wish to be or not. I will not brook disobedience.”

  She laughed, and he turned his head. “That is your cue to say, Yes, Your Grace, in the meekest of accents,” he added.

  “Ah,” she said, “but I never learned my part. No one gave me the script.”

  “I shall teach you,” he said, turning his head away to look out at the countryside.

  And he was only half joking, she thought, puzzled. Perhaps he did not understand that this was only a honeymoon period. Perhaps he thought his feelings would last. But what were his feelings? Was his passion for her only physical? Why had he married her of all women? He was thirty-one years old. He was an aristocrat, rich, powerful, influential, beautiful. Within the past ten years he might have married anyone he chose. No one, surely, would have refused him.

  Why her?

  But only half her attention was on the mystery that was her husband. The rest was upon the slight sickness she was feeling in her stomach. They had stopped for luncheon a short while ago. The other carriage had remained there along with their baggage and all the servants except the coachman. They would return there for the night. But soon they would come to Wensbury, where she had spent a couple of years of her infancy, where her mother was presumably buried, where her grandparents still lived at the vicarage beside the church, where her grandfather was still vicar.

  Was this all a huge mistake? Since they had not wanted her, would it have been better to leave well enough alone and forget about them? But now that the blank emptiness of years had been wiped away, how could she be content not to know everything there was to know? She had to see them, even if they turned her away again. She had to see what she so dimly and inadequately remembered—the room with the window seat, the graveyard below, the lych-gate. Yes, she had had to come.