by Mary Balogh
Viola had pretended until as recently as two days ago that she was happy with her new life. Or if not quite happy, then at least contented. Happiness was not something she missed, after all, since she had never known it, except for one brief flaring of euphoria when she was sixteen and had fallen in love with the seventeen-year-old son of an acquaintance of her mother’s. That budding romance had not lasted. When she was seventeen her father had had a chance to marry her to the son and heir of the Earl of Riverdale, and he had talked her into it. It had not been difficult. She had always been a biddable, obedient daughter.
Viola had sighed as she took a bite of her sandwich and found it unexpectedly tasty. The bread was freshly baked, the beef moist and tender.
Who was she? The question, which popped so unexpectedly into her head, was a little frightening because it had no obvious answer. For many years she had thought she was the Countess of Riverdale and had identified herself with that title and everything that went with it—the social position, the obligations, the respect. She had become, in effect, not a person, but . . . but what? A mere label? A mere title? She had become something that had no basis in fact. She had never been the Countess of Riverdale.
Was she really nothing at all, then? Nobody? Like a ghost?
Who was she? And did no one care that she did not know the answer? That she had no identity? Except more labels—mother, mother-in-law, daughter, sister, sister-in-law, grandmother?
Who was she? At the back of it all, beyond it all, beneath it all, who was she? She had taken another bite and chewed determinedly, though the sandwich no longer tasted delicious. She had felt very close to hysteria. She recognized the panic, though she had never experienced it before—even just after the catastrophe. She had been simply numb then.
There was a certain coziness about the inn, she had noticed when she looked about in a deliberate attempt to steady herself. It was small and shabby, but it appeared to be clean, and it was a happy place, at least at present. She had moved her gaze to the open door and the crowd beyond it in the taproom. They were villagers, she supposed, all wearing their best clothes in anticipation of a day of revelry in one another’s company. She had felt a wave of unexpected nostalgia for the days when, as the countess, she had hosted picnics and open days at Hinsford and everyone had come from miles around. They had been . . . Yes, really, they had been happy times. Her adult life had not been one of unalloyed gloom.
Her eyes had moved idly from person to person of those she could see. On the far side of the room, facing her, were two gentlemen, clearly not belonging to the rest of the crowd, though both had a glass of ale in hand and one of them, the younger of the two, was smiling and nodding in response to something that had been said. They had probably arrived in that smart traveling carriage outside. Her eyes had moved over them and beyond with little curiosity until they snapped back to the other gentleman . . .
Oh.
Oh, goodness me.
It was a long time since she had last seen him. For many years she had avoided him altogether whenever she could and studiously kept her distance from him when she had found herself attending the same social event as he. By what bizarre coincidence . . .
He had seen her too. He was gazing back at her with those hooded, penetrating eyes of his, and she was aware suddenly—annoyingly—of her age and her lone state and the relative shabbiness of her appearance. She had not worn her best clothes for a journey by hired carriage, and she had left too early to have dressed her hair in anything more elaborate than a simple chignon.
She had looked sharply away when the landlord came to refill her coffee cup and tried to keep her eyes from straying again to that doorway. Why had she not sat at a table from which she could neither see nor be seen?
It seemed unfair that men—some men at least—aged far better than women and ended up at the age of forty or so even more attractive than they had been in their twenties. That was what he had been when she had fallen in love with him. Oh, and she had fallen hard. It had been nothing like the joy she had experienced with her first love at the age of sixteen, but she had never doubted that she was in love with Mr. Lamarr. It had not mattered that he was rumored to have been responsible for his wife’s death or that he cared so little for her memory that he had abandoned home and children almost immediately after her passing and lost no time in establishing a reputation for hard living and relentless womanizing, for coldness and a callous disregard for the conventions of society or the feelings of others. It had not mattered that despite his dark, lean good looks and surface charm it had been easy enough to detect the lack of real feeling or humanity in him. Women fell before him like grass before the scythe, and Viola had been no exception. He had singled her out for dalliance and, oh, she had been tempted, even though she had known perfectly well that dalliance was all it was or would ever be. Even though she had known he would abandon her the morning after she gave in to him.
She had been tempted.
Her marriage, even though it had produced three children, had been a sterile, joyless thing, and other wives strayed. It was even considered acceptable, provided the wife concerned had already done her duty and presented her husband with an heir, and provided her liaisons were carried out with sufficient discretion that the ton could pretend not to know.
Viola had sent him away.
Oh, to her shame she had done so not from any great moral conviction but because she had fallen in love with a rake and a rogue and knew that her heart would be broken if she allowed him to bed and then abandon her. She had sent him away and had her heart broken anyway. It had taken her a long, long time to get over him. Every new conquest of his she heard about and every known courtesan he paraded in Hyde Park to the outraged scrutiny of the ton had been like a spear to her heart.
He had been handsome beyond belief.
Now he was attractive beyond reason, even as he looked austere and aloof and more than a little intimidating. She could not resist stealing another look at him. His hair was silvering at the temples gorgeously. He was still looking steadily back at her.
He had made her feel young again—at the grand age of twenty-eight—and beautiful.
Now he made her feel old and . . . weary. As though life had passed her by and now it was too late to live it. All the years of her youth and early womanhood were gone and could never be brought back to be lived differently. Not that she would live them differently even if she could go back, she supposed. For she would still obey her father’s wishes, and she still would have married a bigamist and remained faithful and unhappy and ultimately a nothing and a nobody.
She had caught Mr. Lamarr’s eye again over the rim of her coffee cup and refused to be the first to look away. Why should she? She was forty-two years old and probably looked it. So what? Was her age something to be ashamed of?
Perhaps Harry was wounded again. Or dead. Ah, where had that thought come from? She dropped her gaze, Mr. Lamarr forgotten. She wondered how many mothers and wives across Britain were plagued with such fears every hour of every day of their lives. And sisters and grandmothers and aunts. For every soldier who was killed in battle there must be a dozen or more women who had worried themselves sick for years and might end up mourning for the rest of their lives. There was nothing so special about her. Or about Harry. Except that he was her son and sometimes love felt like the cruelest thing in the world.
He had gone. Mr. Lamarr, that was, and his companion. They had left when she was not looking. How foolish of her to feel disappointment that he had gone without a word or a parting glance. Most of the other people in the taproom had left too, she realized, and the noise had subsided considerably. It must be past noon by now. No doubt they had gone out into the village for the start of the festivities. Would she go out there too? Wander around to see what was to be seen? Or would she go up to her room, lie down for a while, and wallow in her self-pitying misery? How dreadful it was to be
self-pitying. And to have had the feeling intensified by the sight of an attractive man who had once pursued her and wanted to bed her but had gone away today without a word. She had not even had to tell him to leave this time.
Then the dining room door opened—the one into the hallway—and she turned her head to inform the innkeeper that she did not want more coffee. But it was not the innkeeper.
She had forgotten how tall he was, how perfectly formed. She had forgotten how elegantly he dressed, how at ease he was in all his finery. And how harsh and cynical his face was.
She had not forgotten his magnetism. She had felt it across the width of two rooms. Now it was palpable.
“You told me to go away,” he said. “But that was fifteen years or so ago. Was there a time limit?”
Three
“Fourteen,” she said. “It was fourteen years ago.”
It felt like a lifetime. Or like something from another life altogether. But here he was, fourteen years older and fourteen years more attractive, though there was a greater hardness now to the handsome, austere features. She wondered, as she had wondered at the time, why he had taken her literally at her word. He did not seem like a man who took kindly to being told no. But she had told him to go away and he had gone. His feelings for her, of course, had not run more than skin-deep. Or groin deep, to be more blunt about it. And there had been plenty of other women only too happy to jump to his every command.
“I stand corrected,” he said in that soft voice she remembered well. He had never been a man who needed to raise his voice. “Was there a time limit?”
How did one answer such a question? Well, with a simple no, she supposed. There was no time limit. She had sent him away and had intended that it be forever. But here she was, alone in a room with him fourteen years later, and he had spoken to her again and asked a question. He did not wait for the answer, though.
“Now how am I to interpret your silence?” He strolled to the table nearest the door, pulled out a chair, and sat on it, crossing one elegantly booted leg over the other as he did so. “Having sent me away once, you have nothing more to say to me? But you have already said something. You have corrected my defective memory. Could it be, then, that you hate to repeat yourself by inviting me yet again to go to the devil? Or could it be that you do not wish to admit that company—any company, even mine—is preferable to none at all when one is stranded in a godforsaken village somewhere in the wilds of England? I assume you are stranded and have not come here with the express purpose of jollificating with the locals and helping save them from being rained upon on Sunday mornings?”
The mere sound of his voice sent chills up her spine. Just because it was so soft? And because he spoke unhurriedly, with the absolute certainty that no one would dream of cutting him off?
“Jollificating?” she said. “Is it a word?”
“If it is not,” he said, his eyebrows lifting, “then it ought to be. Perhaps I should give serious consideration to writing a dictionary. What do you think? Do you believe it would rival Dr. Johnson’s?”
“With a one-word entry?” she said. “I very much doubt it, Mr. Lamarr.”
“Ah, but you do me an injustice,” he said. “I could think of ten words without having to frown in thought and pummel my brow. But why is it you will not answer a direct question? Was there a time limit? And are you stranded? All alone?”
“The axle of the carriage in which I am traveling came perilously close to breaking,” she said. “The coachman does not believe we will be able to resume the journey until tomorrow morning at the earliest.” Why was she explaining?
“I took a glance out into the innyard before stepping in here,” he said. “There is no sign of a private carriage. Has yours by chance made off without you, the imperiled axle story just one big hoax to be rid of you? But that is unlikely, I must admit. You did not—surely—arrive here in that apology for a conveyance that is listing hard to the northwest and looking for all the world as though it will not be fit to go anywhere for the next eternity or two. Or did you? A hired carriage, Lady Riverdale?”
“That is no longer my name,” she said.
“A hired carriage, Miss Kingsley?” He sounded pained.
“How are the mighty fallen?” she said. “Was that your meaning, Mr. Lamarr? Then why not say so?”
Long, elegant fingers closed about the handle of his quizzing glass, but he did not raise it to his eye. “Riverdale was a blackguard,” he said. “If it was your idea to completely disassociate yourself from him, even in name, then I congratulate you. You are better off without the connection. Kingsley is your maiden name, I assume?”
She did not answer. She looked down at her coffee in order to break eye contact with him. There was still half a cup left. It would be cold by now, though. Besides, she was not sure her hand would be steady enough to lift the cup without revealing her agitation.
“Miss Kingsley,” he said after a few moments of silence had passed. “Are you going to send me away again? And spend the rest of the day alone?”
“How I spend the rest of the day is none of your concern, Mr. Lamarr,” she said. “I do not suppose you are stranded here. I will not keep you, then. You must be eager to be on your way.”
“Must I?” His eyebrows rose again and he rotated the quizzing glass in his hand a few times. “But I am stranded. My brother was eager to be back on the road and left all of fifteen minutes ago. Too eager, perhaps. One wonders how long it will be before he realizes he has forgotten me, and whether when he does so he will deem it necessary to turn back to retrieve me. It is doubtful. The young are ever careless of their elders, do you not find? André is still in his twenties. A mere puppy.”
What? Whatever was he talking about?
“Your carriage has left without you?” She stared at him in disbelief. If it was true, then there could be only one explanation, and the absurd story he had just told was not it. “You sent it and your brother away? Because of me?”
His eyebrows rose again and he turned his glass once more. “But yes,” he said. “Why else?”
Her head turned cold. For one nasty moment she thought she was about to faint.
“Having done so,” he said, “I hope you will not force me to spend the rest of the day alone. The thought of attending a village fair unaccompanied is singularly unappealing. The prospect of whiling away the hours by trudging along country lanes trying to identify flora and fauna has even less appeal. If you are willing to suspend your dismissal of me, even just for today, Miss Kingsley, then perhaps we may step outside together either to jollificate or to wander and thus save each other from a day of unutterable boredom. Assuming, that is, you do not find me unutterably boring. Or worse.”
She stared at him and wondered, as she had done numerous times before—even after she had sent him away, even as she had avoided him and studiously averted her eyes from him whenever they happened to be in the same ballroom or theater—what it was about him that both powerfully repelled and attracted her. He was not a classically handsome man. His face was surely too thin and angular and unamiable. Instead he was . . . gorgeous. But that said almost nothing at all about him, only about her reaction to him. She had never been able to come up with quite the right word to describe him accurately. For with him it had never been just looks. It was . . . everything. Presence. Charisma. Power. Ruthlessness. Sexuality—though that was not a word very common to her vocabulary.
He expected her to spend the rest of the day in his company. Yes, expected. He had gambled on her compliance by sending his carriage on its way without him, though it was altogether likely it was waiting somewhere nearby and would return for him later tonight or tomorrow. It would be madness for her to comply, especially given the mood she was in.
Or perhaps it was exactly what she needed given the mood she was in—to do something unexpected and outrageous to fill in the hours and take her mind
off herself. The alternative was to hide away in her room and brood. And it was not as though she were going to be deceived or seduced or left brokenhearted tomorrow.
“I will attend the fair with you for an hour or two of the afternoon,” she said.
He released his hold on his quizzing glass. “There is to be a feast of sorts at the church hall later,” he said. “There will be nothing at all served here, alas. Both the taproom and the dining room are to be closed so that mine host and his good wife may mingle and feast with their neighbors. The banquet is to be followed by dancing on the village green this evening. It all sounds quite, quite irresistible, does it not?”
“I will most certainly draw the line at dancing,” she said.
“Ah, but you were always so lovely to dance with,” he told her. And oh, goodness, how had he done that? For with the mere dropping of a tone in his voice and a somewhat more intense focusing of his eyes upon hers, he had made it sound as if he were talking about a different sort of dance altogether from what would be performed on the village green this evening.
And of course—oh, of course—his words had their effect, as they always had. They half robbed her lungs of breath and her mind of good sense. She got firmly to her feet. Enough of this. “I shall go and fetch a bonnet and shawl,” she said, “and see if my baggage has been taken up to my room yet.”
He reached the door ahead of her and held it open. “And I will bespeak a room for myself since it would appear unlikely that my brother will return for me this side of nightfall,” he said. “So much for brotherly devotion. Shall we meet here again in fifteen minutes?”