Irresistible

by Mary Balogh

  “They are all here, Sophie,” Kenneth said. “Including the one that was on the floor. And even on the remote chance that he dared keep one or two back, I can assure you that he would never dare to let them come to light. Walter did not call us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for nothing.”

  She stared at the bundle, feeling rather faint.

  “There is a fire in here,” Kenneth said gently. “Shall I set them on it, Sophie, and we will watch them burn?”

  “Yes,” she said, and watched as he tossed the letters into the heart of the fire. There was an instant blaze about them, and they curled into golden and brown ashes. “Thank you.”

  “We did not read them, Sophie,” Eden said from across the room. “We do not know who she was and we do not want to know. All that needs still to be said on the topic is that I for one think old Walter had execrable taste and I would tell him so if he were still alive. But I’ll not say more. He was your husband and I daresay you were fond of him—and your marriage is really none of our business, is it? There—end of topic. Do you have only lukewarm tea to offer us, Catherine?”

  They did not know. They had not read the letters, and apparently Boris Pinter had said nothing. Sophia closed her eyes and heard a buzzing in her ears at the same time as she felt a blast of icy air in her nostrils.

  “She has fainted,” someone was saying from very far away. “No, she will be all right. Just keep your head down, Sophie.” Something firm was pressed against the back of her head, holding her face down almost on her knees. “Let the blood flow back.” It was Nathaniel’s voice.

  Someone was chafing her cold hands with warm ones. “Oh, poor dear Sophie,” Catherine said from close beside her ear. “This has been such a strain on you. Nathaniel, do carry her upstairs to one of the guest rooms. I will go ahead of you.”

  But Sophia lifted her head, pressing back against the resistance of Nathaniel’s hand. “No,” she said, “I am all right now. How terribly foolish of me. I must go home. Please, I must. I am more grateful to you all than I can say, but I need to go home.”

  “Of course,” Rex said. “I will have the carriage brought back around. Nat will accompany you.”

  It did not occur to Sophia to wonder why he had named Nathaniel rather than anyone else. All she wanted was to get home, where she could think herself back into yesterday’s mood and yesterday’s plans.

  She was free. Totally free—they did not even know.

  But while she should have been feeling euphoria, she was actually feeling mortally depressed. How perverse human emotions could be!

  She needed to be at home. She needed to start packing her belongings. She needed to pull herself free of the past, to detach herself from the present, and to look forward to the future.

  To the bright future.

  He had set her hand on his arm in the carriage and held it there with his free hand. He looked at her several times to make sure that she was not going to faint again. But they did not converse. She stared ahead and downward to the seat opposite.

  How must it feel, he wondered, for a woman to discover that her husband had conducted a long-term love affair with another woman and had left behind him a large pile of love letters? And to have salt rubbed in the wounds by a blackmailer threatening to expose the infidelity of her hero husband and her own corresponding shame?

  What did such knowledge and such an experience do to her confidence in herself, to her sense of self-worth? Did it send her into hiding behind a facade of plainness and placid amiability?

  But why had she broken off her friendship with them rather than enlist their help? Was she ashamed to have even them know that Walter had been a bounder after all? It was still difficult to think of Armitage engaging in what must have been a passionate affair—and writing love letters.

  He wished he could say something to console her. But anything he said on the topic would only make matters worse. Besides, Eden had promised her that the topic was permanently closed. And Ken had tossed those letters onto the flames.

  Why had she written that letter to him yesterday? he wondered. Because she knew what she was going to do this morning and had not wanted to be distracted? Because she just did not want a continuance of their affair? Because she did not care for him at all except perhaps as a friend?

  He could not even ask her at the moment. She still had too much of a burden on her mind after the events of the morning. Devil take it, what would have happened to her if they had not arrived when they had? Sooner or later Pinter would have got that gun away from her.

  The carriage came to a halt outside the house on Sloan Terrace.

  “Shall I come in, Sophie?” he asked. “Or would you rather be alone?”

  He expected that she would wish to be alone. But she looked at him as if she had just remembered that he was there with her.

  “Come in,” she said.

  She excused herself when they had arrived in her sitting room and was absent for a few minutes. When she returned, she was carrying a bowl of water with a towel and a cloth over her shoulder. There was a jar of some ointment in one of her hands.

  “Sit down,” she told him as he looked at her in some surprise.

  He did so and watched silently as she took one of his hands and lowered it into the water—it was warm—and proceeded to cleanse his knuckles with the cloth. Her touch was infinitely gentle. He felt very little pain, even though his hand had been devilishly sore and the other one still was. She patted his hand dry with the towel and smoothed some of the ointment onto his knuckles. She started on the other hand.

  She was wearing a dark-colored walking dress that he knew now was about one size too large for her. Her hair had been dressed severely for the morning’s activity. She had obviously not combed it since leaving for Pinter’s lodgings. Unruly curls had sprung all about what had probably been a smooth chignon for perhaps five or ten minutes. Her face was intent on what she was doing. It was still rather pale.

  She looked beautiful to him.

  She got up without a word or even a glance at his face after she was finished and took everything back to wherever she had found it. He flexed his fingers rather gingerly. His knuckles shone from the ointment. They felt considerably soothed.

  He raised his head when she came back into the room. She stood looking down at him—it had not occurred to him to get to his feet.

  “Thank you for what you did, Nathaniel,” she said. “I am sorry I ever called it interference. I recognized it today for what it was—friendship. It is good to have friends.”

  “Sophie,” he said, “will you marry me?”

  She stared at him for what seemed a long while, her eyes filling with tears. The whole of the rest of his life hung in the balance, he knew, scarcely daring to breathe. But her answer came even before she spoke. She shook her head slowly.

  “No,” she said. “Thank you but no, Nathaniel. I am going away—within the week. I am selling my house. I was not sure I could, but apparently it is mine without any conditions attached. I am going home to Gloucestershire to stay with my brother and his family until the sale is final. Then I am going to buy a cottage of my own and begin a new life with old acquaintances and friends. I believe I needed to be here for a while to recover from all those years without roots. But I know now that I will be happiest in the country. I am really looking forward to going, to beginning afresh.”

  He swallowed. Perhaps he had not really believed until now that it was all over, that she simply did not want him. He had served a purpose in her life—though he did not believe she had deliberately used him—but that was now in her past. She was planning her future and looking forward to it. It did not include him.

  “Well.” He got to his feet and smiled at her. “I had to ask, Sophie. Forgive me. I wish you well. I wish you all the happiness in the world. We can part friends?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Oh, of course, Nathaniel. You will always be dear to me. You must know that. Always.”

  He held
his smile and felt the raw ache of tears at the back of his throat and up behind his nose.

  “Yes,” he said. “Always.”

  Though it would be a friendship only in the sense that they would always think kindly of each other, he thought. They would not correspond with each other. They would probably never meet again. He hoped they would not.

  “I will leave you, then, Sophie,” he said. “If I were you, I would rest for a while.”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “Well.” There was a moment of awkwardness, a moment of almost unbearable panic. “Good day to you, then.”

  “Good day, Nathaniel,” she said.

  She stood where she was, not far from the door, her back to it, while he let himself out without touching her. He dismissed Rex’s carriage and set out on the walk home.

  What they had really been saying was good-bye.

  “You are going to Gloucestershire,” Lavinia said unnecessarily, since Sophia had already told her so, and indeed she had arrived with the knowledge—Nathaniel had told her yesterday when he had returned home. “And you are going to buy your own cottage and live an idyllic life in the country.”

  “Yes,” Sophia said.

  There were a few boxes lying open in various parts of the room, into which she had started to pack ornaments and books and the contents of the escritoire. Lavinia was wandering idly about, peering into boxes, though absently rather than inquisitively.

  “I am so happy for you,” Lavinia said. “But not as envious as I might have been. Nat and I are going back to Bowood soon. Georgina will stay with Margaret and John. Nat is going to allow me to live alone somewhere on the estate. It is a great triumph for me.”

  “I am glad.” Sophia smiled, though she did not fail to notice that Lavinia was not smiling. “Are you quite sure, though, that it is what you want? A life of solitude sometimes sounds idyllic. In reality it is frequently lonely.”

  “Are you sometimes lonely?” Lavinia was looking at her, frowning.

  “Sometimes,” Sophia admitted. “Not often, it is true, but on occasion one wishes there were someone to talk with during the quiet hours at home, apart from a dog.” Someone to lie with at night, someone with whom to mull over the events of the day while one lay cozily in his arms. Someone to snuggle close to so that sleep would come more easily and be deeper when it came.

  “I thought you were happy.” Lavinia was still frowning. “You do not look happy, Sophie. You are pale. You look as if you have not slept. Are you sure you are doing the right thing?”

  “Oh yes.” Sophia smiled brightly. “It is just that there is so much work to uprooting oneself and moving across a country. I was accustomed to it once, but those days are long gone. Besides, I had very few belongings in those days.”

  “What were they like?” Lavinia asked. She picked up the handkerchief that was lying on the arm of a chair—the handkerchief! “Nat, I mean, and Lord Haverford and Lord Rawleigh.” She made as if to put the handkerchief down again, but she spread it, folded, across her open palm instead. “And Lord Pelham. Were they horridly obnoxious?”

  “No.” Sophia could scarcely concentrate on what she said. She wanted to snatch away the handkerchief. “They were dashing and brave and bold and charming and funny and outrageous—and very good officers. Their superiors were always exasperated with them—but sent for them whenever there was real work to be done. Their men trusted them and were devoted to them. The women—all of us—were in love with them.”

  “They were not—conceited?” Lavinia asked. Her finger was tracing the outline of the embroidered letter G.

  “They had a great deal to be conceited about,” Sophia said. “There was something—oh, larger than life about them. But they never seemed conceited. They were the best of friends to me. My father’s name was George, you know.” Her father’s name had been Thomas.

  “Mmm?” Lavinia looked up at her with blank eyes.

  “The handkerchief,” Sophia said. How foolish that lie had been. Lavinia had not even been noticing the handkerchief. But she looked at it now.

  “Oh,” she said, and set it down on the arm of the chair again.

  Sophia went toward the chair, picked up the linen casually, and put it into the pocket of her apron.

  “I suppose,” Lavinia said, “men who are too handsome for their own good are not necessarily conceited, are they? They cannot help their looks and their physique and their—experience with life.”

  She was in a strange mood, Sophia thought. Restless. She had not sat down at all, though Sophia had invited her to sit and have some tea.

  “Georgina has an attachment to your nephew,” Lavinia said, picking up a china ornament that had not yet found its way into the box beside which it stood. “And your niece is going to marry Viscount Perry. It certainly did not take them long to make up their minds, did it? Is it possible, Sophie? To know someone for such a short time and yet know for certain that he is the only man in this world with whom one could contemplate spending the rest of one’s life? And that life without him would be unbearably empty? It is not possible, is it? Yet they seem so happy.”

  What was this all about? Sophia sat down and looked closely at her guest. “Whom have you met?” she asked quietly.

  Lavinia looked at her, startled, and flushed deeply. “Oh.” She laughed. “No one. I was not talking about me. I was talking theoretically. Is there such a thing as love, Sophie? As that one man who seems like part of one’s very soul? It sounds like ridiculous rubbish to me, even though I suppose I have always dreamed ...”

  Sophia remembered her sleepless night. Remembered Nathaniel’s sitting on this very chair yesterday, asking her to marry him. With quiet, kind courtesy. Because he felt sorry for her and responsible for her. Because he had lain with her. Because he was genuinely fond of her. Because he was an honorable man. She remembered the temptation, worse than any physical pain. She remembered the stark knowledge the night had brought. Never again. Two of the bleakest words in the English language when put together.

  Never again.

  “Yes,” she said softly, “there is such a love.”

  “Have you known it, Sophie?” Lavinia asked, eagerly.

  “Oh, yes,” Sophia said. “Oh, yes.” She got to her feet abruptly and crossed to the bellpull. “I feel like tea, if you do not.”

  “Sometimes,” Lavinia said with a sigh, “I wish life were simpler. I wish it could be lived with the reason alone. Why do we have to be plagued with emotions?”

  “Life would be very dull,” Sophia said, “without love and friendship and joy and hope and all the other positive emotions.”

  “Yes.” Lavinia chuckled and sat down at last. “It is all the negative ones I object to. I want to be sane and sensible and free and independent.”

  But you have fallen in love, Sophia thought, and wondered who the gentleman was. She could not imagine any man not reciprocating feelings Lavinia had for him.

  However, Lavinia was clearly not ready to confide in her and she would not pry.

  The tea tray arrived.

  And then there was all the distress of parting. Sophia was going to Gloucestershire the next day. Lavinia and Nathaniel were going to Bowood in Yorkshire soon after.

  They would write to each other, the two women agreed. But they both seemed aware that it was unlikely they would meet again.

  TWENTY-ONE

  SOMETIMES SOPHIA LOOKED back with nostalgia on the settled, tranquil life she had lived on Sloan Terrace in London. In the three months since she had left there life had been anything but settled. The sale of her house had taken a little longer than she had expected, with the result that though she now had the money with which to buy a home in Gloucestershire, she still had not done so. She was still nominally living with Thomas and Anne and their children.

  Now she was no longer sure she wished to buy a home just there. Perhaps, she thought, she would go elsewhere, farther away, where no one knew her, where she could really begin all ove
r again. But the prospect was dreary and a little frightening. Sometimes she was tempted to take a more obvious path.

  She had delayed making the decision. First there had been Sarah’s wedding to Viscount Perry to attend in July. Sophia had gone with the idea of spending just two weeks with Edwin and Beatrice, but they had wanted her to stay on so that she might travel with them to Yorkshire late in August for Lewis’s wedding to Georgina Gascoigne—Sophia had, naturally enough, received an invitation. No one had been able to understand her hesitation about going.

  How could she go? It had been bad enough seeing Rex and Catherine at Sarah’s wedding. Wounds that had barely filmed over had been ripped raw again, especially when Catherine, heavy with child, had strolled with Sophia one afternoon and told her that they had been convinced during the spring, she and Rex, that there had been something between Sophie and Nathaniel.

  “It was wishful thinking, of course,” she had said, laughing. “We like to have our friends all closely linked together. And the fact that it was Nathaniel who fought for you seemed wonderfully romantic. You will shake your head at us for trying to manage your life again, Sophie. You are happy in Gloucestershire?”

  But how could she not go to Lewis’s wedding? She would be able to offer no reasonable explanation for not going. Everyone would be hurt and offended if she did not.

  Except Nathaniel. Although he had sent her an invitation, he must surely be hoping that she would refuse.

  But her dilemma had been solved for her—or partly so. Lavinia had written to her each week since they had parted. She was now living alone—except for a few servants—in a cottage in the village of Bowood and claimed to be idyl lically happy. She had invited Sophia to stay there with her when she came for the wedding. It would be so much more cozy, she had written, than staying at the house, which would be crammed with other guests.

  And so Sophia was traveling into Yorkshire with her brother- and sister-in-law and wishing she was going anywhere else on earth—though that was not exactly true, either, she admitted to herself as they drew close to their destination. Edwin and Beatrice were both asleep.