by Mary Balogh
She blinked her eyes. It was not the lake water that was blurring her vision, she realized. She turned away from him and stumbled onward, coming to a stop only when she reached the heap of their clothing on the grass. She fell to her knees beside her dress.
Robert Mitford looked nothing like Peter, Marquess of Wigham. But she had known there beneath the water that they were one and the same nevertheless and that she loved Robert with all her heart and soul, as she had loved Peter and all his other incarnations back through the ages.
Loved and lost each time, if Robert was to be believed.
And this time?
He was on his knees behind her, drying her arms and shoulders with his waistcoat, squeezing out the ruined knot of her coiffure before removing the pins and letting her hair fall about her shoulders.
“I love you with everything that is myself,” he said, his voice deep and warm. “I always have, and I always will.”
And she turned on her knees, and they wrapped their arms tightly about each other and pressed their faces to each other’s shoulder for long moments before raising their heads and gazing into the depths of each other’s eyes.
He kissed her. And she kissed him back with equal ardor.
He was no longer a stranger. He never had been. This was no longer improper, wrong, immoral. He was the man she had loved from all eternity and would love to all eternity.
“Jane.” His mouth was hot against her throat. His hands had pushed up under her shift to cup her buttocks and follow the flare of her hips to the curve of her waist and the firm weight of her breasts.
She raised her arms, and he lifted off the shift and dropped it to the grass beside them.
She felt curiously unembarrassed as his hands came back to her breasts, supporting them from beneath as one thumb pressed against a nipple, and his mouth came down to suckle the other.
She twined her fingers in the warm wetness of his hair and then lowered both hands to move along his thighs, spread on either side of hers.
He raised his head to pull his coat closer and spread it on the grass, and then he lowered her to lie on it while he peeled off his drawers. She sucked in her breath at the sight of him. She had never… Oh, it did not matter. She wanted him. She needed him. And this was right.
Nothing in her life had ever been more right than this.
He parted her thighs with his knees, came down onto her, slid his hands beneath her and came inside her, all long and hard and hot and hurting. And then not hurting at all, but hard and lovely.
Shockingly lovely.
He was her lover, the completion of her soul, and they had these bodies so that they could enjoy their love with all the carnality of their human senses and with the rhythmic give-and-take of this lovely act of ultimate intimacy.
She did not know how to make love. She did not know how to accept a loving. Yet she knew it all at the deepest core of herself, and she moved with him as he loved her and wanted it to go on and on forever and forever.
The one disadvantage of the human condition, of course, was that nothing was forever. Passion strove toward the crest, hovered for a moment upon the very peak of longing and pain, and then swooped into the lovely flowering of pain that turned out not to be pain after all but an exhilarating sort of peace.
A contradiction in terms.
And yet not.
Like all the dualities of human life.
“Robert,” she murmured against his ear.
“My love.”
She wondered as she sank deeper into lethargy if she would be sorry for this. Sanity was bound to reassert itself soon, surely.
But not yet.
Ah, not yet.
He raised his head, and they kissed each other with warm languor. She wrapped both arms about his neck.
He was warmly, deliciously human.
They were still joined at the core.
CHAPTER 5
THEIR CLOTHES HAD DRIED IN THE HEAT OF THE sun while they dozed side by side. But they were both awake again. Their hands were clasped on the grass between them.
That was something he had not intended to do, Robert thought, and ought not to have done. But he could not feel as sorry as perhaps he should. There had been an inevitability about it.
“Marry me?” he asked, squeezing her hand a little more tightly.
And then it struck him that it was hardly a memorable way in which to ask such a momentous question, though it was just the way he had asked two days ago. He turned his head toward her. She was looking back, and she was smiling. Her hair, half-dry, was a tangled mess. It somehow made her look more beautiful than ever.
“Yes,” she said.
Just like that? Was it to be easy after all, then, during this lifetime?
“I ought to have spoken with your father first,” he said. “Will he give his blessing?”
From what he had seen of Sir Horace Everett, the man was vain and arrogant. He also seemed almost unaware of the existence of his two younger daughters.
“I do not know,” she said.
“But you are of age,” he reminded her.
“Yes.”
“Will you marry me even if he disapproves?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I cannot offer you a great deal, Jane,” he said. “A captain’s pay is no fortune, and following the drum is not always comfortable, even for an officer’s wife. But my parents are kind, hospitable people, and would give you a perfectly comfortable home if you should choose not to travel with me. Eventually, of course, my father’s property will be mine, though I cannot hope that will be soon. My grandmother’s modest fortune will be divided among Gerald, our sister and me when she passes, but I also hope that will not be soon. I am scarcely a dazzling match for you.”
“I do not want a dazzling match,” she said. “Only a decent, sensible one that promises to bring me more happiness than I ever dreamed possible.”
“Now that,” he said, smiling, “I can bring you in abundance.”
“I know,” she said as she came into his arms.
And that was that. It seemed almost too easy.
“I will call on Sir Horace tomorrow morning,” he said as he walked with her back to the house later. “Will that be a suitable time, do you suppose?”
“I will talk to him this evening,” she said, “and prepare him.”
He set an arm about her shoulders and she wrapped one about his waist.
“I ought to apologize,” he said. “I ought not—”
“Don’t,” she said, touching a finger to his lips. “Please don’t regret it. I will not. I will always remember our one perfect afternoon.”
Her words sounded a faint note of foreboding. Their one perfect afternoon? There would surely be others, and perfect mornings and nights, too. There would surely be a perfect lifetime together and a perfect forever.
He turned her to him just before the hall came into sight and kissed her slowly and deeply.
“I will see you tomorrow, then,” he said, “after I have talked with your father. We will be officially betrothed, Jane, and soon we will be married and beginning our happily-ever-after.”
“I will wait for you,” she said, “down by the lily pond. Provided rain is not tipping down.”
“Tomorrow.” He kissed her again, and when they arrived outside the stable block, he turned down the driveway while she continued on to the house.
It struck him after he had seen her reach the front doors and turn to wave to him that, though he was using his cane, he did not really need it for every step any longer. He was healing, recovering. Soon he would be able to think about getting back to his regiment.
With a wife to comfort his days and warm his nights.
SIR HORACE EVERETT WAS very upset indeed that a daughter of his would consider besmirching the name of Everett by marrying a cavalry captain of no social significance whatsoever. It was even said that the family’s very modest fortune had been made a few generations ago in trade.
Jane had sought him out in the library, where he retreated most evenings after dinner in order to enjoy his port. He was sitting by the fire, his handkerchief in one hand, his feet on a stool, a general air of distress and injured consequence about his person.
“His brother is our vicar,” he said rather as if that fact set the Mitfords on a social par with the Everett boot boy.
“Mr. Mitford senior has a comfortable fortune, Papa,” Jane explained. “And Captain Mitford is his elder son. Besides, Captain Mitford has distinguished himself in battle and has even been mentioned by name in dispatches. He is well-bred and well-educated.”
And I love him.
“And a cripple,” he said with clear distaste. He reached for the bottle of smelling salts on the table beside him and wafted it beneath his nostrils. “You will not do this, Jane. A Miss Everett of Goodrich Hall can do far better than a crippled army captain. You cannot aspire to a title, perhaps, as Louisa can, but you can expect a husband with £6,000 a year at the very least. No, Jane, I will not hear of such a match for you. Send the young man a letter and tell him he need not come here tomorrow. It would be too much for my nerves to receive him.”
“Papa,” she said, “I love him.”
He looked repulsed, even shocked.
“Love?” he said. “Is a daughter of mine to behave like the vulgar masses and talk of love?”
“I wish to marry him,” she said, clasping her hands at her waist. She had not been invited to sit down.
“You may wish again, miss,” he said. “You always were a trial to me from your childhood on. Sometimes I wonder how you can possibly be mine. I wish your mother had survived. She would have talked sense into you.”
“I wish she had lived, too,” Jane said.
He waved the salts beneath his nose again before setting them aside.
“I will have to send for Lady Percy,” he said. “She must come after breakfast tomorrow morning before this dreadful young man puts in an appearance demanding to speak with me. Lady Percy will advise you. She will support me. She will speak to this soldier and put him in his place. Such insolence! And to think that I condescended to receive him at Goodrich Hall just last evening.”
“This soldier is Captain Mitford,” Jane said softly.
“Write to Lady Percy,” her father said. “Tell her she must come as soon after breakfast as she can. Tell her she must have an early breakfast. And tell her I will send my carriage. It is an embarrassment to have that ancient coach she rides about in seen outside my front doors. Go, Jane, but before you do pour me a glass of brandy. I am feeling quite faint. I must advise the vicar to send his brother away without further ado. I daresay he is a distraction. I did not think last Sunday’s sermon quite up to the vicar’s usual standard.”
Jane did not point out that Captain Mitford had not even been at the vicarage last Sunday—or that her father had snored through the sermon, as he always did. She poured the brandy without another word, set it in her father’s hand and left the room to carry out his instructions.
Lady Percy was her dearest friend despite the twenty-year gap in their ages. And she was sensible and intelligent and diplomatic. She had always been able to soothe Sir Horace’s vapors. She would soothe them now and plead Jane’s case with him. She would make him see that marriage to a cavalry captain, eldest son of a gentleman of modest means, was really not a dreadfully degrading match for the middle daughter of a baronet.
She wrote a fairly lengthy letter, explaining how she and Captain Mitford had met and fallen deeply in love, and how he had proposed marriage to her this afternoon and she had accepted. She described her father’s reaction and her own reasons for holding firm. She sent the letter with a servant and imposed patience on herself until morning.
LADY PERCY ARRIVED AT GOODRICH soon after Jane had eaten breakfast. Not that she had eaten a great deal. She was feeling too agitated. Her father was still in bed. So were her sisters.
Lady Percy came hurrying into the morning room on the heels of the butler. Jane went to meet her and felt the reassurance of setting her hands in the older woman’s outstretched ones. Lady Percy had stood in place of her mother since the latter’s death when Jane was fifteen. It was an enormous relief that she had come promptly and had arrived before Robert.
“Jane, my dear girl,” she said, “whatever is all this about? Has Captain Mitford been presumptuous and set his sights upon a daughter of Lady Everett? Oh, how unpardonable of him! And have you fallen prey to his charm, poor dear? I might have guessed that you would. You are young and impressionable and meet far too few eligible young gentlemen. That must change, and I shall tell Sir Horace so in no uncertain terms as soon as I see him.”
It felt to Jane as if her heart had slipped downward in the direction of her slippers. And she remembered Lady Percy’s saying just a few days ago that Robert was ineligible.
“I think,” she said, smiling, “it is as much a case of me setting my sights upon a military hero. It is very presumptuous of me. But we love each other, you see, and nothing can make us happy except marriage to each other.”
“Oh, my poor love.” Lady Percy released her hands in order to set one arm about her shoulders and seat them both on a sofa. “I can remember falling in love once, too, when I was young. It was a delightful feeling, but of course it was not one upon which a steady future or lasting happiness might have been built. There were other far more important considerations, as there are in your case. You are such a sensible, mature young lady, Jane, that I sometimes forget you are only twenty-one. You need to be married. Oh, indeed you do, and I shall be quite firm with your father on the subject. Whenever he goes up to London for a few weeks, he thinks to take only Louisa with him. It is unpardonable when you are all of marriageable age.”
Jane’s heart, in the soles of her slippers, felt leaden.
“Why is Captain Mitford ineligible?” she asked. “He is a gentleman.”
“And you, Jane,” Lady Percy said, squeezing her shoulder, “are the daughter of Sir Horace Everett of Goodrich. It is an old, illustrious title and an old, illustrious family.”
“He is only a baronet,” Jane said. “He was not even the son of the last baronet, but a nephew. I am his middle daughter.”
“Jane.” Lady Percy took her arm from about Jane’s shoulders and held her hands in a firm grasp again. “It is far more than that. You are very different from most other young ladies of my acquaintance. You are superior to them all. Certainly you are better than your sisters, even Louisa. You have a superior mind. You must not throw it away by becoming a soldier’s wife and following the drum. You would be desperately unhappy once the glow of romance had faded from the relationship. And fade it would, Jane. I assure you of that. Oh, I hate to see you hurt, and there is a hurt look in your eyes now, but I must plead with you to listen to an older and a wiser mind. Listen to me as though I were your dear mother. She would hate to see you being led astray like this by an infatuation. It would break her heart.”
Jane got to her feet, but before she could make any answer, the door opened to admit her father.
“Ah, Lady Percy,” he said, “you have come. And not before time. I had not a wink of sleep last night and feel quite haggard this morning. It took my valet twice as long as usual to make me presentable. You have talked Jane out of her madness, I hope?”
“Oh, not madness, Sir Horace,” she said, smiling. “But I believe I have convinced her to be her usual rational, sensible self again and listen to advice. She is so lovely. Lady Everett would have been proud of her. I need to talk to you about taking Jane and Edna, as well as Louisa, of course, to London with you next spring. They need to attend some of the entertainments of the Season. They need to meet eligible young gentlemen. They need to make the brilliant matches they are surely destined to make as your daughters.”
“It would be a severe strain upon my nerves,” he said with a sigh.
“Nevertheless,” she said. “Imagine how you will be admire
d as the father of three such—”
Jane did not wait to hear more. Robert would surely be here soon, and she did not want to see him when he arrived. She hurried from the house without stopping to fetch a shawl or bonnet despite the fact that it was cooler outside today than it had been for the past week.
She half ran down to the lily pond so that she could sit hidden from view on the seat beneath the willow tree.
Her heart pounded in her chest, in her ears, against her temples.
She would hate to see you being led astray like this by an infatuation. It would break her heart.
Would her mother, too, have opposed this match if she had lived? Oh, surely not. But Lady Percy had been her dearest friend. They had thought alike on most issues. As she lay dying, Mama had begged Jane always to listen to Lady Percy, always to go to her for advice and comfort.
But Lady Percy did not know all the facts.
What would she say if she did?
If she knew that Jane had recognized Robert as soon as she met him as someone she had known and loved in a previous lifetime? That he had been searching for the soul mate he had loved and lost through countless lifetimes? That they had found each other and fallen passionately in love and knew beyond all doubt that they belonged together in this lifetime and for all eternity beyond it? That yesterday afternoon they had acted on their love for each other and made love on the grass by the lake?
What if Lady Percy knew those things?
She would look at Jane with considerable alarm. She would think she really had gone mad.
It did sound like madness.
Was it?
Had she been led astray by infatuation?
ROBERT STEPPED OUT OF Goodrich Hall an hour later. He looked up at the sky and saw without surprise that clouds had moved over while he was indoors. The breeze was cool. It looked as if it might rain later.
He was not worried about Sir Horace Everett’s opposition to his marriage to Jane. The man was weak and vain and vaporish, and Jane had said yesterday that she would marry Robert even if her father disapproved.