Only Enchanting: A Survivors' Club Novel

by Mary Balogh

  What did it mean, then?

  It meant nothing, of course, because there was no such thing. Even the marriages of his three friends would crumble if they and their wives did not work like the devil to keep them whole for the rest of their natural lives. Was it worth the trouble?

  He had believed in romantic love and happily-ever-after once upon a time, silly idiot that he had been. At least—he stopped walking to frown in thought for a moment—he was almost sure he must have believed in it. Sometimes it seemed to him that his mind was a bit like a checkerboard—the dark squares representing conscious memory, the white ones just blank spaces to hold the memories apart. Whether the blanks meant anything more than that, he could not remember. And when he tried too hard to work it out, he either got one of his crashing headaches or else he looked around for something into which he might ram his fist without breaking every bone in his hand.

  There was definitely something in those white squares. There was violence, if nothing else.

  The ladies and Ben—with his canes rather than his wheeled chair—were before him at the lake. Ben had the door of the boathouse open, and the ladies were peering inside. Was he planning to play the gallant and row them across to the island so that they could take a closer look at the temple folly there? Flavian hailed them, and there was a cheerful exchange of pleasantries during which he did not suggest helping to row. He kept on walking about the lake and past the band of trees on the other side. It was a lengthy walk.

  The uninitiated would assume the park ended with the lake and the trees on its far bank. But it did not. It stretched beyond into a spacious area that was a little less cultivated, more secluded, more designed for solitude or the enjoyment of a tête-à-tête with a chosen companion.

  It was solitude he wanted and needed this morning. Where the devil had that outburst come from last night? He had read the notice of Len’s death with some surprise about this time last year. It was always a nasty reminder of one’s own mortality when a contemporary died, especially when one was only thirty. And more especially when, once upon a time, one had known that particular contemporary almost as well as one knew one’s fellow Survivors now. Though he would wager his life that no one of the Survivors would steal away and marry the betrothed of any other who was incapacitated.

  He had read the notice with some surprise but with no greater emotion. All that unpleasantness had happened a long time ago, after all, not long after he had been brought home from the Peninsula and just before he had been taken to Penderris Hall for treatment and convalescence. A lifetime ago, it seemed. It had all meant nothing to him last spring. Len had meant nothing. Velma had meant nothing.

  A whole alarming lot of nothing.

  It still meant nothing now.

  Except that she was coming back from the north of England, which had always felt comfortably like the other side of the world. And it did not require any genius to imagine what excitement her return was arousing in the romantic, matchmaking bosoms of his mother and hers. The fact that his mother expected him to go running to Candlebury for Easter just because Velma would be at Farthings told its own eloquent tale. It also told him that they expected he would feel the same about Velma—and she about him—as they had felt before his injuries and Len’s betrayal.

  He thought back, aghast, to that unexpected outburst last night and that equally unexpected relapse into an almost uncontrollable inability to get his words out. For two pins, if someone had said the wrong thing, he would have lashed out with his fists and done the Lord knew what damage to Vincent’s home. He had been alarmingly close to having a complete relapse into the state of animal madness he’d been left in after the war. And he had fought a throbbing headache for most of a largely sleepless night.

  He thought of Vince’s bubble and chuckled ruefully.

  And then he realized that he was not alone back here after all.

  * * *

  It had been unwise to come here today, especially when there was unlimited countryside, all of it teeming with new growth and the wildflowers of early spring, in every direction about the village. It was wildflowers that Agnes loved to paint. But the only daffodils she had seen were in the flower beds of people’s gardens—and in the grass of the meadow on the far side of the park at Middlebury. And daffodils did not bloom forever. She could not simply wait for three weeks to pass until Lord Darleigh’s houseguests went away.

  Daisies and buttercups and clover would bloom in that near meadowland throughout the summer. There had been snowdrops there a few weeks ago, and there still were some primroses. But now was the time of the daffodils and, oh, she could not miss it.

  It was a little-used area of the park. There was no direct route to it from the house, and it was a long walk away. One had to skirt about the lake and the band of trees that had been planted along its western bank. It was unlikely the guests would stroll there often, if at all. It was very unlikely they would walk there during a morning.

  So she had taken the risk of coming back, her easel tucked beneath one arm, paper and paints and brushes and everything else she might need in her large canvas bag. She had tramped through the trees that lined the south wall, and emerged into sunlight and open spaces only when she was well out of sight of the house and the gardens and lawns fronting it.

  She had painted a single daffodil two days ago but had been dissatisfied with it. She had made it too large, too bold, too yellow. It had been an object largely divorced from its surroundings. She might just as well have plucked it and carried it home and placed it in a jar and then painted it.

  She had come back to paint the daffodils in their meadow. And she was rewarded by the sight of many more of them than there had been just two days ago. They were like a carpet spread out before her, their heads nodding in a breeze she had not particularly noticed. And they had the effect of making the grass in which they grew seem a richer green. Ah, they deserved to be painted just like this, she decided.

  But how was she to capture what she saw with her eyes and felt with the welling emotions of her heart? How did one paint not just daffodils nodding in the grass but the eternal light and hope of spring itself? It was her first full spring here with Dora, and she had greeted it with a certain longing for something she could not even put into words. For life to resume, perhaps, as more than just a genteel existence. Or perhaps for life to begin, though that was a somewhat absurd notion when she was twenty-six years old and had already been married and widowed.

  She did not usually think with her emotions.

  She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon.

  She set down her easel and bag and just stood and looked for a long time: breathing in the smells of nature, hearing birds singing among the branches of the cedars close by, feeling the cool March air overlaid by the fresh warmth of the sun.

  After a few minutes, however, she knew that she was seeing only half the picture and maybe not even that much. For the trumpets of the daffodils were lifted to the sky. The petals about them faced upward. If the flowers could see, as in a sense she supposed they could, then it was the sky, rather than the grass beneath them, upon which they gazed. She, on the other hand, was looking down upon the flowers and the grass. She turned her face upward to see that the sky was pure blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now, of course, she could no longer see the daffodils.

  Well, there was a solution to that.

  She kneeled down on the grass and then stretched out along it on her back, careful not to crush any of the flowers. The grass sprang up between her spread arms and her body and between her ungloved fingers when she spread them wide. Daffodils bloomed all about her. She could smell them and see the undersides of the petals and trumpets of those closest to her—and the sky beyond them. And now there was a vast blue to add to the yellow and the green.

  And she was a part of it all, not a separate be
ing looking upon creation, but creation looking upon itself. Oh, how she loved moments like this, rare as they were, and how she ached with the longing to capture in paint something of the inner experience as well as the outer beauty. Perhaps this was how truly great painters felt all the time.

  Perhaps truly great artists felt all the time.

  But suddenly there was a sense, sharply intrusive, that she was not alone. And here she was, stretched out in the meadow among the daffodils, defenseless and foolish and trespassing even if she had been told by Lord Darleigh as well as by Sophia that she might come whenever she wished.

  Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was no one else here after all. She lifted her head cautiously from the ground and looked around.

  She was not wrong.

  He was standing quite still a short distance away, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tall hat so that she could see neither the direction of his gaze nor the expression on his face. But he could not possibly have missed seeing her. A blind man could not have missed her. Even Viscount Darleigh would have sensed her presence. But he was not Viscount Darleigh.

  Of all the people he might have been—and there were ten of them at the house—he was the very one she had most wanted not to see. Again. What were the chances?

  She was the first to speak.

  “I do have permission to be here,” she said and then wished she had not. She had immediately put herself on the defensive.

  “Beauty among the d-daffodils,” he said. “How v-very charming.”

  He sounded utterly bored. If one could speak and sigh at the same time, he did it. He was wearing his drab riding coat. It had six capes—she counted this time. It was long enough to half cover his highly polished boots. It was pure nonsense to feel that he was more male than any other man she had ever encountered—but she did feel it.

  Instead of leaping to her feet, as she probably ought to have done, she laid her head back down on the grass and closed her eyes. Perhaps he would go away. Was it possible to feel more embarrassed, more humiliated than she did?

  He did not go away. A cloud suddenly came between her closed eyes and the sun—except that there were no clouds. She opened her eyes to find him standing beside her and looking down. And now she could see his face, shadowed though it still was. His eyes were green and heavy lidded, as she remembered them from the night of the ball. His left eyebrow was partly elevated. His mouth was curled up at the corners, though whether with amusement or scorn or both, she could not tell. One lock of blond hair lay across his forehead.

  “I could offer a h-helping hand,” he told her. “I c-could even play the gallant and carry you to the h-house, though I daresay I should expire at your feet of some h-heart condition after arriving there. Are you hurt or indisposed?”

  “I am not,” she assured him. “I am merely viewing the world as the daffodils view it.”

  She winced—quite visibly, she feared. Was it possible to feel more mortified than mortified? What a ridiculously stupid thing to say! Oh, please let him just go away, and she would gladly agree to forget him for all eternity.

  His right hand, clad in the finest, most costly kid, disappeared beneath his coat and came out with a quizzing glass. He raised it to his eye and unhurriedly surveyed the meadow and then, briefly, her. It was a horrible affectation. If there was something wrong with his sight, he ought to wear eyeglasses.

  And through it all she lay where she was, just as though she were incapable of rising—or as though she believed she could hide more effectively down here.

  “Ah,” he said at last. “I g-guessed there must be a perfectly sensible explanation, and now I see there is. I r-remember you as being sensible, Mrs. Keeping.”

  He had remembered her name, then—or he had asked Sophia. She wished he had not.

  “No,” he said, removing his hat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of her easel and bag, “that is not strictly c-correct, is it? I expected you to be s-sensible, but you were enchanting instead.”

  The sun turned his blond hair to a rich gold as he sat down beside her and draped his arms over his raised knees. He was wearing tight buckskin breeches beneath his coat. They hugged powerful-looking thighs. Agnes looked away.

  Enchanting.

  Oh, dear, he had remembered that waltz.

  “And your being here among the d-daffodils now makes full sense,” he said.

  Why? Because she was not sensible but . . . enchanting? Oh, she wished he spoke as other people did, so that one might understand his meaning without having to wonder and guess.

  She was still lying full-length in the grass. She ought at least to sit up, but that would bring her closer to him.

  “I came here to paint,” she told him. “But I will go away. I have no wish to intrude upon your privacy. I did not expect any of the guests to come this far. Not so early in the day, at least.”

  Finally she would have sat up and got to her feet. But as soon as she moved, he set a hand on her shoulder, and she stayed where she was. His hand stayed where it was too, and it scorched through her body right down to her toes—even though he was wearing gloves.

  Why, oh, why had she risked coming here? And what unhappy chance had brought him here too?

  “You have intruded upon my p-privacy,” he said, “as I have upon yours. Shall we both turn h-homeward disgruntled as a r-result, or shall we s-stay and be private together for a while?”

  Suddenly the daffodil meadow seemed far lonelier and more remote than when she had had it to herself.

  “How do the daffodils view the world?” he asked, removing his hand and grasping the handle of his quizzing glass again.

  “Upward,” she said. “Always upward.”

  One of his eyebrows rose, and he looked mockingly down at her.

  “There is a l-life lesson here for all of us, is there, M-Mrs. Keeping?” he asked her. “We should all and always look upward, and all our t-troubles will be at an end?”

  She smiled. “If only life were that simple.”

  “But for daffodils it is,” he said.

  “We are not daffodils.”

  “For which f-fact I shall be eternally thankful,” he said. “They never see August or D-December or even June. You should s-smile more often.”

  She stopped smiling.

  “Why did you come out here alone,” she asked him, “when you are with a group of friends?”

  He had the strangest eyes. At a cursory glance, they always looked a bit sleepy. But they were not. And now they gazed at her and into her with apparent mockery—and yet there was something intense behind the mockery. As if there were a wholly unknown person hiding inside.

  The thought left her a little breathless.

  “And why did you c-come here alone,” he asked, “when you have a s-sister and neighbors and f-friends in the village?”

  “I asked first.”

  “So you did.” She pressed her head and her hands more firmly into the grass when he smiled. It was a devastating expression. “I c-came here to commune with my soul, Mrs. Keeping, and I found enchantment among the daffodils. I shall go back to the house presently and write a p-poem about the experience. A s-sonnet, perhaps. Undoubtedly a sonnet, in fact. No other verse form would do the incident j-justice.”

  She smiled slowly and then laughed. “I deserved that. I had no business asking.”

  “But how are we to discover anything about each other,” he said, “if we do not ask? Who was Mr. K-Keeping?”

  “My husband,” she said and smiled again when his left eyebrow mocked her. “He was our neighbor where I grew up. He offered for me when I was eighteen and he was thirty, and I was married to him for five years before he died almost three years ago.”

  “He was a gentleman f-farmer, was he?” he asked. “And you were wildly in love with him, I suppose? An older, experienced man?”

  “I was fond of him, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “and he of me.”

  “He sounds like a d-dull dog,” he s
aid.

  She was torn between indignation and amusement.

  “You know nothing about him,” she said. “He was a worthy man.”

  “If I were m-married to you,” he said, “and you described me as w-worthy, I would shoot myself and thus put myself out of my m-misery.”

  “What utter nonsense!” But she laughed again.

  “There was no p-passion, was there?” he asked, sounding bored again.

  “You are being offensive.”

  “That means there was no p-passion,” he said. “A p-pity. You look as if you were made for it.”

  “Oh.”

  “And most d-definitely enchanting,” he said, and he shifted his position, leaned over her, and kissed her.

  She was shocked into immobility, even after he had raised his head a few inches to look down at her face. From close up, his green eyes glinted into hers, and his mouth looked slightly cruel as well as mocking. And she felt such a stabbing of lust in her breasts and between her thighs and up into her womb that she was quite incapable of either remonstrating with him or pushing him away.

  She wanted him to do it again.

  “You ought to have stayed safely locked away inside your v-village this morning, Mrs. K-Keeping,” he said. “I came here alone b-because I was feeling somewhat s-savage.”

  “Savage?” She swallowed and raised her hand to set her fingertips lightly against his cheek. It was warm and smooth. He must have shaved shortly before coming out. And yet she knew that this time he was speaking the truth. She could almost feel leashed danger pulsing outward from the person hidden away inside him.

  She had touched him. She looked at her hand rather as if it belonged to someone else, and withdrew it.

  “I spent three years learning to c-control it,” he told her. “My savagery, that is. But it still l-lurks and waits to p-pounce upon some unwary victim. It would have been better if you had not been here.”