by Mary Balogh
“I hope,” she said, “I did not make an utter idiot of myself this morning.”
“Everyone assumed you had tramped about and stood about for too long, Imogen,” Hugo assured her. “Everyone loves a frail lady.”
“What a ghastly image,” she said, but she looked relieved nevertheless.
Apparently, when they had stopped outside the gamekeeper’s hut this morning to listen to the estate manager’s account of something or other, Imogen had collapsed to the ground in an insensible heap, and various persons had gone running for a chair and water while Hugo scooped her up in his arms and Ralph fanned her face with a large handkerchief.
“The door of the hut was propped open,” she explained. “Anyone might have got inside. Children . . .”
“But the gamekeeper was right there,” Ben pointed out.
“And he always keeps the door locked when he is not,” Vincent added. “One lock is at the very top of the door, well out of the reach of any child. I have a firm policy on safety. Everyone knows it.”
“I know, Vincent,” Imogen said. “I am so sorry. I know your employees are not careless. I really do not know what came over me. I see guns all the time. I have made myself see them. I have even been out shooting. George has taken me three times now, and one of those times I actually fired my gun.”
She shuddered and covered her face with her hands.
“I looked at those guns this morning,” she continued, “and I suddenly saw them pointing at my face with no one behind them. They were just waiting for me to reach around and take hold and fire.”
She was gasping for breath, and Flavian walked up behind her and set a hand against the back of her neck while Vincent, seated beside her, fumbled for her knee and patted it.
“Will I never forget?” she asked. “Will none of us ever forget?”
“No, we will not,” George said, his voice quite cool and matter-of-fact. “But neither will you ever forget that he loved you, Imogen.”
“Dicky?” she said. “Yes, he did.”
“Or that you loved him.”
“Did I?” She tipped her head downward, and Flavian massaged her shoulders lightly with both hands while Vincent patted her knee. “I had a strange way of showing it.”
“No,” Vincent said. “It was the best way anyone could possibly show love, Imogen.”
She made a choking sound but then pulled herself together and lowered her hands and looked as calm as ever.
No, none of them would ever forget.
He never would, Flavian thought—which was a strange thought, when he suspected there were still all sorts of things he did not even remember. But he would never forget one thing. One thing, two persons.
Would he ever forgive?
“I am going away at first light tomorrow,” he said abruptly. “I’ll be gone for a few days, but I’ll be b-back.”
They all looked at him in surprise. He had been thinking about it all afternoon but had made no definite decision until this precise moment. His whole life these days seemed to be governed by sudden impulses.
“Going away for a few days, Flave?” Vincent asked. “When this is our final week together?”
“I have some urgent business to attend to,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
They all continued to look at him—even Vincent, whose sightless gaze missed his face by only a few inches. But none of them asked the obvious question. None of them would, of course. They would not intrude. And he did not volunteer the answer.
“If you are going far, Flave,” Ralph said, “take my curricle. Just be sure to leave my team at a decent posting inn. You can pick them up on your way back.”
“It’s London,” Flavian said. “And thank you, Ralph. I will.”
“If you are leaving at cockcrow,” George said, “we had better get to bed. It is already well after midnight.”
* * *
But I have not left yet. Say no when I am leaving if you must, but not before then. Promise me?
And Agnes had promised. It had been a remarkably easy promise to keep. How could one say no—or yes, for that matter—when one was not given the chance? For four whole days she had not set eyes upon Viscount Ponsonby even once, and the visit was almost at an end. After he had gone from here, he had told her, he would not return. Ever.
Well, he might as well be gone now, and she might as well start getting over him now.
If she had not been a lady long practiced in quiet self-control, Agnes thought as the days crawled by, she would surely start throwing things—preferably things that would smash.
She was on the rotating church sick visiting list with Dora, and it was their turn this week. Not that they ignored ailing or aged neighbors at other times, but this week attending to them was their official responsibility. Dora took along her little harp wherever they went so that she could provide some soothing music—and occasionally a lively tune to entertain the children or to set aged toes to tapping. Agnes took along small watercolor sketches of wildflowers she had painted especially for such occasions and propped them on mantels or tables close to the sick person and left them there.
She was glad of the distraction. The visits helped pass the days and stopped her from expecting a knock on the door every waking moment. She looked forward fervently to the time when she could stop counting days and pick up the threads of her life again and be at peace once more.
Though she suspected that peace would not come easily once hope was gone. And she shuddered at the idea that it was hope she still felt.
On the fifth day Lady Harper called with Lady Trentham just after Agnes and Dora had arrived home. Lady Trentham had come to beg the favor of a viewing of Agnes’s paintings. Both ladies looked at them all with flattering attention and much appreciation, though they would not stay to take tea. They had come on an errand from Sophia and had one more call to make, upon Mr. and Mrs. Harrison. They had already been to the vicarage. Sophia hoped some of her friends and Viscount Darleigh’s would come up to the house this evening for cards and conversation and refreshments.
“Do say you will both come,” Lady Trentham said, looking from Dora to Agnes. “We will be at Middlebury Park for only one more day after today. How the time has flown. It has been lovely, though, has it not, Samantha?”
“It has been a pure joy,” Lady Harper said, “to observe such a very close-knit friendship as that of our husbands and the other five. I do wish, though, that Viscount Ponsonby had not gone away.”
Agnes’s heart and stomach plummeted in the direction of her slippers, and it felt as though they collided on the way down.
“He has left?” Dora asked.
“Oh, he assured the others he would return,” Lady Harper said, “but they do miss him. And he gave no explanation, the wretched man.”
Lady Trentham’s eyes were resting upon Agnes. “I am sure he will return if he said he would,” she said. “Besides, he took the Earl of Berwick’s curricle and horses, and will feel obliged to return them. Will you come this evening? Miss Debbins? Mrs. Keeping? We were to tell you that no would not be an acceptable answer and that the carriage will be sent for you at seven.”
“In that case, we must be gracious about it and say yes,” Dora said, laughing. “There is no need to send the carriage, though. We will be happy to walk.”
Lady Harper laughed. “We were told you would say just that, and we were given an answer from Lord Darleigh himself. We were to inform you that the carriage will be here whether you choose to walk beside it or ride inside.”
“Well, then. We would look silly walking beside it, I suppose.” Dora laughed again.
He was gone. Without a word.
He had said he would return, and it seemed he must return, since he had a borrowed conveyance with him. But there was only one day of the visit left.
Agnes turned and half ran up the stairs to her room after she and Dora had waved the ladies on their way. She did not want to talk about it. She did not want to talk at all. Ever. S
he wanted to climb beneath the bedcovers, pull them up over her head, curl into a ball, and stay there for the rest of her life.
And this, she thought, catching a glimpse of her image in the dressing table mirror and pausing to nod at herself in some disgust, was a fine way to be behaving when one was twenty-six years old, a staid, refined widow, and wise enough to have turned down an advantageous marriage offer because it could lead only to lasting unhappiness.
This was not unhappiness?
Besides, she had not turned it down, had she? She had promised not to until he left.
He had left. But he had also said this time that he would return. It all seemed so typical of Viscount Ponsonby. She would be a fool. . . .
But at least she could prepare for this evening without a palpitating heart. He was not at the house. She could occupy her mind with nothing more disturbing than the enormously important question of which of her three evening gowns she would wear. Certainly not the green. The blue or the lavender, then. But which?
She grimaced at her image and turned away.
11
There was a degree of tiredness at which one was bone weary yet beyond feeling sleepy.
It was a point Flavian had reached by the time he drove himself through the village of Inglebrook in the middle of the evening. There was no light in the cottage. They must be in bed already. He could not remember when he had last slept, though he had taken a room at the same inn both going and coming and had certainly lain down on the bed on both occasions. He remembered hauling off his boots and wishing for his valet.
He should drive straight to the stables, abandon his rig—or rather Ralph’s—to the care of Vince’s grooms, go up to his room, and collapse on the bed without summoning his valet, who was probably still sulking anyway over the unexpected five-day holiday he had been given.
There were lights blazing in the drawing room windows, he saw as he was approaching the house. That was not surprising, of course. It was not that late, even though it was dark outside already.
There were two unfamiliar gigs outside the stable block. Ah, visitors. Another reason why he should go straight to bed. He would have to change and wash and shave even to appear before his friends and their ladies, of course, but he would have to make a more special effort for visitors. And he would have to smile and be sociable. He was not sure he could smile. It sounded like too much of an effort.
He would not sleep either, though, he suspected. He felt wound up like a child’s spinning top. And the closer he had come to Middlebury, the madder his whole errand seemed. What the devil had possessed him? It was too late to ponder that question now, however. He had gone and he had returned, and if he had wasted his time, then there was nothing he could do about it now.
He nodded to the footman on duty in the hall and directed the man to send his valet up to him. Perhaps a wash and a shave and a bit of sociability would make him properly tired and enable him to sleep tonight.
Who were the visitors? he wondered.
He found out half an hour later when he sauntered into the drawing room, quizzing glass in hand. Vincent was sitting by the fire with Imogen and Harrison, his neighbor and particular friend. George was standing beside the fireplace, one elbow propped on the mantel. Harrison’s wife was seated at one card table, as was the vicar. The vicar’s wife and Miss Debbins were at another. Ben, his wife, Ralph, and Lady Trentham made up the two tables. Lady Darleigh was carrying two drinks to the vicar’s table. Hugo was standing behind his wife’s chair but was conversing with Mrs. Keeping, who stood beside him.
She was wearing a very modest, almost prim blue gown, which had surely never, ever been even remotely fashionable. He suspected its color was slightly faded too. Her hair was ruthlessly tamed, with not a single strand fallen loose by accident or design to tease the imagination.
She looked utterly delicious.
Short as he had been of time in London, he had nevertheless looked about him quite deliberately at the ladies. There had been some real beauties among them, and others who had made themselves seem beautiful or at least alluring by what they wore and how they wore it. He had been quite unenchanted by every single one of them.
It had been most alarming.
He met her eyes for a heartbeat before Lady Darleigh spotted him at the same moment George and Imogen did.
“Flavian!”
“Lord Ponsonby!”
“You are back, Flavian,” Imogen said, coming toward him, both her hands extended. She turned her cheek for his kiss as he dropped his quizzing glass on its ribbon and clasped her hands.
“I h-had to return Ralph’s curricle and horses,” he said, “or he would have borne a g-grudge for the next ten years or so. He is t-touchy that way.”
“I would have taken your carriage instead, Flave,” Ralph said, looking up from his cards. “No carriage seats have any right to be so plush and cozy.”
“Do let me fetch you a drink and something to eat,” Lady Darleigh said after everyone else had greeted him—with one or two exceptions. “Are you cold? Do move closer to the fire.”
He went to squeeze Vincent’s shoulder and tell him how good it felt to be back among all his friends again. He exchanged a few words with George and Harrison, he spoke with Hugo for a minute or two, and then he went to stand beside Mrs. Keeping, who had moved to look intently over her sister’s shoulder as though it was she who was playing the hand.
She pretended not to notice him. It might have been a convincing performance if every muscle in her body had not visibly tensed as he approached.
“Far from being cold in here,” he observed to no one in particular, though all except one person close by was involved in the card game, “it is actually overwarm. Quite b-boiling with heat, in fact.”
No one either agreed or disagreed.
“And although d-darkness has fallen,” he persisted, “and it is still only M-March, it is not a cold night, and there is not a breath of w-wind. It is perfect for a stroll on the terrace, in fact, p-provided one wears a warm cloak.”
It was Miss Debbins who answered. She looked over her shoulder, first at him and then at her sister.
“Take mine, Agnes,” she said. “It is warmer than yours.”
And she returned her attention to her cards.
Mrs. Keeping did not react at all for a moment. Then she turned to look at him.
“Very well,” she said. “For a few minutes. It is warm in here.”
And she turned to precede him from the room. He had to move smartly in order to open the door for her.
And here he went again. Acting from sheer impulse before he had prepared himself properly or composed any pretty speech or gathered any rosebuds or their March equivalent. And with a mind befuddled from lack of sleep. Would he never learn?
He suspected that the answer was no.
She asked the footman in the hall for her sister’s cloak, and she and Flavian stood side by side, not touching, not looking at each other, while it was fetched. He took it from the footman’s hand and draped it about her shoulders, but before he could touch the fastenings, she very firmly buttoned the cloak herself.
The footman had moved ahead of them and was holding open the door.
Flavian hoped the Survivors, their wives, and all the guests were not lined up at the drawing room windows, looking down at them. It might as well be daylight. The moon was more or less at the full, and every star ever invented was beaming and twinkling down from a clear sky.
But, no, not a single one of them would even peep from a window. They were far too well-bred. But he would wager there was not a one of them who had not noticed and drawn his own conclusion. Or her own conclusion.
Mrs. Keeping kept her hands very firmly inside her cloak as he indicated the terrace that ran along the east wing of the house.
* * *
All Agnes had been able to think of when he had walked into the drawing room, looking immaculate and immaculately gorgeous, was that she ought to have worn her
lavender. On balance she preferred the blue, but it was primmer than the lavender.
How stupidly random and trivial one’s thoughts could sometimes be. As if his coming into the room had not turned her world on its head.
“Did you m-miss me?” he asked.
“Miss you?” she said, her voice surprised and brittle—she would surely be booed off any stage and perhaps even helped off with a rotten tomato. “I did not even realize you were gone until someone mentioned it today. Why should I miss you?”
“Quite so,” he said agreeably. “It was mere v-vanity that made me hope you had.”
“I would imagine,” she said, “it is your friends who have missed you, Lord Ponsonby. I thought this annual gathering of the Survivors’ Club meant more to any of the seven of you than any fleeting pleasure that might draw you off for a few days to enjoy yourself elsewhere.”
“You are angry,” he said.
“On their behalf,” she told him. “And yet, even now that you have returned, you are not spending time with them. You have stepped out here with me instead.”
“Perhaps you are one of those f-fleeting pleasures,” he said with a sigh.
“Much of a pleasure I am to you,” she said tartly, “when you can go away for five whole days without a word in order to indulge some other whim.”
“You are a whim, Agnes?” he asked her.
“I am not what took you away,” she told him. “And I am Mrs. Keeping to you.”
“But you are,” he protested. “You are Mrs. K-Keeping to me. As well as Agnes. And you are what took me away.”
Her nostrils flared. And her steps slowed. She had been setting a cracking pace. With a few more steps they would be beyond the terrace and beyond the end of the east wing, and setting off across the lawn leading to the eastern end of the wilderness walk. She had no intention of walking in any wildernesses with Viscount Ponsonby.