Then Comes Seduction

by Mary Balogh

  “I will,” she said softly. “Next year and the year after. I live here, Jasper.”

  He knew somehow from the tone of her voice that she understood, and he felt foolish and grateful.

  One thrush, perhaps disturbed by the sound of their voices, flew out of a high branch with a flutter of wings, and she tipped back her head to watch it soar into the sky.

  “I have always had places like this of my own,” she said, “though never anywhere quite so remote or more splendid.”

  He looked over to the far corner of the clearing and was surprised and relieved to discover that it was, of course, still there—a great flat slab of rock jutting out of the hillside, level with his knees when he was a boy.

  “Ah,” he said, “the stone is still there. My drea—”

  He stopped abruptly

  “Your drea—?” she said.

  “Nothing.” He shrugged.

  “Your dreaming stone?” she said.

  Good Lord, she had got it exactly right. His dreaming stone.

  “A foolish boyhood fancy,” he said, striding away from her to take a closer look at it. It was covered with moss and twigs and other debris, and he leaned over to brush it off. “I was captain of my own ship here and lord of my own castle and navigator of my own flying carpet. I slew dragons and enemy knights and black- hearted villains of all descriptions here. I was my own favorite, invincible hero.”

  “As we all are in our childhood fantasies,” she said. “As we need to be. Our games give us the courage to grow up and live the best adult lives of which we are capable.”

  Had the vicar taught her that?

  He set one booted foot on the stone.

  “And sometimes,” he said, “I would just lie here watching the sky”

  “Flying on the coattails of the clouds,” she said. “And yet you scorned me when I told you that I dreamed of flying close to the sun.”

  “I was a child at the time,” he said, lowering his foot back to the ground, “and knew nothing. It is here we have to do our living, Katherine. And not even here in this clearing or places like it, but down there in the world, where dreams signify nothing.”

  “Our lives ought to be lived in both places,” she said. “We need both our retreats, our private places and our dreams, and our lives out there, where we make a difference to one another, for good or ill.”

  He must think quickly of something about which to tease her. He was not accustomed to serious conversation. And he felt too raw for one now Why, then, had he brought her here? He might easily have got away on his own.

  He had never brought anyone else here—until now

  She stepped up onto the stone, looked around the clearing from that higher vantage point, and sat down. She took off her bonnet and set it beside her, and then hugged her knees and lifted her face to the sky.

  A few weeks ago she had worn lemon and blue for the lake and the sunshine. Now she wore her pale green cotton for the woods, as if she had known they would come here. A sun goddess there, a wood nymph here.

  And then she looked suddenly dismayed.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “Am I encroaching upon what is yours?”

  “You are what is mine, are you not?” he said, grinning at her. And he stepped up there too and sat with his wrists resting on his crossed legs for a few minutes before removing his hat and coat, spreading the latter behind him, and lying back on it, leaving enough room for her if she chose to lie beside him.

  It was no good. She had not responded to that provocative claim of ownership, and he could think of nothing else with which to tease or mock her.

  She glanced down at him, looked into his eyes, and then came down to join him, her head beside his on the coat. He felt himself relax. It was safe here. There had always been that illusion. It was an illusion, of course. He had always had to go back to the house eventually, where he had been required to explain where he had been, why he had chosen to worry his mother so much with his long absence, why his lessons were not done or his Bible verses learned, why his clothes were dirty, why…

  Well.

  His body was relaxed, but his thoughts had a busy agenda of their own. He could not still them. He could not think of a single thing to say that would make her laugh or that would draw a spirited retort.

  He was not himself at all. He ought to have come alone.

  “He loved Rachel, you know,” he said abruptly at last and felt like an idiot when he heard the words. He had spoken aloud.

  “Mr. Gooding?” she asked after a pause. “Ought that not to be present tense? It seemed to me at our wedding breakfast that—”

  “My father” he said, interrupting her. “She was more than a year old when he died, and he loved her. He adored her, in fact. He used to carry her all over the house, to the frequent consternation of her nurse.”

  She did not say anything.

  “And he was excited about me,” he said. “He had been out shooting with some other fellows on the day he died and was carousing with them afterward, after the rain started, when word reached him that my mother was having pains. He was riding hell bent for leather back home when he jumped that hedge instead of taking ten seconds longer to go through the gate. Perhaps he did not even notice that it was open. And so he died—and the pains were false ones. I did not put in an appearance until a month later.”

  Her hand was in his. Had he taken it? Or had she taken his? Either way, he was clasping it rather tightly.

  He felt like a prize idiot. He turned his head and smiled mockingly at her, loosening his grip as he did so.

  “It was just as well he popped off when he did,” he said. “His second child would have been a colossal disappointment to him. You must agree with that, Katherine.”

  “Why do you speak of these things as if they are new discoveries?” she asked.

  “Because they are,” he said. “I had a chat with some of the servants this morning when I went down to the kitchen in search of you, and they told me all sorts of things I had never heard before. We were not allowed to mention my father’s name, you know”

  “Why?” She frowned.

  “He was a rake and a libertine and the devil’s spawn,” he said. “When righteousness came into the house in the guise of my mother’s second husband, his influence was to be forgotten once and for all. For the good of every one of us, family and servants. Come to think of it, maybe he would not have been disappointed. Maybe he would have hailed me as his true successor. Do you think?”

  She ignored his flippancy.

  “So you were told nothing of your own father?” Her huge, fathomless eyes grew larger.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I was told something of him almost every day of my boyhood. He was the man whose seed had made me bad, irredeemable, incorrigible, and any number of other nasty things. I was as like him as two peas in a pod—as two rotten peas, that is. I would never amount to anything in life because I had his blood running in my veins. And everyone knew where I was headed after I died—downward, to be reunited with him.”

  “Did your mother not have something to say?” she asked.

  “My mother was a sweet lady,” he said. “Naturally placid, I believe, and very easily dominated. She needed always to have someone to tell her what was what. The servants claim that she adored my father. But after his death and my birth she collapsed into lethargy and a gloom that lifted only when Wrayburn took over her life and married her. She loved him, I suppose. She was also terrified of him, or at least terrified of displeasing him. Even after his death she would not say or do anything of which she thought he would disapprove.”

  “She did not love you?” she asked softly.

  “Oh, she did,” he said. “She undoubtedly did. She shed tears over me more times than I can count and begged me to be good and godly, to do all that my step-papa told me so that I would be worthy of his love too.”

  “And Rachel?” she asked.

  “She was denied her youth,” he said, “be
cause the world beyond our doors was a wicked place and a girl’s place was at her mother’s side.”

  “Charlotte?”

  “Ah, but she did not have the bad blood,” he said. “And Miss Daniels came when she was still very young. She was also fortunate enough to be a girl. He was not much interested in her.”

  He felt more and more of an idiot. Why was he spewing out all this ancient history? He never spoke of his boyhood. He rarely even thought about it. He was certainly not looking for pity—perish the thought! He was just surprised that this morning’s revelations in the kitchen had upset him so much, set the wheels of his mind whirling.

  His father had loved Rachel. He had loved his own unborn self. He had been capable of love. He had died for love.

  His thoughts were spinning so fast he felt downright dizzy.

  “I think my father loved my mother too,” he said. “He stopped womanizing after he married her.”

  She had their clasped hands raised, he realized. He could feel the touch of her lips and the warmth of her breath against the back of his.

  “Only minutes before word was brought to him that my mother’s pains had started,” he said, “he proposed a toast to me. Son or daughter—he did not care which I was provided I was born alive and healthy He actually said that, though he must have wanted a son. An heir.”

  She rubbed her cheek back and forth across his hand.

  “The servants worshipped him,” he said, “though they were by no means blind to his faults. Recklessness, according to them, was probably the worst of those.”

  “They worship you too,” she said. “Though they are still not blind.”

  “I think,” he said, “we might have been a happy family if he had lived.”

  He wished he could stop spouting drivel. When was he going to shut his mouth and keep it shut?

  “But then,” he said, “if things had not happened as they did, there would not be Charlotte, would there? She has always been very precious to me.”

  Devil take it, would someone please tell him to shut up?

  “Strange that,” he said. “She is his daughter. How can she possibly be dear to me?”

  “Because she is herself,” she said, “just as you are yourself.”

  “Katherine,” he said, “stop me, please. There must be all sorts of skeletons in your cupboards too. Tell me about them.”

  “There are really none,” she said. “My life has been privileged indeed. Oh, I have lived through the unspeakable grief of losing my mother when I was just a child and then my father when I was only twelve. They were desolate times—and that word does not begin to describe them. But I always had my sisters and brother, and none of us ever doubted that we were loved or wanted. Even though Meg gave up her future with Crispin Dew for us, she never made us feel that it had been a sacrifice for which she partly resented us. Indeed, I did not even know about it until a few years ago when Nessie told me. I was always so secure in the love of my family that I find it hard even to imagine being a child and not having that security I cannot imagine anything worse than a child feeling himself to be unloved and unlovable. I cannot bear the thought.”

  Her voice had become thinner, higher pitched.

  He could not blame circumstances for anything, though, could he? For making him who he was? That would be a sniveling thing to do. They were the circumstances with which he had been presented, and at any moment in his life—child, boy, or adult—the choice of how to think, speak, and behave had been his.

  Still was.

  He drew his hand from hers, raised himself onto one elbow, and smiled lazily down at her. It was time to recover himself

  “Has my sad story moved your tender heart, Katherine?” he asked, his eyes roaming over her face to come to rest on her mouth. “And is that heart smitten with love for me as a result? Are you ready to confess all? That I am one step closer to winning our wager? Two steps? Or that I have won it outright?”

  He realized his mistake immediately. She would not view that as gentle teasing. It was too reminiscent of what had happened at the lake, by Jove. And it was unfair, dash it all.

  Would he never learn?

  But the words could not be unsaid, and all he could do was wait for her reply, his right eyebrow cocked, his eyelids hooded over his eyes, the corners of his lips drawn up into a half- smile.

  One devil of a fine fellow.

  God’s answer to the prayers of lonely, lovelorn womankind.

  Or perhaps not.

  She raised one hand as if to set it tenderly against the side of his face. Instead, her open palm cracked hard and painfully across his cheek.

  22

  S H E rolled away from him, scrambled to her feet, jumped down from the stone, and strode halfway across the clearing before stopping almost knee- deep among the grass and wildflowers.

  She had never in her life hit anyone. She had slapped him across the face. Her hand was still stinging. Her heart was pounding up into her throat and her ears, almost choking and deafening her.

  She whirled on him.

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she cried, her voice breathless and shaking. “Not ever. Do you hear me?”

  He was sitting up, propped on one arm while two fingers of the other hand were poking gingerly at his reddened cheek.

  “I do indeed,” he said. “Katherine—”

  “You took me in,” she said, “you invited me in, and then you slammed the door shut in my face. If you do not want me to have any part in your life, then shut me out altogether, stay hidden behind the wit and the irony and the hooded eyes and the cocked eyebrow. Go away. Leave me here to live my life in peace. But if you choose to let me in, then let me all the way in. Don’t suddenly pretend this has all been about the winning of a stupid wager.”

  She was panting for breath.

  He gazed at her for a few moments, his lips pursed. Then he got to his feet and crossed the clearing to stand in front of her. She wished he were wearing his coat and hat. He was too disconcertingly… male in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

  “They were just a few random comments about my family,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing to get excited about. I thought you might be amused by them. No, I thought you might be touched. I thought you might pity me. Is pity not halfway to love? I thought you might—”

  Crack!

  Oh, dear God, she had done it again—the same hand, the same cheek.

  He closed his eyes.

  “That does hurt, you know,” he said. “And you have me at a disadvantage, Katherine. As a gentleman, I cannot retaliate, can I?”

  “You know nothing—nothing!—about love,” she cried. “You have been loved, and you are loved. You even love without knowing it. But you shut yourself away from it as soon as it threatens to break through the barriers you erected about your heart years and years ago lest you be hurt more and more until you could not bear even to live. Those days are over if you would just realize it.”

  He half smiled at her.

  “You are lovelier than ever when you are angry,” he said.

  “I am not angry,” she cried. “I am furious! Love is not a game.”

  Still that half- smile and the hooded eyes, which were hooded indeed now. There was not even a glimmering of mischief or humor in them.

  “What is it, then, if not a game?” he asked softly.

  “It is not even a feeling,” she said, “though feelings are involved in it. It is certainly not all happiness and light. It is not s-sex either, though I know you must be about to suggest that. Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pai
n, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability. Oh, I know I have had life easy in the sense that there has always been unconditional love in my life. I know I cannot even begin to understand what it was like to grow up with very little love at all. But are you going to let that upbringing blight your whole life? Are you going to give your stepfather that power, even from the grave? And you were loved, Jasper, perhaps by everyone except him. All your servants and I daresay all your neighbors have always loved you. Your mother did. Charlotte adores you. I am going to stop talking now because really I do not know what I have been saying.”

  His smile was twisted, lifting one corner of his mouth higher than the other, and she realized that there was a great tension in him, that his facial muscles were not perhaps quite within his control. The two slaps had probably not helped either.

  “If I can persuade you to love me too, Katherine,” he said, “my life would be complete. Happily ever after. I will—”

  “That wager!” She almost spat out the words. “I am mortally sick of that wager. I’ll have no more of it, do you understand? It is over with. Done. Love is not a game, and I will no longer have any part in pretending that it is. The wager is obliterated. Null and void. Gone. Go back to London with your stupid wagers if you must and to your equally stupid gentlemen friends who think it fun to bet money on whether or not you can persuade a woman who has done nothing to offend any one of you to… to debauch herself with you. Even to allow it to happen up against a tree in a public pleasure garden. Go, and never come back. I will never miss you.”

  Oh, dear, God, where were the words coming from? Why had she had to bring that up again?

  “I think,” he said softly, “my wagering days are probably over. I hurt you dreadfully.”

  It was not a question.

  “Yes, you did,” she said, and burst into tears.

  “Katherine.” His hands cupped her shoulders.