Gentle conquest

by Mary Balogh

  She had seemed so happy and glowing when she returned from her walk. He had seen her like that only at Chartleigh, when she was planning her dinner party. He wished she could always be thus. He wished he could bring her to life like that. She had been walking with her sister and with Roger and the unknown Dennis Vaughan. It must have been this old friend of hers who had made her so happy.

  Ralph sighed. He knew so little about her. He had never thought to ask her to tell him about herself. She had been in London since early in the spring. She had taken part in all the whirl of the Season. She had been presented at St. James's. And she was young, attractive. Was it not likely that she had many friends of whom he knew nothing? She had probably had several admirers. Was there anyone in particular whom she had had to renounce in order to marry him? he wondered. Perhaps this Vaughn was someone she had loved? But no, he did not think so. Surely she would have looked tragic this afternoon if she had met him under such circumstances. She had seemed genuinely delighted by the meeting.

  But she had smiled at him. She had readily agreed to accompany him to Lord Standen's. She had consulted him about the gown she should wear. And she seemed to have chosen something with which she could wear his pearls. He must not miss the opportunity with which she was presenting him, if there was a chance that a warmer relationship between them could develop this evening, even if only a friendship, he must not lose it.

  He wanted Georgiana very badly. Not just her body, though he ached far that. He wanted her companionship, her respect, her love. And that need had only intensified since the night before. Ralph closed his eyes and relived his encounter with Sally Shaw. He no longer wished to think of her by name. He did not wish to picture her as she had appeared at the opera. He wanted only to remember how she had felt in his arms.

  She was small and very shapely, her skin soft and incredibly smoth. He had not expected her to be naked. But he gloried now in the memory of his hands moving over her, learning some of the mysteries of a beautiful woman's body. And she was beautiful. It was a tragedy that she sullied that beauty with paint. He supposed that there was something extremely sordid about what had happened. He had coupled with a woman he did not know, a woman whom he had not even seen close. But it had not seemed sordid. She had offered herself sweetly and undemandingly. He had felt no fear of clumsiness or failure as he discovered inside her body the delights that he had dreamed of for several years.

  She must be very skilledin her art. She had shown no signs of distaste or boredom, and no impatience to be rid of his weight or his person when it was all over. He found himself all impatience for the two days to pass until he could be with her again.

  Did he feel guilty? Ile rather feared that he did not. He had been unfaithful to the wife he claimed to love, and he planned to repeat the infidelity, probably many times. He should despise himself. He had only to think of Georgiana to know that it was she he wanted. And could one want two women at the same time'? He very much suspected that one could. Georgiana was beyond his reach at present. He was not quite sure why this was so. There was no nameable barrier between them, but there was a very real one nevertheless.

  He had begun their marriage all wrong, giving in to timidity just at the time when he had most needed to be decisive. He was sure that if he had consummated their marriage on their wedding night, they could have made the adjustment to married life and begun to build an affectionate relationship, even if the process had taken time. He might have been clumsy. He might have hurt her. It might have been a very unsatisfactory wedding night. But it could have been lived down. The fact that he had left her had paralyzed all future action. Not only for him. There had been that one occasion when he had been close again to making love to her. But she had lost her courage.

  It was a ridiculous situation they found themselves in. Ralph was sure that most people of his acquaintance would hold him in the utmost contempt if they knew. Here he was, with the courage to hire himself a whore and take his pleasure with her, yet terrified into inaction by the mere thought of going to his wife, who slept nightly in a room adjoining his own. He really did not wish to dwell on the thought. It shook to the roots his newfound sense of manhood.

  Georgiana. His love. His biggest failure in life.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE EVENING at Lord Standen's townhouse was indeed quite different from anything Georgiana had expected. Most of the guests were male, and most were considerably older than either she or Ralph. Normally she felt quite unselfconscious in a crowd and could converse with the greatest of ease with whoever happened to be near her. On this occasion, she felt out of her depth. This was no frivolous social occasion.

  Yet Ralph, she noticed with some interest, seemed immediately to be in his element. After some introductions had been made on their entry into the drawing room, he drew her into a group that was talking animatedly about something to do with taxes and land reform. She did try at first to follow what was being said, but her attention quickly wandered.

  It was caught by a young lady on the other side of the room, almost the only person in the room, in fact, noticeably below the age of thirty, with the exception of her and Ralph, and the man on whose arm the girl's hand rested. He was a slightly built young man with a thin, ascetic face and a shock of unruly black curls, a marked contrast to the blond beauty of his companion. Georgiana had been introduced to both a mere few minutes before, but she could not remember their names.

  She caught the eye of the young lady, who smiled and beckoned her. Georgiana removed her hand from Ralph's arm and crossed the room.

  "Do join us, Lady Chartleigh," the girl said. Her beauty was quite flawless, Georgiana saw. "I daresay you are rather dismayed to find yourself in company with so many dry old sticks. I must not say that very loudly, of course, but Standen's parties are not strong on excitement."

  "Oh," Georgiana said. "I had not realized I was looking so bored."

  The girl dimpled. "I used to be terrified of him," she said, "Until Nigel told me that my own opinions are quite as valuable as anyone else's. I must say I still stand in some awe of all this superior intellect. These people all make me feel the merest peagoose. But sometimes the most intelligent people are not the most practical people. Is that not true, Nigel?"

  The dark young man looked gravely at her. "Quite so, my love," he said. "But they are also the most powerful people and ultimately will be able to do far more than you or I to set right the inequalities of our social system."

  "Lady Chartleigh," the girl said, "I can see that you look quite bewildered. And how foolish of me to forget that when one is introduced to twenty new faces in fewer minutes, one is unlikely to remember a single one of them afterward. This is my husband, Nigel Broome. He is Standen's brother, you know, though you would never guess from looking at them, would you? I am Sylvia Broome. Like you, we have been married only a few months."

  Georgiana relaxed. Here was someone as ordinary as herself, a girl of her own age, surely. In fact, now that she looked more closely, she seemed to remember having seen Sylvia Broome before, probably at some of the social events of the spring. She smiled and began to talk.

  It was a strange evening. No cards. No dancing. No music. No charades. Just conversation, and lots of it. But Georgiana had made friends with Sylvia and Nigel Broome by the end of it. They were a fascinating couple, she found. They were deeply devoted to each other although physically they seemed such a mismatch. Sylvia had a habit of prefacing much of what she said with "Nigel says… " And he never failed to listen with the whole of his attention to everything she said, no matter how seemingly frivolous.

  What made them most fascinating to her, though, was the fact that they did not spend their days in fashionable idleness. Not for them the constant fight against boredom that she knew from her own life and which had often led her into all sorts of troublesome scrapes. Nigel ran a school for destitute boys in their own home. They had twenty enrolled, though actual numbers fluctuated quite alarmingly, they confided. It w
as their sole ambition to give the boys enough of an education to enable them to get positions as servants or perhaps even clerks.

  "When you see the reality of the situation, you quickly lose your larger ambitions," Nigel Broome explained. "We have no dream of reforming the world. If we can be of small help to a mere handful of boys so that they have some future instead of none at all, we will feel that our venture has been a success. As Sylvia once said, the ocean is made up of little drops of water. Each little drop is as important as any other."

  "But in your own home!" Georgiana said, turning to Sylvia. "How can you bear it?"

  "The adjustment has certainly not been easy," the girl said, laughing. "I lived a retired and very pampered life in the country until my guardian brought me to London this year, you know. But Nigel says that being able to adapt to change is part of maturing, and Nigel is always there to calm me down when I am ready to say I can take no more. It is a challenging life, Lady Chartleigh. Looking back, I can hardly recognize the girl I was a mere few months ago-a timid, frivolous ninny-hammer of a girl."

  "You were never that, my love," her husband said gravely.

  Ralph joined them partway through their conversation. He sat beside Georgiana and smiled at her. She felt a rush of warmth. How good it was to sit thus with one's husband, conversing with another equally young but very interesting couple. There was something very domesticated about the scene. And how horrified by the very notion she would have been only a couple of months before. Sylvia Broome was right. One did change very quickly after marriage-even after a very incomplete and unsatisfactory marriage.

  "How does your brother react to your project?" Ralph asked Nigel Broome. "He seems very set on bringing about sweeping social changes in the country."

  Nigel smiled. "I am afraid we do not always see eye to eye," he said. "It might seem surprising since we have very similar ideas. But my charge is always that my brother's head is in the clouds. Airy notions do not bring about the changes that are so desperately needed, or if they do, those changes come about so slowly that whole generations suffer in the meanwhile. He charges that my solution helps so few people that it is quite worthless. We keep the peace by agreeing to disagree."

  Later, in the carriage on the way home, Ralph took Georgiana's hand, something he had not done for a while. "Are you very tired, my dear?" he asked.

  Georgiana yawned. "Mmm," she said. She was resisting the urge to rest her head on his shoulder. As it was, she had allowed the motion of the carriage to tilt her sideways so that her shoulder was propped against his arm.

  "I am glad the Broomes were there," he said. "I had not met them before, though Standen has spoken of his brother. He was betrothed to Sylvia Broome, you know."

  "Who?" she asked.

  "Standen," he said. "But something happened and she was forced to marry his brother."

  "How strange," she said. "I would say she has made the wiser choice, though, even though Lord Standen is vastly more handsome than her husband."

  He turned his head and smiled down at her. His cheek brushed against her hair for a moment. "Did you like them?" he asked. "I was afraid for a while that you would be dreadfully bored, Georgiana.”

  "I would not have minded," she said gallantly. "You like that sort of gathering, do you not, Ralph? I think you must be very intelligent and have a very superior education. I must seem very dull to you. I have not read very much and I have never thought very deeply about any really important topic."

  "Georgiana!" he said, turning toward her in the darkness of the carriage and squeezing her hand. "Do not belittle yourself. You have not had occasion, perhaps, to think a great deal on serious matters. But you have qualities of character that I find most enviable. You have the courage and the warmth to show to advantage in almost any situation."

  "Oh," she said. "Ralph, when I talk to someone like Sylvia Broome, I think of how very useless my life has been. And I do admire her tremendously. But I do not believe I could live her kind of life. To have one's home invaded by boys from the street! I think I should become cross beyond all belief and be screeching at them like a barn owl before a day was out."

  He laughed and drew her arm through his so that her shoulder rested comfortably against his arm again. "Then I must be careful never to suggest opening a school for boys in Middleton House," he said. He added quietly, "But I must find something to do, dear. I am not quite sure what. Will you mind?"

  She shook her head and gave in to the temptation to rest her cheek against his shoulder. They rode home in companionable silence and climbed the stairs together to their rooms. Ralph stopped outside her door and looked down at her.

  "I hope it has not been a dreadfully dull evening for you," he said.

  How could she convey to him the fact that any activity this evening would have been a delight provided only she could see him and be in the same room as he?

  "I have enjoyed it," she said. "I think I have learned something about your life, Ralph."

  He smiled and brushed the fingers of one hand against her cheek. "You are a very sweet person, Georgiana," he said.

  She felt herself become breathless. What stopped her from reaching out and putting her hands against his chest or around his neck? Or from taking his hand and opening the door of her bedchamber as she had the night before in a different house? And what prevented him from taking her in his arms? Or leaning across her and opening the door himself? What was it that was between them when there was no apparent reason for any barrier at all?

  They looked into each other's eyes only long enough to know that there was no breaching that invisible wall yet. He bent his head and kissed her very softly on the lips.

  "Good night, dear," he said.

  "Good night, Ralph."

  The formality of their words rang in Georgiana's ears as she stood on the other side of the door a few moments later, leaning back against it, the tears wet on her cheeks.

  ***

  For the next two days Georgiana was very restless. It seemed to her that the time would never come when Roger would again take her to Kensington and she would again don her disguise for her meeting with Ralph. She was all impatience. In the meantime she tried to interest herself in what was going on around her. She went shopping with Gloria for more bride clothes, visited Lady Beauchamp with her mother-in-law, visited her own parents on the occasion of her father's birthday, and wandered around Middleton House, examining each room with a critical eye and imagining how it would look with some changes.

  She was only just beginning to digest the fact that this house was now hers, that she was its mistress. It was a magnificent house, but the furnishings were heavy and old-fashioned. Georgiana hated furniture loaded down with ornate carvings and gilt trimmings. She much preferred simple elegance. And reds predominated far too much in the house, she felt. She would like softer tones to make the rooms lighter and more airy. She would like to see all the family portraits arranged in the upper gallery, where there was light and space enough to show them to advantage. If she had her way, they would all be removed from the living rooms and replaced with landscapes.

  She wondered what Ralph would say if she told him of her ideas. She certainly foresaw battles with his mother, who could not seem to accept the presence of Georgiana in what she still considered as her own home.

  And Georgiana had a visitor. Dennis Vaughan called on the first afternoon and stayed for a whole hour. She heard someone else at the door while he was with her and was disappointed to discover that it was not Ralph. She would have liked her old friend to meet him. They would have nothing in common, of course. Dennis would appear quite trivial-minded beside Ralph. She even admitted to herself with a little twinge of surprise that she wanted Dennis to see that she had married someone above the ordinary touch. She recalled feeling just before her marriage that she would be ashamed for her friends to see the sort of man she had been forced into accepting.

  It was Stanley who had come in. He came and talked with Dennis for
a while before leaving the room again. Georgiana was starting to feel rather uneasy around Ralph's brother. He was always civil, but she had a feeling that he disliked her and disapproved of her. He could not possibly be more unlike Ralph. She put him from her mind.

  She spent a pleasant evening with Ralph the day after the Standen party. The rest of the family had been invited out after dinner, and Georgiana followed her husband to the library.

  "Do you mind if I sit in here to do my embroidery?" she asked. "I shall not disturb you."

  "Of course not, Georgiana," he said. "I merely came to choose a book. I intended to join you in the drawing room."

  "Would you not prefer to stay here?" she asked. "It is a much cozier room."

  And they sat, one on each side of the fire, for an hour or more, she sewing, he reading, with scarcely a word passing between them. Just like an old married couple, Georgiana thought with deep content. So life should be at times. One could not forever be going out, searching for any activity that might alleviate boredom for a few hours.

  She looked up under her eyebrows at him a few times. He was quite engrossed in his reading. She might have felt some resentment against his books, which could take him so completely away from her. But he looked very endearing, slouched down somewhat in his chair, one elbow propped on the armrest, his hand pushing at his hair, which was looking more disheveled than usual. His face held a slight frown of concentration.

  Men must be very different from women, she concluded. He seemed utterly absorbed in his book, just as if he had never visited a certain house in Kensington two nights before and just as if he had made no plans to go there again the following night. Had it really meant so little to him? Was it perhaps just a light flirtation for him, something he would have indulged in even if their marriage was a normal one? She did not care to investigate that thought further. Or did the meetings mean something to him, but he had the ability to put them out of his mind? Could men compartmentalize their lives, love and all its associated emotions being but one compartment? That thought too was not an attractive one.