Someone to Trust

by Mary Balogh

  “Oh, I care,” he told her.

  “That is a very good thing to be told on my wedding day even if I did have to prompt you,” she said, her eyes twinkling at him.

  “I love that expression,” he told her. “That smile in your eyes. You were made for happiness and laughter. I loved to hear you laugh at Christmastime and I loved to provoke it. I intend to keep on doing it, you know. You would not have done much laughing with him, Elizabeth. You would have been expected to be eternally dignified. You would have expected it of yourself too. I do not expect any such thing. I want you to be yourself. Always. Every day. I want you to laugh and be happy.”

  “We could do worse than live on laughter,” she said, her eyes incongruously growing bright with tears.

  “And friendship,” he said, getting to his feet and extending a hand to help her to hers. “We are friends, are we not? We always were and surely always will be. Can friends make love, Elizabeth? Is it time to find out?”

  “Yes, indeed it is,” she said, setting her hand in his.

  Twenty-two

  We are friends, are we not? Can friends make love?

  His words felt like a cold dose of reality. But they were friends. They had a close, precious relationship. If she craved more, then she had only herself to blame. Though actually there was more, even if he did not realize it. He had a deep affection for her. She was quite sure of that. Deeper than one felt for a mere friend. It would be enough. She would make it enough.

  She preceded him into the bedchamber she had chosen for her own and turned as he closed the door into the sitting room. He drew her into his arms and kissed her, and she leaned into him, very aware that she was no longer wearing her stays and he was without the usual heavy layers of clothing. She could feel all the warm, muscled firmness of his man’s body pressed to her breasts and abdomen and thighs.

  He stood back from her after a few moments to unbutton her dressing gown. He removed it and tossed it onto one of the chairs while his eyes moved over her white cotton nightgown. Despite some lace trimming, it was really a very plain, modest garment, made for comfort more than for sensuality. She had decided against shopping for something more bridelike. He took hold of the nightgown on either side of her hips and lifted it while she raised her arms. He tossed the garment to join her dressing gown without taking his eyes off her.

  Oh my! She had been taken by surprise, and the flickering candles suddenly seemed rather bright. But she would not feel embarrassed. She was his wife, and this was who she was. This was what she looked like. She swallowed.

  “You are awfully beautiful, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice husky.

  And without moving closer to her, he explored her lightly with his fingertips. She scarcely felt them, yet his touch raised gooseflesh of awareness and tautened her nipples and sent aches of longing stabbing down through her womb to her inner thighs. His eyes followed the movement of his hands, and he bent forward to kiss her featherlight at the top of her cleavage. He raised his head, took a step closer to her until she felt the silky brocade of his dressing gown brush against her breasts and stomach, spread one hand behind her head, angled his own, and kissed her lightly and lingeringly on the lips until she yearned for more. But he did not deepen the kiss. He moved his head back so that his lips merely brushed her own, and he looked very directly into her eyes.

  “You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me,” he said, “for your beauty comes from within and glows like an aura all about you. And you have admitted me within its light.”

  And this was friendship? Oh, Colin.

  His eyes suddenly laughed into hers. “But it is not at all a spiritual interest I feel for you tonight,” he said. “I want you. In bed.”

  Oh. But she wanted him too. In an impersonal way because she had denied and pushed deep her needs for longer than seven years. In a far more personal way because he was Colin and her husband and he was knee-weakeningly attractive.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He extinguished the candles on the dressing table as she lay down, and she heard him removing his nightclothes before joining her on the bed. She turned to him.

  And he made love to her in a way that seemed to her very typical of Colin as she had come to know him. He was both gentle and thorough. He seemed to know what pleased her, whether by instinct or experience—it did not matter which—and he took his time about doing it. He made low, appreciative sounds when she caressed him with soft fingertips and light palms. And when at last he moved over her and came into her, there was all the heat of a slow passion burning between them, if those two words did not contradict each other. But she was not thinking with words. Indeed, she was not thinking at all, for there was only feeling and pleasure and pain/pleasure and the reaching for what lay beyond.

  He took her there without haste, without demand, moving rhythmically in her until she clenched about him and then relaxed into the blissful oblivion that lay beyond pleasure. And he moved in her until he held deep and she felt the hot gush of his release deep inside as he sighed warm breath against her ear and his weight relaxed onto her.

  They lay like that for a while as her fingers played gently through his hair, and she willed him not to move yet. It had been so long, and he was such a tender lover, her husband.

  She verbalized the word in her mind.

  He was her husband, this handsome, youthful, eager, kind, firm-willed man. He was her husband and she loved him. And she realized why the loving had been so good. For at every moment, even though he had not spoken, he had been making love to her. Not just to a woman or even just to his wife, but to her, Elizabeth. She did not know how she knew. She was not analyzing her thoughts, only allowing them to flow through her mind.

  After a minute or two he murmured something, uncoupled from her, and moved to her side.

  “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I must weigh a ton.”

  “Only half,” she said. She felt light and a bit chilled with his weight gone, but he reached down and pulled the covers over them before turning onto his side and taking her hand and lacing his fingers with hers.

  “You see?” he said, and there was humor in his voice. “It is possible for friends to make love.”

  “It is indeed,” she agreed, laughing softly, for she felt she had a secret he did not know yet. But he surely would. “It is also possible for husbands and wives.”

  “It seems a bit unreal, does it not?” he said.

  “That we are husband and wife?” she asked. “I hope it is not unreal. I would be living in sin.”

  “Ah, but I would do the decent thing and make an honest woman of you tomorrow,” he told her.

  “Well, that is reassuring,” she said.

  He squeezed her hand. “Am I expected to withdraw to the other room now?” he asked her.

  “Are you expected?” She turned to face him. She could not see him clearly even though her eyes had grown somewhat accustomed to the darkness. “And what impersonal being might be doing the expecting? Do I expect you to withdraw? No. Do I want you to go? No.”

  He kissed her briefly on the lips. “The thing is,” he said, and the humor was still there in his voice, “that I may want you again in the night. And you may not—”

  “Or, on the other hand, I may,” she said, cutting him off.

  He chuckled. “I was not a complete failure, then?” he said.

  She assumed the question was rhetorical. She smiled, settled her cheek against his shoulder, and promptly fell asleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  Colin awoke when dawn was beginning to gray the window. Their fingers were still laced and her head was still against his shoulder. Some of her hair was tickling his face. Perhaps that was what had woken him. But he did not mind. He actually did not want to sleep. He wanted to savor the wonder of what had happened to him in less than twenty-four hours. />
  First there had been the euphoria of the wedding. That feeling had taken him a bit by surprise, actually. Ross Parmiter, his best man, had asked if he was nervous, if he was ready to run a million miles without stopping, if he was afraid he would drop the ring as Ross handed it to him, if his breakfast was sitting uneasily in his stomach, if his neckcloth was feeling tight enough to choke him. The answer to all the questions had been no. He had been exhilarated instead and impatient for the nuptials to begin. Even the church and the size of the congregation as it began to gather—somehow larger than it had seemed when they sent out invitations—had not cowed him. The arrival of his mother had almost brought him to tears. And the moment his eyes had alit upon Elizabeth . . .

  Well. There were no words.

  The rest of the day had passed in a happy blur with all the hugs and kisses and back slapping and speeches and toasts—and Elizabeth like his center of serenity in the midst of it all.

  His wife.

  Even their arrival at the hotel had been a part of a memorably wonderful day. As the door to their suite had closed behind them, he had felt that he was home, that they were. That anywhere they were together was home. It was a moment of realization that had warmed him to the heart.

  He wished he had not called her a friend as he had suggested it was time they made love. It was not a very romantic word to use on such an occasion, was it? They were friends, especially as she had insisted that he take her down from the pedestal he had created for her and see her as a person on a level with himself. But surely they were more than just friends.

  Of course they were. They were lovers. But even before they were, when they had still been out there in the sitting room . . . Even then he had loved her. And it seemed to him that she loved him just a bit too.

  It seemed incredible that Elizabeth could love him. Did she? In that way, that once-in-a-lifetime way? That see-someone-across-a-ballroom-and-instantly-know sort of way? He smiled.

  It was how he loved her. It was how he had loved her since Christmas Eve.

  But inevitably he remembered something else. Something he had pushed ruthlessly from his consciousness for more than ten years. It had been bubbling back up recently and had broken into the forefront of his mind tonight.

  Tell me about your father.

  Innocent enough words. And he had begun to tell . . . until he could no longer do so. He had been unable to tell her or even, perhaps, himself. For he had always told himself, always believed, that it was his mother who was the chief source of pain in his life. And there was enough truth in that belief, heaven help him. But his father . . .

  Did you love him?

  Yes, he had. He had loved Wren first and foremost and then his father. After Wren had left and supposedly died, he had turned all his love upon his father and excused his unresponsiveness as just part of his natural reserve. He had interpreted his father’s agreeing to his going away to school as an expression of love.

  And perhaps he had been right. Perhaps he had been right about everything. And if it was true that his father had sent for Aunt Megan to come and take Wren away, perhaps he had done that too out of a sort of love.

  Or perhaps he had been wrong about everything. Those words spoken to the vicar after Justin’s funeral . . .

  He would not think of them. He must think about them. He must confront his mother with his unanswered questions. Or . . .

  Or someone else.

  He would think about it tomorrow. Or later today, he supposed he meant. In the meanwhile, though this was no longer his wedding day, it was still his wedding night.

  There had been sheer joy in the first part of it, in the disrobing and lovemaking and falling asleep in the certain knowledge that they had set the pattern for all the rest of their days—and nights. They had become each other’s family yesterday and last night. It was up to them to make it a happy family even if there were only ever just the two of them.

  He wanted her again, he discovered, just as he had warned her he would when he offered to remove to the other bedchamber. Or, on the other hand, I may, she had told him when he had started to warn her that he might want her again tonight if he remained in her bed. And he had been given the distinct impression that she meant it.

  He moved her hair aside from her face and feathered kisses down from her temple to her jaw. She muttered and stirred and turned her head until their mouths met.

  “Mmm,” she said, and stretched, her body against his. She had a beautiful body—slim and shapely and perfectly proportioned.

  “Mmm indeed,” he murmured against the side of her neck beneath her ear, and he felt her waking up.

  He moved over her and mounted her. She was warm and compliant and hot and relaxed in her depths. He loved her with quick, hard strokes as she awoke to the rhythm and matched it with inner muscles and the motion of her hips. And when he released into her, he knew that she was with him at the pinnacle and crested it with him.

  He moved to her side, slid an arm beneath her neck, and turned her against him while he drew the covers over them.

  “I warned you I might be troubling you again,” he said.

  “It was a great, vast trouble,” she said, laughing softly and warmly into the hollow between his neck and his shoulder, causing him to shiver with contentment.

  And for all his resolve to remain awake to savor his discovery of love and family, he sighed and slid back into sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  She was so glad he had been adamant about reserving the suite of rooms at Mivart’s Hotel rather than agreeing to spend the night with her at the house on South Audley Street. And she was glad she had backed him up when the rest of the family had tried to talk him out of it.

  Having breakfast together at the small table in the sitting room felt cozy. It felt like being at home even though it was not home. They sat down late after lying in bed, talking, after they awoke. And they ate their meal in a leisurely fashion and ordered more coffee to prolong the meal while they talked and laughed over frivolities. They could put behind them the intense, wonderful emotion of yesterday and simply enjoy being together without any time constraints or the chance that they would be interrupted by the return home of relatives—her relatives.

  “I need to go out,” he said eventually. “I need to pay a call.”

  “So do I,” she said, noting without guilt that half the morning was gone already, yet they were still sitting at the table in their dressing gowns. “I want to spend an hour or so with Araminta before she leaves her cousins’ house to return to Kent. I will go now since you have something else to do.”

  He got to his feet and bent over her to kiss her—such a simple but lovely gesture of affection.

  “You are going to call on your mother?” she asked. “You do not want me to come too?”

  “No,” he said. “This is best done alone.”

  Coward that she was, she was glad he did not want her company. She must call upon her mother-in-law, of course, before they left London, as they intended to do within a few days. They needed to go as soon as possible to Roxingley in order to make it ready for the onslaught of summer guests they had invited. Colin had not been there in eight years, and even then he had gone just briefly for his father’s funeral. She had never been there. Very possibly there would be much to do. Indeed, if the drawing room at the house on Curzon Street was anything to judge by, there very probably would be much to do in order to make Roxingley theirs—hers and Colin’s. But she looked forward to the challenge immensely.

  Except for the looming problem of what exactly they were going to do about Lady Hodges—no, the Dowager Lady Hodges if she chose to move back to Roxingley in the summer. Colin had mentioned the possibility of building a dower house, but that would take time.

  They left the hotel and traveled together in Colin’s carriage to the house where Araminta Scot
t was staying. He came briefly inside with her to pay his respects to Araminta and then continued on his way to his mother’s house. He would send the carriage back for her convenience, he told her.

  “Oh, Lizzie,” her friend said with a deliberately exaggerated sigh as the door closed behind him, “he is really quite delicious. Where may I find someone just like him, if you please?”

  “He is one of a kind,” Elizabeth said, laughing, “and he is mine. Now tell me what you plan to do with your life now you have had some time to give the matter some thought.”

  Araminta Scott was a year younger than she. But she had never married, mainly, Elizabeth was convinced, because her father had been determined to keep her at home to serve him. Now her friend was free to live a bit. Perhaps to live a lot.

  They settled into a comfortable conversation.

  * * *

  • • •

  Colin had not outright lied to Elizabeth, though he had not corrected her misconception either. It was not his mother upon whom he was calling. It was someone else. He hoped the man was at home. He would simply have to come back some other time if he was not. It was time he had answers.

  Lord Ede was at home, as it happened, though it took him almost half an hour to come to the small visitors’ salon off the main hall where Colin had been asked to wait.

  Lord Ede entered the room and waited until his butler had closed the door behind him. He was tall and immaculately dressed. His silver hair gave him a distinguished look, though his handsome features had been somewhat ravaged by time and hard living. He stood a little way inside the door, a slightly mocking smile playing about his lips, one eyebrow partially raised as he regarded his visitor.

  “Well, my boy,” he said softly, “this is an unexpected pleasure. I trust you left Lady Hodges in good spirits this morning?”