by Mary Balogh
All doubts fled. All the foolish doubts. This was the way it was, the way it should be. The only way it could be. Her husband inside her, beginning to love her.
“Yes,” she whispered to him without opening her eyes. “Yes, Christopher.”
And then his weight came back onto her and his palms came flat against hers and spread her arms wide on the bed so that she was spread-eagled beneath him, and he began to work in her with steady, rhythmic strokes that had her body first humming with pleasure and then aching with longing and finally taut with need.
“Come,” he said at last, his voice deep against her ear. “Come with me. All the way.”
And she came, trusting him because he was her husband and they loved each other. She shuddered beneath him while his hands pressed down on hers and his seed sprang deep in her body. And she called out his name. And shivered into stillness and sleep beneath his weight.
She awoke only when hands were covering her with the blankets again and one arm was sliding about her shoulders.
“Mm,” she said, giving in to the pleasure of lethargy and letting him settle her damp body against his. “Is it always this good?”
“It always seems better than the time before,” he said.
“Ten years from now it will be quite unbearably sweet, then,” she said and slid back into sleep.
It was quite early in the morning. Christopher could tell that by the quality of light penetrating the heavy velvet curtains at the window. But he wanted to get up. He wanted to start using some of the pent-up energy that had found little outlet during the long sea crossing and the days since his landing. He was not accustomed to idleness. He did not enjoy it.
And yet it was ironic that he should feel so full of energy on this of all mornings. He had not had a great deal of sleep. Or relaxation. He had worked hard during the lengthy periods of wakefulness. She did not come easily, he had discovered during the two encounters that had followed that first. She was quickly aroused but seemed a little uneasy about her response, or even ashamed of it. He had had to take her slowly each time, bringing her to the brink of release with patience and skill. He had not wanted to come alone. Not with her. It had never mattered with other women—and there had been many women in Canada and America. But with her it did matter. And so each time he had held himself back and coaxed her over the edge of passion with him. Each time when she had finally come, it had been with a shattering intensity.
It had been a delirious night of sex—with a woman who was not his wife. Although—no, she was not his wife.
And now he was vigorous with energy. And determined to get up and start learning about his inheritance and taking responsibility for it. Penhallow had been well run for years by stewards, the Archers, father and son. But Christopher was a businessman. He was accustomed to having firsthand knowledge of his business dealings and very often an active hand in their workings. He was used to managing his own affairs. The knowledge that Penhallow was now his filled him with exhilaration. And today, he thought, he was going to begin learning the workings of this new business.
His hand was stroking absently through the silky tangles of Elizabeth’s hair, his fingertips massaging the back of her head. She was fast asleep on top of him, her body warm and relaxed, her legs spread on either side of his. He was still nestled warmly inside her from their last loving. He turned her slowly and carefully to set her on the bed beside him, disengaging his body from hers as he did so. He did not want to wake her. The only less than perfect parts of the night, he had found, had been her awakenings. Each time he had searched her eyes for awareness—and each time there had been none.
She woke now. Her eyes opened. But they were languorous and smiling—the eyes of a woman who had been loved well and thoroughly through the night. She sighed with contentment.
He leaned over her and kissed her mouth. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured. “I am going to ride into the village to see Archer—my steward. I have been neglecting estate business for the past several days. I will be back for luncheon. This afternoon we’ll go to the beach. Shall we?”
“Mm,” she said. “Christopher? Was I all right? I mean, was I a disappointment to you? Different from usual? Not as good?”
He kissed her again. “Did I act like a man who was disappointed?” he asked. “You are merely fishing for compliments. You know very well how wonderful you were. Go back to sleep.”
“Later,” she said, closing her eyes and turning into the warmth of the pillow where his head had been, “you must tell me how we met, Christopher. But I am so very glad we did.”
She was sleeping by the time he got out of bed and looked down at her again. The blankets covered her only to the waist. She was gloriously beautiful, her breasts generous but firm. She would surely cover herself with haste, he thought, if she knew just how unaccustomed his eyes were to the sight of her.
And his body to the feel of her.
He was more convinced than ever, gazing down at her before turning sharply away, that there was little to distinguish the emotions of love and hatred. He hated her this morning both because of what she had done to him in the past and because she had caused him to hate and despise himself for last night’s happenings. And yet . . . it was a hatred that felt very like love.
Nancy was an early riser and had breakfasted with her brother, but she joined Elizabeth later in the breakfast room and sat down to drink a cup of coffee with her.
Elizabeth was radiant. If she had stood on the table and shouted out that she had spent the night in Christopher’s bed, the truth could not have been more obvious than it was just from the look of her. Nancy felt uncomfortable.
“Nancy,” Elizabeth said, leaning forward in her chair, smiling, “I have noticed that you do everything in the house. You consult with Mrs. Clavell and you go down to the kitchen each morning to discuss the day’s menu with the cook, don’t you? Do you always do those things? Or do I? Or do we share?” She flushed suddenly and looked anxious.
“You have been sick,” Nancy said. “I—”
Elizabeth covered her hand with her own. “I know,” she said. “And you have been wonderful to me, Nancy. I don’t want to give the impression that I am jealous or resent your taking charge. I don’t. But what is the usual arrangement? I know that there can be friction when two women share the same house. Has there ever been friction between us? I do hope not. I like you very much. I hope I always have.”
Nancy was feeling angry. She had always been mistress of Penhallow. For the past year since her father’s death she had run the house single-handed and had kept an eye on estate business too. How dare a stranger—a total stranger—come there and try to take over.
But Elizabeth was the victim of a deception to which she, Nancy, had consented, however reluctantly. And it was very hard to dislike her although Nancy had been very prepared to do just that.
“We are friends,” she said, swallowing her anger, “and sisters. We seem not to have any rules about who runs the house. I had not thought of it until you mentioned it now. But everything has always worked smoothly and we have never yet had to resort to pulling out each other’s hair.” She was not good at lying. She could not think fast and she was not sure she had a good enough memory to remain consistent.
Anger rose in her again, but this time it was all directed against her brother. Elizabeth seemed to have matured into a sweet and kind and fair-minded woman. The sweetness had always been there, though it had used to be combined with a meek dependence on her family and a tendency to turn to them at every crisis.
“I must do something,” Elizabeth said. “I think I like to keep busy. I do, don’t I? I was not made for an idle life.”
Nancy smiled. “Why don’t you take a week off?” she said. “I know Christopher is concerned about you and wants to spend some time with you. Relax with him and get to feel familiar with your surroundings again. Just for a week. By that time your memory will probably have returned.”
“I hope so,” El
izabeth said. And the glow came back to her eyes. “I’ll spend the week with Christopher, then, if you don’t mind, Nancy. We are going to the beach this afternoon.”
“You will love it,” Nancy said. “You always have.”
“Is there no one special in your life?” Elizabeth asked. “You are so beautiful, Nancy, and so kind. You must be lonely here with only Christopher and me. Or is there someone?”
“I have no interest in men,” Nancy said briskly. “Or in marrying. I am happy as I am.”
“I am sorry.” Elizabeth grimaced. “I have touched a raw nerve. If I just had my memory, I would not have been so tactless. Forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Nancy said, getting to her feet. “There is no one. I spoke the truth. Would you like to stroll in the garden and maybe along the valley? The trees are lovely at this time of year—all fresh and new.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I need air and exercise. I’ll go fetch a cloak.”
She was feeling envious, Nancy thought incredulously. She had seen Christopher earlier and now Elizabeth and instead of feeling outrage at what they had so obviously been doing through the night, she was feeling—envy.
Sometimes, she thought, armor did not protect as well as it was supposed to do. She had a seven-year armor about herself, but it had been pierced by one look at the face of a woman who had just emerged from a night of passion. And a night of forbidden passion at that.
Her thoughts went back, as they rarely did, to that spring of her come-out. To all the magical excitement of it. And the unexpected success of it. She had been twenty years old, well past the accepted age for a come-out. Christopher had gone up to London after finishing university at Oxford and had persuaded their Aunt Hilda, their mother’s sister, to sponsor Nancy for a Season. And so she had had what she had always dreamed of, though she had never expected it or asked it of her father.
Over the years she had persuaded herself that that Season had not been so wonderful after all. That the life had not really suited her. Penhallow was where she belonged, where she was happy. London had merely been a dizzying and pleasant interlude.
Oh, but it had been wonderful. And wonderful to see Christopher as dazzled and as excited as she. At her very first ball her card had filled up by the time the third set began. There had been gentlemen wanting to drive her in the park and walk with her there and escort her to the theater and the opera. There had been bouquets of flowers.
There had been John Ward, Elizabeth’s elder brother. Captain John Ward, Viscount Aston. And then Martin Honywood.
And finally her flight back home to don the armor. And to convince herself and everyone else that this was where she wanted to be and that a life alone was what she wanted. And it was true. Anything else was out of the question. She had a circle of friends and acquaintances around Penhallow, but she was distrustful of social contact beyond that circle. And the gentlemen she knew had learned that they must not try to come too close either to her person or to her heart.
But sometimes she felt envy. Elizabeth was a victim of her own loss of memory and of Christopher’s ruthlessness and should not be envied. But how wonderful it must be, Nancy thought somewhat wistfully as she hurried upstairs to get her own cloak, to be free—physically and mentally and emotionally free—to enjoy making love with a man. Perhaps if she could lose her own memory . . .
A thoroughly foolish and distasteful thought!
Chapter 8
CHRISTOPHER took Elizabeth up the hill behind the house, walking slowly so as not to tire her, though she claimed to be feeling quite fit again. He turned her at the top and let her arm drop away from his so that he might encircle her waist with his arm and draw her against his side. They looked down at the house and the valley. “There is quite a contrast between here and there, don’t you think?” he said. “That is part of the charm of Penhallow, I always think. It is rather like an oasis in the desert. Though I suppose that is a poor image when the sea is so close.”
“I walked partway along the valley this morning with Nancy,” she said. “But not too far. She was afraid I would tire.”
“You get on well with Nancy?” he asked.
She turned her head sharply and looked up at him. “Yes,” she said. “Am I not supposed to? Do we not normally agree?”
“Of course you do,” he said.
“But it is strange.” She frowned. “We are two women living in the same house, she by right of birth, me by right of marriage, and yet there is no definite arrangement about who is the real mistress of the house—or so she told me this morning. Everything works amicably. It does not sound quite possible. Has it been difficult, Christopher? Have we been like two cats with claws bared? Have you been caught in the middle?”
“Nothing like that,” he said. “Are you jealous of her now that you cannot remember how it was, Elizabeth?”
“I am very fond of her,” she said. “She has shown a great deal of patience with me. I would hate to think that normally things are not so good between us. But perhaps we can learn from this experience. Perhaps I can learn to value her as she deserves to be valued—if it turns out that I did not do so before, that is.”
“You think I am lying to you?” he asked, hugging her tightly to his side.
“No,” she said. “But shielding me from the full truth, perhaps. Everything you and Nancy have told me has made our lives sound perfect—as if we have had wonderful, trouble-free relationships. You and I have a seven-year marriage still being lived in the happily ever after. It does not sound quite real. Oh, I believe it in the main. I believe we love each other and are happy together. I feel that that must be so. But there must have been troubles too. We would not be human otherwise. We would not have been able to grow. We would have remained children. Was I only eighteen when we married? Tell me about some of the troubles.”
He turned her again and they strolled over the coarse grass of the plateau toward the top of the cliffs. He did not speak for a while and she wondered if she had hurt or even angered him. He had tried so hard in the past week to quell her fears, to reassure her that all was well with her life even if she could not remember it.
“I told you about our wedding night,” he said. “That was not quite idyllic. The first few months of our marriage were not. We had both spent lonely, sheltered childhoods. Neither of us was quite ready for the responsibilities of marriage or the adjustments to an intimate relationship that marriage involved. They were not easy months.”
“Tell me about them,” she said. “Perhaps they were not easy, but surely they were of value. We must have grown beyond them to our present contentment.”
“You had always been closely protected by your family,” he said. “They all liked to live your life for you. From the best of motives perhaps. But you did not know how to cope alone. You used to turn to them sometimes instead of to me. And you were dismayed or sometimes defiant when I complained about it.”
“How insufferable I must have been,” she said.
“I had known no other women but Nancy,” he said. “I was shy and bewildered and hid my inadequacies behind frowns and morose moods and attempts to appear very stern and masculine.”
She laughed. “How insufferable you must have been,” she said.
“We would have been a disaster together,” he said, “but for the fact that we loved each other. And were also a little afraid of each other. I was afraid that I would never learn to protect you and hold your trust as well as your family had always done. And I think you were afraid that you could never measure up to my expectations. I think you thought I was an experienced man of the world. I tried to make you believe that, foolish puppy that I was.”
“Oh, Christopher,” she said, “you can remember all the pain of having lived through those months. I cannot, and I think the story charming. Charming in the sense that we must have had strengths of character that were not apparent at the time. We grew up and learned to shape a successful marriage despite everything. We ca
n be proud of that. And so we can be confident of overcoming any trouble to our marriage, including this one.”
He drew her to a halt and looked down into her eyes. “This must be distressing to you,” he said, “but it need not be a trouble. I think we are working through it rather well, don’t you?”
She touched his face. “Are there other troubles that we were working through?” she asked. “That we will have to face again when I remember?”
He lowered his head and kissed her, drawing her tightly into his arms. There was something a little desperate about his embrace. “Nothing,” he said. “We are together. That is the only fact of any importance. You might have died in that accident.”
She felt a wave of panic suddenly. There was something after all. Some lack of ease. But he was right. They were together and she knew that they loved each other.
“And whatever it may be,” she said, “we will work it out, Christopher. Again and again throughout our marriage. We will continue to grow together and deepen our commitment to each other.”
“You have changed,” he said. “Since I first knew you, that is. Thinking back on the way you were makes me realize that.”
They came very quickly to the top of the cliffs, to the point at which the coarse grass and yellow gorse bushes gave way quite suddenly to a sheer drop and there was nothing before their feet but emptiness and the sea far below, blue and sparkling in the sunshine.
She drew in her breath sharply and let it out slowly again. “Ah,” she said, “how can I have forgotten this? It is magnificent. It is creation at its wildest and most beautiful.”
“It’s home,” he said, tightening his clasp on her waist as if he half expected her to take a step forward and disappear forever from his grasp.