Mary Balogh (43 page)

He had nothing to offer her beyond a certain expertise in bed. It had always been enough with women—enough to please them and enough to satisfy himself. It had pleased Mary, too, but she was not the type of woman to wish to build a whole relationship on that alone. And she was right. No relationship could thrive on just sex.

But did he want a relationship? he asked himself, and laughed inwardly. He was incapable of having a relationship.

After half an hour he managed to detach her from his aunt’s side. He had thought the two of them would get along famously, but he had not expected that they would leap into such instant friendship. He took her walking down by the river, and when there was a boat free, he rowed her out onto the water. By his request she told him about Spain, and he listened, fascinated, to her accounts of various campaigns and the endless marches to and fro across the Peninsula. He had heard some of the stories before, but never from a woman’s point of view.

But it was a one-sided conversation. He had nothing to tell her. Nothing beyond his twenty-first year, and before that time his life had been so wrapped up with family that it was difficult to tell any story that did not involve Dick. And as soon as he mentioned Dick, she would be reminded of how he had killed him as a result of a drunken debauch.

He looked at himself through her eyes and saw a worthless fellow, someone who had done nothing that he might lay with pride at the feet of his chosen woman. Chosen? For what? For his mistress? That was what he had wanted. She attracted him and had proved to him already that she could satisfy him more fully than any other woman he had had.

Had
wanted? Was that no longer enough? No, it was not, he realized with numbing shock. It would not be enough to have Mary only in bed, to take her to his house once or twice a week, to stay at hers once or twice more. Not nearly enough. He wanted her in his life, an integral part of it. A part of him. He wanted her as his wife.

“Shall we stroll up to the house?” he suggested when he handed her out of the boat. “You are probably ready
for some tea. Perhaps there will be another couple who will wish to join us in a game of croquet.”

He no longer wanted to be alone with her. Knowing what he now knew, he realized even more the impossibility of the whole situation. His wife! He would see the scorn in her eyes if he so much as hinted at such a thing. And it would be like the lash of a whip. He would be quite defenseless against it.

“Yes,” she said, taking his arm. “That would be pleasant.”

The poke of her bonnet reached barely to his chin. She was light and dainty, like one of the delicate flowers on her bonnet. The thought amazed him. If someone had told him a little more than two weeks before that he would ever look at Lady Mornington and compare her to a delicate flower, he would have chuckled with vast amusement. It was hard to remember how he had used to view her.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked, and then wished he had not done so. Why invite one of the setdowns she was so good at?

“It is very pleasant,” she said. “The surroundings are lovely and the weather perfect. Your aunt is very amiable. I am pleased to have made her acquaintance at last.”

She was also good at diplomacy.

“Ah,” he said. “So I have done something that meets with your approval, Mary. I have effected a meeting between the two of you.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

She had said not one cross or scornful word to him since their arrival. It was as if she had decided that since this was the last day she would have to spend with him, she would be pleasant. She had been scrupulously polite. She seemed to have surrounded herself with an impregnable armor. And there was so little of the day left.

But it was just as well, he thought. It would be as well
when the day was over and he could return to normal living again. There was a new actress at the Drury Lane, a tall brunette who played some of the more minor roles. He had heard that Crompton had taken her under his protection already. But he would oust the opposition with no trouble at all—Crompton was nothing but a gauche boy with a fortune too large for his own good—and enjoy the girl for a few days, or a few weeks if she pleased him.

It would be a relief to return to normal life. He would feel safe again.

They were not alone again for the rest of the afternoon. They played croquet in company with several other couples and then had tea on the upper lawn with the same people. They were all very merry. No one in the group noticeably shunned him. He supposed they would not feel it appropriate to do so, considering his relationship to their hostess.

A few people were already taking their leave. He would have to order around the barouche soon, he thought with mingled regret and relief. The day was all but over. And nothing whatsoever had happened in it to make her want to repeat the experience. Quite the contrary, in fact.

They strolled up to the terrace with two couples with whom they had been having tea, and waved their carriage on its way.

“So, Mary,” he said, “the day nears its end.”

“Yes,” she said.

But before either of them could say more, his aunt stepped between them and took an arm of each.

“I do believe the party has been a success,” she said, “for which I have the weather and your growls to be thankful for, Edmond. The servants actually behaved like real servants.”

Actually, Lord Edmond thought, pursing his lips, his
aunt’s servants probably found it far easier to perform their duties when she was not constantly hovering in their vicinity giving confusing and contradictory orders. All he had done earlier in the afternoon was stroll up to her butler and say quietly, “Growl. Now I have followed her ladyship’s instructions, Soames, and you may go about your business without further interruption.”

The butler had grinned at him for a moment before remembering that he was a butler and pokering up quite as if he had never in his life been taught to smile. “Yes, my lord,” he said. “Thank you, my lord.”

“But I shan’t be sorry to see everyone on the way and to be quiet again,” Lady Eleanor said. “I have scarcely had a chance to exchange a dozen words with either Lady Mornington or you, dear.”

“I shall summon the barouche without a moment’s delay,” Lord Edmond said. “Never let it be said that I cannot take a hint, Aunt.”

“Oh.” She laughed merrily. “I would not be so rag-mannered, dear. I merely meant that I shall be glad to have the two of you to myself for a few hours. You will, of course, be staying for dinner.”

Sweet, seductive idea. “I invited Lady Mornington for the afternoon,” he said. “Perhaps she has other plans for dinner and the evening.”

“There is one easy way of finding out,” she said, turning to smile at Mary. “Do you have another engagement, my dear? I do hope not, as I have looked forward all afternoon to having a pleasant conversation with you over dinner. Do please stay.
Do
you have other plans?”

Her eyes met his across his aunt for a moment. She thought he had arranged this, he thought. She thought he was not playing fair.

“I have the barouche with me, Aunt,” he said. “It is not very suitable for night travel.”

“Then you shall take one of my carriages,” she said,
“and return it to make the exchange some other day. Do not make difficulties where there are none, Edmond. Lady Mornington?”

“I would be pleased to accept your invitation, ma’am,” she said.

His heart leapt with gladness—at a mere delay of the inevitable. He smiled at her, and then thought that the smile would convince her even more that he had arranged it all.

And so after everyone had left, the three of them strolled again down by the river before Lady Eleanor retired to her room to change for dinner and had Mary directed to a guest room to freshen up. And they sat down to dinner together, a long leisurely meal followed by coffee in the drawing room. Conversation did not flag for a single moment.

“You are remarkably quiet, Edmond,” his aunt said at one point during dinner. “I can remember the time when your papa used to have to frown at you and warn you
sotto voce
not to monopolize the conversation when it was on topics to your liking.”

He smiled. “I am enjoying listening to you and Mary exchange views, Aunt,” he said. “I like it when people do not always feel obliged to agree with each other.”

“Oh, I believe Lady Mornington and I respect each other’s minds too much to do anything so silly,” she said. “Is that not right, my dear?”

“And how dull conversation would be,” Mary said, “if people always agreed with each other.”

“Beasley and the crowd gathered about him at your salon,” he could not resist saying.

“What was that, dear?” Lady Eleanor asked, and he was obliged to explain to her what had happened at Mary’s house.

“I called the man an ass when I could stand it no longer,”
he said. “Mary was forced to take me aside and scold me roundly.”

“Mr. Beasley?” his aunt said. “He
is
one, dear, but you should never have said so in quite that way. And in the hearing of ladies? I wonder Lady Mornington did not have you thrown out. Edmond hates humbug, my dear, and sometimes is not too careful about how he shows it. It is hard to believe, is it not, that he was in a fair way to becoming one himself once upon a time?”

“A humbug?” he said. “Surely someone would have done me the kindness to shoot me. Instead I did myself the favor of having myself tossed out of Oxford on my ear. Did you know that unsavory fact about me, Mary?”

“There were extenuating circumstances,” his aunt said, but he was smiling at Mary. One more nail in the coffin of his faded hopes.

“No, I did not,” she said.

But his aunt did not pursue the topic, he was thankful to find. The conversation resumed where it had left off, in a discussion of Wordworth’s poetry, which Mary loved and his aunt considered sentimental drivel.

It was late dusk already when they finally took their leave. Too late and too chill for the barouche. Lady Eleanor’s traveling carriage was brought around, and she insisted on lending Mary a warm woolen shawl and on having some heavy rugs put inside the carriage to cover her lap.

“Nights can be quite chilly after such warm days,” she said, “when there is no cloud cover to keep in the heat. I have enjoyed the latter part of the day more than I can say, dears. You must have Edmond bring you again, Lady Mornington. This has been too pleasant an evening not to be repeated.”

“I have enjoyed it, too,” Mary said, submitting to having her cheek kissed by Lady Eleanor.

“I did not know you had enough sense left to escort
someone of Lady Mornington’s caliber, dear,” his aunt said, turning to Lord Edmond to give him a matching kiss. “I am so glad. It is time my favorite nephew came back from the unpromised land where he has exiled himself altogether too long.”

“It was a mere garden party, Aunt,” he said.

But she patted one of his cheeks and smiled at him.

The carriage was plushly upholstered inside with green and gold velvet.

“You are warm enough?” he asked Mary as he took a seat beside her. “Do you want one of the rugs over you?”

“No,” she said. “The shawl is enough, thank you.”

The carriage jolted into motion and they both turned to wave to his aunt, who had come out onto the terrace with them.

And suddenly the interior of the carriage seemed very confined. And very quiet.

S
HE HAD NOT
bargained on the intimacy of a return home in darkness and inside a closed carriage. She was embarrassed and not at all sure that there was anything else left to talk about.

“Was this all your idea?” she asked.

“No, it was not,” he said. “It might have been, I must confess. I have been known to maneuver as deviously. But it was not.”

“Oh,” she said.

They lapsed into silence.

Just the long drive back into town, she thought. It was almost at an end. And surely he would keep his word. Surely he would. He must have realized during the course of the afternoon that they had nothing in common. And he had been quite unable to participate in the conversation at dinner and in the drawing room afterward. Indeed, much as she had liked Lady Eleanor, she
had thought that perhaps their hostess had been rather ill-mannered to choose topics of conversation about which he seemed to know nothing.

She wished it were at an end already. She wished they had not stayed for dinner. By now she would have been at home, all her associations with Lord Edmond Waite just a bad dream.

And then his hand reached across and took hers in a warm clasp.

“A penny for them, Mary,” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking back over the day, that was all. I like your aunt.”

“And she you,” he said. “She will wish to continue the acquaintance.”

“She will be welcome to attend one of my literary evenings,” she said quickly. “I believe I will send her an invitation.”

“She wants me to take you there again,” he said, and she could see in the near-darkness that he looked at her and smiled.

Oh, no, she thought. She had not seriously considered what she would do if he turned out to be a totally dishonorable man. What if, after all, he continued to pursue her? She turned her head away and dared not ask him. How would she know if he spoke the truth anyway?

They rode for some minutes in silence, until he released her hand and put his arm about her shoulders.

“Please don’t,” she said, keeping her head turned away from him.

“The day is almost at an end,” he said. “Perhaps there is half an hour or a little more left. It is almost over.”

“Yes,” she said.

“You will be glad?”

“Yes.”

His free hand came beneath her chin and turned her
face toward him. She could hardly see him in the darkness. Except that his face was very close to hers.

“Don’t.” She could hear that her voice was trembling.

“So little time, Mary,” he said. “Half an hour. How many years do I have left, do you suppose? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? Even if it is only ten or five—or one—half an hour is such a little time to have left before all the emptiness.”