The Proposal (3 page)

She stood still for a moment and looked out to the still-distant line of the incoming tide. And she was hit suddenly and quite unexpectedly, not by a wave of water, but by a tidal wave of loneliness, one that washed over her and deprived her of both breath and the will to resist.

Loneliness?

She never thought of herself as lonely. She had lived through a tumultuous marriage but, once the rawness of her grief over Vernon’s death had receded, she had settled in to a life of peace and contentment with her family. She had never felt any urge to remarry, though she was not a cynic about marriage. Her brother was happily married. So was Lauren, her cousin by marriage who felt really more like a sister, since they had grown up together at Newbury Abbey. Gwen, however, was perfectly contented to remain a widow and to define herself as a daughter, a sister, a sisterin-law, a cousin, an aunt. She had numerous other relatives too, and friends. She was comfortable at the dower house, which was just a short walk from the abbey, where she was always welcome. She paid frequent visits to Lauren and Kit in Hampshire, and occasional ones to other relatives. She usually spent a month or two of the spring in London to enjoy part of the Season.

She always considered that she lived a blessed life.

So where had this sudden loneliness come from? And such a tidal wave of it that her knees felt weak and it seemed as though she had been robbed of breath. Why could she feel the rawness of tears in her throat?

Loneliness?

She was not lonely, only depressed at being stuck here with Vera. And hurt at what Vera had said about her and her lack of sensibilities. She was feeling sorry for herself, that was all. She
never
felt sorry for herself. Well, almost never. And when she did, then she quickly did something about it. Life was too short to be moped away. There was always much over which to rejoice.

But
loneliness
. How long had it been lying in wait for her, just waiting to pounce? Was her life really as empty as it seemed at this moment of almost frightening insight? As empty as this vast, bleak beach?

Ah, she
hated
beaches.

Gwen gave her head another mental shake and looked, first back the way she had come, and then up the beach to the steep path between the cliffs. Which should she take? She hesitated for a few moments and then decided upon the climb. It did not look quite steep enough to be dangerous, and once up it, she would surely be able to find an easy route back to the village.

The stones on the slope were no easier underfoot than those on the beach had been; in fact, they were more treacherous, for they shifted and slid beneath her feet as she climbed higher. By the time she was halfway up, she wished she had stayed on the beach, but it would be as difficult now to go back down as it was to continue upward. And she could see the grassy part of the slope not too far distant. She climbed doggedly onward.

And then disaster struck.

Her right foot pressed downward upon a sturdy looking stone, but it was loosely packed against those below it and her foot slid sharply downward until she landed rather painfully on her knee, while her hands spread to steady herself against the slope. For the fraction of a moment she felt only relief that she had saved herself from tumbling to the beach below. And then she felt the sharp, stabbing pain in her ankle.

Gingerly she raised herself to her left foot and tried to set the right foot down beside it. But she was engulfed in pain as soon as she tried to put some weight upon it—and even when she did not, for that matter. She exhaled a loud “Ohh!” of distress and turned carefully about so that she could sit on the stones, facing downward toward the beach. The slope looked far steeper from up here. Oh, she had been very foolish to try the climb.

She raised her knees, planted her left foot as firmly as she could, and grasped her right ankle in both hands. She tried rotating the foot slowly, her forehead coming to rest on her raised knee as she did so. It was a momentary sprain, she told herself, and would be fine in a moment. There was no need to panic.

But even without setting the foot down again, she knew she was deceiving herself. It was a bad sprain. Perhaps worse. She could not possibly walk.

And so panic came despite her effort to remain calm. However was she going to get back to the village? And no one knew where she was. The beach below her and the headland above were both deserted.

She drew a few steadying breaths. There was no point whatsoever in going to pieces. She would manage. Of course she would. She had no choice, did she?

It was at that moment that a voice spoke—a male voice from close by. It was not even raised.

“In my considered opinion,” the voice said, “that ankle is either badly sprained or actually broken. Either way it would be very unwise to try putting any weight on it.”

Gwen’s head jerked up, and she looked about her to locate the source of the voice. To her right a man rose into sight partway up the steep cliff face beside the slope. He climbed down onto the pebbles and strode across them toward her as if there were no danger whatsoever of slipping.

He was a great giant of a man with broad shoulders and chest and powerful thighs. His five-caped greatcoat gave the impression of even greater bulk. He looked quite menacingly large, in fact. He wore no hat. His brown hair was cropped close to his head. His features were strong and harsh, his eyes dark and fierce, his mouth a straight, severe line, his jaw hard set. And his expression did nothing to soften his looks. He was frowning—or scowling, perhaps.

His gloveless hands were huge.

Terror engulfed Gwen and made her almost forget her pain for a moment.

He must be the Duke of Stanbrook. She must have strayed onto his land, even though Vera had warned her to give both him and his estate a wide berth. According to Vera, he was a cruel monster, who had pushed his wife to her death over a high cliff on his estate a number of years ago and then claimed that she had jumped.
What kind of woman would
jump
to her death in such a horrifying way,
Vera had asked rhetorically.
Especially when she was a
duchess
and had everything in the world she could possibly need.

The kind of woman,
Gwen had thought at the time, though she had not said so aloud,
who had just lost her only child to a bullet in Portugal,
for that was precisely what had happened a short while before the duchess’s demise. But Vera, along with the neighborhood ladies with whom she consorted, chose to believe the more titillating murder theory despite the fact that none of them, when pressed, could offer up any evidence whatsoever to corroborate it.

But though Gwen had been skeptical about the story when she heard it, she was not so sure now. He
looked
like a man who could be both ruthless and cruel. Even murderous.

And she had trespassed on his land. His very
deserted
land.

She was also helpless to run away.

Hugo had gone alone down to the sandy beach below Penderris after breakfast, the rain having stopped during the night. He had been teased about it. Flavian had told him to be sure to bring his future bride back to the house so that they could all meet her and decide if they approved his choice.

They had all made merry at his expense.

Hugo had informed Flavian where he could go and how he could get there, though he had been immediately obliged to apologize as he had used a soldier’s language in Imogen’s hearing.

The beach had always been his favorite part of the estate. In the early days of his stay here, the sea had often soothed him when nothing else could. And more often than not he had come down here alone, even then. Despite the closeness and camaraderie that had developed among the seven members of the Survivors’ Club while they were all healing and convalescing, they had never lived in one another’s pockets. On the contrary, most of their demons had had to be faced and exorcised alone, and still did. One of the main attractions of Penderris had always been that it offered more than enough space to accommodate them all.

He had recovered from his own particular wounds—as far as he could ever recover, that was.

If it came to counting blessings, he would need the fingers of both hands at the very least. He had survived his war experiences. He had been awarded the promotion to major he had craved, as well as the unexpected bonus of his title as a result of the success of his final mission. Last year he had inherited a vast fortune and a hugely profitable business. He had family—uncles and aunts and cousins who loved him, though he had largely ignored them for many years. More important, there was Constance, his nineteen-year-old half sister, who adored him, though she had been a mere infant when he went off to war. He had a home of his own in the country, which provided him with all the privacy and peace he could possibly ask for. He had his six fellow members of the Survivors’ Club, who had sometimes seemed closer to him than his own heart. He enjoyed robust good health, perhaps even perfect health. The list could go on.

But each time he made the mental list of his blessings, it became like a two-edged sword. Why had
he
been so fortunate when so many others had died? More important, had his ruthless ambition, which had brought personal success and rewards that were far in excess of what he had expected, actually
caused
a number of those deaths? Lieutenant Carstairs would say yes without hesitation.

There were no reasonably personable women strolling along the beach, or any
un
personable ones either, for that matter. He would have to invent a few for the amusement of his friends when he returned to the house, though, and a few stories surrounding his encounters with them. Perhaps he would even add a mermaid or two. He was in no hurry to get back, however, even though it was a chilly day made worse by a rather raw wind.

When he had returned to the pebbled part of the beach and to the foot of the ancient collapse in the cliff face that gave access to the headland and the park of Penderris above, Hugo stood for a few moments and gazed out to sea while the wind whipped at his short hair and turned the tips of his ears numb. He was not wearing a hat. There was really no point when he would have been chasing it along the sand more than he would have been wearing it.

He found himself thinking about his father. It was inevitable really, he supposed, when today was the first anniversary of his death.

Guilt came with the thoughts. He had worshipped his father as a lad and had followed him everywhere, even to work, especially after his mother’s death of some woman’s trouble when he was seven—the exact nature of the ailment had never been explained to him. His father had described him affectionately as his right-hand little chap and the heir apparent. Others had described him as his father’s shadow. But then had come his father’s second marriage, and Hugo, thirteen years old and at an awkward stage of adolescence, had developed a chip on his shoulder as large as a boulder. He had still been young enough to be shocked that his father could even
think
of replacing his mother, who had been so central to their lives and happiness that she was simply irreplaceable. He had grown restless and rebellious and determined to establish his own identity and independence.

Looking back now, he could see that his father had not loved him less—or dishonored the memory of Hugo’s mother—just because he had married a pretty, demanding young wife and soon had a new daughter upon whom to dote. But growing young boys cannot always see their world rationally. Further evidence of that was the fact that he, Hugo, had adored Constance from the moment of her birth when he might have been expected to hate or resent her.

It was a stage of his life, fairly typical of boys his age, that he might well have outgrown with a minimum of harm to all concerned if there had not been something else to tip the balance. But there had been that something else, and the balance had been tipped irretrievably when he was not even quite eighteen.

And he had decided quite abruptly that he would be a soldier. Nothing would dissuade him, even the argument that he did not have the character for such a rough life. If anything, that argument only made him the more stubborn and the more determined to succeed. His father, disappointed and saddened, had finally purchased a commission in an infantry regiment for his only son, but it was to be the one and only purchase. He had made that clear. Hugo was on his own after that. He would have to earn his promotions, not have them bought by his wealthy father, as most other officers did. Hugo’s father had always rather despised the upper classes, for whom privilege and idleness often went hand in hand.

Hugo had proceeded to earn those promotions. He had actually
liked
the fact that he was on his own. He had pursued his chosen career with energy and determination and enthusiasm and a driving ambition to reach the very top. He would have reached it too, if his greatest triumph had not been followed within a month by his greatest humiliation and he had not ended up here at Penderris.

His father had loved him steadfastly through it all. But Hugo had turned his back upon him, almost as if his father had been to blame for all his woes. Or perhaps it was shame that made him do it. Or perhaps it was the sheer impossibility of going back home.

And how had his father repaid him for his neglect? He had left almost everything to him, that was what, when he might conceivably have left it all to Fiona or to Constance. He trusted his son to keep his businesses going and to pass them on to a son of his own when the time came. He had trusted him too to see to it that Constance had a bright, secure future. He must have understood that she might have no such thing if she was left to her mother’s sole care. He had made Hugo her guardian.

Now his year of mourning, his excuse for inactivity thus far, was over.

He stopped when he was halfway up the slope. He still was not ready to return to the house. He turned off the slope and climbed a short way up the cliff beside it until he reached a flat, rocky ledge he had discovered years ago. It was sheltered from most winds, and even though it cut off any view of the sandy stretch of beach farther west, it still allowed him to see the cliff face opposite and the pebbled beach and the sea below. It was a starkly barren prospect, but it was not without a certain beauty of its own. Two seagulls flew across his line of vision, crying out some piece of intelligence to each other.