“Susan! Miss Porter! What are you doing here?” he asked, drawing her inside his room and shutting the door in one swift, fluid movement.
“I came to tell you,” she answered, suddenly breathless, “that I cannot meet you this afternoon.”
“But you are here now!” he exclaimed, laying the instrument down on a table behind the door and drawing her into his arms.
She had not meant such a thing to happen - truly she had not - but she did not resist for more than a startled moment. His arms were both strong and gentle, his embrace a devastating combination of passionate insistence and heart-stopping tenderness. His lips were on hers and she found herself kissing him back, her body melting against his in what he no doubt recognised as surrender. He could probably have done anything with her which he wished. That he did not seemed less remarkable to her than it might have done had she been even a year or two older or had she kissed or been kissed by even one other man.
He put her away from him, holding her by the arms as well as by that mesmerising gaze which made her legs wobble and any resolve, with which she might have armed herself, dissolve instantly.
“You must not!” he said in a voice thickened by something which she did not understand but which she recognised as evidence of his passion. “You should not have come here! Why did you? Are you mine?”
“Yes, no; I know I should not have come; I tried to write you a letter but could not find the words – and to whom could I have given it?”
“That stupid maid, I suppose,” he said on a laugh which cracked. “What words were you looking for?”
“To tell you – just to tell you that I am obliged to go riding. But I did not want you to think that I did not wish to meet you…”
This was growing worse and worse; the letter, however he might have misunderstood it, would surely have made her intentions clearer than what she appeared to be saying now. She had meant only to tell him that she could not meet him that afternoon but, from his immediate and overpowering response, she realised that he was interpreting her action in coming to his room as a positive declaration on her part - a delaying only of her complete submission and an unmistakable promise for the future.
Protected almost as much from the manners and habits of men by her lack of feminine charm as by her sheltered upbringing, she was taken aback by his reception. She realised now that she had made a terrible mistake. The impulse which had propelled her to abandon her pen in favour of what she had intended only to be a brief conversation in person, had failed to anticipate his reaction; she had not perhaps given sufficient weight to either his earlier declaration in the wood or his behaviour there – or indeed considered how he might have interpreted hers. Wanting to avoid misunderstanding, she seemed to have lurched into a far deeper and more dangerous misapprehension than that which she had been trying to avert.
“My darling!” he cried, staring at her as though trying to read what was in her mind, although, truth to tell, there was not much there at present, it having been almost completely obliterated by the excitement of the moment.
“Signor …”
“Vincente – my name is Vincente …”
“I – I must go – Mama will be wondering where I am.”
“Yes, yes, of course you must,” he agreed with surprising alacrity, dropping his arms.
He kissed her again but with an air of finality. They appeared to have reached the end of the last movement, having rushed through the first allegro straight to the conclusion without passing through the andante, a situation which left Susan conscience-stricken and him, to judge from his expression, not by any means in possession of a clear picture of the facts. She had undoubtedly added a layer of horribly complicated emotion and muddled understanding to a situation which was already beyond her experience and capacity to untangle.
She backed towards the door, feeling that it would be unkind to turn away from him when he looked so vulnerable. He stepped forward and put his hand upon the knob, apparently in order to open it for her, but his movement brought him once more so close that they stood breast to breast, she almost pinned against the door.
“Later,” he said. “There is no time now – but later we will speak …”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she replied, unconsciously repeating his words of a moment before.
She reached behind her for the door knob, forgetting that his hand was already there, and found her own encircling his. She wished that they could speak for all this touching and gazing and broken sentences added vastly to her confusion and, she believed, to his. He seemed to have misinterpreted her clumsy efforts to placate as evidence of a passion as strong as that under which he appeared to be labouring and she, swept along by feelings which she had not previously imagined even existed, found herself floundering in a tumult of conflicting emotions. At one and the same time she wished to be away from him, safe in the saddle with her mother and Lord Marklye, and even closer to him, absorbed into his arms, drowning and fainting beneath his kisses.
“Later …” he repeated and turned the knob, opening the door directly behind her and thus propelling her, momentarily, even closer.
“Go,” he said, almost pushing her out into the corridor, “before you cause me to forget myself entirely.”
Thus, neatly, he laid the blame upon her and she accepted it willingly and stumbled down the corridor, cold without his arms around her, lonely without his eyes holding hers, but with her lips burning from his remembered kisses and her heart awakened. Whatever effect the kisses had wrought upon her, it was his words, his suggestion that she held his happiness within her young hands, which completed her capitulation.
Chapter 25
“I thought he would have availed himself of the opportunity to admire your face and cross swords with you,” Lady Leland remarked when the box of counters and packs of cards were carried upstairs together with a note from his lordship. She knew, of course, of the accident with the gig and her companion’s failure to reach Tunbridge Wells the previous afternoon and suspected that the major part of what had passed between her companion and his lordship had not been divulged to her.
“I daresay he has other things to do,” Mary said in a dull voice.
“I doubt any of them would appeal so much as seeing you,” her ladyship argued. “I suppose you quarrelled with him again. You seemed so exceedingly cast down when you returned – and so tired – that I did not like to tease you then.”
“Oh, pray, pray do not tease me now!” Mary exclaimed, the word causing her heart to tremble within her bosom.
Lady Leland shot her a glance from under her brows. “Did he tease you?” she asked bluntly.
“Yes – and I screamed at him in a quite dreadful way. Has he said in his note that he finds he cannot after all attend tonight?”
“No, there is no mention of that; indeed, he proclaims himself to be ‘looking forward’ to it.”
“He cannot be; he never wishes to see my face again.”
“Most unlikely, my dear. If you were horrid to him, I daresay it will have made him all the keener.”
“No, it will not. It was the end yesterday – absolutely and definitely the end. He …” She stopped, choking, and buried her face in her hands.
“I judged you too old to behave in such a childish manner,” Lady Leland said quite sternly. “I can only suppose that your long incarceration here – away from the world – has done you no good at all. I am certain, however, that you need not despair. Did you think him on the point of making you an offer and deflect him, no doubt ‘for his own good’, and succeed all too well?”
“Yes, but I did not deflect him; I tried but he would not be diverted; in the end I screamed at him and then he stopped at once.”
“Screamed? I am persuaded that would not have been necessary.”
“I behaved like a fifteen-year-old. He must have thought me at the very least deranged. In any event, no man could wish for a wife who takes refuge in such hysterical starts.”
> “He would not if he were looking for a wife in a sensible, practical manner; no doubt it would put him off if he wished for a calm, well-run household and a timid, obedient wife, but I do not think that is what he is looking for. Certainly, if he is, you would be an excessively poor choice. It’s my belief he is looking for a woman who can stand up to him, answer him back and love him as much as he loves her. He is convinced he has found such a person in you, my dear. Your unmannerly outburst has probably only convinced him all the more that you are precisely what he is seeking.”
Mary received this analysis with a hollow laugh. “I wish it were so, my lady, but it is not. He barely spoke afterwards and, although he is far too well-mannered to fall into a sulk, there was no sign of that warmth, that light in his regard, to which I have become accustomed.”
“What would you have liked him to do? Sweep you into his arms and kiss you in spite of your protests? Would you then have felt able to yield? He does not want that sort of wife, Mary; he wants you with your consent and, if you want him, you must be brave enough to give it.”
“He will never ask again,” Mary murmured, despairing.
“If he does not, he will be a fool and I do not take him for that,” Lady Leland responded tartly.
“You judge me to be one,” Mary muttered, clearly now in a sulk herself.
“Yes, I do. You are too proud and too puffed up in your own conceit to permit anyone to approach. If you had not insisted on travelling in that worn-out old gig you would not have needed to be rescued at all because Mr Armitage would not have found you wandering along the side of the road and taken it into his head to snatch what he saw as a particularly delectable little flower. It was this which obliged poor Marklye to rescue you once again, as a consequence of which you found yourself in a position where he could make love to you in a manner which evidently prompted you to resist. I do not know how you arrived at a point where he felt able to declare his feelings, but I don’t doubt you encouraged him to some extent. He would not, surely, have rescued a girl he believed to have been abducted, tucked her into his curricle and promptly made love to her himself without some assistance from you? That would have been insensitive and he does not strike me as lacking in sensibility. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I realise that a great many people would not have been forced to spend their afternoon dealing with the consequences of your misplaced pride if only you had done as you were bid.”
In spite of the force with which this opinion was uttered and the reproof contained therein, Mary replied with something resembling a smile beginning to tremble at the corners of her mouth, “I thought you approved of his love-making.”
“I approve of his doing so; I cannot comment upon the style of it, not having been the recipient, but I conjecture, since you seem to have driven him away by raising your voice, that it took the form of words rather than actions. I suspect that you would have submitted if he had imposed his superior strength upon you – as the wretched Mr Armitage did - and that you would even now be telling me of your impending nuptials.”
“But you said that he would not do that, that he wanted me only with my consent.”
“Yes, I did, and I am certain, from what I know of him, that that is the case. Somehow you will have to find a way to climb down from the rock on which you have allowed yourself to become stranded and meet him halfway. That, I am convinced, is the sort of wife he is seeking and the sort of woman he believes you to be.”
“But I am not at all the sort of woman he believes me to be, or the sort that he could possibly want as a wife!” Mary cried in agony. “You know that, Ma’am!”
“I know no such thing! Your fall from grace was a long time ago and you have done your penance fetching and carrying my spectacles for more than ten years. I do not for a moment believe that Marklye will care a jot for something you did as a child but he must be allowed to make that decision for himself. In short, you must tell him all! If you have not the courage to do that, then you deserve to spend the rest of your life mourning his loss and he will be well rid of you. A woman too cowardly to confess is not one with whom he would know a moment’s happiness.”
“I did confess; at least that is not quite true; he guessed and taxed me with my ‘misdemeanour’, as he would keep calling it, having something to do with a man. I admitted it and then he made me an offer – out of pity and duty.”
“Did he say so? Did he say something along the lines of, ‘Poor Miss Best, you have my sympathy; now that you have told me all I would like to offer you the protection of my name’? If he said any such thing I have misjudged him and am surprised you did not hit him; you cannot possibly marry him if he is such an addlepate as to think that marriage to you would be anything but a species of hell on earth if undertaken out of either pity or duty. You would never forgive him.”
“He will not ask me again,” Mary muttered.
“Did he swear he would not?”
“No.”
“In that case you will have to wait for him to come about and approach the fence again. If you want matters to progress a little faster, you could seek an audience with him and explain all or, if that is too daunting, I suppose I shall be obliged to consent to allowing him to teach you to swim. No doubt it will only be a matter of time before an opportunity presents itself either in or near the river.”
“He will not want to do that now.”
“Perhaps not, but you cannot be certain until you ask him. We shall meet the girl he has chosen as your chaperone this evening and I will make a decision based on what I think of her.”
“I do not know why he has not fallen in love with her. I am sure she is unexceptionable.”
“She may be, but that is an absurd thing to say. Why have you not fallen in love with the younger Armitage – I can understand that the elder might not be entirely to your taste – or Sir Adrian? People do not fall in love simply on account of propinquity or convenience – although both help.”
The old lady glared at her companion and added, “We have discussed this quite enough for the time being. There is a whole number of things we need to be doing for this evening, so dry your eyes and do your job.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Mary sniffed, wiped her eyes and stood up.
Meanwhile, over at Marklye Hall, Susan found herself unexpectedly free, her mother having taken to her bed with a headache.
As soon as nuncheon came to an end and she had settled her mother on her bed with a handkerchief soaked in lavender water, Susan set off for the wood, at one and the same time hoping and dreading that she would find the music teacher there in spite of her having cried off. As she drew closer, she heard the sound of the violin; her heart missed a beat for she knew that, as a result of her ill-advised visit to his room earlier, the nature of their association had irrevocably altered.
He must have heard her before she came into view for he had already jumped up and was hurrying to meet her even as she decided to turn away and return as rapidly as possible to the safety of the house. She stopped; whether she would have been able to turn and leave before she saw him she would never know for, as soon as she did, this became impossible. There was no pretence on the part of either that he was hoping, and she had come, in spite of having cancelled the rendezvous, to engage in an al fresco singing lesson. They flew into each other’s arms and spent the ensuing half hour kissing and murmuring to each other like a pair of lovebirds.
This time she did not mention impropriety; he did not suggest that she should essay a song. They sat down together on the log and gazed into each other’s eyes and, when there was a pause in the kissing and the wordless gazing, he begged her to be true to him. Eventually, he brought up the subject of marriage again, declaring that he was determined to make her his wife but, convinced that her parents would not only reject the idea out of hand but also take strong measures to prevent it, implored her not to tell them just yet.
“I shall think of a plan in due course,” he said, “but w
e may lose all if we are too hasty.”
“I am sure Papa will agree,” Susan said with a confidence which she did not in fact feel. “He has said many times that all he wants is for me to be happy.”
“I doubt if he will think your happiness will be served by your marrying a music teacher,” Signor Pontielli pointed out dryly.
“He will wish me to marry the man I love. But I do not think we should tell Mama before he returns because she would be bound to dislike the idea and would, in any event, wish to discuss it with Papa. Ultimately, it will be his decision because Mama always defers to him. It will save them a great deal of trouble as well as money,” she added naïvely, “because they will not have to pay for a come-out. Mama, when she has reconciled herself to my not acquiring a title, will be vastly relieved that she will not be obliged to drag me around London. She is afraid that I will attract a fortune-hunter, you know.”
“I hope you do not judge me a fortune-hunter,” Signor Pontielli said, kissing her hand, his dark head bent over her fingers. “It is not impossible that your papa will cut you off without a penny if you insist on marrying me. Are you prepared for that?”
“Of course he will not. Why, that would be nonsensical because then neither of us would have any money and how would we live?”
“I am afraid we might be forced to manage on my wages,” he said, raising his eyes to hers with a sad little smile. “I should not like you to have to live in such a mean way. That is another reason why I think we should be careful that no one knows how we feel about each other; I wish you to grow used to the idea that you might be poor before you make a definite commitment to me.”
“Papa will not let me suffer; but you are not poor, Vincente – not really poor; you have enough money to live on, do you not? To pay for food and lodging?”
“I am living at your parents’ expense,” he pointed out. “And what is enough for me alone would not be enough for two and would besides impose a level of discomfort on you to which you are not at all accustomed.”
Mary Or The Perils 0f Imprudence Page 22
