At Last Comes Love

by Mary Balogh

  How difficult her moods must have made his life!

  Had her death devastated him? Or had there been some sense of release? But she had been his son’s mother. She had died only four months or so ago—very recently. Perhaps he was still grief-stricken.

  She could not ask him about those years. Not yet. Perhaps never. She did not believe she would ever be ready to talk with him about Crispin. Some things belonged to one’s own heart.

  “But I am coming home again, after all,” he said. “You are right, it seems, Maggie. There always is something beyond the darkness.”

  “When will your son arrive?” she asked him.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “if there are no unexpected delays.”

  She turned one of her hands beneath his and clasped it.

  “There is the prospect of plenty more light to come, then,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She had not told her family about the child. She had noticed that he did not mention him to his mother or grandfather either, though she had been present when he explained to them exactly why he had run off with Mrs. Turner the night before his wedding to the present Mrs. Pennethorne.

  His mother had hugged him hard and shed copious tears. She had assured him that she would not say a word to anyone since Graham was seated beside her now and therefore already knew—although it was going to be extremely difficult not to give Randolph Turner a very large piece of her mind the next time she saw him and not to say a thing or two to Caroline Pennethorne the next time she saw her.

  His grandfather, when they had called upon him later, had frowned fiercely and pursed his lips and harrumphed and told Duncan he was a damned fool. But Margaret had not been deceived for one moment. His eyes beneath the shaggy white brows had been suspiciously bright.

  “The village,” Duncan said quietly now from beside her—his hand had tightened about hers.

  She could see through the window on his side that the road curved around a wide bend, following the line of a river, and that around the bend there was a cluster of red-brick cottages and a church spire rising from among them. Trees had been planted on either side of the river.

  And then the carriage followed the curve, and they lost sight of the buildings for a few minutes until they were among the cottages and approaching a village green. They drove along one side of it.

  They passed the church and, next to it, a thatched and whitewashed public house and inn. The publican, wearing a long white apron, was standing outside brushing off the step with a broom. He raised a hand in greeting after peering curiously into the carriage and seeing who was within. Three children at play on the green stopped to gawk and then went streaking off in three different directions, presumably to tell their mothers that a grand carriage was passing through the village.

  And then the carriage turned between two high wrought-iron gates, which stood open, and onto a tree-shaded driveway. Almost immediately the wheels rumbled over a bridge as it crossed the river.

  Margaret turned to look at Duncan.

  He was looking back, his eyes dark, his face inscrutable.

  He had not been here for six years. When he had planned during the past four months to return here, he had not intended to bring a wife. But he was not the only one whose plans had gone awry during the past three weeks.

  Oh, goodness, three weeks ago they had not even met each other. Three weeks ago she had been planning to accept an offer from the Marquess of Allingham.

  “Take comfort,” she said, “from the thought that it took Odysseus something like twenty-eight years to get home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.”

  “A sobering thought,” he said. And there was that smile lurking deep in his eyes as it had on a few previous occasions. “Look out your window.”

  At first there were only the tall trunks of ancient trees to look at and thick undergrowth between. And then, as the carriage moved out of the woods, she saw a wide, tree-dotted lawn sloping upward to a house on the crest of the hill—a large mansion of mellow red stone and long windows and a gabled roof with a pillared portico and what looked like marble steps leading up to double doors. And a stable block to one side, a little farther down the slope, and a flower garden at the other side—a riot of color flowing down the slope to the river, which looped around behind the hill and the house.

  It was, Margaret thought, one of the prettiest houses and parks she had ever seen.

  And it was home.

  She was home. They were.

  Duncan’s clasp on her hand was almost painful.

  Neither of them spoke.

  If he had come alone, as he had intended, Duncan thought, he would have prowled about the house, looking for what was familiar, what was not, trying to recapture the presence of his father in the library, of his mother in the morning room and drawing room, standing at the window of his old bedchamber, looking down the steep slope behind the house to the river and across it to the wide, straight, laburnum-shaded grass avenue, which ended with the summer house and views of fields and meadows and woods in every direction. He would perhaps have strolled along the portrait gallery, viewing the old family portraits through adult eyes. He would have spent the evening slouched in a chair, perhaps in the drawing room, more probably in the library, reading a book.

  Reveling in the feeling of being home where he belonged.

  At last.

  It had been a long, weary exile—much of it self-imposed. He had gone away to sow some wild oats, and he had stayed away because he had stepped past the invisible but nonetheless real boundary between wild oats and that barren land that stretched beyond the pale. For five years he had yearned to be here with a gnawing ache of longing.

  Oh, he might have paid a visit now and then, he supposed. But there had been no leaving Laura, even with the Harrises, whom she knew and trusted. A few times he had gone away for a night or two just because he had needed some time to himself, some semblance of a life of his own. But each time he had been sorry when he returned. Not that she had railed at him. She had never done that. She had always … loved him. Yes, that was the correct word, though it had not, of course, been a romantic love. And she had needed him. Oh, how she had needed him!

  It should have felt good to be needed.

  It had not.

  Poor Laura.

  He had loved her too. Not with a romantic or sexual love.

  He had not come here alone now, alas. He had brought a wife with him.

  He showed her the house after their arrival and marveled at how little it had changed in six years. Why had he expected that it would have done? Any orders for change would have had to come from him—or from his grandfather.

  He could not dislike Maggie, he found, even though he had half expected to. She was sensitive and compassionate. Good Lord, she had insisted upon having Toby in their home as if he were a legitimate son of the house. It was not just that, though.

  It was … Well, he did not know what it was.

  “You have not seen the gallery yet,” he told her as they sat together at a late dinner, one at the head and one at the foot of the dining room table, from which the butler had had the forethought to remove all the extra leaves so that they were not a great distance apart. “It is best seen in the daylight. I will show it to you tomorrow, if you wish.”

  “Are all your family portraits there?” she asked.

  “It is an interesting gallery,” he said. “All the main family portraits are at Wychen Abbey, my grandfather’s country home. But all the marquesses for the past seven generations grew up here, just as I did, and so the portraits of them as children and young men are here, as well as portraits of all their other family members, of course. It is a cheerful place. I was an only child and did not always have the company of other children, though my cousins were forever coming for extended stays. I spent a great deal of time in the gallery, especially in wet weather. My pictured ancestors were my playmates. I weaved stories about them and me.”

  She was smiling.r />
  “It must be lovely,” she said, “to have an ancestral home, to have that connection with your own roots and with those who went before you.”

  “It is,” he said. “There is a wonderful portrait of my grandfather when he was fifteen or sixteen, astride a horse and bending down to scoop up a shaggy little dog. And another of him as a young man with my grandmother, my father an infant on her knee.”

  She smiled along the length of the table at him.

  “I shall so enjoy looking at those particular paintings,” she said. “Oh, Duncan, he loves you very dearly. I am going to persuade him to come here before the winter.”

  “He has not been here,” he said, “since my father died—fifteen years ago.”

  “Then it is time he came again,” she said. “We will see to it that he replaces those sad memories with happier ones.”

  We will be happy, then? he almost said aloud.

  “If you can persuade him,” he said, “you will be a miracle worker.”

  “Watch me,” she said, laughing. “Shall I leave you alone to your port?”

  It would have seemed mildly eccentric of him when they had no company. Besides, he did not want to sit alone—strange, really, when he had been dreaming of returning here by himself.

  “We will retire to the drawing room,” he said, getting to his feet and going to draw back her chair, “and have tea brought there. Or coffee?”

  “Tea, please,” she said, and he looked at the butler and raised his eyebrows.

  “And that,” he said as he led her toward the drawing room, her arm drawn through his, “was gauche of me, Maggie. I should have left the ordering of the tea tray to you. You are not a guest in my home, are you? You are my wife.”

  “How improper it would be,” she said, laughing again, “if I were only a guest. I will pour the tea, however.”

  Which she proceeded to do as soon as the tray arrived in the drawing room. He watched her, poised and elegant and beautiful. Still a stranger. Was it inevitable in any new marriage? Was it possible to know any woman in advance of living in intimacy under the same roof with her? He had courted Caroline for several months before offering her marriage, and they had been betrothed for several more months. And yet he had not known her at all until very close to the wedding. And even then, he supposed, he had not completely known her—only one fact about her that had repelled him.

  Perhaps it did not matter that he had known Maggie for less than three weeks.

  “It is awkward, is it not?” she said into a rather lengthy silence as they sipped their tea.

  “The silence?” he said.

  “I could keep talking,” she said. “So could you. But not forever. What do we talk about, Duncan?”

  “What do you talk to your brother about?” he asked her. “And your sisters?”

  She was looking directly at him.

  “I am not really sure,” she said. “With strangers and even acquaintances I can keep a conversation going indefinitely. It is a part of being polite, is it not? With my family I do not have to make conversation. They talk, I talk—we do not have to make any effort to find topics. They just happen.”

  “And are you ever silent with your family?” he asked.

  She thought.

  “Yes, often,” she said. “Silence can be companionable. It can be that even with close friends.”

  “I am neither family nor a close friend, then?” he asked her.

  She stared back at him.

  “You are the one and must be both,” she said. “But can friendship be forced, Duncan? Or the ease of friendship?”

  He was feeling a little shaken, if the truth were known. He had not been finding the silence uncomfortable. If he had been, he would have filled it with some form of conversation. He had spoken a great deal about his home and family and childhood, for example, since their arrival. But he had not asked her anything about her own life. Those details would have filled the rest of the evening.

  Of course, he realized suddenly, he was at home. She was not—not in a place that had had a chance to feel like home yet, anyway. Woodbine Park was a strange place to her. It was understandable that she was a little uncomfortable.

  “We are not enemies,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Are we not therefore friends?” he asked.

  She smiled.

  “We are lovers,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “But not friends?”

  “I think,” she said, setting down her cup and saucer, “I am just tired.”

  “And a little depressed?” he asked softly.

  “No,” she said. And she laughed suddenly. “That would be disconcerting after I told you earlier that I am always an optimist. I am just tired and forgot for a moment that marriage is a journey, just as life is. I must not expect it to be perfect from the start. If it were, we would have nowhere to go with it, would we?”

  “Our marriage is not perfect?” he asked her.

  “No, of course it is not,” she said, still smiling. “We married for imperfect reasons, and we have been married for only a few days. I want contentment, happiness with husband, home, and family. You want … well, you want simply not to regret your marriage as deeply as you fear you might. They are not impossible dreams, are they? For either of us?”

  He had been struck by her honesty from the start of their acquaintance. She was being honest now. Her expectations were not impossibly high. Neither were her demands of him.

  “I do not regret it,” he said.

  It struck him that if he were here alone now, he might also be feeling lonely—even though Toby was coming tomorrow. He was not feeling lonely now. A trifle irritated, perhaps, but not lonely. And not unhappy.

  “Thank you,” she said. “One day you will say it with more conviction, I promise.”

  “And you will tell me one day,” he said, getting to his feet, “that you are not only contented with our marriage, but happy. I promise.”

  He reached out a hand for hers and drew her to her feet.

  “And one day,” he said, “we will be able to sit a whole hour together in silence without you feeling awkward.”

  She laughed again.

  And then she drew her hand from his, wrapped both arms about his neck, and leaned in to him, pressing one cheek against his. His arms closed about her.

  “Oh, how I have longed,” she said, and paused for such a long time that he thought she would not continue. But she did. “How I have longed all my life for just this—a home of my own, a husband I can like and respect, intimacy, togetherness, the promise of happiness within grasping distance. Duncan, I really am not depressed. I am … ”

  She drew back her head to look into his face. She did not complete the thought.

  “Lusty?” he suggested.

  “Oh, you horrid man!” she cried. “You know words like that are not in a lady’s vocabulary.”

  He gazed back at her and said nothing.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Lusty. What a deliciously wicked word.”

  Women were complex creatures, he thought as he kissed her—and that was surely the original thought of the century. Lust for them was not the simple need for a thorough good bedding. It was all mixed up in their minds with marriage and home and liking and respect and romance and love.

  And for men? For him?

  He deepened the kiss, opening both their mouths and thrusting his tongue deep, spreading his hands over her buttocks and snuggling her in against his growing hardness.

  He too had longed …

  For a woman in his arms and in his bed and in his—

  Life?

  Heart?

  He did not know and would not puzzle now over the answer. But he had longed.

  Yearned.

  “Maggie,” he murmured into her ear. “Come to bed.”

  “Mmm,” she said on a long sigh. “Yes. That is a good part of our marriage, is it not?”

  “Shall we not analyze it?” he s
uggested, settling her hand on his arm. “Shall we just do it? And enjoy it?”

  Her lips curved into a smile and her eyes brightened with merriment.

  “Yes,” she said. “To both. I think you are making a wanton of me.”

  “Good,” he said.

  20

  THE morning after her arrival at Woodbine Park, Margaret was ashamed of the way she had allowed herself to be overwhelmed the evening before by the newness and unfamiliarity of everything in her life.

  She had found herself during that lengthy silence in the drawing room missing her family, Merton House, Warren Hall, the familiar round of her daily life. And knowing that everything was changed forever with no chance—ever—of going back.

  Which had all been quite absurd. Why should she wish to go back? And it was not as if she had lost her family forever. She had merely got what she had longed for all of last winter.

  In the morning everything looked brighter—even literally. The sun shone from a clear blue sky beyond the windows of the bedchamber she shared with Duncan, and she could see the view out over the park at the front of the house. And a lovely view it was too with the house situated as it was on the crest of the hill. Beyond the inner lawns she could see the trees that circled the park, the river to one side, the roofs of some of the houses in the village, the church spire, and farmland stretching like a giant patchwork quilt to a distant horizon.

  She was filled with energy despite last night’s love-making. Or perhaps partly because of it. That aspect of her new life was wonderful indeed and far surpassed any of her expectations. She had expected, and hoped, that it might be pleasant. It was … Well, it was much better than that.

  Duncan was a skilled, patient, thorough, and passionate lover. And she had discovered an answering passion in herself. Perhaps it was unladylike to enjoy the marriage bed quite so much. But if it was, then she was content to be no lady—at least during the nights and in the privacy of their own bedchamber.

  She intended to spend at least a part of the morning in consultation with the housekeeper and perhaps the cook too. There was much to learn, much to organize, if she was to establish herself as mistress of Woodbine. She would find it easier this time. When she had moved to Warren Hall with Stephen and Kate, she had gone from managing a small village cottage to running a grand country mansion. The two tasks had had very few similarities. It had taken her a great deal of effort and determination.