by Mary Balogh
“Of course,” he said, “the same would apply to trees and flowers, would it not?”
“And birds and animals,” she said.
“And humans,” he said. “Perhaps none of us have real names at all—only what our parents chose for us.”
“And a good thing too,” she said, “or the only way we would have of attracting one another’s attention would be a ‘Hey, you.’ There would be thousands of hey, yous all over the world.”
“Millions,” he said, “and in many different languages.”
“A mite confusing,” she said, and they both laughed.
It seemed to be years since he had allowed himself to indulge in nonsense talk and laughter.
It was years.
Finally they left the water and dried themselves off with two of the towels—he had brought three so that they would have something dry to use afterward. They sat on it, her back to him as he toweled off her hair. They had not dressed.
“I thought days like these were long over,” she said, hugging her knees. “Swimming in a lake, sitting on its bank in the middle of the evening, laughing …”
“You have not laughed since you were a girl?” he asked.
“Oh, I have,” she protested. “Of course I have. My life has not been a sad one—far from it. But I have not felt for a long time such… Oh, I do not even know the word.”
“Joy?” he suggested.
“Carefreeness,” she said. “There is no such word, though, is there? And oh, yes, joy. That is the perfect word. A carefree joy.”
He tossed the towel aside and combed his fingers through her hair, teasing them through tangles.
“It is an impossible task without a comb,” she said, turning to him and then lying back on the towel to gaze at the stars again. “It does not matter. I will brush it out later.”
He lay down beside her and took her hand in his. He laced his fingers with hers.
Joy.
Yes, life still had it to offer. And in the most unexpected place of all—in his own home, with his own wife.
He felt quite consciously happy.
He raised himself on one elbow and leaned over her. Her eyes changed focus and looked back into his. She touched the fingers of one hand to his cheek.
He dipped his head and kissed her, and she pressed her lips warmly back against his.
“I want to make love to you,” he said.
“What?” Her eyes widened. “Out here?”
“Out here,” he said.
She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
“I want it too,” she said. “There could be no more romantic setting, could there?”
Though she might find the ground rather harder and more unyielding against her back than the mattress of their bed.
He lifted her over him and she kneeled astride his hips, hugging them with her thighs as his hands roamed over her, and hers over him. They smiled into each other’s eyes as he settled his hands over her hips, guided her onto his erection, and brought her down onto it until he was fully embedded.
“Mmm,” she said.
“I could not have said it better myself,” he said, and she braced her hands on his shoulders, lifted herself half off him and proceeded to ride him, rotating her hips at the same time in a slow, almost lazy rhythm that brought a delicious mingling of pleasure and pain until he joined the dance, thrusting and withdrawing until they burst together into climax and beyond it into a relaxation that was so total it felt like—
Joy.
They lay side by side for a long time afterward, their hands linked, their fingers laced again.
He almost said it aloud—I love you, I am in love with you—but he did not.
One day later it struck him that he had broken the rules of courtship by making love to her when he ought to have been content with kisses and romance until they got home to their bed.
But perhaps that would have made no difference.
Perhaps fate took no notice of such things.
Anyway, perhaps it ought to have been something other than just I love you. Something like I have not been quite frank with you. I have not quite trusted you. Even now I am afraid… Ah, just afraid.
How could one love and not trust? Perhaps he did not love her after all. Except that the possibility brought the ache of tears to the back of his throat.
After another half hour of idle star-gazing and dozing, they got dressed, rolled up the towels, and strolled back to the house, hand in hand.
“What a lovely evening this has been,” she said.
“The very best,” he said—though all the evenings of their courtship had seemed the best at the time.
“The absolute best,” she said. “Not that I am trying to have the last word.”
“In that case,” he said, “I’ll have it. It was the very absolute, perfect best.”
They both laughed at the silliness as he set one arm about her shoulders and she wrapped one about his waist.
And tomorrow, he thought confidently, would be even better. Perhaps tomorrow he would tell her the full story at last. It was strange how true that old cliché was—the one about molehills developing into mountains if one were not careful. Except that the story he had to tell bore no possible resemblance to a molehill.
He bent his head to kiss her lips, and she kissed him warmly in return.
It was possible to walk among trees about three sides of the park south of the house without ever emerging into open ground except to cross the main driveway.
It was a child’s paradise.
On the afternoon after their swim at the lake, they tiptoed through the woods with Toby. They were explorers in the jungle, watching out for all sorts of ferocious, man-eating beasts and fierce, spear-hurling tribesmen.
Half of Margaret’s mind was on a scheme she had concocted a few days ago and shared with Duncan the same evening to make a wilderness walk out of part of the woods. It must enhance the beauty of the natural surroundings rather than damage it with too much artificiality, of course. But it would be a lovely place in which to stroll and sit on hot days, a lovely place to bring visitors. It would be her contribution to the beauty of the park, as the flower garden had been Duncan’s grandmother’s.
The other half of her mind was upon Toby, whose energy and imagination were boundless, and upon Duncan, who was almost unrecognizable as the man with whom she had collided at a ball not so very long ago. Gone was the dark, brooding, almost morose gentleman he had seemed then. He looked relaxed now, cheerful, contented.
Oh, and she was contented too. More than that, she was happy. She loved, and she was allowing herself to be loved in return. Nothing had been spoken in words yet, but words were unnecessary. Or perhaps they were necessary. Perhaps an unwillingness to speak them aloud showed that they still did not quite trust each other.
Perhaps soon she would speak the words and trust that he would say them back to her.
Soon.
Perhaps this evening.
Toby was scrambling up a tree to avoid the clutches of a ravenous lion—and Duncan, it seemed, was the lion, his fingers curled into claws as he snarled and roared.
Toby shrieked.
“And you are a friendly tribeswoman, Aunt Meg,” he called, orchestrating his own fate, “and come to my rescue with your spear and drive off the lion. You do not kill him, though, because he is only looking for food for his cubs while the lioness stays with them. He is just being himself.”
He shrieked again as Duncan lunged with one set of claws, and Margaret looked up at his flushed, excited face, as she had done so many times during the past week, trying to see something of Duncan in him. Sometimes she thought she did, some fleeting recognition when he turned his head at a certain angle or assumed a certain expression. But it was always gone before she could grasp it, and he was again a small and delicate little blond boy with the heart of a warrior and the conscience of his father.
He is just being himself.
She crept forward w
ith exaggerated stealth as Duncan lunged again and Toby shrieked and laughed. And then she tapped Duncan on the back with her imaginary spear and drove him off with a blood-curdling yell when he turned to her in exaggerated surprise and terror.
“Come,” she said, reaching up her arms to lift the child down. “You can pet him now. He realizes that you are a cub just like his own except that you are human. He will not harm you.”
Duncan snarled and then purred.
Toby giggled.
A few minutes later they were all reclining on the ground, Margaret with her back against a tree trunk, Duncan cross-legged, Toby on his stomach, his chin propped on his hands, his feet waving in the air.
“Tobe,” Duncan said, reaching out a hand to ruffle his hair, “I am getting too old for this. Once the summer is over, we are going to have to find a governess for you.”
“Oh,” Margaret said, “is he not a little young for that yet? He is only four.”
“I am four and a half,” Toby said with some indignation. “I’ll be five just after Christmas. Will she teach me to read, Papa? Then I can read a story to you when I go to bed.”
“And put me to sleep?” he said. “Would there be room in your bed for me, do you think?”
“I’ll move over,” Toby said. “And will she teach me to do sums? I can do two and two. It is four. I can do three and three too, and four and four and right up to ten and ten. Do you want to hear, Aunt Meg?”
“I certainly do,” she said. “Is ten and ten twenty-one?”
“Twenty,” he said.
“Ah,” she said, “silly me.”
Four and a half. At first she was simply amused by the preciseness of a child not wanting to appear younger than he was.
Just after Christmas.
The Christmas after Mrs. Turner left her husband and ran off with Duncan. And that had happened during the Season, just before she herself had arrived in London for the first time with Stephen and her sisters.
Mrs. Turner had been with child when she ran away.
That must mean she had been Duncan’s mistress before then.
It was a fact that surely changed everything.
Everything.
He had lied to her.
To make himself look better. To appear the big hero. And she had passed on the lie to her family, and he had repeated it to his mother and grandfather after the wedding.
So that they would all admire him and forgive him and deem him a worthy husband for Margaret.
Or…
Oh, dear God, there was an alternative explanation too.
But it was one so horrifying that she dared not contemplate it.
If the first explanation changed everything, then this one…
Oh, God. Oh, dear God.
The unwilling thoughts hammered through her brain as she somehow managed to listen to Toby’s prattling and even answered him when he spoke directly to her. She smiled at him with wooden lips. She felt as if the blood had drained from her head.
“You look tired,” Duncan said after a while.
“I am a little,” she said.
He rumpled Toby’s hair again.
“We have worn Aunt Meg out,” he said. “We will go back to the house and let her rest, and perhaps I can take you for that ride I have been promising you.”
“Y-e-e-e-s-s-s!” Toby cried, jumping to his feet. “May I hold the reins, Papa?”
“Probably not,” Duncan said. “I will be getting you a pony soon, and then you can learn to ride.”
Toby jumped up and down with excitement and then dashed off ahead through the trees.
“Take my arm,” Duncan said, offering it. “I must have kept you awake too long last night.”
He was grinning at her.
“I do not need assistance, thank you,” she said, and was aware of his grin fading even though she was not looking at him.
“What is it?” he asked.
She swallowed.
“Nothing,” she said. Coward that she was, she wanted to obliterate the last few minutes, to go back beyond those words of Toby’s—I am four and a half. What the mind did not know …
“You make nothing sound like a whole lot of something,” he said, his face turned to look closely at her.
She opened her mouth to speak. Closed it again, the words unspoken.
There could be no happy answer to her question once it was asked, could there? Either way, everything would be changed. And if her worst fears were realized, everything must change.
Oh, dear God, no, not that. Please not that.
“Maggie,” he said, his voice soft and even trembling with some emotion, “I need to—”
“Duncan,” she began at the same moment. “Tell me the tr—”
But even as they both stopped to allow the other to finish first, Toby was dashing back toward them, yelling as he came.
“Come on, Papa,” he cried. “I want to go riding.”
And he inserted himself between them, took a hand of each, and half trotted along what remained of the path, pulling them along with him and prattling excitedly.
Despicably, Margaret was relieved. She did not want to know. She needed to demand the truth, and she would do it. She must do it. But, ah, God forgive her, she did not want to know.
For the truth, whatever it was, was going to change things. Was going to lower him in her opinion. Was going to call for some action. Was going to create some conflict. She did not want things to change. She liked everything as it was—and as it was becoming.
She was falling …
Oh, never mind.
Why could she not have let Toby’s protest about his age pass her by without noticing its significance?
She feared that the courtship might be over.
How could it possibly continue if …
Had she really married a liar? And possibly worse than that?
Perhaps the marriage would be over too, for all intents and purposes.
She was going to have to insist upon hearing the truth—at last.
Margaret swallowed panic.
23
SHE had not missed it, then. If Toby was four and a half years old, if he had been born just after Christmas, then he must have been conceived during the previous spring—before Laura left London.
It was inevitable that she discover the truth sooner or later, of course. It was foolish of him to have delayed, to have waited until his hand was forced, until she was upset and bewildered and had undoubtedly jumped to all sorts of seemingly obvious conclusions.
She was still subdued when he went down to the drawing room after tucking Toby into bed for the night. She had avoided his company until now, and he half expected to find the room empty. Perhaps he had half hoped to find it empty. Would he have gone in search of her or put off the confrontation until tomorrow? It did not matter. She was sitting beside the empty fireplace, bent over her embroidery.
She did not look up or stop stitching.
She did not look like a woman waiting for the daily hours of courtship. He knew beyond all doubt that he had not misunderstood this afternoon.
“Were you lovers before you ran away together?” she asked, drawing her needle out of the cloth, trailing green silk behind.
“No,” he said. “Maggie—”
“It was his child she was bearing, then,” she said. She attempted another stitch, but her hand was shaking. She rested it on the cloth, the needle pointed upward. “Randolph Turner’s.”
“No,” he said. “Maggie—”
She looked up then and her eyes were swimming in tears.
“It has to be one or the other, Duncan,” she said. “It cannot be both, but it cannot be neither. It is one or the other. Either you were lovers and fled when she discovered she was with child. Or she fled with you, taking her husband’s unborn child with her—in which case you have withheld a legitimate child from his father all this time. Which is it, Duncan?”
He stared at her, grim-faced.
�
�Neither,” he said.
She moved her embroidery frame to one side and stood up. Her hands closed into fists at her sides, and she took one step toward him, her face pale.
“You cannot tell the truth even when you are cornered, can you?” she said. “I try to tell myself that at least there is a noble motive behind your lies—that you love Toby and cannot bear the thought of relinquishing him to his real father. But there is no real excuse. I wish it were the other—that you and she were lovers and ran off together and then concocted the story of violence and abuse to excuse yourselves. It would still be despicable, but God help me, I wish it were that. Which is it?”
He had brought this upon himself. He understood that. Even so, he could feel the stirrings of anger in himself. Her face was only inches from his own.
“It is neither,” he said curtly.
“I suppose,” she said, “she had another lover and he would not run off with her. How very noble of you! And the dead cannot defend themselves, can they?”
“Let me explain,” he said.
But she was angry herself now and horribly upset—that was quite clear to him. She clapped both hands over her ears in quite un-Maggie-like fashion.
“I am sick of your explanations,” she said. “I am sick of your lies. I will not listen to any more. And I hate you for one thing more than all else, Duncan. You brought me here without telling me the truth, and now I have grown to love Toby too. And I too feel the temptation to hide the truth forever so that he can remain part of our happy family. I will never forgive you for that.”
And, without removing her hands from over her ears except to use one to open the door when she reached it, she hurried out of the room.
God damn it, he thought.
God damn it!
She would not listen to him, and he could hardly blame her. But if she would not listen, would the rest of the world? Had he always been right to fear as much as Laura ever had that it would not?
And what would Maggie do now? Keep her mouth shut? Speak out?
Should he force her to listen?
They had been falling in love—or so he had thought. They had been learning to trust life again, to trust love again, to trust each other.
