Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

  “I will pack a picnic tea for you,” Phyllis said, clasping her hands to her bosom.

  And so it was that less than an hour later Jonathan was stowing a picnic basket in the boat the head gardener had pointed out as the most sturdy, and Rachel was eyeing both the boat and the water with an uneasy eye. The lake had always appeared large to her. Now it looked enormous, almost like an inland sea. She could not swim, a fact that had not seemed to matter too much when crossing from England to Belgium and back. She had reasoned on those occasions that if the ship sank, the ability to swim would not greatly help a survivor anyway.

  “Was this really necessary?” she asked.

  “When your uncle himself suggested it?” he said. “I would have to say yes. Besides, would you rather sit through another visit with the worthy rector and his wife?”

  Rachel assumed the question was rhetorical, but she was not at all sure she would have given the expected answer if called upon. He was reaching out his hand to help her into the boat, looking quite sturdy on his feet even though he had finally abandoned his cane only a couple of days before.

  The boat rocked alarmingly when she stepped into it, but Rachel sat down quickly on one of the cross benches and resigned herself to her fate. Jonathan took off his coat before seating himself on the bench opposite, and set it in the bottom of the boat with the basket. His hat soon joined them, and the breeze ruffled his longish hair. He looked healthy and virile.

  “You look remarkably cheerful,” she said, opening her parasol to shield the back of her neck from the sun’s rays as he took up the oars.

  “Why would I not be?” he asked as he maneuvered the craft out into the water and Rachel clung to the side of the boat with her free hand. “The sunshine is enough to fill anyone with a sense of well-being.”

  “I thought,” she said, “we were both eager to avoid being alone together.”

  She glanced at his left leg, which was flexing and stretching as he rowed. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who had lain on her bed in the brothel looking closer to death than life not so long ago. Who was he? she wondered. Sometimes she forgot that he was not Jonathan Smith. How strange not even to know his real name.

  It must be stranger still to him.

  “We are not children, though, are we, Rache,” he asked her, “to be scrapping with each other at every opportunity? Can we agree simply to enjoy an unexpectedly free afternoon together?”

  “I suppose so,” she said, turning her head to look about her. The lake water was sparkling in the sunshine. The trees on the opposite bank looked a brighter green than usual. Somehow the water seemed less frightening now that she was out on it. Or perhaps that was because he obviously knew what he was doing at the oars. “Do you swim?”

  “One of your trick questions?” he asked. “Shall I dive overboard and see? But what would you do if the answer proved to be no and the last you saw of me was a bubble on the surface? You might be stranded out here for the rest of your widowed life. Yes, Rachel, I can swim. It is strange, is it not, that I know certain impersonal things like that about myself? Do you swim?”

  “No.” She shook her head and trailed her free hand in the water. It was cool but not really cold. “I never had the chance.”

  “That is another thing we are going to have to put right, then,” he said.

  She did not argue. She had always thought it must be lovely to swim, to be able to move through a different medium, buoyed up mysteriously by the apparent fragility of water. Now more than ever she craved to know all that she had missed by growing up in London and never venturing into the country even for a short visit.

  “What did you do for fun when you were a girl?” he asked.

  She had hardly known the word had any meaning that could apply to her.

  “I read,” she said, “and I sewed and embroidered. Sometimes I painted. When Bridget was still with me, and I think while my mother was still alive too, I used to go for walks in Hyde Park and other places. We sometimes took a ball with us.”

  “And after Bridget left?” he asked.

  “I was not allowed out without a maid,” she said. “Sometimes, when we had a maid, I used to go to the library. A few times I went shopping with our neighbors.”

  “Going to Brussels must have seemed like an enormous adventure to you,” he said.

  “In a way.” She smiled. “But I was an employee, if you will recall, and I was kept busy with my duties.”

  “Did Lady Flatley take you about with her?” he asked. “To balls and soirees and routs?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “She was in Brussels because her son was a cavalry officer. Miss Donovan, his betrothed, was there too with her parents. I was not really needed at all except during the mornings. Or to pour the tea and run and fetch if Lady Flatley was entertaining.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Then there is no chance that you saw me anywhere.”

  “None,” she said. “The closest I came to going to any entertainment was on the evening of a moonlit picnic in the Forest of Soignés. Lady Flatley wanted me to carry her wraps for her in case the night grew colder. But Mr. Donovan decided at the last moment that he would accompany his wife and daughter after all, and there was no room for me in the carriage.”

  She had been bitterly disappointed.

  He was looking at her and blinking rapidly. He had stopped rowing.

  “What is it?” She leaned forward. “Were you there? At that picnic?”

  She could see the strain on his face, the effort he was making to remember. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. But after what might have been a full minute, he shook his head.

  “Who hosted it?” he asked.

  “I cannot remember,” she said after thinking for a few moments. “An earl, I believe. He did not have a very good reputation, and there was talk about him afterward because he came near to compromising a young lady who was foolish enough, I suppose, to fall prey to his charm. No, his name escapes my mind. He was no one who ever came to Lady Flatley’s.”

  “Sometimes,” he said with a sigh, “it is as if a heavy curtain before my memory sways and threatens to drop away altogether. But each time it falls still again and remains firmly in place. If I was in Belgium at that time, it is altogether possible that I was there at that picnic. For a moment I was sure I was. But I grow tedious with these endless references to the lamentable state of my mind. I brought you out here so that we might enjoy the afternoon. Are you enjoying it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  And it was true. She was, in fact, becoming more and more intoxicated with the country. Riding, exploring the park, visiting, strolling in the lovely parterre gardens, and now boating on the lake—it all seemed like one long idyll. That was, of course, if she ignored all the negative aspects of her stay here that could rob her of joy the moment she dwelled upon any one of them. But these days she was firmly ignoring them.

  Jonathan had started rowing again and was maneuvering the boat alongside a small jetty on the island. He tied the boat securely to a post and handed Rachel out.

  The island seemed larger than it had from the mainland. It rose upward from the water’s edge, and they climbed to the top, though they could have taken one of the overgrown paths to the left or right that apparently led around the perimeter. Jonathan carried the picnic basket, though Rachel had offered to do so out of deference to his weakened left leg, which he still favored slightly as he walked.

  There were bushes and a few trees on the slope, but the crown of the hill was covered only by somewhat overlong grass and a folly at the peak. It was a ruined stone hermitage and had obviously been built that way. There was a sturdy wooden bench beneath the slope of the slate roof that offered both protection from the elements and a splendid view back across the lake to the stables and house.

  But it was a lovely, sunny day with a very slight warm breeze, and the shade of the hermitage did not invite them. After Jonathan had set down the basket and Rachel ha
d propped her parasol beside it, they strolled about the open area, looking at the views in every direction. The loveliest view was of the river water cascading over rocks into the lake some distance away.

  Rachel could feel the sun warm on her bare arms and her whole body. The sky above was a deep, clear blue. She could smell grass and flowers and water. She could not remember any other time when she had experienced a feeling of such utter well-being. Even that morning at the cascades did not really compare to this.

  She tipped back her head so that she could feel light and heat on her face, stretched her arms to the sides, and turned once about.

  “Is the world not a beautiful, beautiful place?” she said.

  Jonathan had already moved back to the basket. He was down on one knee beside it, taking out the thin blanket Phyllis had put inside to spread on the grass. He had left his coat and hat in the boat. His shirt was moving in the breeze. So was his hair. He looked up at her, his eyes squinted against the sunlight.

  “It most certainly is,” he agreed. “And the woman standing on top of it is not its least attraction.”

  She felt a rush of almost debilitating awareness. Her arms fell to her sides, and she felt foolish for her show of exuberance. The island seemed suddenly very secluded indeed. And there he was, more vital, more attractive, than any man had a right to be.

  He stayed very still for several long moments, and the air fairly crackled between them. He was the one who looked away first. He got to his feet after snapping the lid of the basket closed and spread the blanket over the grass.

  “The thing is, Rachel,” he said, his voice sounding testy, “that whenever we look at each other for longer than a few seconds at a time, we feel an attraction to each other, but the image intrudes of the ugly episode that spoiled what we had together. One impulse of pure lust on my part and temptation on yours, and our friendship was gone. Nothing has been the same since.”

  All the brightness, all the joy, had gone from the day. It felt as if heavy clouds had moved over the face of the sun, though in fact the sky remained cloudless. She clasped her hands about her forearms, as if to ward off the chill.

  Lust.

  Temptation.

  Had there been a friendship between them? Yes, of course there had. And a certain tenderness, perhaps on both their parts.

  “Take me back to the house,” she said, “and pack your things and leave. I will explain to Uncle Richard. You need not worry anymore. You do not owe me anything.”

  “That was not my meaning,” he said with a sigh. “I just mourn for that lost relationship and wonder if you do too.”

  “We do not have a relationship,” she told him.

  “Of course we do,” he said, his voice impatient. “I do not doubt that after the turmoil of the past you are looking forward to having the means with which to take command of your own life before you settle to marriage and motherhood. I am looking forward to discovering my past and somehow bringing my present and my future in line with it. We will go our separate ways when this month is over and very probably never meet again. But there will always be some sort of relationship between us. We will always remember each other whether we wish to do so or not. I will never forget the woman who saved my life, and I daresay you will never forget the man whose life you saved. Is this how we are going to remember each other? The month since that night has not been a comfortable or a happy one for us, has it?”

  She had been happy during the past week. He had always seemed full of laughter and vitality. They had behaved like a couple of infatuated newlyweds in company. But he was right. With the possible exception of the mornings when they rode together, they were not comfortable in each other’s company. They had been during those two weeks in Brussels before they had ended up in bed together.

  “What do you suggest, then?” she asked him. “That we shake hands and make up?”

  She turned her head away to look back along the lake to the cascades. She felt like weeping. She had been a little in love with him before that night. She had been only attracted to him since—physically attracted—and it was not nearly as heartwarming a feeling.

  And they had been friends too. She had lost a friend on that evening.

  “What we need to do, Rachel,” he said, “is to go back somehow and make different memories to take with us into our separate futures. Better memories.”

  “What?” She looked back over her shoulder at him.

  He was standing on the far side of the blanket, his booted feet apart, his hands on his lean hips, his shirt fluttering in the breeze.

  “We need to make love,” he said, “but with more pleasure, more joy, more togetherness, this time. We need to take it to a full and happy conclusion. Here in the outdoors, in the sunlight, in the summer heat. We need to, Rachel.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE IDEA CAME TO HIM ONLY AS HE LOOKED AT her and spoke with her. But though it struck him that he might regret his words when he had the chance to consider them in a more reasonable frame of mind—he knew by now that he must always have been an impulsive sort of person—he was not sorry he had spoken. It was not her beauty alone that had put the idea into his mind, or this perfect opportunity of being alone together on the island. And it certainly was not just lust, even though he knew that he wanted her badly—that he always wanted her.

  But he had spoken the truth to her. He could scarcely look at her without remembering that night. If what they had done together had seemed slightly sinful at the time, it had seemed overpoweringly so since. And it really had changed their relationship, and therefore their future memories of each other, for the worse. There had been something sweet between them—a friendship and perhaps a little more—before that, and he very much wanted to remember her as he had seen and felt about her then. He wanted her to remember him as the man she had liked well enough to sit with even when his wounds did not need tending.

  They had to make amends for that night in Brussels.

  She was gazing at him, wide-eyed, her head turned back over her shoulder.

  “Are you mad?” she asked him.

  “To believe that two wrongs will make a right?” he asked her. “Perhaps. But although liking was all mixed up with the lust on that last occasion, basically I was a man consorting with a whore. I hate even thinking about that, but it is true. It says terrible things about me morally. And then I resented you after discovering the truth because you had not told me. And this was after I had disappointed you. It was your first time and I made it a ghastly experience for you.”

  “You were not entirely to blame,” she said. “You did not seduce me. If anything, it was the other way around. I let you believe that I worked there and that I was available that night. And then I was so gauche that . . . Well, never mind.”

  It struck him suddenly, looking at her, that she was the perfect lady of breeding, dressed daintily and fashionably in muslin, her hair neat and shining beneath a small-brimmed straw bonnet, her frilly parasol on the grass beside the basket. He ought to be paying gentle court to her, not inviting her to lie with him here on the grass. But her life had not developed along typical lines. Neither had his since the fifteenth of June.

  She continued to look back at him across the space of perhaps twenty feet that separated them. But the thread of their conversation had broken, and there were several moments of silence during which he felt a heightened awareness of the sun beating down on them, the water sparkling below them, insects whirring in the long grass, and a single unseen bird trilling from one of the trees.

  Her gaze slipped to somewhere on the grass between them.

  “I will not touch you without your permission,” he told her. “If you would prefer, we will forget everything that has just been spoken and sit down on this blanket to eat the picnic tea Phyllis has prepared for us before I row you back to the house. We will go back to the pretense and make the best of the situation until the time comes when we can part and try to forget we ever met. The last thing I wanted to
do was make things worse between us.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again and looked down at her hands, which she spread at waist level, palms down. Her face was lost to view beneath the brim of her straw bonnet.

  “I do not know anything about . . . making love,” she said. “I lived a very sheltered existence with my father and a restricted life with Lady Flatley—until I met Nigel Crawley. But even he never so much as kissed my hand. I did not know what I was doing that night in Brussels with you. I do not know how to make it . . . pleasant.”

  He closed his eyes briefly as it struck him that his feelings were perhaps more deeply engaged with Rachel York than he cared to admit to himself.

  “You do not need to know,” he said. “I do know. I want to leave you with happier memories of me. I want to take away with me happier memories of you. Just tell me something, Rachel. Have there been consequences of that night? It was a month ago. You must know by now.”

  That brought her eyes up to his again and turned her cheeks rosy.

  “No,” she said.

  “And there will not today either,” he said. “I promise you that. Let me make love to you.”

  She lifted her chin slightly and kept her eyes on his.

  “Very well, then,” she said.

  She came toward him then. She did not stop when she reached the other side of the blanket but walked right across it to stop a foot away from him. He untied the ribbon bow beneath her chin and tossed her bonnet to the ground, cupped her face with both hands, and set his mouth to hers.

  This was, of course, no clinical, dispassionate exercise to set matters right between them. There had been an attraction between Rachel York and himself from the first moment, and it had not weakened with time even though their relationship had taken a wrong turn. It was more than an attraction, in fact—and always had been. It was a deep need, a raging passion.