Only a Kiss

by Mary Balogh

  Good God! How damaged had she been? And why was he pursuing this line of questioning? He did not deal in darkness. He hoped she would answer with a simple monosyllable or not at all.

  “Ben—Sir Benedict Harper—had his legs shattered and refused to have them amputated,” she said. “Vincent, Viscount Darleigh, was blinded in his first battle at the age of seventeen, and deafened too at first. Ralph, Duke of Worthingham, was hacked almost to ribbons with a saber when he was unseated from his horse in a cavalry charge. Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, was shot in the head and then fell on it from his horse. Hugo, Lord Trentham, was not wounded at all. He sustained not even a scratch, though he had led a Forlorn Hope that killed almost all his men and severely wounded those few who survived. He went out of his mind. George did not even go to war, but his only son did and died, and then his wife jumped to her death over the cliffs at the edge of his estate. And I . . . ? I was present when my husband died, but they did not kill me. Yes, three years. And those men are my very dearest friends in this world.”

  Percy found himself fondling Hector’s damaged ear and wishing again that he had not started this. Shattered legs. Blind at the age of seventeen—and deaf too. Sons dying and wives committing suicide—over the edge of a cliff. And what the devil had happened to Lady Barclay while her husband was in captivity, presumably being tortured? It was something ghastly enough that she had spent three years at Penderris Hall. He felt a trickle of sweat snake down his spine. He did not want to know.

  “When I left Penderris,” she said, “I came here. My father had died during those three years, my mother had gone to live with her sister, my aunt, in Cumberland, my brother had taken my father’s place with his wife and children, and I did not think it fair to go there, though my sister-in-law very graciously invited me. I could not bear to live in the hall here with my father-in-law and Aunt Lavinia, even though more than three years had gone by. I asked for the dower house, and my father-in-law reluctantly allowed me to go there. That is my story, Lord Hardford. You were entitled to hear it since you have come here for however short a time to find me living on your land. Shall we go down onto the beach?”

  “Down there?” he asked sharply. “No.”

  She turned her head to look steadily at him.

  “I have never seen the attraction of beaches,” he said—well, not for a long time, anyway. “They are just a lot of sand and water. Why is Hardford not more prosperous than it is? Or do you not know?”

  “It pays its way,” she said. “At least, that is what my father-in-law was always fond of saying.”

  “It does,” he agreed. “And he was content with that?”

  She turned her face away and did not answer immediately.

  “He was never a particularly ambitious man,” she said. “Dicky used to get impatient with him. He had all sorts of ideas and plans, but they were never implemented. He decided that the military life would be a better outlet for his energy. I believe his father lost all heart after Dicky died.”

  “And Ratchett?” he asked. “Was he ever an efficient steward?”

  “Maybe once upon a time,” she said. “My father-in-law inherited him.”

  “And he never considered that it might be time to put the man out to pasture and hire someone more . . . vigorous?” Percy was frowning. And he was wishing with all his heart that he could go back to the night of his birthday and erase the sudden drunken impulse to come to Cornwall. Sometimes what one did not know was best left that way.

  “I doubt he ever considered it,” she said. “Mr. Ratchett keeps very neat and orderly books. He spends his days surrounded by them and makes new entries in them as needed. If you wish to know anything concerning rents and crops and flocks or anything else on the estate for the past forty or fifty years, you will surely find the answer in meticulous detail within those pages.”

  “I feel rather, Lady Barclay,” he said impatiently, “as though I had stepped into a different universe.”

  “I suppose,” she said, “the situation is reversible. You could go back to where you—” She stopped abruptly.

  ... where you came from?

  ... where you belong?

  “And leave that house, my house, to be turned into a menagerie?” he asked. “Do you realize that eventually, if Lady Lavinia continues to add every stray who is canny enough to wander up to the doors—and word must be spreading fast in the animal kingdom—eventually the house is going to become uninhabitable by humans? That it will be hopelessly coated with dog and cat hair? That it will smell?”

  “You would have them turned away to starve, then?” she asked.

  “It is not possible to feed all the hungry of this world,” he said.

  “Aunt Lavinia does not even try to take on the world’s woes,” she told him. “She merely feeds the hungry who come to her door—to your door.”

  He felt a sudden suspicion. “Are we talking just about dogs and cats?” he asked.

  “There are people,” she said, “who cannot find work for one reason or another.”

  He stopped in his tracks again and looked at her, appalled. “If I were to wander into the nether regions of the house,” he said, “or into the stables, I would find all the maimed and criminally inclined vagabonds of the world eating me out of house and home, would I?”

  One of the maids who had come to make up his bed last night had been lame and looked as if she might be a bit simpleminded too.

  “Not all,” she said. “And those you would find are usefully employed and earning the food for which you pay. More gardeners and stable hands were needed by the time my father-in-law died, and the indoor staff had grown rather sparse. Aunt Lavinia has a tender heart, but she was never able to give it room while her brother lived. He was content with life as it had always been. He disliked change more and more as he grew older and after he lost Dicky.”

  “One of these strays is, I suppose, Mrs. Ferby,” he said. “Cousin Adelaide, who is not under any circumstances to be called Addie.”

  “I suppose you were given an account at breakfast of the seven-month marriage, were you?” she said. “She has to live upon the charity of her relatives since she has almost no private means, and Aunt Lavinia convinced herself that bringing a companion to the house was the respectable thing to do after she was left alone. Perhaps she was even right. And her chosen companion is a relative.”

  “Not of mine,” he said testily. “I can understand why you would rather I went back to where I came from, Lady Barclay.”

  “Well, you do seem to have managed very well without Hardford Hall for the past two years,” she said. “Now, having come here on what seems to be some sort of whim, you have whipped yourself into a thoroughly bad temper. Why not go away and forget about our peculiar ways and be sweet-tempered again?”

  “A thoroughly bad temper?” The dog whimpered and cowered at his feet. “You have not seen me in a bad temper, ma’am.”

  “It must be a very disagreeable sight, then,” she said. “And like all bad-tempered men, you have a tendency to turn your wrath upon the wrong person. I am not the one who has neglected Hardford and the farms belonging to it. I am not the one who has filled the house with strays without a clear plan for what to do with them. I am not the one who brought Cousin Adelaide here as a companion, with the full knowledge that she will remain here for the rest of her life. Under normal circumstances, I mind my own business in my own house and make no demands upon the estate or anyone on it.”

  “The most abhorrent type of person on this earth,” he said, narrow eyed, “is the one who remains cool and reasonable when being quarreled with. Are you always cool, Lady Barclay? Are you always like a block of marble?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “And now see what you have done,” he told her. “You have provoked me into unpardonable rudeness. Again. I am never rude. I am usually all sweetness and charm.”


  “That is because you are usually in a different universe,” she said, “one that revolves about you. The Peninsula was full of rude, blustering officers who believed other people had been created to pay them homage. I always thought they were merely silly and best ignored.”

  And she turned, the baggage, and began walking back the way they had come. She did not look behind her to see if he was following. He was not. He stood where he was, his arms folded over his chest, until she was out of earshot. Then he looked down at the dog.

  “If there is a type of woman that grates upon my every nerve more than any other,” Percy said, “it is the type that always has to have the last word. Rude and blustering. Silly. SILLY! ‘I always thought they were best ignored.’ For two pins I would go straight to the stables, mount my horse, and set its head for London. Forget about this ungodly place. Let you and all your playmates overrun the house until it is derelict. Let the earl’s apartments turn to mildew. Let that steward turn into a fossil in his dusty office. Leave Lady Lavinia Hayes alone with her cousin and her bleeding heart. Let that marble pillar beggar herself with the bill for her roof and all the other repairs that are bound to be needed. Let the tide ebb and flow against the cliffs until eternity wears them away and both houses fall off.”

  Hector had no opinion to offer, and there was no point in Percy’s standing here, pointlessly venting his frustration as he watched the cause of it recede into the distance.

  “At least then I would not find myself babbling nonsense to a dog,” he said. “I suppose you have exhausted yourself, though if you have it is entirely your own fault. You cannot say I did not warn you. And I suppose you are ready for your dinner so that you can build up some fat to hide those bones from sight. Come, then. What are you waiting for?”

  He looked for a gap in the gorse bushes and found one that would leave only a few surface scratches on his boots as he pushed through it—Watkins would look tragically stoic. But as he stepped into the gap, he looked back at the dog, scowled at it, and stooped to lift it over the prickly barrier, hoping as he did so that no one could see him. He set off grimly across the lawn in the direction of the house.

  At least, he thought—at least he was not feeling bored. Though it did occur to him that boredom was perhaps not such a sad state after all.

  5

  The afternoon brought visitors.

  Somehow word had spread that the Earl of Hardford was in residence, and since the correct thing to do was to call upon him, people called. Besides, everyone was agog with curiosity to make his acquaintance at last.

  Imogen had been planning to spend the afternoon at the dower house, although its roofless state made even the downstairs rooms almost unbearably chilly. She had missed luncheon because she could not bear the thought of making polite conversation with that man, who had provoked her to rudeness but who would no doubt be all smooth charm with the older ladies. She had also been feeling agitated after telling him her story, brief and undetailed though she had made it. She almost never spoke of the past or thought of it when she could help it. Even her dreams were only rarely nightmares now.

  Before she could set out for her own home, however, the first of the visitors arrived, and it would have been ill-mannered to leave even though they had not come, strictly speaking, to see her. She just wished she did not have to be sociable on this particular afternoon, though. For everyone was enamored of the Earl of Hardford as soon as they met him. His very presence here was sufficient to please them, of course. But his youth and extraordinary good looks, coupled with the excellence of his tailoring, dazzled the ladies and impressed the gentlemen. His charm, his smile, and his ready conversation completed the process of bowling them over. He assured everyone that he was delighted to be here at last, that there was surely nowhere else on earth to compare with Hardford and its environs for beauty, natural and otherwise.

  Those words and otherwise were spoken, as if by chance, while his eyes rested upon Mrs. Payne, wife of the retired Admiral Payne. Mrs. Payne, whose mood usually hovered on the edge of sourness, when it did not spill quite over into it, inclined her head in gracious acceptance of the implied compliment.

  The Reverend Boodle, though, was the first to arrive with Mrs. Boodle and their elder two daughters. The admiral and his wife came next, and they were soon followed by the Misses Kramer, middle-aged daughters of a deceased former vicar, with their elderly mother. Those three ladies could not admit to the social faux pas of calling upon a single gentleman, of course. They had come, the elder Miss Kramer explained, to visit dear Lady Lavinia and Lady Barclay and Mrs. Ferby, and what a surprise it was to discover that his lordship was in residence. They could only hope he did not think them very forward indeed to have intruded all unwittingly thus upon him. His lordship, of course, responded with the predictable reassurances and soon had the three ladies quite forgetting that they had come to see Aunt Lavinia.

  Imogen would undoubtedly have been amused by it all if she had not taken the man so much in dislike. Though actually, she thought, these visits were probably akin to excruciating torture for him and were therefore no less than he deserved. She met his glance as the malicious thought flashed through her mind and knew from the infinitesimal lift of his eyebrows that she was right.

  As the Reverend Boodle and his female entourage were leaving after a correct half hour, Mr. Wenzel drove up in the gig with Tilly. Imogen greeted the latter with a brief hug and sat beside her in the drawing room. But even Tilly was not immune to the earl’s charm. She leaned toward Imogen after a few minutes and murmured beneath the sound of the general conversation.

  “One has to admit, Imogen,” she said, “that he is a perfectly gorgeous specimen of manhood.”

  But her eyes were twinkling as she said it, and the two of them exchanged a brief smirk.

  Mr. Soames, the elderly physician, came with his much younger second wife and his three daughters and one son of that second marriage. Mr. Alton arrived last with his son, a gangly youth who had been wrestling with facial pimples for the last year or so, poor boy. He was soon in the throes of a serious case of hero worship, having been complimented by his lordship on the knot of his cravat, which looked like a perfectly ordinary knot to Imogen.

  She gave the earl a penetrating look. She really did not want to believe that he was kind. He had not paid any compliment to Mr. Edward Soames, a good-looking young man who had been affecting the appearance and manners of a dandy since making a brief visit to London last spring to stay with one of his older half sisters.

  By the time the last of the visitors had taken their leave, the four residents were left in possession of a number of invitations—to a dinner party, to an evening of cards, to an informal musical evening, to a picnic on the beach, weather permitting, of course, for the eighteenth birthday of Miss Ruth Boodle, though that would not be until the end of May. They had also been informed by each wave of callers that the next dance in the assembly rooms above the village inn was to be held five evenings hence, and it was to be hoped the Earl of Hardford would condescend to grace it with his presence—as well as the ladies, of course.

  Wild horses could not keep him away, the earl had assured everyone. He had solicited a set with the eldest Boodle daughter, the eldest Miss Soames, and Mrs. Payne. The elder Miss Kramer meanwhile had promised herself a comfortable coze with Aunt Lavinia and Cousin Adelaide while the young people danced. And Mr. Wenzel and Mr. Alton had each reserved a set of dances with Imogen.

  “Well,” Aunt Lavinia said when everyone had left, “that was all very gratifying, was it not? As you have seen, Cousin Percy, we are not without genteel neighbors and genteel entertainments in the country here. There is little chance you will find time hanging heavily on your hands.”

  “That Kramer woman who does all the talking for her mother and sister is a bore,” Cousin Adelaide remarked. “You may have a comfortable coze with her during the assembly, Lavinia.
I shall choose more congenial company.”

  “It would seem,” Imogen said, “that you are doomed to remain here for at least the next two weeks, Cousin Percy, since you have accepted invitations extending that far into the future. Not to mention Ruth Boodle’s birthday party more than three months from now.”

  “Doomed?” He smiled with what she recognized as his most practiced, most devastatingly charming smile at her. “But what a happy doom it is sure to be, Cousin Imogen.”

  God’s gift to womankind, Cousin Adelaide had said. And to mankind too. That was what he thought he was, and it seemed that everyone who had called here today was only too eager to confirm him in that opinion. He was in reality an empty shell of vanity and artificiality and arrogance and peevish temper when he was thwarted. He was in sore need of a good setdown.

  But it really would not do to allow herself to continue being ruffled by someone who had done nothing more lethal to harm her than to demand of her and who the devil might you be? She was not usually one to bear a grudge.

  His smile had become more genuinely amused, and she realized that she had been holding his gaze. She got to her feet and pulled on the bell rope to summon a maid to remove the tea tray.

  Had he been right earlier when he had suggested that she resented him because he was in the place Dicky should have been? She hated to think it might be so.

  Her eyes rested fondly on Aunt Lavinia for a moment. Imogen’s mother and Aunt Lavinia had been at a girls’ school together in Bath for several years and had remained fast friends afterward. Imogen had come here often as a girl, sometimes with her mother, sometimes alone for extended periods. Aunt Lavinia had always declared that Imogen was the daughter she had never had. Being rather on the tomboyish side, Imogen had played with the son of the house from the start. They had become fast friends and comrades. They had never really fallen in love. The very idea seemed a little absurd. But at some point after they grew up they had made the mutual decision to continue their friendship into marriage so that they could remain together. Imogen could not even remember if there had been a marriage proposal and, if so, which of them had made it. Everything had always been mutual with them.