Only a Kiss

by Mary Balogh

  “Who did what, m’lord?”

  “Keep working,” Percy said, leaning his arms along the fence. “In all fairness, I did not expect you to come out with a name. Will you answer a few questions with yes or no, though? Viscount Barclay was opposed to the smuggling that was going on in this area, was he not?”

  Bains was carefully examining the horse’s leg.

  “I was just a lad,” he said. “I was not his lordship’s personal groom.”

  “He opposed smuggling?”

  “I knew his opinions on horses,” the man said. “That was all.”

  “Did you too voice an objection to smuggling after he had gone?” Percy asked. “Because you admired him so much?”

  “I wanted to go with him,” Bains told him. “I wanted to be his batman, to look after his things and him. My dad wouldn’t let me go. He was afraid I would get hurt.”

  “Ironic, that,” Percy said. “You liked Viscount Barclay?”

  “Everyone liked him,” Bains said.

  “And admired him?”

  “He was a fine gentleman. He ought to have been—”

  “—the earl after his father’s passing?” Percy said. “Yes, indeed he ought. But he died instead.”

  “That Mawgan went with him instead,” Bains said. “Just because he was Mr. Ratchett’s niece’s boy and had pull and was eighteen years old. But he was no good. He ran away in the end. Said he was foraging for firewood up in them foreign hills when the frogs came and took his lordship and her ladyship. But I would bet anything he was hiding among the rocks scared as anything and then ran away. I would have saved them if I had been there. But I wasn’t. There is nothing wrong with this horse’s leg, m’lord.”

  “I must have just imagined that he was favoring it on the way back up from the village, then,” Percy said. “It is always as well to check, though, is it not? Did you try to stop the smuggling here so that Lord Barclay would be proud of you?”

  “There is some smuggling going on up the Bristol Channel way, or so they say,” Bains said, straightening up again. “And some over Devon way. But I never been farther from home than ten miles, if that, so I wouldn’t know for sure.”

  “Or did you flatly refuse to join the gang?” Percy asked. “Or threaten to expose them to the revenue men? No, don’t answer. There is no need. Take one last look down at that leg. I will do so as well. One never knows who is watching, does one, even if we cannot be heard. Nothing? I am glad to hear it. Off with you, then. You might as well take the horse with you.”

  Bains made his way back to the stables, leading the horse. It was obvious that every step was painful to him. Percy wondered if the old earl had hired a reputable physician to set his broken legs. Soames? He wondered too just how badly they had been broken.

  He was going to have to stop all this, he thought as he made his way back to the house. He must be very bored indeed if he was starting to fancy himself as some sort of Bow Street Runner. He was going to be getting himself into trouble if he was not careful. And he really did not want to be thinking about smashed legs and dark coves on moonless nights and weighty kegs being carried up that cliff path and shady characters breaking into the cellar of the dower house beneath the very feet of the marble lady.

  Or of himself dashing to her rescue, sword flashing in one hand, pistol brandished in the other.

  Did he owe her an apology? She had been a full participant in that kiss last night. But what gentleman asked a lady with barefaced cheek if she had been raped? The very thought that he had done just that was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.

  * * *

  Imogen was kneeling in the grass the following morning, looking at what was definitely a snowdrop, though there was no blossom yet. Even the frail shoot, though, was a welcome harbinger of spring. And surely the air was marginally warmer today. The sun was shining.

  The work on her roof was finished. Mr. Tidmouth had been paid, and he and his men had gone away. He had assured her that the roof was good for the next two hundred years at the very least. She hoped it would not leak the next time there was rain.

  She ought to walk down into the village and call upon Mrs. Park to see if she had taken any harm from her outing to the assembly. She ought to call at the vicarage and let the girls twitter at her about the dance and their conquests there—their parents always discouraged frivolous talk, but girls sometimes needed someone to whom they could twitter to their hearts’ content. She ought to go up to the hall to assure Aunt Lavinia that the dower house was perfectly comfortable again. She ought to write an answering letter to Gwen, Lady Trentham, Hugo’s wife, who had written to inform her that young Melody, their new daughter, appeared to have recovered from her colicky, crotchety start to life before Christmas and was eagerly anticipating her journey to Penderris Hall with her mama and papa in March. She ought to . . .

  Well, there were numerous things she ought to do. But she could settle to nothing even though she kept telling herself that it was sheer heaven to be back in her own home. Alone.

  And lonely.

  She must be feeling depressed. She never admitted to loneliness—simply because there was no loneliness to admit to.

  And then she was alone no longer. A shadow fell across her from the direction of the garden gate, and she looked up, desperately hoping it was Aunt Lavinia or Tilly or even Mr. Wenzel or Mr. Alton. Anyone but . . .

  “Saying your prayers in the brisk outdoors, Cousin Imogen?” the Earl of Hardford asked.

  She got to her feet and shook out her skirts and her cloak.

  “There is a snowdrop here,” she said, “though it has not bloomed yet. I always look for the first one.”

  “You believe in springtime, then?” he asked.

  “Believe in?” She looked inquiringly at him.

  “New life, new beginnings, new hope,” he suggested, circling one gloved hand in the air. “Off with the old, on with the new, and all that rally-the-old-and-tired-spirits stuff?”

  “I want only an end to the cold,” she said, “and the sight of flowers and leaves on the trees.”

  If he asked her to walk with him today, she would say no. But even as she thought it, he opened the gate and stepped inside, Hector at his heels.

  “It is a lovely day,” she said.

  He looked up at the blue sky above and then back down at her.

  “Must we talk about the weather?” he asked. “It lacks a certain . . . originality as a topic of conversation, would you not agree? But it is a lovely day, I must concede. I came to bring the joyful tidings that dearest Fluff has presented the world with kittens—six of them, all apparently as healthy as horses. No runts. And I have it on the most reliable authority that they are the sweetest things in the world.”

  “Aunt Lavinia?”

  “And a few assorted maids and one footman, who ought to have been on duty in the hall but had inexplicably taken a wrong turn and ended up in the stables instead,” he said. “Mrs. Ferby is as usual unimpressed with such sentimental stuff. I may even have heard a rumble of drown ’em spoken in her voice as I left the dining room after breakfast, but it may have been merely the rumble of a bit of dyspepsia coming from her, ah, stomach.”

  She had no choice, Imogen thought. She could not be openly rude, even to him. Especially when he was spouting absurdities again.

  “Would you care to step inside, Lord Hardford?” she asked him. “Would you care for a cup of tea, perhaps?”

  “Both, thank you.” He smiled at her, his spontaneous, genuine smile—which somehow did not look either spontaneous or genuine.

  If she did not know better, Imogen thought as she led the way inside, she would say he was ill at ease. She did not want him here. Did he not realize that? Did he not understand that she had come back here yesterday, even before the house was ready for her, in order to escape from him? Though that was p
erhaps a little unfair. She had come back to escape from herself, or, rather, from the effect she had allowed him to have on her. She did not want to feel the pull of his masculinity and the corresponding stirring of her femininity.

  He and Blossom eyed each other in the sitting room. Blossom won the confrontation. He took the chair on the other side of the fireplace after Imogen had seated herself firmly in the middle of a love seat. Hector plopped down at his feet, ignored by the cat. Mrs. Primrose had seen them come in and would bring the tea tray without waiting for instructions. Visitors were always plied with her tea and whatever sweet delight she had baked that day.

  He talked with great enthusiasm about the weather until the tray had arrived and Imogen had poured their tea and set his beside him with two oatmeal biscuits propped in the saucer. He made dire predictions for the future based upon the fact that they had been enjoying a string of fine days and must surely suffer as a consequence. He almost had her laughing with his monologue, and once again she was forced to admit to herself that she almost liked him. She might even withdraw the qualification of the almost if he did not fill her sitting room to such an extent that there seemed to be almost no air left to breathe.

  She resented that charisma he seemed to carry about with him wherever he went. It seemed undeserved.

  He picked up one of his biscuits and bit into it. He chewed and swallowed.

  “If not that, then what?” he asked abruptly, and curiously she knew exactly what he was talking about. His whole manner had changed, and so had the atmosphere in the room. If not rape, he was asking her, then what?

  She ought to refuse to answer. He had no right. No one else had ever asked her outright. At Penderris, everyone—even the physician, even George—had waited until she was ready to volunteer the information. It had taken two years for it all to come out. Two years. She had known him . . . how many days? Eight? Nine?

  “Nothing,” she said. “You were mistaken in your assumption.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I believe you. But something happened.”

  “My husband died,” she said.

  “But you not only mourn,” he said, looking at the biscuit in his hand as though he had only just realized it was there, and taking another bite. “You also refuse to continue to live.”

  He was too perceptive.

  “I breathe air into my lungs,” she told him, “and breathe it out again.”

  “That,” he said, “is not living.”

  “What do you call it, then?” she asked, annoyed. Could he not take a hint and talk about the weather again?

  “Surviving,” he said. “Barely. Living is not merely a matter of staying alive, is it? It is what you do with your life and the fact of your survival that counts.”

  “Spoken by an authority?” she asked him.

  But she thought unwillingly of her fellow Survivors who had done a great deal with their lives and their survival in the years since Penderris. Ben, though he still struggled to walk, had acquired a great deal of mobility since taking to a wheeled chair and was the very busy manager of prosperous coal mines and ironworks in Wales. He was also happily married. Vincent, despite his blindness, walked and rode and exercised, even boxed, and composed children’s stories with his wife, stories that she then illustrated before they were published. They had a son. Flavian, Hugo, Ralph—they were all married too and living active, presumably happy lives. Yet she could remember them all when they were so broken that even drawing in another lungful of air had been a burden. Ralph in particular had been suicidal for a long time.

  But none of them carried her particular burden. Just as she carried none of theirs. What if she could not see the first snowdrop, not this year or ever? What if she could never stride along the cliff path or the beach below?

  He had not answered her question. He was chewing the last mouthful of his first biscuit.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Oh, confession is a two-way business, Lord Hardford,” she said sharply. “Unless one is a priest, perhaps. You also have stories you would rather not tell.”

  The progress of his second biscuit was arrested two inches from his mouth. “But one would not wish to scandalize a lady,” he said, lowering it, “or scorch her ears with unsavory stories.”

  She tutted. “You are terrified of the sea,” she said, “and of the cliffs. I daresay it was only your pride because I, a mere woman, was there that got you down the path onto the beach a few days ago.”

  He set the biscuit back in his saucer.

  “Are we bartering here, Cousin Imogen?” he asked. “Your story for mine?”

  Oh.

  Oh. No.

  She ought to have thought before she spoke. She ought not to have started any of this.

  “Shall I go first?” he asked.

  10

  He did not wait for her answer.

  “I was ten or eleven,” he said. “I was at that obnoxious age, which all boys go through and perhaps girls too, when I knew nothing and thought I knew everything. We were spending a few weeks by the sea. I have no memory of quite where, though it was somewhere on the east coast. There were golden beaches, high, rugged cliffs, a jetty and boats, the sea to splash around in and foaming waves to hurl myself beneath. A boy’s paradise, in fact. But—the blight of a boy’s existence—there was an army of adults with me, united in its determination to see that I did not enjoy a single moment of my time there—my parents, one of my tutors, various servants, even my old nurse. The sea was dangerous and drowned little boys; the boats were dangerous and tipped little boys into the water before drowning them; the cliffs were dangerous and dashed little boys to their death on jagged rocks below—everything was dangerous. The only thing that could keep me safe was constant adult supervision, preferably of the hold-my-hand-don’t-do-that variety. I resented every little that was uttered and every hand that was held out for mine.”

  “I suppose,” Imogen said, “you found a way to come to grief.”

  “In a spectacular way,” he agreed. “I escaped one evening, Lord knows how, and went down onto the beach alone. It was deserted. The sea was calm, the boats were bobbing invitingly by the jetty, and I decided to try my hand at the oars of one of them, something I had not been allowed to do despite my pleas that I knew how to use them. I did too. I even discovered the art of holding a course parallel to the beach rather than one that would take me across it in the general direction of Denmark. After a while I spotted a cove that looked like a perfect pirates’ lair and decided to land and play awhile. I dragged the boat up onto the beach and became a pirate king. I climbed the cliff until I came to a flat ledge that made a perfect lookout and continued with my game until I noticed several things all at once. I believe the first was that I was a bit chilly. I was chilly because the sun had gone down and dusk was coming on. Then, in quick succession, I noticed that while I had been searching the horizon for treasure ships to plunder, the tide had come in and claimed almost all the beach below me, that the boat had been lifted from its resting place and had floated away, and that the cliffs behind me and to either side of me were all very high and very sheer and very menacing.”

  “Oh,” Imogen said, “your poor mother.”

  “Well, yes,” he agreed, “though it was only poor me I could think of at the time. I spent the night there and a good part of the next day. It seemed like a week or a year. The tide went out and came in again, but even low tide did not help me. There was no way around the end of the rocks to the main beach. And even if there had been, I was so paralyzed by terror that I could not move an eyelash or an inch from where I was, perched precariously upon a ledge that seemed to become narrower and higher off the beach with every passing hour. And then the wind got up and tried to snatch me off my perch and the sky turned leaden gray and the sea heaved and foamed and I got seasick even though I was not on it. When a boat finally hove into sight, tossing
and pitching quite alarmingly, and the boatman and my tutor spotted me from within it, they had the devil’s own time landing. And then they were compelled to virtually scrape me off the face of the cliff. The boatman had to toss me over his shoulder and order me to shut my eyes before carrying me down and lifting me into the boat. I daresay my eyes were rolling in my head and I was foaming at the mouth. I was sick again on the way home.”

  He eyed his cup and the biscuit but did not move a hand toward them. Perhaps, Imogen thought, he was afraid his hand might be shaking.

  “They had thought I was dead, of course,” he said, “especially when a boat was discovered bobbing on the open sea soon after dawn, empty and mysteriously minus one oar. My father celebrated my resurrection from the dead when I was ushered into our lodgings first by hugging me so tightly it was amazing he did not suffocate me and break every bone in my body, and then by bending me over the back of the nearest chair, hauling down my breeches, and spanking the living daylights out of me with his bare hand—the only time I can ever remember his hitting me. Then he sent me to apologize to my mother, who had taken to her bed with smelling salts and other restoratives, but leapt out of it in order to crush my bones again and half drown me in her tears. After I had eaten—standing—from a tray the cook had sent up, laden with enough food to feed a regiment, I crept off to my room, where my tutor was awaiting me with his cane in hand. He had me bend myself over, hands on knees, before giving me twelve of the best. Then he sent me off to bed, where I remained until we set off for home next morning. I slept on my front, a position I have always found uncomfortable.”

  “And you have been terrified of all things connected with the sea and cliffs since,” Imogen said.

  He turned his head and grinned at her—an expression so totally without any of his usual artifice that it caught at her breath.

  “A fate I thoroughly deserved,” he said. “It must have been a night and morning of sheer hell for them. I was loved, you know, worthless cub though I could sometimes be. It was only sometimes, however, to be fair.”