by Mary Balogh
And there it was. The real man. The real Percy Hayes, Earl of Hardford, all artifice stripped away. A decent, principled man, whom she liked. Oh, too tame a word. She liked him enormously.
“You can bring my dog to bed too if you wish,” he said, “to cuddle between us after.”
She laughed.
His head tipped a little farther to the side.
“Imogen,” he said, “let yourself do that more often. Please?”
But he did not wait for an answer. He strode toward the bed, kissed her firmly on the lips, and pulled the blankets up to her chin.
“I know you have been longing to do that for the last ten minutes,” he said. “Stay there. I will see myself out. That key I saw hanging beside the door in the hall is not the only one you possess, is it?”
She shook her head.
“I will take it, then,” he said, “and lock the door behind me. I will not also unlock it at any time to let myself in, though. That will be by invitation only after I have knocked. Good night.”
“Good night, Percy,” she said, and saw a flicker of something—desire?—in his eyes before he turned away.
“Come along, Hector,” he said. “This is a time when you definitely must follow along at your master’s heels.”
Imogen listened to their footsteps descending the stairs—he had not taken the candle with him—and the front door opening and then closing. She heard the scrape of the key turning in the lock. And she set the heels of both hands over her eyes and wept.
She did not know why. They were not tears of sadness—or joy.
15
Percy had no idea what time it was when he arrived home, but at least he could see no light in any windows as he approached. He hoped that meant everyone, including his newly arrived friends, was in bed. No one was going to believe he had been out stretching his legs for several hours. And he was not in the mood for any male bragging on his own part or ribbing on theirs.
She lived in a house that he owned in a corner of his park surrounding his principal seat. She shared his name and still bore the female half of one of the titles that was his. He was Viscount Barclay; she was the viscountess. It was all rather bothersome. And he had no idea if she knew how to prevent conception. He had not thought to ask. He never did, but all the women who had been his mistresses or his casual amours from among the ton had known how to look after themselves and had not needed to be asked. He suspected that Imogen Hayes, Lady Barclay, was not that kind of woman.
She would not be pleased if she was forced to marry him.
Neither would he.
He lit a candle and looked down at Hector, who was looking back with his bulging eyes and ever-hopeful expression.
“The trouble is, Hector,” he said, though he kept his voice down out of deference to the sleeping house, “that I am not accustomed to thinking and behaving responsibly. Is it time I learned, do you think?”
Hector gazed earnestly back and waved his apology for a tail.
“Yes?” Percy said. “I was afraid you would say that. I do not want to give her up, though. Not yet. And she needs me. What the devil am I saying? How could anyone possibly need me? She needs . . . something, though. Laughter. She needs laughter. Heck, I can make her laugh.”
Lord, here he was talking to a dog and he was not even drunk.
If he took Hector back to the second housekeeper’s room—why was it called that?—he would probably end up letting the whole menagerie out.
“Oh, come on, then,” he said ungraciously, and made his way upstairs. Hector trotted after him, looking almost cocky.
Man and faithful hound.
He was not ready to give her up. He had only just had her. She had been a one-man woman until now. He had no doubt whatsoever of that. And that one man had been gone longer than eight years—after a four-year marriage. She had been a powder keg of passion tonight. It had not been just the outpouring of eight years of suppressed sexuality, though. At least, he did not think so. It had been very deliberate. She had been right there with him. She had called him by name.
Damn it—could he not just enjoy the feeling of relaxation left over from some vigorous and thoroughly pleasurable sex? It was unlike him to think about the experience. To worry about it, even.
He was worried.
Was she going to regret what she had done? Had he seduced her or at least led her into temptation? Was she with child? Or in danger of being if they continued their liaison? He was not ready for fatherhood. Or husbandhood either. Was that a word? Husbandhood? Probably not. He ought to write his own dictionary. It would give him something marginally useful to do.
Watkins, the idiot, was sitting quietly in his dressing room, waiting up for him.
“What the devil time is it?” Percy asked, frowning.
Watkins looked at the clock, visible now that Percy had brought a candle into the room. “Twelve minutes after three, my lord.”
There was no point in scolding or what-the-deviling. Percy allowed his valet to undress him and produce a nightshirt warmed by the fire in the bedchamber. And then he climbed into bed and promptly fell asleep with Hector curled and huffing contentedly beside him.
* * *
Mrs. Wilkes, who asked to be called Meredith, called at the dower house the following morning with Mr. Galliard, her father, and her young son. Mr. Galliard, Imogen remembered, was Mrs. Hayes’s brother. She was gradually sorting out who was who among the relatives.
They had not come to visit, however, and declined her offer of coffee with thanks. They were taking Geoffrey down onto the sands so that he could run free and work off some energy. The child was currently sitting on the doorstep, his arms around a happily purring Blossom. They had called in with a message. The older ladies were going into the ballroom after morning coffee and intended to make plans for the upcoming birthday party.
“And of course,” Meredith said with a smile, “it is to be the grandest entertainment this part of the country has ever seen. Poor Percy—he will hate it. Though I daresay he will survive the ordeal. And he deserves it anyway after running off to London in order to escape just such a party in Derbyshire right on his birthday. Aunt Julia was crushed with disappointment.”
“That young man has been spoiled all his life,” Mr. Galliard added fondly. “Though he has come out of it relatively unscathed. What Meredith has forgotten to add, Lady Barclay, is that you are to take yourself off to the hall as fast as your feet will convey you—if you will be so good. Your opinion is being solicited, young lady. And my sisters are not to be trifled with when they are making plans. Neither is Edna Eldridge. I have not yet sized up Lady Lavinia, though she appears to be happy enough to be drawn into action. The dragon, however, will have nothing to do with any plans to celebrate anything that concerns a man.”
“Papa!” Meredith exclaimed, laughing. “Was Mrs. Ferby really married for just a few months when she was seventeen, Cousin Imogen? And did she really worry her husband to death?”
Less than half an hour later Imogen walked up to the hall on another brilliantly sunny morning. She hoped, hoped, hoped she could reach the ballroom without running into the Earl of Hardford. The events of last night seemed unreal today despite the physical evidence of a slight and pleasurable soreness. It was going to seem strange and a little embarrassing to see him again. Today she could not even think of him as Percy.
As luck would have it, she spotted him in the distance over by the stables with Mr. Cyril Eldridge and two strange gentlemen who she assumed were his newly arrived friends from London. They were talking with James Mawgan, Dicky’s former batman, now the head gardener.
Lord Hardford saw her, raised a staying hand, and came striding across the lawn, the other gentlemen with him. She clasped her own gloved hands at her waist and waited. Oh, dear, he looked very handsome and virile in his riding clothes. And they must have been ri
ding. He was carrying a crop. Imogen felt a dull throbbing memory of where he had been last night.
“Lady Barclay.” He touched the brim of his tall hat with the crop. “May I have the pleasure of presenting Viscount Marwood and Sidney Welby? Lady Barclay is the widow of my predecessor’s son, who died in the Peninsula. She lives at the dower house over there.” He nodded in the direction from which she had come.
The gentlemen bowed and Imogen curtsied.
“You will stay out of the way of my mother and my aunts if you know what is good for you, Lady Barclay,” Mr. Eldridge said, and grinned. “They are about to force the entire neighborhood to celebrate in grand fashion Percy’s long-gone birthday.”
“A grand ball, I understand,” she said. “I have been summoned to discuss what might be done with the ballroom.”
“Well, we all know what ballrooms are for,” Mr. Welby said. “You are doomed to be doing the dainty with all the village maidens, Perce.”
“You too, Sid,” he said. “Why else did you come all the way from London? For a private and decorous birthday tea? You have met my mother before, have you not? Allow me to escort you to the ballroom, Lady Barclay.” He offered her his arm.
Imogen hesitated. She would have said no, but his friends might consider it ill-mannered and she might leave him feeling foolish.
“Thank you,” she said, slipping her hand through his arm.
“I’ll show you the way down to the beach,” she heard Mr. Eldridge say to the other two gentlemen. “I was down there yesterday.”
“Imogen,” the earl said softly as they approached the house. He was looking directly down at her.
“Lord Hardford.”
“I am Lord Hardford this morning, am I?” he asked her.
She turned her face unwillingly to his. She wished his eyes were not quite so blue.
“Are you sorry?” he asked her.
“No.”
She would never be sorry. She was determined not to be.
“May I come again?” he asked. “If you have not changed your mind in the cold light of day. Though not necessarily to go to bed.”
She drew a slow breath. “You may come,” she said, “for tea and conversation. And to go to bed too. I hope.”
Having decided to take a sort of vacation from her life, to have an affair with a man who would be here just a short while, she wanted the whole of it. He would be gone soon. And she would be gone soon—to Penderris Hall. She wanted to sleep with him again and again and again in the meanwhile—even if the price was to be tears, as it had been last night after he left.
“I will come, then,” he said. “For all three. Imogen.”
With those words, they were inside the house, and the young twins were chasing Prudence through the hall, trying to catch her in what was clearly a lost cause. They were flushed and giggling and announced their intention of going out to see the kittens if someone would care to accompany them. One of them—it was impossible to tell them apart—batted her eyelids at Lord Hardford, and they both giggled again. The other asked where Mr. Welby and Lord Marwood had gone—and they both giggled. There was no further chance for private talk. The earl abandoned Imogen at the open doors of the ballroom after grimacing at the sight of his mother and aunts and Aunt Lavinia in a huddle inside.
“Enjoy yourself,” he said.
“Oh,” she assured him, “I shall. I want to see you dancing in surroundings as splendid as they can be made.”
“You had better save all the waltzes for me,” he said.
“If you ask nicely,” she told him, “perhaps I will save one.”
He laughed and strode away, and she realized she was smiling after him.
* * *
Percy’s shoulder was propped against the wooden partition that had been built around Fluff’s nest in the stables, his arms crossed over his chest, faithful hound seated alertly at his booted feet. He had always been fond of the youngsters in the family, especially those in the obnoxious age range between five and eighteen, when they giggled or guffawed or climbed trees they were not supposed to climb or swam in lakes in which they were not supposed to swim or put toads in their tutors’ beds or spiders down their governesses’ necks. The age, in fact, when most adults found them trying and tiresome and occasionally loathsome and best appreciated in their absence.
He liked them.
His family abounded with such youngsters as well as with the under-fives, whom everyone adored for their fat cheeks and plump legs and lisping voices. But today only Alma and Eva were available, so here he was because they had wanted him to come. They were squealing over the kittens and picking them up one by one while Fluff looked uneasily on. They were trying to decide which one they would like to take home with them—they seemed to be agreed upon the communal possession of just one. The kittens would not be ready to leave their mother until sometime after they left, of course, but he let them dream.
As a result of his mother’s and aunts’ visit to the village yesterday afternoon with Lady Lavinia, it seemed that four of the six kittens were already spoken for. And the Misses Kramer and their mother had apparently met Biddy, the sausage dog, at some time and had declared her to be the sweetest little thing they had ever seen. Perhaps, Lady Lavinia had said at dinner last night, they could be persuaded to take her, though she would be missed.
He had heard himself agreeing but insisting that it would happen only if they would take Benny too, Biddy’s tall friend, since the two were inseparable. And he had said it, he had realized, not so much in the hope of getting rid of two of the strays instead of just one as out of concern for the well-being of both dogs. Though it would be good to deplete the menagerie. Blossom was firmly established at the dower house. Fluff had learned mousing skills somewhere during her pre-Hardford days, it seemed, and had been demonstrating them with remarkable success since her move to the stables. She would remain here.
However . . . If Percy’s eyesight had not deceived him, a hideously large and ugly feline of hopelessly mixed breed and unknown sex, with matted coat and fierce face and long whiskers, had darted across his path when he was coming downstairs for breakfast this morning. A stranger, no less. But soon to become a resident? Was Lady Lavinia hoping he would not notice? Or had she sized him up and drawn her own conclusions. A disturbing possibility, that.
There was a disagreement. The girls were squabbling with raised, indignant voices—until they dissolved into giggles again.
Percy’s eyes rested thoughtfully upon Bains, the bandy-legged stable hand, who was spreading fresh straw in the stall being used for Sidney’s horse. And he thought about Mawgan, the head gardener, with whom he had been having a few words earlier before he spotted Lady Barclay. Bains had had a raw deal. He had been left behind when he had volunteered to go to the Peninsula and had had his legs and his spirit broken. He was still a mere hand in the stables. Mawgan, by contrast, had gone off to war as Barclay’s batman, had returned with the slight, though perhaps unjustified, taint of coward about him, and had been rewarded with what appeared to be a sinecure. He was head gardener, but, according to Knorr, it was another man who actually performed that function, since the other gardeners turned to him for instructions. Knorr had so far been unable to ascertain what exactly Mawgan did to earn his salary, though it was still only February and not high gardening season.
Perhaps he should just leave well enough alone, Percy thought. Perhaps the man had earned some recognition for his service to Barclay but was not suited to any particular task on the estate. He had grown up in the lower village, the son of a fisherman, now deceased. He had apparently had no aptitude for fishing either.
The girls had had enough of the kittens for now and were cooing over Hector, whom they were declaring to be so ugly, poor thing, but so-o-o sweet. He should take them down onto the beach, Percy thought. But there was something that had been nagging at him.
It was something to do with leaving well enough alone, letting sleeping dogs lie. He seemed to be thinking those phrases rather often, perhaps for a good reason. Why stick one’s neck out and perhaps stir up a hornet’s nest. And what a ghastly mix-up of images.
“You ought to go down onto the beach,” he suggested. “It is a beautiful day for the time of year. Cyril is down there with Welby and Marwood. Take Beth with you.”
“No, indeed,” they cried in unison.
“If Beth comes,” Eva explained—he had always been able to tell the twins apart, sometimes to their chagrin—“then she will surely wilt from climbing down that steep path and simply have to lean upon Viscount Marwood’s arm or Mr. Welby’s, and either Alma or I will be stuck walking with Cyril.”
“To be fair,” he said, grinning, “that would probably be as much of a trial for your brother as it would for you.”
They both pulled identical faces at him and hurried off in the direction of the cliff path before he could try insisting that they include their sister in the party.
Percy made his way back to the house. He found Crutchley appropriately enough in the butler’s pantry, wearing a large apron and cleaning an ornate pair of silver candlesticks that usually lived on the mantelpiece in the dining room.
“I am going to take a look around the cellar,” Percy told him, and received rather a sharp look in return. “It is the only part of the house I have not seen.”
“There is nothing much down there, my lord,” the butler said, “apart from cobwebs and wine.”
“Perhaps,” Percy said, “either you or Mrs. Attlee could give the order to remove the webs sometime, Crutchley, and the spiders that go with them. In the meanwhile, I shall descend to the bowels of the earth anyway, since I am not afraid of spiders—or wine. You may accompany me if you wish, though it is not necessary to abandon your important task here. I shall take a candle with me and hope it does not shiver out and leave me stranded in the sort of darkness I experienced in my room the night after you had those heavy curtains erected across my window.”
