Only a Kiss

by Mary Balogh

  One maid—the deaf-mute—had her head slightly turned and her eyes fixed to his lips, Percy noticed for the first time. He strolled down the center of the lines, looking first one way and then the other. He felt more martial than ever.

  “Anyone who fears reprisal,” he said, stopping and looking steadily into the face of the stable hand beside Colin Bains, a ginger-haired lad with freckles half the size of farthings, “will speak either to Mr. Knorr or to me.”

  That was a tricky point, actually. Anyone who feared how the gang would react to his—or her—withdrawal from the trade would hardly make a public complaint and draw even more attention to him – or herself. Would they all be in danger of reprisal? It was a risk he had chosen to take.

  “I will speak openly of this wherever I go over the next few days,” Percy said, returning to his place by the door and letting his eyes move from face to face along the rows. There was absolutely nothing to be read in any of them. “I will make sure it is clearly understood that this is my rule and that everyone in my employ is required to live by it or lose his or her position. Are there any questions?”

  “Mr. Crutchley,” he said when no one spoke up, “you will send the servants about their business, if you please. James Mawgan, I will see you in the library as soon as you have been dismissed.”

  The head gardener’s face turned in sharp surprise and became almost instantly blank again.

  The morning room that seemed more like a library to him was unoccupied by any human, Percy was happy to discover. It was, however, occupied by the remnants of the menagerie. The bulldog—Bruce?—had claimed the hearth, and was flanked by his usual cohorts, two of the cats. The new one was beside the coal scuttle, cleaning his paws with his tongue. Hector sat erect and alert beside the chair Percy usually occupied. He was neither cowering nor hiding, an interesting development. The other two dogs—the long and the short—had been taken yesterday to the Kramer house, where apparently they had been given an effusive welcome and a large bowl of tasty tidbits apiece. All of Fluff’s kittens had now been spoken for, though they were not to leave their mother for a while yet.

  Percy wondered if he had just set the cat among the pigeons, or stepped on a hornet’s nest, or awakened a sleeping dog, or otherwise done what it would have been altogether better for him not to do. Time would tell.

  “Come,” he called when someone tapped on the door.

  Mawgan stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and stood with his arms hanging at his sides and his gaze fixed on the carpet two feet in front of him.

  “You were the late Viscount Barclay’s batman for almost two years, Mawgan?” Percy said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “You did not like the life of a fisherman?” Percy asked.

  “I did not mind it,” Mawgan said.

  “How did it come about, then? Did Barclay not have a valet?” He surely would have been the obvious choice for the position of batman. He might have been elderly, of course, but it was unlikely when Barclay himself had been a very young man.

  “He died, my lord.”

  “The valet?”

  “He drowned,” Mawgan explained. “He was on a day off and wanted to go out fishing in my father’s boat. He fell in. He couldn’t swim. I jumped in and tried to save him, but he fought me in his panic and we went under the boat and I got knocked on the head. Someone pulled me out, but I didn’t come round for two whole days after. He didn’t make it, poor bugger—begging your pardon, my lord.”

  Percy stared at him. Mawgan had not changed posture at all. He was still staring at the carpet.

  “Your appointment was in the nature of being a reward, then, for trying to save the valet’s life?” he asked. “You are the great-nephew of Mr. Ratchett, I believe?”

  “I think he put in a word for me, my lord,” Mawgan said, “after Bains would not let his boy go. But his lordship called at our house to see me after I came around, and I asked myself.”

  “You saw him and the viscountess being captured by a French scouting party?” Percy asked.

  “I did, my lord,” Mawgan said. “There were nothing I could do to stop it. There were six of them, and I did not even have my musket with me. It would have been suicide if I had tried. I thought the best thing to do was get back to the regiment as fast as I could and fetch help. But it was a long way and I got lost in the hills in the night. It took me more than a day.”

  “You assumed, did you,” Percy asked, “that they had both been killed?”

  “They was obviously not French,” Mawgan said, “and his lordship was not in uniform and had nothing on him to prove he was an officer. I thought they were for sure both dead. I would have stayed on in the Peninsula if I had believed there was any hope. But I was not even allowed to go with the party that went looking for them. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, that was, but I wanted to go all the same. It would have been something to do. It is worst of all to have nothing to do.”

  And yet, Percy thought, his head gardener seemed to be making a career of doing just that. “And so you came home,” he said.

  “I wish I had stayed, my lord,” Mawgan assured him. “I felt that bad when I knew her ladyship was still alive and had been released and brought home all out of her mind like. I might have been some comfort to her, a familiar face.”

  ... all out of her mind like.

  Imogen!

  “Thank you,” Percy said briskly. “I wish I had known Viscount Barclay. He was a distant cousin of mine and a brave man. A hero. You were privileged to know and serve him.”

  “I was, my lord,” the man agreed.

  “What do you know about this smuggling business?” Percy asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know nothing,” Mawgan assured him. “And it would not surprise me, my lord, if there isn’t nothing to know. I think someone must of been spinning yarns at you to make you think there is smuggling going on here. Once upon a time maybe, but not now. I know most of the servants don’t tell me nothing because I am head gardener, but I would have caught some whisperings. I haven’t heard nothing.”

  Percy knew a great deal about double negatives. Some of his knowledge had entered his person via the cane of one of his tutors across his backside, though most of it had entered through the front door of his brain. I don’t know nothing was probably the exact truth. But short of applying hot needles to Mawgan’s fingernails, there was no more information to be gathered, he understood. He had just wanted to be quite clear on the matter. He sighed aloud.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “However, it is as well that everyone here understand just where I stand. You will keep your ear to the ground, Mawgan? And let me know if you hear anything? You have been a loyal servant, I can see.”

  “I certainly will, my lord,” Mawgan said, “though I don’t expect there will be nothing to tell. These are good people here. My great-uncle has always said so and I have seen so for myself.”

  “Thank you,” Percy said. “I will not keep you from your busy duties any longer.”

  Mawgan backed out without once looking up.

  Percy was feeling cold even though he stood with his back to the fire. Barclay had received two threatening letters before he went to the Peninsula. His valet, who would surely have accompanied him as his batman, had died accidentally in a boating accident. Bains, who had pleaded to go in his place, had been deemed by his father to be too young, though fourteen was really not very young for a boy. Mawgan had been appointed through a combination of heroism in a losing cause and the influence of Ratchett, who was his mother’s uncle. Mawgan had been conveniently out of the way—without his musket—when the French scouting party took Barclay and Imogen. Then he got lost on the way back for help. When he came home here, he was given the post of head gardener.

  There was nothing sinister in any of those details, except the threatening letters. Even when one
put them all together, there was nothing convincing, nothing that would not be laughed out of any court in the land.

  ... when I knew her ladyship was still alive and had been released and brought home all out of her mind like.

  The bottom felt as if it had fallen out of Percy’s stomach at the remembered words.

  Imogen all out of her mind. Living for a while at her brother’s house unable to sleep, eat, or leave her room. Living for three years at Penderris Hall until she had transformed herself into a marble lady and could cope once again with the outside world from within her rigid shield.

  And then, Imogen laughing and curled up in his arms. Sleeping with her head on his shoulder and grumbling incoherently when he awoke her.

  ... all out of her mind like.

  Love, he thought almost viciously, was the damnedest thing, and he had been wise to avoid it all these years. Not the sort of love he felt for his family, but the sort of which the great poets wrote. Euphoria for one minute, if that, and blackest despair for an eternity after.

  But how did one unlove?

  He loved Imogen Hayes, Viscountess Barclay, so deeply that he almost hated her.

  And let his mind work that one out if it dared.

  He had to see her.

  But first . . .

  * * *

  Imogen ought to have been reading or crocheting or writing a letter. She ought at the very least to have been sitting upright in her chair like a lady, her back straight as she had been taught to sit when she was a girl. Instead she was slouched down in one of the chairs by the fire, her back in an inelegant arch, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. Her head was nestled in a cushion. Blossom was curled up on her lap and Imogen had one hand buried in the cat’s fur. She was drifting pleasantly in and out of consciousness. She had not had much sleep last night or the two nights before—her lips curved into a smile at the remembered reason for that—and it had been a long and busy morning. Now it was late afternoon and she intended to relax. She expected, and hoped for, another night of little sleep tonight.

  She was just drifting off to sleep when something solid came between her and the heat of the fire and a shadow obstructed its light. At the same time her incoherent dream became fragrant with a familiar smell and she smiled one of her smug smiles. Blossom purred. Imogen made a sound that was very similar.

  “Sleeping Beauty,” the fragrant shadow murmured, and then his lips were light and warm and parted on hers and she moved deeper into her dream.

  “Mmm.” She smiled at him and lifted her hands to his shoulders.

  His legs were on either side of hers, his hands braced on the arms of the chair, his face a few inches from her own. He looked large and looming and gorgeous. He smelled delicious.

  “I did not use the key,” he assured her. “I was let in quite respectably by your housekeeper, though she was looking rather like a prune. I had better not be alone in here with you for long. She will be getting ideas.”

  Blossom jumped down off her lap, contemptuously close to Hector, and Hector barked once sharply, bared his teeth, growled, and then barked once again. The cat crossed to the other chair in rather ungainly haste.

  “Goodness,” Imogen said. “That is the first time I have heard Hector’s voice.”

  “I am training him to be fierce,” Percy said, straightening up.

  “What you are training him to do,” she said, “is to have some confidence in himself.”

  “Come down onto the beach with me,” he said.

  Imogen raised her eyebrows as she sat up. “Is that a request, Lord Hardford, or a command?”

  “A command,” he said. “Please? I need you.”

  She looked closely at him. He was looking grim about the mouth. She got to her feet and went to fetch her cloak and bonnet and put on shoes suitable for walking on the sand.

  There were several snowdrops blooming in her garden, and a clump of primroses was beginning to stir into life in one corner. She did not stop either to look at them or to draw attention to them. She led the way out through the gate.

  “You are not with any of your guests this afternoon?” she asked, though the answer was perfectly obvious.

  “All the over-forties tired themselves out this morning,” he said, “and are variously disposed about the house with sedentary activities. The younger lot have gone off in a body with young Soames and his sisters to have a look at some ruined castle on the other side of the valley. It is said to be picturesque, and I daresay it is.”

  “And you chose to drag me down onto the beach rather than go with them?” she said.

  He did not answer. And she was interested to note that when they came to the path down to the beach, he turned onto it without hesitation and led the way with bold, almost reckless strides. There was a great deal of unleashed energy inside him, she sensed. Perhaps an angry energy.

  She would not pry, she decided. It might explode out of him before he was ready to do something more constructive with it. Perhaps, despite his words and his kiss when he came upon her asleep a short while ago, he was regretting their affair. Perhaps he did not know how to break the news to her that it was over.

  Oh, please, please let it not be that. Not yet. Not just yet.

  He turned and lifted her down from the rock above the beach without waiting for her to move onto the last short section of the path and descend on her own. He set her down and gazed grimly at her, his hands hard on her waist.

  “You did not mention the valet,” he said.

  She waited for some explanation. None came, only an accusing glare. “The valet?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Your husband’s,” he said.

  Comprehension dawned. “Mr. Cooper? Oh, it was a terrible tragedy. He drowned.”

  “He would have been your husband’s batman,” he said.

  “He was looking forward to it,” she told him, “though Dicky offered to release him and give him a good character if he preferred to stay and look for a new position. It was terribly sad. He was only twenty-five.”

  “And then Bains volunteered to go in his stead,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Dicky was fond of him, and he was very eager to go. We were surprised that his father would not agree. We expected that he would see it as a great opportunity for his son. But I suppose he wanted to keep him home, where he would be safe.”

  “And so Mawgan went,” he said. “He had risked his own life trying to save the valet’s.”

  “Yes, I believe he did try,” she said. “But it was not just that. Mr. Ratchett had a word with my father-in-law and he had a word with my husband, and Dicky needed a batman in a hurry.”

  “Was it a reluctant choice?” he asked.

  “Not particularly.” She frowned. “We did not know him at all well and there was no time to get to know him before we all sailed. But Dicky never complained about him. He was just a bit . . . sullen. Or perhaps that is too harsh a word. He was reticent.”

  What was this all about?

  “I went to pay a call upon Bains’s father this morning,” he said. He was still holding her by the waist, and he was still frowning at her.

  “Oh, but he died,” she said, “not long before Christmas. I baked a cake and took it to Mrs. Bains because Dicky—and I—had always been fond of Colin. I was still at the dower house, so it must have been before the roof blew off.”

  “Bains Senior was over the moon with pride and joy, or words to that effect, when he first knew that Viscount Barclay had chosen to take his boy to the Peninsula with him as his batman,” he said.

  Imogen frowned back at him and shook her head slowly. “That is what Mrs. Bains told you?”

  “And then suddenly, for no discernible reason, he changed his mind,” Percy said. “And he was quite adamant. Mountains would not have moved him. Neither would th
e pleadings and even the tears of his son. He would give no reason—not then or ever.”

  “What?” Her frown had deepened.

  He released her suddenly and turned to look at the cliff face on the west side of the path. He looked more than grim now. He looked like granite.

  “I am going up,” he said.

  They had not taken even one step along the beach after coming all the way down here. Neither had Hector. He was seated at their feet.

  “Very well,” she said. Her mind was feeling a bit addled. There had been a number of threads to their conversation for the past few minutes, seemingly random threads that nevertheless should somehow connect themselves into a weave and a pattern, she felt. But she had not made the connections yet. Or perhaps she was afraid to try too hard.

  “I mean up there,” he said, pointing off to the left of the path down to the beach.

  “Up the cliff face?” she asked him. “You are going to climb?”

  “I am,” he said, and he took off his hat and dropped it to the sand. His gloves and his greatcoat followed and then his neckcloth and cravat—and his coat. It was not a particularly cold day, but neither was it by any means a warm one in which to be standing on the beach in shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

  “But why?” she asked. “You are afraid of the cliffs.”

  “For precisely that reason.”

  And he strode away from her.

  20

  It was what he had intended from the moment he had seen his cousins and friends off on their afternoon excursion. They had been disappointed that he was not going with them, and his friends had looked downright puzzled.

  Percy had known he was going to climb the cliffs. Why he had not stridden off to perform the foolish feat alone, he did not know. Why drag Imogen along with him? To rescue him if he got stuck or to go tearing off to fetch help? To watch and admire while he defied death in such a daring escapade? To pick up the pieces if he fell? He had dashed well better not fall. She did not need that memory to add to all her others.