The Proposal

by Mary Balogh

  She had no real experience. Ah, incredibly she had almost none. She mated with him out of pure instinct.

  But she certainly had not done anything to dampen his ardor. He worked her with undiminished power until he stilled in her suddenly, rigid in every muscle, straining for greater depth, hot and slick with sweat, and she felt the hot gush of his release at the same moment as he spoke low against her ear.

  “Gwendoline,” he said and relaxed his full, not inconsiderable weight down upon her.

  There was no mattress beneath her back, only the sand beneath the blanket. Who would have guessed sand was so hard and unyielding? But she did not care.

  She did not care.

  She probably would. Perhaps soon.

  But not now. Not yet.

  He mumbled something after a minute or two and rolled off her to lie beside her, one arm flung over his eyes, one leg bent at the knee.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I must have been crushing you.”

  She tipped her head to one side to rest against his shoulder. Was it possible that sweat could smell this good? She thought about lifting her dress up over her breasts and pushing down her skirt over her legs, but she made neither concession to modesty.

  She slid into a relaxed state halfway between sleeping and waking. The sun shone warmly down on them. The gulls were calling again. Eternally calling. Sounding harsh and mournful. The sound of the sea was there too, as steady and as inescapable as a heartbeat.

  She did not believe she would ever be sorry.

  But of course she would.

  The eternal cycle of life. The balance of opposites.

  She came back to full consciousness when he got to his feet and, without a word to her, strode the short distance to the water. He waded in a little way and bent to wash himself.

  Washing off the sweat?

  Washing off her?

  She sat up and set her dress to rights after reaching beneath it and somehow doing up her laces. She drew her cloak about her shoulders and clasped it at the neck. Suddenly she felt a little chilly.

  They drove back to the house in near silence.

  The sex had been good. Very good indeed, in fact. And all the more so because he had been starved of it for too long.

  But it had been a mistake anyway.

  A colossal understatement.

  What was one supposed to do when one had bedded a lady? And when it was quite possible that one had impregnated her?

  Say thank you and leave her?

  Say nothing?

  Apologize?

  Offer her marriage?

  He did not want to marry her. Marriage was not about beddings. Not exclusively about them, anyway. And the parts of marriage that were not the beddings were every bit as important as those that were. A marriage with Gwendoline was impossible. And, to be fair, that applied to both of them.

  He wondered if she expected an offer.

  And if she would accept were he to make one.

  His guess was that the answer to both was a resounding no. Which made it safe to offer, he supposed, and somehow set himself in the right and appease his conscience.

  Daft thought.

  He took the option of saying nothing.

  “How is your ankle?” he asked.

  Idiot. Brilliant conversationalist.

  “It is coming along slowly but surely,” she said. “I shall be careful not to do anything as reckless again.”

  If she had been more careful a few days ago, she would have climbed safely past his hiding place, unaware that he was there, and he would not have spared her a thought since. Her life would be different. His would be.

  And if his father had not died, he thought in some exasperation, he would still be alive.

  “Your brother will send a carriage for you soon?” he asked.

  It struck him suddenly that he could have offered to take her to Newbury Abbey himself and save her a few days at Penderris.

  No. Bad idea.

  “If he does not delay in sending it,” she said, “and I am sure he will not, then it may arrive the day after tomorrow. Or certainly the day after that.”

  “You will be happy to be able to recuperate at home with your family about you,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, “I will.”

  They were talking like a pair of polite strangers who did not have a whole brain between the two of them.

  “You will go to London after Easter?” he asked. “For the Season?”

  “I expect so,” she said. “My ankle will be healed by then. And you? Will you go to London too?”

  “I will,” he said. “It is where I grew up, you know. My father’s house is there. My house now. My sister is there.”

  “And you will want to look for a wife there,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  Good Lord! Had they really been intimate with each other on the beach in the cove less than an hour ago?

  He cleared his throat.

  “Gwendoline—” he began.

  “Please,” she said, cutting him off. “Don’t say anything. Let us just accept it for what it was. It was … pleasant. Oh, what a ridiculous word to choose. It was far more than pleasant. But it is not anything to be commented upon or apologized for or justified or anything else. It just was. I am not sorry, and I hope you are not. Let us leave it at that.”

  “What if you are with child?” he asked her.

  She turned her head sharply and looked at him, clearly startled. He kept his eyes on the lane before them, looking steadily between the ears of the horse that trotted along ahead of the gig. Surely she had thought of that? She had the most to lose, after all.

  “I am not,” she said. “I cannot have children.”

  “According to a quack,” he said.

  “I am not with child,” she said, sounding stubborn and a little upset.

  He looked at her briefly.

  “If you are,” he said, “you must write to me immediately.”

  He told her where he lived in London.

  She did not answer but merely continued to stare.

  George and Ralph and Flavian must have been for a long ride. They were only just stepping out of the stable block as the gig approached. They all turned to watch it come.

  “We have been to the cove,” Hugo said as he drew the horse to a stop. “It is always at its most picturesque at high tide.”

  “The fresh air has been lovely,” Lady Muir said. “It is sheltered and really quite warm down on that little beach.”

  Good Lord, even to his own ears they sounded like a pair of coconspirators being so overhearty in their enthusiastic simulation of innocence that they proclaimed themselves as guilty as hell.

  “I imagine,” Ralph said, “that drawing room conversations today are loud with predictions of the dire suffering we are surely facing as punishment for today’s glorious weather.”

  “No doubt,” Flavian said, “it will snow tomorrow. With a strong north wind. And we will never again be so foolish as to think of enjoying such an unusually lovely day.”

  They all laughed.

  “You do not have your crutches with you, Lady Muir?” George asked.

  “Crutches are not much use on cliff paths and pebbles and sand,” Hugo said. “I’ll drive her up to the doors and carry her inside.”

  “Off you go, then,” George said, giving Hugo a penetrating look. He had not been fooled, at least, and it would be nothing short of a miracle if Flavian had. Or Ralph, for that matter. “I daresay Imogen has seen us all arrive and has ordered the tea tray brought up.”

  Hugo proceeded on his way to the house, a silent Lady Muir beside him.

  Chapter 10

  The sun was shining just as brightly the following day, though Gwen could see when she stood at the morning room window before Vera arrived that the tree branches were swaying today. It must be windy. And it was a little cooler too, the Duke of Stanbrook had said after an early morning ride.

  When Vera arrived, she reported
darkly that all her friends agreed with her that they would suffer for this weather by having no summer at all.

  “Mark my words,” she said. “It is just not natural to have all our good weather this early in the year. I am quite determined not to enjoy it. I will merely become low in spirits when the rain starts, as it inevitably will, bringing the cold with it. And it is not in my nature to feel low, as you very well know, Gwen. I have come to cheer you up. There was no one to greet me when I arrived five minutes ago except the butler. I am not one to complain, but I do think it discourteous of His Grace to neglect the sister-in-law of Sir Roger Parkinson so blatantly. But what is one to expect?”

  “Perhaps the carriage returned with you sooner than he anticipated,” Gwen said. “He did not neglect to send the carriage, after all, and that is the most important thing. It would have been a long walk for you. And here comes the tray with coffee and biscuits for two. I do thank you for coming, Vera. It is very good of you.”

  “Well,” Vera said as she looked closely at the plate of biscuits on the tray a footman had just set down, “it is not in my nature to neglect my friends, Gwen, as you very well know. I see we are not important enough to be offered the raisin biscuits we had yesterday. It is just plain oatmeal for us today.”

  “But how tedious it would be,” Gwen said, “to be given the same foods day after day. You will be so good as to pour, Vera?”

  A little over three hours later, Vera was on her way home despite her suggestion that Gwen must be giving in too readily to low spirits if she still needed an afternoon rest as a consequence of her little accident.

  Gwen, of course, did not need to sleep. She had slept too much last night, or at least she had lain on her bed for too long. She had taken the coward’s way out and sent down her excuses when the usual footman had arrived in her room to carry her down to the drawing room at dinnertime. Her outing had left her fatigued, she had claimed, and she begged His Grace to excuse her for the rest of the evening.

  She had slept. She had had long wakeful spells too, though, during which she had relived the events on the beach and wondered what Lord Trentham would have said if she had allowed him to continue what he had started to say in the gig on the way back to the house.

  Gwendoline, he had said after drawing a deep breath.

  And she had stopped him.

  She would forever wonder what he would have said.

  But she had had to stop him. She had been feeling raw with emotion and quite unable to handle any more. She had been desperate for time alone.

  She had not seen him since he had carried her up to her room after they took tea in the drawing room with everyone else. He had not spoken a word. Neither had she. He had merely set her down on the bed, stood back and looked at her with those intense dark eyes of his, inclined his head stiffly, and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  She opened her book, but it was hopeless to try to read, she realized after a few minutes, during which time her eyes had passed over the same sentence at least a dozen times without once grasping its meaning.

  The swelling seemed to have completely disappeared about her ankle today, and most of the pain had gone with it. But when Dr. Jones had called earlier, while Vera was here, he had bound her ankle again and advised her to continue to keep her weight off the foot and to have patience.

  It was very hard to be patient.

  The carriage from Newbury might possibly arrive tomorrow. More probably it would come the day after tomorrow. It was an endless wait, whichever it turned out to be. She wanted to be gone now.

  She gave up all pretense of reading and set the book facedown across her waist. She laid her head back against a cushion and closed her eyes. If only she could take a brisk walk outside.

  If she had not fallen in love with him, she thought, she did not know what words would describe the state of her heart. This was more than just lust or the memory of what they had done together down in that cove. It was certainly more than simple attraction and far more than just liking. Oh, she was in love. How foolish!

  For she was no green girl. She was no hopeless romantic. It was a love that could bring nothing but heartbreak if she tried to cling to it or pursue it. She probably could not pursue it anyway. It took two. She would be leaving here soon. Although both she and Lord Trentham would be in London later in the spring, it was unlikely their paths would cross. They moved in different circles. She would not settle for an affair. She doubted he would. And they were both agreed that marriage was out of the question.

  Oh, why could Neville’s carriage not arrive today?

  And then, even as she was thinking it, there was a light tap on the morning room door and it opened quietly. Gwen looked fearfully—and hopefully?—over her shoulder and saw the Duke of Stanbrook standing there.

  She was not disappointed, she told herself as she smiled at him.

  “Ah, you are awake,” he said, pushing the door wider. “I have brought you a visitor, Lady Muir. Not Mrs. Parkinson this time.”

  He stepped to one side and another gentleman strode past him into the room.

  Gwen sat bolt upright on the sofa.

  “Neville!” she cried.

  “Gwen.”

  Her eyes did not deceive her. It really was her brother, his face all anxious concern as he hurried across the room toward her and bent over her to catch her up in a great bear hug.

  “What have you been doing to yourself while my back was turned?” he asked her.

  “It was a silly accident,” she said, hugging him tightly in return. “But it was my bad leg that I twisted, Nev, and I still cannot put any weight on my foot. I feel terribly foolish and really something of a fraud, for it is only a sprained ankle, yet it has caused no end of trouble to numerous other people. But what a wonderful surprise this is! I did not expect the carriage until tomorrow at the earliest, and I certainly did not expect you to come with it. Oh, poor Lily and the children, having to do without you for several days all because of me. I will not be very popular with them, I daresay. But oh, dear, it feels like a year instead of less than a month since I was at home.”

  He perched on the edge of the sofa and squeezed her hands in his. He looked very dearly familiar.

  “It was Lily who suggested I come,” he said. “Indeed, she insisted upon it, and there is no worse tyrant than Lily when she once has an idea stuck in her head. Apparently Devon and Cornwall are overrun with vicious highwaymen, all of whom will relieve you of your jewels and your blood, not necessarily in that order, if I am not with you as you travel, and all of whom will certainly turn tail and run for cover if I am.”

  He grinned at her.

  “Dearest Lily,” she said.

  “But why are you not at Mrs. Parkinson’s?” he asked.

  “That is a long story,” she said, grimacing. “But, Neville, the Duke of Stanbrook has been extremely kind and hospitable. So have his houseguests.”

  “It has been our pleasure,” the duke said as Neville looked up at him. “My housekeeper will have a room made up for you, Kilbourne, while you and Lady Muir join me in the drawing room for an early tea. Lady Muir has crutches.”

  Neville held up a staying hand. “I appreciate the offer of hospitality, Stanbrook,” he said. “But it is still quite early in the afternoon, and the weather is perfect for travel. If Gwen feels up to traveling with her foot elevated on the carriage seat, then we will leave as soon as her bags have been packed and brought down. Unless it will cause unnecessary inconvenience, that is.”

  “It will be as you wish,” the duke said, inclining his head to Neville and looking inquiringly at Gwen.

  “I shall be ready to leave as soon as I have changed into travel clothes,” Gwen assured them both.

  Where was Lord Trentham?

  She was asking the same silent question less than an hour later after she had changed and been brought back downstairs. The footman set her down in the hall, where Lady Barclay waited with her crutches. The Duke of Stan
brook and his other guests were all gathered there too, talking with Neville. Gwen shook them all warmly by the hand and bade them farewell.

  But where was Lord Trentham?

  It was as if Lady Barclay had heard her thought.

  “Hugo came walking along the headland with Vincent and me after luncheon,” she said. “But when we turned back, he went down onto the beach. He often spends hours down there before he returns.”

  All her fellow guests turned their eyes upon Gwen.

  “I will not see him again, then,” she said. “I am sorry about that. I would have liked to thank him in person for all he has done for me. Perhaps you would say my goodbyes and express my thanks for me, Lady Barclay?”

  She was not going to see him again.

  Perhaps ever.

  Panic threatened. But Gwen smiled politely about her and turned to the door.

  Before Lady Barclay could reply, Lord Trentham himself appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily and looking large and flushed and fierce-eyed. He glanced around at them all, and then his eyes focused upon her.

  “You are leaving?” he asked.

  Relief flooded through her. And she wished he had stayed away a little longer.

  The old contradictions.

  “My brother has come for me,” she said. “The Earl of Kilbourne. Neville, this is Lord Trentham, who found me when I hurt myself and carried me all the way here.”

  The two men looked at each other. Taking each other’s measure in that age-old male way.

  “Lord Trentham,” Neville said. “Gwen mentioned your name in her letter. It sounded familiar then, and now that I see you, I understand why. You were Captain Emes? You led the Forlorn Hope on Badajoz. I am honored. And in your debt. You have been extraordinarily kind to my sister.”

  He offered his right hand, and Lord Trentham took it.

  Gwen turned determinedly to the Duke of Stanbrook.

  “You have been kindness and courtesy itself,” she said. “Words are not adequate to express my gratitude.”

  “Our club is to lose its honorary member,” he said, smiling in his austere way. “We will miss you, Lady Muir. Perhaps I will see you in town later in the year? I plan to be there for a short while.”