by Mary Balogh
"Mrs. Turner adores Prue," Chastity said. She hesitated. "And I believe Ben does too. Mama would have an apoplexy."
Joshua drew a slow breath. Devil take it, it looked as if he was going to have to stay awhile. His aunt was the mother of these girls, of course, and therefore their rightful guardian even if not their legal one. But he could see nothing but unhappiness all around him. Here were two young ladies-both in their twenties-who had not yet been given any chance of a life of their own. And Prue was now grown up-she was eighteen. They could no longer continue to think of her as a child, though he gathered that his aunt preferred not to think of her at all. She seemed incapable of thinking of anyone's happiness but her own.
He wished then that he had not come back after all.
Would the problems vanish, then, if he were not here to see them?
Could he so selfishly ignore his responsibilities?
"I'll speak with Miss Palmer," he said. "And we will talk another time of what is best for Prue. But now, to our list. We have ten names on it so far. I believe we need a few more if we are to outnumber the members of the orchestra."
Constance laughed.
"An orchestra?" Chastity asked, her eyes shining again. "Really, Joshua? How magical this ball is going to be."
Some time later Joshua made his way up the steep path behind the house, the sun warm on his body, though he knew it would feel cooler when he reached the top and was no longer sheltered from the wind. For the first time in seven months he really felt like the Marquess of Hallmere. He felt weighted down by responsibility. The really alarming thing, though, was that it did not feel like an oppressive weight. His cousins needed him here even if everything else could be managed by a steward, and he was fond of them. Now he had the power to do something positive to make their lives happier-and the power not to do so. He could go away and leave them to his aunt's care, or he could stay and assert his guardianship.
Strangely, he had spared scarcely a thought all afternoon for the murder charge that still hung over his head. It was difficult to take it seriously.
The path brought him up out of the valley, and, as expected, a gust of wind assaulted him. He looked back down toward the house and gardens, to the river and the bridge below them, to the village just visible beyond the headland on the other side of the valley. And he turned to look at the land swelling slightly to his left, rough with stone outcroppings and coarse grass and gorse bushes and wildflowers. The sheep of the home farm were dotted about the land, grazing. To his right the land sloped downward and leveled off into a neat patchwork of fields separated by stone walls and a few hedges. The main road came up out of the valley not far away and snaked its way between the fields and stretched ahead as far as the eye could see, on its way to Land's End.
His land. His farms. And the farms of his tenants.
A totally unexpected love for it all hit him like a low blow to the stomach. Good Lord, had he taken leave of his senses?
He shook his head and turned left to stride in the direction of the cliffs. The Bedwyns were an energetic lot, as he had discovered at Lindsey Hall. The ride into Lydmere during the morning and the romp on the beach had not been enough for them. They had come up here at his direction to see the view. He had promised to join them as soon as he had finished drawing up the guest list for the ball.
Soon he could see them in the distance. The children and Prue were dashing about, a safe distance from the cliff top. It looked as if they were chasing sheep-a favorite childhood pastime of his own. But the sheep-sensible creatures-showed no signs of real panic but merely bobbed off a safe distance just before they could be caught, and then returned to the serious business of grazing. Eve was sitting on a flat rock, her arms clasped about her knees while Aidan sprawled on the ground beside her. Morgan and Alleyne were strolling along the headland some distance away. There was no sign of Freyja.
Prue spotted him first and came lumbering toward him in her characteristic ungainly manner, her elbows clamped to her sides, her hands flapping in the air. She was laughing and excited, and he opened his arms and braced himself as she hurtled into them and took her usual death grip on his neck.
"Josh!" she cried. "Josh, Josh, Josh. I am having such fun. I like Becky and I like Davy. I love Eve and I love you and-"
He released himself gently from her hold, set an arm about her shoulders, and hugged her to his side.
"You love everyone, Prue," he said. "You should save your breath and just tell me that you love everyone. Are you chasing sheep?"
"Ye-e-es." She laughed. "Eve said we could if we did not hurt them. Davy does not want to hurt them. Becky does not want to hurt them. I do not want to hurt them. I love sheep." She beamed up at him.
"Where is Freyja?" he asked.
"Looking at the sea," she said. "She likes it. She likes me. She let me hold her hand and pull her up the path."
Freyja had done that? he thought in some astonishment.
"I held her hand because she is lonely," Prue said. "I made her feel a bit better. You will make her all better, Josh."
Freyja lonely? Now that was a strange notion, but very possibly deadly accurate. Prue sometimes had unexpectedly sharp perceptions, which were quite unhampered by expectations that had been processed through thought and intellect. It was a novel thought, though. Freyja lonely?
"Joshua," Eve said as he came up to them, "this is all quite breathtakingly lovely. I am so glad we came here instead of going to the Lake District. After you are married to Freyja, we are going to be angling for invitations all the time. Are we not, Aidan?" Her eyes were dancing with laughter.
Aidan reached up with a blade of grass and tickled her behind the ear with it. She laughed out loud as she batted it away.
"I am going to have to teach you some manners, my lady," Aidan said, poker-faced.
Joshua felt a curious lurching sensation low in his abdomen. He tended to think of marriage as an outlet for passion, the sort of sexual passion one might find elsewhere without having to make a lifetime commitment. But here was an aspect of marriage that was altogether more enticing-strangely so, perhaps, when there was no overt sign of the passion that he guessed must flare when the two of them were alone and private together. They were relaxing together, laughing together-Aidan was laughing despite the deliberately severe expression-and teasing each other.
"Might I say," Aidan said as Prue skipped off to join the children in their play, "that your handling of that ridiculous situation at breakfast this morning quite won my admiration, Joshua? Bringing the whole thing out into the open as you did was clearly the very best thing to do."
"I learned early," Joshua said, "not to play my aunt's games her way."
"But what if that man-Garnett, is it?-should bring along more witnesses?" Eve asked. "Today is all so lovely and so peaceful that I keep having to remind myself that someone is trying to frame you for murder."
"I have no worries about it." Joshua smiled. "It is just a nuisance of a matter that needs to be cleared up once and for all. Where is Freyja?"
"She found a hollow back there to sit in," Aidan said, indicating the cliffs behind him with his thumb. "I do believe she is awestruck."
Joshua knew just the place she must have found. It was like a scoop of land hollowed out with a giant cup, its floor grassy, its three sides a mixture of rock and firm earth. On the fourth side the cliffs fell away beyond a grassy lip almost sheer to the beach and sea beneath. It was a place that was sheltered from most winds unless they were coming directly from the south.
She was sitting in the middle of the hollow, her legs stretched out before her, her arms braced on the grass behind her taking her weight. She had changed out of the smart riding habit and hat she had worn this morning. Now she was wearing a muslin dress and a warm-looking cloak. Her hair, predictably, was loose down her back.
"This was my childhood fortress," he said, standing on the rim of the hollow above her, "and my ship's mast and my eagle's aerie and my haven for all s
orts of dreams."
She lifted her face to the sun as he came down to stand and then sit beside her.
"I have never been fond of the sea," she said. "It has always seemed too vast to me, too mysterious, too . . . powerful. One could never control the sea, could one?"
"And you like to feel in control of everything?" he asked her.
"I am a woman," she said. "Women have very little control over anything in their lives. We are not even persons by right, but the property of some man. We have to fight for every bit of control we can wield over our own destinies. I have four powerful brothers. I have had to fight harder than most. But I could not fight the sea."
"Neither could I, if it is any comfort," he said. "The sea is there to remind us all how little and how powerless we really are. That is not necessarily a bad thing. We do dreadful things with the power we do have. But you sounded when you first spoke as if perhaps you have forgiven the sea."
"It is exalting too," she said. "All that freedom and energy. I feel as if I am gazing into eternity. The beach below is private, is it not? It belongs to Penhallow."
"It does," he said. "I'll take you there one day. It is wide and golden when the tide is out and nonexistent when the tide is in. It can be dangerous. The tide comes in fast at the end and one can be cut off from the valley if one is not careful to be back there in time."
"And if one is not?" she asked. "One drowns?"
"Or one climbs the cliff," he said. "I used to do it sometimes just for the thrill of it, even when the tide was out. It looks sheer, but of course there are numerous foot- and handholds. It's dangerous, though. One slip and I would have been dashed to pieces on my way down and you would never have met me."
"I would have climbed too if I had lived here with you," she said, her teeth bared, the reckless light of a challenge in her eyes. "And I would have raced you to the top."
He chuckled. "We will never know, will we?" he said.
She pointed ahead, out into the sea. "What is that island?" she asked him. "Is it inhabited?"
"It was a smuggling haunt a long time ago," he said. "But no longer, as far as I know. It is wild and deserted."
"Have you ever been there?" she asked.
"I used to row over there once in a while," he told her. "Sometimes with friends, more often alone. I liked the solitude, the chance to think and dream without interruption."
"It must be difficult to get to," she said. "The water looks choppy about it, and there are steep cliffs rising straight from the sea."
"There are a few harbors," he said. "Are you afraid of the sea?"
"I am not afraid of anything," she said, lifting her chin into the air in that characteristically arrogant gesture of hers.
"Liar," he said. "You are afraid."
"Nonsense!" she said while he kept a wary eye on her hands. But she kept them propped behind her. "Take me there. One day-tomorrow. Just you and me. Just the two of us."
He had not been on water in any small craft since that night. He had not even realized until this moment that he was reluctant to go back out. He gazed down at the sea where he and Albert had sat and argued until Albert had dived overboard and then refused to get back in. He turned his head and gazed at the point beyond the river where Albert had been standing chest-deep in water when he, Joshua, had deemed him safe and gone off around the next headland to clear his head and decide what his next move must be.
He closed his eyes, wishing that the memories would go away. All of them.
"I believe," Freyja said, "that you are the one who is afraid, Josh."
He turned his head to grin at her.
"Tomorrow?" he said. "Just the two of us? Are you willing to face such danger? And I am not referring to the boat ride."
She turned and looked at him, her eyebrows arched. She stared at him for long moments before answering, and he felt a distinct tightening in his groin.
"I am willing," she said at last. "But I do wish, Josh, that I could still see you now as I saw you when we were in Bath-as just a charming, shallow rake."
He grinned at her.
"But I am exactly those things, sweetheart," he said. "I just happen to have had an interesting childhood and to have got myself hopelessly entangled in a pile of nonsense before I left here. It has caught up to me now, it seems, and must be dealt with once and for all. But this is a minor hiccup in my frivolous life."
"I wish I could believe you," she said, sitting up and hugging her knees.
And he wished Prue had not suggested to him that Freyja was lonely. He wanted to think of her as strong and independent and contemptuous of all lesser mortals. Yet she had lost the man she had grown up to marry, and she had lost the man she had loved passionately. No, he had not really wanted to get to know Freyja Bedwyn any more than she had wanted to know him.
Their light flirtation in Bath had been so very enjoyable.
He grinned at her, and she continued to look haughtily back at him. But the usual light, flirtatious antagonism was no longer there between them. Something subtle had changed. He thought desperately of a way to lighten the atmosphere. But she foiled him by lifting one hand and setting her fingertips feather-light against his cheek. For a moment he had the absurd feeling that there was not enough air in the hollow to be drawn into his lungs. He lifted his hand to take hers, and turned his head to kiss her palm.
"Are you sure you do not want me to invite anyone else to join us on this island excursion?" he asked her.
"I am sure," she said. "No one else."
Lord! He was fit to explode. Much more of this and he would dive off the cliff to cool himself in the sea-except that the tide was out.
The devil of it was, Joshua thought as she leaned forward and set her lips against his, that he could no longer remember why their betrothal was fake, why they were going to have to end it sooner or later. There was a reason, was there not? Something about his not being ready to settle down? Something about her loving someone else?
But his thought processes were made sluggish by the fact that they were embracing. Somehow he was lying on his back and she was half lying on top of him. They were kissing each other, not with wild passion, or even with lusty hunger, but with soft, almost lazy kisses that seemed far more dangerous to Joshua. He was holding her face cupped in both hands. Her hands were in his hair, her fingertips lightly stroking his head. Both of them had their eyes open.
Lord!
A passionate Freyja was a keg of powder exploding. A tender Freyja was far more deadly.
"Mmm," he said against her lips. "My memories of this hollow will forever be changed."
How long they would have continued to exchange soft kisses he did not know. Someone was clearing his throat above them.
"Lovely view, Morg, would you not agree?" Alleyne asked. "Though I would advise you to look outward rather than downward. You may get vertigo."
"I would advise you to find another lookout point," Joshua said as Freyja sat up and Morgan laughed. "This one is taken."
"Tut, tut," Alleyne said. "Such a gracious host. We are not wanted, Morg. But Davy has caught a sheep, I see, and is attempting to ride it. I had better go to the rescue."
"Of Davy or the sheep?" Morgan asked.
They disappeared.
"That excursion is going to be very dangerous, you know," Joshua said, lacing his fingers behind his head while Freyja pushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears before clasping her knees again.
"I know," she said.
"But you are not afraid?"
"No," she said. "Are you?"
"Mortally." He chuckled, though he was deadly serious. "I may not be able to keep my hands off you, sweetheart."
The sun came out behind her head as she turned it to look down at him, and converted the untamed waves of her hair to a golden halo all about her face. She looked strangely and suddenly beautiful to him.
"Perhaps I will not be able to keep mine off you," she said, looking steadily down at him.
The hollow felt airless again.
"It should be an interesting day," he said.
"Yes."
God help them, he thought, now what were they getting themselves into? Deep waters, no doubt, in more ways than one.
There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.
What the devil was the reason? He might be able to save himself if he could remember it.
"When I say my prayers tonight," he said, "I will offer one up for no rain."
He grinned at her.
CHAPTER XIX
F reyja prayed for rain or-better yet-snow. Then she caught herself playing coward and petitioned the divine weather-maker for cloudless sunshine and midsummer temperatures instead.
Some time very early-it was not even light-she tossed back the bedcovers, crossed her room to the window, and looked out. There was not a cloud in the sky-which did not mean, of course, that it was going to be a lovely day. Often a bright start gave way to clouds and rain later. And a sunny day at this time of year often came with arctic temperatures. But the window was open, she realized, and she was not even shivering.
Whatever had possessed her? She was afraid of the sea. She was mortally afraid of being cast adrift on its surface in a small fishing boat. But she had demanded to be taken across to that alarmingly distant island. It was not that prospect that had disturbed her sleep, though. After all, she was Freyja Bedwyn, and it was in her nature to confront her fears head-on whenever a challenge presented itself.
Take me there. One day-tomorrow. Just you and me. Just the two of us.
Where had the words come from? Why not an excursion for all of them? It would surely be possible to hire more than one boat. There was safety in numbers.
Just you and me. Just the two of us.
She was in far deeper with Josh than she cared to admit. She had realized that during the night when she had caught herself during one wakeful spell trying to convince herself that she was not over Kit. But she was. She was beginning to use her old passion for him as a shield behind which to hide. Kit was happy with Lauren and she with him, and there was no longer any pang of grief or anger in the realization. That part of her life was over and done with.
