Mary Balogh (5 page)

“If I had only thought,” he said, “I would have brought my telescope out with me. Except that I did not bring it with me to Clifton, of course. And now that I come to think of it, I do not possess one at all. I shall slink across into some bushes if you wish, Soph, to observe the proceedings. Do you think they will miss me? I don’t know how they could when Lady Jennifer is shrieking with such mirth. Whatever can Hathaway be saying to her, do you suppose?”

“This is all a joke to you, is it not?” she asked. “My mama and papa are together for the first time in fourteen years and all you can do is talk about stupid things like slinking off into bushes. Do you ever take anything seriously?”

“I do, Soph,” he said. “I would worry about getting my knee breeches snagged by thorns.”

“Oh!” she said, tossing her head.

“I think it is time for a melting glance,” he said. “We cannot have them thinking that our ardor has cooled. I
think we have done remarkably well so far, don’t you? I don’t know about you, Soph, but I am giving serious consideration to going on the stage.”

“You might as well,” she said tartly. “You would be close to all your actresses.”

“Smile, darling,” he said seductively, turning his face sideways in order to give an image of his profile to those walking behind them and smiling dazzlingly down at her. “Come on, Soph. It is worth a mint to see you do it.”

She turned her head to look up into his eyes and smile slowly and meltingly. He bowed his head a fraction closer and looked down at her lips.

“Don’t you dare,” she said, her expression not changing at all. “If you want your cheek smacked and your nose flattened and your eye blackened, just come half an inch closer, Francis.”

His face moved perhaps a quarter of an inch closer. “That is quite far enough,” he said. “Not that your threats would deter me if I really were tempted in even the smallest way to steal a kiss, Soph. But I have a distinct feeling that your father’s fist might cause my nostrils to part company with each other if I did.”

They both turned their heads to face the front again, the radiant smiles fading as they did so.

“What next?” he asked. “My parents are already planning wedding journeys and drawing up guest lists and wondering which church the wedding is to be in. And my mother is already dreaming of new grandchildren and wondering if there will be time to wash and iron the family christening robes after Claude’s baby and before ours. All while I stand by looking complacent and rather as if a falling star had hit me in the eye.”

“I don’t like to disappoint them,” Sophia said, “but I would not marry you, Francis, if you were the last man on earth.”

“In some ways we are remarkably well suited, Soph,” he said pleasantly. “We think alike. I do not believe I would marry you even under similar but reversed conditions to the ones you mentioned.”

“You are no gentleman,” she said. “You never have been.”

“There is no point in being cross just because I refuse to marry you, Soph,” he said. “I was gentleman enough to allow you to refuse to marry me first. But enough of this quarreling. What happens next? We suddenly find that our love has cooled so that my parents and I can take ourselves off tomorrow and I can get back to the congenial life of raking?”

“You would like that, too, would you not?” she said. “You would like to abandon me just as if I were a hot potato to be dropped at all cost?”

“In short, yes,” he said. “But I gather from your tone that you have further use for me.”

“Of course I have further use for you,” she said indignantly. “If you leave tomorrow or the next day, Francis, Mama will have no further need to stay here and she will go home and never see Papa again. And that will be that. And if that happens, I shall never marry anyone for I will not allow myself to be lured into such a life of misery. What are they doing? And
don’t look now
!”

Lord Francis looked. “Strolling and talking,” he said.

“Talking?” She looked up at him eagerly. “That is promising. Don’t you think so, Francis?”

“We have been talking, too,” he said. “Quarreling.”

She sighed. “Do you think they are quarreling, too?” she asked.

“No idea,” he said. “But you can depend upon it that they are too well-bred to come to fisticuffs, Soph. So I am to stay in order to keep them together, am I? Do you think they are going to allow us to become betrothed?”

“Not if Papa can help it,” she said. “He says that I am far too young even though I have had my eighteenth birthday already and am older than Mama was when she married. But that would be his meaning, would it not? We are going to have to be distraught, Francis. We are going to have to threaten elopement or suicide.”

“By Jove,” he said. “Quite a choice, is it not? The devil and the deep blue sea, would you say?”

“No,” she said. “But I would fully expect you to do so. I would choose suicide without the slightest hesitation. It will be best if they do consent, though.” She frowned in thought. “We will want to marry without delay, of course. A summer wedding. Mama will have to stay to plan it. There will be a great deal for her and Papa to discuss. And perhaps our wedding will remind them of their own.”

“Ah,” he said, “I hate to interrupt this pleasant train of thought, Soph, but did you say our
wedding
? What do we do afterward? Neglect to consummate it and go begging for an annulment?”

“Oh,” she said. “You are right. There cannot actually be a wedding, can there? But just the planning of it will remind them. Don’t you think? And how could you say what you just said? It would be just like you to humiliate me by annulling our marriage and having the whole world say that I could not even attract you sufficiently to tempt you on our wedding night.”

“Soph,” he said, “I am glad the moon is not quite full. I might hear some words of real madness from you.”

“But really,” she said, “you could not have said anything more insulting, Francis. I should die of mortification.”

“Good Lord,” he said. “And to think that I gave up a week or two or five of a life of genial civilization in Brighton for this.”

“A life of gambling and carousing and womanizing, you mean,” she said tartly.

“That is what I said, is it not?” he said. “Time to bill and coo again, Soph. A kiss on the hand, I believe?” He raised her hand to his lips and held it there while she smiled radiantly up at him.

T
HERE WAS A CERTAIN FAMILIARITY EVEN AFTER
fourteen years. A familiar height, her cheek just above the level of his shoulder. A familiar and distinctive way of holding his arm, with her own linked through it. He held it tight to his body so that the back of her hand was against his side.

She had never minded before, of course. She had always walked close beside him. When they had walked unobserved, he had often set an arm about her shoulders while she had set hers about his waist.

“Your curls make a comfortable pillow for my cheek, Liv,” he had often said. And sometimes he would rest it there and snore loudly while she had giggled and told him how foolish he was.

She minded now. She had hoped to avoid memories and comparisons. She had hoped to avoid all but purely business encounters with him. A foolish hope, of course, when the duration of her stay was indefinite and there were guests at the house looking for amusement. And when it was summertime at Clifton. Summertime at Clifton. She felt a welling of memories and nostalgia.

Marc. Oh, Marc
.

“So what do you think?” he asked now, breaking the silence between them.

“About Sophia and Lord Francis?” she asked. “She is
too young, Marcus. Only just eighteen. She is still a child.”

“Yes,” he said, and they both remembered an even younger child who nineteen years before had insisted on marrying. Two young children.

“She knows nothing of life,” she said, “and nothing of people. She finished school only a year ago and was with me in the country until after Christmas. How can she possibly be ready for marriage?”

“She cannot,” he said.

“I know how it must have been,” she said. “She got caught up in the whirl and glamour of the Season and met Lord Francis again for the first time since they have both grown up, and fell in love with him. It was inevitable. He is a very handsome and charming boy. But she does not know what a sheltered world she has been living in. She does not know that their love cannot possibly last.”

“No,” he said.

“I know what it is like,” she said. “I know just how she is feeling.”

“Yes,” he said.

Because it happened just like that with me
. She did not speak the words aloud, but she did not need to. They hung heavy on the air before them.

“You are agreed with me, then,” he said, “that we must prevent the betrothal from happening?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

“It will not be easy,” he said. “They are quite besotted with each other and you know how stubborn Sophia can be. I have always avoided confrontations with her whenever possible. I am afraid I have sometimes found her unmanageable. You have always done better than I on that score, Olivia.”

“Yes,” she said. “You have always indulged her, Marcus. Perhaps you were afraid of losing her love. I have
always shut my mind to the possibility and refused to allow her her way on every matter.”

“I have seen so little of her,” he said. “I never kept her long because I felt she needed her mother more than her father. And I always thought you would miss her.”

“Yes,” she said. “I always did. Oh, Marcus, look at them. They are totally wrapped up in each other.”

Sophia and Lord Francis were still walking, but their faces were turned to each other, the moonlight catching his expression of tenderness and utter absorption in her. For one shocked moment Olivia thought that he was going to kiss her daughter, but he drew his head back and they strolled on.

“By God,” the earl muttered quite viciously, “he would have been sorry if he had moved just one inch closer.”

“Oh, Marcus,” the countess said, “is he quite as wild as you suggested? He seems such a pleasant young man.”

“There is nothing vicious about him, as far as I know,” Lord Clifton said. “He has been known to gamble a little too much and he involves himself in too many of the more outrageous and daring exploits in the betting books—things like racing curricles to Brighton and drinking a pint of ale at as many inns in London as possible during one night before becoming insensible. And he spends too much time in the greenrooms of the theaters. Nothing he will not outgrow in time in all probability. He is only twenty-two.”

But you did not outgrow them
. She wondered with unwilling curiosity if Lady Mornington was still his mistress or if it was someone else now. She so rarely heard news of his doings. Lady Mornington might be four or five years in his past by now, for all she knew. And probably was. After all, he had remained faithful to his wife for less than five years.

“But why would he suddenly wish to marry Sophia?” she asked. “He is very young and his behavior has suggested
that he is not yet ready to settle down. Why the sudden change? She is just an infant.”

“But a very pretty and vivacious infant,” he said. “We are looking at her through parents’ eyes, Olivia. To us she is just a child and probably always will be. You were increasing when you were her age.”

She closed her eyes briefly and remembered. The wonder of it. The sheer joy of it. Life growing in her. Her child and Marc’s, the product of their love. The only cloud—the
only
one on what had remained of their married life together after Sophia had been born was the fact that it had never happened again, that she had never again been able to conceive despite the fact that they had made love very frequently.

“Yes,” she said. “Marcus, she must be persuaded to give up this foolishness. I shall have to talk with her tomorrow. I have had no chance today. I shall explain to her all the dangers and disadvantages of marrying so young. She will listen to me. She almost always has. And if she will not, then you must exert your authority. You must reject Lord Francis’s suit.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “It will not be easy, Olivia. William and Rose seem to think the betrothal is an accomplished fact already. They are more than delighted. And they have always been such good and such close friends.”

“Then you must speak with them,” she said. “We can do so together if you wish. We must explain that Sophia is too young, that her happiness is very precious to us because she is our only child.”

The only link between us in all these years
.

“And everyone else expects it, too,” he said. “That is why they think they have been invited here. And everyone in the neighborhood, doubtless. It is why they think you have come. Sophia has persuaded me to organize a ball for the end of the week, you know. Everyone will be expecting the announcement to be made there.”

“Then they will have to find that they are wrong,” she said. “Marcus, don’t make a scene. There are two other couples out here. And it is just her hand.”

She had felt the tightening of his arm muscles and had looked up to see the hardening of his jaw as he glared ahead at a besotted Lord Francis holding Sophia’s hand to his lips and keeping it there for altogether too long a time.

“Impudent puppy,” the earl muttered. “I shall take a horse whip to his hide and do what Weymouth should have done years ago.”

“His behavior is not so very improper,” she said soothingly. “Now that I am here we can handle this together, Marcus. It will be all over within a few weeks, I daresay, and then we can return to normal living.”

“I hope you are right,” he said.

T
HE
C
OUNTESS OF
Clifton sat in the window seat of her private sitting room the following day waiting for her daughter to come. It was more than an hour past luncheon already and they had still not had their talk. It was very difficult, it seemed, to accomplish anything of a serious or personal nature while a house party was in full swing. There was always too much else to do.

That morning a riding party had been arranged for the young people, to be chaperoned by Lord and Lady Wheatley, Lady Jennifer’s parents. The earl had joined them. And at luncheon Miss Biddeford had talked of nothing else except the bonnet in the village that she should have bought the day before. Finally Mrs. Biddeford had agreed to take her daughter back into the village.