Only a Kiss (12 page)

“Spoken by an authority?” she asked him.

But she thought unwillingly of her fellow Survivors who had done a great deal with their lives and their survival in the years since Penderris. Ben, though he still struggled to walk, had acquired a great deal of mobility since taking to a wheeled chair and was the very busy manager of prosperous coal mines and ironworks in Wales. He was also happily married. Vincent, despite his blindness, walked and rode and exercised, even boxed, and composed children’s stories with his wife, stories that she then illustrated before they were published. They had a son. Flavian, Hugo, Ralph—they were all married too and living active, presumably happy lives. Yet she could remember them all when they were so broken that even drawing in another lungful of air had been a burden. Ralph in particular had been suicidal for a long time.

But none of them carried her particular burden. Just as she carried none of theirs. What if she could not see the first snowdrop, not this year or ever? What if she could never stride along the cliff path or the beach below?

He had not answered her question. He was chewing the last mouthful of his first biscuit.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Oh, confession is a two-way business, Lord Hardford,” she said sharply. “Unless one is a priest, perhaps. You also have stories you would rather not tell.”

The progress of his second biscuit was arrested two inches from his mouth. “But one would not wish to scandalize a lady,” he said, lowering it, “or scorch her ears with unsavory stories.”

She tutted. “You are terrified of the sea,” she said, “and of the cliffs. I daresay it was only your pride because I, a mere woman, was there that got you down the path onto the beach a few days ago.”

He set the biscuit back in his saucer.

“Are we bartering here, Cousin Imogen?” he asked. “Your story for mine?”

Oh.

Oh. No.

She ought to have thought before she spoke. She ought not to have started any of this.

“Shall I go first?” he asked.

H
e did not wait for her answer.

“I was ten or eleven,” he said. “I was at that obnoxious age, which all boys go through and perhaps girls too, when I knew nothing and thought I knew everything. We were spending a few weeks by the sea. I have no memory of quite where, though it was somewhere on the east coast. There were golden beaches, high, rugged cliffs, a jetty and boats, the sea to splash around in and foaming waves to hurl myself beneath. A boy’s paradise, in fact. But—the blight of a boy’s existence—there was an army of adults with me, united in its determination to see that I did not enjoy a single moment of my time there—my parents, one of my tutors, various servants, even my old nurse. The sea was dangerous and drowned little boys; the boats were dangerous and tipped little boys into the water before drowning them; the cliffs were dangerous and dashed little boys to their death on jagged rocks below—
everything
was dangerous. The only thing that could keep me safe was constant adult supervision, preferably of the hold-my-hand-don’t-do-that variety. I resented every
little
that was uttered and every hand that was held out for mine.”

“I suppose,” Imogen said, “you found a way to come to grief.”

“In a spectacular way,” he agreed. “I escaped one evening, Lord knows how, and went down onto the beach alone. It was deserted. The sea was calm, the boats were bobbing invitingly by the jetty, and I decided to try my hand at the oars of one of them, something I had not been allowed to do despite my pleas that I knew how to use them. I did too. I even discovered the art of holding a course parallel to the beach rather than one that would take me across it in the general direction of Denmark. After a while I spotted a cove that looked like a perfect pirates’ lair and decided to land and play awhile. I dragged the boat up onto the beach and became a pirate king. I climbed the cliff until I came to a flat ledge that made a perfect lookout and continued with my game until I noticed several things all at once. I believe the first was that I was a bit chilly. I was chilly because the sun had gone down and dusk was coming on. Then, in quick succession, I noticed that while I had been searching the horizon for treasure ships to plunder, the tide had come in and claimed almost all the beach below me, that the boat had been lifted from its resting place and had floated away, and that the cliffs behind me and to either side of me were all very high and very sheer and very menacing.”

“Oh,” Imogen said, “your poor mother.”

“Well, yes,” he agreed, “though it was only poor me I could think of at the time. I spent the night there and a good part of the next day. It seemed like a week or a year. The tide went out and came in again, but even low tide did not help me. There was no way around the end of the rocks to the main beach. And even if there had been, I was so paralyzed by terror that I could not move an eyelash or an inch from where I was, perched precariously upon a ledge that seemed to become narrower and higher off the beach with every passing hour. And then the wind got up and tried to snatch me off my perch and the sky turned leaden gray and the sea heaved and foamed and I got seasick even though I was not on it. When a boat finally hove into sight, tossing and pitching quite alarmingly, and the boatman and my tutor spotted me from within it, they had the devil’s own time landing. And then they were compelled to virtually scrape me off the face of the cliff. The boatman had to toss me over his shoulder and order me to shut my eyes before carrying me down and lifting me into the boat. I daresay my eyes were rolling in my head and I was foaming at the mouth. I was sick again on the way home.”

He eyed his cup and the biscuit but did not move a hand toward them. Perhaps, Imogen thought, he was afraid his hand might be shaking.

“They had thought I was dead, of course,” he said, “especially when a boat was discovered bobbing on the open sea soon after dawn, empty and mysteriously minus one oar. My father celebrated my resurrection from the dead when I was ushered into our lodgings first by hugging me so tightly it was amazing he did not suffocate me and break every bone in my body, and then by bending me over the back of the nearest chair, hauling down my breeches, and spanking the living daylights out of me with his bare hand—the
only
time I can ever remember his hitting me. Then he sent me to apologize to my mother, who had taken to her bed with smelling salts and other restoratives, but leapt out of it in order to crush my bones again and half drown me in her tears. After I had eaten—standing—from a tray the cook had sent up, laden with enough food to feed a regiment, I crept off to my room, where my tutor was awaiting me with his cane in hand. He had me bend myself over, hands on knees, before giving me twelve of the best. Then he sent me off to bed, where I remained until we set off for home next morning. I slept on my front, a position I have always found uncomfortable.”

“And you have been terrified of all things connected with the sea and cliffs since,” Imogen said.

He turned his head and grinned at her—an expression so totally without any of his usual artifice that it caught at her breath.

“A fate I thoroughly deserved,” he said. “It must have been a night and morning of sheer hell for them. I
was
loved, you know, worthless cub though I could sometimes be. It was
only
sometimes, however, to be fair.”

Yes, she imagined he had been loved.

“I was proud of myself a few mornings ago,” he said. “It was unkind of you to notice my discomfort and remark upon it.”

“Well,” she said, “it takes courage to confront one’s worst fear and move into it and through it. Perhaps it was your courage I was remarking upon.”

He laughed outright and she realized something she would really rather not know. She
did
like him. Or, rather, she had to admit that he was a likable man who disturbed an inner calm she had spent years establishing. She did not like what he did to that hard-won discipline.

“Your turn,” he said so softly that she almost missed the words.

But their echo remained.

Imogen swallowed. Her throat was dry. Her tea was untouched, as was the single biscuit she had taken. The tea was probably cold by now, though, and she hated cold tea. And if he had feared that his hand might be shaking, she
knew
hers was.

“There is not much to tell,” she said. “They knew my husband was a British officer, though the fact that he was not in uniform gave them all the excuse they needed to pretend they did not believe him and to use every means at their disposal to force information from him.”

“Torture,” he said.

She spread her hands across her lap and looked down at them.

“They treated
me
with the utmost respect,” she said. “I was given a private room in their temporary headquarters and the services of a maid, the wife of a foot soldier. I dined each day with the most senior of the French officers, and they made an effort to converse with me in English though I speak French reasonably well. I had not been so well treated since leaving England.”

“But you did not see your husband,” he said.

“No.” She drew a slow breath and licked dry lips with a dry tongue. “But sometimes, seemingly quite by accident, for which they always apologized profusely afterward, they let me hear him scream.”

Her skirt was pleated between her fingers.

“He did not divulge his secrets?” he asked her after what seemed like a lengthy pause.

“Never.” She smoothed out the creases. “No, never.”

“They did not try to get information from you?” he asked.

“I knew nothing,” she told him. “They understood that. It would have been a waste of their time.”

“And they did not use you to pry information out of him?”

And
he
understood too much. Her skirt pleated itself between her fingers again.

“He never told them anything,” she said again, raising her eyes to look at him. He was looking a bit pale and grim about the mouth. “And they never . . . did anything to me. They never hurt me. After his . . . death, a French colonel escorted me back to British headquarters under a flag of truce. He even had the soldier’s wife accompany us for propriety’s sake. He was gracious and courteous. And of course he was all surprise and regret when he was informed that I was indeed the wife—the widow—of a British officer.”

“You were present when your husband died?” he asked.

Her eyes were locked with his, it seemed. She could not look away.

“Yes.” She spread her fingers, releasing the creased fabric.

He stared a moment longer and then got abruptly to his feet. The dog scrambled to
his,
and Blossom eyed them both without raising her head, saw that her ownership of the chair was not about to be disputed, and closed her eyes again. Lord Hardford set one forearm along the mantel and one booted foot on the hearth and gazed into the fire.

“He was a brave man,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you loved him.”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes and kept them closed.

She opened them with a start of alarm when he spoke again. He had crossed the room to the love seat without her realizing it and was leaning over her. His face was not many inches from her own. But his intent was not sexual. She realized that immediately.

“War is the damnedest thing, is it not?” he said without either apologizing for his language or waiting for her answer. “One hears about those who were killed and feels sorrow for their relatives. One hears about those who were wounded and winces in sympathy while believing they were the lucky ones. One imagines that once they heal as far as is possible, they continue with their lives where they had left them off before they went to war. One scarcely thinks of the women at all, except with a little sorrow for their loss of loved ones. But for everyone concerned, dead or alive, it is the damnedest,
damnedest
thing. Is it not?”

This time he waited for her answer, his face pale and grim and almost unrecognizable.

“It is,” she agreed softly. “It is the
damnedest
thing.”

“How did they know you were there?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows.

“The French,” he explained. “They were behind enemy lines when they took you, were they not? Your husband thought it safe enough to take you that far. How did they know you were there? And how did they know he was important enough to take? He was not in uniform.”

“It was a scouting party,” she said. “The hills were full of them, theirs and ours, on both sides of the line. The line was not a physical thing, like the wall between the park here and the land beyond, and it changed daily. There is nothing tidy about war. Even so, he was assured that that particular part of the hills was safe for me.”

He straightened up and turned, all impatience and arrogance once more.

“There is that evening of cards with the Quentins tonight,” he said. “Shall I have the carriage wait for you? I will take my curricle. Or would you prefer that I make some excuse for you?”

“The carriage, please,” she said. “I may choose to live alone, Lord Hardford, but I am not a recluse.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Are you ever tempted to be?”

“Yes.”

He regarded her in silence for a few seconds. “One
ought
to consider the women,” he said. “Your husband was not the only brave one in your marriage, Lady Barclay. Good day to you.”

And he strode from the room, the dog trotting at his heels. A few moments after the sitting room door closed behind him, Imogen heard the outer door open and close too.

Your husband was not the only brave one in your marriage. . . .

If only she had died when Dicky had, the two of them together, just seconds apart. If only they had killed her, as she had fully expected they would—as Dicky had fully expected they would.
Courage,
that last look of his had said to her as clearly as if he had spoken the word aloud.

Courage.

She sometimes forgot that that was the
last
word his eyes had spoken.
Me
had come a few second before it.
Me, Imogen.
And even those unspoken words she sometimes forgot—or did not trust because they had not been spoken aloud. Though she and Dicky had always known what was in the other’s mind. They had been that close—husband and wife, brother and sister, comrades, best friends.

Me.
And then,
Courage
.

She sat where she was while a grayish film formed over the cold tea in her cup—and the Earl of Hardford’s.

*   *   *

He pretty much hated himself, Percy decided as he shut the garden gate behind him and, without conscious thought, took the cliff path until he came to the gap. He scrambled down the steep track to the beach, heedless of possible danger, and strode the short distance to the cave. He went inside without stopping, daring the tide to come galloping up over the sand to trap him in there and drown him. The cave was much larger than he had expected.

Yes, he did, he decided as he placed one hand on a protruding rock and gazed out into daylight. He hated himself.

“You came all the way down this time without help, did you?” he asked Hector, who was lying across the mouth of the cave, his head on his paws, his bulging eyes looking inside. “Well done.”

Why was the dog so attached to him when he was a worthless lump of humanity? Dogs were supposed to be discriminating.

He had just confessed to the big dark blot on the otherwise relatively serene progress of his life—the great terror from which he had never recovered. A boy’s disobedient folly gone wrong. The ghastly humiliation that had dogged him into adulthood, though he had always hidden it well by the simple expedient of staying far from the sea and confronting every other challenge that came his way, the more dangerous the better, with a reckless disregard for his own life. It was mildly ironic, he supposed, that when he had inherited the title totally unexpectedly two years ago, it had come with a house and park that not only were in Cornwall but also were perched spectacularly upon a high cliff top.