Only a Kiss (16 page)

He had joked about it, told her he was charm through to the very heart. He was not sure his heart did anything more than pump blood about his body. Except that he
did
love. He must not be too harsh with himself. He loved his family.

“You have gone very quiet again, Percy,” Aunt Edna remarked.

“I am just enjoying the fact that you have all come such a distance for my sake,” he told her. And the thing was that he was not lying—not entirely so, anyway.

He wanted his peace and quiet back.

What?

He had always avoided both as he would the plague.

The gathering began to break up after the tea tray had been removed. Some of the older generation as well as Meredith went off to bed. A few of the cousins were going to the billiard room and invited Sidney and Arnold to join them. A couple of the uncles were going to withdraw to the library for a drink and a look at the reading choices.

“Come with us, Percy?” Uncle Roderick suggested.

“I think I am going to get a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Stretch my legs before I lie down.”

“Do you want company, Perce?” Arnold asked.

“Not necessarily,” he said.

His friend bent a look on him.

“Right,” he said. “The outdoors by the sea on a February night does not really call to me, I must admit. Enjoy your . . . solitude?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Billiards, Arnie?” Cyril asked, and the two of them went off together in pursuit of most of the other young people.

Percy stepped outside after donning his greatcoat and gloves and hat and then deliberately going and fetching Hector from the second housekeeper’s room, though why he bothered he did not know. The dog would surely have found a way of following him anyway. His name would more appropriately be Phantom rather than Hector.

It was a little before eleven o’clock. It was
not
too late for a stroll before retiring for the night. It
was
too late, far too late, to make a social call. But what about a call of necessity?

May I seek refuge here occasionally?
he had asked her.

He could not possibly call on her at eleven o’clock at night. It would seem he had come for one thing only.

And would that be true?

His steps took him to the right outside the front doors and around the path that led past the dower house. Would he walk on past, though?

He would let her decide, he thought, or, rather, her lamp or candles or whatever she used to see in the dark when she was not sleeping. If her house was in darkness, he would walk on by. If there was light within, he would knock on her door—unless the light came from an upstairs room.

There was light in the sitting room.

Percy stood at the gate for what might have been five minutes until his feet inside his shoes—he had not changed into boots—turned numb with cold and his fingers inside his gloves tingled unpleasantly. Even his nose felt numb. He willed the light to move, to proceed upstairs, to give him the cue to move away and go home.

And he willed it to stay where it was.

Hector had given up sitting at his feet. He was lying there instead, his chin on his paws. He was beginning, Percy thought, looking down at him in the dim light of the moon, to look almost like a normal dog. Which was just as well, since he seemed to be stuck with the mutt. And, annoyingly, he felt love begin to creep up on him.

Damned dog.

The light stayed where it was.

Percy opened the gate and closed it quietly behind him after he and Hector had stepped through. He did not want to signal his arrival. There was still time to escape. He lifted the knocker away from the door, hesitated, and released it. It made a horrible din.

Lord, it was probably
after
eleven by this time.

The door opened almost immediately, long before he was ready.

And he said nothing. Not only could he not think of anything to say, but it did not even occur to him that perhaps he ought to say something.

She did not say anything either. They stared at each other, the lamp she held in one hand lighting their faces from below. It took Hector to break the spell. It must have occurred to the dog that the warmth inside the house was preferable to the cold outside. He trotted in and turned, as if by right of ownership, into the sitting room.

She stood to one side, mutely inviting Percy inside.

“It is not exactly what it seems,” he said as she closed the door. “Late as it is, I have not come here expecting to sleep with you.”

He never knew quite what happened to his tongue when he was in her presence. He had never spoken with any other lady as he very often seemed to speak to her.

“You have come to take refuge here.” It was not a question. She turned to look at him with calm eyes and face. “Come, then.”

And she led the way into the warmth of the sitting room.

I
mogen had chosen not to go up to the hall for dinner even though Aunt Lavinia had sent a brief note again, assuring her that she would be welcome, that she was always welcome, as she knew, and did not need to wait for an invitation. And, she had added, there were two more guests—Cousin Percy’s gentlemen friends from London.

Imogen liked all these people who had come to shatter her peace at Hardford, but she was finding the noise and bustle a little overwhelming. She was very thankful indeed for her own house, even if she must expect it to be invaded frequently during the daytime until everyone left.

She wondered if
he
was finding it overwhelming too. But they were of his world, and his world was a busy, noisy place, she guessed, with little room for quiet introspection. Perhaps he was enjoying their company and had forgotten all about that night when he had asked if he might retreat here occasionally.

But she remembered the book of Alexander Pope’s poetry on a table beside his chair in the library—and his double first degree in the classics. And she remembered something he had said just before asking if he might come here—
I think I came to Cornwall in the hope of finding myself, though I did not realize that until this moment. I came because I needed to step away from my life and discover if from the age of thirty on I can find some new and worthwhile purpose to it.

But he had not been allowed to step away from his life for long. It had caught up to him here.

She stayed up later than she ought, though the morning visit with the older ladies and the afternoon down on the beach with a group of exuberant youngsters had tired her. She could not settle to reading, which might have relaxed her. She thought of writing to her mother, but decided to wait until morning, when she would be wider awake. She crocheted but could not admire what she did. She went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and ended up baking a batch of sweet biscuits and then washing up after herself. She crocheted again and petted Blossom, who was always fascinated by the fine silk thread and the flash of the crochet hook.

And finally she admitted that she was waiting for him to come and it simply would not do. She was allowing her peace and hard-won discipline to be shattered. She would go to bed, have a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow take herself firmly in hand. This
would not do
.

She put her crochet away and got to her feet, remembering as she did so that she had not eaten any of the biscuits she had baked or made any tea after boiling the kettle and measuring the tea leaves into the teapot. It was too late now, though. And she was neither hungry nor thirsty. She reached for the lamp, glancing at the same time at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was ten minutes past eleven.

And that was when a knock sounded at the door, causing her to jump and Blossom to open her eyes.

Imogen picked up the lamp and went to open the door. It did not occur to her to be cautious about doing so.

For a dreadful moment they just stood looking at each other, one on each side of the door’s threshold. A draft of cold air came in from outside. The lamp, lighting his face from below, made him look taller and a bit menacing, especially as he was neither smiling nor speaking. But she knew in that moment that she wanted him, that there was really no decision to make—or if there was, then she had already made it. And she knew too that it was not just
that
—oh, she might as well think of it as
sex
—that made her desire him. It was not just sex. It was . . . more than that. That was what made it a truly dreadful moment.

And then he was inside and had said that about not having come expecting to sleep with her—had he
really
said it aloud and not shocked her beyond words? And she had acknowledged that he had come to seek refuge and led the way into the sitting room. Hector was already seated beside the chair on which she had been sitting all evening, the chair where
he
always sat when he was here.

Always?

How many times had he been here? It seemed as if he had always been here, as if that chair had always waited for him when he was not, as though when she sat on it she was drawing comfort from the fact that it was his.

This combination of tiredness and a late night was playing strange and dangerous tricks with her mind.

He waited for her to seat herself on the love seat and then sat down himself. He had left his coat and hat out in the hall, she noticed. He was still unsmiling. He must have left his armor of easy charm out in the hall too.

“You must have been about to go to bed,” he said. And then he did smile—a bit ruefully. “That was not the best conversational opener, was it?”

“I am still up,” she said.

He looked about the room and at the fire, which had burned low. He got up, as she remembered his doing last time, picked up the poker to spread the coals, and then piled on more from the coal scuttle beside the hearth. He stayed on his feet, one forearm resting on the mantel. He watched the fire catch on the new coals.

“What if I had?” he asked her.

Strangely, she knew exactly what he was asking, but he elaborated anyway.

“What if I
had
come expecting to sleep with you?”

She considered her answer.

“Would you have tossed me out?” He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder.

She shook her head.

They gazed at each other for a few moments before he poked the fire again to give it more air and resumed his seat.

“Is it possible for people to change, Imogen?” he asked her.

She felt a little lurching of the stomach at the sound of her name on his lips—again.

“Yes,” she said.

“How?”

“Sometimes it takes a great calamity,” she said.

His eyes searched her face. “Like the loss of a spouse?”

She nodded slightly again.

“What were you like before?” he asked.

She spread her hands on her lap and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers—something she tended to do when her mind was agitated. She released the fabric and clasped her hands loosely in her lap.

“Full of life and energy and laughter,” she said. “Sociable, gregarious. Tomboyish as a girl—I was the despair of my mother. Not really ladylike even after I grew up. Eager to live my life to the full.”

His eyes roamed over her as if to see signs of that long-ago, long-gone girl she had been.

“Would you want to be that person again?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Have you read William Blake’s
Songs of Innocence and Experience
?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“It is impossible to recapture innocence once it has been exposed for the illusion it is,” she said.

“Illusion?” He frowned. “Why should innocence be more unreal, more
untrue,
than cynicism?”

“I am not cynical,” she said. “But no, I could not go back.”

“Can experience and suffering not be used to enrich one’s life rather than deaden or impoverish it?” he asked.

“Yes.” She thought of her fellow Survivors. They were in a vastly different place in their lives than could have been predicted eight or nine years ago, but five of them at least had risen above the suffering and forged lives that were rich and apparently happy. Perhaps they would not be so happy now if they had not had to go through that long, dark night of pain and brokenness. Disturbing thought.

“You are in some ways fortunate, Imogen,” he said softly, and her eyes snapped to his. “How can one, at the age of thirty, learn from the experience of nothing but empty pleasure and frivolity?”

“And
love,
” she said fiercely. “Your life has been so full of love, Lord Hardford, that it is fairly bursting at the seams with it. Even that
dog
loves you, and you love it. It is
not
unmanly to admit it. And your life has included a period of intense learning about two of the greatest civilizations our world has known. You may have largely wasted the years since you left Oxford, but even
that
experience does not have to be for nothing. No time is
really
wasted unless one never learns the lessons that it offers.”

He had sat back in his chair and was regarding her with a half smile on his lips. “You are expending passion over a wastrel, Lady Barclay?” he said. “
What
lessons?”

She sighed. She
had
allowed herself to become rather wrought up. But he was not a wastrel. A week or so ago she might have believed it, but no longer. He might have lived the life of a wastrel, but that did not make him one. He was not defined by what he had done or not done in the past ten years.

“Perhaps in recognizing how one ought
not
to live, one can learn how
to
live,” she said.

“It is that easy?” he asked her. “I should turn overnight, you think, into a worthy country gentleman, a Cornish country gentleman, and bury myself for the rest of my life in the back of beyond with my crops and my sheep and the ugly dog I have supposedly come to love? Breeding heirs and spares and hopeful daughters? Loving my wife and helpmeet and cleaving only unto her for as long as we both shall live?”

And she laughed. Despite the almost unbearable tension that his words had begun to build, he had also created an image that was just too absurd.

His eyes smiled—oh, goodness!—and then his lips.

“You are really quite stunning when you laugh like that,” he said.

That sobered her. But she had been having exactly the same thought about him and his smile.

“It gives a glimpse into the person you say you were and the person you were meant always to be,” he said. “Can you not be happy again, Imogen?
Will
you not be?”

She smiled, found that she could not see him clearly, and realized that her eyes had filled with tears.

“No, don’t cry,” he said softly. “I did not mean to make you unhappy. Will you come to bed with me?”

She blinked away her tears. And her self-imposed exile from her own life seemed suddenly pointless. Wasted time—between eight and nine years to match his ten.

He had asked a question.

“Yes,” she said.

And he got to his feet and came toward her. He reached out a hand. She looked at it for several moments, a man’s hand, a hand that would touch her . . . She placed her own in it and stood. He had not left much room between himself and the love seat. She put her arms up about his neck and leaned into him as his own arms came about her, and their mouths met.

It was a very deliberate thing, she decided. It was not seduction, and it was not unbridled temptation. It was not something for which she would feel guilt, something she would regret. It was something she wanted and would allow. No, nothing as passive as that. It was something for which she would step back into life, something to which she would give herself unreservedly, something she would allow herself to enjoy. But not alone. Together. It was something they would enjoy together.

Just for a brief while. A short vacation from the life she had imposed upon herself and must live until the end.

She drew back her head and looked into his eyes, which were very blue even in the dimness of the lamplight.

“I do not expect forever,” she told him, “or want it. I do not expect you to come back here in the morning out of any sense of guilt to offer me marriage. I would say no if you did. This is just for now. For a little while.”

His eyes smiled again before his mouth followed suit. It was a devastating expression and quite unconscious and therefore unpracticed, she guessed. She was seeing him, or at least a part of him, as he really was.

“If I were to offer forever, I would be a fool,” he said. “No one has forever in his possession. Take the lamp, and I will set the guard about the fire.”

She turned to lead the way upstairs. Blossom was padding off to her bed in the kitchen.

“Stay,” she heard him say to Hector.

*   *   *

A fire had been lit in the bedchamber. A few of the coals, now turned almost to ash, still glowed faintly red. The room was not exactly warm, but it was not frigid either.

She set down the lamp on the dressing table, lit a candle, and extinguished the lamp. Immediately the light was dimmer, more intimate. It was a pretty room, not small, but given a cozy effect by a ceiling that followed the slope of the roof on one side and a square window that reached almost to the floor. She drew the curtains across it—pretty white curtains with a bold flower pattern in pastel shades to match the bedcover. He did not usually notice such things, but he suspected they had been chosen, even if unconsciously, to suit Imogen Hayes as she had been before the death of her husband.

Percy stood inside the door, his hands clasped behind him, savoring the strangeness of the moment. This was not seduction on his part or even skilled persuasion. She was fully acquiescent. There had not even been any flirtation. This was a new experience for him and he was not sure what to expect
. That
was a new experience too.

She lifted her arms, facing away from him, and began to remove the pins from her hair. He moved then to stride toward her.

“Allow me,” he said.

She lowered her arms without turning.

Her hair was warm and thick and shining in the candlelight. It was also absolutely straight and reached almost to her waist. It would be a maid’s nightmare, he guessed, when the fashion was for curls and ringlets and waving tendrils. It was glorious and several shades of blond. He combed his fingers through it. There were no tangles that would need a brush.

Her crowning glory, he thought on a foolish flight of clichéd fancy and was glad he had not spoken aloud.

He turned her by the shoulders. She looked years younger with her hair down, and she looked twice as . . . No, she could not possibly look more desirable to him than she had downstairs, telling him earnestly that his time during the past ten years had not been wasted, eyes filling with tears when he had asked if she would allow herself to be happy again.