Only Enchanting (9 page)

She got to her feet as she spoke, and her fellow guests rose too to take their leave.

No one seemed to notice that Agnes had not given an answer. But it was not necessary to do so, was it? How could she possibly refuse? It was an evening for Dora, and she knew that, though her sister would suffer in the anticipation of it, it could also be one of the happiest evenings of her life.

How could she, Agnes, spoil it?

“Oh, Agnes, dearest,” Dora said as soon as they had watched their visitors walk away along the village street, “ought I to have said no? I really cannot—”

“Of course you can,” Agnes said, slipping her arm through her sister’s. “Imagine, if you will, that they are all just ordinary people, Dora—farmers and butchers and bakers and blacksmiths.”

“There is not a single one of them without a title,” Dora said with a grimace.

Agnes laughed.

Yes, and one of them was Viscount Ponsonby. Whom she really ought not to want to see again. Her only previous experience with combating churning emotions had come last October, and she’d found it neither easy to deal with nor pleasant. And on that occasion he had not even kissed her.

One would expect to have learned from experience.

*   *   *

George had been having the old nightmare again, and with increasing frequency. It was the one in which he reached out to grasp his wife’s hand but could do no more than brush his fingertips against hers before she jumped to her death over the high cliff close to their home at Penderris. At the same moment he thought of just the words that might have persuaded her to return from the brink and live on.

The Duchess of Stanbrook really had committed suicide in just that way, and George really had seen her do it, though he had not in reality been quite as close. She had seen him running toward her, heard him calling to her, and disappeared over the edge without a sound. It had happened a mere few months after their only son—their only
child
—was killed in Spain during the wars.

“Has the dream been recurring more frequently since the wedding of your nephew?” Ben asked.

George frowned and thought about it.

“Yes, I suppose it has,” he said. “There is a connection, do you suppose? But I am genuinely happy for Julian, and Philippa is a delightful girl. They will be a worthy duke and duchess after my time, and it seems there will be issue of the marriage within the next few months. I am content.”

“And that very fact makes you feel guilty, does it, George?” Ben asked.

“Guilty? Does it?”

“We should call it the Survivors’ guilt,” Ralph said with a sigh. “You suffer from it, George. So do Hugo and Imogen. So do I. You feel guilty because the future of your title and property and fortune have been settled to your satisfaction, yet you feel your very contentment with that somehow betrays your wife and your son.”

“Do I?” The duke settled an elbow on the arm of his chair and cupped his hand over his face. “And
have
I?”

“Sometimes,” Hugo said, “you feel wretched when you realize that a whole day has passed, or maybe even longer, without your thinking even once about those who did not live while you did. And it almost always happens just when you are at your happiest.”

“I do not believe a whole day has passed yet,” George said.

“A day is a long time,” Imogen agreed. “Twenty-four hours. How can one turn off memory for that long? And would one wish to? One thinks one does until it happens for a few hours.”

“This is precisely what I mean,” Ralph said. “It is guilt pure and simple. Guilt over being alive and
able
to forget—and smile and laugh and feel moments of happiness.”

“If I had died, though,” Vincent said, “I would have wanted my mother and my sisters to live on and have happy lives and to remember me with smiles and laughter. Not every day, however. I would not have wanted them to be obsessed with remembering me.”

“One good way to forget,” Flavian said, “is to fall off your h-horse and land on your h-head after someone has shot you through it and then have someone ride over you. Behold the blessing of my poor memory: no g-guilt whatsoever.”

Which they all knew to be a lie.

But if he had died, he would have been quite happy at the notion of Velma’s marrying Len—his betrothed and his best friend, respectively. At least he
thought
he would have been happy. Except that no one could be happy when he was dead. Or unhappy either, for that matter.

Anyway, he had not died—but it had happened
anyway. Velma had come and told him. Len had not. Perhaps he had decided against it when he heard what happened after Velma came. Perhaps he had judged it best to keep his distance.

Now Len was dead, and they had not spoken in more than six years while he still lived. And Flavian felt guilty about it—oh, yes, he did, unfair as it seemed. Why
should
he feel guilt? He was not the one who had done the betraying.

Usually these late-night sessions made them all feel somewhat better, even if they solved nothing. Flavian did not feel better the next morning, however. He had gone to bed feeling as if he had leaden weights in his shoes and in his stomach and in his soul, and he woke up with one of his headaches and deep in one of his depressions.

He hated them more than the headaches—that feeling of dragging self-pity and the fear that nothing was worth anything. It was the one shared mood the Survivors’ Club had all fought against most fiercely during those years they had spent together at Penderris. Bodies could be mended and made to work again, at least well enough to enable the person inside them to live on. Minds could be mended to the degree that they worked efficiently again for the one who inhabited them. And souls could be soothed and fed from an inner well of inspiration and from an outer sharing of experience and friendship and love.

But one never quite reached the point at which one could relax and know that one had made it through to the other side of suffering and could now be simply content, even happy, inside a balanced mix of body, mind, and spirit.

Well, of course one did not. He had never been quite naïve enough to expect it, had he? Surely, even when he
had been head over ears in love with Velma, and she with him, and they had become betrothed at the end of those brief weeks of his leave and had expected a life of happily-ever-after, surely even then he had not believed it to be literally possible. After all, he had been a military officer, and there had been a war to fight. And his brother, David, had been dying.

Why the devil had they got betrothed and even celebrated the event at a grand ball in London the night before he set off back to the Peninsula, while David was at Candlebury dying, and Flavian had come home for the express purpose of being with him? And why had Flavian gone back to war when the end for his brother had obviously been near and he was about to be landed with the responsibilities of the title and property? He frowned in thought, trying to remember, trying to work it out, but the trying merely made his head thump more painfully.

The sun was shining from a clear blue sky again, he could see, and the daffodils beckoned. Or, rather, the enchantress among the daffodils beckoned. Would she be there? Would he be disappointed if he went and she was not? Would
she
be disappointed if she went there and he did not? And what did he intend if he did go? Conversation? Dalliance? Seduction? On Vince’s property? With the viscountess’s friend? He had better stay away.

Ben, Ralph, George, and Imogen were going riding. They expected to be gone all morning, since they were going beyond the confines of the park.

“Will you come with us, Flavian?” Imogen asked at the breakfast table.

He hesitated for the merest moment.

“I will,” he said. “Vince is taking Hugo and the l-ladies over the wilderness walk, and it sounds alarmingly s-strenuous. I will come with you and l-let my horse do all the exercising.”

“What I
am
going to do,” Vincent said, “is show everyone what they cannot see because they have eyes.”

“The boy has taken to talking in riddles,” George said, looking at him fondly. “Yet, strangely, we know just what you mean, Vincent. At least I do.”

“I am even going to sacrifice my morning’s practice in the music room,” Vincent said.

“He p-put me to sleep there yesterday morning,” Flavian said.

“With a
lullaby
, Flave,” Vincent protested, “for which you asked. I would say I was singularly successful.”

Flavian chuckled.

“Oh,” Lady Darleigh said, her hands clasped together at her bosom, “I am
so
looking forward to this evening, and I am quite certain you will all be vastly impressed, even though some of you spend time in London and must attend all sorts of concerts with the very best performers.”

This evening?

“I do believe,” Lady Trentham said, “that Miss Debbins was pleased to be asked, Sophia. What a delightful lady she is. And her sister too.”

Miss Debbins? She was the music teacher, was she not? And her sister was . . .

“I am probably as far from being a connoisseur of music as it is possible to be,” Lady Darleigh said. “But I do believe that talent in any artistic field is unmistakable when one encounters it. And I believe Miss Debbins is talented. You will all be able to judge for yourselves this evening.”

“Miss Debbins is to play here?” Flavian asked.

“I did not
tell
you?” the viscountess asked him. “I am so sorry.”

“He was not listening,” Hugo said.

“Perhaps he was not present when I announced it.”
Lady Darleigh beamed at Flavian. “Miss Debbins is going to play for us this evening, as well as anyone else of our number who can be persuaded to entertain the rest of us. She will be coming for dinner too. For once we will have an even number of ladies and gentlemen at the table.”

Even numbers. Flavian did the calculations in his head, but they did not add up. Unless . . .

“Her sister will be coming too,” Vincent said. “Mrs. Keeping. We are fond of her, are we not, Sophie, not least because she is the one who made it possible for us to become world-famous authors.”

He chuckled, as did everyone else—Flavian included.

The devil, he was thinking. He had just resisted the temptation to stride off in the direction of the meadow and the daffodils. Yet he was to meet her again after all today. Here. She was coming to dinner.

Well, at least tonight she would not be surrounded by little trumpets of sunshine fallen from the sky.

And if he was not very careful, he was going to find himself penning sonnets after all. Shudderingly awful ones.

Little trumpets of sunshine, for the love of God.

But his headache suddenly seemed to have eased.

5

A
gnes did not go back to the park, despite the facts that it was a lovely day and the daffodils would not bloom forever or even for much longer. She stayed home instead to wash her hair and dream up excuses for not going out to dinner. She could not do more than dream, however, for Dora looked as though she would snatch at the flimsiest excuse to stay at home with her.

Agnes wondered if
he
had gone back this morning and, if so, how he had felt to discover she was not there. He would probably have shrugged and forgotten her within moments. It must not be difficult for a man like him to find women to kiss whenever he pleased.

A man like him.

She knew nothing about him, apart from the fact that he had once been a military officer and must have been wounded severely enough to have to spend a few years in Cornwall at the home of the Duke of Stanbrook, recuperating. The only sign of any wound now was his slight stammer, and that might have nothing to do with the wars. Perhaps he had always had a speech impediment.

But—
a man like him.
He was extraordinarily handsome. More than that, though, he radiated a magnetic,
almost overpowering masculinity. His hooded eyes and mobile eyebrow suggested that he was a rake. And his looks, his physique, his air of assured command would all make him a very successful one and probably a ruthless one.

Not that she could be sure of anything. She did not
know
him.

She donned her pale green silk when it was time to get ready, and remembered that it was what she had worn to the harvest ball. It could not be helped. It was her best evening gown, and nothing less would do for tonight. No one would remember anyway.
He
would not. And apart from Sophia and Dora, no one else among tonight’s guests had seen her that night. She dressed her hair a little more severely than she would have liked. She ought not to have washed it today. It was always at its silkiest and least manageable on the first day.

Who would care what she looked like?

Dora looked positively pasty, and her dark hair was even more severe than her sister’s.

“Sit down and let me do your hair again,” Agnes said. Dealing with her sister’s appearance and soothing her jitters helped calm her own discomfort and embarrassment until the carriage arrived from Middlebury, and it was time to go.

There were only ten people gathered in the drawing room when she and Dora were announced, and two of them were Sophia and Viscount Darleigh, with whom they were long familiar. Three of the others had come with them to the cottage yesterday. It really ought not to be an ordeal, then, to meet the others. Yet there seemed to be far more than just ten persons in the room, and it was hard to convince oneself that they were just people like anyone, despite the grandeur of their titles.

Really, of course, Agnes was forced to admit to
herself, there was only one of the company she dreaded meeting, and he was no stranger.

The Duke of Stanbrook was a tall, elegant, austere-looking older gentleman with dark hair graying attractively at the temples. Sir Benedict Harper was lean and handsome—and seated in a wheeled chair. His wife, Lady Harper, was tall and shapely, very dark, and stunningly beautiful in a faintly foreign sort of way. The Earl of Berwick was a dark-haired young man who somehow remained good-looking despite the nasty scar that slashed across his face and slightly distorted one eye and one side of his mouth.