The Proposal (38 page)

He winked at her.
Winked.
He could not remember ever winking before in his life.

But his steward was entering the ballroom with his wife, and the vicar and his wife and son and daughter were coming behind them. Hugo turned his attention to his guests.

It was all really quite delightful, Gwen decided during the next hour. She paused to examine the thought, but there was no condescension in it. People were people, and these people were enjoying the occasion with unabashed pleasure. There was none of the restraint and polite ennui one encountered all too often with the
ton,
so many of whose members seemed to believe that it was either naïve or vulgar to enjoy anything with too great an exuberance.

The orchestra made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in skill. Most of the sets were vigorous country dances. Gwen danced them all, having assured the few people who were bold enough to ask that her limp did not deter her from dancing. And in no time at all she was flushed and laughing.

Mrs. Lowry, Hugo’s Aunt Henrietta, drew her aside between the second and third sets and asked her without preamble if she was going to marry Hugo.

“I was asked once and said no,” Gwen told her. “But that was quite a while ago, and
if
I were to be asked again, I
might
give a different answer.”

Mrs. Lowry nodded.

“His father was my favorite brother,” she said, “and Hugo has always been my favorite nephew even though I did not set eyes on him for years. He never ought to have gone away, but he did, and he suffered, and now he is back, just as tender-hearted as ever, it seems to me. I don’t want to see his heart broken.”

Gwen smiled at her.

“Me neither,” she said.

Mrs. Lowry nodded again as a few more of the aunts gathered about them.

The next set was to be a waltz. The news was buzzing about the ballroom. Some of Hugo’s neighbors had requested it and he had given the order to the orchestra leader and now there was a chorus of laughter from those same neighbors, who were all loudly urging Hugo to dance it.

He, interestingly enough, was laughing too—and then holding up both hands, palm out. For a moment as she watched him, something caught at the edges of Gwen’s mind, but it refused to come into focus and she let it go.

“I will waltz,” he said, “but only if my chosen partner clearly understands that at worst she may be dealing with squashed toes at the end of it and at best she may have laid herself open to some ridicule.”

There were a few cheers, a few jeers, and more laughter—from everyone this time.

“Come on, Hugo,” Mark, one of his cousins, called. “Show us how it is done, then.”

“Lady Muir,” Hugo said, turning and looking fully at her, “will you do me the honor?”

“Yes, go on, Gwen,” Bernardine Emes urged. “We won’t laugh at you. Only at Hugo.”

Gwen stepped forward and walked toward him as he walked toward her. They met in the middle of the gleaming dance floor, smiling at each other.

“Are my eyes deceiving me?” he asked her when they met. “Is no one else stepping onto the floor with us?”

“They are probably all taking heed of your warning about squashed toes,” she said.

“Hell and damnation,” he muttered—and did not apologize.

Gwen laughed and set her left hand on his shoulder. She held out her other hand for his, and he clasped it. His right hand came to rest at the back of her waist.

And the music began.

It took a few moments for him to get his feet under him and the sound of the music into his ears and the rhythm of the dance into his body, but then he accomplished all three and danced off about the floor with her, holding her firmly at the waist so that it felt as if her feet floated over the floor and there was no discomfort from the fact that her legs were not of equal length.

There was applause from all his family and guests gathered about the perimeter of the room, a few loud comments, a little laughter, one piercing whistle. Gwen smiled up into his face, and he smiled back.

“Don’t encourage me to relax,” he said. “That is when disaster will strike.”

She laughed and suddenly felt a great welling of happiness. It was at least equal to that tidal wave of loneliness she had felt on the beach below Penderris just before she met Hugo.

“I like your world, Hugo,” she said. “I
love
it.”

“It is not really so very different from your own, is it?” he said.

She shook her head. It was not so
very
different. It was different enough, of course, that moving back and forth between them would not be always easy—
if
that was what was going to happen.

But she was too happy for speculation at this precise moment.

“Ah,” he said, and she looked around to see that others were taking the floor and starting to waltz, and the focus of attention was no longer exclusively on them.

He twirled her about a corner of the floor and tightened his hand against the back of her waist. They were not touching, but they were definitely closer than they ought to be.

Ought to be according to
whom
?

“Hugo,” she said, looking up into his eyes—his lovely dark, intense,
smiling
eyes. And she forgot what she had been about to say.

They danced in silence for several minutes. Gwen was very consciously aware that they were among the very happiest minutes of her life. And then, before the music ended, he bent his head to murmur in her ear.

“You noticed,” he said, “that there is a loft at the far end of the stables? Where the puppies are?”

“I noticed,” she said. “I climbed right up there with Mrs. Rowlands, did I not? When she chose her puppy?”

“I cannot have you in my bed here,” he said, “while I have family and guests in my house. But after everyone has gone home and to bed, I am going to take you out there. None of the grooms sleep there. I cleaned the loft and spread fresh straw this morning and took out blankets and pillows. I am going to make love to you for what remains of the night.”

“Indeed?” she said.

“Unless you say no,” he said.

She
ought
to. Just as she ought to have down in that cove at Penderris.

“I’ll not say no,” she said as the music drew to an end and he waltzed her into one more twirl.

“Later, then,” he said.

“Yes. Later.”

She felt not a qualm of conscience.

And that little fluttering at the edge of her consciousness that she had felt when he held up his hands earlier to address the pleas that he waltz opened like a curtain from across a window, and she could see what was within.

Gwen did not want the evening to end and yet she did. There was a magnificence to a
ton
ball that she would always enjoy, but there was a warmth to this one that made it at least equally enjoyable. She loved the way all the guests at the house had called her by her first name as soon as she had invited them to do so on the second day here. And she loved the informal, affectionate way in which Hugo’s neighbors treated him. He was an angel in disguise, the butcher’s wife told Gwen at one point in the evening, forever mending chair legs or clearing blockages in chimneys or sawing off tree branches that were in danger of falling on a roof if the wind ever blew hard enough or working over a garden for someone who was getting too elderly to do it without a great deal of painful effort.

“And him
Lord
Trentham,” the woman said. “You could have knocked us all over with a feather when we found that out last year, my lady. But he
still
went on doing it, just as if he was any ordinary man. Not that many ordinary men would do what he does, mind you, but you know what I mean.”

Gwen did.

And at last the evening came to an end and all the outside guests drove off or walked in the direction of the village, lanterns held aloft and swaying in the breeze. It seemed forever after that before the last of the houseguests drifted off to bed, though it was only a little after midnight, Gwen discovered when she reached her own room. But of course, all these people worked for a living, and even when they were on holiday they did not stray far from their early mornings and early nights.

Gwen dismissed her maid for the night and changed into different clothes. She set her cloak on the bed—the red one she had been wearing when she sprained her ankle. And she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting.

Waiting for her lover, she thought, closing her eyes and clasping her hands in her lap.

She was not even going to
start
considering whether this was right or wrong, whether she ought or ought not.

She was going to spend the rest of the night with her lover and that was that.

And finally there was a light tap on the door and the handle turned quietly. He too had changed, Gwen saw as she got to her feet and flung her cloak about her shoulders and blew out the candles and left the room to join him in the long, dark corridor. He was holding a single candle in a holder. He took her hand and bent to kiss her on the lips.

They did not speak as they passed along the corridor and down the stairs and across the hall. He handed her the candle while he drew back the bolts on the door and opened it. Then he took the candle back, blew it out, and set it down on a table close to the door. It would be unnecessary outside. The clouds, which had made a dark night of it when the guests were leaving, must have moved off, and an almost full moon and millions of stars made a lamp quite unnecessary.

He took her hand again and turned in the direction of the stables. Still they did not speak. The sound of voices carried far in the night, and some people would not have been in bed for much longer than half an hour.

The stables were in darkness until Hugo took a lantern off a hook just inside the great door and lit it. Horses whinnied sleepily. The familiar smell of them and of hay and leather was not unpleasant. They walked the length of the narrow passageway between stalls, hand in hand, their fingers laced. And then he released her hand to light her way up the steep ladder to the loft before following behind her. Two or three of the puppies were squeaking in their large wooden box, and a quiet woof indicated that their mother was with them.

Hugo hung the lantern on a hook beneath a wooden beam and stooped to spread a blanket over the fresh straw. He tossed a few pillows to one end of it and turned to look at Gwen. He had to stoop slightly so that his head would not bang against the roof.

“I had better say one thing first,” he said curtly, “and get it out of the way. Otherwise I won’t know a moment’s peace.”

He was frowning and looking really quite morose.

“I love you,” he said.

He glared at her with set jaw and fierce eyes.

It would be absolutely the wrong thing to do to laugh, Gwen decided, quelling the urge to do just that.

“Thank you,” she said and stepped forward to set her fingertips against his chest and lift her face for his kiss.

“I didn’t do too well with that, did I?” he said—and grinned.

And instead of laughing, she found herself blinking back tears.

“Say it again,” she said.

“You would torture me, would you?” he asked her.

“Say it again.”

“I love you, Gwendoline,” he said. “It is actually a bit easier the second time. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

And his arms came about her and he hugged her to him tightly enough to squeeze most of the breath from her body. Gwen laughed with what breath she had left.

He released his hold on her, looked into her eyes, and undid the clasp at the neck of her cloak.

“Time for action instead of just words,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed as her cloak fell to the straw at her feet.

Only one thing had kept their lovemaking in the cove at Penderris from being perfect in Hugo’s memory. He had had his hands all over her on that occasion, and he had ridden her deep and long, but he had not had her naked. He had not known her flesh to flesh, as a man ought to know the woman he loved.
Know
in the biblical sense, that was.

Tonight they would both be naked, and they would know each other with no barrier, no artifice, no mask.

“No,” he murmured when she would have helped him undress her. No, he would not be deprived of this. And there was no real hurry. It must be at least one o’clock already, and the grooms would be here by six. But that still left plenty of time for a few good lovings and maybe a little sleep in between. He had never
slept
with a woman. He wanted to sleep with Gwendoline almost as much as he wanted to have sex with her. Well, maybe not quite as much.

He unclothed her slowly, her dress, her shift—she was wearing no stays—and on down her body until only her silk stockings remained. He stood back to look at her in the lamplight. She was beautifully, perfectly shaped. She had a woman’s body rather than a girl’s. A woman’s body to match his man’s body. He ran his hands down lightly over her breasts and in to her waist and over the flare of her hips. She shivered, though not with cold, he guessed.

“I am a little self-conscious,” she said. “I have never
done
this before. Without clothes, I mean.”

What?
What the devil sort of man had Muir been?

“You are wearing clothes,” he said. “You still have your stockings on.”

She smiled.

“Come,” he said, taking her hand. “Lie down on the blanket. I’ll take off my own clothes and then cover you with my body and so restore your modesty.”

“Oh, Hugo,” she said, laughing softly.

She lay down, and he went down on his knees to draw off her stockings, one at a time. He kissed the insides of her thighs, her knees, her calves, her ankles, the arch of her feet as he went. And then, of course, he wanted to release himself and take her then and there. He was ready. She was ready. But he had promised himself that it would be flesh to flesh this time.

He knelt back on his heels and pulled off his coat.

“Do you want me to help?” she asked.

“Another time,” he said. “Not now.”