Authors: Mary Balogh
He would make her happy. No, perhaps not that. Good sex was not synonymous with happiness. He would give her good sex. It was the only thing of value that he
could
give. No experience was ever wasted, she had said. Well, he had plenty of that.
He smiled at her. She did not smile back, but there was a softness and an openness to her that he knew was deliberate. She was allowing this, both for him and for herself. She had chosen
him,
he thought in some wonder. There must have been other men in more than eight years, other candidates more worthy than he. He knew of a couple right here in this neighborhood. But she had chosen him—just for now.
For a little while.
Perhaps because she knew he would go away as soon as his family left? Perhaps because she knew there was no chance of permanence? He was not a permanent sort of man. Or perhaps because she really did not want permanence but merely a brief affair with good sex.
Did it matter why she had chosen him? Or why he had chosen her?
He reached behind her and undid the fastenings of her dress. He drew it off her shoulders and down her arms. It slid to the floor to pool about her feet. She was not wearing stays. He had realized that downstairs earlier. She did not need them. He kneeled down, removed first one slipper and then the other, rolled her silk stockings down over her calves and off her feet. Her legs were long and well shaped. He stood. She was wearing only her shift, which barely covered her bosom and reached not quite to her knees.
He drew a slow breath and reached for the hem, but her fingertips came lightly to his wrists.
“I would be uncomfortable,” she said.
With her own nakedness? He nodded. He would make her comfortable when they were on the bed. There was no hurry. Experience had taught him that, and he was glad tonight to be experienced, though his mind did not even touch upon all the women with whom he had acquired it.
For tonight there was only her. Imogen. A bit of a clumsy name, he had thought at first. Now he thought it perfect for her. Individual. Strong. Beautiful. Imogen.
He did not have any inhibitions about his own nakedness. He undressed while she watched, setting his clothes on a chair beside the window. And he did not stop when he came to his drawers, his last remaining garment. He removed them, then came back to her and cupped her face with his hands, and brushed his lips across hers. He was almost fully aroused, but she was no virgin to become vaporish at the sight. She had seen a man in his desire before.
“I knew you would be as beautiful without your clothes as you are with,” she said, sounding almost resentful.
“I am sorry if I offend you.” He smiled. “And I will wager you are as beautiful without yours as you are with too. A man does not necessarily like to be described as
beautiful,
you know.”
“Not even when he
is
?”
Her shoulders and her arms, he noticed, were pebbled with goose bumps.
“But I leave you cold, do I?” He moved his hands down to her shoulders and drew her against him. “I must be losing my touch.”
“I very much doubt it,” she said, her hands—her
cold
hands—spreading over his chest.
“Come,” he said, leading her to the bed and throwing back the covers. “Let me warm you up.”
It did not take long. Not that he did all the warming. She had decided that she would let this happen, he had already realized, but there was nothing passive about the letting. She was going to
make
it happen, and abandoned herself to passion as soon as her back encountered the mattress. He doubted she even realized when her shift was peeled off over her head or that they had left the candle burning. She kissed him as though she would never have enough of him—just as he kissed her, in fact. And when his hands and his mouth explored every inch of her, teasing and arousing as they went,
her
hands and mouth were busy on him. They did not need either a fire in the hearth or blankets on the bed. They created their own roaring furnace of heat and desire and passion.
When his hand went between her legs, she opened and lifted to him. She was hot and wet to his fingers, and his thumb caressed her to an almost instant cresting and release. She sighed out loud and rolled into him, relaxed for the moment but unsated. Her mouth found his.
“Percy,” she whispered against his lips.
It tipped him over the edge—just that, the sound of his name on her lips.
He drew her beneath him, slid his hands under her as she lifted her long legs and twined them about his, and went hard into her. Experience almost let him down then. He almost went off in her like a randy schoolboy. She was hot and moist and welcomed him with a slow, firm clenching of inner muscles.
It took him a few moments to control himself while he held deep in her, in a near ecstasy of pain.
And then they made slow, deliberate, exquisitely satisfying love. He had never before thought of sex with that particular euphemism. There was no love involved with having sex. It was purely, earthily, wondrously physical. But with her—with Imogen—sex was more than just that. Not love, but . . . But there was a deficiency of language.
It was strange how the thoughts were present in his mind even while his body was fully concentrated upon the sex act. Or upon making love. Or whatever the devil . . .
Then her inner muscles clenched as he thrust but did not unclench as they had done for the past several minutes in perfect rhythm with his withdrawals. And it was not just the inner muscles. Her whole body was taut and straining and lifting harder against his. He pressed deep again and held still. And . . .
Good Lord. Heaven help him . . .
Good Lord.
He had been going to wait for her to climax and then continue toward his own release. But there was some sort of explosion that happened simultaneously inside his head and in his loins—and in her too.
And sometimes there was no experience to draw upon.
And absolutely no vocabulary.
He lay spent and heavy and panting on her, and she panted beneath him, all relaxed and hot and sweaty, and what had happened to all her goose bumps?
“Sorry,” he murmured, disengaging from her and rolling off her and reaching down to pull the bedcovers over them. “I was squashing you.”
“Mmm.” She rolled into his side, all soft woman and warm, silky hair.
Maybe she had the same problems with vocabulary.
“Thank you,” he murmured. He was sinking fast into warm, comfortable oblivion.
“Mmm,” she said again. Very eloquent.
He shifted position, slid an arm beneath her neck to cup her shoulder with his hand.
“Do you mind if I sleep here for a little while?” he asked her.
“No.”
He was sliding deeper, as he guessed she was, when a trot-trot-trotting sound was followed by a great warm lump of something landing heavily on the bed and worming its way between their legs.
“Damned dog,” he muttered, but he was too sleepy to apologize for his language or to order the damned dog to get down and leave a man alone with his lover.
* * *
Imogen awoke when warm lips closed briefly over her own. She kept her eyes shut for a few moments. She did not want to disturb the dream. She knew it was not a dream, that it was real, but she half wished it were just a dream, something for which she need not bear responsibility.
But she only
half
wished it.
His face was above her own. She could see him quite clearly. The candle was still burning. She had no idea what time it was, how long they had slept. The dog, she realized, had gone from between them.
“I should take myself off back home,” he said, “before any of the servants are about.”
He looked predictably gorgeous, his dark hair disheveled, his eyelids sleepy, his shoulders bare. He was in her own bed with her, she thought foolishly. They had done
that
together, and it had been wonderful. If there was to be guilt, she was not going to feel it yet. Or at all. She had quite consciously decided to do this, to enjoy it and him. She slid her hands over his shoulders, cupped the sides of his neck, rubbed her thumbs over the underside of his jaw.
“You need a shave,” she said.
He smiled slowly, that genuine, devastatingly attractive smile that began with his eyes.
“Are you afraid of whisker burn, Lady Barclay?” he asked.
“No.” She found herself smiling back at him. “You are leaving, are you not, Lord Hardford?”
“Yes,” he said. “After.”
“After?”
“After I have said a thorough good-bye,” he said. “No, that sounds too final. After I have said a thorough farewell. May I?”
She drew his face down to hers in reply.
“Let me do it,” he murmured against her lips as he moved over and onto her between her thighs and came into her, hard and ready and deep. “Relax.”
It was not what she had intended but . . . well, he was the expert.
It was delicious beyond words—to lie open on her back, all her muscles relaxed, even the inner ones that ached to close about him. To feel the hard, steady rhythm of his lovemaking into the soft heat of her body. To surrender. To receive and give nothing in return
except
her surrender. It was against her very nature to be submissive. It was something entirely new to her.
It was . . . well, it was delicious beyond words.
And, totally surprisingly, she shivered into release—but release from
what
?—after a few minutes. He felt it and held still and firm in her until she was finished, and then he continued until he was done and she felt the hot gush of his release deep inside.
For a moment—ah, foolishness indeed!—she wished she was not barren. But she let the thought go and enjoyed the full weight of his body relaxing onto her.
She could hear the dog snuffling in his sleep from somewhere in the room.
What was it going to be like, she found herself wondering as she stared up at the slope of the ceiling, after he had gone? Not just from her house tonight, but . . . after he had gone from Hardford and Cornwall, perhaps never to return.
He inhaled deeply and audibly and lifted himself away from her and off the bed. She watched him get dressed. He turned to watch
her
as he did so. He was totally unself-conscious about his body, she realized. She desperately wanted to pull the blankets up from her waist but did not do so. It would be absurd to cover herself out of embarrassment in light of what they had done twice in the past few hours.
“When I seek refuge here again,” he said as he pulled on his coat, “I will be quite happy with conversation and perhaps some tea. And I will not have a temper tantrum even if you turn me away altogether. I do not want you to think that I will come here in the future only to bed you. I do not want to think of you as my mistress. You are not that.”
“But how disappointing,” she said. “I was looking forward to negotiating with you on the size of my salary.”
“What?” he said. “Half a roof is not enough?”
“Ah, but both halves actually belong to you,” she reminded him, “as does the house beneath them. You have said so yourself. You became very lord-of-the-manorish and quite obnoxious, in fact, when you said it.”
“Did I?” He tipped his head to one side and looked at her with a lazy smile—another new expression. “But I do not own the woman inside the house, do I? Nor do I wish to. You may turn me away whenever you choose, Imogen, or ply me with tea, or bring me to bed.”
And there it was. The real man. The real Percy Hayes, Earl of Hardford, all artifice stripped away. A decent, principled man, whom she liked. Oh, too tame a word. She liked him enormously.
“You can bring my dog to bed too if you wish,” he said, “to cuddle between us
after
.”
She laughed.
His head tipped a little farther to the side.
“Imogen,” he said, “let yourself do that more often. Please?”
But he did not wait for an answer. He strode toward the bed, kissed her firmly on the lips, and pulled the blankets up to her chin.
“I know you have been longing to do that for the last ten minutes,” he said. “Stay there. I will see myself out. That key I saw hanging beside the door in the hall is not the only one you possess, is it?”
She shook her head.
“I will take it, then,” he said, “and lock the door behind me. I will not also
un
lock it at any time to let myself in, though. That will be by invitation only after I have knocked. Good night.”
“Good night, Percy,” she said, and saw a flicker of something—desire?—in his eyes before he turned away.
“Come along, Hector,” he said. “This is a time when you definitely
must
follow along at your master’s heels.”
Imogen listened to their footsteps descending the stairs—he had not taken the candle with him—and the front door opening and then closing. She heard the scrape of the key turning in the lock. And she set the heels of both hands over her eyes and wept.
She did not know why. They were not tears of sadness—or joy.
P
ercy had no idea what time it was when he arrived home, but at least he could see no light in any windows as he approached. He hoped that meant everyone, including his newly arrived friends, was in bed. No one was going to believe he had been out stretching his legs for several hours. And he was not in the mood for any male bragging on his own part or ribbing on theirs.
She lived in a house that
he
owned in a corner of
his
park surrounding
his
principal seat. She shared his name and still bore the female half of one of the titles that was his. He was Viscount Barclay; she was the viscountess. It was all rather bothersome. And he had no idea if she knew how to prevent conception. He had not thought to ask. He never did, but all the women who had been his mistresses or his casual amours from among the
ton
had known how to look after themselves and had not needed to be asked. He suspected that Imogen Hayes, Lady Barclay, was not that kind of woman.
She would
not
be pleased if she was forced to marry him.
Neither would he.
He lit a candle and looked down at Hector, who was looking back with his bulging eyes and ever-hopeful expression.
“The trouble is, Hector,” he said, though he kept his voice down out of deference to the sleeping house, “that I am not accustomed to thinking and behaving responsibly. Is it time I learned, do you think?”
Hector gazed earnestly back and waved his apology for a tail.
“Yes?” Percy said. “I was afraid you would say that. I do not want to give her up, though. Not yet. And she needs me. What the devil am I saying? How could anyone possibly need
me
? She needs . . . something, though. Laughter. She needs laughter. Heck, I can make her laugh.”
Lord, here he was talking to a dog and he was not even drunk.
If he took Hector back to the second housekeeper’s room—why
was
it called that?—he would probably end up letting the whole menagerie out.
“Oh, come on, then,” he said ungraciously, and made his way upstairs. Hector trotted after him, looking almost cocky.
Man and faithful hound.
He was not ready to give her up. He had only just had her. She had been a one-man woman until now. He had no doubt whatsoever of that. And that one man had been gone longer than eight years—after a four-year marriage. She had been a powder keg of passion tonight. It had not been just the outpouring of eight years of suppressed sexuality, though. At least, he did not think so. It had been very deliberate. She had been right there with him. She had called him by name.
Damn it—could he not just enjoy the feeling of relaxation left over from some vigorous and thoroughly pleasurable sex? It was unlike him to
think
about the experience. To worry about it, even.
He was worried.
Was she going to regret what she had done?
Had
he seduced her or at least led her into temptation?
Was she with child?
Or in danger of being if they continued their liaison? He was
not
ready for fatherhood. Or husbandhood either. Was that a word?
Husbandhood?
Probably not. He ought to write his own dictionary. It would give him something marginally useful to do.
Watkins, the idiot, was sitting quietly in his dressing room, waiting up for him.
“What the devil time is it?” Percy asked, frowning.
Watkins looked at the clock, visible now that Percy had brought a candle into the room. “Twelve minutes after three, my lord.”
There was no point in scolding or what-the-deviling. Percy allowed his valet to undress him and produce a nightshirt warmed by the fire in the bedchamber. And then he climbed into bed and promptly fell asleep with Hector curled and huffing contentedly beside him.
* * *
Mrs. Wilkes, who asked to be called Meredith, called at the dower house the following morning with Mr. Galliard, her father, and her young son. Mr. Galliard, Imogen remembered, was Mrs. Hayes’s brother. She was gradually sorting out who was who among the relatives.
They had not come to visit, however, and declined her offer of coffee with thanks. They were taking Geoffrey down onto the sands so that he could run free and work off some energy. The child was currently sitting on the doorstep, his arms around a happily purring Blossom. They had called in with a message. The older ladies were going into the ballroom after morning coffee and intended to make plans for the upcoming birthday party.
“And of course,” Meredith said with a smile, “it is to be the grandest entertainment this part of the country has ever seen. Poor Percy—he will hate it. Though I daresay he will survive the ordeal. And he deserves it anyway after running off to London in order to escape just such a party in Derbyshire right
on
his birthday. Aunt Julia was crushed with disappointment.”
“That young man has been spoiled all his life,” Mr. Galliard added fondly. “Though he has come out of it relatively unscathed. What Meredith has forgotten to add, Lady Barclay, is that you are to take yourself off to the hall as fast as your feet will convey you—
if you will be so good
. Your opinion is being solicited, young lady. And my sisters are not to be trifled with when they are making plans. Neither is Edna Eldridge. I have not yet sized up Lady Lavinia, though she appears to be happy enough to be drawn into action. The dragon, however, will have nothing to do with any plans to celebrate anything that concerns a
man
.”
“Papa!”
Meredith exclaimed, laughing. “Was Mrs. Ferby
really
married for just a few months when she was seventeen, Cousin Imogen? And did she
really
worry her husband to death?”
Less than half an hour later Imogen walked up to the hall on another brilliantly sunny morning. She hoped, hoped,
hoped
she could reach the ballroom without running into the Earl of Hardford. The events of last night seemed unreal today despite the physical evidence of a slight and pleasurable soreness. It was going to seem strange and a little embarrassing to see him again. Today she could not even think of him as
Percy
.
As luck would have it, she spotted him in the distance over by the stables with Mr. Cyril Eldridge and two strange gentlemen who she assumed were his newly arrived friends from London. They were talking with James Mawgan, Dicky’s former batman, now the head gardener.
Lord Hardford saw her, raised a staying hand, and came striding across the lawn, the other gentlemen with him. She clasped her own gloved hands at her waist and waited. Oh, dear, he looked very handsome and virile in his riding clothes. And they must have
been
riding. He was carrying a crop. Imogen felt a dull throbbing memory of where he had been last night.
“Lady Barclay.” He touched the brim of his tall hat with the crop. “May I have the pleasure of presenting Viscount Marwood and Sidney Welby? Lady Barclay is the widow of my predecessor’s son, who died in the Peninsula. She lives at the dower house over there.” He nodded in the direction from which she had come.
The gentlemen bowed and Imogen curtsied.
“You will stay out of the way of my mother and my aunts if you know what is good for you, Lady Barclay,” Mr. Eldridge said, and grinned. “They are about to force the entire neighborhood to celebrate in grand fashion Percy’s long-gone birthday.”
“A grand ball, I understand,” she said. “I have been summoned to discuss what might be done with the ballroom.”
“Well, we all know what ballrooms are for,” Mr. Welby said. “You are doomed to be doing the dainty with all the village maidens, Perce.”
“You too, Sid,” he said. “Why else did you come all the way from London? For a private and decorous birthday tea? You
have
met my mother before, have you not? Allow me to escort you to the ballroom, Lady Barclay.” He offered her his arm.
Imogen hesitated. She would have said no, but his friends might consider it ill-mannered and she might leave him feeling foolish.
“Thank you,” she said, slipping her hand through his arm.
“I’ll show you the way down to the beach,” she heard Mr. Eldridge say to the other two gentlemen. “I was down there yesterday.”
“Imogen,” the earl said softly as they approached the house. He was looking directly down at her.
“Lord Hardford.”
“I am
Lord Hardford
this morning, am I?” he asked her.
She turned her face unwillingly to his. She wished his eyes were not quite so blue.
“Are you sorry?” he asked her.
“No.”
She would never be sorry. She was determined not to be.
“
May
I come again?” he asked. “If you have not changed your mind in the cold light of day. Though not necessarily to go to bed.”
She drew a slow breath. “You may come,” she said, “for tea and conversation. And to go to bed too. I hope.”
Having decided to take a sort of vacation from her life, to have an affair with a man who would be here just a short while, she wanted the whole of it. He would be gone soon. And
she
would be gone soon—to Penderris Hall. She wanted to sleep with him again and again and again in the meanwhile—even if the price was to be tears, as it had been last night after he left.
“I will come, then,” he said. “For all three. Imogen.”
With those words, they were inside the house, and the young twins were chasing Prudence through the hall, trying to catch her in what was clearly a lost cause. They were flushed and giggling and announced their intention of going out to see the kittens if someone would care to accompany them. One of them—it was impossible to tell them apart—batted her eyelids at Lord Hardford, and they both giggled again. The other asked where Mr. Welby and Lord Marwood had gone—and they both giggled. There was no further chance for private talk. The earl abandoned Imogen at the open doors of the ballroom after grimacing at the sight of his mother and aunts and Aunt Lavinia in a huddle inside.
“Enjoy yourself,” he said.
“Oh,” she assured him, “I shall. I want to see you dancing in surroundings as splendid as they can be made.”
“You had better save all the waltzes for me,” he said.
“If you ask nicely,” she told him, “perhaps I will save one.”
He laughed and strode away, and she realized she was smiling after him.
* * *
Percy’s shoulder was propped against the wooden partition that had been built around Fluff’s nest in the stables, his arms crossed over his chest, faithful hound seated alertly at his booted feet. He had always been fond of the youngsters in the family, especially those in the obnoxious age range between five and eighteen, when they giggled or guffawed or climbed trees they were not supposed to climb or swam in lakes in which they were not supposed to swim or put toads in their tutors’ beds or spiders down their governesses’ necks. The age, in fact, when most adults found them trying and tiresome and occasionally loathsome and best appreciated in their absence.
He liked them.
His family abounded with such youngsters as well as with the under-fives, whom everyone adored for their fat cheeks and plump legs and lisping voices. But today only Alma and Eva were available, so here he was because they had wanted him to come. They were squealing over the kittens and picking them up one by one while Fluff looked uneasily on. They were trying to decide which one they would like to take home with them—they seemed to be agreed upon the communal possession of just one. The kittens would not be ready to leave their mother until sometime after they left, of course, but he let them dream.
As a result of his mother’s and aunts’ visit to the village yesterday afternoon with Lady Lavinia, it seemed that four of the six kittens were already spoken for. And the Misses Kramer and their mother had apparently met Biddy, the sausage dog, at some time and had declared her to be the sweetest little thing they had ever seen. Perhaps, Lady Lavinia had said at dinner last night, they could be persuaded to take her, though she would be missed.
He had heard himself agreeing but insisting that it would happen
only
if they would take Benny too, Biddy’s tall friend, since the two were inseparable. And he had said it, he had realized, not so much in the hope of getting rid of two of the strays instead of just one as out of concern for the well-being of both dogs. Though it
would
be good to deplete the menagerie. Blossom was firmly established at the dower house. Fluff had learned mousing skills somewhere during her pre-Hardford days, it seemed, and had been demonstrating them with remarkable success since her move to the stables. She would remain here.
However . . . If Percy’s eyesight had not deceived him, a hideously large and ugly feline of hopelessly mixed breed and unknown sex, with matted coat and fierce face and long whiskers, had darted across his path when he was coming downstairs for breakfast this morning. A stranger, no less. But soon to become a resident? Was Lady Lavinia hoping he would not notice? Or had she sized him up and drawn her own conclusions. A disturbing possibility, that.
There was a disagreement. The girls were squabbling with raised, indignant voices—until they dissolved into giggles again.
Percy’s eyes rested thoughtfully upon Bains, the bandy-legged stable hand, who was spreading fresh straw in the stall being used for Sidney’s horse. And he thought about Mawgan, the head gardener, with whom he had been having a few words earlier before he spotted Lady Barclay. Bains had had a raw deal. He had been left behind when he had volunteered to go to the Peninsula and had had his legs and his spirit broken. He was still a mere hand in the stables. Mawgan, by contrast, had gone off to war as Barclay’s batman, had returned with the slight, though perhaps unjustified, taint of coward about him, and had been rewarded with what appeared to be a sinecure. He was head gardener, but, according to Knorr, it was another man who actually performed that function, since the other gardeners turned to him for instructions. Knorr had so far been unable to ascertain what exactly Mawgan did to earn his salary, though it was still only February and not high gardening season.