Only a Kiss (22 page)

There was nothing sinister in any of those details, except the threatening letters. Even when one put them all together, there was nothing convincing, nothing that would not be laughed out of any court in the land.

... when I knew her ladyship was still alive and had been released and brought home all out of her mind like.

The bottom felt as if it had fallen out of Percy’s stomach at the remembered words.

Imogen
all out of her mind.
Living for a while at her brother’s house unable to sleep, eat, or leave her room. Living for three years at Penderris Hall until she had transformed herself into a marble lady and could cope once again with the outside world from within her rigid shield.

And then, Imogen laughing and curled up in his arms. Sleeping with her head on his shoulder and grumbling incoherently when he awoke her.

... all out of her mind like.

Love, he thought almost viciously, was the damnedest thing, and he had been wise to avoid it all these years.
Not
the sort of love he felt for his family, but the sort of which the great poets wrote. Euphoria for one minute, if that, and blackest despair for an eternity after.

But how did one
un
love?

He loved Imogen Hayes, Viscountess Barclay, so deeply that he almost hated her.

And let his mind work
that
one out if it dared.

He had to see her.

But first . . .

*   *   *

Imogen ought to have been reading or crocheting or writing a letter. She ought at the very least to have been sitting upright in her chair like a lady, her back straight as she had been taught to sit when she was a girl. Instead she was slouched down in one of the chairs by the fire, her back in an inelegant arch, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. Her head was nestled in a cushion. Blossom was curled up on her lap and Imogen had one hand buried in the cat’s fur. She was drifting pleasantly in and out of consciousness. She had not had much sleep last night or the two nights before—her lips curved into a smile at the remembered reason for that—and it had been a long and busy morning. Now it was late afternoon and she intended to relax. She expected, and hoped for, another night of little sleep tonight.

She was just drifting off to sleep when something solid came between her and the heat of the fire and a shadow obstructed its light. At the same time her incoherent dream became fragrant with a familiar smell and she smiled one of her smug smiles. Blossom purred. Imogen made a sound that was very similar.

“Sleeping Beauty,” the fragrant shadow murmured, and then his lips were light and warm and parted on hers and she moved deeper into her dream.

“Mmm.” She smiled at him and lifted her hands to his shoulders.

His legs were on either side of hers, his hands braced on the arms of the chair, his face a few inches from her own. He looked large and looming and gorgeous. He smelled delicious.

“I did
not
use the key,” he assured her. “I was let in quite respectably by your housekeeper, though she was looking rather like a prune. I had better not be alone in here with you for long. She will be getting ideas.”

Blossom jumped down off her lap, contemptuously close to Hector, and Hector barked once sharply, bared his teeth, growled, and then barked once again. The cat crossed to the other chair in rather ungainly haste.

“Goodness,” Imogen said. “That is the first time I have heard Hector’s voice.”

“I am training him to be fierce,” Percy said, straightening up.

“What you
are
training him to do,” she said, “is to have some confidence in himself.”

“Come down onto the beach with me,” he said.

Imogen raised her eyebrows as she sat up. “Is that a request, Lord Hardford, or a command?”

“A command,” he said. “Please? I need you.”

She looked closely at him. He was looking grim about the mouth. She got to her feet and went to fetch her cloak and bonnet and put on shoes suitable for walking on the sand.

There were several snowdrops blooming in her garden, and a clump of primroses was beginning to stir into life in one corner. She did not stop either to look at them or to draw attention to them. She led the way out through the gate.

“You are not with any of your guests this afternoon?” she asked, though the answer was perfectly obvious.

“All the over-forties tired themselves out this morning,” he said, “and are variously disposed about the house with sedentary activities. The younger lot have gone off in a body with young Soames and his sisters to have a look at some ruined castle on the other side of the valley. It is said to be picturesque, and I daresay it is.”

“And you chose to drag me down onto the beach rather than go with them?” she said.

He did not answer. And she was interested to note that when they came to the path down to the beach, he turned onto it without hesitation and led the way with bold, almost reckless strides. There was a great deal of unleashed energy inside him, she sensed. Perhaps an
angry
energy.

She would not pry, she decided. It might explode out of him before he was ready to do something more constructive with it. Perhaps, despite his words and his kiss when he came upon her asleep a short while ago, he was regretting their affair. Perhaps he did not know how to break the news to her that it was over.

Oh, please, please let it not be that. Not yet. Not just yet.

He turned and lifted her down from the rock above the beach without waiting for her to move onto the last short section of the path and descend on her own. He set her down and gazed grimly at her, his hands hard on her waist.

“You did not mention the valet,” he said.

She waited for some explanation. None came, only an accusing glare. “The valet?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Your husband’s,” he said.

Comprehension dawned. “Mr. Cooper? Oh, it was a terrible tragedy. He drowned.”

“He would have been your husband’s batman,” he said.

“He was looking forward to it,” she told him, “though Dicky offered to release him and give him a good character if he preferred to stay and look for a new position. It was terribly sad. He was only twenty-five.”

“And then Bains volunteered to go in his stead,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Dicky was fond of him, and he was very eager to go. We were surprised that his father would not agree. We expected that he would see it as a great opportunity for his son. But I suppose he wanted to keep him home, where he would be safe.”

“And so Mawgan went,” he said. “He had risked his own life trying to save the valet’s.”

“Yes, I believe he did try,” she said. “But it was not just that. Mr. Ratchett had a word with my father-in-law and he had a word with my husband, and Dicky needed a batman in a hurry.”

“Was it a reluctant choice?” he asked.

“Not particularly.” She frowned. “We did not know him at all well and there was no time to get to know him before we all sailed. But Dicky never complained about him. He was just a bit . . . sullen. Or perhaps that is too harsh a word. He was reticent.”

What was this all about?

“I went to pay a call upon Bains’s father this morning,” he said. He was still holding her by the waist, and he was still frowning at her.

“Oh, but he died,” she said, “not long before Christmas. I baked a cake and took it to Mrs. Bains because Dicky—and I—had always been fond of Colin. I was still at the dower house, so it must have been before the roof blew off.”

“Bains Senior was over the moon with pride and joy, or words to that effect, when he first knew that Viscount Barclay had chosen to take his boy to the Peninsula with him as his batman,” he said.

Imogen frowned back at him and shook her head slowly. “That is what Mrs. Bains told you?”

“And then suddenly, for no discernible reason, he changed his mind,” Percy said. “And he was quite adamant. Mountains would not have moved him. Neither would the pleadings and even the tears of his son. He would give no reason—not then or ever.”

“What?” Her frown had deepened.

He released her suddenly and turned to look at the cliff face on the west side of the path. He looked more than grim now. He looked like granite.

“I am going up,” he said.

They had not taken even one step along the beach after coming all the way down here. Neither had Hector. He was seated at their feet.

“Very well,” she said. Her mind was feeling a bit addled. There had been a number of threads to their conversation for the past few minutes, seemingly random threads that nevertheless should somehow connect themselves into a weave and a pattern, she felt. But she had not made the connections yet. Or perhaps she was afraid to try too hard.

“I mean up there,” he said, pointing off to the left of the path down to the beach.

“Up the cliff face?” she asked him. “You are going to
climb
?”

“I am,” he said, and he took off his hat and dropped it to the sand. His gloves and his greatcoat followed and then his neckcloth and cravat—and his coat. It was not a particularly cold day, but neither was it by any means a warm one in which to be standing on the beach in shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

“But why?” she asked. “You are afraid of the cliffs.”

“For precisely that reason.”

And he strode away from her.

I
t was what he had intended from the moment he had seen his cousins and friends off on their afternoon excursion. They had been disappointed that he was not going with them, and his friends had looked downright puzzled.

Percy had known he was going to climb the cliffs. Why he had not stridden off to perform the foolish feat alone, he did not know. Why drag Imogen along with him? To rescue him if he got stuck or to go tearing off to fetch help? To watch and admire while he defied death in such a daring escapade? To pick up the pieces if he fell? He had dashed well better
not
fall. She did not need that memory to add to all her others.

He had chosen what looked like a climbable route to the top while he was standing beside her, and strode toward the base of it. He noticed that he had picked a climb that was not too far left of the path, the unconscious idea being perhaps that if he got to a point at which there was no feasible way up, he would not have to find his way back down—perish the thought—but could edge sideways and walk the rest of the way to the top.

He looked down when he was probably not much more than his own height above the beach and decided on the instant that he would not do
that
again. Neither did he look up except to his next hand – and foothold. Climbing, he discovered, was like a number of other concentrated activities. It was a moment-by-moment-by-moment thing—don’t look ahead, don’t look back, focus upon what must be done now.

Terror started in his mind, then engulfed his heart and set it to pumping and thumping through his chest and up into his ears and his head, and then took up residence in every bone and muscle and nerve-ending in his body. At one point he was all pins and needles. At another he was so weak that he felt like a newborn babe. Everything in him screamed to stop while he was still safe. Except that he had never been farther from being safe in his life and stopping was out of the question. If he stopped, he would never move again—not until his tutor and a boatman arrived to pry him off the face of the cliff and carry him down to the boat.

There was a wind, which he had not noticed when he left the house or when he descended the path to the beach. It roared about his head and his feet at what must surely be hurricane force. The rocks to which he clung were slick with ice, and the sun baked his back and the top of his head. And such imaginings meant that he was going out of his mind—which might be the best place to be at the moment. All the better if he could go out of his body too.

Climb. Don’t think. Climb. Don’t stop. Don’t wonder how far you have come. Climb. Don’t wonder how far there is to go. Don’t wonder where Imogen is. Don’t wonder if that valet was murdered. Stop thinking and climb. Don’t wonder if Bains’s father was threatened and intimidated. Don’t think. Don’t stop. Don’t wonder if Barclay was lured to his death and if Imogen had escaped by the skin of her teeth. Climb. Don’t stop.

At one point he looked down inadvertently. He knew the sea was not directly below him—the tide did not come in that far. Nevertheless, the sea was all he saw, gray and choppy and far, far below the hurricane that was roaring about his feet. He wished he had taken off his waistcoat. He wished all the bones from his knees had not migrated elsewhere. He hoped like the devil that he was not going to arrive at the top with wet breeches. He hoped like a thousand devils that he was going to arrive at the top.

Climb. Don’t stop. Climb.

He should have worn his other boots.

A couple of times he was stuck with seemingly nowhere else to go. Each time he found a way. The third time it happened he was scared out of his wits—what was left of them. There was nothing there above him. There was nowhere else to go even though he pawed about with one hand to find solid rock. He crawled along a horizontal surface, still looking, and something came down flat on his back—a hand?

“Don’t ever,
ever
do that again,” a shaking voice said, and for a moment he mistook it for an angel’s voice and thought perhaps he was crawling on his belly toward the pearly gates. “Not
ever,
do you hear me? I could
kill
you.”

“That would be a bit of a shame,” he said to the grass on the cliff top—he was grasping two fistfuls of it, “when I seem to have survived the cliff face.”

He rolled over onto his back, and she came to her knees beside him, and somehow—for some idiotic reason—they were both laughing. He wrapped his arms about her—they felt a bit like jelly—and drew her down on top of him while they snorted and shook with mirth.

By Jove, he had done it.

“By Jove, I’ve done it!”

“Why?” she asked, rising to her knees again.

Two bulging eyes, gazing steadily at him from his other side, asked the same question.

“I have some dragons to slay,” he explained. “But first I had to slay the one at my back.”

She shook her head and tutted but did not say what she obviously
wanted
to say. Hector merely looked.

“Percy,” she said then, “you must be frozen.”

“Frozen?”
he said. “Are you sure someone has not shoveled more coals onto the sun?”

She looked upward and smiled. “What sun?”

Lord, but he loved to see her smile. He was glad he had survived just to see that.

Clouds stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon. No sun. And what had happened to the hurricane?

“
What
dragons?” she asked him. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap.

“I called a staff meeting this morning,” he told her.

“Yes. Mrs. Primrose told me,” she said, “though she would not tell me what it was about. She would only say it was business.
You
called it?”

“I made it clear,” he said, “that my land and the beach below here are now and forever out of bounds to smuggling, and that no employee of mine will be involved in any way in the trade. I have allowed a couple of days for any voluntary resignations and for the removal of any illegal goods from the house and grounds while I look studiously the other way. Everyone has advised me to turn a blind eye, but I have not turned it.”

She gazed steadily at him for several silent moments before leaning over him and kissing him on the lips. “When I first knew you,” she told him, “I would have said that you were as different from Dicky in every imaginable way as it is humanly possible to be. I would have been wrong.”

It was not the best feeling in the world for a man to be compared to his lover’s dead husband, even if it was a favorable comparison—especially then, in fact.

But her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“That is
exactly
what he would have done,” she said. “You fool, Percy.”

It was not great to have your lover call you a fool either.

“I l—” She clamped her lips together and returned to the upright. “I
honor
you.”

I love you?
Was that what she had stopped herself from saying just in time?

He covered the hands in her lap with one of his own.

“I am a bit of a fool actually,” he said. “Having conquered the impossible heights, I now have to trot back down the path to haul up my belongings.”

“There.” She pointed behind herself, and he saw both of his coats and his hat and cravat and neckcloth. They were even neatly folded and stacked. “How can you possibly walk around wearing all that, Percy? They weigh a
ton
.”

“Because I am tough. A real
man,
in fact.” He grinned at her. “I knew the little woman would carry them up for me.”

He caught her fist before it thumped against his shoulder and brought it to his lips. “I am sorry, Imogen,” he said. “I am sorry for all of this. You probably had other, more congenial plans for the afternoon.”

“No,” she said. “I have given myself time off for this, and I intend to enjoy every moment that offers itself.”

She bit her lower lip then, reclaimed her hand, and got to her feet

Time off?
From what? Her marble existence?

I intend to enjoy every moment that offers itself.
As though there were a time limit.

As there was. That had been clearly agreed between them. He had set one for himself. He intended to leave here soon after the ball, probably never to return. She was going off to her reunion with that Survivors’ Club group.

Was he too merely taking time off, then? From what, though? His meaningless existence? Was he going to go back to pranks and dares and mistresses and the occasional appearance in the House as a sop to his conscience?

“Tonight,” he said, “I will make sure I come with enough energy to climb the stairs to your bed. And we will make full use of it, Imogen, for hours and hours. Be prepared.”

“Oh, I will be,” she said, but she did not look at him. She was busy pulling on her gloves as he stood up.

And standing up, of course, put him in sight of the house over the gorse bushes and up the lawn. It would not do to pull her into his arms and kiss her. All the elder relatives as well as assorted servants might well be lined up in the windows gazing seaward.

His legs were still feeling decidedly unsteady, and one glance at the long drop not far from his feet assured him that he still had a very healthy fear of getting too close to the edge. But by Jove, he had climbed up.

They walked back to the dower house without talking, and he took her hand when they were on either side of the gate and squeezed it without raising it to his lips. He had not forgotten the look on her housekeeper’s face when she opened the door to him earlier.

He feared that he really had stepped into some hornet’s nest this morning.

“Until later,” he said.

“Yes.”

He strode away across the lawn without looking back.

*   *   *

To her shame, Imogen was almost an hour later than usual rising the following morning. She intended walking into the village and calling upon a few people, including Tilly and Elizabeth. She was marvelously well blessed, she realized, to have two such close women friends—close in mind and temperament as well as in age.

She was going to need them in the foreseeable future.

But she would not think of that yet. She stretched luxuriously and turned her head toward the pillow beside her own. No, she had not mistaken. He
had
left something of the smell of his cologne behind.

He had come just before midnight and not left until well after half past four. And, as he had promised, he had kept her very busy indeed during the intervening hours, with only brief respites for relaxation and snatches of sleep. They had made love four separate times. But making love with Percy, she was discovering, consisted not just in the joining of their bodies and the brisk activity that followed. It was also about talking—often utter nonsense—and laughing and touching and kissing and rolling about and—yes!—hurling pillows at each other and forgetting all about reserve and decorum and adult dignity. It was about sexual play that preceded penetration. But she had learned to give as good as she got in
that
aspect of lovemaking. If he could make her beg—and he could—then she could make him beg too. Oh, yes, she could.

And the joining of their bodies! Ah, there was nothing more wonderful in this life after lengthy romping and even more lengthy sex play. And the hard rhythms of lovemaking, and the rhythmic sounds of wetness and labored breathing, and the gradual building of tension and excitement. And the release at the end of it all—the most wonderful moment of all, and the saddest, for following that moment, there came the gradual awareness of separation even while they were still joined, the knowledge that they were two.

But there was the knowledge too that they still had some time left—more than a week.

He had left after sitting, fully clothed, on the side of the bed and kissing her slowly and thoroughly as though the previous hours had not been enough, would never be enough.

“Tonight,” he had murmured against her lips, “and tomorrow night and . . .”

She had laughed then, for Hector had been peering over the side of the bed, his chin on the bedcovers, his eyes bulging. He was such an ugly, adorable dog.

She had listened to them leave, to the sound of the key turning in the lock, and she had indulged in her usual little weep before falling so deeply asleep that she could not even remember if she had dreamed.

And now she was late waking, though it really did not matter.

Mrs. Primrose brought her breakfast to the dining room as soon as she came downstairs.

“You was wise to sleep late, my lady,” she said as she poured Imogen’s coffee. “A nasty, dismal day it is out there.”

It was too. Imogen had not noticed. There was rain on the windows, and they were even rattling in the wind. The sky beyond was leaden.

“At least,” she said, “we do not have to run upstairs with all the pails to catch the drips.”

She stirred her coffee and turned her attention to the letters beside her plate. One was from George, Duke of Stanbrook—she recognized his writing. Another was from Elizabeth—an invitation, probably, to some entertainment that included all the guests at the hall. Elizabeth had talked about it at their reading club meeting. The other letter was addressed in a round, childish hand. One of her nieces or nephews, perhaps? It had not happened before. She broke the seal of that one first out of curiosity.

It was a totally untutored hand, a jumbled mixture of capital and lowercase letters, some large, some small, some cramped, most looping. Who on earth . . . ?

You will perswaid that luver of your’s to leve here and stay away,
it read,
or you may cum to harm, yore laidyship. This is a frendly warning. Heed it.

There was no signature.

Imogen held the paper with both hands, both of them pulsing with pins and needles. She ought to have understood as soon as she saw the outside of it. More than ten years had passed, but she should have realized anyway. If she was not mistaken, the same person who had written the threatening letters to Dicky and herself before they left for the Peninsula had written this.