Only a Kiss (28 page)

Alas, sanity had prevailed, though not necessarily his own.

Those friends of hers had all assured her that if she must leave their reunion early, then they quite understood and would be delighted for her—or words to that effect. The wives had assented too with hugs and kisses and sentimental tears. But they had all somehow managed to look collectively forlorn at the same time, and it was Percy himself who had declared that there was no way on this earth he was going to come between his newly betrothed and the dear friends he hoped would also be
his
dearest friends in the future—or foolish words to that effect.

He had stayed for a few days, during which time he almost lost the affections of Hector to a one-year-old toddler who chased him and mauled him and giggled over him and fell asleep on his doggie stomach and generally enslaved him.

Percy had written a whole library of letters—perish the memory—while Imogen did the same beside him in Stanbrook’s library, and sent them off. And then he had returned to London, where he saw to putting notices in the morning papers and arranging for banns to be read and—soon enough—being caught up in a ferocious tornado of wedding plans as his family gathered about him in force and his mother arrived from Derbyshire—
I came to London from Cornwall via the scenic route through Derbyshire
had become her joke of the moment.

Then the Penderris contingent had arrived in force, bringing Imogen with them—she was staying at Stanford House with the duke and had been joined there by her mother and the mother’s sister, who were somehow related to Stanbrook.

Lady Lavinia and Mrs. Ferby, Imogen’s brother and his wife, and numerous other people come for the wedding, had filled the Pulteney Hotel to the rafters.

There had been dinners and parties and soirees at the homes of various aunts and uncles of Percy’s; a betrothal ball for Meredith and Wenzel at Uncle Roderick’s, at which Percy’s engagement had been celebrated too; a ball at the Duke of Worthingham’s, at which there had been a betrothal cake in the center of the supper table; and another ball hosted jointly by Lady Trentham and her cousin, Viscountess Ravensberg, at which Percy found himself being congratulated by a rather large number of Bedwyns, including the formidable Duke of Bewcastle himself. Percy had heard him speak in the House of Lords a time or two, and for no apparent reason stood in awe of the man. Perhaps his intense light silver eyes had something to do with it, or his austere, haughty demeanor. It was something of a surprise to discover that he had a pretty though not ravishingly beautiful wife, whose smile seemed to light her up from the inside out and who seemed not one whit cowed by her husband.

It had all been enough, Percy decided as Watkins dressed him for his wedding all in silver and gray and white, to make him dashed sorry he had been forced to agree to marry the proper way—that had been Imogen’s way of putting it, anyway.

“Oh, Percy,” she had said with a sigh when he had still been making hopeful noises about going off in search of a special license. “I do so wish we could marry that way. But a wedding is not just about the bride and groom, is it? It is about their family and friends too. It is one of those rare celebratory events that punctuate a happy life. Let’s wait and marry in the proper way.”

He had
not
asked if marrying the other way would be improper. He would have given her the sun if she had asked for it, or the moon, or a proper wedding.

A proper bridegroom went to church—St. George’s on Hanover Square, of course—clad in silver, gray, and white, with yards of lace frothing at neck and cuffs and a diamond the size of a small egg winking in the linen and lace folds at his neck and rings and fobs and the Lord knew what other finery about his person.

And with unsteady knees. And two hands full of thumbs, any two or three of which were bound to drop the wedding ring at the key moment.

Cyril was no help, and Percy wondered if he should have chosen someone else to be his best man.

“What if I should drop the ring?” Cyril asked on the way to church.

Surely one of the functions of a best man—the
principal
function, in fact—was to calm the nerves of the bridegroom.

“Then you crawl around on the floor until you recover it,” Percy said. “It will not happen.”

“I have never done this before,” Cyril added.

“Neither have I,” Percy told him.

All the pews inside the church would surely have been filled just with family members and close friends. But of course, because this was a
proper wedding,
everyone who had a remote connection to the
ton
had been invited, and since the Season was just getting nicely launched and this was the very first fashionable wedding of the year—there would be others, since the Season was also the great marriage mart—everyone and his dog had accepted. Well, not dogs, actually. Hector’s nose was severely out of joint. When he had tried to trot unobtrusively out to the carriage, Percy had put his foot down, not an easy thing to do with an animal that sometimes had difficulty with the master/creature distinction.

The church was packed. There might even be a few people sitting up on the roof. There should be a few rows of chairs up there.

Cyril’s teeth were chattering almost audibly. Percy, seated with him at the front of the church, concentrated upon his ten thumbs and the necessity of converting eight of them back into fingers before they arrived at the ring part of the ceremony. He flexed them and did a mental check of his knees. He could not get married sitting down, could he?

And then it was starting—
really
starting. The clergyman, gorgeously vested, arrived at the front of the church, the buzz of conversation died to an expectant hush, the congregation got to its feet, and the organ struck up with something impressively proper.

Percy’s knees worked, and he turned to watch his bride approach along the nave, on the arm of her brother.

Lord, dear Lord.

She was all ice blue simplicity and elegance. Not a frill or a flounce or even half a yard of lace in sight. Not a curl or a wavy tendril of hair escaping from her plain straw bonnet trimmed only with a wide ribbon to match her dress. Not a jewel, except for something sparkling in her ears.

She passed elaborate splendor in the pews on both sides of her as she came. They paled into insignificance. She looked like a Nordic goddess or a Viking princess or some such thing.

She was Imogen.

For a moment when she drew closer he thought she was the marble lady. Her face was pale and set, her eyes fixed upon him. And then—watch it, knees!—she smiled. And there was no need of candles or any other illumination in St. George’s. The church was flooded with light. Or perhaps it was only his heart. Or his soul.

He did a mental check of his facial muscles and discovered that he was smiling back at her.

It was really a dashed shame, he thought later, for a fellow to miss his own wedding. But he effectively did just that, so dazzled was he by the light she brought with her and the warmth that reached out from her to envelop him too. He thought he remembered someone saying
Dearly beloved,
in the tone only a clergyman ever used, and he
did
remember a moment’s anxiety as he saw Cyril’s hand shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze while it held a gold ring, and he certainly remembered hearing that he and Imogen were now man and wife together and no man should even dream of putting them asunder and those other things that all meant simply that one was married right and tight for all eternity.

But he missed everything else.

He came back to himself only when he and his bride were in the vestry signing the register and Imogen was signing her old name for the last time.

“Though it remains the same,” her brother remarked with a chuckle, “with the addition of Countess of Hardford.”

“No,” she said softly, “it changes. All of it. I am married to Percy now.”

Percy could have bawled, but—fortunately—did not.

And then they were walking back along the nave together—he remembered to imitate the speed of a turtle—while the organ played an anthem that seemed designed to lift the top right off one’s head so that one’s soul could soar straight to heaven, and Imogen’s mother and aunts
and
Mrs. Ferby and his own mother and assorted aunts wept shamelessly and everyone else smiled enough to cause wrinkles.

“For two pins,” he murmured to his bride, “I would start skipping like a boy.”

“For two pins,” she murmured back, smiling to both right and left, “I would join you.”

“But we are at a proper wedding,” he said.

“Alas.”

And then they were outside and the sun that had been at war with the clouds covering the sky earlier had won and a cheering multitude of gawkers and the merely curious greeted them as well as a small army of grinning Survivors and cousins and friends armed with the petals of a few thousand unfortunate flowers. The petals were soon raining down about them and quite ruining the lovely paleness of their wedding attire.

And Imogen was laughing.

He would never,
ever
grow tired of hearing—and seeing—her laugh. He was laughing too, of course, but that was less of a rarity. Indeed, perhaps she cherished the rare sight of him looking earnest.

“Oh, look,” she wailed, though it was a happy wail. “Look, Percy.”

He did not need to. He had fully expected it, having been involved in his fair share of weddings over the past ten years or so. Their open carriage, bedecked nicely with flowers, was also all set to drag what appeared to be half of London’s kitchen hardware behind it, and also an ancient boot or two, all the way to Stanbrook House, where the duke had insisted the wedding breakfast be held.

“After all,” Percy said as he handed her into the carriage and the congregation began to spill out of the church behind them, “there may be one or two people in town who have not heard that we are getting married today. They must be made to hear.”

“I think all the neighbors in
Cornwall
will hear too,” she said as she settled herself on the seat and he took his place beside her. “It would not surprise me if Annie Prewett at Stanbrook House could hear the din.”

Annie, the deaf-mute housemaid who had had the courage to pass on information about the whereabouts of Ratchett and Mawgan, had been promoted to the position of Imogen’s personal maid after she had demonstrated that she had some skill in the performance of the necessary duties. And in front of them now, up on the box of the wedding carriage, waiting for the signal to move off, sat Percy’s coachman and his new footman, Colin Bains, both of them resplendent in new livery.

“And since this is a proper wedding, Lady Hardford,” Percy said in the precious remaining moments before the carriage moved and the unholy din of moving, jostling metal drowned out the joyful pealing of the church bells, “we must do what is now proper.”

She turned a laughing face toward him as he set an arm about her shoulders and cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand.

“But of course we must,” she said. “My love.”

Cheers, laughter, the ringing bells, the snorting and stamping of the horses, the deafening din of hardware—none of it mattered as he kissed his bride and her hand came to his shoulder.

Percy was, at least for the moment, in another world. And Imogen was right there with him.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book

in Mary Balogh’s Survivors’ Club series,

ONLY BELOVED

Available in May 2016 from Signet.

O
ne might almost be lulled into believing that spring was turning to summer even though it was still only May. The sky was a clear deep blue, the sun was shining, and the warmth in the air made her shawl not only unnecessary but actually quite burdensome, Dora Debbins thought as she let herself in through the front door and called to let Mrs. Henry, her housekeeper, know that she was home.

Home was a modest cottage in the village of Inglebrook in Gloucestershire, where she had lived for the past nine years. She had been born in Lancashire, and after her mother ran away when she was seventeen, she had done her best to manage her father’s large home and be a mother to her younger sister, Agnes. When she was thirty, their father had married a widow who had long been a friend of the family. Agnes, who was then eighteen, had married a neighbor who had once paid his addresses to Dora, though Agnes did not know that. Within one year Dora had realized she was no longer needed by anyone and indeed did not belong anywhere. Her father’s new wife had begun to hint that Dora ought to consider other options than remaining at home. Dora had considered seeking employment as a governess or a companion or even a housekeeper, but none of the three had really appealed to her.

Then one day by happy chance she had seen in her father’s morning paper a notice inviting a respectable gentleman or lady to come and teach music to a number of pupils on a variety of different instruments in and about the village of Inglebrook in Gloucestershire. It was not a salaried position. Indeed, it was not a real position at all. There was no employer, no guarantee of work or income, only the prospect of setting up a busy and independent business that would almost certainly supply the teacher concerned with an adequate income. The notice had also made mention of a cottage in the village that was for sale at a reasonable price. Dora had had the necessary qualifications, and her father had been willing to pay the cost of the house—more or less matching the amount of the dowry he had given with Agnes when she married. He had looked almost openly relieved, in fact, at such a relatively easy solution to the problem of having his elder daughter and his new wife living together under his roof.

Dora had written to the agent named in the notice, had received a swift and favorable reply, and had moved, sight unseen, to her new home. She had lived here busily and happily ever since, never short of pupils and never without income. She was not wealthy—far from it. But what she earned from the lessons was quite adequate to provide her needs with a little to spare for what she termed her rainy-day savings. She could even afford to have Mrs. Henry clean and cook and shop for her. The villagers had accepted her into their community, and while she had no really close friends here, she did have numerous friendly acquaintances.

She went directly upstairs to her room to remove her shawl and bonnet, to fluff up her flattened hair before the mirror, to wash her hands at the basin in her small dressing room, and to look out through the back window at the garden below. From up here it looked neat and colorful, but she knew she would be out there in the next day or two with her fork and trowel, waging war upon the ever-encroaching weeds. Actually she was fond of weeds, but not—please, please—in her garden. Let them bloom and thrive in all the surrounding hedgerows and meadows and she would admire them all day long.

Oh, she thought with a sudden pang, how she
still
missed Agnes. Her sister had lived with her here for a year after losing her husband. She had spent much of her time outdoors, painting the wildflowers. Agnes was wondrously skilled with watercolors. That had been such a happy year, for Agnes was like the daughter Dora had never had and never would. But Dora had known the interlude would not last. She had not allowed herself even to hope that it would. It had not, because Agnes had found love.

Dora was fond of Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, Agnes’s second husband. Very fond, actually, though initially she had had doubts about him, for he was handsome and charming and witty but had a mocking eyebrow she had distrusted. Upon closer acquaintance, however, she had been forced to admit that he was the ideal partner for her quiet, demure sister. When they had married here in the village last year, it had been evident to Dora that it was, or soon would be, a love match. And indeed it had turned out to be just that. They were happy together, and there was to be a child in the autumn.

Dora turned away from the window when she realized that she was no longer really seeing the garden. They lived in faraway Sussex, Agnes and Flavian. But it was not the end of the world, was it? Already she had been to visit them a couple of times, at Christmas and again at Easter. She had stayed for two weeks each time, though Flavian had urged her to stay longer and Agnes had told her with obvious sincerity that she might live with them forever if she chose.

“Forever
and
a day,” Flavian had added.

Dora did not so choose. Living alone by its very definition was a solitary business, but solitude was infinitely preferable to any alternative she had ever discovered. She was thirty-nine years old and a spinster. The alternatives for her were to be someone’s governess or companion on the one hand or a dependent relative on the other, moving endlessly from her sister’s home to her father’s to her brother’s. She was very, very thankful for her modest, pretty cottage and her independent employment and lonely existence. No, not lonely—solitary.

She could hear the clatter of china downstairs and knew that Mrs. Henry was deliberately hinting to her, without actually calling upstairs, that the tea had been brewed and carried into the sitting room and that it would go cold if she did not come down soon.

She went down.

“I suppose you heard all about the big wedding in London when you went up to Middlebury, did you?” Mrs. Henry asked, hovering hopefully in the doorway while Dora poured herself a cup of tea and buttered a scone.

“From Lady Darleigh?” She smiled. “Yes, she told me it was a very grand and a very joyous occasion. They married at St. George’s on Hanover Square, and the Duke of Stanbrook hosted a lavish wedding breakfast. I am very happy for Lady Barclay, though I suppose I must refer to her now as the Countess of Hardford. I thought her very charming when I met her last year but very reserved too. Lady Darleigh says her new husband adores her. That is very romantic, is it not?”

How lovely it must be . . .

She took a bite of her scone. Sophia, Lady Darleigh, who had arrived back at Middlebury Park from London with her husband the day before yesterday, had said more about the wedding they had gone there to attend, but Dora was too tired to elaborate further now. She had squeezed an extra pianoforte lesson for the viscountess into what was already a full day of work and had had scarcely a moment to herself since breakfast.

“I will no doubt have a long letter from Agnes about it in the next day or two,” she said when she saw Mrs. Henry’s look of disappointment. “I will share with you what she has to say about the wedding.”

Her housekeeper nodded and shut the door.

Dora took another bite from her scone, and found herself suddenly lost in memories of last year and a few of the happiest days of her life just before the excruciatingly painful one when Agnes drove off with her new husband and Dora, smiling, waved them on their way.

How pathetic that she relived those days so often. Viscount and Viscountess Darleigh, who lived at Middlebury Park just beyond the village, had had houseguests—very illustrious ones, all of them titled. Dora and Agnes had been invited to the house more than once while they were there, and a few times various groupings of the guests had called at the cottage and even taken tea there. Agnes was a close friend of the viscountess, and Dora was comfortable with them herself as she gave music lessons to both the viscount and his wife. On the basis of this acquaintance, she and Agnes had been invited to dine one evening, and Dora had been asked to play for the company afterward.

All the guests had been incredibly kind. And flattering. Dora had played the harp, and they had not wanted her to stop. And then she had played the pianoforte and they had urged her to keep on playing. She had been led up to the drawing room for tea afterward on the arm of no less a personage than the Duke of Stanbrook. Earlier, she had sat between him and Lord Darleigh at dinner. She would have been awed into speechlessness if she had not been long familiar with the viscount and if the duke had not made an effort to set her at her ease. He had seemed an almost frighteningly austere-looking nobleman until she looked into his eyes and saw nothing but kindness there.

She had been made to feel like a celebrity. Like a star. And for those few days she had felt wondrously alive. How sad—no, pathetic—that in all her life there were no other memories half so vivid with which to regale herself when she sat alone like this, a little too weary to read. Or at night, when she lay in bed, as she sometimes did, unable to fall asleep.

They called themselves a club, the male guests who had stayed at Middlebury Park for three weeks—the Survivors’ Club. They had survived both the wars against Napoleon Bonaparte and the dreadful injuries they had suffered during them. Lady Barclay was a member too—the lady who had just married. She had not been an officer herself, of course, but her first husband had, and she had witnessed his death from torture, poor lady, after he had been captured in Portugal. Viscount Darleigh himself had been blinded. Flavian, Lord Ponsonby, Agnes’s husband, had suffered such severe head injuries that he could neither think nor speak nor understand what was said to him when he had been brought back to England. Baron Trentham and Sir Benedict Harper and the Earl of Berwick, the last of whom had inherited a dukedom since last year, had all suffered terribly as well. The Duke of Stanbrook years ago had gathered them all at his home in Cornwall and given them the time and space and care they needed to heal and recuperate. They were all now married, except the duke himself, who was an older man and a widower.

Dora wondered if they would ever again gather at Middlebury Park for one of their annual reunions. If they did, then perhaps she would be invited to join them again—maybe even to play for them again. She was, after all, Agnes’s sister, and Agnes was now married to one of them.

She picked up her cup and sipped her tea. But it had grown tepid and she pulled a face. It was entirely her own fault, of course. But she hated tea that was not piping hot.

And then a knock sounded on the outer door. Dora sighed. She was just too weary to deal with any chance caller. Her last pupil for the day had been fourteen-year-old Miranda Corley, who was as reluctant to play the pianoforte as Dora was to teach her. Miranda was utterly devoid of musical talent, poor girl, though her parents were convinced she was a prodigy. Those lessons were always a trial to them both.

Perhaps Mrs. Henry would deal with whoever was standing on her doorstep. Dora’s housekeeper knew how tired she always was after a full day of giving lessons, and guarded her privacy a bit like a mother hen. But this was not to be one of those occasions, it seemed. There was a tap on the sitting room door, and Mrs. Henry opened it and stood there for a moment, her eyes as wide as twin saucers.

“It is for you, Miss Debbins,” she said before stepping to one side.

And, as though her memories of last year had summoned him right to her sitting room, in walked the Duke of Stanbrook.

He stopped just inside the door while Mrs. Henry closed it behind him.

“Miss Debbins.” He bowed to her. “I trust I have not called at an inconvenient time?”

Any memory Dora had had of how kindly and approachable and really quite human the duke was fled without a trace, and she was every bit as smitten by awe as she had been when she met him for the first time in the drawing room at Middlebury Park. He was tall and distinguished looking, with dark hair silvered at the temples, and austere, chiseled features consisting of a straight nose, high cheekbones and rather thin lips. He bore himself with a stiff, forbidding air she could not recall from last year. He was the quintessential fashionable, aloof aristocrat from head to toe, and he seemed to fill Dora’s sitting room and deprive it of most of the breathable air.

She realized suddenly that she was still sitting and staring at him all agape, like a thunderstruck idiot. He had spoken to her in the form of a question and was regarding her with raised eyebrows in expectation of an answer. She scrambled belatedly to her feet and curtsied. She tried to remember what she was wearing and whether her garments included a cap.

“Your Grace,” she said. “No, not at all. I have given my last music lesson for the day and have been having my tea. The tea will be cold in the pot by now. Let me ask Mrs. Henry—”

But he had held up one elegant staying hand. “Pray do not concern yourself,” he said. “I have just finished taking refreshments with Vincent and Sophia.”

With Viscount and Lady Darleigh.

“I was at Middlebury Park earlier today,” she said, “giving Lady Darleigh a pianoforte lesson since she missed her regular one while she was in London for Lady Barclay’s wedding. She did not mention that you had come back with them. Not that she was obliged to do so, of course.” Her cheeks grew hot. “It was none of my business.”

“I arrived an hour ago,” he told her, “unexpected but not quite uninvited. Every time I see Vincent and his lady, they urge me to visit anytime I wish. They always mean it, I’m sure, but I also know they never expect that I
will
. This time I did. I followed almost upon their heels from London, in fact, and, bless their hearts, I do believe they were happy to see me. Or not see in Vincent’s case. Sometimes one almost forgets that he cannot literally see.”

Dora’s cheeks grew hotter. For how long had she been keeping him standing there by the door? Whatever would he think of her rustic manners?

“But will you not have a seat, Your Grace?” She indicated the chair across the hearth from her own. “Did you walk from Middlebury? It is a lovely day for air and exercise, is it not?”