He smiled at her even as her own smile faded.
“Not tonight, though,” he said. “I have a valet to consider. No matter what I say to him, he will insist upon waiting up for me. He will be sitting in my dressing room at this very moment, without a fire, without a light, like patience on a monument. It is time I went home.”
She lifted the cat gently off her lap and set it down beside her—the animal thanked her with an indignant meow. And she stood and brushed cat hairs from the ancient velvet of her dressing gown and looked up at him.
He closed the distance between them and kissed her, his arms about her. There was no desire, though, to take her back up to bed, and that in itself was a bit unnerving. There was only the warmth of embracing a woman with whom he was becoming increasingly comfortable, even if she did harangue him when she could get him alone at two in the morning.
She saw him on his way, holding the lamp aloft with one hand to light the path to the gate and clutching her dressing gown to her throat with the other. He looked back after closing the gate behind him and tried to convince himself that she did not present the most appealing sight he had ever seen in his life.
The sooner he left here after this infernal ball, he thought, the better it would be for his peace of mind. He touched the brim of his hat with one gloved hand and turned away.
18
The ladies had taken possession of the library and the ballroom again. Imogen, Beth, and Meredith, at last sighting, were writing invitations. A couple of the uncles had gone off with Knorr to watch as part of the park wall was rebuilt without mortar. Leonard and Gregory had walked to Porthmare with Alma and Eva to deliver some invitations and visit some new acquaintances. Uncle Roderick and Cyril had taken Geoffrey down onto the beach again.
Percy was riding along the top of the valley with Sidney and Arnold.
“If I were you, Perce,” Arnold was saying, “I would turn a blind eye. You say nothing specific has happened since you came here to compel you to act.”
“Apart from one soggy bed, one sooty floor complete with dead, sooty bird, and one window curtain designed to keep out the light even of the sun on midsummer day, no,” Percy admitted. “Nothing of which I am aware.”
“You will be gone from here soon, Perce,” Sidney said. “And I doubt you will be back soon. There is not much here for you, is there? Apart from the widow, that is.”
That drew Percy up short—and his horse too. “The widow?” he asked, frost in his voice.
Arnold’s mount pranced about as he reined it in. He was grinning. “The last of us staggered off to bed just before three last night,” he said. “One of your uncles remarked that you were wiser than the rest of us and must have taken yourself off to bed after walking with the dog. Sid and I took a brief peek into your room. Fire crackling, nightshirt spread over a chair before the blaze, bedcovers turned neatly down, no Percy.”
And the thing was, Percy thought as he contemplated dragging both men from their horses and banging their heads together, that they fully expected him to grin back, confess to his whereabouts at that ungodly hour, and make some bawdy boast about his newest conquest. They had every reason to expect it. It was what he would normally do. What was so different this time?
Could it be that he was different? That he had changed, or, since a change of character did not happen overnight or even over a hundred nights, that he was changing? Devil take it, he needed to leave this place.
He looked down to the valley, peacefully green, the river flowing through it, the village farther back toward the sea.
“I will be leaving soon,” he said. “And I doubt I will ever come back. It is the damnedest backwater.”
And yet he felt disloyal saying so—disloyal to Lady Lavinia, to the Quentins and Alton and even Wenzel, to the vicar and the physician and the Kramer ladies and the sturdy fisherfolk. And there was Bains with his bandy legs and broken spirit, and Crutchley, who might have some voluntary involvement with smuggling or who just might be the victim of intimidation. There was that half cellar below his house that might be stuffed with contraband or awaiting a new shipment. There was . . . Imogen.
How long had he been here? Two weeks? Three? It was no time at all. A mere blink of the eye. He would forget it all in another blink once he was away from here.
He would forget her.
They continued their ride.
He could not recall regretting any of the liaisons he had had with women. He had ended most of them himself, but never because he had regretted starting them. He liked having affairs. They were mindless mutual enjoyment with no commitment or responsibilities attached.
He already regretted what he had started with Imogen.
He would forget her, though. She was leaving here herself a few days after this infernal ball. He would be gone before she returned.
It was just dashed stupid of him to have fallen in love. He presumed that was what had happened to him. Certainly he could not explain his feelings any other way. He did not like being in love one little bit.
“He does not want to talk about the widow, Arnie,” Sidney said.
“I have come to the same conclusion, Sid,” Arnold agreed. “But I would ignore the smuggling if I were you, Perce. Everyone else does. You are not going to stop it anyway. Those revenue men never can. And you must admit, they are a humorless lot. It is a pleasure to see them hoodwinked.”
“And you must admit, Perce,” Sidney added, “that brandy that comes into the country by the back door, so to speak, always seems to taste better than the legal stuff. It costs a lot less too.”