Only Enchanting (28 page)

“You must indeed be weary, Agnes,” Lady Shields
said as she brought Agnes a cup of tea. “Traveling is a tedious and uncomfortable business at the best of times.”

Agnes thought back on the journey with some longing. She had known even at the time that it was in a sense a bridge between her old life and the new, and she had clung to it as a sort of time out of time. Her mind touched for a moment upon what they had done three separate times to alleviate the boredom of a lengthy journey. That was the excuse Flavian had given, anyway.

She had been right to cling to that bridge.

Of course it was deliberate and just the sort of thing you
would
do. Well, you are the one who must live with the consequences.

In punishing us so cleverly, Flavian, you have, of course, punished yourself too. It is so typical of you. But, as Marianne observed, it is you who must suffer most as a result. . . .

And somehow it all had something to do with the very sweet and beautiful Velma, Countess of Hazeltine, who was at the end of her year of mourning for her husband. And to whom Flavian had never written with any regularity. Was there some reason he ought to have done so?

“Thank you, ma’am,” Agnes said in acknowledgment of the tea.

“Oh, that must be Marianne, if you please,” Lady Shields said. “We are sisters. And how very strange
that
sounds. I have been deprived of involving myself in your wedding, which is perhaps just as well, for Flavian would doubtless have called it
interference
. Do tell us all about the wedding. Every detail. And you may save your breath to drink your tea, Flavian. Men are utterly hopeless at describing such events at any length that exceeds one sentence.”

He had taken the chair on the other side of the fireplace and sat there looking across at Agnes, his sleepy,
slightly mocking expression firmly in place. She wondered whether his mother and sister realized that it was a mask that covered all sorts of uncertainties and vulnerability.

She described her wedding and the wedding breakfast at Middlebury Park. And she wondered what they had meant by saying that he had married her
quite deliberately
.

*   *   *

The trouble was, Flavian thought some time later as he led his wife upstairs, that he had never taken charge. Never. It had been quite deliberate when he was still a boy and David had inherited the title after their father’s death, and everyone had tried to prepare
him
for the day in the not-so-distant future when the title would be his. There had been plans, of course, for David to marry, and the faint hope that he would beget an heir of his own, but that faint hope had come to an end when Flavian was eighteen and old enough for everyone to try arranging a marriage for
him
.

He had flatly refused to have anything to do with any of it.

The bedchamber next to his own had already been prepared, he was relieved to discover when he entered it with Agnes. No one had given the order, least of all himself, though he
ought
to have done so, but servants could almost always be relied upon to act on their own initiative. A young maid was visible through the open door to the dressing room on the far side of the bedchamber. She was unpacking his wife’s bags. She bobbed a curtsy and explained that she had been “assigned to my lady until my lady’s own maid” arrived.

“Thank you,” Agnes said, and Flavian nodded at the girl before shutting the door.

He turned then to Agnes. “I am s-sorry,” he said,
breaking the silence that had held since they left the drawing room.

“Oh, and so am I,” she said on a rush. “It was horrible, and it was a ghastly shock for your mother and sister. But you were hardly to blame, Flavian.”

Her brushes had already been set out on the dressing table. She moved closer to rearrange them.

“The thing is,” he said, “that I have n-never asserted myself. I have been Ponsonby for longer than eight years, and I have n-never established my authority. They would not have behaved as they did today if I had. I am s-sorry.”

She positioned two candleholders more to her liking on either side of the dressing table and then moved them together on the same side.

“You were ill for several of those years,” she said.

It was a pretty room, furnished mostly in mossy greens and cream, very different from the rich wine brocades and velvets in his own room. It was here he would most enjoy making love to her, he suspected.

Good God, Velma! It had felt like walking through some warp in time. Seven years had fallen away just as if they had never happened, and there she was again, but moving toward him rather than away, smiling joyfully instead of weeping in grief and agony. And looking every bit as lovely as ever.

He rubbed the edge of a closed fist across his forehead. There was a headache trying to move in.

“Who is Velma?” Agnes asked him, just as if she could read the direction of his thoughts. She was looking at him over her shoulder.

“The Countess of Hazeltine?” He frowned.

“You called her Velma at first,” she said. “And she called you Flavian.”

He sighed.

“We were n-neighbors,” he said. “She told you that.
Farthings Hall is eight miles from Candlebury. Our families were always quite close.”

She sat on the padded bench before the dressing table, facing him, her hands clasped in her lap.

“Velma was intended for D-David,” he said. “They were to be betrothed when she t-turned eighteen. He was b-besotted with her. But when the time came, he w-would not do it. It was already obvious he had c-consumption and was not getting any better. He r-refused even though everyone tried to insist that he could still father an heir and m-maybe even a spare. He w-would not do it. And his heart b-broke.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “Did she love him?”

“She w-would have done her d-duty,” he said.

“But she did not love him?”

“No.”

“Poor David,” she said, looking at him. “And your heart broke for him?”

He wandered restlessly to the window and drummed his fingers on the sill. Her window, like his in the adjoining room, looked down on the square and the immaculately kept garden in the center of it. The headache niggled. Something snatched at the edge of his mind and made it worse.

“I had him purchase a commission for me,” he said, “and I went off to join my regiment.”

It seemed like a non sequitur. It was not. He had refused to be betrothed to her himself when David would not. He had had to get away. It had been the only way he could save himself—by running away.

The headache started to pound like a heavy pulse.

“And Velma?” she asked.

“She married the Earl of Hazeltine a few years l-later,” he said. “He died last year. There is a daughter,
or so I h-have heard. No son, though. She must have been d-disappointed about that.”

He wondered whether Len had been too. But of course he must have been. Why had he even wondered? Drat this wretched headache.

“Did David die before she married?” Agnes asked.

“Yes.” He kept his back to her.

“You must have been glad about that for his sake,” she said.

“Yes.” She did not know the half of it, and he did not have the energy or the will to tell her.

She had come to stand beside him, he realized. He wrapped one arm about her shoulders and turned to draw her against him. He touched his forehead to the top of her head. She had not yet changed or cleaned up after a day of travel. Neither of them had. But he breathed in that familiar soap smell of her and folded her even more tightly into himself.

“We are right by the window,” she said.

He reached up a hand and jerked the curtains closed. And he kissed her with openmouthed urgency, reaching for the safety she represented.

“This c-conversation needs to be continued on that b-bed,” he said against her mouth.

“In broad daylight?”

“It w-worked well enough in the carriage,” he pointed out.

“The maid.” She glanced at the dressing room door.

“Servants will not enter an occupied room uninvited,” he told her.

He did not wait to unclothe either her or himself. He tumbled her to the bed, hiked her skirts to the waist, unbuttoned the fall of his pantaloons, positioned himself on top of her and between her thighs, and plunged into
her as though his life depended upon finding some sort of salvation in her hot depths. He pounded into her, the blood thundering in his ears, and exploded into release a good few seconds before he heard the breath sobbing out of him and in again.

He rolled off her and flung an arm over his eyes. His headache was still hovering.

“I am s-so s-sorry,” he said.

“Why?” She turned onto her side and spread a hand over his chest.

“Did I h-hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “Flavian, you must forgive yourself for being alive when your brother is not.”

She did not know the
half
of it. But he withdrew his arm and turned his head to look at her. He smiled lazily. “It was good s-sex?” he asked. “Even though there was not much f-finesse?”

“And there was in the carriage?” she asked, her cheeks turning pink.

He raised one eyebrow. “You have no idea of the skill involved in such maneuverings, ma’am,” he said.

“I believe I do,” she told him. “I was
there
.”

“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes and gazing at her lips, “that was
you
, was it?”

And he turned over to kiss her again, more slowly this time, more skillfully, with more of a thought to pleasing her. He wondered how Velma was feeling. Her heart had surely been in her eyes when he first stepped into the drawing room.

And how was
he
feeling?

He was feeling safe with the wife of his own choosing. His headache had done an about-turn and was marching away into the distance without him.

“Agnes,” he whispered, and sighed with contentment.

16

L
ife then changed more radically than Agnes could possibly have expected it would.

Her mother-in-law recovered by dinnertime on that first day from the worst of her shock and dominated the conversation. It was not difficult to do, for Marianne and Lord Shields had returned to their own town house, Flavian chose to be sleepy, and Agnes could not seem to marshal her thoughts well enough to initiate any social talk.

It was a very good thing Easter was late this year, the dowager commented, and it would be a couple of weeks yet before the
ton
descended upon London in any great numbers and the Season began in earnest. They would have those weeks in which to assemble a wardrobe at the very least. She had taken one look at Agnes’s lavender evening gown earlier, and her expression had become pained.

Agnes must be made to appear more like a viscountess, the dowager said quite bluntly. She would summon her own modiste to the house tomorrow and her hairdresser within the next few days. That way there would be no chance of Agnes’s being seen by the wrong people before she was ready to meet anyone at all.

Flavian exerted himself at that point.

“The
wrong
p-people may go hang if they do not like Agnes as she is, Mother,” he said. “And I will take Agnes to Bond Street m-myself tomorrow. The best dressmakers are to be found there.”

“And
you
know exactly who they are, I suppose?” his mother said. “And you know all the latest fashions and the newest fabrics and trims, I suppose? Really, Flavian, you must leave such things to me. You cannot want your viscountess to look a frump.”

“I do not believe that would be p-possible,” he said, leaning to one side so that a footman could refill his wineglass.

“And now you are being quite deliberately foolish, Flavian.”

It was time to intervene. Agnes was beginning to feel like an inanimate object over which mother and son were wrangling.

“I would be very
happy
,” she said, “to go to Bond Street or anywhere else reputable dressmakers may be found. Perhaps you will
both
accompany me there tomorrow. I would appreciate your escort, Flavian, and I am sure your mother would too. And I will certainly appreciate your advice and expertise, ma’am.”

Flavian pursed his lips and raised his glass in a silent toast to her. His mother sighed.

“You had better call me
Mother
, Agnes, since I am your mama-in-law,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, then. We will go to Madame Martin’s. She dresses at least one duchess that I know of.”

Flavian’s eyes—what could be seen of them beneath his eyelids—gleamed, but he refrained from commenting. He must have recognized a compromise when he heard one.

“I shall look forward to it, Mother,” Agnes said.

She was going to have to be presented at court, the dowager went on to say, and to society, of course, since she was an unknown. They were going to have to put on a grand ball at Arnott House early in the Season, but before that she must take her daughter-in-law to call upon all the best families. And after the ball there must be frequent appearances at all the most fashionable parties and soirees and breakfasts and concerts, as well as visits to the theater and the opera house and Vauxhall. There must be walks and drives in the parks, most notably Hyde Park during the fashionable hour in the afternoon.

“You will certainly not wish anyone to suspect you are hiding your viscountess away because she is not up to the position,” she said to Flavian.

He considered, crossing his knife and fork over his roast beef and picking up his wineglass by the stem. “I am not sure, Mother,” he finally said, “that I would wish to c-control anyone’s suspicions. People m-may believe what they wish with my blessing, even an asinine thing like that.”

She tutted.

“The trouble with you, Flavian,” she said sharply, “is that you have never cared. You do not care about either your responsibilities or the pain you cause others. But you can no longer honorably avoid caring about either. You have made an impulsive marriage to Agnes, who is a gentlewoman by birth but without any connection to the beau monde or any experience whatsoever of the sort of society into which she has married. You
must
care, for her sake even if not for mine or Marianne’s. Or your own.”