Page 7

by Mary Balogh

He hurried toward her.

“Christopher.” She reached out her hands to his, and they were cold when he took them. “How can I have forgotten everything?”

“Try not to worry about it.” He squeezed her hands.

“And yet,” she said, looking at him earnestly, “that is not quite true, you know. I remember some things.”

He felt suddenly as if his heart might beat its way right through his chest.

“London,” she said. “I can picture it in my mind: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the river, Bond Street.” She looked at him for several moments with a slight frown on her face. Then she shook her head. “But no people. Nothing personal.”

“It will come, Elizabeth,” he said soothingly.

“I remember the war too,” she said, frowning again. “Napoleon Bonaparte. Our men in Spain. The war is over, is it not? He has been defeated. Where did I hear that?”

“It is true,” he said. “Everything will come back gradually. Just give it time.”

“Yes.” She smiled and took him by surprise by slipping her hands from his and clasping them about his neck. She studied his face from arm’s length away. “You are the most familiar thing in my world, Christopher,” she said. “It feels right to be with you. I know that I love you. That is one comfort at least. It would be dreadful, would it not, if I shrank from you in fear.”

His hands could still almost meet about her waist, he discovered, setting them there. And he could still drown in her eyes if he gazed into them for too long a time.

“I think,” she said, “that I love you very dearly. Do I tell you that often enough? Perhaps after seven years of marriage I take too much for granted and forget to tell you.”

“It always bears repeating,” he said.

She stared at him for a while. “Well?” she said. “Are you not going to return the compliment?”

It was unavoidable. But strangely he did not even want to avoid the moment. Perhaps it was even true. But of course it could not be that. Except, he thought, that hatred and love were very similar emotions, only the negative and the positive separating them. But both deep, passionate, all-consuming emotions.

“I love you,” he told her, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Did I force it from you?” Her smile was a little uncertain. “I am sorry. I should not have done so.”

His arms wrapped themselves about her waist and he held her to him fiercely. “I love you,” he said, and he drew back his head, looked down into her face, and kissed her.

He was in deep waters, he thought, drawing back his head after what had been far too lingering a kiss. Hellish deep waters. And yet he had foreseen it all even before telling her that she was his wife. But he had told her anyway. And he was not sure that he would do differently if he had that minute to live through again.

“Christopher,” she said, lowering one arm to twist the top button of his waistcoat, “I feel better. Hardly any aches and pains; almost no headache; no dizziness.”

“Good,” he said, but he knew exactly where her words were leading.

“I think my life should return to normal,” she said, and her eyes slid from the button up his chest and over his chin to lock on his.

She flushed deeply. “I think I should return to our room tonight.”

He drew a deep breath. “Perhaps we should give it a little longer,” he said. “Your ribs were badly bruised, the doctor said. Besides, it might be difficult for you to sleep beside a stranger.”

“I am trying to face the possibility that my memory will not return,” she said. “The lump has almost disappeared from my head, but there is no memory except those useless details about London and the wars. I want to try to live as normally as I can, Christopher. If nothing else, I want to begin a whole new set of memories. Don’t you want me back?”

For answer he drew her to him again and set his cheek against hers.

“I want you back,” he said. And he abandoned himself to the words he was speaking. It seemed almost as if his normal sensible self had been possessed by a madman. But the possession was not undesirable.

Quite the contrary. The temptation to give in to it was overwhelming—as it had been from the moment when Wickenham had told him about her wedding.

“I’ll have Doris move my things back into our room, then,” she said.

God help him, but he found her words arousing. And he would allow it to happen too. Of course he would. Why else had he brought her to Penhallow? Why else had he told her that she was his wife?

And why else had he told her that they shared a bedchamber?

He nodded and kissed her lightly once more. “This is enough exploring for one day,” he said. “You must be getting tired. I’ll take you to the drawing room for tea. Nancy should be back from her visit to the village by now.”

“Tea sounds good,” she said, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her from the room.

After tea Elizabeth left the drawing room before the other two. She wanted to summon Doris, she said, to move her things back to her regular dressing room. And she wanted to rest for a while. She was going to come to the dining room for dinner.

“Provided you will come to escort me,” she said, smiling at Christopher as she got to her feet. “Otherwise I might be wandering around lost and hungry all evening.”

But she would not allow him to take her back to the green bedchamber from the drawing room.

“I can remember the way,” she said. “I have been looking about me very carefully all afternoon.”

Nancy and Christopher were left alone.

“Whose suggestion was it?” Nancy asked him after the door had closed, her voice tense as it so often was these days. “Yours?”

“No,” he said. “She wants life to return to normal. She has a great deal of courage, Nance. She has changed.”

She laughed shortly. “To normal,” she said scornfully. “So you are going to carry the deception to its bitter end, Christopher. What has happened to you? Have you been so embittered by the events of the past? I hoped you had put it all behind you.”

“I would rather not talk about it,” he said, his face shuttered and harsh. “It is my concern, not yours.”

“Except that I have to lie for you,” she said. “But that is not the point. The point is, Christopher, that she is not your wife.”

“She might have been,” he said. “I did not acquiesce in anything that happened after I had left, Nance. And I would not have acquiesced if I had been consulted. What if I do not accept the way things turned out?”

“You have no choice in the matter,” she said. “She is not your wife.”

He looked at her, his eyes hostile.

“She will be in your room tonight believing that she is,” Nancy continued. “If she were making a free choice, Christopher, I would say nothing though it would still be wrong and I would still disapprove. But she is not making a free choice. To do that she would have to be in possession of all the facts. And then she would not be directing Doris to move her things into your room, would she?”

“She was not in possession of all the facts seven years ago,” he said.

“She was not free to choose that time either. But she did choose. And Chicheley was there to make sure she chose the way he wanted her to choose. Don’t talk to me of freedom, Nance. There is no such thing.”

Nancy got to her feet. “I am going upstairs,” she said. “There is a book I want to finish before dinner. And I can see there is no point in pursuing this conversation. Your mind is made up and your heart is hardened against decency. I have hated her too, Christopher, but I can see that I have never hated her as much as you do now.”

He stared broodingly after her as she left the room.

Chapter 7

ELIZABETH stood in the middle of Christopher’s bedchamber—no, theirs—and looked about her almost fearfully. It was a large room, surely twice the size of the green bedchamber, and high. The ceiling wa
s coved and painted blue and gold. Inside the large gilded circle in the center was a painting of two nymphs, all in shades of blue, silver, and white. The walls were covered with Brussels tapestries, which must be very old though their colors were fresh and bright. The high canopy of the bed reached up into the cove of the ceiling.

It was a magnificent room. But the curtains at the windows and the bed hangings were dark wine in color and heavy. So were the two chairs, arranged on either side of the fireplace. Too dark and too heavy for the room. They gave it a thoroughly masculine look. It was a man’s room, not a married couple’s.

Elizabeth wondered if she had ever suggested to Christopher that they change the furnishings. Perhaps they had argued over it? Perhaps he liked tradition and she liked light and beauty. Did they argue? she wondered. But they must do so if they had been together for so long.

Surely they did not see eye to eye on every issue. Wouldn’t their lives be dull if they did?

The bed was unusually wide. Another heirloom? Her cheeks grew hot as she looked at it and waited for him to come. Yet how foolish she was being. They had occupied that bed together for years. They had coupled there innumerable times.

Elizabeth gripped the fluted bedpost at the foot of the bed, set her forehead against it, and closed her eyes. Perhaps if she concentrated very hard there would be something. Some memory connected with this room that would spark all the other memories. The feel of the bed-post, perhaps. Yes, perhaps something as seemingly insignificant as that. She ran her hand down its smooth polished curves without opening her eyes. Or a memory of lovemaking. She pictured herself on the bed with him. She felt herself there. She felt him touch her. But it was only anticipation that she could feel, not memory.

And then a door opened and he came into the room. Presumably that door led into his dressing room—he wore only a nightshirt. She tried to feel familiarity with the moment. He had come through that door a thousand times before.

“Do you realize,” she said, smiling to hide her embarrassment and shyness, “that you could have told me any story when I woke up without a memory? That if I were not your wife at all, you could have persuaded me that I was?”

He said nothing, but merely came to a stop a short distance from her and looked at her with expressionless eyes.

“I should not have said that,” she said, closing the distance between them and touching him lightly on the chest. “Forgive me? I know that this is as difficult for you, Christopher, as it is for me. Oh dear, I feel as nervous as if this were my wedding night again.”

He touched one of her cheeks with light fingertips.

“Was I nervous?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Very. And so was I. We were both virgins.”

“Were we?” She laughed softly. “That is lovely, Christopher. I am glad there has only ever been each other.”

His eyes looked deeply into hers. Yet she could not read his expression. Uncertainty, perhaps?

“Was it good?” she asked. “Our wedding night?”

He swallowed. “Yes and no,” he said. “I was awkward and fumbling and I hurt you. But you held me afterward and kissed me and called me every love word ever invented when I showed my distress.”

She set her face against his chest and breathed in the musky scent of him. “No,” she said. “You are making that up, aren’t you? About being upset?”

“I had hurt you,” he said, “when I had been trying to love you. I wanted to be perfect for you. But it was better the next time.”

She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “The same night?” she asked.

“The same night,” he said. “I never told you that I was a virgin. I thought it shameful and unmanly, I suppose, at the age of twenty-four. You must have thought I was merely clumsy or insensitive.”

“But you were sorry and in distress,” she said. “I must have known.”

“No.” His eyes were almost hard suddenly. “You did not know.”

She set the backs of her fingers against his cheek. “But it has been beautiful ever since, hasn’t it?” she said. “It must have been. I feel that I love you so very much and you told me this afternoon that you love me. You do, don’t you?”

“I do,” he said.

“Make love to me, then,” she said, her eyes dropping to his mouth, her voice suddenly breathless. “I am only sorry, Christopher, that I do not know what I usually do. I do not know how to please you.”

He set his arms right about her then and hugged her to him.

“You please me just by being,” he said against her hair. His arms tightened. “Elizabeth, this does not seem fair. Making love to you when you do not know me, that is. Perhaps you would prefer to wait. I can be content just to hold you if it is what you wish.”

“But I do know you,” she said, clasping her arms about his neck and looking earnestly into his eyes. Let him not be reluctant, she prayed swiftly and silently. If he did not want her now, perhaps he never would as long as her memory was gone. And perhaps her courage would fail her entirely if it did not happen now. “I know you with my heart, Christopher. That may sound absurd, but I know that I have loved you for a long, long time. And I know that I will always love you. I want everything to be back to normal or as near normal as it can be. Your arms about me feel so right. You feel so right.”

He looked into her eyes for a long moment. And she could see indecision there again, the indecision of a man who wanted to make love to a woman who could see him only as a stranger. But he was not a stranger. He was her husband. She lost her fear suddenly. He was her husband.

She smiled at him. “I want to know what my loss of memory has deprived me of,” she whispered.

It had deprived her of the feel of his mouth open over hers, warm and moist, faintly wine-tasting, of his breath warm on her cheek, and his hand cupping the back of her head, his fingers pushing up beneath her hair. And of his tongue, outlining her lips so lightly that sensation sizzled through her before it explored its slow and exquisite, way deep into her mouth.

And loss of memory had deprived her of the feel of his hands exploring her body with light, feathering touches, beginning to arouse it for love.

“Oh, Christopher,” she said when his mouth moved down over her chin to her throat, “how very beautiful it is. May I touch you too? I don’t know what I am supposed to do.” There was anguish in her voice as well as longing.

He lifted his head and kissed her eyes and her mouth again.

“Touch me,” he said, and she could see in his face and hear in his voice that he wanted her, that all indecision had gone. “Do whatever seems right and good. There are no taboos between us.”

And so she touched him, feeling the powerful muscles of his shoulders and arms, the firm muscles of his chest and flat stomach.

He must work hard, she thought, not spend all his time about the house with her as he had in the past few days. She must ask him how he usually spent his days.

But the thought and the intent barely touched her conscious mind.

She pulsed with longing for him and made no resistance when he raised her nightgown up her body and off over her head, or when he lifted her into his arms and laid her on the bed. She watched him as he stripped away his nightshirt, and raised her arms to him.

“You are beautiful,” she said, her eyes roaming over the splendid proportions of his body.

“And you,” he said, lowering himself on top of her, twining his hands in her hair, laying his mouth against hers. “You are lovelier than you were as a bride, Elizabeth. You were only a girl then. You are a woman now.”

She was frightened then, suddenly and unaccountably. Frightened of his weight and of his nakedness against her own. Frightened of the intensity in his eyes and the demand of his mouth. And convinced that her joke when he had entered the bedchamber must be true. She did not know this man.

Or this place. Or this act.

“No!” she cried, struggling against him in her panic. “No,
no.”

He rolled off her immediately and lay at her side, one arm beneath her neck, his breathing labored. He had turned suddenly pale. His eyes had gone blank again.

She bit her lower lip hard.

“Hush,” he said, his voice gentle, at variance with the harsh discipline of his face. He pulled the blankets up over her breasts. “It’s all right. I am not going to force you into anything you do not want. I’ll hold you. Just relax. Sleep if you can.”

She closed her eyes and buried her face against his shoulder. She could hear his heart thudding against his chest. “I am so frightened,” she whispered.

“You need not be.” His voice was calm and quiet against her ear.

“I’ll just hold you. Or I’ll move to another room if you wish.”

“No, not of that,” she said. “Just of having to face life like this—perhaps forever. I don’t even know who I am apart from your wife. I don’t know anything of my own family or where I lived. Or even what my name was before I married you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought I had these panics under control. They are so pointless really.”

“Sh,” he said, and he kissed her on the ear and on the temple, and circled her warmly with his arms.

She felt unutterably sad. They were husband and wife. They loved each other. Their marriage had a seven-year history. But she was going to ruin it all because of an accident and because she did not have the courage to deal with such a frightening situation. She turned her head and kissed his throat and his chin. And his mouth when he moved his head.

“Yes,” she said. “I want you, Christopher. And I think I need you. Come inside me. Please come inside. Help me deal with the loneliness. And let me give you some pleasure.”

The passion of their earlier embrace had gone. In its place was something infinitely more wonderful, she discovered when he rolled her over onto her back and covered her again. In its place was tenderness and gentleness and love.