Mary Balogh - Simply Magic

“I would not plan on doing anything if I were you,” he said. “Meet them and allow the relationship to develop from there. They are your blood kin.”

“I am so frightened,” she said. “And what a very foolish thing to say.” She sat farther back in her chair.

“It might be worth remembering,” he said, “that as they draw nearer to Fincham today, they are probably very frightened too.”

“I had not thought of that,” she said. “Do you suppose it is true?”

“If they are prepared to make such a long journey in the dead of winter just to meet you,” he said, “I would say it is undoubtedly true.”

“Oh,” she said, and she closed her eyes.

He let her rest while he poked the fire in order to disperse the flames more evenly. A shower of sparks crackled up the chimney.

“They sent him away,” she said without opening her eyes, “after he had fallen in love with his brother’s wife and then killed his brother in a fight. But she followed him and they married.”

“Your mother?” he asked, seating himself again.

“Yes,” she said. “I think it must have been a great and very painful love. One filled with guilt. I wonder if they ever knew a moment of happiness.”

Probably not. The William Osbourne he remembered had certainly not been an unfeeling brute of a man.

“He wrote,” she said, “that my mother paid the ultimate price when she died giving birth to me and that now it was his turn.”

“But why then?” he asked. “Why did he wait twelve years?”

He thought she would not answer him, and he certainly would not press. This was her story. He had no right to hear it unless she chose to tell him. But she did answer after a while.

“His secret was out,” she said. “He had recently told Sir Charles himself since someone was trying to blackmail him by threatening to expose him. But then sh-. But then that person decided to ruin him anyway by telling untrue stories that surely would have been believed when his past was disclosed too.”

It sounded, Peter thought, like something a woman might do-a scorned woman. And Susanna had been about to say she before she used the more neutral person instead. Poor Osbourne. Perhaps he had tried to find comfort in another woman’s arms, and it had cost him his life.

He was facing disgrace and perhaps worse,she had said earlier. Worse than disgrace?

Had rape been the threatened charge, then?

“It has just struck me,” she said, “that my one grandfather and grandmother lost two sons within twelve years of each other, and that my other grandfather lost a daughter. And that the circumstances must have been particularly painful for all of them.”

“And then,” he said, “they lost you when you disappeared.”

“Theodore told me,” she said, “that they searched for me but could not find me.”

She spread both hands over her face.

He knew after a few moments that she was not weeping but that it was costing her an enormous effort to control her tears. He got up out of his chair, crossed to her, and without really thinking of what he did, scooped her up into his arms, leaving her cloak behind, and sat on the sofa with her on his lap. He cradled her head against his shoulder and held it there when she buried her face against him, her hands still covering it, and wept.

He knew that she was weeping out eleven years’ worth of grief-for her mother and father, for her grandparents, perhaps for her dead uncle. And for herself. He held her and let her cry as long as she needed to. At last he offered her a handkerchief, and she took it and dried her eyes and blew her nose before putting it away in a pocket of her own.

“I am sorry,” she said, resting the side of her head against his shoulder again. “Did you even know I was at Fincham?”

“I did,” he said. “Why do you think I went there this morning?”

“Theodore said something about an invitation for his mother,” she said.

“An invitation for you all,” he said, “but especially for you. There is to be a ball at Sidley on Christmas evening. We have a houseful of guests and I have invited everyone from the neighborhood too. It will be the first grand event that I have hosted at Sidley. You must come.”

“Oh, no, Peter,” she said, sitting up and looking down at him with troubled eyes. “I cannot possibly do that.”

“You can,” he said. “It is for you. I thought you would be proud of me. It is a very little dragon I have slain, but I have done it anyway. It was my idea, and I have done all of the planning and all of the inviting. Don’t refuse to come. Please don’t.”

He would not want to attend himself if she did not-and that would lead to a mildly absurd situation.

“As host,” he said, “I will have to dance all evening. I will have to waltz with someone else if you are not there.”

“Oh, Peter,” she said, cupping one of her palms about his cheek.

“Tell me you don’t want me waltzing with anyone but you,” he said.

“Peter-”

“Please tell me.”

She bowed her head and closed her eyes.

“I cannot bear the thought of you waltzing with anyone but me,” she half whispered.

“Susanna-”

She opened her eyes and looked into his, her own still somewhat reddened from the weeping.

“I really cannot bear it,” she said, but he was no longer sure she was talking just about the waltz.

He spread his hand over the soft curls at the back of her head and drew it down toward his until her arms came about his neck and he kissed her.

And he knew at that moment that love would never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep, precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love. To Susanna.

But he was not going to think meekly about that someone else and that reasonably happy life he might live. He was not giving up what he really wanted without a fight. He might never have been much of a knight during his twenty-six years, he might never have been in the habit of searching out dragons to fight and quell-indeed, he had run from them five years ago. But he would find one and fight it to the death if Susanna were the prize.

Or perhaps even if she were not.

Her face was a little above his, cupped in his hands, her auburn curls spilling over his fingers, her eyes very green.

“Let me take you upstairs,” he found himself saying. “There is no fire up there, but the bedcovers are warm. Let me make love to you.”

He felt as though he had walked out to the end of a plank, a helpless prisoner on a pirate ship. He felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt in his life before. If she said no, every dream he had ever dreamed would be shattered. For he was not asking her just to bed with him. He was asking for her love. He was offering his own.

He was offering everything he had, everything he was.

Did she know that? Did she understand?

He watched her swallow.

“Yes,” she said.

She should, of course, have said no. This time she knew exactly what she had agreed to-future pain, the danger of consequences. And she knew too that afterward, sometime before she returned to Bath, he would offer her marriage again-and that she would refuse again. She even knew that his feelings for her were deeper than just liking. She knew that her refusal would hurt him.

She did not care about any of it.

Sometimes love was to be grasped in any form and in any manner it was offered. And sometimes love must be given in the same way. After a morning of emotional turmoil, she wanted, more than anything else in this world, to give love, to pour it out recklessly and unstintingly.

“Yes,” she said again, and got to her feet.

He set a guard in front of the fire and took her by the hand. They left the room and went up the wide staircase together without speaking and turned to their right, past several closed doors, until he opened one that led into a front-facing room, obviously the main bedchamber, which was fully furnished, just as the downstairs was. The bed was made up.

“Susanna,” he said, turning to her, taking both her hands in his and holding them against the lapels of his coat, “are you sure?”

She was. She had never been more sure of anything in her life. She wanted to give, and she wanted to receive, and it struck her suddenly that both were equally important components of love. She loved him and would give him her body. She would allow him to give to her in exchange.

“I am,” she said. “Make love with me, Peter.”

“ With you.” He smiled as he leaned his head closer and touched his lips lightly to hers. “Yes, I like it.”

She let him unclothe her, first her dress, then her stockings, then her undergarments. She thought at first that she would be embarrassed. But how could she be when his eyes worshiped her and his hands too as he stripped the clothes away? And there was something undeniably erotic about the cold room and his warm hands. Her arms were covered with goose bumps, partly from the cold, partly from the anticipation of what was to come.

He kissed her again, more deeply this time, his tongue coming into her mouth, his hands on either side of her waist and then spreading over her buttocks to bring her fully against him-naked body to fully clothed body.

Desire sizzled through her.

“You are so beautiful, Susanna,” he said against her lips. “So very beautiful.”