Mary Balogh - The Proposal

She looked into his eyes as he knelt between her legs again and spread his knees beneath her thighs.

“There cannot be any other man as modest as you, Hugo,” she said. “I would not change a thing about your appearance. You are perfectly beautiful.”

He laughed softly as he leaned over her, his hands bracing himself on either side of her shoulders, and lowered himself so that he could feel her breasts lightly brushing his chest.

“Even when I scowl?” he said.

“Even then,” she said, lifting her hands to cup the sides of his neck. “Your scowl does not deceive me for a moment. Not for a single moment.”

He kissed her softly while his loins burned with an urgent heat.

“I wanted this to be perfect,” he said against her lips. “This first loving tonight. I wanted to play endlessly before taking you to the heights of ecstasy and leaping off into the void with you.”

She laughed again.

“I think we can dispense with the play,” she said, “and save it for another time.”

“Can we?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

She pressed her lips to his and lifted her bosom to press against his chest and twined her legs about his hips, and he forgot that the word play even existed. He found her and plunged into her. And if he had feared that she was not fully ready for him, he was soon disabused. She was hot and slick, and her inner muscles clenched about him and invited him deeper.

He withdrew and plunged again and established a rhythm that would bring them to climax within moments. The haste did not matter. This was not about stamina or prowess. And memory came flooding back, not a memory that had ever been put into words, but one he had felt at the center of his heart—that Gwendoline was the only woman in his life with whom having sex was subordinate to making love. She was the only woman with whom sex had ever been a shared thing and not just something for his own physical ease and pleasure.

He slowed his rhythm for a moment, raised his head, and gazed down into her eyes. She looked back, her own half closed. She looked almost in pain. Her teeth closed about her bottom lip.

“Gwendoline,” he said.

“Hugo.”

“My love.”

“Yes.”

He wondered briefly if either of them would remember the words. Saying nothing and saying everything.

He lowered his forehead to her shoulder and drove them both to the edge of the pinnacle and over it in a glorious descent to nothingness. To everything.

He heard her cry out.

He heard himself cry out.

He heard a puppy squeak and then suckle.

And he sighed aloud against her neck and allowed himself the brief luxury of relaxing all his weight down onto her hot, damp, exquisitely lovely body.

She sighed too, but not in protest. It was a sigh of perfect fulfillment, perfect contentment. He was sure of it.

He moved off her, reached out for the other blanket he had brought this morning—or yesterday morning, he supposed it was—and spread it over them. He lifted her head onto his arm and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

“When I have more energy,” he said, “I am going to offer to make an honest woman of you. And when you have more energy, you are going to say yes.”

“Am I?” she asked. “With a thank you very much, sir?”

“Yes will be sufficient,” he said and promptly dozed off.

Hugo,” she whispered.

He had been sleeping for a while, but he had been making stirring sounds in the last few minutes. She watched the faint light from the lamp flicker across his face.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Hugo,” she said, “I have remembered something.”

“Mmm,” he said again and then inhaled loudly. “Me too. I have just this moment remembered, and if you will give me a few moments, I will be ready to create more memories.”

“About … about the day Vernon died,” she said, and his eyes snapped open.

They stared at each other.

“I have always tried hard not to remember those few minutes,” she said. “But of course I have remembered. Nothing can ever erase the images.”

He spread his hand over the side of her face and kissed her.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“And something has always fluttered at me,” she said. “Something that did not somehow fit. I have never tried too hard to discover what it was because I did not want to remember at all. I still do not. I still wish I could forget altogether.”

“You have remembered what did not fit?” he said.

“It happened last evening,” she said, “when your neighbors were all trying to persuade you to waltz and everyone was laughing and you held up your hands so that you could give an answer.”

His thumb stroked her cheek.

“You held up your hands with your palms out,” she said. “It is what people do, is it not, when they want to say something or stop something.”

He did not say anything.

“When I—” she began and swallowed convulsively. “When I turned as Vernon fell from the gallery, Jason was turned to him already, and he was holding his hands up above his head to stop him. It was a futile gesture, of course, but an understandable one under the circumstances. Except that—”

She frowned, even now trying to bring the remembered image into focus. But she was right.

“His palms were turned inward?” he said. “Beckoning rather than stopping? Taunting? ”

“Perhaps I have misremembered,” she said. Though she knew she had not.

“No,” he said. “Memories like that are indelible even if the mind will not admit them for seven years or more.”

“He would not have been able to do that,” she said, “if I had not turned my back, if I had gone up to Vernon instead of to the library.”

“Gwendoline,” he said, “if nothing had happened, how long would you have remained in the library?”

She thought about it.

“Not long,” she said. “No longer than five minutes. Probably less. He needed me. He had just overheard something very upsetting. I would have understood that as soon as I stepped into the room. I would have drawn a few deep breaths, as I had done on other occasions, and gone to him.”

“He took the loss of your child badly?” he asked.

“He blamed himself,” she said.

“And he needed comforting,” he said. “Did he give you comfort?”

“He was ill,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “he was. And if you had both lived for another fifty years, he would have continued ill and you would have continued to love him and to comfort him.”

“I promised for better or worse, in sickness or in health,” she said. “But I let him down in the end.”

“No,” he said. “You were not his jailer, Gwendoline. You could not be standing watch over him for twenty-four hours out of every day. And sick or not, he was not without his wits, was he? You had lost a child as much as he had. More. But he took the burden of guilt upon himself and in the process robbed you of the comfort you so desperately needed. Even in the depths of his despair, he ought to have known that he was placing an unbearable burden upon you and doing nothing to fulfill what he had promised you. Illness, unless it is total madness, is not an excuse for great selfishness. You needed love as much as he did. He fell. No one pushed him. He was beckoned and taunted. But he was the one who fell—deliberately, it would seem. I understand why you blame yourself. I better than anyone, perhaps, can understand that. But I absolutely absolve you of all blame. Let it go, my love. Grayson cannot really be accused of murder, can he, even though his intent was doubtless murderous. Leave him to his conscience, though I doubt he has one. Leave him to his nastiness. And let yourself be loved. Let me love you.”

“He was with us when I fell,” she said, “when my horse did not clear the hedge. He had never missed a jump before and it was not the highest fence he had jumped. Jason was with us. He was behind me, crowding me, trying to encourage my horse to clear the jump, I have always thought. He could not have … Could he?”

She heard him inhale slowly.

“Is it possible,” she said, “that I did not kill my own child? Or is it wishful thinking because I have realized that he wanted Vernon out of the way? Even dead? Did he want our child dead too? Did he want me dead?”

“Ah, Gwendoline,” he said. “Ah, my love.”

She closed her eyes, but she could not stop the hot, scalding tears from spilling over onto her cheeks and diagonally across them to drip onto the blanket and pool at the side of her nose.

He gathered her into his arms, spread one great hand behind her head, and kissed her wet cheeks, her eyelids, her temples, her wet lips.

“Hush,” he crooned. “Hush now. Let it all go. Let me love you. You have love all wrong, Gwendoline. It is not all give, give, give. It is taking as well. It is allowing the other one the pleasure and joy of giving. Let me love you.”

She thought her heart would surely break. All her life, it seemed, or since her marriage, anyway, she had held herself together, tried always to be cheerful, tried not to be negative or bitter. She had tried to love, and she had accepted love in return provided it was the quiet, steady love of her mother or her brother or Lauren or Lily or the rest of her family.

But …

“It would be like jumping off the edge of the world,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be there to catch you.”

“Will you?” she said.

“And you can catch me when I jump,” he told her.

“You will squash me,” she said.

And they were both laughing, hugged together in each other’s arms, both damp from her tears.

“Gwendoline,” he said when they were finally quiet again, “will you marry me?”

She held him, her eyes closed, and inhaled the mingled smells of cologne and sweat and maleness. And the indefinable something wonderful that was Hugo himself.

“Do you think I can have children?” she said. “Do you think I deserve another chance? What if I cannot?”

He clucked his tongue.

“No one ever knows for sure,” he said. “We will find out as time goes on. And yes, you deserve to have children of your own body. As for me, don’t worry. I would a thousand times rather marry you and have no children than marry any other woman in the world and have a dozen. In fact, I don’t think I will marry anyone else if you will not have me. I’ll have to start going to brothels.”

They were snorting with laughter again then.

“Well, in that case,” she said.

“Yes?” He drew back his head and gazed at her in the lamplight.

“I’ll marry you,” she said, sobering. “Oh, Hugo, I don’t care how many different worlds we have to cross in order to find our own little world within. I don’t care. I will do what has to be done.”

“Me too,” he said.

And they smiled at each other until they both had tears in their eyes.

He sat up and rummaged around in the heap of his clothing until he found his watch. He held it up to the light of the lamp.

“Half past two,” he said. “We had better be out of here by half past five. Three hours. What can we do in three hours? Any suggestions?”

He turned to look down at her.

She opened her arms to him.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “An excellent suggestion. And three hours gives plenty of time for play as well as feasting.”

“Hugo,” she said as his arms closed about her again and he lay down on his back, bringing her over on top of him. “Oh, Hugo, I love you, I love you.”

“Mmm,” he said against her lips.

Hugo made the announcement at a late breakfast, which everyone attended. He ought perhaps to have spoken with Gwendoline’s brother first, but he had already done that once upon a time. And perhaps the announcement ought to have been made to her family first, but … why? Her family would be informed as soon as they returned to London.

“Ah,” Constance said, looking about the table and sounding wistful, “all the excitement is over, and tomorrow we will be returning to London.”

“But every moment of our stay has been wonderful, Constance,” Fiona said, her voice warm and animated in a way Hugo had never heard before this week. “And there is still today to enjoy.”

“And the excitement is not all over,” Hugo said from the head of the table. “At least, for me it is not. And for Gwendoline it is not. For we are newly betrothed and intend to spend the day enjoying our new status.”

She had told him last night that he might make the announcement today if he wished. She smiled now and bit her lip as the room filled with the sounds of exclamations and squeals and applause and everyone clambering to speak at once and chairs scraping back across the floor. Hugo found his hand being pumped, his back being slapped, his cheeks being kissed. Gwendoline, he saw, was being hugged and kissed too.