Mary Balogh - The Proposal

Warm fingers probed the swelling.

“I do not believe anything is broken,” Lord Trentham said. “But I cannot be certain. You must keep your foot where it is until the doctor comes. The cut to your knee is superficial and will heal in a few days.”

She opened her eyes and was acutely aware of her bare foot and a length of bare leg elevated on the cushion. Lord Trentham was standing upright, his hands clasped at his back, his booted feet slightly apart—a military man at ease. His dark eyes were gazing very directly back into hers, and his jaw was set hard.

He resented her being here, she thought. Well, she had tried very hard not to be. She resented being resented.

“Most women,” he said, “do not bear pain well. You do.”

He was insulting her sex but complimenting her personally. Was she supposed to simper with gratitude?

“You forget, Lord Trentham,” she said, “that it is women who bear children. It is generally agreed that the pain of childbed is the worst pain there is.”

“You have children of your own?” he asked.

“No.” She closed her eyes again and for no apparent reason continued—on a subject she almost never spoke of, even to those nearest and dearest to her. “I lost the only one I conceived. It happened after I was thrown from my horse and broke my leg.”

“What were you doing riding a horse when you were with child?” he asked.

It was a good question, even if it was an impudent one too.

“Jumping hedges,” she said, “including one neither Vernon—my husband—nor I had ever jumped before. His horse cleared it. Mine did not and I was tossed off.”

There was a short silence. Why on earth had she told him all that?

“Did your husband know you were with child?” he asked.

It was an unpardonably intimate question. But she had started this.

“Of course,” she said. “I was almost six months into my confinement.”

And now he would think all sorts of uncomplimentary things about Vernon without understanding at all. It was unfair of her to have said so much when she was certainly not prepared to launch into lengthy explanations. She seemed to have done nothing but show herself in a bad light since she first set eyes upon him and cringed in fear. Yes, she really had. She had cringed.

“This was a child you wanted?” he asked.

Her eyes snapped open and she glared at him, speechless. What sort of question was that?

His eyes were hard. Accusing. Condemning.

But what did she expect? She had made both herself and Vernon seem unpardonably reckless and irresponsible.

It was time to change the subject.

“Is the blond gentleman downstairs a guest at Penderris too?” she asked. “Have I imposed upon a house party?”

“He is Viscount Ponsonby,” he said. “There are six guests here, apart from Stanbrook himself. We gather here for a few weeks each year. Stanbrook opened his home to us for several years during and after the wars while we recuperated from various wounds.”

Gwen gazed at him. There was no outer sign of any wound that might have incapacitated Lord Trentham for that long. But she had been right about him. He was a military man.

“You were or are all officers?” she asked.

“Were,” he said. “Five of us in the recent wars, Stanbrook in previous ones. His son fought and died in the Napoleonic Wars.”

Ah, yes. Shortly before the duchess leapt from the cliff top to her death.

“And the seventh person?” she asked.

“A woman,” he said, “widow of a surveillance officer who was tortured to death after being captured. She was present when he was finally shot.”

“Oh,” Gwen said, grimacing.

Now she felt worse than ever. This was far more terrible than imposing upon a simple house party. And her own sprained ankle seemed embarrassingly trivial in comparison with what the duke and his six guests must have endured.

Lord Trentham had picked up a shawl from the back of a nearby chair and came closer to spread it over Gwen’s injured leg. At the same moment the drawing doors opened again and a woman came inside carrying a tea tray. She was a lady, not a maid. She was tall and very straight in posture. Her dark blond hair was pulled back in a chignon, but the simplicity, even severity, of the style emphasized the perfect bone structure of her oval face with its finely sculpted cheekbones, straight nose, and blue-green eyes fringed with lashes a shade darker than her hair. Her mouth was wide and generous. She was beautiful, despite the fact that her face looked as though it were sculpted of marble. It looked not only as though she never smiled but as if she were incapable of doing so even if she wished. Her eyes were large and very calm, almost unnaturally so.

She came toward the sofa and would have set the tray down on the table beside Gwen if Lord Trentham had not taken it from her hands first.

“I’ll see to that, Imogen,” he said.

“George guessed that you would consider it quite improper to be in a room alone with a strange gentleman, Lady Muir,” the lady said, “even if he did rescue you and carry you back to the house. I have been designated as your chaperon.”

Her voice was cool rather than cold.

“This is Imogen, Lady Barclay,” Lord Trentham said, “who never seems to consider it improper to stay at Penderris with six gentlemen and no chaperon.”

“I would entrust my life to any of the six or all of them combined,” Lady Barclay said, inclining her head courteously to Gwen. “Indeed, I have already done so. You are looking embarrassed. You need not. How did you hurt your ankle?”

She poured three cups of tea as Gwen described what had happened. This, then, she thought, was the lady who had been with her husband when his torturers had killed him. Gwen had an inkling of the torments she must have lived through every minute of every day since. She must forever be asking herself if there was anything she might have done to prevent such a disaster. Just as Gwen forever asked it of herself with regard to Vernon’s death.

“I feel very foolish,” she said in conclusion.

“Of course you do,” Lady Barclay said. “But it could have happened to any of us, you know. We are always up and down to the beach, and that slope is quite treacherous enough even without the shifting stones.”

Gwen glanced at Lord Trentham, who was silently sipping his tea, his dark eyes resting on her.

He was, she thought in some surprise and with a little shiver of awareness, a terribly attractive man. He ought not to be. He was too large to be either elegant or graceful. His hair was too short to soften the harshness of his features or the hard line of his jaw. His mouth was too straight and hard-set to be sensuous. His eyes were too dark and too penetrating to make a woman want to fall into them. There was nothing to suggest charm or humor or any warmth of personality.

And yet …

And yet there was an aura about him of almost overpowering physicality. Of masculinity.

It would be an absolutely wonderful experience, she thought, to go to bed with him.

It was a thought that shocked her to the roots of her being. In the seven years since Vernon’s death she had shrunk away from the merest thought of another courtship and marriage. And she had never in her life thought of any man in any other connection.

Did this unexpected and rather ridiculous attraction have anything to do with the equally unexpected wave of loneliness she had felt down on the beach just before she met him?

She made conversation with Lady Barclay while these strange thoughts buzzed about in her head. But really it was difficult to concentrate fully upon either words or thought. Pain, as she remembered now from the time when she broke her leg, could never confine itself to the injured part of one’s body but throbbed instead all through it until one did not know quite what to do with oneself.

Lord Trentham got to his feet as soon as she had finished her cup of tea, took an unused linen napkin off the tea tray, and crossed to a sideboard, where he must have found a jug of cold water among the liquor decanters. He came back with a wet napkin from which most of the water had been squeezed, spread it over Gwen’s forehead, and held it in place there with one hand. She rested the back of her head against the cushion again and closed her eyes.

The coolness, even the pressure of his hand, felt very good.

Where was the insensitive brute she had judged him to be?

“I have been hoping to distract her with conversation,” Lady Barclay said. “She is as pale as a ghost, poor thing. But she has uttered not a moan of complaint. She has my admiration.”

“Jones is certainly dragging his feet,” Lord Trentham said.

“He will come as soon as he is able,” Lady Barclay said. “He always does, Hugo. And there is no better doctor in the world.”

“Lady Muir has suffered a previous injury to the same leg,” Lord Trentham said. “I daresay it hurts like a thousand devils.”

They were talking of her as if she were not there to speak for herself, Gwen thought. But for the moment she did not care. For the moment she was distancing herself as far from the pain as she could get.

And there was warmth in their voices, she noticed. As if they were fond of each other. Almost as if they were genuinely concerned for her.

Even so, she wished the physician would come soon so that she could ask the Duke of Stanbrook again for a carriage to take her to Vera’s.

Oh, how she hated to be beholden to anyone.

When Flavian returned with the doctor, he brought Mrs. Parkinson too. It was that lady who hurried into the drawing room first. She curtsied low to Imogen and Hugo and assured them that His Grace was kindness itself, that they were kindness itself, that she would be grateful to Lord Ponsonby for the rest of her days for bringing her word of her dearest friend’s accident so promptly and insisting upon bringing her here in His Grace’s carriage despite the fact that she would have been happy to walk ten times the distance if it had been necessary.

“I would walk five—nay, even ten—miles for dear Lady Muir’s sake,” she assured them, “even if it was careless of her to wander onto His Grace’s land when I had specifically warned her to be careful to avoid giving offense to such an illustrious peer of the realm. His Grace would have been quite justified if he had chosen to refuse her admittance to Penderris, though I daresay he hesitated to do so when he learned she is Lady Muir. I suppose it is that fact I have to thank for my invitation to ride in the carriage, for such a distinction has never been offered me before, you know, despite the fact that Mr. Parkinson was the younger brother of Sir Roger Parkinson and was fourth in line to the title himself after his brother’s three sons.”

It was only after she had delivered herself of this remarkable speech, looking from Hugo to Imogen as she did so, that the lady turned toward her friend, her hands clasped to her bosom.

Hugo and Imogen exchanged a poker-faced glance in which volumes were spoken. Flavian had come to stand silently just inside the door, looking openly bored.

“Gwen!” Mrs. Parkinson cried. “Oh, my poor dear Gwen, what have you done to yourself? I was beside myself with worry when you did not return from your walk within the hour. I feared the worst and blamed myself most bitterly for having felt too low in spirits to accompany you. What would I have done if you had met with a fatal accident? What would I have said to the Earl of Kilbourne, your dear brother? It was really too, too naughty of you to cause me such panic. All of which I felt, of course, because I love you so dearly.”

“I twisted my ankle, that is all, Vera,” Lady Muir explained. “But unfortunately, it is impossible for me to walk, at least for the present. I hope not to have to impose upon the duke’s hospitality for much longer, however. I trust he will be kind enough to allow the carriage to return to the village with the two of us once the doctor has looked at my ankle and bound it up.”

Mrs. Parkinson regarded her friend with open horror and uttered a slight shriek as she clasped her hands even more tightly to her bosom.

“You must not even think of being removed,” she said. “Oh, my poor Gwen, you will do your leg irreparable damage if you attempt anything so reckless. You already have that unfortunate limp from a previous accident, and I daresay it has deterred other gentlemen from paying you court since dear Lord Muir’s passing. You simply must not risk becoming entirely lame. His Grace, I am assured, will join me in urging you to remain here until your ankle is quite healed. You must not worry that I will neglect you. I shall walk over daily to bear you company. You are my dearest friend in the world, after all. I am sure this lady and this gentleman as well as Viscount Ponsonby will also urge you to stay.”