Mary Balogh - The wood nymph

"There is really nothing to tell," she heard herself say, and she shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "My life has been very ordinary. Tell me about yours. It must have been very exciting, I think."

"And you would be very wrong," he told her. "I have a great deal, do I not, wood nymph? Wealth and property and social status. It must seem to you that I cannot fail to be happy."

"And you are not?" she prompted, unconsciously squeezing the hand that still held hers.

"I had a lonely childhood," he said. "My parents died when I was an infant, and my grandfather brought me up in Scotland. He was a recluse long before I came to him. I was educated at home by him-fortunately, he was a learned and an intelligent man. He would not allow me to make companions of any other boy in the vicinity, and he did not wish me to go away to school. He and his housekeeper, who had been with him for years and years, were almost the only human companions I knew until I grew to manhood."

"Poor little boy," she said, her eyes suspiciously bright as they looked into his.

He laughed. "I am not trying to spin a tragedy," he said. "It was a lonely childhood, yes, but there were compensations. I loved my grandfather and I believe he loved me. Even his refusal to let me out of his sight came, I think, from a fear that he would lose the one link with life that had come to him in his old age. It was a very secure childhood. It was not until long after he died and I decided that I should venture out into the world that I realized how ill-equipped I was to become a part of it."

"Where did you go?" she asked.

"To London first," he said. "I found life hard there. It is not easy for me to meet and converse with new people. I find myself frequently tongue-tied."

"Yet you can talk to me," Helen said.

He smiled and took her hand in a warmer grip. "Yes, little wood nymph, I can talk to you," he said, "because I know you are not sitting in judgment on my conversation and my manners. I always used to feel the same way with… with someone else."

"With a lady?" she asked.

"I had one good friend, too," he said, not answering her question. "He was everything I am not: charming, at ease in any company, never at a loss for words. He helped me a great deal."

"Why have you come here?" she asked.

"I wanted a little peace and quiet, wood nymph," he replied. "I thought to find it here. Maybe I am more like my grandfather than I care to admit."

"Have you found it?" she asked. "The peace and quiet, I mean."

His eyes wandered over her face for a while before he answered. "To a degree," he said finally. "I have met you, Nell, and with you I feel I can relax. I can forget that there are such things as balls and assemblies and dinner parties and afternoon visits to be made. You do not realize how fortunate you are not to have to worry about such things."

She smiled. The moment for her great revelation seemed to be slipping farther into impossibility. His hand left hers and reached up to cup the side of her head. His thumb stroked her cheek.

"I have missed you, Nell," he said softly. And he meant it. He knew that he should not mean it, that he should even now be making an effort to remain aloof from her. But the magic was there, as it always was when he was with her. She sat so quietly and earnestly listening to him, this girl who was very beautiful despite the shabbiness of her dress and the untidiness of her hair. Desire was rising in him and he did not have the will to quell it.

"I have missed you too," she said, and she turned her head so that her lips were against his palm.

Mainwaring was lost. His hand slipped through her hair to cup the back of her head and his other hand reached for her shoulder and pulled her close. Ah yes, her lips were as he remembered them, soft and warm, eager to part beneath the persuasion of his tongue, her mouth sweetly responsive to his invasion. He could feel her firm, unfettered breasts against his coat and her fingers in his hair.

But this time he wanted to be quite sure that she had as much pleasure as he. He laid her back against the grass and lifted her dress to her breasts and over her head and free of her arms. He removed her undergarments. He took his coat off and rolled it beneath her head before removing the rest of his clothes. She was beautiful, breathtakingly so. He gazed with wonder at her, not even touching her for a while. And he noticed that she gazed unashamedly back. Nell. His lovely Nell.

He touched her only with his hands, exploring her breasts and her small waist, her inner thighs, and he watched the color mount in her cheeks, and her lips part. When he touched her in more intimate places, she closed her eyes and tipped back her head. She clutched the grass on either side of her. He watched her, his own desire under rigid control, his hand learning with slow patience to arouse her for his entry.

When she looked at him once more and reached up her arms for him, he finally took her, and the taking was infinitely sweeter for the knowledge that their passion was shared. Her hips reached up and found his rhythm, and by very instinct he paced himself to the tension of her body. He knew, he felt, when that tension was ready to give way, and finally, gratefully, he pressed all his weight down on her and drove his own release into her soft and yielding warmth. He heard her cry out and was aware that his own voice had been mingled with hers.

Mainwaring lifted himself off her and drew her into the shelter of his arms. Her body was warm and damp and still shaking with the aftermath of passion. He kissed her closed eyes and her mouth, feeling relaxed and sleepy. He smiled dreamily when she looked up at him, her own face flushed and drowsy.

"Oh, William," she said, "I do love you so." And she smiled into his eyes, turned her head more comfortably into his shoulder, and slept.

William Mainwaring lay taut and wide awake beside her. God, what had he done? Were those words merely spoken in the aftermath of a satisfactory coupling, or had she meant them? Oh, God, no, he thought, and put his free hand over his eyes. He could not have done that to her, could he? He had not put someone else in the same position that he had been put in the year before.

He wanted to wake her, ask her what she had meant. She could not love him, surely. She was just a country girl, he a wealthy gentleman. She must have realized from the start that there could never be any real relationship between them. Surely she had known that the best they could hope for was a mutually satisfactory summer of physical passion. They were mere words she had spoken; they must be. He continued to hold her in his arms while she slept.

But when she woke and looked up at him, her smile was so bright and trusting, her eyes so full of tenderness, that his heart felt like lead inside him. What sort of havoc was he about to wreak in another human's life? He kissed her with a hopeless tenderness.

"I must leave, Nell," he said.

Her smile faded somewhat. "So soon?" she asked. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Next time, little wood nymph," he said, kissing her lightly on the nose and sitting up to dress himself.

"I had something to tell you," she said, reaching for her own clothes. Her voice sounded a little forlorn.

"Then say it." He smiled around at her as he buttoned his shirt.

"No," she said hesitantly. "It is something I find difficult to say. I wanted to tell you when you were holding me."

He laughed and pulled her to her feet. "I really must go, Nell," he said. "Next time I shall hold you and you shall make your big confession. Will that please you?"

"I suppose so," she said uncertainly, and she put her hands on his chest and raised her face to be kissed.

He took her face between his hands and looked down into her trusting eyes so full of… love! God, but he hated himself. He kissed her briefly and very gently on the lips and turned and left her without another word.

***

Helen was left with an almost empty feeling, which she did not understand. He had come, and seeing him again had made her realize that she loved him far more than she had thought. It had felt so lovely to sit beside him on the bank of the stream, holding his hand and listening to him talk. No one ever seemed to want to talk to her. People were impatient of her strange ideas, her intensity about subjects that did not matter to them. But William had seemed to want to talk to her, and he had talked about himself. He had seemed relaxed, though he had said that he found it difficult to converse with other people. He had made her feel unusually wanted.

And he had made love to her again. She could not have imagined any experience more wonderful. She had loved it the first time, knowing herself possessed by the man to whom she had given her heart. But this time he had done indescribably wonderful things to her body, arousing excitement and longings of which she had not suspected herself capable. And then he had carefully and thoroughly satisfied all those longings. When she had curled against him and slept, she had felt as if they were united forever, as if they could never again be two separate entities.

Why, then, was she here alone, and he on his way back to Graystone? She looked around her. Everything seemed to quiet and so… almost inanimate without William there to share it with her. He had to go, of course, just as she had to go home. It was absurd to expect otherwise. She tried to shake off her mood. Tomorrow he would come back again and they would talk and love. He would remember that she had something important to say to him, and finally she would be able to unburden herself of her secret.

He had seemed to be almost in a hurry to leave. But, of course, perhaps he really did have something important to do. It was quite possible that he had a dinner appointment and would have to get ready early for it. Yet surely he could have spared a few more minutes when he knew that she wanted to speak to him. Nonsense, she told herself. If she had really pressed the point, he would have listened.

Had he said he would come back tomorrow? Had he said anything about seeing her again? He had said he would hear what she had to say the next time, but he had not said when that next time was likely to be. Absurd to worry about that. They had met enough times, and knew each other well enough that they no longer had to make definite arrangements to meet again. He knew that she came here very often in the afternoons. He would come tomorrow, or at worst the next day. Had he not said that he had missed her? And had not his lovemaking shown a very definite regard for her?

Helen turned around with sudden impatience and pulled her dress over her head again. She tossed it down on the grass and jumped into the stream. The water reached to her waist, and she gasped with the shock of its coldness against her heated flesh. Then she took a deep breath and plunged beneath the surface, trying to wash away her uneasiness along with the dried sweat of summer heat and an afternoon's passion.

It was really a crime that one did not get up early every morning. William Mainwaring thought as he drove his curricle along dusty country roads, expertly maneuvering it around bends that would have taken an inattentive driver quite unawares. There was a quiet and peacefulness about the early morning that was not there later in the day. The sun was still quite low on the horizon, and a haze still settled over everything, promising heat again later. But for now, the air was fresh and cool. He felt almost cheerful for a brief few minutes.

If only he did not feel quite such a failure. It seemed to have become his fate in life to be constantly running away. When he had left Scotland a few short years before, he had thought he was running to life, a life that had passed him by for the whole of his youth. But what had the adventure brought him? Last year he had fled from Elizabeth as soon as her husband made it clear to him that he would not easily leave her go. And he had left London just a short while ago, convinced that he would be happy again in a country setting.

And now here he was again, running back to Scotland because of a little wench whose parents could not afford to buy her a dress that fit or shoes for her feet. Would he ever find a place where he belonged? Had he merely been unfortunate in his relationships, or was there something wrong within himself? He sighed. His housekeeper in Scotland would be surprised to see him. He would probably throw her into fits. His grandfather's old housekeeper had survived him by only a couple of years, and Mainwaring had hired this woman shortly before his departure for London. He assumed that the household was running smoothly, but he did not know how the woman would react to his unexpected arrival.