At Last Comes Love

21

DUNCAN spent the rest of the day with Toby. He had tea with him, showed him the schoolroom, which was part of the nursery, and the toys and books that had been there from his own childhood, and he took him outside to show him the river and the wide lawns to the west of the house, where they would play cricket and other games that needed wide open spaces. He took him to the stable block to see the horses and the puppies in the far stall, jealously guarded by their mother, a border collie. And no, Toby might /not/ take one of them into the house – though Duncan did not doubt he would be coaxed and wheedled until he consented to allow one to be adopted, once the animal could be taken from its mother without crying all night in the nursery and keeping everyone awake.

He had dinner in the nursery and suggested that they invite Toby's new friend to join them there. "But she is not my friend yet," Toby pointed out. "She said she would let me know tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps she does not like me. Do you think she does, Papa?" "I think," Duncan said, "she will like you a little bit more if you invite her to dinner. We gentlemen have to be crafty where ladies are concerned, Tobe. If we are always polite and considerate and include them in our various activities, they will usually be our friends." "What does /considerate/ mean?" Toby asked. When Duncan told him, he nodded and agreed that Maggie really ought to be invited to dinner.

After the meal, Duncan spent an hour listening to Toby's much-embellished accounts of the adventures he had narrowly survived in Harrogate before telling him a few stories and tucking him into bed for the night. "Sleep tight," he said, kissing the child on the forehead. "Tomorrow we will play again." "You will be here, Papa?" Toby asked. "Promise?" "I promise." Duncan smoothed a hand over his soft fair curls. "And we can stay here, Papa? For always? Promise?" "Maybe not for all the rest of our lives, Tobe, unless we want to," Duncan said. "But for a long, long time. This is home, a place to play and grow up in, a place to come back to whenever we go somewhere else for a little while. A place to belong." "Together," Toby said. His eyelids were growing heavy. "Just you and me, Papa." "Yes," Duncan said. "You and me. And perhaps my wife, your new friend – /if/ she decides to be your friend, that is. I think she might, though. She was pleased to be invited to dinner, was she not?" "It was kind of us to ask her. We will do it again," Toby said, yawning hugely and closing his eyes. "Am I safe now, Papa? Nobody will come and take me away, as Mama always used to say?" "You are as safe as safe can be," Duncan assured him, and sat where he was until he was sure the child was asleep.

He hoped he had spoken the truth. Devil take it, but he hoped so.

Perhaps after all he should have kept Toby's identity a carefully guarded secret. But no, Maggie was right. The time for secrecy was over.

Except that there were still secrets – heavy ones, which perhaps he ought to have divulged with the others. But Laura had always been adamant that for Toby's sake, and hers, the truth must never be told. And he had promised her over and over again … Did a promise extend even beyond the grave?

Should loyalty to a new spouse supersede all else?

His life had been defined for five interminable years by secrets and the certain disaster that would result if they were uncovered. It was not easy to shake himself free of those years. It was not always easy to know what was the right thing to do – or the wrong.

Especially as it was an innocent child who would suffer if he were to make the wrong decision.

Had he already made it?

What would happen if he went downstairs now and told the whole truth to Maggie? But he feared he knew the answer. She would persuade him that it was in everyone's best interest that the truth be told openly at last, that nothing good ever came from secrecy and subterfuge.

The very idea that she might talk him into agreeing with her made his stomach churn uncomfortably. There was far too much risk involved.

He sighed and stood up, touching his fingers to Toby's hand before tucking it beneath the covers.

He had not forgotten the strange conversation he had had with Maggie down by the river just before Toby arrived with the Harrises. In fact, it had been very much on his mind ever since.

He had no idea where the words had come from. Or the idea behind them.

Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift.

He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic.

He was not, though.

He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still – and always – safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business.

For receiving meant opening up the heart again.

Perhaps to rejection.

Or disillusionment.

Or pain.

Or even heartbreak.

It was all terribly risky.

And all terribly necessary.

And of course, there was the whole issue of trust … He found her in the drawing room, working at an embroidery frame, something he had not seen her do before. She looked up and smiled when he entered the room. "Is he asleep?" she asked.

He nodded. "Maggie," he said, "I am sorry he was so rude when he arrived." "You must not be," she said. "He was not deliberately ill-mannered, only honest in the way of young children – and very frightened. He saw me as someone who could take you away from him. I was touched when he told me I could be his friend." "It was inspired," he said, "to tell him you needed to consider the matter and would give him your answer another time." She laughed. "He is a sweetheart," she said. "And a little devil," he said. "He almost toppled into the river looking for fish when he had been here scarcely two hours – after I had told him not to lean out beyond the edge of the bank." She laughed. "But I did not come here to talk about Toby," he said.

She rested her hand holding the needle on her embroidery and looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and somehow fathomless in the candlelight. "Didn't you?" she said. "I will spend time with him each day," he said, "because I must and because I wish to. And of course I must spend time about estate business just as you will go about the business of the house. There will be visitors soon, I do not doubt, and calls to return. But there must be time for you and me." She looked down at her work and with the forefinger of her free hand traced the silk petal of one embroidered flower. "To fall in love," he said.

She looked up at him. "Can it be done so deliberately?" she asked. "How else are we to do it?" he asked in return. "Let us not call it falling in love. Let us call it courtship instead. There was no time for it before we married, but it is not too late for it now. Is it?" "But courtship is a one-way thing," she said. "A man courts a woman." "Let us be rebels, then," he said. "Court me too, Maggie, as I will court you. Make me fall in love with you. I will make you fall in love with me. There will be magic." Her eyes filled with tears suddenly, and she bent her head to thread her needle into the cloth and set it aside. "Oh," she said, and her voice sounded a little shaky, "that is it, is it not? The grand dream. There will be magic." She looked up at him again. "Will there be?" "The moon is almost full," he said, "and the sky is clear. The stars are a million lamps. Let me fetch you a shawl and take you outside. What setting could be more conducive to romance?" "What indeed?" she said, laughing softly. "Go and fetch a shawl, then." Ten minutes later they were at the bottom of the flower garden and stepping onto the humpbacked wooden bridge that crossed the river. They stopped halfway across it to gaze down into the water, which gleamed in the moonlight. She held the ends of her shawl with both hands, and he had his hands clasped at his back.

He was thirty. So was she. The first flush of youth had passed them both by, ending abruptly for him just before his twenty-fifth birthday, leached gradually out of her after the death of her father and the departure of her lover and his ultimate faithlessness.

They had both given up on romance.

There was no scene more romantic than this. The evening air was cool but not by any means cold. He could smell the flowers and hear the water gurgling beneath the bridge. And he was in company with a beautiful woman who was his lover as well as his life's companion. "Turn your face to me," he said.

She did so, and they gazed into each other's eyes for a while until they both smiled.

He bent forward and rubbed his nose against hers before kissing her softly on the lips. "I think," he said, "it is possible to start again, don't you? Life, I mean. It cannot possibly be intended that we simply acquire experience upon experience like a lot of excess baggage to carry about with us until we stagger into middle age and old age beneath the impossible weight of it all. We must, as we grow older and wiser, be able to allow all the … all the pain to seep out of our bones and our souls so that we can start again. Do you think?" "I thought it was a matter of will and discipline," she said. "I thought the past was gone – off my shoulders, out of my life, until I had a letter from Lady Dew a few months ago telling me that Crispin was a widower and that he was back in England with his daughter and asking about me and wanting to see me again. I have used my will again since then, and discipline." "But to no avail?" he asked. "I married you," she said. "I did it for a number of reasons, none of them consciously to do with Crispin. But he was one of the reasons. I wanted to forget once and for all. I wanted to stop loving him – or rather, I wanted to stop fearing that I would love him again. I don't want to. I want the pain to go away. I want to start again. I want to love you. Oh, Duncan, I already do. But I want…" "The magic," he said. "Yes." He took one of her hands in his, laced his fingers with hers, and crossed to the other side of the bridge with her. They strolled along the avenue in silence, and it seemed to Duncan that she did not feel the awkwardness she had felt last evening. He felt that together they were allowing the cool quiet of the night, the moonlight and the shadows, to pour into their souls and heal them.

After a few minutes he released her hand and wrapped one arm about her waist. A moment later she wrapped her arm about his. Inevitably, her head came to rest on his shoulder.

Desire for her hummed pleasantly in his veins.

He was at peace, he realized. "Duncan," she said without raising her head, "I have just realized that I am happier than I have been in years." "Are you?" he said. "I am here in this lovely place," she said, "and it is where I belong.

And I am with a man I like and admire and with whom I have … pleasure. A man with whom I am embarking upon a courtship, a romance." "There is a summer house at the end of the avenue," he said. "Yes," she said. "I can see it." "Be prepared," he told her. "I intend to kiss you silly when we reach it." She laughed and lifted her head to look into his face, her eyes shining with merriment. "I would think the less of you if you did not," she said. "But be warned. I intend to give as good as I get." And he laughed too, throwing his head back, and felt more carefree than he remembered feeling in years.

They released their hold on each other and joined hands, their fingers laced.

He had intended lighting the lamp that he hoped was still kept ready in the summer house as it had always used to be. But there was enough moonlight streaming through the windows on all five sides of the structure that artificial light was unnecessary.

There was a leather sofa there as well as two upholstered chairs and a round table in the center. They sat together in one of the chairs, she on his lap, her arms about his neck, his about her waist. "This is what every girl dreams of," she said, "being taken somewhere lovely and moonlit and quite private by a handsome gentleman." "Girls dream such wicked dreams?" he said, rubbing his nose across hers. "Oh, not wicked," she said. "/Romantic/. Girls dream of kisses to make their hearts beat faster and their toes curl up inside their slippers.

They dream of heaven blossoming like a perfect rose in the center of their world." She laughed softly. "Do they?" he said, nibbling on her bottom lip. "Yes." She pressed her lips softly to his. "I am still a girl at heart, Duncan. And I still dream." "I am a handsome gentleman, then?" he asked her.

She laughed again, the sound coming from somewhere deep in her throat. "I think you must be," she said. "Certainly my heart is all aflutter, and my toes are curling up in my slippers. Now there is only that certain heaven to travel to, Duncan." "May I come too?" he whispered against her lips, and deepened the kiss. "Mmm," she said on a long sigh.

Duncan was not sure he did not respond with an answering sigh.

They kissed long and deep, murmuring to each other when they came up for air, returning over and over again to the feast. And yet they kissed without any urgent sexual passion. That would come later, when they returned home to their bed. This was not about sex. It was about romance. It was about falling in love.

It was all very strange – and it was all strangely enticing.

Romance more enticing than sex?

He was not even sure he could not smell a perfect rose.

Margaret spent almost the whole of the following morning with Mrs.

Dowling. She inspected the china and glassware and silverware and linen and sat poring over the account books and the order books with her. She was taken belowstairs to inspect the kitchen and pantries and storehouses, and stayed to drink a cup of tea and sample some sweet biscuits fresh out of the oven while she discussed menus and meal times with Mrs. Kettering, the cook.

She met a number of the servants and thoroughly enjoyed the morning. She was very aware, as she had never been at Warren Hall, that this was /her/ home, that these were /her/ servants.

She felt consciously happy. And though she remembered the night with pleasure – they had made love twice, once when they went to bed and once before Ducan got up for an early morning ride – it was last evening she remembered with a warm glow about the heart.

They had kissed each other out in the summer house with a deepening affection and a promise of passion when they went home – but with something that went beyond affection or passion. They had talked between kisses and had even been silent for a longish spell, her head on his shoulder, his fingers playing lightly with her hair. And they had laughed.

Their shared laughter had caused her to slide closer to falling in love with him. She had not heard him laugh often, and almost never with total lightheartedness at some silliness that was probably not really funny at all. And she could not remember laughing herself in quite so carefree a manner for a long time.

There was mutual trust in shared laughter.

She trusted his unexpected commitment to making a love match of their union. He had been open and frank with her. She had to trust him. She /needed/ to.

Duncan was busy too. He had taken breakfast with Toby in the nursery, but he was spending the rest of the morning with Mr. Lamb, his steward.

They had gone out on horseback just after breakfast, probably to tour the home farm.

Honeymoons were wonderful things, Margaret decided, but it felt equally good to be settling to what would be the routine of daily life whenever they were in the country. And that, she supposed, would be most of the time, at least for the next several years, with Toby so young. And perhaps soon there would be another infant in the nursery.

Oh, she /hoped/ so.

Duncan was to spend the afternoon with Toby. Margaret told herself that she did not mind. He had said from the start that the child must come first with him, and he had arrived here just yesterday. He needed to spend time with his father.

However, just before luncheon, when Margaret was in her dressing room changing her clothes, there was a knock at the door. Ellen opened it.

Toby was standing there, Duncan behind him. "There you are," the child said to Margaret. "We looked in the big room downstairs, but you were not there. You are to tell me today if you will be my friend." "Oh," Margaret said, looking briefly up at Duncan and finding that for some reason her knees felt suddenly weak, "I have been busy and have not given the matter a great deal of thought. But I think I might like to be your friend, Toby. Indeed, I am certain I would be. Shall we shake on it?" She stepped closer to the door and held out a hand for his.

He pumped her hand up and down. "Good," he said. "We are going out after I have eaten. We are going to play cricket. Papa is going to bowl to me and I am going to hit the ball. You can catch it. If you want to, that is. I'll let you bat some of the time." "That is kind of you," she said. "And then," he said, "we are going to the lake, and Papa is going to let me swim if I have been a good boy." " /Is/ there a lake?" She looked at Duncan with raised eyebrows. "At the foot of the west lawn," he said. "It is out of sight from the house behind the trees." "Splendid," she said, looking at Toby. "What shall I call you?" he asked her. "I won't call you Mama." "That would be absurd anyway," she said, "since I am /not/ your mother.

Let me see. Papa calls me Maggie. Everyone else in my family calls me Meg. How about Aunt Meg, even though I am not really your aunt either?" "Aunt Meg," he said. "You had better be ready after luncheon or Papa will go without you. He said so." "I was talking to /you/, imp," Duncan said. "Off you go now. Mrs. Harris is waiting for you in the nursery. Can you find your own way?" "I can," the child said, darting off. "Of course I can. I am four years old." "Going on forty," Duncan said when he was out of earshot. He stepped inside the dressing room – Ellen had already left. "I am sorry about this, Maggie. Playing cricket with a child who has not yet learned to swing his bat on a collision course with the ball is probably not your idea of an enjoyable way to spend a sunny afternoon." "On the contrary," she said. "I always did find fielding the ball the most dreary part of playing cricket. Now I can claim a different role and teach Toby how to hit a ball. If he will grant me the favor, that is, as his newest friend." They both laughed – and locked eyes. "This evening," he said, "will be just for us. And for romance." "Yes." She reached up and cupped his face with both hands. She kissed him lightly and briefly on the lips. "I really do not know," he said, "how I could have imagined even for a moment that I would be able to find a bride, marry her in haste, and then settle her somewhere on the outer periphery of my life." "You have accomplished two out of the three," she said, "and that is not a bad average. However, you must have imagined all that before you met me or got to know me at all well. I do not function at all well when balanced on peripheries." He laughed and returned her kiss just as briefly. "If we do not go down and eat immediately," he said, "I daresay Toby will go without us and we will be doomed to an afternoon with nothing to do but entertain each other." "Oh goodness," she said, "whatever would we find to do?" She laughed when he merely waggled his eyebrows.

She had done the right thing, she thought as she took his arm. Oh, she had done the right thing in marrying him. That collision in the Tindell ballroom /was/ something that had been meant to be.

She was happy already.

They were going to fall in love.

And perhaps their determination to fall meant that they had already fallen – at least a part of the way.