Chapter 9
“Arrangement be damned,” Augustus said, biting gently on one beautiful, rosy nipple.
They were not supposed to have been together for another two days, but as soon as Augustus saw her, cheeks rosy from a brisk wind, hair flying about her, silently beckoning him like some mystical being, he realized waiting two days to be with her would be far too torturous. They had just finished making love for the second time that day, and Augustus lay in bed more content than he could ever remember being. And definitely more satisfied.
Harriet laughed, then nestled against him drowsily, one arm slung over his chest, her fingers playing with his chest hair. She had bewitched him and he could only pray that when the time came to say good-bye, he would be able to do so with dignity. At the moment, however, all he could do was picture himself dissolving on the floor in abject misery. His poor wife, whoever she might be, would be a pale comparison to the woman he now held in his arms.
“I have to tell you something,” she said sleepily, but he thought he detected a hesitancy in her voice, and he found himself bracing for whatever it was she was about to say.
“What it is, love?”
“It’s a bit mortifying to say aloud, but I suppose I must.” She let out a sigh. “I’m expecting my monthlies quite soon,” she said quickly, then let out a small groan and ducked her head against him.
Augustus chuckled in relief, until he realized it might be several days before he would be able to make love to her. Then another wonderful thought occurred to him. Once she was finished with that bit of feminine horror, he would be able to make love to her without a sheath—at least for a couple of days before it became dangerous again.
“Ah,” he said, for what could a man reply when a woman said such a thing? “Then we shall have to take picnics.”
Harriet got up on one elbow to look down at him. “Picnics?”
“If I can’t make love to you,” he said, turning his head and kissing her creamy shoulder, “picnics will have to do.”
“Oh.” She looked surprised, and not in a good way. He realized he might have overstepped the boundaries of their agreement. Idiot. They were not courting. A man did not take his lover on picnics; that sort of activity was reserved for sweethearts and wives.
“After some thought, perhaps it would be best to simply focus on the restoration.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Now she sounded rather disappointed. Would he never understand what was happening inside a woman’s mind? Tucking his hands beneath his head and staring at the ceiling, he said, “You might as well tell me what I’ve done wrong. I shouldn’t like to do it again, you know.”
He could hear her breathing and almost see her mind working. “It’s only that when you asked to go on a picnic, it occurred to me that going on picnics isn’t the sort of activity that…” Her voice trailed off. “It made me too happy. I know I’m supposed to not like you, but I find that I do.”
“Who said you cannot like me?”
“Like you overmuch, I mean. It would be much better if you would vex me more.”
He chuckled. “You want me to make you angry?”
“Yes,” she said with a decisive nod. “As it stands now, you are being entirely too agreeable and I fear that when our arrangement is over, I shall miss your…your…agreeability.”
“My agreeability.”
“Yes.” She climbed onto his chest and rested her chin on her fists. “If you were more vexing, I wouldn’t miss you at all.”
He laughed so hard, she moved up and down on his chest, nearly sliding off him. “Oh, my darling girl, I shall try to anger you at least once a day.”
She gave him a grin. “See what I mean? I ask you to be disagreeable and what do you do? You agree to be disagreeable!” Harriet dissolved into laughter and this time she did slide off his chest.
“So,” he said with hesitation. “Does that mean you want to go on a picnic or not?”
“Of course I do, you silly man.”
“Of course,” he said ironically.
She nestled against his side again and he watched the golden light of the setting sun bathe her cheek. The smallest bit of down on her cheek, like the fuzz on a peach, shone golden in the sun. And that’s when he realized they had spent the entire day abed.
“It’s getting late.”
“I know,” she said, her voice muffled against his side, her breath tickling him. “My family has gone to London to try to find Clara a husband so it’s not so terribly important that I get back at a particular time. They took most of the servants with them so there is no one there who would even take note of my being gone. Except perhaps our cook.”
Augustus sat up. “Do you mean to say they went to London without you? My God, have they no sense at all? To leave their unmarried daughter alone?”
She widened her eyes innocently. “Yes, I know, I could get into all sorts of trouble, couldn’t I?”
He gave her a scowl, but ended up chuckling at his own hypocrisy. “Still, it wasn’t good of them, was it.”
“No,” Harriet said on a sigh. “It wasn’t. But if I’m to be completely honest, I’d much rather be here than in some townhouse in Mayfair. It’s much warmer in St. Ives than London this time of year.”
Bending to kiss the tip of her nose, he said, “Much warmer.”
* * * *
Harriet knew her heart was in danger the day she’d proposed their arrangement, but she hadn’t had any real idea how quickly and how completely she would fall in love. She’d been half in love with the earl before their arrangement but was able to talk herself out of believing it was any more than becoming spoony over a man, much as she had been for Mr. Southwell. Having no real experience with love, she hadn’t been at all prepared for it and what it would mean.
It happened on the day of their picnic. The day was blustery and cold and no two adults in their right minds would have considered such a day as one perfect for a picnic. Yet Augustus had promised and so they went, bundled up and rosy cheeked, to a grassy bluff on the very edge of the Berkley estate. Going beyond the estate was out of the question, an unspoken rule. Their love affair would never become public and no tongues would ever wag with gossip that the earl was carrying on with poor, plain Harriet Anderson. That suited them both fine.
Harriet would have died with mortification had anyone known the full extent of their relationship. No one would ever know that they had once, and quite enthusiastically, participated in an affair. It almost felt as if it were all happening to another woman entirely.
She was already half in love, but that picnic on that cold and blustery day, a day on which making love was not part of the agenda, would prove to be her heart’s downfall.
Not wanting to attract the attention of the workers, Harriet pretended to head home while Augustus headed toward the stable, presumably to fetch his horse for a trip to the village. Instead of being ashamed of their clandestine picnic, Harriet was unaccountably excited. Someday, she realized, she might look back at her foolishness and wish she’d had better sense, but at the moment, it was grand.
He was already waiting for her, his horse tied to a nearby tree, when she arrived. Far below them, the sea was mottled with whitecaps, and the air was filled with the sound of the sea crashing against the shore. When she arrived, he was struggling with a blanket that seemed to have come alive in the wind and was attempting an escape.
Laughing at the sight, Harriet grabbed one end of the blanket in an attempt to wrangle it to the ground. Instead, he pulled on the material and she stumbled forward and into his arms. Her laughter stopped abruptly when he lowered his head and kissed her. “Good afternoon, Catalina.”
“Good afternoon, Gus.” She grinned up at him, amazed at how young and handsome he looked with his dark hair whipping around his head, his cheeks flushed from the wind, and his dark blue eyes smiling down at her. He kissed her again, a long, drugging kiss.
“You cannot…”
She shook her head. “I cannot,” she said with real regret.
“Then I shall have to be satisfied with only a kiss.” He bussed her lips. “Or two.” Another kiss, this one a bit longer. “Or three.” And this one left them both breathless. Then, “I’m starving.”
Between the two of them they managed to arrange the blanket on the ground by anchoring it with some stones. Once they were seated, the wind was far diminished, and Harriet could better feel the bit of warmth from the sun.
“This is a lovely spot,” she said, wrapping her arms about herself, for though the wind had died down, it was still chilly.
He sat down behind her and drew her against him so that her back rested against his chest and his leg splayed out on either side of her. She could feel his manhood against her bottom, a clear indication that he desired her, but he did nothing other than draw her close to him and rest his head upon her shoulder to look out at the sea.
“You’ve lived in St. Ives your entire life?”
Harriet nodded. “A true local girl. I spent some time in Longrock with my grandparents on my father’s side when I was younger and I have been to London two times, but yes, I’ve lived in St. Ives for as long as I remember.” She craned her neck to look at him. “That must seem terribly provincial to you.”
“Not at all. St. Ives is my favorite place in all the world, and I’ve seen quite a bit of it.”
“You lived in America. How exciting that must have been.”
He chuckled. “It was. Exciting and lonely and far, far different from England. I left right after university and lived in America for three years, returning a bit more grown up than when I left. I married, then went back.”
Harriet was silent for a while, but she was curious why a man would leave for America so soon after his wedding. It was not a particularly honorable thing to do, and she didn’t like knowing he’d behaved in such a manner. “Why did you return to America?”
He let out a long sigh. “My father was a powerful man. Unbeknownst to me, he held some information over my father-in-law’s head. It was a forced marriage on her part, something I was completely unaware of. On my part, I’d decided it was time to do my duty and marry. To be honest, I didn’t particularly care who it was but was pleasantly surprised by Lenore. She was pretty and intelligent, and though her family’s situation was far below ours, I was happy enough. On our wedding night Lenore made it quite clear she hated me and our marriage, and if I thought to continue on, I would find myself in the untenable situation of raping my own wife. So I left. I’m not proud of what I did and I realized after a time that it was a mistake, but by then it was too late.”
“You were quite young,” Harriet said, but she couldn’t help thinking how wrong it had been of him to abandon his new wife.
“Not so young.” He kissed her neck. “Enough of that maudlin talk. Let’s see what cook has prepared for us.”
With that, he opened the basket, revealing the small porcelain statue of the fairy sitting upon a rock, reading. She stared at it, overcome that he had remembered and had taken the time to buy it for her. It wasn’t the expense—the figurine couldn’t have cost more than a few pennies—it was that he’d gone into the village and bought it. For her. And that was the moment he became more than her lover. He became her love.
“I remembered you liked it,” he said gruffly, then lifted it out and handed it to her.
“She’s lovely,” Harriet said, smiling at the whimsical little girl with the fairy wings. “My grandmother used to tell us stories of fairies who lived in the forest. She would tell them so well, Clara and I were convinced they truly existed.”
“And they don’t?” Augustus asked in mock horror.
“Nor gnomes or ogres.” She looked up at him and grinned. “Thank you, Gus. It’s the most wonderful gift I’ve ever received.”
“Then I hate to think what was the worst.” His words came out slightly mocking, just on the edge of unkind. He busied himself with setting out the food, and Harriet wondered if he was slightly embarrassed by her enthusiasm over the simple gift. Harriet tried to tell herself it meant nothing, that he probably had gone into the village on other business and happened to see it and bought it on a whim. It meant nothing. A small gesture.
But she simply could not stop her heart from expanding, until she thought it would burst. “Just the same, I like it,” she said, tucking the figurine into her pocket.
Each day after that, Harriet would spend the morning directing the workmen and the afternoon with Augustus. He attempted to teach her chess, but the two ended up playing checkers instead, which Harriet thought was far more fun, especially because she kept beating him.
After each win, he would demand a kiss, and each kiss became longer and deeper the more she won, until she finally said, “I do believe you are letting me win on purpose simply so you can claim a kiss.”
By the end of the week, Harriet knew all about his lonely childhood, his time in school, his friendship with Lord Lansdowne, and his years in America. And Augustus knew about life in St. Ives, how her sister loved her garden more than anything in the world, and how her mother and father had grown rich. One topic they carefully avoided was Lenore’s murder, for Harriet had convinced herself it was, indeed, murder.
She was surprised, then, when during an endless game of pinochle, Augustus said nonchalantly but with an underlying tension, “Every ‘c’ on the list has accepted.”
Harriet had been about to take a trick when she paused. “That is exciting.” She studied his face, and though he was seemingly concentrating on the card game, she could sense something was wrong. “That is not exciting?” She took the trick and he frowned.
“It is only that I cannot imagine any of the men on the list committing murder. I know most of them and the ones I do not have impeccable backgrounds. Then again, I fear I cannot imagine any man committing such a terrible act.” He closed his eyes. “I keep picturing her, struggling, screaming…” She laid down a king of hearts, which happened to be the trump suit, and he threw a random card, allowing her to take another trick. “Do you have any suit other than trump?” he asked.
Harriet wrinkled her nose at him. “Don’t you think it strange that no one heard her scream?”
“I didn’t at the time. Not when we thought she’d killed herself. But since we found the letters, yes. I keep going back over that night and trying to remember if I heard anything strange. It does seem to me that someone would have heard her. The servants’ quarters are very near the tower and I know some of them would have just gone to bed.”
Though it was her turn to lead, Harriet clutched her cards, lost in thought. “Perhaps he killed her beforehand, then threw her from the tower so that it would look like a suicide. I’d like to think that’s what happened. Either way is horrible, of course. What about Mr. Pearson? Have you asked him who on that list would have had the opportunity to spend that much time with Lady Greenwich? From her diary, it seemed that whoever it was would have been a frequent visitor.”
Augustus tossed his cards down. “I dislike where this leads,” he said darkly.
“I apologize. I did not wish to upset you.”
“You misunderstand. There is only one person who regularly saw my wife.”
“Who?”
“Lord Lansdowne.”
His oldest and dearest friend, the man he had entrusted to watch over Lady Greenwich in his absence. “It may not be him. It may not have been anyone at all. Perhaps she did throw herself from the tower. It would explain why no one heard a scream.”
Augustus stared blindly at the cards for a long moment. “Do you know why the constable did not pursue charges against me, even though more than a dozen people had seen and heard us arguing that night? Several heard me threaten her.”
By God, I could kill you for what you’ve done. She’d read that account in the newspaper. “Because of the diary. Because it seemed clear that Lady Greenwich had meant to end her life.”
Augustus let out a bitter laugh. “Yes. Thank God for that diary.”
“What are you saying?”
“That Mr. Bennet did not press charges because it would have been far too much work and brought too much attention to this little village. Yes, the discovery of the diary made a difference but I cannot help thinking it was not enough to exonerate me. We have found out ourselves how ambiguous Lenore’s words were. Do you know for years they’ve been trying to dismantle the position of constable? I believe the real reason Mr. Bennet did not arrest me was because he simply could not stomach the idea of putting an earl in jail. Why do you think half the people in this village walk in the other direction when they see me coming?”
“That does not happen,” Harriet said firmly. Then most hesitantly, “Does it?”
“Not so much anymore, but you know there are people who still talk about it, who still believe I killed her. That is why it is so important that we find the real killer. And I simply do not believe a single man on that list could have done it.”
Harriet gathered up the cards, for it was clear their game was over. “Who else, then?”
Augustus shook his head. “I have no idea.”
The cottage, their haven, was cozy from a warm fire. Augustus had brought a picnic lunch that they ate indoors, thank goodness, for it was another chilly day. Harriet had thought that during the time of her woman’s flow, she would not see Augustus privately, but each day he arranged for them to meet. It was the sort of thing that made trying not to love him exceedingly difficult. They spent the days playing cards or checkers, and talking incessantly. And laughing. Harriet could not recall laughing as much as she’d laughed these last few days. With each day that passed, Augustus revealed more of himself and in the end, he’d reduced himself to simply a man, no longer an earl or a lofty title. To Harriet, he had become Gus, and she couldn’t help but fall more in love with him.
After they’d put the cards away, Augustus drew her to him and simply held her. “Would you mind very much lying with me?”
“It’s a bit soon,” Harriet said, mortified.
“No, I meant simply lying with me. On the bed.” They lay down and he drew her against him, her back to his front, and they watched the fire crackling. “I like the way we fit,” he said softly, bringing his hand up to cup her breast. Harriet breathed in deeply, feeling need grow, and definitely feeling his.
“I can feel you,” she said boldly.
He chuckled. “I cannot control that part of me when I am with you, I fear.” He pushed against her, then stopped, letting out a low groan. “I should not torture myself like this, but I want you near me. Someday I shall show you how to please me another way so I don’t go insane with wanting you.”
“Two more days.”
“I shall die,” he said, and she laughed. “Tell me about your cottage.”
“You really want to know?”
“No. I really want to make love to you but since that is not possible, tell me about your cottage to get my mind off your lovely body.”
Harriet giggled. “It doesn’t exist, I know that, but if it did, this is what it would look like.” She closed her eyes and pictured it, her perfect little cottage somewhere by the sea. “It is whitewashed and lovely, with roses surrounding it and diamond-shaped windows all looking out to the sea. On the second floor, there is a small balcony, and I will go there on fine days and stare out for hours. The balcony is off my room, of course.”
“Of course.”
“A stone path leads to the front door, and there is a slate step, worn from years of footsteps. Inside is a large room with beams stretching across it, much like a ship captain’s quarters. The floor is honey-colored wood, and there’s a pretty little fireplace at one end. The stairs are shaped in an upside down Y and there is a small landing a few steps up where the stairs join.” She turned to look back at him and he kissed her cheek. “Much like Costille House but much smaller. The newel posts are sturdy and square and plainly decorated, and the stairs lead up to two bedrooms, mine, looking out to the sea, and another, looking over the pretty back garden.”
“Yes, you mentioned you wanted a garden for Clara.”
“Yes. A kitchen garden and one just for pretty things. And that’s it. That’s my house.”
Pulling her against him, he said, “It sounds lovely.”
“It is, and if I ever find it or even something close to it, I shall purchase it on the spot.”
The entire time she’d been speaking, Augustus had been caressing her arm, up and down, but he stopped just then. “This cottage, it won’t be too far from St. Ives, will it?”
“I shouldn’t like to be close enough for my parents to drop by, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps not too far. I cannot imagine living in another part of England where it’s cold enough to snow. Somewhere in Cornwall, I suppose. I used to think I would want to move to America, to be as far away as possible. But I have friends here, and I would miss Clara terribly.”
“Only Clara?”
“I already miss you, so you don’t count.”
“Already miss me,” he said in mock outrage. “Why, we have another two weeks together at least.”
“More than enough time.”
He pushed her gently to her back, then leaned over her. “Will you miss me terribly?”
She shrugged. “I daresay I shall forget your name within a fortnight.”
“You’ll remember me as long as that?” he asked, grinning.
“Or until I find a new lover,” she said pertly, and giggled when he growled and buried his head against her neck.
“No other man shall have you,” he pronounced, still jesting. But Harriet didn’t find such a jest at all amusing. Though she tried not to let her heart ache, it did. The truth was, she could not imagine ever loving another man as she did Augustus.
“I should return home,” she said, and started to sit up, but Augustus held her down easily.
“What is wrong?” he asked, but Harriet could only shake her head, for her throat was closing up and she feared if she said aloud what she was thinking, she would dissolve into tears. “Tell me, Catalina. What have I said?”
She swallowed. “It’s only that this time with you has been grand, and I will miss our days together. I don’t want to think about that now, though.” Forcing a smile, she turned to look at him. “I fear you have ruined me for all other men, Gus. Was that your intention?”
He looked about to speak, then shook his head and drew her against him again. They lay like that for several long minutes before he said, “I can let you go now.”
* * * *
Augustus watched her gather up her coat and wrap a thick, wool scarf around her neck. When she was adorably bundled, she came over to where he still lay in bed, propped up slightly by two pillows, and kissed him good-bye.
Long after she’d gone, he lay in bed, thinking about his last words to her. I can let you go now.
He had a terrible feeling that when the time came, letting her go would be the most difficult thing he would ever do.