Only a kiss, indeed.
Only a kiss!
He had no idea. But could she expect him to? He was a mere man—a handsome, virile, arrogant man who had probably always had just what he wanted of life, including any woman he desired. She had seen the way all the women, regardless of age and marital status, had looked at him tonight. Oh, no, he certainly could have had no idea. They had been alone together in the library late at night, they had been standing close to each other, and they had been quarreling. Of course his thoughts had turned to lust. It would have been surprising if they had not.
Imogen sat on the stool before the dressing table, her back to the mirror. Her life was suddenly in tatters again, and there were still several weeks to go before the annual gathering of the Survivors’ Club at Penderris Hall. Her longing for the company and comfort of those six men was suddenly so acute that it bent her in two from the waist until her forehead almost touched her knees. George, Duke of Stanbrook, was probably at home. If she went early . . .
If she went early, he would welcome her warmly and without question. She would find herself enveloped in peace and safety and . . .
But she had to learn to cope alone with her living. That was what she thought she had done by the end of those three years at Penderris. She had made a pact with life. She would go through the motions of living it, return to Hardford, be an attentive daughter-in-law and niece, a cheerful and sociable neighbor, a fond daughter and sister and aunt. She would live alone without allowing herself to become a recluse. She would be kind—above all else she would be kind. And she would breathe one breath after another until there were no more, until her heart stopped and brought her final, blessed oblivion.
She would go on, she had decided, but she would not live. She was not entitled to do that. The physician at Penderris had tried to lead her out of it, but she had remained adamant. Her six friends had offered comfort and encouragement and love, abundant and unconditional. They would have offered advice too if she had solicited it, but she had never asked them to talk her out of the future she had set herself.
She spread her hands over her face and ached with longing to see them all again, to hear their voices, to know herself accepted for who she was, known for who she was and loved anyway. Ah, yes, for three weeks out of each year she allowed herself to be loved.
Now her fragile peace had been shattered—by one moment and what the Earl of Hardford had carelessly dubbed only a kiss.
Imogen undressed for bed though she had no expectation that she would sleep.
*
Percy absented himself from home for most of the next day. Assaulting a lady who was living under the protection of his own roof was decidedly not the thing, and he certainly owed her an apology, which he would get to in good time. First, though, he needed to take himself off and out of her sight for a while.
He checked that the roofers were working at the dower house again—they were, all six of them, as well as Tidmouth, who was inside the garden gate, leaning back against it, arms folded, looking masterful. Percy did not linger in case Lady Barclay should come on the same errand.
He paid calls upon Alton and Sir Matthew Quentin, both of whom owned land and farmed it even if they had never actually wielded a hoe or sheared a sheep. He felt woefully ignorant. No, he was woefully ignorant, and he needed to do something about it. He found himself tramping about the land of each in turn for the whole day and talking about virtually nothing other than farming—even with Lady Quentin at luncheon, since she set the topics of conversation. Alarmingly, he realized as he rode homeward in the late afternoon, he had enjoyed himself enormously and had felt not one jot of boredom. He had begun to conceive ideas for his own land. He was even excited at the prospect of conferring with his new steward when that as-yet-unknown individual arrived.
Excited?
He was going to be a candidate for Bedlam if he did not leave Cornwall soon and return to civilization and his familiar idle existence.
He spent the evening in the library reading Pope, while the ladies presumably conversed and drank tea and busied themselves with whatever worthy and productive projects ladies did busy themselves with in the drawing room above. Lady Barclay had been almost silent during dinner and more like granite than marble. He obviously owed her a serious apology.