“Yes.” She thought of her fellow Survivors. They were in a vastly different place in their lives than could have been predicted eight or nine years ago, but five of them at least had risen above the suffering and forged lives that were rich and apparently happy. Perhaps they would not be so happy now if they had not had to go through that long, dark night of pain and brokenness. Disturbing thought.
“You are in some ways fortunate, Imogen,” he said softly, and her eyes snapped to his. “How can one, at the age of thirty, learn from the experience of nothing but empty pleasure and frivolity?”
“And love,” she said fiercely. “Your life has been so full of love, Lord Hardford, that it is fairly bursting at the seams with it. Even that dog loves you, and you love it. It is not unmanly to admit it. And your life has included a period of intense learning about two of the greatest civilizations our world has known. You may have largely wasted the years since you left Oxford, but even that experience does not have to be for nothing. No time is really wasted unless one never learns the lessons that it offers.”
He had sat back in his chair and was regarding her with a half smile on his lips. “You are expending passion over a wastrel, Lady Barclay?” he said. “What lessons?”
She sighed. She had allowed herself to become rather wrought up. But he was not a wastrel. A week or so ago she might have believed it, but no longer. He might have lived the life of a wastrel, but that did not make him one. He was not defined by what he had done or not done in the past ten years.
“Perhaps in recognizing how one ought not to live, one can learn how to live,” she said.
“It is that easy?” he asked her. “I should turn overnight, you think, into a worthy country gentleman, a Cornish country gentleman, and bury myself for the rest of my life in the back of beyond with my crops and my sheep and the ugly dog I have supposedly come to love? Breeding heirs and spares and hopeful daughters? Loving my wife and helpmeet and cleaving only unto her for as long as we both shall live?”
And she laughed. Despite the almost unbearable tension that his words had begun to build, he had also created an image that was just too absurd.
His eyes smiled—oh, goodness!—and then his lips.
“You are really quite stunning when you laugh like that,” he said.
That sobered her. But she had been having exactly the same thought about him and his smile.
“It gives a glimpse into the person you say you were and the person you were meant always to be,” he said. “Can you not be happy again, Imogen? Will you not be?”
She smiled, found that she could not see him clearly, and realized that her eyes had filled with tears.
“No, don’t cry,” he said softly. “I did not mean to make you unhappy. Will you come to bed with me?”
She blinked away her tears. And her self-imposed exile from her own life seemed suddenly pointless. Wasted time—between eight and nine years to match his ten.
He had asked a question.
“Yes,” she said.
And he got to his feet and came toward her. He reached out a hand. She looked at it for several moments, a man’s hand, a hand that would touch her . . . She placed her own in it and stood. He had not left much room between himself and the love seat. She put her arms up about his neck and leaned into him as his own arms came about her, and their mouths met.
It was a very deliberate thing, she decided. It was not seduction, and it was not unbridled temptation. It was not something for which she would feel guilt, something she would regret. It was something she wanted and would allow. No, nothing as passive as that. It was something for which she would step back into life, something to which she would give herself unreservedly, something she would allow herself to enjoy. But not alone. Together. It was something they would enjoy together.
Just for a brief while. A short vacation from the life she had imposed upon herself and must live until the end.
She drew back her head and looked into his eyes, which were very blue even in the dimness of the lamplight.
“I do not expect forever,” she told him, “or want it. I do not expect you to come back here in the morning out of any sense of guilt to offer me marriage. I would say no if you did. This is just for now. For a little while.”
His eyes smiled again before his mouth followed suit. It was a devastating expression and quite unconscious and therefore unpracticed, she guessed. She was seeing him, or at least a part of him, as he really was.
“If I were to offer forever, I would be a fool,” he said. “No one has forever in his possession. Take the lamp, and I will set the guard about the fire.”
She turned to lead the way upstairs. Blossom was padding off to her bed in the kitchen.
“Stay,” she heard him say to Hector.
*