They had not come to visit, however, and declined her offer of coffee with thanks. They were taking Geoffrey down onto the sands so that he could run free and work off some energy. The child was currently sitting on the doorstep, his arms around a happily purring Blossom. They had called in with a message. The older ladies were going into the ballroom after morning coffee and intended to make plans for the upcoming birthday party.
“And of course,” Meredith said with a smile, “it is to be the grandest entertainment this part of the country has ever seen. Poor Percy—he will hate it. Though I daresay he will survive the ordeal. And he deserves it anyway after running off to London in order to escape just such a party in Derbyshire right on his birthday. Aunt Julia was crushed with disappointment.”
“That young man has been spoiled all his life,” Mr. Galliard added fondly. “Though he has come out of it relatively unscathed. What Meredith has forgotten to add, Lady Barclay, is that you are to take yourself off to the hall as fast as your feet will convey you—if you will be so good. Your opinion is being solicited, young lady. And my sisters are not to be trifled with when they are making plans. Neither is Edna Eldridge. I have not yet sized up Lady Lavinia, though she appears to be happy enough to be drawn into action. The dragon, however, will have nothing to do with any plans to celebrate anything that concerns a man.”
“Papa!” Meredith exclaimed, laughing. “Was Mrs. Ferby really married for just a few months when she was seventeen, Cousin Imogen? And did she really worry her husband to death?”
Less than half an hour later Imogen walked up to the hall on another brilliantly sunny morning. She hoped, hoped, hoped she could reach the ballroom without running into the Earl of Hardford. The events of last night seemed unreal today despite the physical evidence of a slight and pleasurable soreness. It was going to seem strange and a little embarrassing to see him again. Today she could not even think of him as Percy.
As luck would have it, she spotted him in the distance over by the stables with Mr. Cyril Eldridge and two strange gentlemen who she assumed were his newly arrived friends from London. They were talking with James Mawgan, Dicky’s former batman, now the head gardener.
Lord Hardford saw her, raised a staying hand, and came striding across the lawn, the other gentlemen with him. She clasped her own gloved hands at her waist and waited. Oh, dear, he looked very handsome and virile in his riding clothes. And they must have been riding. He was carrying a crop. Imogen felt a dull throbbing memory of where he had been last night.
“Lady Barclay.” He touched the brim of his tall hat with the crop. “May I have the pleasure of presenting Viscount Marwood and Sidney Welby? Lady Barclay is the widow of my predecessor’s son, who died in the Peninsula. She lives at the dower house over there.” He nodded in the direction from which she had come.
The gentlemen bowed and Imogen curtsied.
“You will stay out of the way of my mother and my aunts if you know what is good for you, Lady Barclay,” Mr. Eldridge said, and grinned. “They are about to force the entire neighborhood to celebrate in grand fashion Percy’s long-gone birthday.”
“A grand ball, I understand,” she said. “I have been summoned to discuss what might be done with the ballroom.”
“Well, we all know what ballrooms are for,” Mr. Welby said. “You are doomed to be doing the dainty with all the village maidens, Perce.”
“You too, Sid,” he said. “Why else did you come all the way from London? For a private and decorous birthday tea? You have met my mother before, have you not? Allow me to escort you to the ballroom, Lady Barclay.” He offered her his arm.
Imogen hesitated. She would have said no, but his friends might consider it ill-mannered and she might leave him feeling foolish.
“Thank you,” she said, slipping her hand through his arm.
“I’ll show you the way down to the beach,” she heard Mr. Eldridge say to the other two gentlemen. “I was down there yesterday.”
“Imogen,” the earl said softly as they approached the house. He was looking directly down at her.
“Lord Hardford.”
“I am Lord Hardford this morning, am I?” he asked her.
She turned her face unwillingly to his. She wished his eyes were not quite so blue.
“Are you sorry?” he asked her.
“No.”
She would never be sorry. She was determined not to be.
“May I come again?” he asked. “If you have not changed your mind in the cold light of day. Though not necessarily to go to bed.”
She drew a slow breath. “You may come,” she said, “for tea and conversation. And to go to bed too. I hope.”
Having decided to take a sort of vacation from her life, to have an affair with a man who would be here just a short while, she wanted the whole of it. He would be gone soon. And she would be gone soon—to Penderris Hall. She wanted to sleep with him again and again and again in the meanwhile—even if the price was to be tears, as it had been last night after he left.