And the thing was, Percy thought as he contemplated dragging both men from their horses and banging their heads together, that they fully expected him to grin back, confess to his whereabouts at that ungodly hour, and make some bawdy boast about his newest conquest. They had every reason to expect it. It was what he would normally do. What was so different this time?
Could it be that he was different? That he had changed, or, since a change of character did not happen overnight or even over a hundred nights, that he was changing? Devil take it, he needed to leave this place.
He looked down to the valley, peacefully green, the river flowing through it, the village farther back toward the sea.
“I will be leaving soon,” he said. “And I doubt I will ever come back. It is the damnedest backwater.”
And yet he felt disloyal saying so—disloyal to Lady Lavinia, to the Quentins and Alton and even Wenzel, to the vicar and the physician and the Kramer ladies and the sturdy fisherfolk. And there was Bains with his bandy legs and broken spirit, and Crutchley, who might have some voluntary involvement with smuggling or who just might be the victim of intimidation. There was that half cellar below his house that might be stuffed with contraband or awaiting a new shipment. There was . . . Imogen.
How long had he been here? Two weeks? Three? It was no time at all. A mere blink of the eye. He would forget it all in another blink once he was away from here.
He would forget her.
They continued their ride.
He could not recall regretting any of the liaisons he had had with women. He had ended most of them himself, but never because he had regretted starting them. He liked having affairs. They were mindless mutual enjoyment with no commitment or responsibilities attached.
He already regretted what he had started with Imogen.
He would forget her, though. She was leaving here herself a few days after this infernal ball. He would be gone before she returned.
It was just dashed stupid of him to have fallen in love. He presumed that was what had happened to him. Certainly he could not explain his feelings any other way. He did not like being in love one little bit.
“He does not want to talk about the widow, Arnie,” Sidney said.
“I have come to the same conclusion, Sid,” Arnold agreed. “But I would ignore the smuggling if I were you, Perce. Everyone else does. You are not going to stop it anyway. Those revenue men never can. And you must admit, they are a humorless lot. It is a pleasure to see them hoodwinked.”
“And you must admit, Perce,” Sidney added, “that brandy that comes into the country by the back door, so to speak, always seems to taste better than the legal stuff. It costs a lot less too.”
The whole world was in agreement, it seemed, that it was best to ignore what was going on under everyone’s nose. Who was he to become a crusader? It had never occurred to him to be one until he came here. Having a conscience and acting upon it made him seem suspiciously like his old studious self—out of tune and out of step with all the rest of the world. A killjoy. A poor sport. An idiot.
“Quite so,” he said. “There are supposed to be some old tin mines over there on the other side of the valley. I’ll find out exactly where and get up a party to go exploring one day.”
And the conversation moved away from both smuggling and his affair.
*
By the end of the morning the invitations had all been written. Imogen allowed her spirits to be seduced by a sense of family as the older ladies flitted in and out of the library and the younger two chattered between invitations.
Mrs. Hayes and her sister and sister-in-law often had disagreements, a few of them quite heated. But they never seemed to bear a grudge, and somehow they always found a compromise over a disputed plan for the grand party. The young cousins too, she had noticed on previous occasions, frequently squabbled among themselves, but always ended up giggling or guffawing. The twins sometimes avoided their older sister quite deliberately, but once she had seen them sitting on either side of her on the pianoforte bench while she picked out a melody, each with an arm about her shoulders. Mrs. Hayes’s brother seemed to prefer the company of his daughter and grandson to that of anyone else, but he was perfectly amiable when he was in company, and had even invited Mr. Cyril Eldridge, who was no blood relation, to walk on the beach with him and the little boy this morning. The other two older gentlemen were often discussing current affairs with each other and growing quite heated in their disagreements, but they also seemed ultimately content to agree to disagree.