“Mmm.” She smiled at him and lifted her hands to his shoulders.
His legs were on either side of hers, his hands braced on the arms of the chair, his face a few inches from her own. He looked large and looming and gorgeous. He smelled delicious.
“I did not use the key,” he assured her. “I was let in quite respectably by your housekeeper, though she was looking rather like a prune. I had better not be alone in here with you for long. She will be getting ideas.”
Blossom jumped down off her lap, contemptuously close to Hector, and Hector barked once sharply, bared his teeth, growled, and then barked once again. The cat crossed to the other chair in rather ungainly haste.
“Goodness,” Imogen said. “That is the first time I have heard Hector’s voice.”
“I am training him to be fierce,” Percy said, straightening up.
“What you are training him to do,” she said, “is to have some confidence in himself.”
“Come down onto the beach with me,” he said.
Imogen raised her eyebrows as she sat up. “Is that a request, Lord Hardford, or a command?”
“A command,” he said. “Please? I need you.”
She looked closely at him. He was looking grim about the mouth. She got to her feet and went to fetch her cloak and bonnet and put on shoes suitable for walking on the sand.
There were several snowdrops blooming in her garden, and a clump of primroses was beginning to stir into life in one corner. She did not stop either to look at them or to draw attention to them. She led the way out through the gate.
“You are not with any of your guests this afternoon?” she asked, though the answer was perfectly obvious.
“All the over-forties tired themselves out this morning,” he said, “and are variously disposed about the house with sedentary activities. The younger lot have gone off in a body with young Soames and his sisters to have a look at some ruined castle on the other side of the valley. It is said to be picturesque, and I daresay it is.”
“And you chose to drag me down onto the beach rather than go with them?” she said.
He did not answer. And she was interested to note that when they came to the path down to the beach, he turned onto it without hesitation and led the way with bold, almost reckless strides. There was a great deal of unleashed energy inside him, she sensed. Perhaps an angry energy.
She would not pry, she decided. It might explode out of him before he was ready to do something more constructive with it. Perhaps, despite his words and his kiss when he came upon her asleep a short while ago, he was regretting their affair. Perhaps he did not know how to break the news to her that it was over.
Oh, please, please let it not be that. Not yet. Not just yet.
He turned and lifted her down from the rock above the beach without waiting for her to move onto the last short section of the path and descend on her own. He set her down and gazed grimly at her, his hands hard on her waist.
“You did not mention the valet,” he said.
She waited for some explanation. None came, only an accusing glare. “The valet?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Your husband’s,” he said.
Comprehension dawned. “Mr. Cooper? Oh, it was a terrible tragedy. He drowned.”
“He would have been your husband’s batman,” he said.
“He was looking forward to it,” she told him, “though Dicky offered to release him and give him a good character if he preferred to stay and look for a new position. It was terribly sad. He was only twenty-five.”
“And then Bains volunteered to go in his stead,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Dicky was fond of him, and he was very eager to go. We were surprised that his father would not agree. We expected that he would see it as a great opportunity for his son. But I suppose he wanted to keep him home, where he would be safe.”
“And so Mawgan went,” he said. “He had risked his own life trying to save the valet’s.”
“Yes, I believe he did try,” she said. “But it was not just that. Mr. Ratchett had a word with my father-in-law and he had a word with my husband, and Dicky needed a batman in a hurry.”
“Was it a reluctant choice?” he asked.
“Not particularly.” She frowned. “We did not know him at all well and there was no time to get to know him before we all sailed. But Dicky never complained about him. He was just a bit . . . sullen. Or perhaps that is too harsh a word. He was reticent.”
What was this all about?
“I went to pay a call upon Bains’s father this morning,” he said. He was still holding her by the waist, and he was still frowning at her.
“Oh, but he died,” she said, “not long before Christmas. I baked a cake and took it to Mrs. Bains because Dicky—and I—had always been fond of Colin. I was still at the dower house, so it must have been before the roof blew off.”