Mary Balogh - Bespelling Jane Austen

“I am not afraid,” she protested.

But he knew she was. He had had many months to accustom himself to the knowledge that had revealed itself to him in India through long sessions of meditation and counseling by his guru. She had had a lifetime—since the age of four, anyway—to shut down and deny the intuitive knowledge of eternity that had somehow come with her through the passage of forgetfulness to her birth. She had been frightened into forgetting, and now she was frightened at being forced to remember.

The spirit world had endless patience. He was of that world. He must be patient, too.

He released one of her hands, took a step back and smiled at her.

“We are strangers, then,” he said. He clasped her hand a little more tightly. “Or rather we are new acquaintances who are strangely attracted to each other. Are you willing to grant this much, Jane?”

“Y-yes,” she said hesitantly.

“Then let us walk down closer to the water and admire the view,” he said. “Let us talk about anything that comes to mind, shall we, except eternity?”

“Yes,” she said a little more firmly.

They went to stand on the bank of the lake, below the level of the pavilion, and she pointed out to him the house—Goodrich Hall—just visible on the far side of the water among the trees, and the jetty, where the boats from the boathouse would be moored if they were ever allowed to be taken out. She showed him the little island in the lake, where she could remember picnicking with her mother, though not since her mother’s death.

“Your father does not enjoy the outdoors?” he asked.

“It would coarsen his complexion and ours,” she said. “But I believe a coarsened complexion is a risk worth taking when the alternative is to remain indoors on a sunny day.”

“You are encouraged to step out only when it rains, then?” he asked.

“Then we will ruin our clothes,” she said with a chuckle, “and redden our complexions and give ourselves the ague. Perversely, I like walking in the rain. I am not a very dutiful daughter, am I?”

He was not conceiving a particularly favorable impression of Sir Horace Everett.

“Is the water very deep here?” he asked.

“It is,” she said. “At the far end it is shallow, so that one could bathe if one were allowed to do so.”

“I suppose,” he said, “you do not swim, and I have not done so since before my injuries. We had better not dive in. We will have to sit sedately on the bank and dangle our feet in the water instead.”

Her head turned quickly toward his.

“Are you serious?” she asked him. “We would have to remove our shoes and stockings.”

“They would get horribly wet if we did not,” he said.

She was blushing rosily, he could see. She was prim. She was also charming. It was still a dizzying thought that he knew her so little and yet knew her intimately to the depths of her soul.

He sat down and tugged off his boots. After a short hesitation, she sat beside him, her legs folded neatly to one side of her and completely covered by her skirt.

He reached out a hand.

“One foot, please,” he said.

“It would be very improper,” she said, but he could see desire and hesitation war within her.

“And very pleasant on a hot day,” he said. “One foot, please.”

“I can remove my own shoe and stocking,” she said, but she did not put up any fight when he took her foot in his palm, removed her shoe and then slowly edged down her stocking until he could pull it off.

Her bare foot was small and prettily shaped and sat on the palm of his hand, soft and warm. He set it on the grass and held out his hand for the other.

“This is very improper,” she said again when he was finished, but her eyes were laughing when he looked into her face.

Suddenly, she looked vividly, startlingly pretty.

He grinned back at her and removed his own stockings. Apart from the faded scars about his right ankle, his foot was not too unsightly. His leg was another matter, but that was well hidden beneath his riding breeches.

When she set first one foot and then the other in the water, she laughed out loud—a happy, girlish sound.

“Oh,” she said, “it is cold.”

It was. It also felt delicious against his heated flesh.

He took her hand as they bathed their feet, and they talked with an ease usually indicative of a long acquaintance. They talked about school and books and childhood and religion and music and dancing and… Well, Robert did not keep tally of the subjects they covered during the half hour or so they sat there.

And eventually they fell silent, and that was most remarkable of all. Because there was no element of strain in it. They sat as though they were a couple long acquainted and thoroughly comfortable with each other.

He felt as though he had loved her forever. As, of course, he had.

He released her hand and lay back on the grass, his feet still in the water, one arm draped over his eyes to protect them from the sun. He sighed deeply.

“Do you ever feel so thoroughly happy,” he asked, “that you might well burst with it?”

“Is that how you feel now?” she asked, laughing softly.

“Yes.” He removed his arm, turned his head and squinted up at her.

She gazed gravely back down at him.

“So do I,” she said.

He reached up one hand to tuck an errant curl of hair behind her ear, and cupped the side of her face lightly with his palm. She leaned her cheek against it.

She was all warm and soft and human. And feminine.

She was part of himself.

“Come,” he said softly and wondered if he was just being impatient again, if he was pushing her too hard.

But she leaned over him and lowered her face until her lips were against his.

They were soft and warm and ever so slightly parted. He cupped her face with both palms and kissed her softly, parting his lips over hers, touching them with his tongue, curling it up to stroke the tender, moist flesh within, and then pressing it slowly past her teeth into the warm cavity beyond.

His mind burst into a happiness too intense for words.

And he wanted her. Wanted her in every way there was to want.

But he must not rush her.

He lifted her face away from his and held it above him while he gazed up at her with half-closed lids and smiling lips. Her own lips looked full and rosy. Her eyes were a deep, dark blue in the shade of her bonnet brim. Her hands were splayed across his chest for balance.

“This is very improper,” she said—predictably.

“Must I know you for two eternities, then,” he asked her, “before I can venture to embrace you?”

“We agreed not to talk of eternity,” she said.

“And so we did,” he conceded. “And why should we? For now this lifetime is enough, Jane. This moment is enough. I am in love with you—head over heels.”

It was true, too.

“But you have known me only a few hours,” she protested.

“If you will.” He smiled more fully, to lessen the tension she was feeling. “But I have fallen in love with you anyway. Deeply and irretrievably. Marry me.”

“Do you always offer marriage to women you have known for three or four hours?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “Only to those with whom I fall irrevocably in love. And that has happened only once in my life. Now, in fact.”

“You are absurd.” She sat up and proceeded to dry her feet on the hem of her dress. “When you fell from your horse, you must have addled your brain.”

“I fear you are right,” he said meekly.

She looked at him suspiciously before turning away to pull on first one stocking and then the other.

“Do you really believe all that nonsense about being born again and again into different lives?” she asked.