Mary Balogh - Simply Unforgettable

Lucius found himself wishing again that they could relive yesterday—just exactly as it had been except perhaps for the afternoon, which they had wasted by spending apart in a vain attempt to avoid what had probably been inevitable from the moment of their meeting. It must be years since he had frolicked as he had with her out in the snow just for the simple enjoyment of frolicking. It was years since he had danced voluntarily. Indeed, he did not believe he had ever done so before last evening. And he still felt relaxed and satiated after a night of good, vigorous sex.

Damnation, but he was not ready to say good-bye to her yet.

And why should he say it? The Season would not begin in any earnest until after Easter. There was not much he could do about fulfilling his promise until then. And despite what his mother and sisters seemed to believe, he had not yet committed himself to Portia Hunt. In fact, he had always been very careful in her presence and in that of Balderston, her father, and most especially in that of Lady Balderston not to commit himself in any way, not to say anything that might be construed as a marriage offer. He had not even promised his grandfather that she would be the one.

Honor was not at stake here, then. Not yet, anyway. He had not been unfaithful to anyone last night.

Why should he say good-bye?

He was rationalizing, of course. He knew that. There was no realistic future for him and Frances Allard. But he went on trying to devise one anyway.

He had little experience with not getting whatever he wanted.

Why could there not have been a stagecoach passing through the village?

Or why could she not simply have said that she would wait alone for her great-aunts’ carriage to be ready tomorrow? But he would not, she was sure, have been willing to leave her alone at the inn. And, truth to tell, she could not have borne to be left alone there, to watch his carriage drive away from the inn and disappear to view. The emptiness of the inn, the silence, would have been unbearable.

It was what would happen in Bath, though. The thought caused a painful churning of her stomach that made her sorry she had eaten any breakfast.

The best solution, of course, would have been to say good-bye this morning after breakfast and to have both left in a different carriage—to go in the same direction for a while. His carriage would soon have outpaced hers, though. Anyway, that had not been an option.

Ah, there was no easy way to say good-bye.

What on earth had possessed her last night? She had never come close to giving in to such temptation before.

She had given herself to a stranger. She had made love with him and spent all night in bed with him. They had coupled three separate times, the third time hot and swift and wonderful just before he got up and left her room, wearing only his pantaloons and carrying the rest of his clothes.

And now she was going to have to suffer all the considerable emotional consequences. She was already suffering them even though she was still with him. She could feel his body close to hers on the carriage seat. She could feel his body heat down her right side. But it was the end. Soon—at the end of this slow, dreary journey past snow fields that looked gray rather than pristine white today—soon they would be saying good-bye, and she would never see him again.

And as if depression and grief were not enough, there was her nervousness every time the carriage wheels slithered on the slushy road surface—and they did so almost constantly during the first few miles until Lucius Marshall slid his hand beneath her lap robe, drew her right hand free of her muff, and held it firmly in his, lacing his fingers with hers.

She could have wept at his warm, assured touch.

“Peters is not the most subservient of retainers,” he said, “but he is the finest driver of my acquaintance. I would, and do, trust him with my life.”

“I think,” she said, “that the feeling of slithering then sliding backward right off the road and finding myself submerged in a snowbank will live in my nightmares for a long time.”

“But if it had not happened to you,” he said, “you would not have met me.”

He was looking down at her, she knew, but she would not turn her head to see his expression. He had said the same thing on that very first day—was it only the day before yesterday?—but he had been being nastily ironic on that occasion.

“No,” she said. “I would not, would I? How dreadful that would have been.”

“There, you see?” He chuckled. “You forgot your nervousness for a moment in order to be spiteful. Or do you mean it?”

She laughed too despite herself.

Her nervousness largely disappeared after that, and so did the tension there had been between them ever since he walked into the kitchen this morning. They continued to hold hands, and after a while she realized that her shoulder was resting against the heavy capes of his greatcoat. She could feel the warmth and strength of his arm beneath them.

She would have her classes write an essay—no, a story—within the next few days, she thought. Not the dull topic of how they spent Christmas that they might expect, but something more creative—“Imagine that as you returned alone to school after Christmas, you ran into a snowstorm and were stranded at a deserted inn with one other person. Write the story . . .”

Marjorie Phillips would dip her quill pen in the inkwell and bend over her paper without further ado and would not straighten up again until she had scribbled a dozen pages of closely packed writing. Joy Denton would do almost as well. Sarah Ponds would put up her hand and remind Miss Allard that she had not left the school before Christmas and therefore did not return to it after Christmas. The rest of the class would sit with furrowed brows and inactive or even nonexistent imaginations, wondering if she would notice if they wrote large, widely stretched words on widely spaced lines and made their stories one page long.

Frances smiled fondly at the thought. All the girls were very precious to her.

But her thoughts were not easily diverted during that long day of travel.

They stopped a few times for changes of horse, and once for almost a full hour to dine, but for the rest of the time they sat together in the carriage, not talking a great deal, their hands clasped, their thighs and arms touching, her head sometimes tipped sideways to rest on his shoulder. Once she dozed off and, when she woke up again, she found that he had laid his cheek against the top of her head and was himself asleep.

Again she felt like weeping. Her chest was tight and sore from the necessity of holding back her tears.

It was sometime after that, when it seemed to her that they must surely not be very far from Bath, that he set one arm right about her shoulders, turned her to him, lifted her chin in the cleft between his thumb and forefinger, and kissed her.

His mouth felt shockingly warm in contrast to the chill of the air. She heard herself utter a low moan, and she wrapped her arm about his neck and kissed him back with all the yearning she felt.

“Frances,” he murmured after a long, long while. “Frances, what the devil am I going to do about you?”

She drew away from him, sat back in her seat, and eyed him warily.

“I think,” he said, “we ought to ask ourselves if it is really necessary to say good-bye to each other when we arrive in Bath.”

His words were so exactly what she had been dreaming of hearing all day that her heart lurched with painful hope.

“I teach school there,” she said. “You have your own life elsewhere.”

“Forget about teaching,” he said. “Come with me instead.” There was a reckless intensity in his eyes.