The Proposal: Number 1 in series (Survivors’ Club)

Hugo was more than usually silent and withdrawn for the rest of the day. And he found himself quite unfairly resenting the presence of Lady Muir. Without her, he would be relaxing with his friends, talking, laughing, teasing and being teased, playing cards, reading, sitting in companionable silence—whatever moved them, in fact. Activities at Penderris were rarely planned.

Everyone else seemed to be enjoying Lady Muir’s company. No one else appeared to resent her. Perhaps that was because she was a lady and was a part of their world. She joined in the conversation with apparent ease, yet without in any way trying to dominate it. She could talk on virtually any topic. She could listen and laugh and make just the right comments and ask just the right questions. She liked them all, it seemed, and they had grown to like her. She was the perfect lady.

Or perhaps it was because none of the others had kissed her—twice.

Ben was appointed to take dinner with her. Both he and she seemed happy with the arrangement. Not long after dinner she suggested retiring to her room.

“You are in pain, Lady Muir?” George asked.

“Hardly at all when I keep still,” she said. “But you are a club. I daresay the evenings are the time when you most enjoy being together for companionship and conversation. I will withdraw.”

She was sensitive too. And tactful. More evidence of the perfect lady.

“There is really no need,” George said.

“A sprained ankle qualifies as a war wound,” Ben said, “and a club stagnates if it never increases its membership. We will expand to include you, Lady Muir, at least for this year. Consider yourself an honorary member.”

She laughed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I am honored. Actually, I am in some discomfort even if it does not quite amount to pain. I shall be more comfortable lying on my bed.”

“I shall summon a footman, then,” George said, but Hugo was already on his feet.

“No need,” he said. “I shall carry Lady Muir upstairs.”

He resented her most because she disturbed him. He did not dislike her, as he had yesterday. But she was of an alien world. She was beautiful and elegant and well dressed and self-possessed and charming. She was everything a lady ought to be. And she attracted him, a fact that annoyed him. He had always been able to look at ladies, even sometimes to appreciate their looks and allure, without ever desiring them. One ought not to desire alien species, no matter how beautiful they were.

Was he totally daft?

He had even told her this afternoon—alas, there was no possibility that his memory was playing tricks on him—that he would like to bed her.

He wondered if he ought to apologize. But an apology would only bring that scene in the garden alive again. It was perhaps best forgotten or at least left to lie dormant.

Besides, how could one apologize for kissing a woman twice? Once might be explained away as an impulsive accident. Twice suggested definite intent or a serious lack of control.

His foot was on the top stair before either of them spoke.

“You have been very silent tonight, Lord Trentham,” she said.

“At the moment I need all my breath to carry you,” he told her.

He paused outside her room while she turned the handle of the door. He stepped inside with her and set her down on the bed.

He propped a few of the many pillows behind her back and positioned one beneath her right foot. He straightened up and clasped his hands behind his back. Someone had already lit the candles, he realized.

He would love to turn on his heel and leave the room without another word or a backward glance, but he would make himself look like an idiot or an unmannerly clod if he did so.

“Thank you,” she said. And in the next breath, “I am sorry.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“You are sorry?”

“It must be a coveted treat to return here each year,” she said. “But you have been uncomfortable this evening, and I can only conclude that I am the cause. I have written to my brother and asked him to send the carriage as soon as possible, but it will be a few days before it arrives to take me home. In the meanwhile, I shall try to stay out of your way. Any serious involvement between us is out of the question for all sorts of reasons—it is out of the question for both of us. And I have never been one for meaningless flirtation or dalliance. My guess is that you have not either.”

“You came up early tonight because of me?” he asked her.

“You are a member of a group,” she said. “I came up because of the group. And I really am a little tired. Sitting around all day makes me sleepy.”

Any serious involvement between us is out of the question for all sorts of reasons.

Only one reason came to mind. She was of the aristocracy; he was of a lower class despite his title. It was the only reason. She was being dishonest with herself. But it was a huge reason. On both their parts, as she had said. He needed a wife who would pull cabbages from the kitchen garden with him, and help feed those lambs that could not suck from their mothers, and shoo chickens and their squawking and flapping wings out of the way in order to retrieve their eggs. He needed someone who knew the social world of the middle classes so that a husband could be found for Constance.

He bowed stiffly. Words were clearly superfluous.

“Good night, ma’am,” he said and left the room without waiting for her reply.

He thought he heard a sigh as he closed the door.

It was mostly Vincent’s turn that night.

He had woken up in a fit of panic in the morning and had been fighting it all day. Such episodes were growing less frequent, he reported, but when they did happen, they were every bit as intense as they had ever been.

When Vincent first came to Penderris, he had still been more than half deaf as well as totally blind—a result of a cannon exploding close enough to have propelled him all the way back to England in a million pieces. By some miracle he had escaped both dismemberment and death. He had still been something of a wild thing, whom only George had been able to calm. George had often taken the boy right into his arms and held him close, sometimes for hours at a time, crooning to him like a baby until he slept. Vincent had been seventeen at the time.

The deafness had cleared, but the blindness had not and never would. Vincent had given up hope fairly early and had adjusted his life to the new condition with remarkable determination and resilience. But hope, pushed deep inside rather than banished completely, surfaced occasionally when his defenses were low, usually while he slept. And he would awake expecting to see, be terrified when he discovered he could not, and then be catapulted down to the depths of a dark hell when he realized that he never would.

“It robs me of breath,” he said, “and I think I am going to die from lack of air. Part of my mind tells me to stop fighting, to accept death as a merciful gift. But the instinct to survive is more powerful than any other and I breathe again.”

“And what a good thing that is,” George said. “Despite all that might be said to the contrary, this life is worth living to the final breath with which nature endows us.”

The rather heavy silence that succeeded his words testified to the fact that it was not always an easy philosophy to adopt.

“I can picture some things and some people quite clearly in my head,” Vincent said. “But I cannot with others. This morning it struck me—for only about the five thousandth time—that I have never seen any of your faces, that I never will. Yet every time I have such a thought, it is as raw as it was the first time I thought it.”

“In the case of Hugo’s ugly countenance,” Flavian said, “that is a signal mercy, Vincent. We have to look at it every day. And in the case of my face … Well, if you were to see it, you would despair, for you will never look so handsome yourself.”

Vincent laughed, and all of them smiled.

Hugo noticed Flavian blinking away tears.

Imogen patted Vincent’s hand.

“Tell me, Hugo,” Vincent said, “were you kissing Lady Muir when I came to fetch you in for tea? I could hear no conversation as I approached the flower garden though Ralph had assured me you were both out there. He probably sent me deliberately so that the lady would not be embarrassed at what I might see.”

“If you think I am going to answer that question,” Hugo said, “you must have cuckoos in your head.”

“Which is all the answer I need,” Vincent said, waggling his eyebrows.

“And my lips are sealed,” Ralph said. “I will neither confirm nor deny what I saw through the morning room window, though I will say that I was shaken to the core.”

“Imogen,” George said, “will you cater to our collective male laziness and pour the tea?”

The Duke of Stanbrook produced a pair of crutches for Gwen the following morning, explaining that they had been needed when his house was a hospital but had lain untouched and forgotten for several years since. He had had them tested for safety, he assured her. He measured them for length and had a few inches sawn off them. He had them sanded and polished. Then Gwen was able to move around to a limited degree.

“You must promise me, though, Lady Muir,” he said, “not to bring the wrath of Dr. Jones down upon my head. You must not dash about the house and up and down stairs for eighteen hours out of every twenty-four. You must continue to rest your foot and keep it elevated most of the time. But at least now you can move about a room and even from room to room without having to wait for someone to carry you.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “You cannot know how much this means to me.”

She took a turn about the morning room, getting used to the crutches, before reclining on the chaise longue again.

She felt a great deal less confined for the rest of the day, though she did not move about a great deal. Vera spent most of the morning with her, as she had the day before, and stayed until after luncheon.

Her friends, she reported happily, quite hated her for being on intimate visiting terms with the Duke of Stanbrook. His crested carriage had been seen to stop outside her house a number of times. Their jealousy would surely cause them to cut her acquaintance if they did not find it more to their advantage to bask in her reflected glory and boast to their less privileged neighbors of being her friends. She also complained of the fact that His Grace did not see fit to send anyone in the carriage to bear her company and that again today she was not invited to take luncheon in the dining room with the duke and his guests.

“I daresay, Vera,” Gwen told her, “the duke is touched by your devotion and considers that you would find it offensive to be taken away from me when I cannot sit in the dining room with you.”

She wondered why she bothered to try to soothe ruffled feathers that never stayed smooth for long.

“Of course you are right,” Vera said grudgingly. “I would be offended if His Grace parted me from you for a mere meal when I have given up a large part of my day just to offer you the comfort of my company. But he might at least give me the opportunity to refuse his invitation. I am surprised that his chef serves only three courses for luncheon. At least, he serves only three here in the morning room. I daresay they enjoy a larger number of courses in the dining room.”

“But the food is plentiful and delicious,” Gwen said.

Vera’s visits were a severe trial to her.

After the Duke of Stanbrook had borne her friend off to his waiting carriage, Gwen felt a little agitated. What if Lord Trentham came again as he had yesterday? The weather was just as lovely. She could not bear to find herself tête-à-tête with him again. She had no business being attracted to him, or he to her. She had no business allowing him to kiss her, and he had no business asking it of her.

If he came again this afternoon, she thought, she could pretend to be asleep and to remain asleep. He would have no choice but to go away. But she was not sleepy today.

She was saved anyway from having to practice such subter-fuge. There was a tap on the door not long after Vera left, and it opened to reveal Viscount Ponsonby.

“I am on my way to the l-library,” he said in his languid voice and with his slight stammer. “Everyone else is off enjoying the sunshine, but I have such a stack of unanswered letters that I am in grave danger of being buried under it or lost behind it or some such dire thing. I must, alas, set pen to p-paper. It occurred to me that you may wish to try out your new crutches and come to select a book.”

“I would be more than delighted,” she said, and he stood in the doorway watching while she hoisted herself onto her crutches and moved toward him.

Her ankle was still swollen and sore to the touch. There was still no possibility of getting on a shoe or putting any weight on it. It was somewhat less painful today, however. And the cut on her knee was now no more than a scab.

Lord Ponsonby walked beside her to the library and turned a sofa that was by the fireplace so that light from the window would fall on it.

“You may remain here and read or w-watch me labor,” he said, “or you may return to the morning room after choosing a book. Or you may run up and down stairs, for that matter. I am not your jailer. If you need a volume from a high shelf, d-do let me know.”

And he retreated behind the large oak desk that stood near the window.

Gwen wondered about his stammer. It was the only imperfection she could detect in his person. Perhaps he too had come through war physically unscathed but had gone out of his head, as Lord Trentham had phrased it. She had not thought a great deal before this week about the mental strain of being a military man. And yet it showed a lamentable lack of imagination on her part that she had not.

She read for a while, and then Lady Barclay found her and invited her to the conservatory to see the plants. There were some long wicker seats there, she explained, on which Lady Muir could rest her foot. They sat there and talked for a whole hour. Later, they went for tea in the drawing room.

It was Lady Barclay who dined with her that evening.

She wanted to broach the subject of Lady Barclay’s loss and assure her that she understood, that she too had lost a husband under violent, horrifying circumstances, that she too felt guilty over his death and doubted she would ever free herself of the feeling. And perhaps it was more than just a feeling. Perhaps she really was guilty.

But she said nothing. There was nothing in Lady Barclay’s manner to suggest that she would welcome such intimacy. Anyway, Gwen never talked about the events surrounding Vernon’s death or the fall that had caused it. She suspected she never would.

She never even thought about those events. Yet in some ways she never thought of anything else.

Later in the evening, she admitted when asked that she played the pianoforte, though not with any particular flair or talent. It did not matter. She was persuaded to cross the drawing room on her crutches in order to sit at the instrument and play, rusty fingers and all. Fortunately, she acquitted herself tolerably well. And then she was persuaded to remain there in order to accompany Lord Darleigh as he played his violin. She moved to the harp with him afterward while he explained to her how he was learning to identify all the many strings without seeing them.

“And his next trick, Lady Muir,” the Earl of Berwick said, “is to play the strings once he has identified them.”

“Heaven defend us,” Lord Ponsonby added. “Vincent was far less d-dangerous when he had his sight and the only weapons at his disposal were a sword and a giant cannon. He is threatening to start embroidering, Lady Muir. Lord knows where his needle will end up. And we have all heard horror stories about silken bonds.”

Gwen laughed with them all, including Lord Darleigh himself.

When she withdrew to her room soon after, she was not allowed to climb the stairs with her crutches. A footman was summoned to carry her up.

Lord Trentham did not offer.

She had not seen him all day. She had scarcely heard his voice all evening.

She hated the idea that she had very possibly ruined his stay at Penderris. She could only hope that Neville would not delay in sending the carriage once he had received her letter.

She felt depressed after she had been left alone in her room. She was not tired. It was still quite early. She was also rather restless. The crutches had given her a taste of freedom but not the real thing. She wished she could look forward to a long early morning walk or, better yet, a brisk ride.

She did not feel like reading.

Oh dear, Lord Trentham was so dreadfully attractive. She had been aware of him with every nerve ending in her body all evening. If she was being strictly honest with herself, she would be forced to admit that she had chosen her favorite apricot evening gown with him in mind. She had played the pianoforte aware only of him in the small audience. She had looked everywhere in the room except at him. Her conversation had seemed too bright, too trivial because she had known he was listening. Her laughter had seemed too loud and too forced. It was so unlike her to be self-conscious when in company.

She had hated every moment of an evening that on the surface had been very pleasant indeed. She had behaved like a very young girl dealing with her first infatuation—her first very foolish infatuation.

She could not possibly be infatuated with Lord Trentham. A few kisses and a physical attraction did not equate love or even being in love. Good heavens, she was supposed to be a mature woman.

She had rarely spent a more uncomfortable evening in her life.

And even now, alone in her own room, she was not immune—at least to the physical attraction.

What would it be like, she found herself wondering, to go to bed with him?

She shook off the thought and reached for the book she had taken from the library. Perhaps she would feel more like reading once she started.

If only Neville’s carriage could appear, like some miracle, tomorrow. Early.

She felt suddenly almost ill with homesickness.