Page 68 of The Summer Country

“I’m not complaining,” she said, and rested her head against his chest, just beneath his chin. So softly that he could barely hear it, she said, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he murmured into her hair. Relief and joy washed through him and he hugged her close, as close as he dared. “I missed you so.”

Jenny’s fingers traced a pattern in the fine, fair hair on his chest. “When I was away . . . I wondered if I had imagined it all. This.”

“No,” said Charles fervently. He had no more words for it than that. “No.”

“All the time we were in Antigua,” she said, not looking at him, “I told myself it was over. That I would come back and you would be a stranger again. That I would see you and feel—nothing.”

“If this was nothing, it was a very fine nothing, indeed. Jenny?” All he could see was the parting of her hair. Charles touched her cheek with his finger, trying to think how to put into words what he felt, needing her to know it meant more than that. “I’ve lain with women before. I’ve even fancied myself in love. But none of them were anything to this. It’s like trying to compare the light of a candle to the strength of the sun. There’s no comparison. The one might warm one’s hands awhile, but this—this could burn down cities.”

Jenny lifted her head to look at him, her eyes troubled. “Isn’t that sort of fire dangerous?”

“Some light the fields to make the crops grow,” said Charles, running his fingers lightly down her arm. “And there’s always the phoenix, emerging triumphant from the flames, born anew with every blaze.”

Jenny gave him one of her skeptical looks. He had missed those looks. “The phoenix is a myth.”

The little room was very still. Quietly, Charles said, “But this isn’t. Is it?”

“No,” Jenny admitted. “But how are we to go on like this? Sooner or later, someone will discover us. And Mary Anne—she’ll mind. She’ll mind badly. She thinks—she thinks if you’d married her, it would all have been better.”

“If I had married her, we would have made each other miserable.” Scooting up a bit, using the wall as a headboard, Charles asked, “What happened in Antigua?”

Jenny sighed and leaned her head back against the rough stuff of the wall. “It was the colonel. We ought to have known he wouldn’t go away without finding some way to spoil things. He went up to Master Robert at the wedding breakfast and told him he’d seen you and Miss Mary Anne together. Intimately together. He said that was why she was so eager to wed.”

“But then wouldn’t she have wed me? If that had been the case, one imagines the lady’s guardian would have something to say about it,” said Charles. “Those are the occasions that call for a special license and a hastily planned wedding breakfast.”

“The colonel will have found a way to explain it,” said Jenny wearily. “That you had a previous commitment or something of that sort.”

“I do, as it happens,” said Charles, taking her hand. “But that’s beside the point.”

Jenny cast him a reproving look. “When Master Robert saw us talking at the door, he probably thought I was arranging an assignation for my mistress.”

“But wait,” said Charles, trying to figure out how they’d got from the promise of the rainy months to this. “Didn’t you say the two of them had been—er, anticipating the wedding night?”

“With vigor,” said Jenny, smiling a little at Charles’s discomfiture. “Oh, he enjoys her appetites well enough. And she enjoys his. But once my father got at him, he started wondering who else might be sharing in those appetites. He threw all those old rumors back at her.”

“The ones about her insatiable appetites?” Charles recalled a long-ago discussion with his brother on the balcony at Rosehall. “That’s why she wouldn’t ride with a groom, only with you.”

Jenny nodded. “It’s my father’s work. It has his signature on it. Poor Mistress Mary. Every time they fight, they end up in bed. And every time they end up in bed, Master Robert invariably ends by accusing her of sharing her charms with others. Mostly you,” she added.

“My charms are yours alone,” said Charles. “We’ll find a way to make it right. If only we can draw your father’s poison. Now he’s gone . . .”

“Mary Anne can’t forgive Master Robert for paying him off,” said Jenny flatly. “They’ve been at each other like cat and dog and it’s only getting worse.”

“And you in the middle of it?” said Charles. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had thought if they were happy together—”

“Then we might be too?” There was something so wistful, so vulnerable in the words. It made Charles want to ford oceans and slay dragons for her. Surely, this should be simple in comparison?

“We will be. We’ll find a way.” Charles wrapped his arms around her, feeling, for the first time in a very long while, as though he’d come home. Which was foolish, since he hadn’t been anywhere. She was the one who had gone away. But there it was. “Perhaps once there’s a child . . .”

“That may be sooner than you think. Mary Anne’s been ill two mornings now.”

“But that’s of all things wonderful!” Charles said, sitting up straight. “Robert will be pleased, I imagine. He’ll have proved his virility and secured an heir. And as for your mistress . . .”

“It will give her someone else to manage?” Jenny finished for him.

Charles felt seized by a sudden surge of optimism. He squeezed Jenny’s hands. “You’ll see. We’ll have it all sorted and you at Peverills by Christmas.”