“Probably,” he said, “even if only temporarily. I want to take you to safety. I want to take you to London.”
“I will be going to Penderris next week,” she reminded him. “I will be there for three weeks. I would guess that George will try to persuade me to stay longer and that each of the others will try to persuade me to go with him. They are good friends.”
“And I am yourlover,” he said. “Go there first, if you will, but then come to London with me and marry me. I rather fancy a grandtonwedding at St. George’s on Hanover Square. Don’t you? And I never thought I would hear myself say that. Come with me and marry me, Imogen, and let me keep you safe for the rest of your life.”
Unhappiness assailed her like a great ball of lead in her stomach, weighing her down, freezing her so that she no longer saw the blue sky and the sun. The two gulls, playing a moment ago, were now crying mournfully.
“I cannot marry you, Percy,” she said.
“You do not love me?” he asked.
She closed her eyes briefly as he stopped to pat Hector on the head and then squinted up at the cliff top.
“I am very fond of you,” she said.
He spoke the same shocking word he had uttered when he saw her letter. This time he apologized.
“But I would rather you hated me,” he added. “There is passion in hatred. There is hope in it.”
“You do not need to marry me,” she said. “I have friends.”
“Damnyour friends,” he said, and apologized again. “I suppose you are talking about those Survivor fellows rather than your neighbors here. I am beginning to dislike them intensely, you know, Imogen. Does any of themloveyou? There are a billion degrees of love, I know. But you know what I mean. Does any of themloveyou? The way I love you.”
Her mouth was dry. Her knees felt weak. The struggle to stop herself from weeping made her throat feel raw with aching.
“To use your own word,” she said, “we hadsextogether, Percy, and it was good. It ought not to have happened, but it did and it was good. It is over now, though. I am fond of you. I always will be. But it is over.”
“You do not know how you tempt me,” he said, “to unleash upon you the full arsenal of colorful vocabulary I normally reserve for male ears only and that only on rare occasions.”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “I believe I do know. But you will return to London and you will soon forget me.”
“Well,” he said, “that calls for the least offensive and most unsatisfactory item in that arsenal. Damn!Doubledamn! And don’t expect an apology. Ah, I am sorry, my love. I truly am. I asked, you replied, and like a gentleman I should have started conversing politely about the weather. Forgive me?”
“Always,” she said.
“Iwillask again,” he told her, “perhaps on the night of the ball. It would be a fittingly romantic setting, would you not agree, and we could make the announcement to our gathered guests. I believe you, you see, when you say that you are fond of me. However, I do not believe you have spoken the full truth and nothing but the truth. I shall ask again, but I shall try not to pester you. Which is precisely what I am doing now. Do you trust this weather? Or will we be made to suffer for it with storms and vicious cold for the rest of the spring? I never trust weather. It gives with one hand and then delivers a knockout blow with the other fist. If, of course, we pretend not to be enjoying the sunshine and warmth one little bit, then perhaps we can trick the weather fairy into giving us more of the same just to keep us miserable. Do you think? Are you a good actor? It is a dreadfully tiresome day, is it not? The sunshine forces one tosquint.”
And, incredibly, she ended up laughing. He went on and on, all on the topic of the weather, getting more absurd by the minute.
And he was laughing too.
It cut like a knife, the sound of their laughter and the feel of it bubbling up inside her. It hurt that he loved her, that he believed she loved him.
23
In less than a month, Percy thought several times over the next few days, he had made a thorough mess of his own life and countless other people’s. And there had been no satisfactory conclusion to anything and very probably would not be.
Sir Matthew Quentin thought he was mad. He had not exactly said so, it was true. Indeed, he had even commended Percy for having the courage to speak out when no one else had for years past. But he still thought Percy was mad. And Quentin might have been a friend—well, still might, in fact. Percy liked him.
The customs officer was merely frustrated, but that, Percy concluded, was probably his natural state. Chasing down smugglers when they were shrouded by a conspiracy of silence was not the most enviable of jobs.
Everyone in the house and neighborhood had been stirred up, but to no purpose. It all seemed pointless, except that perhaps the whole organization might fall apart if the leaders had been shaken badly enough.Mightwas the key word, though. Perhaps Ratchett wasnotthe kingpin or Mawgan his right-hand man. And even if they were, they may well be setting up somewhere else without having lost any of their control over their followers.
Perhaps Imogen was still in danger. And perhaps Percy’s actions so far had merely made them more bent upon revenge. They knew very well that the worst thing they could do to him was to harm Imogen.
Devil take it, but he was desperate to get her away from here, preferably to London, where he knew a lot of people and perhaps she did too, where a gang of Cornish smugglers was unlikely to pursue her. And he was desperate to marry her so that he could keep her secure within his own home, surrounded by his own handpicked servants, and safe within his own arms both day and night.
He had thought she might agree. He really had. Oh, she had said she would never marry again, it was true, and he knew that a great deal more damage had been done her by the events of the past eight or nine years than she had admitted to him. He knew there was a gap in her story, and that knowing what was in that gap would explain everything. But... could she never let it go? He had thought—damn it all, he hadknown—that their affair had been more than sex to her, more than just sensual gratification. He had had affairs before. He knew the difference between those and this.
