With This Kiss: Part One Page 3

  “Hello there,” he said, smiling at her. “How’s the best correspondent in the world?”

  Grace felt her cheeks flood with color. “I’m fine. I’m so happy to see you home safe, Colin.” She looked him over. “Without an injury. It’s just marvelous!”

  “Yes, well,” he said, with an odd flatness in his voice. “I’m lucky enough to have all fingers and toes accounted for. What are you painting?”

  “I’m making a portrait of Brandon.” She frowned down at her paints as she tried to figure out what was wrong with Colin’s voice. Surely it was a good thing not to be injured?

  “Brandon is not my favorite ducal progeny,” Colin said. “You are, darling girl, with all those wonderful letters. There were times when I would have gone stark mad but for thinking about the stories you told me.”

  “Are you still blockading the slaver ships?” she asked, wishing that she could think of something clever and funny to say.

  Colin sat down next to her. “That I am, Grace. That I am.”

  They sat for a while and looked out at the lake.

  “And do you still hate the fighting part?”

  “Your letters help.”

  “Do you ever read poetry?” she offered. “Maybe that would help as well.”

  He threw her a glance that warmed her down to her toes. “You’re overestimating me, Grace. I’m no good with words. I try to write you back, you know. I sit there and I can’t think of anything to say because it’s all—” He stopped.

  “If you hate it that much,” she said, after a moment, “you must leave the navy.”

  His jaw tightened. “I can’t give it up. It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

  “You could learn something else. There’s no point in doing something you loathe so much.”

  There was silence.

  “You do loathe it, don’t you?”

  He said nothing. Colin answered her letters so rarely that she found herself reading the few lines he wrote over and over. Yet it felt to her as if his anguish stretched all the way from the coast of Africa to England.

  “Does your friend Philip Drummond hate it as much as you do?”

  “No.”

  “What’s Philip like?”

  “Much more cheerful than I am,” Colin said, shooting her a glance from under his lashes. “He likes excitement.” A little shudder went through him.

  Grace saw that with a sinking heart. “You must resign your commission, Colin. Sir Griffin could get you out.”

  “There’s no way out, Grace. Not without dishonor.”

  “Dishonor is better than death,” she insisted. Rather than look at him, she stared at the drying paint on her brush.

  There was more silence, the only sound the lapping of lake water. “They’ve all died around me,” he said, finally. “Everyone but myself and Philip. They call us the golden twins, because no matter what happens on board, we walk off without a scratch.” He reached out his hand before them. “Not even a scratch, Grace. Do you see that?”

  She thought it was the most beautiful hand she’d ever seen: large and indubitably male, a strong hand. It bore no resemblance to the pampered hands of the aristocratic boys she’d met. “I am glad to see you haven’t injuries,” she said, giving it emphasis.

  “It’s a curse.”

  A big black swan drifted up to shore. “Don’t look him in the eyes,” Grace warned. “He’s cross most of the time. Your father says he’s a devil in disguise. If you meet his eye, he’ll get out of the water in order to snap at our toes.”

  “As you told me in a letter,” Colin said, smiling his lopsided smile. “I take it this is Bub, short for Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness himself?”

  “Why is it like a curse to walk out of a battle unwounded?” Grace asked. It had to be asked, even though her stomach clenched into knots at the idea of Colin’s being wounded.

  “There’s all this smoke, and when it clears, the men are dead. All around you. Or crying.” His voice was hollow and utterly calm. “Dying men cry for their mothers, Grace. They do. There’s nothing you can do for them, but make promises you can’t keep.”

  “That’s awful,” she whispered.

  “You must wonder why I don’t write you more often. I’m not good with words. I use up all I have, writing those mothers.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. And then she came up on her knees, put her palette to the side, and pulled at him until her arms could go around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”

  He resisted for one moment, and then gave in, arms going around her waist, holding her tightly against his big body.

  It was a moment Grace never forgot. The sun was hot on her back, and because she was on her knees, and he was seated, her head was slightly above his. She tried not to think about the fact that his shoulders and his back were muscled, because he was hurting. Even if there weren’t any wounds on the outside, he was injured.

  After a while he pulled away and looked at her. His eyes were the dark blue of the ocean just at twilight. “You are quite special,” he said, his voice deep and low. He put a finger on her lips.

  Grace felt that touch to the bottom of her toes.

  Then he stood. “Would you like to return to the house now, Lady Grace?” He held out a hand to her.

  She accepted his help and stood, trying to figure out what it all meant. She loved him. She felt it in every part of her being. It would break her heart if he died; she might never recover.

  But she couldn’t say that to him, and he didn’t seem to share her feelings.

  “I understand that you and your sister are to debut next season?” Colin’s voice had turned coolly pleasant, the voice of a family friend.

  Did he like her? Did he care at all?

  When he left a few days later, she still had no idea.

  So she took up her pen and began a letter to him, about the escapades of the two youngest Barrys, who had decided to run away from home.

  She wrote nothing about herself, or the golden twins, or the curse.

  He didn’t reply to her next two letters, and sent only a note after the third. From the cursory letters he sent, she had the feeling that he skimmed hers and tossed them aside. And yet, stupidly, she couldn’t stop writing and rewriting her descriptions, sometimes staying up all night working on a miniature watercolor to slip into a packet.

  She had always signed her letters, From Ryburn, or From Arbor House… Lady Grace. But one night in a fit of rebellion, she changed her signature. Your friend, Lady Grace.

  He sent one of his infrequent replies to that one. It was only three lines long, but she took it as a sign he approved.

  Five

  May 1835

  Grace’s debut went about as well as she had imagined it would.

  Lily shone in the ballroom. She danced like the sprite Colin imagined her; she laughed at all the young men, and they adored her for it.

  By the end of May, four men had asked for her hand, and one of them was heir to a marquess.

  Grace had one proposal, from a thirty-eight-year-old widower with three daughters.

  The only bearable part about it was that she made the miserable experience sound rather funny and bright in her letters. She painted pictures of abject suitors collapsed at Lily’s feet. She painted her desperate swain with a child in each arm and one on his shoulders. She told Colin about his brother Fred knocking over the punch bowl at Lady Bustfinkle’s musicale because—as it turned out—he had drunk far too much punch himself.

  She never wrote a word about what it was like to sit at the side of a ballroom even as the music made her feet long to dance. She made it sound as if London gentlemen adored shy girls who had no clever conversation.

  She had realized by now that she wasn’t ugly, except perhaps in comparison to Lily. She was quite acceptable, with a heart-shaped face and nice eyes. Thanks to her mother, her gowns flattered her slender figure and red hair.

  But she simply could not sparkle. And at times she felt
so desperately shy that she could hardly speak.

  Then Colin wrote one of his rare letters, congratulating her on having a brilliant season.

  She couldn’t bear the fact that she had, in essence, misled him. So she sent a little self-portrait as a well-dressed mouse sitting in the corner of the ballroom, watching everyone dance.

  She didn’t put the truth of it down in words.

  Words were hard; painting was easier.

  He didn’t write back.

  She told herself that he was silently sympathetic, that he was wishing he were home to dance with her.

  Then she tried to believe it.

  Six

  May 1836

  The Duke of Ashbrook’s townhouse

  Colin didn’t return to London again until the following year, when Grace was nineteen. The night before his ship was due in Portsmouth, she was sick with nerves.

  By two days later, she was just sick. He was definitely in London; her own parents had seen him and he had told them warmly—according to the duchess—how much he appreciated her letters.

  But he hadn’t called on her. She didn’t want appreciation. She was old enough to know exactly what she did want.

  “Perhaps he’ll come to the ball tonight,” Lily suggested. Then: “Do you suppose that the fact Lord Swift sent me violets means that he is serious?”

  Grace didn’t feel precisely jealous of her sister. She would hate to be the center of attention the way Lily was; she was much more comfortable dancing with second sons and future vicars. She actually liked sitting at the side of the room, where she could watch the dancers. It wasn’t easy to memorize a face well enough to be able to paint it the next morning or, sometimes, that very night. If a face was so interesting that she was afraid she would forget details, she might stay up half the night painting, much to her mother’s dismay.

  In fact, she didn’t pay young gentlemen much attention unless they had interesting features. According to her mother, that explained why they paid her even less.

  She didn’t care.

  She was in love, and although it was difficult to imagine a future with Colin—given the fact that he hardly ever wrote her, and never a word about anything personal—she couldn’t help herself. Loving him was as natural as breathing. And as essential to her as her ability to paint.

  That night, the family went to a ball thrown by the Duchess of Sconce. Grace danced a few times, and sat down to supper with her sister, a flock of Lily’s admirers, and Lord McIngle, a Scotsman who was showing signs of becoming an admirer of her own. Even though he wasn’t old, or widowed, or half blind.

  Supper was just over; she had curtsied to Lord McIngle and was following her sister into the crowded ballroom, when there was a rustle through the room.

  Grace turned. Colin was standing in the door. All around her she heard whispers; after all, he had recently been made captain of his own vessel: the youngest Englishman ever to receive that honor.

  His uniform was magnificent, dark blue with gold trim and gold buttons all over his chest. The gleaming, bronze-colored epaulets on his shoulders made him look outrageously manly. His cravat was lace, and (she thought) the white emphasized the darkness in his eyes.

  She loved the fact that he carried a secret in his eyes, one that he had never let out, except once, on the shore of the lake.

  She instinctively started toward him, but made herself stay still and allow him to come to her. Lily always said it was important for gentlemen to pursue ladies, rather than the other way around.

  That frozen moment gave her an excellent view of the most romantic thing to happen in London in ages, or so everyone said the next morning. As Colin walked down the steps, there was one of those accidental, miraculous partings of the crowd that happens even in crowded ballrooms. Colin was at one end, bowing before Lady Sconce, straightening, looking up… and Lily was at the other.

  In the bright light of the ballroom, Lily looked—to Grace’s objective eye—as beautiful as a true fairy sprite. She wore a pale gown suitable for a young lady, but because the Duchess of Ashbrook had a hand in the fabric, Lily sparkled with a subdued gleam that made her skin look flawless, and her hair blazed like rubies on white velvet. She had a perfect figure, round in all the right places, and slim everywhere else.

  Grace’s heart sank to her toes with a thud. She was wearing her most beautiful dress, the one that made her look like a Renaissance queen, or so her mother said. But she—and her mother—knew that an ordinary girl, no matter how sweet her expression, couldn’t hold a candle to Lily. No one could. And it just made it worse that Lily wasn’t vain about it. Even though she still had moody spells, she was a genuinely nice person.

  The joy on Lily’s face when she saw Colin walk into the ballroom was entirely unfeigned. And the look of utter shock, and then dazed awareness that came over his face… entirely unfeigned.

  Having spent a few years in London ballrooms, Grace could diagnose love at first sight as well as anyone. Colin had just fallen in love. And Lily? Perhaps Lily had as well. She had a weakness for men in uniform. She was smiling at Colin, holding his hands and smiling up at him with such unmitigated pleasure that Grace wanted to weep. Or vomit.

  She felt that, too. She felt just as joyful that Colin was home safe, that he had survived all those sea battles and whirlpools, and made his way home with prizes and accolades, though she didn’t care about those. She just cared that he was home, rather than five fathoms deep with his bones turned to coral, and all the rest that Shakespeare wrote about drowned men.

  And then, as everyone sighed with delight, the young lion returning with the vice admiral’s special commendation asked Lily to waltz with him.

  Grace watched from the side of the room as Colin twirled Lily, one hand lightly clasping hers, the other around her waist. When they were opposite Grace, Lily’s head fell back and her curls fell over Colin’s arm. She was laughing, looking up at him. When Lily laughed, as their father always said, the world laughed with her.

  Grace watched until they neared the doors to the portico, saw Colin’s face light with pleasure, saw the way he bent toward Lily as if he were a frozen man and she were a fire.

  Then she turned and walked, very precisely, to the entryway. She shook her head when the butler offered to fetch her mother, telling him instead that she wanted the Duke of Ashbrook’s carriage drawn up immediately. Then she asked him to inform her mother that she had a headache.

  She fled.

  Seven

  Colin took one look at the exquisite, laughing Lily and lost his heart. He had entered the ballroom feeling rather cold and sick. She had looked at him, then laughed, and held out her hands.

  Lily was everything battle wasn’t: she was exquisite and fragile and utterly precious. The very sight of her told him that there were things in the world worth fighting for.

  He danced with her, and that was even better. He could hardly believe that they used to refer to her as The Horror.

  “How can you be naughty Lily?” he said, looking into her dazzlingly beautiful eyes. She was dainty, and yet perfectly shaped, like a statue of Venus. And she smelled so good… the sort of perfume that reminded him that there were rooms where no one crumpled to the floor with a cry of pain, where there had never been a smell of death and decay, where there was always another glass of champagne to drink.

  He forced his jaw to relax. He had made up his mind not to think about that sort of thing. To leave it behind. Only a weakling would let memories follow him like a trail of wailing ghosts all the way from Portsmouth and into a ballroom.

  The good thing was that Lily knew nothing of war. He almost didn’t want to see Grace because she knew too much. She knew that he hated the navy. He was afraid merely seeing her might unman him.

  He took no pleasure from the ocean anymore. All that was subsumed with his loathing of battle.

  But here, with Lily, he felt different. He could feel his heart lifting. This was the way out of the maze of fear and me
mory: dancing and laughing with an enchanting woman who knew nothing of war, who had a dimple in her cheek, who smelled like roses. He twirled her faster and faster, letting the tempo guide his steps.

  In the ballroom, there was no death and blood. No tears. No letters to be sent to mothers.

  He smiled down at the lovely lass in his arms. Her lips were the color of spring roses and her eyes were soft and affectionate. Lily was like a whirlwind made of laughter. The faster they twirled, the more she loved it, leaning back against his arm and giggling.

  After their dance, he asked for Grace. But he was secretly glad when it turned out that she had gone home with a headache.

  “She never would have left if she knew you were coming,” Lily told him. “She absolutely adores you, though I don’t know why. You obviously don’t deserve it!”

  Over her fan, her eyes shone with a merry, wicked light. Around them pretty girls swirled, their dresses light and airy against their perfectly shaped bodies, arms gleaming in the candlelight, lips rosy. He traded Lily to a sleek young lord who told him, languidly, that he had deep admiration for the navy. “The bravery,” the man said, waving his hand. “All the courage you chaps display. Quite remarkable.”

  He danced with a friend of Lily’s, who had bouncing curls and shining white teeth. In fact, her teeth were rather mesmerizing, and he found himself imagining her head as a skull, but then he forced the image away—away—and managed to put himself back in the gaily turning ballroom.

  “More champagne?” The evening was drawing to a close, but Lily and her friends were as fresh as daisies, as beautiful as they had been hours ago.

  He took the glass, perhaps his fourth, perhaps his eighth, and met Lily’s eyes with a smile. He was sure it was a smile because he turned his lips the right way.

  “I want to meet your friend, Mr. Philip Drummond!” she said.