Meant To Be (Pendleton Manor 1)

He turned toward her. “In a couple of years, I hope. I’m not going on to university like some of my friends, or into the army, like Adam.”

“Don’t you want to go to Oxford?” she asked, curious.

He shrugged. “It isn’t an option. I won’t be entering the church or any of the other professions set aside for gentlemen. I’m lucky I’m an older son. I will inherit Pendleton Manor, and Father needs me here. That’s all I want to do. All I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Sir Arbuthnot will insist you marry an heiress,” Sophy said, remembering again what her father had said.

Harry laughed and shook his head as if she were making a poor joke. “What would I want with an heiress? The Baillieus have enough money already, or they would if Father agreed to change some of his old-fashioned thinking when it came to the estate. He keeps me and Adam on a tight rein, although Adam …” His voice trailed off.

“What about Adam?” Adam had been attending the same school as Harry, waiting for an army commission to be purchased for him, and Sophy missed his friendly face and silly jokes. But Harry shrugge

d. He didn’t want to discuss the matter.

He leaned closer, and she looked down at her lap, feeling that odd squirmy feeling in her chest. His warm breath was on her cheek, stirring wisps of untidy hair. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“If you like,” she answered softly, still shy.

“I want to marry you, Sophy. I can’t imagine living here without you by my side.”

Her heart soared. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again he had dipped his head so that she could see him, and his face was earnest and honest. She almost told him what her father had said, almost laid out all of her doubts and concerns before him, but in the end she decided that was a conversation for another day.

“I feel the same,” she whispered. “I can’t imagine being here with anyone but you.”

He lifted his hand and smoothed back another stray lock of her hair. He was looking at her so intently now. “Never leave me,” he said, “and I will never leave you.”

And then he kissed her, his lips warm and tender against hers, his breath mingling with hers, and Sophy knew nothing had ever felt as wonderful.

HARRY

Her lips were as soft and sweet as they looked. Sophy gave a little gasp, as if he had taken her by surprise, but when he leaned back her eyes were closed. With her golden hair and pale skin she looked like one of the angels in the stained glass windows of Pendleton Church.

Sophy was too good for him. If she guessed the kind of feelings he had for her now, the base urge he was struggling against, would she even want to be his friend? If she could see inside his head, see the inappropriate things he was thinking of doing to her, would she let him kiss her?

And yet he couldn’t lose her. She was all that was keeping his hold firm on the man he wanted to be, and not the man he feared he was becoming. The lecherous man his father had always been, and the man he suspected Adam was turning into.

Last month, Adam had taken him into the nearby town to a house where women did almost anything for money. He and Adam had been drinking, and his brother hired out a room and brought two women into it. Harry had found himself in bed with one of them. What they did, what he felt, sickened him afterwards, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough to stop him from doing it again. Most of his friends would laugh at him if he told them he’d planned to save himself for Sophy. He was a Baillieu, and expected to sow wild oats before and even after marriage, just as his father had done and his father before him.

Sophy had been with no one, he was certain of that, and he accepted that he couldn’t tell her what he’d done. She wouldn’t understand. She would look at him with wide, hurt eyes and he would feel even worse than he already did.

The act itself had been exciting and enjoyable at the time, but it was the knowledge that, while he had been engaged in it, he had been imagining Sophy in that woman’s place, that filled him with repugnance.

Harry worried he was becoming corrupted, like Adam, and he couldn’t seem to stop it from happening. Even when the school found out and told his father, Sir Arbuthnot had dismissed it with a smirk. He thought their behaviour was a natural progression of young Baillieu men. He’d rambled on about ‘When I was your age,’ and went into a story that made Harry cringe.

Harry had loved his mother. She had died when Adam was little, but he still remembered the arguments between his parents. Bitter words clashing with hot tears. He was under no illusions as to Sir Arbuthnot’s fidelity. Was he going to end up the same? Like father like son? He didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to hurt Sophy the way his mother had been hurt every time his father strayed outside the marriage bed.

“I’ve never been kissed before.”

Her soft voice pulled him back from his dark thoughts. Sophy’s eyes were open now, looking at him in the way she always did, as if she could see right through to the boy inside.

“I like it when you do it,” she added shyly.

Harry’s heart was beating hard in his chest and he could feel the heavy sensation in his groin he’d been noticing a lot more lately. Adam had lost his virginity years ago but Harry had held on to his, and now he couldn’t seem to go back to the way he was, no matter how he tried.

“I like it too,” he said huskily.

He came closer and cupped her face in his hand, his fingers sliding into her silky hair, his thumb caressing her skin. “When I come home for good,” he said, “I’ll kiss you as much as you’d like.”

“Can’t we practise now?” she asked, her lashes shielding her eyes in a way that seemed strangely coy for his forthright Sophy. He could see her pulse beating in her throat, and he wanted to put his mouth to it.