A Summer to Remember (20 page)

“Why do
you
have trouble sleeping?” she asked.

“Sleeplessness is a defense against nightmares, I suppose,” he said, “though not always a conscious one.”

“Nightmares?”

“You would not want to know, Lauren,” he said. But he continued speaking anyway. “I became a military man because it was what my father had always planned for his second son. And it was my personal choice too. I cannot remember a time when I did not dream of becoming an officer and distinguishing myself on the battlefield. I was not disillusioned after my commission was purchased for me, either. The life suited me. The tasks at hand were ones I could do and do well. I jumped at the opportunity to become a reconnaissance officer when it came my way, and I never regretted my choice. Selling out last year was a hard thing for me to do. In some ways I felt that I was giving up a part of my identity. And yet . . .”

The rockers of the chair squeaked. It was not an unpleasant sound. It was almost lulling.

“And yet?” she asked.

“And yet it involved killing,” he said. “I lost count long ago of the number of men I have killed. There are all sorts of ways of justifying killing in war, of course. It is a kill-or-be-killed situation. It is most comforting, though not often possible, to think of the enemy merely as a mass of evil monsters who deserve no better than death. Certainly when one is a soldier one must find a way of overcoming one’s scruples and simply do what must be done. But the faces of dead men come to me in my nightmares. No, not dead. Dying. The faces of
dying
men. Ordinary men with mothers and wives and sweethearts at home. Men with dreams and hopes and worries and secrets. Men like me. In my worst nightmares the man who is dying has the face of the man I see in the mirror every day.”

“And so you prove that you are human,” she said. “War would be truly monstrous if it destroyed all horror of killing.”

“But it would be easier to sleep if one were an unfeeling monster,” he said.

She had never thought to wonder if men’s minds were permanently damaged by the atrocities of war. She had always considered that Englishmen fought for right and justice and so would have nothing on their consciences.

“If I am thankful for one thing,” he said, “it is that you and my mother and grandmother and those children in the nursery have never been in the path of warring armies. I am grateful for that, at least.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head to smile at him. It was time to change the subject, she thought, time to lighten the gloom, to make it possible for him to return to the house and sleep dreamlessly.

“What a delight the children are, Kit,” she said. “I have not encountered many since I was a child myself. I was a happy child, you know. Were you?”

“Yes.” He smiled back.

“That is something we have in common, then,” she said. “It is rare, I believe. I do not often think back to my childhood, but there were so many happy times. I was fortunate to have Gwen and Neville for companions, and there were cousins too that we used to see quite frequently.”

They began exchanging stories of their childhoods, as she had intended. Stories full of humor and adventure and nostalgia—and of mischief on his side. At first their stories alternated with no pause between. But eventually Lauren put her head back and closed her eyes again, and when the pauses between stories grew longer, they were not at all uncomfortable, but were filled with warm thoughts and a cozy companionship that had no need of words. The fire, which he had built up once, burned down again, spitting and crackling a little as it did so. The rocker squeaked with slowing rhythm.

Yes, she had had a happy childhood, which she might not have had if her mother and stepfather had returned from their wedding trip and taken her off somewhere to live alone with them, away from her adopted brother and sister. Yet she had spent much of her childhood pining secretly for the mother whose face she could not even remember. Strange!

She sighed deeply.

Kit was still sitting upright on the side of the bed, even though he had been growing sleepier by the minute. The squeaking of the rocker on the old chair should have been annoying but was not. It was lulling him before it stopped altogether.

Lauren, he guessed, had fallen asleep. She had not spoken for several minutes, and she had not responded to the last story he had told.

He had stopped thinking of his childhood during the past few years. There were almost no memories that did not include Jerome and Syd, and very few that did not involve the Bedwyns. But tonight he had opened up the memories again and had found them pleasant, surprisingly free of pain or bitterness. Despite all that had happened three years ago, those had been happy years. The friendships and the brotherly love had shaped him, nurtured him, made him the man he was now, he supposed.

Lauren’s head had tipped to the side. It was an endearing pose, so different from her usual disciplined dignity. He should wake her up and take her back to the house. He rather thought he would sleep peacefully himself for what remained of the night. Indeed, he could nod off right now if he allowed himself to. The thought of the walk back was daunting.

She had done that deliberately, he thought, gazing at her. She had allowed him to talk about his nightmares, but she had not let him wallow in them. She had changed the subject. She had done it so deftly that he could not recall now how they had suddenly found themselves talking about their childhoods. What had created the link from his talk of war and killing? He could not remember, but he was convinced that she had done it deliberately and skillfully. So that his spirits would be lifted, so that his thoughts would be softer, brighter, more conducive to sleep.

He yawned widely.

If he did not wake her soon, she was going to have a sore neck. He got to his feet and reached out a hand to shake her shoulder—and then returned it to his side without touching her. He looked at the bed and then pulled back the two remaining blankets. They were alone together in the middle of the night in a room with a bed—a potentially dangerous situation if ever he had heard of one. Though strangely enough the thought of seduction had not once crossed his mind since they had come inside the hut. And even now the desire he knew he could feel for her was not dominating his mind.

He turned back to the rocking chair, bent down, and scooped her up gently into his arms. She woke up, of course, but she was too sleepy for resistance. He set her down on the bed, as far to the inside as he could. He removed her shoes and then his boots and lay down beside her. He drew the blankets up over both of them. She watched him sleepily the whole while. It was not a wide bed. It was impossible to leave any gap between them.

“Go back to sleep,” he said.

He thought she might already have been asleep before he spoke. He could smell that fragrant soap smell of her hair again. He could feel the soft contours of her body all down his right side, and her body heat. Strangely, although he was half aroused, it was merely a pleasant, easily controlled feeling. He did not want to desire her any more urgently. He did not want this to be turned into a sexual orgy.

It was too precious for that.

She
was too precious.

She had worked her way into the affections of his mother and grandmother—he believed Grandmama adored her, in fact. She had won the respectful regard of his father. And all of it with quiet dignity. His own life here had been immeasurably more comfortable since her arrival—somehow he was finding it easier to relate to his family again, except for Syd, of course.

He had taught Lauren to be a little more outgoing. He had taught her to bathe in the lake and to climb trees. He had coaxed her into unbending enough to smile and even laugh. But it was not just the changes in her that were precious to him. It was the insight she had allowed him into the person behind the cool façade. The person who did not demand much for herself but worked quietly and tirelessly for everyone else’s comfort.

He was surprised most of all, perhaps, by the fact that such a woman—apparently without any great charisma—attracted him.

She
did
attract him.

He turned his head, rubbed his face against her soft curls, and kissed the top of her head.

He was asleep within moments while the lamp burned itself out on the table and the last embers of the fire faded.

For just the merest moment when she awoke, Lauren did not know where she was. But then she remembered that she was still inside the hut in the woods where she and Kit had talked last night. She had been sitting in the rocking chair, growing more and more sleepy, finding it harder and harder to concentrate upon what he was saying. And then . . .

She was lying on the bed, she realized without opening her eyes. The pillow beneath her neck was warm and comfortable. She was lying on her side pressed against something equally cozy. One of her legs was wedged between . . .

She was not alone on the bed, she realized in a flash. She was in Kit’s arms. She could hear his heart beating. She could smell his cologne. For a moment she stiffened in alarm, and indeed a tentative wiggling of the toes on her free foot told her that she was without her shoes. But when she moved a hand slowly to touch herself on one hip, it was to the reassuring discovery that she was fully clothed. She was on the inside of the bed. There would be no wriggling her way out without waking him.

But did she want to? Wriggle her way out, that was?

What on earth would they think at the house?

Whatever had she done?

She had done nothing, that was what. Nothing to be ashamed of. She had talked with Kit, and they had comforted each other and made it possible to sleep peacefully. This was just one more incident in her summer to tuck away for future memories. How she would remember this night!

“You are awake?” he asked softly.

She opened her eyes, tipped back her head—it had been wedged between his shoulder and neck—and looked at him in the faint early morning light beaming through the hut’s one small window.

“Did I fall asleep in the middle of one of your stories?” she asked.

“The very best of them.” He shook his head in apparent sorrow.

“Kit,” she asked, suddenly anxious despite herself, “did—”

“No,” he said firmly. “This was one occasion on which I was the perfect gentleman. Well, almost perfect. I would have woken you and taken you back to the house to be quite perfect, I suppose. I could not face the walk back.”

“Did you sleep?” she asked him.

“Like a baby.” She saw the flash of his grin in the near-darkness. “Thank you, Lauren. Both for listening and for . . . being here.”

He was a man who needed to be listened to, she thought. He was not the uncomplicated, carefree man she had judged him to be on first acquaintance.

“However are we to get back to the house without being seen?” She could feel herself flush.

“Why would we arouse suspicion by even trying to creep in unseen?” he asked her. “We will walk boldly up the driveway, and anyone who sees us will assume we have been out for an early walk.”

He withdrew his arm from beneath her head and rolled away to sit on the edge of the narrow bed, his back to her. He set his elbows on his knees and pushed the fingers of both hands through his hair. He looked rumpled and . . . undeniably attractive.

Lauren could hardly believe she had spent the night in bed with a man. Even more amazing was the fact that she was feeling no shock, no horror, no sense of humiliation.

It would be as well for this masquerade to end as soon as possible, she thought as he got to his feet and she felt beside the bed for her shoes. She was turning into a wanton.

He smiled at her as he held open the hut door and she stepped out to the freshness of the morning air and the sound of the birds chirruping a dawn chorus from the treetops. It was his smile—and his laughter—that she would remember long after her other memories had faded, she thought. It was a memory that would surely bring a smile to her own lips down the long years ahead.

He took her hand in his as they began to walk.

“For the benefit of anyone who happens to be watching,” he explained. “There is no more tender sight than that of a betrothed couple holding hands.”

“Kit,” she said reproachfully, but she made no effort to pull her hand away.

14

T
he sun was shining the next day and it was possible to seek amusement outdoors. Lauren herself did not go out until afternoon—if one discounted a walk with Kit back to the house from the gamekeeper’s hut at a little after six in the morning. She helped the countess look over her plans for the birthday celebrations and offered to take over some of the responsibility for the daytime events. She spent an hour in the nursery at Nell Clifford’s invitation. And she sat conversing for a while, first with her grandfather and then with the dowager and Lady Irene.

A group of the younger people had agreed to go riding in the afternoon. They were loud in their insistence that Gwendoline and Lauren accompany them. Gwen was quite firm in her refusal, but Lauren’s objections were overridden.

“Oh,
do
come,” young Marianne Butler begged. “I want to see your riding habit. I’ll wager it is
ravishing
.”

“Ladies do not make wagers,” her brother Crispin reminded her and won for himself a rude, cross-eyed stare, which Lauren pretended not to notice—and which she was surprised to find amusing.

“Of course you will come,” Daphne Willard said briskly. “If it is to be just the very young things, I will have no one sensible to talk to.”

“And Kit will pine away if you are not there,” Frederick Butler added, “and likely fall off his horse.”

“We would have to carry him back on a door,” Phillip Willard said, adding to the nonsense.

“Of course Lauren will be coming,” Kit said with a grin. “I have promised to make this summer more enjoyable for her than any other she has known. How can one enjoy oneself if one does not get out for at least one respectable gallop?”

She looked reproachfully at him, but he was his usual merry-eyed self today and there would be no reasoning with him, she knew. Her stomach fluttered with awareness when she remembered that she had spent the night with him, pressed against his warmth, listening to his deep, even breathing the few times she surfaced to near-consciousness. She had
slept
with him. How much more scandalous could her behavior become this summer? And how much more enjoyable, added a little inner voice that she was beginning to recognize as her emerging rebellious self. It had been the most wonderful night of her life.

“Oh, very well,” she said weakly. “I will ride. But I will
not
gallop, Kit. The very idea! I would be the one coming home on a door.”

Kit winked at her and the cousins chose to find her words amusing. The dowager and Aunt Clara, both of whom were present, smiled indulgently.

The pace set by Claude Willard, who led the way out of the stables, was reassuringly sedate. Lauren rode between Marianne, who lamented the fact that she did not have the figure to wear anything as divinely elegant as Lauren’s riding habit, and Penelope Willard, who wanted to know—among numerous other things—if the gentlemen in London were more handsome than those in the country. It was a novel, rather pleasant experience to Lauren to be the admired idol of young girls who were not yet “out.”

Kit was riding a little way ahead, in the midst of a group that was indulging in a great deal of laughter. He did glance back quite frequently, though, to smile. And to check to see that she was still firmly planted on her horse’s back? Lauren wondered. But she was beginning to enjoy both the ride and the company.

Until, that was, Lady Freyja Bedwyn and Lord Rannulf hove into sight, also on horseback, and chose to join the party after exchanging loud greetings with the group, with all or most of whose members they appeared to have an acquaintance.

Suddenly, and without knowing quite how, Lauren found herself riding between the two of them.

“You really
do
ride, then, Miss Edgeworth,” Lady Freyja observed, controlling with consummate skill her magnificent, spirited mount, which was clearly accustomed to a far quicker pace.

“And with a remarkably elegant seat,” Lord Rannulf added, his mocking eyes sweeping over her and making of his words a double entendre.

“I expected to find you at Alvesley, hard at work on your sampler,” Lady Freyja said.

“Indeed?” Lauren replied coolly. “How very peculiar.”

“You are exposing your ignorance, Free,” her brother told her. “Even I know that only very little girls work on samplers. Miss Edgeworth doubtless graduated long ago to tatting and weaving and lace-making and knitting and knotting and all those other fascinating accomplishments that true ladies spend their time so usefully about.”

“Oh,
do
you do all those things, Miss Edgeworth?” Lady Freyja asked. “How you put me to shame. I always find them
so
dull.”

“Fortunately,” Lauren said, “the world offers enough variety of activities to suit every taste.”

“Well,
my
taste does not run to crawling over the earth’s surface when I have a good mount beneath me,” Lady Freyja said. “If we were to go any more slowly we would be in danger of going backward. Race with me, Miss Edgeworth. To the top of
that
hill?” She pointed with her whip across the pasture they were traversing to a hill maybe a couple of miles distant—Lauren rather thought it was the hill behind Alvesley on which the wilderness walk came to an end.

“I am afraid I cannot oblige you,” Lauren said. “This pace suits me admirably.”

“I must confess, Miss Edgeworth,” Lord Rannulf said, lowering his voice, the mockery in his eyes turning to laughter, “that a slow ride can occasionally be every bit as satisfying as a vigorous gallop to the finish. Provided the mount is worth the effort of restraint, that is.”

He could not possibly mean . . . But Lauren had no chance to digest her shock.

Lady Freyja had raised her voice to command the attention of the whole group. “Miss Edgeworth will not race against me,” she cried. “Will no one accept my challenge? Kit? You could not possibly say no. Though on
that
horse you would not be able to beat a mule to the top of the hill.”

“Ah, a challenge,” Lord Rannulf murmured.

Kit was grinning. “You are going to have to eat those words within a few minutes, Freyja,” he said. He made an extravagant gesture with one arm. “Lead the way.”

A few of the cousins whooped with enthusiasm as Lady Freyja dug her spurs into her horse’s side and, bent low over her sidesaddle, went streaking off in the direction of the hill. With a laugh, Kit went after her.

“She always was an outrageous hoyden,” Daphne Willard remarked cheerfully.

“And more often than not Kit’s equal,” Lord Rannulf added.

Lauren watched them go in a race that had been deliberately orchestrated for her benefit, she knew. It did not matter. They looked just as she had imagined them that day up on the hill with Gwen. They were galloping side by side, flying like the wind. They looked magnificent together.

They would
be
magnificent together once this summer was over and they were both free and under no pressure to make a dynastic alliance. They were each other’s equal in passion and daring.

She did not mind, Lauren told herself. She had no claim on Kit herself. She had no wish to have any claim on him. She wanted only to be free herself. But she could not stop remembering last night—the shared stories, the gentle, shared laughter, the rhythmic squeaking of the rocking chair, the lazy wonder of waking to find him lifting her out of the chair and laying her on the bed, the cozy comfort of sleeping with her body pressed against his.

The racers were sitting side by side at the bottom of the hill when the rest of the group came up to them. Their horses were grazing untethered nearby. Lauren met Lady Freyja’s glance and saw challenge and triumph and faint malice there.

“Well, who won?” Claude Willard called.

“Kit did,” Lady Freyja called back. “He would have pulled back at the end to let me win, but I told him I would shoot him between the eyes if he ever stooped to such condescension.”

“What was the prize, Kit?” Lord Rannulf asked.

“Alas,” he said, getting to his feet, mounting his horse, and riding toward Lauren, “we did not agree upon anything in advance. Now, if no one has any objection, my betrothed and I would like a little time alone together.”

Lauren turned her horse without comment and rode off with Kit while Daphne behind them was suggesting that they all climb the hill and rest on the summit.

“Were Freyja and Ralf annoying you?” Kit asked.

“Not in any way I could not handle,” she said.

He looked across at her, a smile in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I have realized that about you. Has this afternoon brought you any enjoyment at all?”

“Of course it has,” she assured him. “I like all your relatives, Kit. I like their company.”

“But it has not been the sort of memorable stuff I promised you.” He grinned at her. “We will pass sedately through that gate into the pasture, and then we will see.”

“Kit!” she protested. “Please don’t get any ideas. I am quite perfectly happy as I am.”

But he would only chuckle.

“Now.” He closed the gate behind them a couple of minutes later and gazed off into the distance—it seemed a vast expanse of distance. “There is another gate at the other side, which you may remember even though it is not visible over that slight rise in the land. We will race to it.”

“Kit!”

“And this time,” he said, “we will agree upon a prize in advance. A kiss if I win. And—
what
if you win?”

“There is not even any point in naming anything,” she said indignantly. “
Of course
you will win, or would if I were to be foolish enough to accept your challenge. I never race, Kit. I never take a horse to a gallop.”

“Then it is time you did,” he said. “I will be sporting about it, though. I will give you an early start. I’ll count slowly to ten.”

“Ki-it!”

“One.”

“I will not do it.”

“Two.”

“You will not be satisfied until I have broken my neck, I suppose.”

“Three.”

She took off.

She knew her horse could gallop at least twice as fast as it did. She did not by any means give it its head. Even so, it felt to her as if the ground were flying by beneath its hooves, as if the wind would whip off her hat despite the pins, as if she had never done anything nearly as dangerous or exhilarating in her life before.

He did not pass her. It was quite a while before she realized that he was just behind her left shoulder—in position to catch her if she fell? She started to laugh.

By the time the gate came into sight—reassuringly close once they had topped the rise—she was laughing helplessly, and she could hear Kit laughing behind her.

“I am going to beat you,” she shrieked with just a few yards to go. “I am going to—”

He went past her as if her horse were standing still.

She bent forward until her nose almost touched the horse’s neck. She could not seem to stop laughing.

“If you would just raise your head,” he said at last, “I could claim my prize.”

“Unfair!” she said, straightening up. “You were just
toying
with me.
I
should be the one putting a bullet between your eyes. Oh, Kit, that was such
fun
!”

“I always thought,” he said, riding up alongside her until one of her knees was pressed against his thigh, “nothing could be lovelier than your eyes. But they can
be lovelier than themselves when they sparkle, as they do now.”

“Oh, foolish,” she said at the silly flattery, warmed through to the very center of her heart by it.

And then his mouth was on hers, firm, warm, his lips parted. He took his prize with slow thoroughness while she thought again of the loveliness of last night and realized in some shock that she was in danger of coming to care rather too much for comfort.

“There!” she said briskly when he had finished. “The debt is paid, you foolish man.”

She expected him to grin. He smiled softly instead.

“Foolish,” he murmured. “Yes, I suppose I am that.”

She was in grave danger indeed.

The family gathering in the drawing room that evening was a merry one. Two tables of cards had been set up for the older people. Several of the younger people took their turn at the pianoforte while others gathered around the instrument to listen, to sing, to joke, and to laugh. Still others stood or sat in groups, sipping their tea, catching up on family news and other assorted gossip.

Kit’s grandmother was at the heart of it all, in her chair beside the fire, nodding and contented despite the fact that she had used to enjoy playing cards. Lauren sat on a stool beside her, massaging her bad hand, as had become her daily custom. She was a pretty child, the old lady told her, not for the first time.

“Hardly a child, ma’am,” Lauren said in her usual quiet, matter-of-fact way. “I am six and twenty.”

“But very definitely pretty, Grandmama,” Kit said from his standing position before the fireplace. “I am in full agreement with you on that point. Not on the other, though. What, might I ask, would I want with a child bride?”