A Summer to Remember (26 page)

They laughed together and turned to walk back to the house.

“You are going to have to talk to Kit, you know,” she said as they approached the terrace. “Even if you have to tie him down and gag him.”

“I think not,” he said, though he chuckled at her words.

“Please?” she begged softly.

Baron Galton had come by gig with Sir Melvin Clifford to the stretch of riverbank where all the men and boys had gathered to fish, but he chose to walk with Kit back to the house, relinquishing his place in the vehicle to the
earl.

“A dashed good spot for fishing,” he said.

“We have always had pleasure from it,” Kit agreed. “There are few more relaxing ways to spend a morning.”

The others strode on ahead, talking all at once, it appeared, and bearing the morning’s catch with them. Kit reduced his stride to accommodate the slower pace of the elderly gentleman.

“I am planning, sir,” he said when there was no longer any possibility of their being overheard, “to institute an inquiry. I was a reconnaissance officer for a number of years, as you know, and have several useful contacts at both the Foreign Office and the War Office. I know many officers who are still active in the field too. I believe you should be aware of what I plan to do. I hope to discover exactly where, when, and how Mrs. Wyatt, Lauren’s mother, your daughter, died.”

“Why?” Baron Galton looked at him sharply. “What the devil do you want to know that for?”

Kit was somewhat taken aback by his almost hostile tone. “You have never been curious yourself, sir?”

“Never!” the old man assured him. “They met with some misadventure and died and word did not get back to us. That is all. People—sons, daughters, parents—die every day, Ravensberg. We can do nothing to bring them back once they are gone. It is pointless to spend time and money and effort simply to discover what we already know. It is best to leave them in peace and get on with our own
lives.”

A sensible attitude, perhaps, but it did not seem quite natural for a father to be so unconcerned about his daughter’s fate.

“You made no inquiries at the time, sir?” he asked.

“At what time?” the baron asked. “They never did write often. How were we to know they were even missing until years had gone by? By then any inquiry would have been fruitless.”

“Did the Earl of Kilbourne make no attempt to locate his brother? Or discover what had happened to him?”

“Look here, Ravensberg.” Baron Galton had stopped walking and was regarding Kit sternly from beneath bushy eyebrows. “I have no doubt you are a clever young man and are eager to impress your betrothed by discovering what no one else has discovered in ten or fifteen years. But take my advice and leave it. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Kit looked steadily back at him. “Good God, sir,” he said with sudden insight, “you
know,
do you not?”

The old gentleman pursed his lips and looked broodingly at him. “Leave it,” he said again.

Kit leaned slightly toward him, his hands clasped at his back. “You
know,
” he said. “But Lauren does not. Why? What happened?”

“She was a
child,
that was why,” the baron said irritably. “She had a good home with Kilbourne and his countess. She was happy and secure. She had companions of her own age and good prospects. She was only three when her mother left, little more than a baby. She quickly forgot her, as children do. Kilbourne and his wife became her parents. She could not have asked for better. You can see for yourself that the Dowager Lady Kilbourne loves her every bit as much as she loves her own daughter.”

“You believe that Lauren did not miss her mother?” Kit was still frowning. “That she did not feel abandoned? That she did not suffer when the infrequent letters and gifts stopped coming?”

“Of course she did not.” Baron Galton spoke firmly and turned to resume walking. “She never once asked. She never spoke of her mother. She never stopped being as serene and happy as she had always been. You may wonder how I can be so sure when I visited her only rarely. I love my granddaughter, Ravensberg. I dote on her. She is all I have of my own. I would have had her to live with me at the snap of two fingers, but it would have been selfish of me. She was happier where she was. I wrote weekly to Kilbourne until his death and he wrote weekly to me. Lauren was a model child and then a model young lady. She was rarely if ever disobedient. She never neglected her lessons or her other duties. She was never discontented or demanding. She was less trouble than either of Kilbourne’s own children. There was no need to upset her unnecessarily with news of a mother she had long forgotten.”

“Kilbourne knew the truth too, then?” Kit asked.

“Of course he did,” Baron Galton replied. “Forget about your inquiries, Ravensberg. And forget about upsetting my granddaughter by dredging up what is long in the past. Leave it be.”

“What
did
happen?” Kit asked.

The old gentleman sighed. “I suppose,” he said, “you have a right to know. I would have felt it my duty to inform you before you committed yourself to a betrothal to Lauren, had you given me an opportunity to do so. But I was presented with a fait accompli instead. My daughter was as unlike my granddaughter as it is possible to be, Ravensberg. She was always a great trial to her mother and me. She married Whitleaf just to be free of us, I believe, though I approved the match. She led him a merry dance. It was something of a scandal when she married Wyatt a mere ten months after Whitleaf’s death. By some miracle, though, that very marriage gave Lauren a good, steady home, where she was soon loved for herself. I never heard one murmur from either Kilbourne or his countess about bad blood. And they were quite as eager for the match between their son and my granddaughter as I was.”

They walked in silence for a while. Kit offered no
comment that might distract his companion’s train of thought.

“Their wedding trip turned into a permanent way of life,” Lord Galton continued eventually. “She—Miriam—was forever wanting Lauren to join them, but I flatly refused to send her, and Kilbourne backed me on that decision. She was no fit mother, and they lived no fitting style of life for a child. There were forever rumors about their wild excesses and debaucheries, brought home by other travelers. Finally, Ravensberg, when they were in India, she left Wyatt in order to take up residence with some fabulously wealthy Indian potentate, and he resumed his travels with a Frenchwoman of questionable reputation. He died five years later—ten years ago—somewhere in South America. Kilbourne did not go into public mourning—mainly for Lauren’s sake. He did not want to have to hurt her with explanations. She was sixteen years old at the time—an impressionable age.”

“Good God! And Mrs. Wyatt?” Kit asked.

“The last I heard, she was still in India, with some official of the East India Company,” Baron Galton said curtly. “She writes once or twice a year, usually to Lauren. She is dead to me, Ravensberg, and by damn she will remain dead to my granddaughter if I have any say in the matter.”

“You—or Kilbourne—have kept her mother’s letters from her? You do not believe she should know the truth?” Kit asked. “That her mother is still alive?”

“I do not.”

The house was well in sight. It had been a lengthy walk for an elderly gentleman who obviously did not indulge in a great deal of exercise. He was breathing heavily.

“Perhaps,” he said sternly, “you feel you have made a bad bargain in your choice of bride, Ravensberg. But it was your choice to rush into a betrothal. And by God you will treat her kindly, or you will have me to answer to for as long as I am spared from my grave.”

“You need not worry about that, sir,” Kit said. “I love your granddaughter.”

The lie was spoken without thought, but it could not be recalled. And it was not such a great untruth, was it? He had grown enormously fond of Lauren. He had lain awake half the night before, thinking about her, wishing she were there in the bed beside him, curled warm and relaxed and asleep against him as she had in the hut and on the island, realizing that after she left there was going to be a yawning emptiness in his life for some time to come. The idea of actually marrying her was becoming more and more appealing to him. The need somehow to persuade her to marry him was becoming more and more imperative, quite aside from the fact that she might be with child by him.

Yet how could he coerce her when it seemed that the greatest gift he could give her was her freedom?

“Then you will protect her from the sordid truth,” Baron Galton said, “as I have done. As the late Kilbourne and his countess and their son have done. If you love her, you will never breathe a word to her of what really happened to her mother. She is far happier in her ignorance.”

“Yes, of course, sir. I will do all in my power to protect her.”

But she was
not
happy, he thought. All those who had loved her all her life were wrong about that. She had cultivated obedience and gentility and placidity in order to hide the hurt of being a child unwanted by her own mother. She had made herself into the perfect lady to win the love of her adopted family—so that they too would not abandon her. She believed her grandfather had not wanted the bother of caring for her. She believed—rightly, it seemed—that her father’s family had openly rejected her.

She was
not
happy. She had lived behind the mask for so long—for at least twenty-three of her twenty-six years—that even those nearest and dearest to her seemed to believe that the mask was the reality. Perhaps he was the only person on this earth who had seen the eager, vital, laughter-loving, sensual, truly beautiful woman who was the real Lauren Edgeworth.

But it was indeed a sordid story. Under the circumstances perhaps her grandfather and the Kilbournes had made the right decision to keep it from her. What would it do to her to discover now that her mother still lived, that she was, apparently, promiscuous?

That she had never stopped writing to her daughter?

That she had wanted Lauren to live with her?

“No.” Kit stopped walking again. They were very close to the house. “No, sir, I cannot agree with you. Lauren has suffered from not knowing. She would suffer too from knowing. Perhaps it
would
be a kindness to keep the truth from her, to protect her because she is a lady and has lived a sheltered life. But I don’t believe so. I believe she has the right to know.”

“You would tell her, then,” Baron Galton asked, clearly angry, “when I have spoken to you in strictest confi-dence?”

Kit looked steadily back at him. “Yes, I believe I will, sir,” he said, “if I am given no alternative. I will tell her the truth after I marry her. Not before then. I beg
you
to do it. The story should come from you. She
needs
the truth. You need to trust her with it. You need to set her free.”

“Free?” The old gentleman frowned. He drew breath to say more, but closed his mouth again.

“Please, sir?” Kit asked softly.

19

L
auren had fully expected the day before the dowager’s birthday to be a busy one since she had committed herself to helping the countess with the last-minute preparations. But looking back on it later, she marveled that any day could be so eventful and still contain only twenty-four hours. She had never lived through a more tumultuous, emotion-packed day.

It began after breakfast when she was already busy with the countess in the latter’s private sitting room, drawing up a written schedule for the next day’s division of labor. The earl and countess would officially greet all comers during the afternoon—outdoors if weather permitted—and judge all the contests that had been announced in the village and the surrounding countryside a month or more ago. Kit and Lauren would organize and run the children’s races. The countess would . . .

But there was a knock on the door and at the countess’s summons it opened to reveal an apologetic Aunt Clara, with Gwen behind her.

“I am
so
sorry to interrupt you, Lady Redfield,” Aunt Clara said, lifting her right hand to reveal an opened letter, “but I simply could not wait to let Lauren know the news.”

Lauren got to her feet. She had noticed Gwen’s suppressed excitement at the same moment as she saw the ducal crest at the head of the letter—the Duke of Portfrey’s crest, that was.

“Elizabeth has been delivered safely of a boy,” Aunt Clara announced before they all disgraced themselves by falling into one another’s arms and laughing and crying and exclaiming.

“The Duchess of Portfrey?” the countess asked, getting to her feet and hugging Lauren. “Well, this news is as good an excuse for an interruption of work as any I have heard. Do sit down, ladies, and I will have a pot of chocolate brought up. I am quite sure Lauren is ready to hear every sentence of that letter. If she is not,
I
am.”

The duke had written that his son and heir had arrived earlier than expected, but with ten fingers and ten toes, a powerful set of lungs, and a voracious appetite. Elizabeth was recovering well after a long and difficult delivery. As soon as mother and child could safely travel, he was intending to take them to Newbury Abbey so that the newborn Marquess of Watford could become acquainted with Lily, his half-sister, and Elizabeth could be fussed over by her own family for a month or so.

“Oh, Lauren,” Gwen said, tightening her grasp on her cousin’s hands, “Mama and I must go home early to prepare for their arrival. Not that we will need to do anything, of course. Lily and Nev will have everything well under control. The duke is Lily’s father, after all, and the baby her half-brother. And Elizabeth is Neville’s aunt as much as she is mine. But—” She smiled, still dewy-eyed.

“But of course you will want to be there when the Portfreys arrive,” the countess said. “That is perfectly understandable. I just hope you will remain for the birthday celebrations tomorrow?”

“We would not miss them for any consideration,” Aunt Clara assured her. “But perhaps the day after tomorrow we will be on our way. Lauren, you must stay and—”

“But of course she will stay.” The countess leaned over to pat Lauren’s knee. “I am beginning to wonder how I ever managed without the help and support of a daughter. I am going to find it difficult to relinquish her, Lady Kilbourne, though I must eventually allow her to return to Newbury to make plans for the wedding.”

“Yes, indeed,” Aunt Clara agreed, and the two older ladies indulged in a comfortable coze on the subject of weddings while Gwen winked and smiled fondly at Lauren and Lauren felt wretched. If only she had stopped to
think
during that infamous tête-à-tête in Vauxhall.

It was later in the morning, as Lauren was returning from the rose arbor with the dowager and Lady Irene, that she found Kit and her grandfather standing out on the terrace, obviously awaiting her approach, both looking almost grim. Aunt Clara’s decision to return home the day after tomorrow with Gwen had made Lauren very aware that her task here had been completed and there was really no further need to linger. But seeing him now, knowing that she must leave soon and then never see him again, made her feel decidedly queasy. She smiled.

“Take a little walk with us, Lauren,” her grandfather said after exchanging courtesies with the older ladies.

“Of course, Grandpapa,” she said, taking his arm and looking inquiringly at Kit. His expression gave nothing away.

They turned in the direction of the stables.

“Aunt Clara has had a letter from the Duke of Portfrey,” she said.

“Yes, so we have heard,” her grandfather said.

Kit walked silently at her other side, his hands clasped behind him.

“I have been anxious about Elizabeth,” she said. “She is rather advanced in years to be having a child.” And perhaps she herself was with child, she thought, not for the first time. What would happen if she was? She would have to marry Kit. He would have to marry her.

They walked in silence until they were on the lawn beyond the stables, on their way to the lake.

“What is wrong?” she asked.

Her grandfather cleared his throat. “You have always been happy at Newbury Abbey, have you not, Lauren?” he asked. “They always treated you well? You never felt that the earl and countess resented you in any way? Loved you less than their own children?”

“Grandpapa?” She looked at him, puzzled. “You know I have always been happy there. You know they have always been kindness itself to me—all of them. Last year was unfortunate. Neville had
told
me not to wait for him when he went to war. He truly believed when he came back that Lily was dead. He would not in a million years have hurt me deliberately. Why are you—”

But he was patting her hand and clearing his throat again.

“Did you ever think of your mother?” he asked her. “Ever feel sad that she was not there with you? Ever feel hurt that she did not return? Ever feel that she had abandoned you?”

“Grandpapa?”

“Did you?” he asked.

She thought of denial. Denial was second nature to her. What had made him even ask the questions? And why was Kit with them, a silent presence at her other side? She was tired of denial. Mortally weary of it. And of so much else in her life too.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes to all of your questions.”

He drew in his breath and let it out on a sigh. “And did you ever think I did not want you with me?” he asked.

Ah. Sometimes the truth was impossible to tell. Sometimes it would hurt.

“You were alone, Grandpapa,” she said, “and not a young man. Having a child with you all the time would have been a heavy burden. I did not blame you. I never did that. I have always known that you love me.”

“Sometimes I ached to have you with me,” he said. “When I used to visit you, I used to dream of taking you home with me, of your asking me to take you so that doing so would not have seemed so selfish. But you were far happier where you were, among younger people, with other children.”

“Grandpapa—”

“Sometimes,” he said, “children are quiet and obedient and good-natured and one assumes they are perfectly happy. Sometimes one can be wrong. I was wrong, was I not?”

“Oh, no,” she cried. “I
was
happy, Grandpapa.”

“I have to tell you about your mother,” he said.

They had reached the bank of the lake, the spot where everyone had bathed after the cricket match. It was quiet now, deserted. What did he mean—
I have to tell you about your mother
?

They were standing side by side close to the water’s edge. She was no longer holding his arm. Kit had strolled away to lean against a tree trunk, but he was well within hearing distance.

Lauren felt cold and inexplicably frightened suddenly.

“What about her?” she asked.

And then he told her.

There was a slight breeze, enough to cause ripples on the surface of the lake. It had been like glass all three times she had bathed in it.

The sky was dotted with moving clouds. It was amazing how variegated the colors of water could be. And of sky.

Someone must have taken the children out for a walk. Their voices, shouting, shrieking, and laughing, were coming from somewhere far off.

Kit, propped against the tree, did not move except to cross his arms over his chest.

Her grandfather cleared his throat but did not speak. It was Lauren who broke the silence that had succeeded his story.

“She is alive?” A rhetorical question.

He answered it anyway. “Yes, or was until recently.”

“There have been letters from her ever since I last heard from her when I was eleven?”

“It was better that you thought her dead, Lauren. Kilbourne and I were agreed on that.”

“She wanted me to join them during their travels?”

“You were far better off where you were.”

She was alive. She had wanted Lauren with her. She was alive. She had kept on writing. She was in India, where she had lived with at least two men who were not her husband. She was alive.

She was alive.

“The letters?” she asked, suddenly frantic. “The
letters,
Grandpapa? Did you destroy them?”

“No.”

“They still
exist
? All her letters to me? Fifteen years’ worth of letters?”

“Thirty-two of them,” he said, his voice flat and heavy. “I have them all, unopened.”

She pressed one hand to her mouth then and closed her eyes tightly. She felt herself swaying, then felt strong, steadying hands close about her upper arms from behind.

“I think it would be best if you were to return to the house, sir,” Kit said. “Go and rest. I’ll take care of her.”

“You see?” Her grandfather’s voice was distressed, accusing. “It was the wrong thing to do. Damn you, Ravensberg, it was the wrong thing.”

She pulled herself back from what felt like a long, dark tunnel down which she was falling. But she did not open her eyes.

“It was not the wrong thing, Grandpapa,” she said. “It was not wrong.”

She could sense rather than hear him walk away. Then Kit tucked one arm very firmly about her waist and drew her against his side before strolling with her farther along the bank of the lake. She dipped her head sideways to rest on his shoulder.

“She is alive,” she said.

“Yes.”

“She wanted me. She loved me.”

“Yes.”

“And she has never stopped loving me.”

“No.”

She stumbled and he tightened his arm even more firmly about her. They had come to a stop on a particularly lovely stretch of the bank, with cultivated beds of anemones beyond the grassy bank, and trees beyond them. Across the lake the temple folly was visible.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit.”

“Yes, my love.”

She wept. Long and helplessly, a storm of weeping. Grief for the lonely, wounded child she had been, for the girl who had felt so very alone even though she had been surrounded by love, showered with it at every turn. For the terrible cruelty of love—from people who had loved her. For the mother who was not dead. Who had loved her enough to write thirty-two unanswered letters over fifteen years. Who could never come home because she had behaved in ways that were unforgivable in English polite society.

Kit scooped her up and sat down on the grass with her. He held her on his lap, cuddled her, cradled her in his sheltering arms, crooned nonsense into her ear.

She was quiet at last. The sun, peeking out from behind a cloud, shone full on the white marble of the folly. Its bright reflection shivered in the water beneath.

“
Was
it the wrong thing to do?” Kit asked softly.

“No.” She blew her nose in her handkerchief, put it back in her pocket, and settled her head against his shoulder again—he must have removed her bonnet when they sat down. “The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is a strange paradox, is it not—full of emptiness?”

He kissed her temple.

“It was you, was it not?” she said. “You talked Grandpapa into it?”

“I advised him to tell you,” he admitted.

“Thank you.” She snuggled closer. “Oh, Kit,
thank
you.”

He kissed her temple again, and when she lifted her face, he kissed her mouth.

“I must look a dreadful fright,” she said.

He drew his head back and looked closely at her. “Good Lord,” he said, “you do. I am going to have to muster all my courage not to run screaming back to the house.”

She laughed. “Silly!”

He was going to have wrinkles at the corners of his eyes long before he was an old man, she thought as they crinkled with laughter.

And that was only the beginning of her eventful day.

Tomorrow was going to be a day for guests and organized celebrations. Today would be for family. It was what they all agreed upon during luncheon, though it was Sydnam who suggested a picnic out at the hill where the wilderness walk ended. The idea was greeted with enthusiasm and immediately acted upon.