A Summer to Remember (27 page)

The mothers of young children went up to the nursery to get their children ready, most of the other adults retired to their rooms to change their clothes, Sydnam strode off to the stables to have the gig prepared since he had persuaded his grandmother—with the help of a chorus of supporting pleas from various cousins—to come too, and Lauren and Marjorie Clifford descended to the kitchens to cajole the cook into preparing a picnic tea and a couple of footmen into conveying it out to the hill.

The top of the hill was the highest point in the park and afforded a wide prospect over the surrounding countryside in every direction. For that reason the designer of the park and the wilderness walk had decided that there would be no trees up there and no elaborate folly to obstruct the view. What he had done instead was build a hermit’s cavern into the side of the hill, close to the top. There never had been a hermit, of course, but the children loved it. They were first to scramble to the top.

Everyone else toiled up more slowly. The whole family had come, without exception. Frederick and Roger Butler cupped their hands together at the bottom of the slope and carried their grandmother to the top—despite her protests—after she had been helped out of the gig. Boris Clifford had set up a chair for her on the summit, and Nell had plumped up a cushion for her back. Lawrence Vreemont and Kit carried Lady Irene up while Claude and Daphne Willard prepared her chair. The elderly sisters-in-law sat side by side, like twin queens on their thrones, Clarence Butler remarked. Lauren raised their parasols for them and Gwendoline helped Marianne spread blankets on the grass for any other adults who cared to sit and recover from the walk.

Kit sat down and prepared simply to enjoy himself. Lauren, he noticed, was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and looking remarkably pretty. After they had returned from the lake earlier, she had gone up to her grandfather’s room and remained there with him until luncheon. She had come down on the old gentleman’s arm, and had been looking noticeably happy ever since.

He could not stop himself from remembering some of the words she had spoken—
I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness.

It was such a relief to know that he had done the right thing in persuading Baron Galton to tell her what he knew of her mother. To know that he had done some good in his life.

But there was not a great deal of time for reflection—
or recovery from the walk and climb. The children, who were perfectly well able to play with one another, could not resist the attraction of a whole host of idle adults, who surely could not possibly have anything better to do than play with them. Before many minutes had passed it was no longer good enough for bandits and crusading warriors to creep up by foot on dragons and kidnapped maidens and hidden robbers in the cavern. Horses were required, and of course adult male cousins and uncles and occasionally fathers made splendid steeds.

Kit galloped around the hilltop for all of half an hour with an assortment of youngsters on his back. But the ladies were not exempt, he saw just before the older children tired of that particular game. Lauren and Beatrice and Lady Muir had been coaxed to their feet by some of the infants and were playing some circle game with them, all their hands joined—ring around the rosy, he guessed when they all fell down. Lauren was laughing, and little Anna jumped on her, followed by David and Sarah. She wrapped her arms about them while their mothers scolded and told them not to hurt Lauren.

But their attention was soon distracted. Young Benjamin had discovered that the slope behind the hill was broken halfway down by a wide, flat ledge before it continued its descent to the plain below, and that the upper slope was just long enough and smooth enough and grassy enough to be perfect for rolling down. He tested his theory with shrieks of exuberance, and soon all the tiring human horses were abandoned in favor of the new game. Even the little children could join in this one and did.

And then Sarah was tugging at Lauren’s hand, while Kit watched, grinning, from a short distance away. She laughed and shook her head, but then David was pulling at her other hand, and she was walking closer to the edge of the slope.

“Do it!” Frederick called, distracted from the conversation he was having with Lady Muir.

Sebastian put two fingers to his lips and whistled. Phillip whooped. Everyone turned to look.

Lauren was laughing.

“I dare you!” Roger said.

She took off her bonnet, sat down on the grass and then lay down, and rolled to the bottom, all light muslin skirts and bare arms and trim ankles and tumbling dark curls and shrieking laughter.

Kit stared after her, utterly enchanted. But it was Lady Muir, moving to his side and setting one hand on his sleeve, who voiced his thoughts.

“
That
is Lauren?” she said. “I can scarcely believe it. Lord Ravensberg, I bless the moment she met you.”

Lauren was up on her knees, brushing the grass from her dress, looking upward, and still laughing.

“It would be a great deal easier,” she said, “if one did not have arms to get in one’s way.”

Yes, there had been that moment when they had met—that first moment in Hyde Park when their eyes had met. And there was this moment, when the truth finally burst in on him. Of course she had become precious to him.
Of course she had.
He was head over ears in love with her.

He loved her.

Sydnam was standing watching too.

“Oh, well,” he called down cheerfully, “if a lack of arms makes for easier rolling, I should be halfway decent at it.” And surrounded by shrieking, exuberant children, who were absorbed in their own pleasure, he rolled down the hill to come to rest a few feet from Lauren.

Kit tensed while all around him the relatives whistled and applauded. And then as Syd scrambled to his feet and offered his hand to Lauren, he looked up at Kit and their eyes met. He was
laughing
.

They toiled up the slope, hand in hand, while the children continued the game and most of the adults turned their attention to the approach of their tea from the opposite direction. They stood before Kit, still hand in hand. There was a moment of awkwardness.

“I need to tell you,” Sydnam said, his voice pitched low so that only Kit and Lauren would hear, “that I lied to you, Kit. When I told you the night you came home that I wanted nothing of you, you asked me if that included your love. I said yes. I lied.”

Kit swallowed hard, terrified that the sudden ache in his throat would translate into tears that everyone would see.

“I see,” he said stiffly. “I am glad.”

This, he thought, was the first time Syd had spoken voluntarily to him since that night three years ago when he had told Kit to leave and not come back.
Why was he holding Lauren’s hand?
He released it even as Kit thought it, smiled rather awkwardly, and would have turned away.

“Syd,” Kit said quickly, “I . . . er . . .”

Lauren, looking most unlike her usual immaculate self—bonnetless, her hair untidy and strewn with grass, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright—linked one arm through Syd’s and one through his and turned to stroll away from the chairs and blankets and rolling, noisy children.

“I have been thinking,” Kit said, “about something Lauren said this morning. I have not been able to get it out of my head, in fact, even though she was not talking about either you or me, Syd. She said that the people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for.
You
are, are you not? And God knows I love you.”

“Yes,” Syd said.

“And I humiliated you the other night, coming to your defense when Catherine wanted you to waltz with her.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose,” Kit said, “it happens over and over again—with Mother and Father, with all your old friends and neighbors.”

“Yes,” Syd admitted. “But with you most of all, Kit.”

They did not descend the slope. They stood looking out across the fields below, across the pasture where Kit and Lauren had raced a few days before.

“You are an
artist,
Syd.” Pain was back in his throat and chest, the terrible, impotent pity for the brother he had adored from childhood on. “But you are condemned to be a
steward
.”

“Yes,” Syd said. “It has not been easy to adjust. Perhaps the adjustment will never be fully made. Perhaps being an excellent steward will never quite make up for the fact that I can never paint again. But it is
my
problem, Kit,
my
adjustment to make. This is
my
body,
my
life. I’ll cope with it. I have done rather well so far. I would appreciate a little credit. I don’t need your pity. Only your
love.”

Lauren still had an arm linked through each of theirs, creating a physical connection between them, a sort of bridge, Kit thought, realizing suddenly that it was quite deliberate. Her hand crept into his, and she laced her fingers with his.

“I can’t forgive myself,” Kit said. “I can’t, Syd. You ought never to have been in the Peninsula. You certainly ought not to have been on that mission with me. It was my carelessness that led us into that trap. And then I left you to suffer . . .
this
while I escaped. Don’t tell me it is your life and not my concern. It
is
my concern. I doomed you to half a life and got off scot-free myself.”

“I would find that almost insulting if I did not recognize your agony,” Sydnam said. “Kit, I
chose
to become an officer. I
chose
to be a reconnaissance officer. The trap was unforeseeable. I
volunteered
to be the decoy.”

Was that true? Of course it was. But did it make a difference? Had Syd had any choice? If he had not volunteered, Kit would have had to command him to take that role. Syd had saved him from having to do that.

“I’ll not say I enjoyed what followed,” Sydnam continued. “It was sheer hell, in fact. But I was
proud
of myself, Kit. I had finally proved myself your equal, and Jerome’s. Perhaps I had even surpassed both of you. In my conceit I expected
you
to be proud of me too. I expected when you brought me home that you would tell everyone here how proud you were. I thought you would have extolled my courage and endurance. It was very conceited of me.”

“And instead I belittled you,” Kit said quietly, “by taking all the blame and focusing everyone’s attention on myself as I went noisily mad. I made you seem no better than a victim.”

“Yes,” Sydnam said.

“I have always,
always
been proud of you,” Kit said. “You did not have to prove anything, Syd. You are my
brother
.”

They stood gazing out across the countryside, the breeze at their backs, the noise of merry voices and laughter behind them.

Kit chuckled softly. “You
were
talking about me, Lauren,” he said. “What else did you say this morning? ‘It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer.’ In some ways, Syd, my role was as hard as yours. That may seem insulting, but there is truth in it.”

“Yes, I know,” his brother agreed. “I have always been thankful that I was not the one appointed to escape. I could not have borne to see
you
like this. It
is
easier to suffer something oneself than see a loved one do it.”

“I don’t know about either of you,” Lauren said after a short pause, “but I am very hungry.”

Kit turned his head to smile at her and then met his brother’s eye beyond her. He wondered if he looked as sheepish as Syd did, and decided that he probably
did.

“Come on, Syd,” he said, “let’s see how well you can eat chicken with just one hand—and the left one to boot.”

“I have one distinct advantage if it is greasy,” Syd replied. “I have only one hand to wash afterward.”

Kit pressed his fingers tightly about Lauren’s and blessed again the moment he had looked up from kissing the milkmaid to find himself locking glances with a prim, shocked Lauren Edgeworth.

Except that she might yet break their engagement.

20

L
auren stood at her bedchamber window, still in her nightgown, gazing out on what promised to be a lovely day. There was not a cloud in the sky. The tree branches were still, suggesting that if there was a wind at all it was the merest breeze. All the anxiously conceived alternate plans for the day’s festivities if it rained could be abandoned. The countess would be
so
relieved. All was going to be perfect for the dowager’s birthday.

Tomorrow Aunt Clara and Gwen were returning to Newbury. Grandpapa too had decided to return home to Yorkshire. He was going to send the bundle of letters from Lauren’s mother by special messenger—to Newbury. She had asked him to send them there rather than here.

She had come here to help Kit avoid an unwanted betrothal. She had done that. She had come to help reconcile him to his family, who had rejected him and sent him away three years ago. She had done that. She had done it in time for this birthday and could feel confident that Kit would be able to celebrate fully and happily with his family and they with him. There was really nothing left to do.

She had come for a little adventure, for a taste of life as other people lived it, those who had not disciplined all spontaneity, all joy, out of their lives. She had found adventure in abundance. She had bathed and swum in the lake—once, naked; she had climbed a tree to the higher branches; she had raced on horseback; she had played with children and rolled down a steep slope with them. Very tiny adventures indeed.

She had gone outside alone one night and spent what remained of it in a hut with Kit. She had
slept
with him on a narrow bed. She had lain with him on one of the velvet benches in the portrait gallery and given him her virginity. She had lain with him among the wildflowers on the island and made love with him. A momentous adventure.

The sound of laughter and voices had her leaning closer to the window and peering downward. Phillip and Penelope Willard, Crispin and Marianne Butler, were on their way out for an early morning walk. The day was beginning.

The last day.

There was no more to be experienced. Already there had been too much. Far too much. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. Tomorrow she would leave with Aunt Clara and Gwen, though she was not going to tell anyone until today was over. If she did not go soon then she might stay forever, and that would be dishonorable.

She would not cling to what she had found. All her life she had clung with all her might to her only hope of permanent belonging and security, a marriage with Neville. And when that anchor had been snatched from her, she had drifted on a vast, dark, threatening ocean, frightening in its emptiness. She would not cling now, even though she knew Kit’s honor would urge him into encouraging her to do just that, even though she knew he had grown fond of her. She did not need to cling. Not to anyone. She could and would stand alone.

This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.

She had learned something of limitless value here at Alvesley. And she had Kit to thank. It was such a simple, such an earth-shatteringly profound lesson. The world, she had discovered—
her
world—would not explode into chaos if Lauren Edgeworth laughed.

There was a scratching on the door behind her, and she turned with a smile to watch her maid come in with her morning cup of chocolate.

The morning was to be for the family alone—the calm before the proverbial storm, as it were. They all went into the village for a celebratory service at the church. The plan was that the dowager would then return home in the first carriage in order to rest quietly in her private apartments for a few hours before the afternoon festivities began.

It was a return that was delayed by nearly half an hour. Almost the whole village had spilled out of doors to gather about the churchyard gateway to cheer the dowager and pay their respects and pelt her with flower petals. She would see them all again during the afternoon, but she insisted upon stopping to talk to a number of them—no easy feat for her—and to hand out coins to the children.

Finally she was on her way, Lady Irene beside her. A long line of carriages, barouches, and curricles moved steadily forward to pick up the rest of the family.

Kit took Lauren by the elbow. “Will you mind walking back to the house?” he asked.

“Of course not.” She turned her head to smile at him. Her bonnet and the ribbons that trimmed her light muslin dress exactly matched her eyes. She looked very fetching indeed.

“I want to look at something,” he told her.

He had sat down with his father the night before, after everyone else had gone to bed—and Syd too had stayed on his window seat, a silent listener through most of the conversation that had followed. Kit had begun it by apologizing for his behavior three years before.

“It is best forgotten,” his father had said. “It is over.”

But Kit had disagreed, and they had talked, awkwardly at first, with growing ease as time went on.

“I sent you away,” his father said at one point. “I never meant it to be forever. I never used the word
banishment
. That was your interpretation, Kit. But I was content to let it stand. I was as stubborn as a mule. You take after me there. When you did not write, your mother wanted
me
to do it. But I would not. Jerome pleaded with me to do it, but I would not. Neither would he, of course—or your mother. What a parcel of fools we all were. All of us—you too. Family quarrels are the very worst kind. They are so very difficult to end.”

“
Jerome
wanted you to write to me?”

There had been an understanding between Jerome and Freyja for several years, apparently. It had been one of those courtships that no one had been in any particular hurry to bring to fruition. But then Kit had come home, half raving and in a towering rage at the whole world, most of all himself. His family had watched helplessly as he flung himself into passionate pursuit of Freyja, which in their opinion had nothing whatever to do with love. Jerome had been particularly alarmed and had ridden over to discuss the matter with Bewcastle—and with Freyja herself. His announcement of their betrothal at dinner had been the result—followed, of course, by Kit’s fight, first with him and then with Rannulf.

“He never blamed you or held a grudge, you know, Kit,” the earl said. “He blamed himself for going about things entirely the wrong way. He should have had a talk with you, tried to explain, he used to say afterward. He should have tried to get you to vent your anger, brother to brother. Though there was really no talking to you that summer, Kit. After you were gone, he kept putting off the nuptials. He wanted you here. He wanted peace with you before he married Freyja. He wanted to know that you had realized she was not the woman for you. He wanted me to write to you. But he was too stubborn to do it himself.”

“And then,” Kit said, “we all ran out of time.”

“Yes.”

“He never stopped loving you, Kit,” Syd said, speaking up at last. “None of us did. And you must stop punishing yourself now. It has gone on long enough. For all of us.”

It was years since Kit had been to the family plot behind the church. His grandfather had been his childhood idol. Kit had visited his grave regularly for a number of years after his death. But he had not been here since he was eighteen, since his commission had been purchased.

“This is where the family ancestors are buried,” he told Lauren, leading her through the gateway between the two halves of the low, neatly clipped hedge that separated the plot from the rest of the churchyard. “I have not been here for eleven years.”

He found his grandfather’s grave immediately. There were fresh roses in the marble vase before the headstone—his grandmother had come here after the picnic yesterday with her two sons and her daughter. There were roses in the vase before another headstone too—the one that had not been here eleven years ago. Kit moved toward it and stood at the foot of the grave, reading the headstone. Only two words out of all those written there leapt out at him.

Jerome Butler.

His hand was in Lauren’s, he realized suddenly, their fingers tightly laced. He was probably hurting her. He eased his hand free and set his arm lightly about her shoulders.

“My brother,” he said unnecessarily.

“Yes.”

“I loved him.”

“Yes.”

He had been afraid that, standing here, he would be overwhelmed by bitter regret, remembering their last encounter, knowing that they had been unreconciled when Jerome died. But it really did not matter, he found now. Love did not die just because of a quarrel. And a relationship was not a linear thing, the last incident defining the whole of it. They had been close, the three of them—Jerome, Kit, Syd. They had played and fought and laughed together. They had been brothers. They
were
brothers.

He had been afraid he would break down with inconsolable grief at seeing finally the indisputable evidence of Jerome’s nonexistence. He was dead. His remains were beneath the ground here.

Kit smiled. “He used to tease me,” he said, “when I came home on leave and he would have heard of yet another dispatch in which I had been singled out for commendation. I would die a gloriously heroic death, he used to say—when Mother was not around to hear him say it, of course—and there would be no living down my memory. It would be insufferable. I think it might have amused him if he could have known that
he
was the one destined for the heroism. And the death.”

“There are worse ways to die, Kit,” Lauren said.

“Yes, there are.” He had seen too much of death to cling to any illusion that it was reserved for old age. “Good-bye, brother. Rest in peace.”

He had to blink then, several times. And he had to release the pressure of his grip on Lauren’s shoulder. She was leaning against him. Her arm was about his waist.

Perhaps after all, he thought, he had not lost the right to grasp hold of whatever remained of life and live it to the best of his ability. Jerome had lived his life. Syd was living his. They were his brothers and he would love them both to his dying breath, but when all was said and done he could live only his own life. He had done his share of foolish, even wrong things—but who has not? He had the freedom to live on and try to do better. It was all he could do.

He felt suddenly, strangely happy.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

“Yes.”

He took her hand in his and drew it through his arm.

The afternoon brought friends and neighbors and tenants and laborers and villagers—people of all classes from miles around, in fact—to the lawns of Alvesley for a garden party that was enlivened with contests of all descriptions for all ages.

Lauren had her part to play—almost her final part—and played it to the full. While the earl and countess judged the needlework and baking and woodworking contests and the dowager listened to the poetry contestants proclaim their verses but refused to judge them because all the poems had been written in her honor—they were drawing a great deal of attention and much laughter—Lauren and Kit organized the races and other physical contests.

There were footraces and sack races and three-legged races for the children, though Kit ran the latter too with young Doris, there having been an uneven number of would-be contestants. There was a batting contest for the young boys with a cricket bat and ball. There was a wood-chopping contest for the young men and an archery contest too, though the winner of that was the sole female entrant, Lady Morgan Bedwyn, who had ridden over to Alvesley with Lord Alleyne. She would not be at the ball in the evening, she admitted haughtily when pressed, because Bewcastle had the Gothic notion that at sixteen she was too young. She threatened to put an arrow between Lord Alleyne’s eyes when he laughed.

There was tea for everyone when it was all over, and Lauren circulated among the visitors, plate in hand, making sure that she had a friendly word with almost everyone who had come. But she was feeling hot and nearly exhausted. How was she ever to find the energy to dance during the evening?

It was a feeling shared by others, it seemed. The earl, after the final visitor had left, suggested that they all retire to their rooms for a rest. He would see to it that a bell was rung loudly enough to rouse them all in time to dress for dinner and the ball.

“Come for a walk?” Kit asked Lauren, taking her hand in his.

A walk was the last thing she needed. But it was her final day and already it was late afternoon. There could be panic in the thought if she allowed herself to dwell upon it. But there was still a little time left, this evening and . . . the rest of this afternoon.

She smiled.

He did not take her far. At first when he set out in the direction of the lake she hoped that perhaps he would take her to the island again. She hoped that perhaps they would make love one more time. But although part of her longed for it, she was not sorry when he led her only as far as the secluded spot where they had stood yesterday, across from the temple. The sun was in such a position in the sky that the surrounding trees shaded the bank.