A Summer to Remember (28 page)

“What a busy day!” she said, sinking to the grass beside him. “I hope it will not prove too tiring for your grandmother.”

“She is lapping up every moment of it,” he said, stretching out on his back and closing his eyes.

Lauren took off her straw bonnet and lay down beside him. He felt for her hand and held it in his. It felt so natural now, she thought, to be alone together like this, and to touch each other with casual gestures of affection. And seductively comforting.

He did not want to talk, it seemed. Neither did she. She wanted to concentrate on this, perhaps their final time alone together. She wanted to memorize it so that she could call it to mind anytime she wished to in future. It was a memory she would avoid for a long time, she suspected, as being just too painful a reminder of a brief summer when life had come vividly alive and love had been born with startling unexpectedness. But eventually she would remember this lazy heat, the cool springiness of the grass, the smell of flowers, the droning of insects, the warmth of his hand.

She slept.

She swatted at the ant or whatever it was crawling across her nose and trying to wake her when she had no wish to awake. But it was a persistent insect and trailed boldly across her nose again. She brushed it away crossly and then someone chuckled softly and kissed her warmly on the lips.

“It was you!” she accused sleepily, seeing the telltale blade of grass in his upraised hand. “Horrid you.”

“There is a ball to attend, Sleeping Beauty,” he said.

“That was Cinderella.” Her eyes drifted closed again. “Wrong story. Sleeping Beauty did not attend any balls. She was allowed to sleep for a hundred years.”

“I wonder,” he said, “if she was this cross with the prince who kissed her.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him again. “Was I really sleeping?”

“Snoring like thunder,” he said. “I could not snatch a wink myself.”

“Silly.” She sighed with contentment. For the moment she had forgotten that this was the final day.

“Lauren,” he said, “I would like to have our wedding date announced tonight.”

She was finally, irrevocably awake.

“No, Kit.”

“Why not?” he asked. “We
are
betrothed, and I thought you had perhaps grown fond of me—and of my family. You must know I have grown fond of you.”

“Yes.” She lifted a hand to push aside a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. It fell back as soon as she had removed her hand. “But it was not part of our bargain, Kit.”

“To hell with our bargain.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said. “It is not nice language.”

“My abject apologies, ma’am.” He grinned at her. “Neither was it a part of our bargain that we indulge in carnal relations. We must marry, you know. You may very well be with child.”

“I hope I am not,” she said. “It would spoil everything. I think a wonderful thing has happened here, Kit, much more than we could ever have anticipated. I believe we have helped set each other free. Really free, not just of certain social restraints, but of all that has held us back from happiness—for years in your case, all my life in mine. We must not snare each other now before we have even had a chance to test our wings.”

He stared down at her, his eyes suddenly blank and unfathomable.

“Is that what you really think?” he asked her. “That we have found our separate freedoms? That marriage with each other would be an undesirable trap?”

Yes, it
was
what she believed—with her intellect. Her heart was a different matter altogether. But her heart had no part at all in their bargain. And it would be grossly unfair to explain that
fondness
was no basis for marriage. It had been altogether enough for her once. But Kit was not Neville. He was not someone with whom she had grown up as a sister grows up with a brother. Kit was
different
. Fondness would not be enough with him, not when there was something much different from fondness on the one side.

“It is what I really think,” she said, forcing herself to look steadily back into his eyes. “It was our bargain, remember? That for you the betrothal would be real, that in your gallantry you would try to persuade me not to break it. That for me it would be a charade. That I
would
break it when the time was right.”

“Not yet,” he said quickly.

She drew breath to tell him she would be leaving tomorrow, but did not say the words.

“Not yet,” she agreed softly, and he lay back on the grass again.

She did not turn her head, but she knew that he stared at the sky as she did, sleep and relaxation forgotten, even though it was a long time before he got silently to his feet and reached down a hand to help her up.

21

A
fter dinner Lauren stood with Kit and the earl and countess in the receiving line at the ballroom doors. The dowager was seated on a comfortable chair inside surrounded on three sides by great banks of flowers—her own private bower, she had said when she saw it. There she was greeted and kissed by everyone who passed and showered with gifts.

There had been no rest at all for Lauren after returning from the lake. Apart from having to bathe and dress and have her hair done, she had taken it upon herself to help the countess check the decorations the servants had worked upon during the afternoon. The ballroom was like a garden. It had been Lauren’s idea to confine the colors to varying shades of pink and purple, together with white. And green, of course, so often neglected in floral arrangements. She definitely had a gift for color and design, the countess had told her approvingly.

It was not exactly the squeeze of a London ball. But the room was pleasingly full nonetheless before the dancing began. Most of the guests were not quite as fashionably dressed as their London counterparts would have been, or as bedecked with costly jewels, but all were wearing their best and looked bright and festive. She liked country gatherings better than town ones, Lauren decided as Kit led her into the ballroom and onto the floor to signal the imminent opening of the ball. There was something warm and intimate about them.

Kit looked very handsome in shades of gray and silver and white. She was wearing the violet gown she had worn to the Mannering ball, a deliberate choice. It seemed fitting somehow that she should wear it the last time she danced with him as she had worn it the first. More than one of the guests, as well as a few family members, had commented on how well they complemented each other in appearance, on what a handsome couple they made.

She was going to enjoy the evening, Lauren decided as other couples gathered around them. Every single moment of it. Her maid was above stairs, packing her trunks. But there was this evening left.

“You look particularly lovely tonight,” Kit said, leaning a little closer so that only she would hear his words. “And do I mistake, or— No, indeed I do not. Your gown really does match the color of your eyes.” His own eyes laughed into hers.

“Absurd.” She smiled back. How much had happened since the first time he had spoken those words to her! And yet not so very much time had passed. He had been a roguish, unwelcome stranger then. Now he was . . . well, now he was Kit. And achingly dear to her.

The music began and she concentrated on the steps and figures of the quadrille. She could never be happier than she was at this moment, she thought—and realized in some shock that it was precisely what she had told herself on her wedding eve ball when she had been in company with Neville.

The day following that had been the bleakest of her whole life. . . .

She smiled more brightly and noticed that the Duke of Bewcastle had just stepped into the ballroom with his brothers and Lady Freyja.

Sleeping Beauty, Kit had called her this afternoon. She felt more like Cinderella, dancing at the ball with her prince—with the knowledge that midnight would inevitably come and turn everything into rags and pumpkins.

But she had no glass slipper to leave behind on the stairs.

Lauren had taken to the floor with Bewcastle, who was looking elegant, austere, almost satanic in black and white. Kit had never seen him dance at any assembly or ball before this. He did so now, it would seem, to allay any lingering suspicion there might be in the neighborhood that he nursed some resentment against the Earl of Redfield and his family. Ralf was leading out Lady Muir while Alleyne bent his head close to Kit’s grandmother to hear what she was saying.

“May I have the honor, Freyja?” Kit bowed to her and extended his hand. She was looking particularly handsome tonight in gold satin overlaid with blond lace. Her hair was tamed and dressed high on her head with gold ornaments that gleamed in the candlelight.

She was small—smaller than Lauren, but fuller figured. Quite voluptuous, in fact. And she had the boldness, the energy, the vitality, to which he had always responded. As they danced without talking, he tried to re-create in his mind and his emotions the madness that had possessed him three years before when he had been consumed by passion for her. He could do it with his mind. She had always been his friend—and he had needed a friend that summer. A male friend would not do, as he had discovered when he had tried pouring out his woes to Ralf, and Ralf had told him rather impatiently not to be an ass. He had done his duty and also saved Syd’s life, had he not? And brought him home? What did he find to blame himself for? Freyja had shown no greater sympathy, but Freyja was a woman. All his grief, all his anger, all his guilt, had been converted to physical, sexual passion and focused on her person.

If he had anything to remember with guilt from that summer, it was surely the way he had used Freyja. It had been unconscious and quite unintentional, of course. But that was what had happened. She had been there, and he had used her.

“It is too warm in here,” she said when the set was almost at an end. The words, typical of Freyja, were issued almost like a challenge.

“It is,” he agreed. “It has been a hot day. It probably still is warm outside.”

“At least,” she said, “the air must be fresh out there.”

“Do you want to find out?” He grinned at her. “You are not about to faint, are you?”

She looked at him with mingled haughtiness and contempt.

The ballroom was at the east side of the house, on the ground floor. The east entrance was close to it, and on such a warm night the doors stood open and several guests had stepped outside, some merely to stand in the cooler air, a few to stroll among the parterres of the formal gardens. There was no one in the rose arbor, toward which Freyja turned. Kit walked beside her, hoping she would turn back before they actually reached the arbor.

“We need to talk,” she said.

The arbor it was, then. She sat on the very seat where Lauren had sat the evening of her arrival at Alvesley, and Kit stood looking down at her, his hands clasped at his back.

“What is it?” he asked. But he did not wait for her to reply. “Freyja, allow me to apologize—for three years ago. You never did say you loved me, did you? You never did say you would marry me and come with me to follow the drum. It was all in my imagination. I had no right to come banging on the door at Lindsey Hall and to force that fight on Ralf and create such an atrocious scene. Please forgive me.”

She looked at him coolly. “How foolish you are, Kit,” she said. “How utterly foolish.”

“You had an understanding with Jerome,” he said. “You would not have married me.”

“Of course I would not,” she said impatiently. “You were a younger son. I am the daughter of a Duke of Bewcastle.”

“Well, then.” How devastating those words would have sounded to him three summers ago. How relieved he was to hear them now. “There was no permanent harm done, then, was there? Did you love Jerome?”

“Oh, fool, Kit,” she said softly. “Fool!”

He had known her for a long time. They had been close friends. Sometimes meanings did not have to be spelled out in words.

“Freyja—” he began.

“For what are you punishing yourself this time?” she asked him. “Still for Sydnam? For Jerome? Because you broke his nose and had no chance to beg his pardon before he died? You have become a bore, Kit. Just
look
at her! If you had chosen to flagellate yourself with a nail-studded club you would not have been picking a worse punishment. She is primness and dullness personified. You have made your point, believe me. Now, what do you plan to do to extricate yourself?”

For a brief moment he closed his eyes. Ah, he had not expected this. He moved a little closer, fearful suddenly that they might be overheard. He lifted one foot to the seat beside her and draped one arm over his raised leg.

“Freyja,” he said, “you are mistaken.
Very
mistaken, I’m afraid.”

There was one thing about Freyja—she had never been slow of understanding. And it was quite against her nature to grovel, to beg, to weep, to make any sort of scene. She stared up at him, all cold haughtiness, and then she moved to jerk to her feet.

“No, don’t.” He grasped her shoulder. “Don’t hurry back without me. It might be noted and commented upon. Take my arm and we will return together. Perhaps we can smile?”

“You, Kit,” she said, getting to her feet more slowly and linking her arm through his, “may go to hell. I hope you burn there. Better yet, I hope you live well into your nineties with your lady bride. I cannot imagine a more hellish sentence for a man of your nature.”

She lifted a smiling face to his. Freyja had always been mistress of the feline smile.

He did not respond. There was no point. Besides, he was reminded that if he
did
live into his nineties, sixty or so of those years were going to have to be lived without Lauren. Unless even yet he could get her to change her mind. Surely he could. Once this day was over he would be able to concentrate all his efforts upon coaxing her to love him.

We must not snare each other now. . . .

He would not remember that she viewed marriage with him as a sort of imprisonment, as a loss of all her newly won freedom.

He would teach her that there was more than one kind of freedom.

Kit was nowhere in sight when the dance with the Duke of Bewcastle was over. But Gwen was approaching on Lord Rannulf’s arm. Lauren smiled at them both. She would suggest to Gwen that they slip away for a few minutes to find a cool drink. It was a warm night. But Lord Rannulf gave her no opportunity to make the suggestion. He bowed to Lauren and asked for her hand in the next set.

He was one of the few gentlemen of her acquaintance, she thought after she had accepted, who could make her feel almost diminutive. He really was a giant of a man.

“You are looking becomingly flushed, Miss Edgeworth,” he said with that look in his eyes that she had never been able quite to interpret. Was it mockery or simply amusement? “But one would hate to force you into further exertions too soon. Do come and stroll with me outside.”

She had absolutely no wish to walk outside with him even though she knew there were several other guests out there to make all proper. But it was not a request he had made, she realized. He had drawn her arm through his and was moving purposefully out of the ballroom and toward the outer doors. Well, she decided, a little fresh air
would
feel good.

He could be an amusing companion. He pointed out several of the neighbors and told her brief anecdotes about them. He was a keen observer of human nature, it seemed, and yet none of his observations were quite malicious. Lauren found herself feeling well entertained. They were strolling above the parterres, in the direction of the rose arbor.

“Ah,” he said softly when they were close, “foiled! There is someone there before us—two persons actually. We must walk into the flower gardens instead.” And he turned her into the parterres.

He must have known even before coming out here, she realized, even before asking her for this set of dances, who was in the rose arbor. He had wanted her to know, to see for herself. Probably Lady Freyja wanted it too.

She was sitting on one of the seats. Kit, in a characteristic pose, stood close to her, one foot on the seat, one arm draped over his leg. The other hand was on her shoulder, bringing his head very close to hers.

Lord Rannulf was recounting some other anecdote, to which Lauren was not listening. He stopped, obviously without finishing.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I would not for worlds have had you see that.”

“Would you not?” she asked. Ladies did not call gentlemen liars.

“It is not what you think,” he said. “They have been friends all their lives, you know. They are still friends. You have seen for yourself how much they have in common, how they love to challenge each other and compete against each other, how much they come alive in each other’s company. But there is no more to it than friendship, I do assure you.”

“Lord Rannulf,” she said, “you were in the middle of a story. Please finish it. You need not concern yourself with what I think. My thoughts are private. You could not begin to guess their contents.”

Despite herself she had been wavering in her resolve. She did not even realize it until now when her determination to leave in the morning was strengthened, when staying even one more day was finally no option at all. It was a good thing this had happened, she thought as Lord Rannulf at her side, far from completing the story he had begun earlier, fell silent.

She had known that it
would
happen, of course, that it was inevitable. But now she had seen for herself and could entertain no niggling doubts. No faint hopes.

She would not let it upset her. It would be vastly unfair—to both Kit and herself. She had had her adventure and now it had come to an end. It was understandable that her spirits were rather flat after such a splendid adventure. But she would soon cheer up once she was back at Newbury. There would be her mother’s letters to read, Elizabeth and the baby to fuss over, Lily to rejoice with—oh, yes, finally,
finally,
she would be able to rejoice with Lily—and her future to plan. There would be her new freedom to enjoy. How many women had the freedom she now had?