Slightly Tempted (33 page)

And every day reallyhad seemed like a week, she admitted to herself.

THE WEEK REALLY HAD SEEMED ENDLESS.GERVASEhad tried to busy himself with estate business and had spent a considerable amount of time with his steward-and his father's before him-either in the office or outside touring the home farm. But his father, as of course he had always known, had been a superb manager who had always had his finger on the pulse of estate business. And the steward had obviously admired him greatly. His name came up constantly-his lordship did this, his lordship believed that, his lordship would never allow the other-until it was as much as Gervase could do not to bellow at the man thathe was his lordship now.

But he could not compete with his father. He knew so little. It would take him a great deal of time to learn. In the meantime he depended upon his steward.

He had quarreled with Henrietta, and to a lesser degree with his mother. When he had inquired casually of his cousin where she had been one afternoon and she had informed him that she had been visiting Marianne, he had asked her rather sharply if she considered it loyal to him to have continued that particular friendship. And when she had reminded him that what happened between him and Marianne had been nine years ago, he had lost his temper and assured her that he wasvery well aware of how long ago it had been. He had been living in exile all those years. She had ended up fleeing to her room in tears, and his mother had suggested gently that it was perhaps time he put the past behind him.

The thing was, he could not forgive his father.

He could not forgive Marianne.

He could not forgive Bewcastle.

And now he was finding it hard to forgive Henrietta.

He was in bad shape, he realized. He was consumed by a bitterness he thought he had put behind him until fairly recently-until he had set eyes upon Lady Morgan Bedwyn at the Cameron ball in Brussels, in fact.

And so he was glad of the distraction of so many houseguests. And he was genuinely glad to see Morgan again. Perhaps she would torment him-undoubtedly she would, in fact. But at least she would stimulate his mind and his senses. She would make him laugh.

He made a grand production of presenting her with her betrothal gifts the evening of her arrival. Everyone watched her unwrap one parcel after another and exclaim in delight over the contents, which she had chosen in London, but which he had had wrapped and transported to Windrush. When she had finished, she came to him, wrapped both arms about his neck, and kissed his cheek.

If her family was shocked by such indiscreet behavior, they gave no sign. His own family was charmed. He was considerably amused. He hoped she would let him watch her paint.

The following day was as warm and sunny as the day of her arrival. He suggested a picnic at the lake during the afternoon, and they all went out there in a noisy group, the children too. Pierre and Emma had come over from the vicarage with Jonathan. There was a vigorous game of hide-and-seek to begin with and then Joshua-all the Bedwyns had asked to be called by their given names-and Harold took out the boats and gave rides to everyone while Emma and Eve splashed around in the water with some of the children. They all feasted on the tea carried out by some of the servants, and then most of the adults settled to laziness on the blankets beneath the shade of a large oak tree, while the children devised games of their own.

"Come walking with me,chérie ?" Gervase suggested to Morgan.

She took his arm and he led her along a grassy, tree-lined avenue perpendicular to the lake.

"What is that in the distance?" she asked him, pointing.

"A summerhouse," he told her. "It is a quiet refuge on a rainy day with a lovely view in all directions. Perhaps down the years you will enjoy sitting there with a book."

"In order to escape all the children in the nursery, I suppose," she said.

"Or the constant demands of an amorous husband," he suggested.

"But would the amorous husband not suspect where I had gone?" she asked him.

"I believe,chérie, " he said, "he would pursue you there and convince you that what you had wanted to escape was visitors who might have arrived to disturb our privacy."

"Delightful," she said. "Are there any other such retreats in the park? It would be too unsporting if I could not at least keep you guessing as to which one I had chosen on a particular day."

"There is the grotto," he said. "It is at the end of the wilderness walk, but not obvious to anyone who does not know it is there. I will take you there one day. You may wish to paint there."

"Ah, but you would not wish me to do that," she told him as they strolled onward between the straight lines of trees, which shielded them from the full glare of the sun. "I getvery absorbed in my painting."

"But I have all the patience in the world," he told her. "I will sit and wait, and when you have finished I will help you relax before carrying your things back to the house for you."

"Indeed?" she said.

"We will make love there," he told her, "and in the summerhouse here and in the more secluded areas bordering the lake."

"I thought the boats looked interesting," she said.

"And in the boats too," he agreed. "Both of them. We will decide which is the more comfortable and which rocks more pleasantly."

She turned her head at the same time as he did and their eyes met. They both laughed.

"Have you forgiven me yet,chérie ?" he asked her.

But she would only laugh again and then look about her with a great sigh of what sounded like contentment.

"How beautiful this all is," she said. "I love summertime."

They had reached the summerhouse by then. He had not intended that they stop there but that they turn back to rejoin the others. There was no reason they should, though. They were officially betrothed. Both his family and hers were consequently indulgent about their being alone together for lengthy periods of time. He opened the door and stood aside for her to precede him inside.

It was hot in there, though not as bad as it might have been as it sat within the shade of two tall trees. It was a round structure with a stone wall to waist height, glass windows above, and a painted wooden dome over their heads. A wide leather seat circled the wall with a round oak table in the center.

She did not sit down immediately. She looked back along the avenue they had just walked and then turned to look at the narrower, flower-bordered avenue to the house and at the thin line of trees with part of the wilderness walk beyond and at the river flowing toward the lake on the fourth side.

"So much beauty," she said, and sat down.

"So much indeed,chérie ." He smiled down at her before taking a seat beside her. She had left off her mourning. He had noticed that yesterday when she arrived. She was wearing a pretty pale blue muslin dress with a flower-trimmed straw bonnet.

"How does it feel," she asked him, "to have all your family about you again?"

"Strange," he said. "Monique and Cecile were just girls the last time I saw them. Now they are married ladies with children. Pierre was little more than a boy. And I have two nephews and three nieces."

"Do you feel bitter," she asked him, "that you have missed so much of their lives?"

He considered his answer. But there was no point in denying it, was there?

"Yes," he said. "I feel almost as if I had come back from the dead, expecting that everyone must have spent the intervening years mourning me only to discover that they had continued with their lives and proved to me that I was not indispensable to them after all. It is a foolish objection. Why do we always assume we are so important to other people? None of us is irreplaceable even to those closest to us."

"There is one member of your family missing," she said. "How do you feel about your father, Gervase?"

He gazed down the avenue toward the house.

"He was the model husband and father," he said, "and the model landowner too, it seems. I admired him greatly. We were very close. I always believed I was his favorite even though he was dearly fond of all of us. I was never rebellious as other sons were and never wild despite the fact that I liked to cut a figure in London and cultivated the friendship of men of influence, like Bewcastle."

"His rejection of you must have been devastating," she said.

"One might say so." He glanced at her and chuckled, though quite without mirth. "None of us had ever done anything to disappoint him before then. We were a singularly dull lot,chérie . And thus, I suppose, he reacted to what he thought I had done with all the implacable fury of a man who had never had to deal with anything like it before."

"Do you still hate him?" she asked.

"Ah," he said softly. "It is too late for that. He is dead."

"Where is he buried?" she asked. "In the village churchyard?"

"Yes," he said.

"Have you been there?" she asked him.

He shook his head. The vicarage was beside the church and the churchyard, and he had been there several times. He had been to church too. But he had averted his face from the churchyard each time.

"We will go together." She rested her hand on his.

"Will we?" He chuckled again.

"And what about Marianne?" she asked him. "What has happened to her? Do you know?"

"She lives not five miles away," he said. "You must ask Henrietta if you want to know more about her. They have remained friends."

"Ah," she said, "that must rankle too."

"Why should it?" he asked her. "Nine years is a long time and they are neighbors. They were always friends."

"Gervase," she said, "all this has been dreadfully hurtful to you. More than I realized."

Her hand was still on his. He set his free hand over it.

"But I will not be seen as a victim,chérie, " he said. "I made a life for myself on the Continent. I saw places I would not otherwise have seen and met interesting people and experienced things I would not have done if my life had continued along its dull, blameless course. I metyou ."

"And that is something you will yet regret," she told him. "But I think it is the only way you can make your life bearable again, is it not? To believe that everything that happens in life can serve a positive purpose, that no time is wasted unless we refuse to learn the lesson that is there in that apparently wasted time. You can be a better person than you were."

"Or a worse."

They sat for a long while before walking back to the house together, in a silence that was surprisingly companionable, their hands joined, their shoulders almost touching. If he relaxed, he could almost imagine that they were back in Brussels during that week when time had seemed suspended and all his energies, all his emotions, had been centered upon her and her courage and energy and impending grief.

She would make him fall in love with her, she had promised. Was that what she was doing now? If so, she was succeeding.

Or was this all genuine?

There was no way of knowing.

CHAPTER XVIII

MORGAN WAS THE YOUNGEST OF A FAMILY OFsix. Life had been boisterous while they were growing up. She could particularly remember wild, vigorous, often dangerous games with the neighboring Butlers, sons of the Earl of Redfield. But the trouble was that they had all grown up long before she did. The last few years had been relatively lonely ones. And until recently she had been technically in the schoolroom. She had had very little experience of being one among other adults. Even through the spring she had been merely a young girl making her come-out.

She loved being at Windrush. She was surrounded by her own family and Gervase's. And she was very much one of them, the focus of all attention. They called upon neighbors, and neighbors called upon them, and she was no longer the very young Lady Morgan Bedwyn, but the affianced bride of the Earl of Rosthorn. Everyone was excited at the prospect of the garden fete and evening ball the countess was busily planning in honor of the betrothal. The mansion and the park were spacious and beautiful surroundings for a summer of social activities in which she could finally play a full part.

Sometimes she forgot that it was all a charade, that she had been driven into this false position by outrage and the burning desire to exact revenge.

She really had not realized how badly Gervase had been damaged by an ancient injustice. When he had spoken of it in vague terms in Brussels, she had assumed that now that he was no longer exiled, he could return to England, take up his duties as Earl of Rosthorn, and live happily ever after. But it had been very unimaginative of her to think thus. In a very real sense his youth had been taken from him. He was a man who had wandered aimlessly for nine years, building an impressive and doubtless a well-deserved reputation as a rake, but nevertheless robbed of the life that ought to have been his in the country that was his own.

He was full of hatred and bitterness, much of which he was denying.

She still strongly resented what he had done to her. She could never forgive him for that. She could never trust him again. But it was basically against her nature to hate. And since she was here at Windrush for a while, she might as well try to do some good.