A Summer to Remember

Chapter 12

We have scarcely had a private moment together. But I daresay I must accustom myself to losing you.” Gwendoline linked her arm through Lauren’s. “It is all in a good cause, fortunately. I like Lord Ravensberg exceedingly well.”

“Do you, Gwen?”

They were on the wilderness path, taking advantage of a quiet morning before the expected onslaught of arrivals later in the day. Kit had gone off with his father to inspect the hay crop on some distant field. Lauren was pleased about that. She just hoped they would talk. She had maneuvered them together last evening. The earl had been turning the pages of her music at the pianoforte, and after finishing her piece she had smiled deliberately at Kit, who had been talking with Gwen and his grandmother, almost forcing him to her side. She had known that he was reluctant to come—and that his father too would be feeling somewhat trapped. They always avoided each other as much as they could, father and son, even though Lauren had witnessed no open hostility on either side.

She had folded her music, turned on the bench, smiled at both Kit and his father, and asked the latter questions about the home farm while they stood awkwardly side by side. Fortunately she had not had to suggest quite blatantly that Lord Redfield show Kit some of its operations. The earl himself had suggested that, and Kit had agreed. Oh, she was very skilled indeed at conversation, at steering it in directions she wished it to take. She knew it was one of her best accomplishments.

Perhaps they did not even realize they had been maneuvered. But it was one reason she had come here—to reconcile Kit with his family.

“He is such a perfect foil for you that your meeting must be considered a happy stroke of fate,” Gwendoline said while Lauren shortened her stride to accommodate her cousin’s limp. “His carefree, laughing manner balances your quiet good sense and makes for one pleasing whole. I am very happy.”

“Thank you.” Lauren was not sure the steep path she had taken with Kit the afternoon before would be good for Gwen, but she turned onto it anyway and they labored slowly upward.

Gwendoline laughed merrily. “Oh, so grave, Lauren,” she said, “just as if you were not bubbling with happiness inside. This is me, Gwen. And I noticed your damp hair at breakfast, just as I noticed it yesterday. I thought then that you had got up early to wash it until Lord Redfield mentioned seeing you ride out with Lord Ravensberg. I am quite capable of adding two to two and coming up with a sum of four. Lauren, you have been swimming. Oh, this is famous!”

“And not at all the thing,” Lauren said, pausing on a large, flat stone so that they could catch their breath. “But he insists that I be made to enjoy myself. Can you imagine anything more absurd, Gwen, than the notion that I might find riding in the early morning and swimming in the lake enjoyable?”

“Oh, Lauren,” Gwen said, “I love him. I do. You had better marry him quickly, or I will steal him for myself.”

“Gwen,” Lauren said, resuming the laborious climb, “I can float. On my back and even on my stomach—with my face in the water. I sink like a stone, though, when I try to kick my legs to propel myself forward. He laughs at me.” That was not strictly true. He had laughed with her. She must have laughed more in the last two days than she had done in her whole life before, in fact. Not just the laughter of polite amusement, but the helpless, straight-from-the-stomach merriment that had her doubled over and helpless with mirth, tears streaming down both cheeks.

“Oh, goodness,” Gwen said, stopping and glancing upward. “Look at that tower. Is it a real ruin, do you suppose?”

“A folly,” Lauren said. “It was built to look like a ruin. But it is rather picturesque.”

She had had to come back here. She had to free her mind of a certain spell that appeared to have been cast over it. There had been nothing magical about yesterday afternoon. They had merely sat on a tree branch looking at the view. She had merely allowed him to fondle her in a manner that was so startlingly improper that even now she could not believe she had not stopped him far sooner than she had. It was ridiculous to remember that hour together as one of the most enchanted hours of her life. It was pathetic, if the truth were known.

Poor deprived twenty-six-year-old virgin!

She might have been a mother by now, almost sixteen months after her wedding. The duties of the marriage bed might have become routine to her by now. She might have been proof against such foolish unidentified yearnings as had kept her awake half the night before. Though she had not been the only one up. She had seen Kit walking in the darkness outside, striding down the driveway and across the bridge until he had passed from sight.

“We came up here yesterday,” she told Gwen. “We climbed high enough to see over the tops of the trees.”

Gwendoline looked up. “The view from the top must be breathtaking,” she said. “But I would rather imagine it than see it. I believe I will sit down on the grass for a while.”

She was looking at the tower.

“I mean the tree,” Lauren said. “We climbed up the tree.” The branch on which they had sat did not look so very high when viewed from the ground, but it was certainly high enough. Higher than the tower. Her knees turned weak.

Gwen looked and chose to be amused again. “You really are in love,” she said. “Neville and I could never persuade you to do anything remotely daring when we were all younger. Oh, Lauren, what a relief it is to be able to mention his name to you without fear of seeing that stricken look in your eyes, so quickly veiled even from me. And to be able to mention Lily. She really is a joy, you know. I saw them the day after they announced to Mama and me that she is increasing. They were down on the beach, and Lily was twirling about and about on the sand, her arms stretched to the sides, without either a bonnet or shoes and stockings while Neville stood against the great rock, his arms crossed over his chest, laughing at her. I did not intrude.”

Lauren drew a slow breath and set her palm against the great trunk of the old oak. It was not painful. It was not.

“She will be a good mother,” she said.

The magic was still here this morning. She closed her eyes. He was not nearly as big as Neville. She had always thought she liked big, tall men. But she fit against Kit so very comfortably. He had lovely hands—not large, but nimble, strong, expressive. They had felt good. . . . He ought not . . . And she ought not to have allowed it. He had held her breasts, and for a moment it had felt so right. And he had put one of his hands there. But instead of feeling horror she had felt . . . pleasure. And something more than pleasure.

But that had not been the magic. Not really. There had been the exhilaration, the sense of daring and achievement, the sense of safety despite danger. She would trust him with her life, she realized suddenly. And there had been the laughter. Ah, yes, the laughter.

The seductive enchantment of sheer joy.

“ Shall we sit for a while?” Gwendoline suggested.

Something Lauren had not noticed the day before was that both the hill and the trees fell away behind the slope they had climbed. The drop was a steep one, allowing for only a few hardy shrubs to cling to its side. Below and for miles into the distance was rolling farmland bordered with neat hedgerows, some of the fields under cultivation, some dotted with sheep. It was like a patchwork quilt, interrupted here and there by little cottages with accompanying clusters of farm buildings.

“What a blustery day after yesterday,” Gwendoline said. “And cooler too. I hope those clouds do not intend to bring rain later. This is a lovely place, Lauren. Your future home. And not too far distant from Dorsetshire, thank goodness. We will be able to see each other occasionally.”

“Unless you marry someone who will carry you off to the farthest Hebridean island,” Lauren said. “Or to the westernmost coast of Ireland.”

“I think not,” Gwen said. “Indeed I know not.”

“You cannot forget Lord Muir?” Lauren asked sadly. “No one can ever take his place in your affections?”

“I will never forget Vernon,” Gwen said with quiet conviction. “I will never remarry. But Neville is happy and you will be and Mama needs companionship. And so I will be content. I will, Lauren.”

Lauren lifted her face to the wind, heedless of the danger to her complexion. Yes, Alvesley was lovely. Rural and peaceful and beautiful and vast. But not her future home. That would be somewhere in Bath, she hoped. She would make a place for herself in the restricted, staid society of the spa, which was no longer as fashionable as it had used to be. It was inhabited mainly by the elderly. It would suit her. It would be safe.

“Now that looks rather dangerous,” Gwen said, nodding in the direction of the land below them.

Three riders were moving like toy figures across the landscape. They were not following any road or lane but were riding a more or less straight course across the fields. They were moving at speed, galloping neck or nothing, in fact. If they encountered a stone or a rabbit hole in the uneven ground that was common to most fields they would be down in a moment, injured and very possibly killed. Even as they watched, the riders made straight for a hedge and soared over it. Gwen sucked in her breath, but they landed safely on the other side and galloped onward.

“One of them is a woman,” Gwendoline said.

With long, fair hair streaming out behind her.

“Lady Freyja Bedwyn,” Lauren said. “With Lord Rannulf and Lord Alleyne, if I am not mistaken. They are riding in this direction. They must be intending to call at Alvesley.”

“The lady Lord Redfield intended for Lord Ravensberg?” Gwendoline asked, shading her eyes with one hand and squinting more intently at the riders. “Gracious, Lauren, she is not wearing a hat, and her hair is down. Will she call on the countess looking like that?”

“I believe so.” She was riding sidesaddle, but she was doing so with consummate skill. Lauren felt unwilling admiration.

“Is she beautiful?” Gwen asked.

“No, not beautiful,” Lauren said. Indeed her first impression had been that Lady Freyja was remarkably ugly. “She has a bold, dark-complexioned face with a prominent nose and dark eyebrows quite at variance with the color of her hair. She is . . . handsome.” That was not quite the right word, either. There was something about her, some charisma that Lauren knew she herself could never acquire even if she lived for a million years.

“And so are her brothers, if my guess is correct,” Gwen said. “Are they really going to Alvesley? If so, Lord Ravensberg’s insistence upon calling in person at Lindsey Hall yesterday and yours upon accompanying him seem to have brought about the desired results.”

“I am glad, then,” Lauren said. “Neighbors ought not to be at variance with one another.”

She could picture Lady Freyja and Kit riding side by side. Galloping stride for stride, soaring over hedgerows together, laughing, careless of danger. They were surely perfect for each other. And surely must still love each other. Certainly Lauren felt no doubt that the lady’s behavior yesterday had been occasioned by severely disappointed hopes.

But perhaps not disappointed forever, she thought, watching the riders disappear around a bend in the hill in the direction of the Palladian bridge. Once the summer was over, they would be free to rekindle their love without the direct interference of either the Earl of Redfield or the Duke of Bewcastle. By Christmas they would probably be married. He would be happy. He would have made up his quarrel with his father and would have overcome the awkwardness with his brother. He would have recovered the love of his heart.

By Christmas she would be established in Bath.

The thick band of clouds, which had been drifting closer for an hour or more, finally obscured the sun. Lauren shivered in the sudden chill.

The Earl of Redfield had decided to take his son, not just to the hay field, as planned, but on a general tour of the home farm. He talked determinedly and impersonally for most of the morning about crops and drainage and cattle and wages and a dozen other related topics. They stopped occasionally to talk to workers. Kit had the distinct impression that his father was uncomfortable with him and did not know how to deal with him on any personal level.

But he understood. He felt the same way.

He had been a cavalry officer for ten years. He knew, of course, how to take orders. Even as a lieutenant-colonel for the last year and a half of his service there had always been superior officers. But in the main he had been the one in charge, the one who issued orders, the one who bore all the responsibility of seeing them executed. That had been particularly true of his numerous missions as a reconnaissance officer, when he frequently had to make his own difficult and momentous decisions. He had made a name for himself in that capacity. He had been daring and ruthless, but utterly practical and trustworthy. He had been the one chosen for all the most seemingly impossible tasks. He had always found a way to do what had to be done. He had felt like a man very much in command of his own life.

It was only with his family that he had ever felt gauche and worthless. With his family he had been a massive failure—beginning with Sydnam’s intrusion upon his other life. But only beginning there. It had culminated, he supposed, in the year he had just wasted in London, behaving more like a callow youth than the Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Ravensberg known to his colleagues in the army. Almost as if he had felt compelled to prove to the whole of the fashionable world just how worthless he really was. Almost as if he had wanted word to get back to Alvesley so that his father and the rest of his family would be confirmed in their opinion of him.

He had never even tried to think this all out before. Was he really so immature?

“Does Syd always ride out with you on business?” he asked abruptly when they were finally on their way home. Except this morning.

“Usually,” his father said.

“I am surprised he is able to ride,” Kit said, broaching a topic he had no wish to pursue, except that it could not be avoided forever. Syd had no right arm.

“He has always been stubborn,” the earl said. “He was out of his sickbed long before the doctor advised any movement at all. He kept walking, even though he had to grit his teeth against the pain, until he could do it without limping. And he bruised himself over and over—and caused your mother many a bitter tear—until he could ride without losing his seat and falling off. He practiced for long hours until he could write legibly with his left hand. And he started spending whole days together with Parkin, learning the duties of a steward. When Parkin retired at the end of last year, Sydnam asked me if he could have his position.”

“But Syd was not cut out to be a steward,” Kit protested.

“He has made a life for himself,” his father said firmly. “He will accept no salary from me, of course, but he has been talking to Bewcastle about employment on one of the numerous Bedwyn estates. It seems that an opening is to be expected in the autumn—a salaried position even though Sydnam has independent means and does not need it. He is determined to be his own man. He does not wish to stand in your way here.”

But Alvesley would need a steward. Why not Sydnam if he was already doing the job? It was at least something he could do at home, where he had family to care for his needs. But of course that family now included Kit. That was explanation enough for Syd’s determination to leave.

“Why did he not come with you this morning?” Kit asked, though the answer was, of course, obvious. Because I am with you.

“The account books needed bringing up to date,” his father said.

They were riding past a neat row of freshly thatched cottages, and the earl pointed them out as some of the laborers’ homes, which had been leaking during the spring. He hailed and exchanged pleasantries with a woman who was outside sweeping the threshold of her home while three young children played in the grass nearby.

“Your mother and I would like to have the first banns for your nuptials read on Sunday,” his father said abruptly as they rode on. “Our family members and Miss Edgeworth’s can be persuaded to stay on here for a month, I daresay, to attend the wedding. I suppose that after what happened at Newbury last year, she will not wish to be married there. There is no reason for delay, is there? We approve of her. She is a true lady. The embarrassment over Lady Freyja is an unfortunate one, but there is no point in dwelling upon what cannot be helped. What do you say?”

Kit had been listening in dismay—the more so, perhaps, because his father appeared to be asking rather than telling him. Another of the olive branches Lauren had spoken of yesterday?

“I would not wish to rush her, sir,” he said. “There will be bride clothes to shop for, and there are many other relatives she will want at her—at our wedding. The Duchess of Portfrey, her aunt, for example. The lady is to be confined soon—within the next month or so, I believe. We were thinking more of a winter or perhaps a spring wedding.”

“I just do not want your mother or your grandmother disappointed again,” the earl said.

Again? Was he talking about Jerome and Freyja? Of course, he must be. But no one had mentioned Jerome’s name since Kit’s return home. He could not mention it now. Neither, it seemed, could their father. They rode through the village in heavy silence and spoke with false cheer to the porter, who opened the gates for them and delayed them for a few moments while he squinted upward at the heavy clouds and speculated upon the likelihood of their lordships getting rained upon before they reached the stables.

“I would rather not have the idea of banns pressed upon Lauren too soon, sir,” Kit said as they rode onward into the darker shade of the deer forest. “She suffered a severe and humiliating disappointment last year. I want all to be perfect for her this time.”

“Hmm. The thought does you credit,” his father said.

God help him, but he really did want that, Kit thought. Absurdly, he believed he would gladly give his life to make something perfect for Lauren. Perhaps he would find pardon and peace if he could bring about her happiness. But he could do just that, he thought rather bitterly. He could set her free.

By the time they rode clear of the trees an occasional large spot of rain splashed down onto them. Pretty soon it was going to be raining in earnest.

“We had better make a dash for it,” the earl said, looking upward. He added rather stiffly, “It has been a good morning, Ravensberg. She is a true lady.”

Yes. It had not escaped Kit’s notice, either, that they owed this morning together, earl and heir together as they ought to be, to Lauren’s gentle maneuvering last evening.

He smiled ruefully as he urged his horse to a gallop and clattered over the bridge in his father’s wake.

The guests began arriving in the rain soon after luncheon. Lauren spent much of the afternoon in the great hall with the earl and countess, with the dowager countess and Mr. Sydnam Butler, and with Kit, receiving the visitors, being presented to all of them, trying to impress names and exact relationships upon her memory.

It was not easy. It might have seemed impossible if she had not trained herself long ago, when she had expected to spend her adult life as the Countess of Kilbourne with all the duties of a hostess. She would remember Lady Irene Butler, the late earl’s unmarried sister, because she was white-haired and frail and severely bent over. And she would remember Viscount Hampton, the dowager’s brother, because of his shiny bald head and loud laugh, and Mr. Claude Willard, his son, who closely resembled him. Then there was Daphne Willard, Claude’s wife, and their three not-quite-grown children, two sons and a daughter—three young people who were on their very best behavior, doubtless in the hope of being included with the adults rather than with the nursery group during the coming days. Then there was the placid and smiling Marjorie, Lady Clifford, the Earl of Redfield’s sister, and her florid-complexioned, wheezing husband, Sir Melvin. Boris Clifford, with the eyeglasses, was their son, the buxom Nell his wife. This latter couple had three infant children, who were whisked up to the nursery after a brief inspection by the dowager, their great-grandmama.

There was a lull in the arrivals before Lauren had to memorize more names and faces and relationships. Mr. Humphrey Pierce-James arrived next with his wife, Edith, their daughter Catherine and her husband, Mr. Lawrence Vreemont. The latter couple also had two infant children. Mr. Pierce-James, Lauren understood, was the dowager’s nephew by a deceased sister. Last to arrive were Mr. Clarence Butler, the earl’s younger brother, with his wife, Honoria, their daughter Beatrice and her husband, Baron Born, and their brood of unwed offspring, varying in age from Frederick, who must be Kit’s age, to Benjamin, who was eight. Doris, one of the daughters, had her fiancй, Sir Jeremy Brightman, with her.

Lauren did not promise herself that she would remember every name and face and relationship immediately—there were so many of them—but she thought she would within a day or so. She smiled with some relief when it seemed the last guest had arrived and disappeared upstairs to freshen up before tea. Everyone had been amiable. If any of them knew about the projected engagement to Lady Freyja Bedwyn, none of them looked as if they held a grudge.

She had not had a chance to ask Kit about his morning. But he had spent the whole of it with his father about estate business—a promising sign indeed. Neither of them had been at home to receive Lady Freyja Bedwyn and her two brothers, but they had indeed called and spent fifteen minutes with Kit’s mother and grandmother and with Aunt Clara. They had expressed their intention of riding over again before the day of the birthday celebrations. A permanent rift had been avoided, it seemed.

It must be time to go back upstairs to the drawing room, Lauren thought. But the butler, peering discreetly through a window, announced that yet another carriage was approaching across the bridge.

“Perhaps this time,” the countess said, speaking to the earl but smiling at Lauren. “Do have a seat, Mother. You will be exhausted from having been on your feet all afternoon.”

“I will not . . . sit,” the old lady said. “Miss . . . Edgeworth, let me . . . take your . . . arm again.”

But Sydnam Butler stepped forward and offered his instead. The newly arrived carriage was drawing up before the steps, and the butler himself had gone down with a large black umbrella to escort the gentleman who was alighting from it indoors. Two footmen held the doors wide open. Lauren shivered from the chill of the wet, windy outdoors. But she donned her sociable smile again and prepared to be presented to yet another member of Kit’s family.

And then the butler removed the sheltering umbrella and stood to one side while the visitor stepped over the threshold into the hall and looked about expectantly.

Lauren forgot her famous dignity in the surprise of recognition and the welling of joy. She hurried forward, both arms outstretched.

“Grandpapa!” she exclaimed.

“Lauren. There you are, my dear!”

She was enfolded in his embrace then and inhaling the snuffy, leathery scent she always associated with him. And swallowing and blinking her eyes and trying—in vain—to hold her tears in check.

He had come.

He had come!

“I did not know,” she said, drawing back from him and gazing into his lined, dearly familiar face. “I did not expect . . .” She turned to look with tear-bright eyes at the earl and at Kit. “Who did this? Whose idea was it?”

“Mine,” Kit said. He was grinning. “As soon as Mother and Father asked me which of your relatives should be invited.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at each of them in turn. “Oh, thank you.”

“Present me, please, Lauren.” Kit stepped forward and brought her back to a sense of duty.

She proceeded to present them all, her arm linked through Baron Galton’s—her very own relative—her heart brimming with happiness. They had invited him for her betrothal celebrations, and he had come all the way from Yorkshire. Just for her! Surely because he loved her. And it had been Kit’s idea to invite him and surprise her in this way. What a delightful surprise it was.

It was only as she led him up the grand staircase a short while later to the room that had been prepared for him, Kit on his other side, that she remembered something. Amazingly, alarmingly, it had totally fled her mind for all of ten minutes.

It was not a real betrothal.