A Summer to Remember (18 page)

The branch was as broad as many of the trunks of lesser trees.

“You could not fall off if you tried,” he said not quite truthfully as he sat down on it, settled his back against the trunk, and drew her down to sit between his spread legs, her back against his chest, his arms protectively about her waist.

“I do not intend to try,” she assured him. “Kit, how are we ever going to get down?”

He could feel her heart thumping against his hand. She was overwarm and panting from the climb—and from fear too, he guessed. He noticed that her gaze did not move downward by even a single degree. She pressed her head back hard against his shoulder—her bonnet had been abandoned at the foot of the tree.

“Trust me,” he said against her ear.

“Trust the man famous or infamous for all sorts of reckless and foolish exploits?” she said, closing her eyes. “Trust the officer mentioned in several official military dispatches as a particularly daring spy?”

“But I came back from every mission in one piece,” he said.

Her heartbeat was beginning to slow to normal. She was beginning to relax. She was half reclined along the tree branch, her legs slightly bent, her feet flat. They were long, slender legs, clearly outlined by the flimsy muslin of her dress. Her feet were slim, her ankles trim. It was strange what a change an acquaintance with someone could bring to one’s perceptions. Lauren Edgeworth seemed far more youthful to him now than she had appeared when he first saw her. And less classically beautiful and more femininely pretty.

“If you can ever persuade yourself to open your eyes,” he said, “you will see that the view has made the climb worthwhile.”

“
Nothing
could do that,” she assured him. But she opened her eyes and looked.

It really was an impressive vista. There was a clear view over the treetops to the stream and the parterre gardens, which from here could be viewed in all their geometric precision, and the eastern front of the house. But they were high enough to see far more than that. There were the cultivated, tree-dotted lawns surrounding the house, the river with the lake in the distance, the deer forest and the spire of the village church, the hills in the opposite direction, farmland in the far distance.

A feast for the eyes and the other senses too. There were birds singing. There was a suggestion of coolness in the slight breeze. And there were bars of sunlight and shade across their bodies from the branches and the sun, which was descending in the late afternoon sky. There were the heavy smells of heat and vegetation and . . . a soft, fragrant soap.

“Nothing could make the climb worthwhile,” she said severely, “though the prospect is a good one, I will concede.”

Well. Cool praise indeed. But a moment later she ruined the effect of her words. He felt a slight tremor beneath his hands, and then she was laughing softly. Lauren Edgeworth was laughing!

“I am up in a tree,” she said. “Gwen and Aunt Clara will not believe it even if I should tell them.
No
one who knows me would believe it. Lauren Edgeworth up a tree, without a bonnet.”

She seemed to find the idea enormously tickling. For a few moments her laughter was almost silent. But she could not contain it. She burst into peals of glee, gales of merriment. And Kit, holding her safe, joined her.

“And loving every moment of it?” he asked when he could.

“Now
that
I will never admit to,” she said and laughed again. But finally they were both quiet, and when she spoke again her voice held more wistfulness than humor. “I will remember today. All of it. For the whole of the rest of my life. Thank you, Kit.”

He settled his cheek against the top of her head—
her hair was warm from the sunshine. The pleasures he had given her today—
if
they had given her pleasure—were such simple things. But she would remember them for the rest of her life? Strangely enough, he believed he would too.

He bent his legs at the knee, braced his feet against the branch on either side of her, and relaxed. When had he last done this? Just sat, that was, soaking up sunshine and heat, feeling the sheer comfort of another human presence? It seemed that perhaps he had never done it. Certainly not in recent years. He was always busily intent upon filling in every idle moment, avoiding every chance that he might inadvertently come face-to-face with his own thoughts. He even avoided lying in bed at night until he was too exhausted to do anything but fall into instant sleep. Though even then there were the dreams. . . .

But he abandoned all thought, all his cautious defenses, as he closed his eyes.

He had always favored small women, not being a particularly tall man himself. He had always been attracted to voluptuous women. And passionate women. He had had several affairs over the years, most of them tumultuous in nature, intensely satisfying, soon over. His summer with Freyja had followed much the usual pattern, though he had always denied it to himself, the only real difference being that his passion had not been satisfied physically and therefore had never been slaked. It had been over before he was ready to see it end. At the time he had thought he never would want it to end, that she was the woman to whom he could pledge his lifelong devotion. But had he not thought so with numerous mistresses before her?

Lauren Edgeworth was tall for a woman. She was slender. She was cool in nature. Not frigid. No, not that. But probably incapable of hot physical passion. She should have been unattractive to him despite her undeniable beauty.

But he desired her. He turned his head slightly, buried his nose in her hair, breathed in the scent of her. He desired her in an unfamiliar, controlled way. Without the usual burning need to mount her body to satisfy his hunger. It was a curiously uncarnal desire. And yet it
was
physical. It was desire he felt, not just admiration or affection.

He nudged her hair back from her face with his cheek and kissed her temple, her cheek, her jaw. He kissed her earlobe and sucked it gently between his teeth.

She sat motionless, her eyes closed again. Yet not quite motionless either. She tipped her head slightly toward his arm, allowing him easier access to the side of her face closer to him. He kissed her neck, nuzzling it softly.

She somehow fit him like a glove, he thought. A comfortable kid glove. And yet he felt definite desire—an invigorating surging of the blood and tightening of the groin. Desire mingled with tenderness, two feelings that had never coincided in him before now. He was on unfamiliar ground.

He settled his cheek against her head again and spread his palms over her waist and abdomen. They were flat, and yet soft and womanly too. He lifted his hands to cup her breasts lightly. He paused, giving her a chance to protest, to push his hands away, to break the drowsy spell of desire he was exploring. Drowsiness and desire as simultaneous feelings? Strange indeed! She spread her hands over his Hessian boots, just above the ankles.

They were small breasts, but firm and lovely. They fit his hands as if made for them. She seemed perfectly relaxed, yet her nipples, he found, touching them lightly with the pads of his thumbs, were peaked and hard. He lowered his head once more to kiss her in the warm hollow between her neck and shoulder. He opened his mouth, licking her, tasting her, breathing warm air against her silky flesh.

For the first time she made a sound—a soft whimpering sigh deep in her throat. She may not be a woman of passion, he thought, but she was certainly capable of desire. Loving her would be a somewhat tender experience. One would need to awaken her slowly, patiently, with gentle consideration. One would need to cherish her, to subdue one’s own need in order to nurture hers. One would need to make love to her in ways he had never before made love. There was something strangely arousing in the thought.

He slid his palms downward and curved the fingertips of one hand into the soft, warm juncture of her thighs. She drew in a breath, not noisily but with slow deliberation, and pressed her head more firmly back against his shoulder. The soft muslin of her skirt gave before the pressure of his fingers, and he rubbed her lightly.

It was as well, he thought, that they were where they were. They were not really betrothed. They were not going to be married. And though he was honor-bound to try to persuade her to change her mind during the coming weeks, he had no wish to coerce her. He would not violate her and so give her no choice in her own future. The knowledge of where they were was its own limit on how far he could carry this encounter. He ran his palm along one of her inner thighs but made no attempt to reach down for her hem to lift her skirt.

He wanted her. He desired her. It would feel good to be inside her body. And yet his desire was curiously lacking in physical urgency. It felt more like a yearning of the heart. For her innocence, perhaps? For the sweet, quiet discipline that could so easily be mistaken for cold passivity?

“Kit,” she said, “no. Really you need not.”

“
Need
not?” Reluctantly he wrapped his arms safely about her waist again. “What do you know of my needs?”

“Enough to be quite certain that I am not the woman to satisfy a single one of them,” she said. “You have been wonderful to me today. Horrid but wonderful. I
will
remember swimming and climbing trees, you see. I will remember with pleasure. But I did not ask for passion, not of—not of this nature anyway. It is improper. We are strangers really, are we not? We
will
be strangers in future. If our families knew that we were not really betrothed, they would never allow us to be alone together like this. And it is easy to understand why. I have never . . . Kit, I have never done these things before. And I must not again. Please.”

“You must not be a woman?” he murmured against her ear. “Only a lady?”

She did not answer for a few moments. “Yes,” she said at last. “I choose to be only a lady.”

“You cannot be both?”

“Only if I were married,” she said. “To someone I loved and to someone who loved me in return.”

“You believe Kilbourne loved you?”

He felt her swallow. “He did,” she said. “He always did. We always loved each other. Not as he loves Lily or as she loves him, but . . . Kit, I do not want to be having this conversation. I cannot ever love you, that is all. And you certainly could never love me. Without love, what we have been doing is wrong. Even perhaps a little sordid, though it did not feel that way. Take me home, please. But how on earth are we to get down?”

“Now that you mention it,” he said, “how
are
we?”

She turned her head sharply to regard him with wide, dismayed eyes. He grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows.

“I am s-s-scared,” he wailed.

“Oh, Kit!” And she laughed again, as she had earlier, her whole face lighting up with glee as she punched his shoulder with the side of her fist. “Never fear. I will rescue you. I will open my mouth and screech for help.” She laughed again—no, she giggled. Like a girl. Like the child she had never been, perhaps. She drew breath as if she were an operatic soprano about to hit a high C, and he clapped a hand over her mouth.

“If it comes to a choice between breaking both my legs on the one hand and watching an army of gardeners charge up here to the rescue,” he said, “I think I will sacrifice my legs. Here we go, then. Hang on tight and trust me. Sir Galahad is my middle name.”

She laughed once more.

12

W
e 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.