A Summer to Remember (29 page)

“I am sorry,” Lord Rannulf said softly, and for the first time it seemed to Lauren he spoke with sincerity. “I am truly sorry, Miss Edgeworth. You have not deserved this.”

“Deserved what, Lord Rannulf?” she asked him. “Trickery? But life is full of tricks and lies and masks. One would be foolish not to be armed against them.”

Especially when she herself was the biggest perpetrator of deception.

He took her to where Aunt Clara was talking with the Countess of Redfield in the ballroom, bowed over her hand before raising it to his lips, and walked away without speaking another word to her.

Lady Freyja was back in the rose arbor when Lord Rannulf found her. She was sitting on the same seat she had occupied a few minutes before.

“Go away,” she said ungraciously when she saw him coming.

The Bedwyns rarely did as they were bidden. He moved closer and sat beside her.

“Well?” he asked.

“Bloody hell and a thousand damnations,” she said, quiet venom in her voice. “No, make it a million.”

He clucked his tongue but attempted no other admonition. Years ago none of a long string of governesses had ever been able to impress upon their headstrong pupil the reality of the fact that she was a lady and must learn to conduct herself accordingly. Her brothers had never made much effort to reinforce what the governesses had tried to teach.

“I want to go home,” she said. “I want to raid Wulf’s wine cellar. I want to get foxed. Blind drunk. With you. You can drink with me.”

“That is very generous of you, Free,” he said. “It is very tempting too after what you have just put me through—I
like
the woman, damn it. But Wulf and Alleyne would not appreciate being stranded here without the carriage. And it would offend my sensibilities to haul up the best liquor with the sole purpose of drinking ourselves three sheets to the wind with it. Inferior liquor would serve the same purpose but Wulf does not keep any.”

“Wulf be damned,” she said.

Her brother raised his eyebrows. “Drinking like a fish is no cure for what ails you, you know,” he said. “All you will get out of it is a crashing headache and a fervent wish that you were dead.”

“When I need your advice,” she said with woeful lack of originality, “I will ask for it.”

“Quite so.” He shrugged. “It was foolish to fall in love three years ago and never fall out again, you know.”

He saw it coming despite the darkness. But he thought it might do her more good than drinking herself under the nearest table. She clenched her right hand into a tight fist, drew back her arm, and punched him hard on the chin. His head snapped back, but he was not swayed from his comfortable posture on the seat.

“Ouch!” he said quietly after a few moments. “If you really insist upon getting foxed, Free, we will steal two horses from the stables here and be on our way. Or we could go back inside and dance. You could show everyone what you are made of. Show that you don’t care a fig for Kit or any other mortal so far beneath the notice of Lady Freyja Bedwyn.”

“I
don’t
care for him,” she said, getting to her feet. “I hate him if you want to know the truth, Ralf. And as for that mealymouthed
lady
he has brought home with him, well—I would have to say he richly deserves her. And that is
all
I have to say. Are you coming or are you not?”

“I’m coming.” He got to his feet and grinned down at her. “That’s the girl, Free. Up with the chin. The Bedwyn nose can be a priceless asset on occasions like this, can it not?”

Freyja looked at him along the length of hers as if he were a worm beneath her dancing slipper.

Country balls, even when they were of the elaborate nature of the one at Alvesley, did not continue until dawn as the most memorable of London balls did. Supper was served at eleven and was followed by the first and only waltz of the evening for the relatively few couples bold and skilled enough to dance it. After that the dancing continued, but the guests began gradually to drift away. And the Dowager Countess of Redfield retired to bed.

Kit and Lauren took her up to her room. They had just waltzed together, and Kit had been powerfully reminded of their first waltz, when he had been struck by her beauty, daunted by her apparently cold dignity, and challenged to try to shock her out of her complacency.

His grandmother was tired. There was none of her fierce independence tonight. Instead of clutching her cane with her good hand, she had one arm linked through Lauren’s and the other through his, and she was leaning heavily. But Kit knew it had been an extraordinarily happy day for her.

“Good . . . night.” She relinquished Lauren’s arm when Kit had opened her dressing room door and her dresser had come hurrying to assist her. “P . . . recious boy.”

“Good night, Grandmama.” He hugged her gently as she kissed his cheek.

“Good night.” She turned to kiss Lauren, who leaned down to hug her too. “Sweet . . . child.”

“Good night, ma’am. Happy birthday.” There were tears in Lauren’s eyes when she took Kit’s arm again.

“We have just danced together,” he said as they made their way back downstairs. “If we return to the ballroom, we will have to take other partners.”

“So we will,” she said. “It is the polite thing to do.”

“Would it be
impolite
to walk outside together?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Everyone has a partner for this set anyway.”

There were still a few other people outside, mostly the young cousins, who were chattering and laughing together in a group. Kit led Lauren past them, exchanging cheerful greetings as they went. They strolled without talking through the parterres and across the lawn below until they came to the little wooden bridge across the stream. They stopped there by unspoken assent and rested their arms along the wooden rail. There was the sound of water bubbling below, though it was invisible in the darkness cast by the trees. In contrast, the lawn and flower beds and house were bathed in moonlight.

Kit sighed. “A long day almost over.”

“But a wonderful day,” she said. “It has been perfect, has it not? Perfect for your grandmother and perfect for everyone else too.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

He could hear distant laughter from the direction of the house. And the faint sound of music. It was good to be alone with Lauren. She was a restful companion. He had not realized until recently how important a component of friendship the ability to be quiet together was. And to feel as comfortable as one felt when alone. No,
more
comfortable.

“Kit,” she said softly, “we did the right thing, did we not?”

He understood the question immediately.

“If you had come here alone,” she said, “you would be feeling now that you had been forced into a betrothal without any freedom of choice. You might always have resented it, and your family would have sensed it even if you had not put it into words. There would be awkwardness and friction and hostility whereas now there are peace and love and harmony. It was not wrong, was it?”

“It was not wrong,” he said, finding her hand with his own on the rail and covering it.

“After it is all over,” she said, “the harmony will remain here, and you will be free to choose your own future.”

“From tomorrow on,” he said, “I am going to be free to woo you more aggressively. I am going to do it. Be warned. I am going to convince you that the best ending for what had been started here is going to be our wedding. Happily ever after and all that.”

“Kit,” she said after a short pause, “I am going to be leaving with Aunt Clara and Gwen tomorrow.”

“No!” His fingers closed tightly about hers. Panic gripped his insides.

“It will be the best possible solution. You will surely agree when you think about it,” she said. “They are from my own home. They accompanied me here as my chaperones. They are eager to return home because Elizabeth is coming with the new baby. It will be the most natural thing in the world for me to leave with them. And your mother and Aunt Clara between them have assumed that our wedding will take place at Newbury. It will seem, then, that I am going in order to start the preparations. No awkward explanations will need to be made. By the time I write to put an end to our betrothal, your family guests will all have returned home and you will be able to break the news quietly to the earl and countess. And to your grandmother and Sydnam.”

Her voice was quiet and sensible. There was no trace of regret there, of pain, of any emotion whatsoever.

“Stay a little longer,” he said. “A week. Give me one week to persuade you. Don’t leave tomorrow, Lauren. It is too soon.”

“I have accomplished everything I came here to do,” she said. “And I have had my adventure, my summer to remember. There is no good reason to prolong it and every reason to end it. It
is
time, Kit. You will soon realize it for yourself.”

“Stay,” he urged her, “until we know for sure whether or not you are with child.”

“If I am,” she said just as coolly as before, “I will write to you immediately. If I am not, I will write to cancel our betrothal. I will wait until I know, Kit. I can do that just as easily at Newbury. And I really believe I am
not
. There were only two occasions, after all.”

One. There had been only
one
occasion when she might have conceived. “I hope you are,” he said, gripping her hand even more tightly. “I hope you
are
with child.” Did he? Was he so desperate that he wanted her to be coerced?

“Why?” she asked.

Because I love you. Because I cannot bear the thought of life lived without you.
But he could not hang that albatross about her neck. It would be horribly unfair. She might somehow feel honor-bound to stay with him, to marry him, to give up the life she dreamed of, now so close to being in her grasp.

“It is because you have . . . possessed me, is it not?” she said. “As a gentleman you feel you must persuade me to marry you at all costs. There is no need—not unless I am with child. It was not seduction. What I did, I did freely. It was part of the adventure, part of the memorable summer. I will never regret it. I will always be glad that I—that I
know
. And that it was with you. And that it was so . . . wonderful. But you owe me nothing, certainly not a lifetime of devotion. You are free, Kit. So am I.
Free!
”

She made freedom sound like the most desirable state of the human condition. He might have agreed with her a month or so ago.

He tasted defeat. How could he argue against a plea for freedom?

“There is nothing I can say to change your mind, then?” he asked.

“No.”

He lifted her hand, set his forehead against it, drew a slow breath.

“Thank you,” he said. “For all you have done for me and my family, thank you, Lauren. You have been sweetness and patience and generosity and unfailing dignity.”

“And thank
you
.” She set her free hand on his arm. “For my adventure, Kit. For the swimming and riding and tree-climbing. For the—for the laughter. And for persuading Grandpapa to tell me the truth about my mother. That is a more precious gift than I can put into words. Thank you.”

He felt her lips against his cheek and fought the urge to pull her into his arms, to use his superior physical strength, to flatly refuse to let her go—ever.

“Tomorrow morning, then?” he said, his eyes tightly closed. “We will need to be cheerful, will we not? Regretful for the brief parting, but cheerful because wedding plans are being set in motion. Basically cheerful, yes. I’ll kiss you, I believe. On the lips. It will seem appropriate.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “There will be others gathered to see us on our way, I daresay. There will be others watching.”

“But now,” he said, bringing her hand to his lips, “we are alone together. For the last time. Good-bye, then, my friend. Good-bye, Lauren.”

“Oh, my dear,” she said, and for the first time it seemed to him that her voice faltered and emotion crept in. “Good-bye. Have a good life. I will always remember you with—with deep affection.”

He stood there for several silent moments, his back to the house, his eyes closed, her hand to his lips, memorizing the feel and the soap fragrance of her and the gentle aura she seemed to cast about him, before escorting her back for what remained of the birthday ball.

22

S
ummer had lingered on through the hot, lazy days of August and well into September. But it was finally giving place to autumn, it seemed. There was a distinct chill in the air and clouds were gathering overhead, low and heavy. It was going to rain.

She was in the very worst place she could be on such a day, Lauren thought. She was on the beach at Newbury Abbey. Not only on the beach, but perched on the very top of the great rock that appeared for all the world as if a giant must once have hurled it there from the cliffs above to land in the middle of the wide expanse of golden sand. She was sitting with a cloak wrapped warmly about her, her arms clasping her updrawn knees beneath its folds. But she was hatless—her bonnet lay at the foot of the rock, wedged into a narrow cranny with her gloves, where they would not blow away. The wind—no, it was more like a gale—whipped her hair back from her face and tasted of salt. The sea, on the ebb and halfway out along the sand, was slate gray and rough and flecked with angry white foam.

She was feeling almost happy. She allowed herself the qualifier of
almost
because she had accepted the fact that self-deception was also self-destructive. She would not deceive herself any more or hide behind any mask in an attempt to shield herself from the reality of her life.

Hence the beach, which she had never liked until recently, especially on a wild day. And hence her perch on top of the rock, which she had never climbed before today. Climbing it had been forbidden when she was a child, and so of course both Neville and Gwen had scaled it several times. Equally inevitably, she never had. Climbing it more recently had been unladylike. She could remember her shock at seeing Lily sitting up here one day, not long after her arrival at Newbury.

And hence too her bonnetless state. The wind and the sea air would do dreadful things to both her complexion and her hair. She tipped her face higher into the air and shook out her tangled hair with smiling defiance.

Hence also the fact that the likelihood of rain was not sending her scurrying back to the dower house for shelter. If she got wet, she would also feel cold and uncomfortable and might ruin her bonnet and her good shoes. She looked up at the clouds and challenged them to rain torrents on her head.

She was not with child. She had wept in the privacy of her own room when her courses had begun less than a week after her return from Alvesley. She had grieved for the child who had never been and the marriage that would never happen. At the same time she had been overwhelmingly relieved. She had written the next day to Kit, breaking off their engagement—the most difficult task she had ever undertaken in her life.

The thought of it—of the moment the letter had left her hands—could still make her chest tighten with an almost unbearable pain. She would not allow herself to think of it. At some time in the future—still rather far in the future, she believed—she would be able to look back on the brief summer at Alvesley and remember with pleasure what had surely been the happiest time of her life.

But not quite yet. At this precise moment in her life she was
almost
happy. She accepted with quiet patience that she was not entirely so.

Tomorrow she was going to Bath. Oh, not permanently yet, but the wheels were being set in motion. Gwen and Neville were going to accompany her. An agent had found four different houses he considered suitable residences for a single lady of modest fortune. She was going to view them all and make her choice. Against the advice of everyone except Elizabeth, but with the reluctant support of all, she was about to embark upon the rest of her life. Not a passive observer any longer, but an active participant.

The mist of spray from the sea—or perhaps it was the beginning of the rain—was dampening her face. Her hair was going to be impossibly curly when she got back home and her poor maid was called upon to do something with it. Lauren closed her eyes and felt enclosed by wind. Exhilarated by the wildness of it. Empowered by it.

She had read fifteen years’ worth of letters from the stranger who was her mother. Cheerful, careless, untidily scrawled letters from a woman who was clearly enjoying her life even though she complained freely about anything and everything—particularly about the men on whom she had heaped rapturous praises in an earlier letter, and consistently over the fact that her beloved Lauren never wrote back to her, never came to live with her. They were letters that would have shocked Lauren to the core even a few months earlier. But she had acquired a new tolerance, an acceptance of the myriad ways in which other people coped with the one life allotted them. She felt an aching love for the mother she remembered so dimly that none of the memories was concrete. She had written a long, long letter and sent it on its way to India. She could not expect any reply until sometime next year, but she felt a connection with the woman who had borne her.

She should climb down, she supposed, looking with some misgiving at the footholds and handholds that had appeared perfectly manageable when she had examined them from the beach. But she had been looking up then, not down. If she waited until the rain was falling in earnest, the rock might become slippery and she would be stranded.

For a moment her mind touched upon the memory of Kit helping her descend the tree at Alvesley, his body and arms cradling her protectively from behind, though she had forbidden him to touch her or carry her down. She pushed the memory aside. She was not ready for it yet. It was still too painful.

Something caught at the edge of her vision, and she turned her head to look. There was a steep path down from the cliff top to the valley where the waterfall and pool and cottage were, just out of her range of vision from where she sat. But she could see the bridge that crossed the river as it flowed the last few yards to the beach and the sea. He was just stepping onto the bridge, his long drab riding coat billowing out to one side, his tall hat pulled low over his brow.

A mirage, she thought foolishly, whipping her head downward to rest on her knees. Her heart thumped uncomfortably, as if she had been running too fast. It was just Neville, sent by Aunt Clara to discover what kept her so long on the beach. But it was not Neville. The Duke of Portfrey, then, sent by Elizabeth and Lily on the same errand. No. No, it was not he. Besides, none of them would have come looking for her. She had told them she wanted to be alone.

She lifted her head again and turned it casually, so as not to disappoint herself when she saw empty beach and bridge and path.

He was on the beach, striding toward her.

Lauren clasped her knees more tightly.

All the guests had left Alvesley within two weeks of the birthday party. Sydnam had left a week after that, bound for one of the Duke of Bewcastle’s larger estates in Wales. He had been very cheerful about it. Doing a good job as someone else’s steward was a challenge he needed to take on, Kit had realized. Syd certainly had no need of the extra income.

Life at home would have been tranquil and happy except for one thing. His relationship with his father was better than it had ever been. They could communicate man to man. They could relate as father and son. His father was eager to teach; he was eager to learn. And he brought with him skills acquired during years of commanding men and shouldering life-and-death responsibilities, and a young man’s energy to complement his father’s slower, more deliberate wisdom. His mother was cheerful and affectionate. He was once again his grandmother’s favorite, though he had little competition, of course. He had come face-to-face with Rannulf when both were out riding alone one day. They had talked for a few hours, Ralf turning his horse to ride alongside his erstwhile friend since neither of them had had any particular destination in mind. They had fallen back into the easy camaraderie they had enjoyed throughout their boyhood years. They had met several times since then. Their friendship had resumed.

There was only one thing to mar the tranquillity, though to call it
one
made it sound small, insignificant, unimportant. It was the consuming fact of Kit’s life. Lauren had written a formal little note from Newbury, breaking their engagement, citing incompatibility and personal fickleness. Right to the end she had kept her part of the bargain, careful to assume all the blame for the breakup. And the letter was designed for other eyes in addition to his own. There was not a whisper of a mention of pregnancy. He had to assume from the nature of the letter that she was not with child. He had opened it not knowing which of two quite opposite fates he was going to be facing.

After reading it he had stridden down to the lake, torn off all his clothes—even though it had been daytime and total privacy had been by no means guaranteed—and swum the whole length of the lake, using every last ounce of his energy so that by the time he reached the far side of the island he had had to half stagger, half drag himself up the sloping bank to fall in a panting stupor facedown on the grass among the wildflowers. He did not even know for how many hours he had lain there.

The foolish part—the really stupid part—was that after he had returned to the house he had not immediately told anyone. He could not face the questions, the explanations, the emotion, the recriminations, the sympathy, the whatever it was he would have been called upon to face if he had told. He had postponed the telling until the evening, and then until the next morning, and then . . .

He had not told at all.

One morning when they were riding home from an inspection of the ripening crops on the home farm, his father admitted to him that he had arranged the marriage with Freyja only because he had thought it would please Kit. Left to himself, he had added, Kit had chosen far more wisely and well than anyone else could have done for him. He had matured into a sensible, dependable man despite the wild oats he had been sowing in London even as late as this spring. Miss Edgeworth would be a fine viscountess and a worthy countess when the day came.

The day Syd left, their mother linked an arm through Kit’s after drying her tears and strolled with him in the parterre gardens. She had had misgivings at the prospect of sharing a home with Freyja, she admitted, though she was very fond of her and of all the Bedwyns, who had suffered only from not having had a mother through their most formative years to curb their wildness and teach them some restraint. But she simply loved Lauren. She had done almost from the first, though she confessed that she had been predisposed to dislike her intensely. Lauren already felt like the daughter she had never had but had always longed for.

Kit’s grandmother spoke of Lauren when she got up in the mornings and Lauren was not there to accompany her on her walk, when she sat by the fire in the evenings and Lauren was not there to listen to her or to entertain her with conversation or massage her bad hand, and whenever she fancied that Kit was looking restless, which was almost every time she set eyes on him.

He had been able to find neither the courage nor the heart to tell them that the engagement was over, that they would never see Lauren again, that he would not either.

By the middle of September, with his mother asking almost daily when the wedding date was to be set and his grandmother urging that it be before Christmas so that they would have Lauren with them for the holiday—and so that they could start airing out the family christening robes—he knew that he was going to have to do something decisive. He was going to have to tell them.

It was during a lapse in the conversation at dinner one evening that he finally steeled himself and drew breath to speak.

“I’ll be going down to Newbury Abbey,” he said abruptly. “Tomorrow, I think. I need to . . . see Lauren.”

His words surprised him as much as they did his family. More so, in fact. They were all delighted. They had been expecting it, in fact. They thought it was high time. Lauren would be thinking he was having second thoughts.

It was only when the unexpected, unplanned words were spoken that he understood why he had not broken the news to his family, why he had been unable to let go of the charade. He had learned something of infinite value during the summer—he and Lauren had both learned it, he believed. He had learned the importance of openness, of talking to the people he loved, even when habit urged him to keep everything locked up inside himself. He had a good relationship with his father and with Syd today because Lauren had coaxed him into talking with them after a three-year estrangement.

Yet he had never spoken the full truth to Lauren herself. He had withheld it for her sake, because it was something she did not want to hear, because she might find the knowledge a burden, because it might influence her into sacrificing what was of greatest importance to her—her freedom.

But perhaps she had a right to the truth. Freedom surely involved the right to choose.

Or perhaps he was simply deluding himself into self-indulgence.

But if it was self-indulgence, he thought as he rode into the village of Upper Newbury two days later on a blustery day and took a room at the inn on the green, it felt remarkably uncomfortable. The village was picturesque, and there was another part of it—Lower Newbury?—at the bottom of a steep hill, he could see from his room, its small houses clustered about a sheltered harbor, which nevertheless could not disguise the roughness of the sea.