A Summer to Remember

Chapter 15

He turned upstairs rather than down, though he had no particular destination in mind. His room, where he could hide out for the rest of the evening? He was at the top of the flight when a voice stopped him.

“Kit.”

He turned and looked down. She was standing with one slippered foot on the bottom stair, one slim hand on the banister. He was feeling grim and humiliated— and grief-stricken, as if he had just lost all that was nearest and dearest to him. His first instinct was to tell her to go back to the drawing room. He was no fitting company for her or for anyone else at the moment. But he did not want to be alone, he realized suddenly. He could not bear to be alone.

“Come,” he said.

He watched her until she was halfway up and then turned to take a candle from a wall sconce. He knew where he would go, where he would take her. He did not wait for her to reach his side, but strode away from the bedchamber wing toward the western wing and the family portrait gallery, which stretched the full width of the house.

The door was kept locked, but he knew that the key was kept in a not-so-secret hiding place inside the large marble urn that stood on the floor nearby. He reached inside for it, unlocked the door, and stood aside while Lauren preceded him into the room. He locked the door behind them.

His single candle threw darting, ominous shadows across the floor and up the walls. It was quite inadequate to light up the whole gallery. And it was cold up here. Sometime during the evening the wind had come up. He could hear rain lashing against the windows. All Lauren had with which to cover her arms was a thin cashmere shawl. He strode along the room, shadowy, barely visible ancestors gazing silently down at him from their heavy ornate frames on the walls, and Lauren followed. Neither of them spoke until he came to the great marble fireplace in the center of the long wall, flanked by wide, velvet-covered benches with low backs.

A fire had been laid in the hearth. He knelt down and lit the kindling with the flame of his candle and then set it on the mantelpiece. He stood looking down into the feeble flames, listening to the crackling of wood, feeling the first thread of warmth.

He was reminded of the night before. There was a strong similarity of circumstances but a far different atmosphere. There would be no comforting and lulling exchange of stories tonight. Tonight he was staring deep into the abyss of all his worst and most frequent nightmares. The ones he had not told her about last night. The ones he had shared with no one for three interminable years.

Lauren, he sensed rather than saw, sat down on one of the benches. She made no attempt to speak to him. He had not expected that she would. She was one of a rare breed, he had learned. She was a giver rather than a taker. And God help him, he was about to take from her. He was about to use her as an audience, as he had begun to do last night. He was about to force her to hear what he was compelled to say. He had bottled it inside for too long. He would surely go mad—literally insane—if he did not tell her. He would not allow himself to consider the impropriety of telling such a tale to a gently raised lady.

“It was I who first suggested that Syd purchase a commission,” he said abruptly. “I had come to England on official business and dashed home for a week’s leave. I accused him of softness and inactivity. A military life would toughen him up and make a man of him, I told him. It was said as a joke. I did not mean it, and he knew I did not. I was inordinately fond of him—and he of me, more is the pity. But I had planted the seed in his mind, and before I knew it, he was urging our father to purchase him a commission. At first I joined the chorus of protest and told him not to be an idiot, that there were more important things for him to do than brandish a sword at Frenchmen. But when I saw that his mind was made up, I was—God help me, I was taken with the idea. When Mother pleaded with me to talk him out of it, I told her it was Syd’s decision, that I would not interfere. I could easily have done what she wanted. He would have listened to me. But I did not do it.”

Flames were licking about the larger logs wedged above the kindling. Warmth was beginning to radiate beyond the hearth.

“I was good at my job as a reconnaissance officer,” he continued. “It was a lonely, dangerous job, but I had the physical stamina and the mental fortitude for it as well as a well-developed love of a challenge. It was a job that needed a will of steel and a heart of flint. There was no room for fear, for indecision, for pity, for any of the finer sensibilities that a gentleman might permit himself in more civilized circumstances. Too many lives depended upon me alone. But I did it willingly and well. Honor and duty were all that mattered. They were right and good. I did not ever expect to have to choose between honor and love. They ought to be on the same side, ought they not? On the side of right? It should be not only possible to choose both but impossible to separate them. What would you do if they were on opposite sides? Which would you choose?”

He did not expect an answer even though he paused for several moments to gaze into the dancing flames. He had almost forgotten that he had an audience, except that he felt all the uncertain relief of finally unburdening himself to another human being. He would take any judgment that might follow. He would take any punishment. God grant only that it be harsh enough and painful enough to bring him some absolution—provided it was not everlasting, as the guilt was now.

“Syd persuaded Colonel Grant to allow him to accompany me on one of my missions,” he said. He did not want to continue. He could not continue. But neither could he stop. He leaned one arm along the mantel, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did. I raged and stormed at both of them, but to no avail. Grant was his usual inflexible self, and Syd merely went quietly and cheerfully about his preparations. Two things were wrong about that mission—three if one counts the fact that I had my brother with me. First, the nature of the task made it imperative that we travel without uniform. It was very rare. I had done it only two or three times before. Second, I had papers with me—usually there was nothing written, nothing tangible, but this time there was. If they had fallen into French hands . . . Well, they simply could not be allowed to do so, that was all. But on our second day out we became trapped in the mountains of Portugal by a French scouting party—something that had never happened to me before.”

He curled his hand into a fist and rested his forehead against it. His heart was beating so loudly he could hear it hammering against his eardrums.

“There was one slim chance of breaking out,” he said. “Syd was the one who saw it. If one of us created a diversion, something that would mean certain capture, the other might be able to get away. The choice of which of us would court capture and which would continue on his way with the papers was mine to make—I was the superior officer. Syd had no experience. Even if he had broken free, the chances were slim that he would successfully complete the mission. It had to be completed. Honor dictated that I do all in my power to serve the allied cause. Honor dictated that I be the one to escape the trap. Love dictated that I choose the more painful role. Which would you have chosen, Lauren?”

She spoke for the first time. “Kit,” she said softly, “Oh, Kit, my dear.”

“I chose honor,” he said, pressing his forehead so hard against his fist that he felt—and welcomed—pain. “God help me, I took the chance of escape and assigned my brother the role of scapegoat.”

From a position high in a mountain pass, after he had broken free of the encircling trap, he had looked back to see Syd being led away captive. He had continued on his way and had completed his mission successfully. He had been highly commended afterward, mentioned in dispatches, hailed as a fearless hero. One of God’s bizarre jokes.

“It was war,” Lauren said.

“It was worse than war.” His nightmares were clawing at his waking self. He was about to face the dreaded images quite deliberately. He was about to verbalize them to a lady, who should be protected from the harsh realities of life and war, not deliberately exposed to them. But his own need to achieve some sort of catharsis overwhelmed his sense of decorum. “War is a game, you see—a vicious game. If a British officer is captured in uniform, he is treated with honor and courtesy while held in captivity. If he is not in uniform, then he is treated with all the ferocity the French and the Spanish and Portuguese partisans show one another’s captives. I knew that before my decision was made.”

He had known it. He had known it. It had been in the forefront of his mind when he had hesitated for the merest fraction of a moment before making his decision. He had known what would be facing the one of them who was caught. There had been time for only a quick bear hug . . .

“I met up with a group of partisans the same day,” he continued. “I could have sent them back to rescue Syd. They could have done it—they outnumbered the French. But I needed them—all of them. My damned mission had need of them. Two weeks passed before we were finished and could find Syd and spring him free. I did not expect to find him still alive, but he lived—barely.”

If only memory were not such a starkly visual thing. He closed his eyes more tightly. If only it were only visual. But there were sounds. And smells. Who would have guessed that in one’s nightmares one could smell burned flesh?

“They had started on his right side,” he said, “and worked their way gradually downward with exquisitely wrought tortures of burning, crushing, and gouging. They had reached his right knee before we found him. Our surgeons saved his leg, but his arm had to be amputated after we had got him back to base. That journey!” He sucked in air slowly and audibly. “He had given away nothing under torture—not my name or my destination or the purpose of my mission. Only his own name, rank, and regiment, repeated over and over again, night and day, even after we had him back. They had not broken him, except in body. Had he broken, of course, and told them what they wanted to know, they would have granted him a swift and merciful death.”

He heard a soft expulsion of breath behind him, but she said nothing.

“I sacrificed my brother,” he said, “for honor. And then I had all the glory of success. I was trained, you see, to have a heart of flint, to be ruthlessly opportunistic and selfish in the accomplishment of my duties. I sacrificed my brother, and then I brought him home and created mayhem here with the lives and sensibilities of the rest of my family. I behaved badly that summer, Lauren. Shamefully. It is a good thing you have insisted upon a temporary betrothal. I would not be a good lifelong bargain. I amputated myself, you see, in exchange for becoming a glorious hero. There is nothing of me left.” He laughed softly. “Nothing but honor.”

“He is alive,” she said. His sensible, matter-of-fact Lauren. “Kit, he is alive.”

“He breathes.” He spoke harshly. “He is not alive, Lauren. He will never be that again. He is my father’s steward here, for God’s sake. He plans to accept the salaried position of steward on one of Bewcastle’s properties. You do not understand, of course, the dreadful nature of such a fate. How could you? Sydnam was an artist. No, is—he is an artist. His landscape paintings were the most extraordinary canvases I have ever seen. There was craftsmanship there and an eye for color and atmosphere and detail and . . . Ah, how can an ordinary mortal like me describe the—the soul that was there? His painting breathed with what even a layman like me could sense was the very meaning of the scene he depicted. He was a gentle man and a dreamer and a visionary and . . . And now he is serving a life sentence inside the prison of a ruined body, capable of nothing loftier than being someone’s steward.”

“Kit,” she said, “you must not do this to yourself, dear. It was war. And you did what was right. You made the right decision. You did your duty. It was what you had to do.”

“How could it be right?” he cried. “When I see him so maimed and scarred, when I see my sweet-natured Syd shut up deep inside himself, rejecting my every overture of sympathy, hating me, how can I believe that what I did was right?”

“It just was,” she said. “Some things have no neat explanation, Kit. Life is not like that, unfortunately. One can spend all of one’s life doing the right things and going unrewarded in the end. One can find oneself forced into making a choice between two courses that seem equally right but only one can be chosen. You made the right choice.”

A part of him knew with the utmost certainty that if he had the choice to make over again he would take the same course—and suffer the same hell of remorse and guilt afterward.

“‘I could not love thee, dear, so much/Loved I not honor more,’ ” he said quietly. “Who wrote those lines? Do you know?”

“Richard Lovelace, I believe,” she said. “One of the Cavalier poets.”

“Never believe it,” he said. “It is a lie. Nothing should come before love.”

“If you had made the other choice,” she said after a short silence filled with the howling of the wind and the lashing of the rain, “and if hundreds, perhaps thousands, had suffered as a result, Kit, you would never have forgiven yourself.”

He laughed softly. “I would not have needed to. I would be dead.”

“You did your duty,” she said softly. “It is all any of us can do, Kit.”

He kept his eyes closed and his forehead pressed to his fist. He allowed her words to envelop him, to soothe him, to comfort him, very much—for the moment at least—like absolution.

For the past several minutes Lauren had been feeling very much as if she were going to faint. She had always tried to avoid any sight or mention of violence, believing that ladies should have no dealings with such sordid realities. It had never been particularly difficult to do. Most gentlemen seemed to hold the same belief. She could remember an occasion when Lily, newly come to Newbury, had launched eagerly into a conversation about the wars—she had grown up in the train of the armies, first in India, then in the Peninsula, as the supposed daughter of an infantry sergeant. Lauren, consumed by secret hatred at the time, had tried to appease her conscience by instructing Lily in what would be expected of her as the Countess of Kilbourne. She could recall advising Lily that a lady did not speak of the wars or listen to any conversation about them.

She had been so very righteous in those days, so convinced that she was right. So much the perfect lady. So unbearably prim.

But now she could not shake from her mind the horrifying images of torture that Kit had conjured up, though he had given no details. Or the image of the regimental surgeon plying his trade, saw in hand, amputating a man’s arm. She could almost smell the blood.

At one point she had considered trying to change the subject, as she had done so successfully last night. But the two occasions, so similar on the surface, were in fact entirely different. Tonight the unfortunate incident in the drawing room with Sydnam Butler had ripped away everything he had put there to cover the gaping wound of his deepest agony. Tonight it would have been cruel, unthinkable, unpardonable, to have tried to stop him. Tonight he had needed to unburden his conscience more, perhaps, than he had needed anything else in his life before.

And so she had sat straight and still on the wide velvet bench, her feet neatly side by side on the floor, her hands clasping the ends of her shawl, determinedly clinging to consciousness, fighting the ringing in her ears, the coldness in her head. The fact that she was a delicately, correctly nurtured lady was of no significance. She had resisted the urge to shift the focus of her hearing to the wind and the rain outside. She had listened carefully to every single word.

She had not cringed or allowed herself to faint. She knew what it felt like to lock up everything that was most painful inside oneself, not sharing one’s hurt even with one’s dearest friend. She knew all about pain and loneliness and even despair. Perhaps that was why he had chosen her as his audience, even if it had not been a conscious choice. Perhaps he simply recognized in her a fellow sufferer.

There was no doubt that he had done what was right. She had told him that, and of course he must know it for himself. But she realized too that knowing it would not really ease his pain. She knew he would never forgive himself for not doing the wrong thing. It was pointless to add words to words. She sat quietly and waited, giving him all the time he needed. She was glad he had locked the gallery door behind them. There was no danger of anyone rushing in before he was ready to face the world again.

After a while, when she sensed somehow that the time was right, she got to her feet without speaking and closed the distance between them. She set her arms about his waist from behind and rested her cheek against his shoulder, intent upon giving him all the comfort of her physical presence, for what it was worth. She felt him inhale slowly and deeply. She both felt and heard the breath shudder out of him. And then he turned and caught her to him, crushing her against him with arms that felt like iron bands. She felt all the breath rush out of her, but it did not occur to her to feel alarm or to struggle to be free. He needed her.

Plainly and simply stated, he needed her. And it did not occur to her for a single moment to resist his need.

When his mouth found hers, it was hard and urgent, grinding her lips against her teeth, bruising them, pressing them apart. His tongue plunged deep into her mouth. One of his hands, spread over her lower back, jerked her hard against him, leaving her in no doubt of the sexual turn his need had taken.

She felt curiously detached. The part of her that was the Lauren Edgeworth, perfect lady, stood some distance away, coolly analyzing, admonishing her with the reminder that this was the inevitable consequence of all the impropriety that had characterized her dealings with him from the very start—from the very moment she had looked back over her shoulder at him in Hyde Park. This was the consequence of being repeatedly alone with him, having deceived her family and his into allowing it on the assumption that they were betrothed. This was the sort of unbridled, dangerous passion one must expect to be unleashed by the unseemly talk of violence she had allowed when they were alone together behind locked doors.

This had to be stopped right now.

The other, less familiar, formerly unsuspected part of herself that had been born at Vauxhall—or perhaps much earlier than that, in the park—stayed present in his arms and recognized that she was a woman, that he had need of her, that she had warmth and femininity and humanity to offer him in his need. And the freedom to give all if she chose. Choices again. Until recently—ah, until now—choices had never been difficult. She had always known, by the rigid code of gentility, what was right. She had never known the code of the heart. Honor or love? They were opposed, as they had been for him. But this time it was love that could—and should—triumph.

She chose love, though she did not perhaps use that word to herself since her thoughts were not verbal ones.

This, she thought quite clearly— this was what she had meant at Vauxhall. She knew it with a sudden blinding intuition. This was what she had meant. This coming alive to the woman who had been locked away all her life inside the lady who was Lauren Edgeworth.

His mouth was against her throat, on her shoulders, at her breasts. His hands were moving urgently against the flimsy fabric of her evening gown, pushing it off her shoulders and down her arms, exposing her breasts. She did not flinch even though there were both firelight and candlelight to make her feel doubly exposed. She was a woman and he needed her. She would give, then. She needed too—she needed to be a woman. She shivered with mingled fright and excitement as his mouth closed warmly over one breast and suckled her, his tongue flicking over her nipple and suffusing her from head to toe in raw desire. She cupped a hand with infinite gentleness over the back of his head and set a cheek against his soft fair hair.

He moved his head to set his forehead against her shoulder.

“Stop me,” he said, his voice both rough and husky. “For God’s sake, Lauren, stop me.”

“No.” She lifted his head with both hands and looked into his face, her fingers gently stroking through his hair. “This is what I choose, Kit. What I freely choose. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” She could not bear it now if he did. “This is not just for you. It is for me too.” She feathered light kisses over his face as she spoke, kissing his cheeks, his eyes, his mouth.

He was holding her again then, just as close, and kissing her just as deeply as before except that the frenzied urgency had gone, to be replaced by hot passion mingled with what felt very like tenderness. As if she had become for him not just a woman, but Lauren too. Her naked breasts pressed against his coat.

She was giver and gift. He was gift and giver.

It was upon one of the velvet benches that he laid her down after another minute or two. It was quite wide enough to make a narrow bed, she realized. She reached up her arms for him, but he was raising her gown to her waist, removing her silk slippers, her stockings and her undergarments, unbuttoning the front flap of his breeches. His eyes, heavy-lidded with desire, roamed over her. His hair was disheveled, his cheeks flushed. He looked beautiful beyond belief.

Lauren Edgeworth, that disciplined lady, stood apart again for a moment and informed her other self that she was simply not thinking, that she would forever regret what would happen unless she put a stop to it now. But the point was that she was thinking. This was not mindless passion. It was not even passion, in fact. It was something more primal, more deeply emotional than that. It was something she knew with absolute certainty she would never regret.

He knelt beside the bench, kissing her face with light, feathering kisses. With his hands he fondled her, doing exquisite things with her breasts, holding them, stroking them, rolling the hardened, tender nipples between thumbs and forefingers. And then with one hand he fondled her there, his fingers nimbly probing her naked flesh, parting folds, stroking, lightly scratching, pulsing, finding the most intimate part of her and sliding inward.

She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly.

She knew what happened between a man and a woman. Aunt Clara had explained it to her before her planned wedding to Neville. She had sometimes tried to imagine it, though more often she had tried not to. It must be embarrassing, utterly distasteful, she had always thought. She had imagined it as a purely carnal thing, totally stripped of emotion or even of any tactile sensation apart from the humiliating penetration of her body that must occur.

She had never suspected that there would be this ache, this yearning, this eagerness to be penetrated, to be joined. This need—emotional as well as physical—to give and to be gifted. Was this passion? If so, it was not mindless at all.

“Lauren.” His mouth was warm over hers. “It is not too late to stop me.”

“Don’t stop.” She did not open her eyes. “Kit . . .”

He had removed his coat and waistcoat. His shirt felt warm and silky against her naked breasts. So did his breeches against her inner thighs as he pushed between them and spread them wide. His weight bore her down into the velvet cushions of the bench. It made her feel more defenseless, on the verge of alarm. Open and vulnerable. And pulsing with a heightened need that was almost unbearable.

She felt him then, pressed against the place where his finger had been just moments before. But much thicker, harder . . . She breathed in slowly as he came inside her, slowly, stretching her, filling her with a terrifying sort of exultation. There was no going back now, no stopping him. It was too late, and she was glad it was too late. She gripped his shoulders and concentrated upon not showing either fear or pain. There was pain. There was no more room. He was going to hurt her—but she had been told it would hurt. Then something tore inside her, something that for a moment threatened unbearable pain and then was gone, just as the barrier of her virginity was gone. He pushed deep.

“Lauren,” he murmured against her ear. “Sweet. So very sweet. Have I hurt you?”

“No.” Her voice sounded shockingly normal.

She should lie still and relaxed, Aunt Clara had advised, until her husband had finished. Her husband.

Finished? Had he finished now?

He drew out of her and she felt a pang of regret. This was all? Once in a lifetime and it was over already, to be relived only in dreams for the rest of her life? Over so soon? But at the moment she expected him to withdraw altogether he pushed back inward. There was soreness. There was also an exquisite silken feeling and the knowledge that there were to be a few moments longer. She wanted to beg him to do it again, but even at such a moment she knew a lady’s reluctance to appear gauche or to make foolish demands.

He did it again. And again. She lay still, holding his shoulders as if they were the only anchor of her existence, quietly absorbing all the forbidden delights of her shocking fall from virtue.

She was glad. What reward had virtue ever brought her? Virtue was its own reward, she had always believed. But it was not. Virtue was no reward at all.

Did he know how good it made her feel, this repeated thrust and withdrawal, which had become smooth and rhythmic? Did he know? Was that why he did it? To delight her? But she could hear his labored breathing, and she could feel his increased body heat, and she knew that of course he did it because it delighted him. She delighted him.

She delighted him. She, Lauren Edgeworth. She smiled and focused all her thoughts, all her feelings, downward. She would drink this cup of pleasure to the very dregs. The memory would last her a lifetime.

His hands slid beneath her before she was more than halfway down the cup, holding her buttocks firm, tilting her upward, and his thrusts became harder, faster, deeper. A sharp ache of pure pleasure came swirling upward through her belly to focus in her breasts, but before it could be repeated, far too soon, it seemed—how greedy she was!—he strained deep into her and she felt a warm liquid gush.

Ah. He was finished.

And she was not.

Did women ever finish? Did they ever begin? Was there only the delight and the reaching for something beyond one’s grasp? But the delight was enough. She was not sorry. She would never be sorry. She would not allow her conscience to scold her later tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of her life. She was glad this had happened. It had been one of the loveliest experiences of her life. No—it was the loveliest.

She thought he must have fallen asleep for a few minutes. She ran her fingers through his hair and turned her head to gaze into the fire, which was sending crackling sparks up the chimney as the logs burned down. She listened to the cozy sound of rain against the window.

“Mmm,” he said after a while, and he lifted his head to look down at her. “I do not have to say I am sorry, do I, Lauren? I did not force—”

She set the fingers of one hand over his mouth. “You know you did not,” she said. “I will not be on your conscience, Kit.”

He smiled—a sleepy, warm smile. “I will say thank you instead, then,” he said. “Thank you, Lauren, for such a precious gift. Was it very painful? I have heard it is so the first time.”

“It was not very,” she assured him.

He lifted himself off her then and stood up to adjust his clothing, his back to her. He held his handkerchief out to her without turning.

“Use this,” he said.

She had been wondering how she would manage. There was blood, she discovered. But even now, though her hand shook as she cleansed herself, she could not bring herself to a full realization of the enormity of what she had done. That came only after she had put herself to rights and was sitting on the edge of the bench, all neat and respectable again, the soiled handkerchief balled in one hand.

“Well,” Kit said, turning and smiling cheerfully at her, “we are going to have to decide upon a wedding date, aren’t we?”