A Summer to Remember

Chapter 18

The following morning presented Lauren with an opportunity to talk privately with Sydnam Butler, something she had not accomplished before. He was not often visible during the day, and during the evenings he invariably sat in the drawing room window, his very posture discouraging company. She had no real wish to talk with him at all, but she had come here to help Kit be reconciled with his family. The deepest hurt of all, she had discovered two nights before, involved his younger brother.

A number of the men and boys had gone fishing with Kit, Lauren’s grandfather among them. Several of the ladies, including Gwen and Aunt Clara, had gone into the village to see the few shops and to view the Norman church. Lauren had stayed behind to wander among the flowerbeds and through the hothouses with the countess and help her make final plans for decorations for the birthday. When that task was completed she accompanied the dowager on her morning walk to the rose arbor and back.

Mr. Sydnam Butler was riding alone up the driveway, Lauren saw as they slowly climbed the steps on their return to the house. He appeared to do it very well considering the fact that he had only one arm. She felt very sorry for his disabilities, but she did not feel particularly kindly disposed to him. He had been unfair to Kit.

The dowager took the arm of her favorite footman, a stout, good-natured young man, for the climb up the stairs to her room. Lauren excused herself and went back outside. She hardly knew what she intended to do as she stood on the steps again, her eyes on the stables. Kit’s brother came walking out onto the terrace a few moments later. He limped ever so slightly, she noticed, perhaps as a result of stiffness from his ride. The limp disappeared after a few steps. He hesitated for a moment when he noticed her, and then came onward.

“Good morning, Miss Edgeworth,” he said when he was close enough. He touched the brim of his hat with his whip.

“Mr. Butler.”

She felt dislike—and guilt. But why feel guilt merely because he was maimed? She did dislike him. He had consigned Kit to a sort of permanent hell for no good reason. Yet Kit still loved him.

He smiled his crooked smile when he came to the foot of the steps and would have gone on past.

“Mr. Butler, will you walk with me?” Lauren asked.

He looked at her in evident surprise. He drew breath—to offer some excuse, she guessed. But he closed his mouth again, bowed, and turned to walk with her across the terrace and out onto the wide lawn on which the cricket match had been played the day before.

“The weather is not quite as lovely as yesterday,” he remarked.

“No, there are some clouds today.”

She almost lost her courage. But their bargain aside, she was concerned about Kit. She cared about him—she cared for him. Much too deeply for comfort. She clasped her arms behind her and drew breath.

“Mr. Butler,” she asked, “why will you not forgive him?” It did not occur to her that perhaps he would not know what she was talking about.

“Ah,” he said softly. “Is that what he has told you? Poor Kit.”

“Is he mistaken, then?” She frowned.

He said nothing for a while as they strolled diagonally in the direction of the trees. Then he sighed.

“It is far too complicated an issue,” he said at last. “You need not concern yourself with any of it, Miss Edgeworth. And you need not fear that I will be here indefinitely to blight your happiness and Kit’s. I will be leaving within the next month or so, I believe. I will be taking a post with the Duke of Bewcastle.”

“As a steward?” she asked. “That upsets Kit, you know. He tells me you were not made for such a life, that you were— are—an artist. He loves you. Do you not realize that?”

He stopped walking and gazed at the grass ahead of them before turning his head and looking directly at her. Lauren was shockingly aware of how very handsome he had been, of how terribly disfigured he now was. But her dislike of him had not waned.

“And you think I do not love him?” he asked her.

“I think you cannot,” she said, “or you would offer him some comfort. Do you believe he has not suffered just because he does not carry around your wounds?”

He was angry then. Furiously so, judging by the sudden hardness of his eye and tensing of his jaw and flaring of his nostrils. But he brought himself under control before he spoke again.

“Yes, I believe he has suffered,” he said curtly. He turned to look back at the house. “This walk was not a good idea, Miss Edgeworth. Not unless we agree to talk about the weather. I like you. Very much indeed, though I realize the feeling is not mutual. You are kindness and patience itself with my grandmother. You are gracious and amiable with everyone else. You have an obvious affection for my brother. I wish you happiness—both of you. But I must leave. I doubt you will see much of me once I have gone. It will be best for everyone that way. Shall we return?”

But she had heard more than his words alone conveyed. She had heard another sad and lonely soul, too far withdrawn into himself for happiness. Kit, for all his deep misery, had found an audience in her two evenings ago and some comfort. In whom did Sydnam Butler confide his deepest griefs? Was there anyone? He seemed such a very solitary figure.

“There is one thing I am good at,” she told him, ignoring his gesture back in the direction of the house. “I am good at listening. Really listening, instead of hearing only what I want or expect to hear. Tell me what happened. Tell me your version of what happened.”

Kit had told her facts. She did not believe he had lied or tried in any way to mislead her. But sometimes even facts did not tell the complete story. Sometimes there were unconscious omissions or shadings that could change the whole perspective on an event. Get three people to tell what had happened on some tumultuous occasion—her wedding at Newbury, for example—and the chances were that one would get three similar but essentially different stories.

He looked steadily into her eyes for a few moments before turning to continue their stroll away from the house.

“Yes, I was the artist,” he said, “the dreamer, the little brother who was small for his age until he shot up to a gangly height at the age of fifteen. I wonder if Kit has ever noticed that I grew taller than he. Jerome was the solid one, the responsible one, the one who would inherit and be earl one day. He was confident, active, strong. Kit was the mischief-maker, the daredevil, the one at the center of any trouble, the one most often summoned to our father’s library. He was the charismatic one, the bright, laughing one. My boyhood hero. I adored him.”

Lauren said nothing. A largish cloud had just moved off the face of the sun, and there was a flood of welcome brightness and warmth.

“I was everyone’s favorite,” he said. “Sweet little Syd, the gentle dreamer. The one to be protected against all danger, all potential enemies, all punishments.” He chuckled suddenly, and Lauren realized that he had almost forgotten her presence. “One time when I took the boat out and did not secure it properly on my return so that it drifted off into the middle of the lake—even taking it out unsupervised was strictly forbidden, you must understand—Kit confessed to the misdemeanor and was caned. Then after I had heard about it and insisted upon telling the truth and was feeling rather proud of my own stinging rear, Kit got caned again for lying. They both did it—Jerome and Kit. They were forever protecting me. But I was a dreamer, you see, not a weakling.”

“They were overprotective?” Lauren asked.

“Yes.” They had reached the little stream that bubbled over its uneven stony bed on its way to join the river. They turned to walk beside it. “Because they loved me, of course. Love can be an infernal nuisance, Miss Edgeworth. Did you know that?”

It was a rhetorical question. She did not attempt to answer it.

“I wanted so desperately to be like Kit,” he said. “Self-knowledge is far more slowly learned than any of one’s other lessons. Indeed, some people never come close to learning it, and perhaps none of us fully succeeds. I suppose the boat episode must have been an attempt on my part to be as bold as he. My insistence upon becoming a military officer was another. It was utterly foolish. I was not, of course, cut out for such a life. But I had something to prove. To Kit and my family. Most of all to myself.”

“And it ended badly,” Lauren said. “I am very sorry about that. But it was not really Kit’s fault, was it? He did not insist that you purchase a commission. He actively tried to prevent you from joining him on that disastrous spying mission. And his promise to protect you was unrealistic.”

“Of course it was not his fault,” he said fiercely.

Lauren looked curiously at his perfect left profile. “Why then,” she asked him, “do you refuse to forgive him? There is not even anything to forgive, is there? He made the right decision. Didn’t he?”

He looked angry again. They walked onward while Lauren listened to the brook and looked across it to the path of the wilderness walk, just visible among the trees opposite.

“I owed obedience to officers of superior rank,” he said at last. “At that time I was a lieutenant while Kit was a major, two ranks above me. He was my superior. More than that, on that particular mission he was my commanding officer. Had he ordered me to stay and be captured, I would have obeyed him without question. He did not so order. I volunteered. Did he tell you that?”

“No,” she said after a brief, silent moment. “He did tell me that you were the one to spot the possibility of escape for one of you.”

“He never ordered me to do it,” Sydnam said. “I volunteered. He was horribly silent, wasting precious moments after I had suggested it, knowing very well as a loyal officer himself that there was no alternative. But he could not bring himself to give the order. I volunteered again. I insisted. And then I hugged him and I ordered him—a superior officer—to get out of there. I chose to stay. Even though he would have ordered me to do so eventually—because duty must come before a brother, you will understand— I would not burden him with having to do it. I volunteered.”

“Then why . . .” Lauren frowned. “Why?”

“Kit will have told you that I was tortured,” he said. “I will not horrify you with any of the details, Miss Edgeworth. I hope he has not. I will say only this. For days and days on end death seemed the most attractive, desirable gift ever dangled before my eyes. I could have grasped that gift at any moment for the price of a little information. I did not do so because I was an officer, because it was my duty to keep silent. I did not break because I was capable of not breaking. I surprised even myself, because hell could not possibly be worse than— Pardon me. Eventually I knew—beyond a certain point I knew that I would have the strength of will to die the hard way. I knew it and a part of me exulted in the knowledge. I was so very proud of myself.” He laughed softly. “And then Kit and a gang of partisans rescued me.”

Lauren understood suddenly. He did not need to complete his story. She understood. But having begun it, he needed to tell it. They had come to the junction of the stream and the river and had stopped walking. Lauren gazed off into the deer forest beyond and waited.

“Again I was poor Syd,” he said. “I went through amputation and other painful procedures. I went through the delirium of fever and the ordeal of the voyage home. And all the time I was poor Syd. I arrived home and Kit took all the blame on himself. I was just poor Syd, who should not have been allowed to go in the first place. I was poor Syd, whom my brother had failed to protect. Kit came very close to madness that summer—because he had sacrificed his young brother, because he could not take the wounds and the sufferings of poor Syd upon himself. Pardon me for being bitter. I could not make any of them understand. I gave up trying.”

“They would not simply rejoice with you?” Lauren asked quietly.

He looked at her sharply. “You do understand?”

She nodded, and her eyes filled with tears, something that seemed to be happening to her rather too often these days.

“Yes, I understand.” She set one hand tentatively on his arm and then stretched up to place one gentle kiss against his good cheek. She hesitated only a moment before kissing his withered, purple-skinned right cheek as well. “You were every bit as much a part of the success of that mission as Kit was. No, you were the greater part, because your role was so much more dangerous and painful and lonely. There is nothing sad or pathetic about you, Sydnam Butler. You are a great hero and I honor you.”

His grin was lopsided and rather sheepish.

“Yes indeed,” she said severely, “love can be an abomination when it insists upon wrapping the loved one in cotton wool, when it will not trust the strength of the one it loves. I am quite sure you have made yourself into the world’s most competent steward.”

They laughed together and turned to walk back to the house.

“You are going to have to talk to Kit, you know,” she said as they approached the terrace. “Even if you have to tie him down and gag him.”

“I think not,” he said, though he chuckled at her words.

“Please?” she begged softly.

Baron Galton had come by gig with Sir Melvin Clifford to the stretch of riverbank where all the men and boys had gathered to fish, but he chose to walk with Kit back to the house, relinquishing his place in the vehicle to the earl.

“A dashed good spot for fishing,” he said.

“We have always had pleasure from it,” Kit agreed. “There are few more relaxing ways to spend a morning.”

The others strode on ahead, talking all at once, it appeared, and bearing the morning’s catch with them. Kit reduced his stride to accommodate the slower pace of the elderly gentleman.

“I am planning, sir,” he said when there was no longer any possibility of their being overheard, “to institute an inquiry. I was a reconnaissance officer for a number of years, as you know, and have several useful contacts at both the Foreign Office and the War Office. I know many officers who are still active in the field too. I believe you should be aware of what I plan to do. I hope to discover exactly where, when, and how Mrs. Wyatt, Lauren’s mother, your daughter, died.”

“Why?” Baron Galton looked at him sharply. “What the devil do you want to know that for?”

Kit was somewhat taken aback by his almost hostile tone. “You have never been curious yourself, sir?”

“Never!” the old man assured him. “They met with some misadventure and died and word did not get back to us. That is all. People—sons, daughters, parents—die every day, Ravensberg. We can do nothing to bring them back once they are gone. It is pointless to spend time and money and effort simply to discover what we already know. It is best to leave them in peace and get on with our own lives.”

A sensible attitude, perhaps, but it did not seem quite natural for a father to be so unconcerned about his daughter’s fate.

“You made no inquiries at the time, sir?” he asked.

“At what time?” the baron asked. “They never did write often. How were we to know they were even missing until years had gone by? By then any inquiry would have been fruitless.”

“Did the Earl of Kilbourne make no attempt to locate his brother? Or discover what had happened to him?”

“Look here, Ravensberg.” Baron Galton had stopped walking and was regarding Kit sternly from beneath bushy eyebrows. “I have no doubt you are a clever young man and are eager to impress your betrothed by discovering what no one else has discovered in ten or fifteen years. But take my advice and leave it. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Kit looked steadily back at him. “Good God, sir,” he said with sudden insight, “you know, do you not?”

The old gentleman pursed his lips and looked broodingly at him. “Leave it,” he said again.

Kit leaned slightly toward him, his hands clasped at his back. “You know,” he said. “But Lauren does not. Why? What happened?”

“She was a child, that was why,” the baron said irritably. “She had a good home with Kilbourne and his countess. She was happy and secure. She had companions of her own age and good prospects. She was only three when her mother left, little more than a baby. She quickly forgot her, as children do. Kilbourne and his wife became her parents. She could not have asked for better. You can see for yourself that the Dowager Lady Kilbourne loves her every bit as much as she loves her own daughter.”

“You believe that Lauren did not miss her mother?” Kit was still frowning. “That she did not feel abandoned? That she did not suffer when the infrequent letters and gifts stopped coming?”

“Of course she did not.” Baron Galton spoke firmly and turned to resume walking. “She never once asked. She never spoke of her mother. She never stopped being as serene and happy as she had always been. You may wonder how I can be so sure when I visited her only rarely. I love my granddaughter, Ravensberg. I dote on her. She is all I have of my own. I would have had her to live with me at the snap of two fingers, but it would have been selfish of me. She was happier where she was. I wrote weekly to Kilbourne until his death and he wrote weekly to me. Lauren was a model child and then a model young lady. She was rarely if ever disobedient. She never neglected her lessons or her other duties. She was never discontented or demanding. She was less trouble than either of Kilbourne’s own children. There was no need to upset her unnecessarily with news of a mother she had long forgotten.”

“Kilbourne knew the truth too, then?” Kit asked.

“Of course he did,” Baron Galton replied. “Forget about your inquiries, Ravensberg. And forget about upsetting my granddaughter by dredging up what is long in the past. Leave it be.”

“What did happen?” Kit asked.

The old gentleman sighed. “I suppose,” he said, “you have a right to know. I would have felt it my duty to inform you before you committed yourself to a betrothal to Lauren, had you given me an opportunity to do so. But I was presented with a fait accompli instead. My daughter was as unlike my granddaughter as it is possible to be, Ravensberg. She was always a great trial to her mother and me. She married Whitleaf just to be free of us, I believe, though I approved the match. She led him a merry dance. It was something of a scandal when she married Wyatt a mere ten months after Whitleaf’s death. By some miracle, though, that very marriage gave Lauren a good, steady home, where she was soon loved for herself. I never heard one murmur from either Kilbourne or his countess about bad blood. And they were quite as eager for the match between their son and my granddaughter as I was.”

They walked in silence for a while. Kit offered no comment that might distract his companion’s train of thought.

“Their wedding trip turned into a permanent way of life,” Lord Galton continued eventually. “She—Miriam—was forever wanting Lauren to join them, but I flatly refused to send her, and Kilbourne backed me on that decision. She was no fit mother, and they lived no fitting style of life for a child. There were forever rumors about their wild excesses and debaucheries, brought home by other travelers. Finally, Ravensberg, when they were in India, she left Wyatt in order to take up residence with some fabulously wealthy Indian potentate, and he resumed his travels with a Frenchwoman of questionable reputation. He died five years later—ten years ago—somewhere in South America. Kilbourne did not go into public mourning—mainly for Lauren’s sake. He did not want to have to hurt her with explanations. She was sixteen years old at the time—an impressionable age.”

“Good God! And Mrs. Wyatt?” Kit asked.

“The last I heard, she was still in India, with some official of the East India Company,” Baron Galton said curtly. “She writes once or twice a year, usually to Lauren. She is dead to me, Ravensberg, and by damn she will remain dead to my granddaughter if I have any say in the matter.”

“You—or Kilbourne—have kept her mother’s letters from her? You do not believe she should know the truth?” Kit asked. “That her mother is still alive?”

“I do not.”

The house was well in sight. It had been a lengthy walk for an elderly gentleman who obviously did not indulge in a great deal of exercise. He was breathing heavily.

“Perhaps,” he said sternly, “you feel you have made a bad bargain in your choice of bride, Ravensberg. But it was your choice to rush into a betrothal. And by God you will treat her kindly, or you will have me to answer to for as long as I am spared from my grave.”

“You need not worry about that, sir,” Kit said. “I love your granddaughter.”

The lie was spoken without thought, but it could not be recalled. And it was not such a great untruth, was it? He had grown enormously fond of Lauren. He had lain awake half the night before, thinking about her, wishing she were there in the bed beside him, curled warm and relaxed and asleep against him as she had in the hut and on the island, realizing that after she left there was going to be a yawning emptiness in his life for some time to come. The idea of actually marrying her was becoming more and more appealing to him. The need somehow to persuade her to marry him was becoming more and more imperative, quite aside from the fact that she might be with child by him.

Yet how could he coerce her when it seemed that the greatest gift he could give her was her freedom?

“Then you will protect her from the sordid truth,” Baron Galton said, “as I have done. As the late Kilbourne and his countess and their son have done. If you love her, you will never breathe a word to her of what really happened to her mother. She is far happier in her ignorance.”

“Yes, of course, sir. I will do all in my power to protect her.”

But she was not happy, he thought. All those who had loved her all her life were wrong about that. She had cultivated obedience and gentility and placidity in order to hide the hurt of being a child unwanted by her own mother. She had made herself into the perfect lady to win the love of her adopted family—so that they too would not abandon her. She believed her grandfather had not wanted the bother of caring for her. She believed—rightly, it seemed—that her father’s family had openly rejected her.

She was not happy. She had lived behind the mask for so long—for at least twenty-three of her twenty-six years—that even those nearest and dearest to her seemed to believe that the mask was the reality. Perhaps he was the only person on this earth who had seen the eager, vital, laughter-loving, sensual, truly beautiful woman who was the real Lauren Edgeworth.

But it was indeed a sordid story. Under the circumstances perhaps her grandfather and the Kilbournes had made the right decision to keep it from her. What would it do to her to discover now that her mother still lived, that she was, apparently, promiscuous?

That she had never stopped writing to her daughter?

That she had wanted Lauren to live with her?

“No.” Kit stopped walking again. They were very close to the house. “No, sir, I cannot agree with you. Lauren has suffered from not knowing. She would suffer too from knowing. Perhaps it would be a kindness to keep the truth from her, to protect her because she is a lady and has lived a sheltered life. But I don’t believe so. I believe she has the right to know.”

“You would tell her, then,” Baron Galton asked, clearly angry, “when I have spoken to you in strictest confi-dence?”

Kit looked steadily back at him. “Yes, I believe I will, sir,” he said, “if I am given no alternative. I will tell her the truth after I marry her. Not before then. I beg you to do it. The story should come from you. She needs the truth. You need to trust her with it. You need to set her free.”

“Free?” The old gentleman frowned. He drew breath to say more, but closed his mouth again.

“Please, sir?” Kit asked softly.