A Summer to Remember

Chapter 19

Lauren had fully expected the day before the dowager’s birthday to be a busy one since she had committed herself to helping the countess with the last-minute preparations. But looking back on it later, she marveled that any day could be so eventful and still contain only twenty-four hours. She had never lived through a more tumultuous, emotion-packed day.

It began after breakfast when she was already busy with the countess in the latter’s private sitting room, drawing up a written schedule for the next day’s division of labor. The earl and countess would officially greet all comers during the afternoon—outdoors if weather permitted—and judge all the contests that had been announced in the village and the surrounding countryside a month or more ago. Kit and Lauren would organize and run the children’s races. The countess would . . .

But there was a knock on the door and at the countess’s summons it opened to reveal an apologetic Aunt Clara, with Gwen behind her.

“I am so sorry to interrupt you, Lady Redfield,” Aunt Clara said, lifting her right hand to reveal an opened letter, “but I simply could not wait to let Lauren know the news.”

Lauren got to her feet. She had noticed Gwen’s suppressed excitement at the same moment as she saw the ducal crest at the head of the letter—the Duke of Portfrey’s crest, that was.

“Elizabeth has been delivered safely of a boy,” Aunt Clara announced before they all disgraced themselves by falling into one another’s arms and laughing and crying and exclaiming.

“The Duchess of Portfrey?” the countess asked, getting to her feet and hugging Lauren. “Well, this news is as good an excuse for an interruption of work as any I have heard. Do sit down, ladies, and I will have a pot of chocolate brought up. I am quite sure Lauren is ready to hear every sentence of that letter. If she is not, I am.”

The duke had written that his son and heir had arrived earlier than expected, but with ten fingers and ten toes, a powerful set of lungs, and a voracious appetite. Elizabeth was recovering well after a long and difficult delivery. As soon as mother and child could safely travel, he was intending to take them to Newbury Abbey so that the newborn Marquess of Watford could become acquainted with Lily, his half-sister, and Elizabeth could be fussed over by her own family for a month or so.

“Oh, Lauren,” Gwen said, tightening her grasp on her cousin’s hands, “Mama and I must go home early to prepare for their arrival. Not that we will need to do anything, of course. Lily and Nev will have everything well under control. The duke is Lily’s father, after all, and the baby her half-brother. And Elizabeth is Neville’s aunt as much as she is mine. But—” She smiled, still dewy-eyed.

“But of course you will want to be there when the Portfreys arrive,” the countess said. “That is perfectly understandable. I just hope you will remain for the birthday celebrations tomorrow?”

“We would not miss them for any consideration,” Aunt Clara assured her. “But perhaps the day after tomorrow we will be on our way. Lauren, you must stay and—”

“But of course she will stay.” The countess leaned over to pat Lauren’s knee. “I am beginning to wonder how I ever managed without the help and support of a daughter. I am going to find it difficult to relinquish her, Lady Kilbourne, though I must eventually allow her to return to Newbury to make plans for the wedding.”

“Yes, indeed,” Aunt Clara agreed, and the two older ladies indulged in a comfortable coze on the subject of weddings while Gwen winked and smiled fondly at Lauren and Lauren felt wretched. If only she had stopped to think during that infamous tкte-а-tкte in Vauxhall.

It was later in the morning, as Lauren was returning from the rose arbor with the dowager and Lady Irene, that she found Kit and her grandfather standing out on the terrace, obviously awaiting her approach, both looking almost grim. Aunt Clara’s decision to return home the day after tomorrow with Gwen had made Lauren very aware that her task here had been completed and there was really no further need to linger. But seeing him now, knowing that she must leave soon and then never see him again, made her feel decidedly queasy. She smiled.

“Take a little walk with us, Lauren,” her grandfather said after exchanging courtesies with the older ladies.

“Of course, Grandpapa,” she said, taking his arm and looking inquiringly at Kit. His expression gave nothing away.

They turned in the direction of the stables.

“Aunt Clara has had a letter from the Duke of Portfrey,” she said.

“Yes, so we have heard,” her grandfather said.

Kit walked silently at her other side, his hands clasped behind him.

“I have been anxious about Elizabeth,” she said. “She is rather advanced in years to be having a child.” And perhaps she herself was with child, she thought, not for the first time. What would happen if she was? She would have to marry Kit. He would have to marry her.

They walked in silence until they were on the lawn beyond the stables, on their way to the lake.

“What is wrong?” she asked.

Her grandfather cleared his throat. “You have always been happy at Newbury Abbey, have you not, Lauren?” he asked. “They always treated you well? You never felt that the earl and countess resented you in any way? Loved you less than their own children?”

“Grandpapa?” She looked at him, puzzled. “You know I have always been happy there. You know they have always been kindness itself to me—all of them. Last year was unfortunate. Neville had told me not to wait for him when he went to war. He truly believed when he came back that Lily was dead. He would not in a million years have hurt me deliberately. Why are you—”

But he was patting her hand and clearing his throat again.

“Did you ever think of your mother?” he asked her. “Ever feel sad that she was not there with you? Ever feel hurt that she did not return? Ever feel that she had abandoned you?”

“Grandpapa?”

“Did you?” he asked.

She thought of denial. Denial was second nature to her. What had made him even ask the questions? And why was Kit with them, a silent presence at her other side? She was tired of denial. Mortally weary of it. And of so much else in her life too.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes to all of your questions.”

He drew in his breath and let it out on a sigh. “And did you ever think I did not want you with me?” he asked.

Ah. Sometimes the truth was impossible to tell. Sometimes it would hurt.

“You were alone, Grandpapa,” she said, “and not a young man. Having a child with you all the time would have been a heavy burden. I did not blame you. I never did that. I have always known that you love me.”

“Sometimes I ached to have you with me,” he said. “When I used to visit you, I used to dream of taking you home with me, of your asking me to take you so that doing so would not have seemed so selfish. But you were far happier where you were, among younger people, with other children.”

“Grandpapa—”

“Sometimes,” he said, “children are quiet and obedient and good-natured and one assumes they are perfectly happy. Sometimes one can be wrong. I was wrong, was I not?”

“Oh, no,” she cried. “I was happy, Grandpapa.”

“I have to tell you about your mother,” he said.

They had reached the bank of the lake, the spot where everyone had bathed after the cricket match. It was quiet now, deserted. What did he mean— I have to tell you about your mother?

They were standing side by side close to the water’s edge. She was no longer holding his arm. Kit had strolled away to lean against a tree trunk, but he was well within hearing distance.

Lauren felt cold and inexplicably frightened suddenly.

“What about her?” she asked.

And then he told her.

There was a slight breeze, enough to cause ripples on the surface of the lake. It had been like glass all three times she had bathed in it.

The sky was dotted with moving clouds. It was amazing how variegated the colors of water could be. And of sky.

Someone must have taken the children out for a walk. Their voices, shouting, shrieking, and laughing, were coming from somewhere far off.

Kit, propped against the tree, did not move except to cross his arms over his chest.

Her grandfather cleared his throat but did not speak. It was Lauren who broke the silence that had succeeded his story.

“She is alive?” A rhetorical question.

He answered it anyway. “Yes, or was until recently.”

“There have been letters from her ever since I last heard from her when I was eleven?”

“It was better that you thought her dead, Lauren. Kilbourne and I were agreed on that.”

“She wanted me to join them during their travels?”

“You were far better off where you were.”

She was alive. She had wanted Lauren with her. She was alive. She had kept on writing. She was in India, where she had lived with at least two men who were not her husband. She was alive.

She was alive.

“The letters?” she asked, suddenly frantic. “The letters, Grandpapa? Did you destroy them?”

“No.”

“They still exist? All her letters to me? Fifteen years’ worth of letters?”

“Thirty-two of them,” he said, his voice flat and heavy. “I have them all, unopened.”

She pressed one hand to her mouth then and closed her eyes tightly. She felt herself swaying, then felt strong, steadying hands close about her upper arms from behind.

“I think it would be best if you were to return to the house, sir,” Kit said. “Go and rest. I’ll take care of her.”

“You see?” Her grandfather’s voice was distressed, accusing. “It was the wrong thing to do. Damn you, Ravensberg, it was the wrong thing.”

She pulled herself back from what felt like a long, dark tunnel down which she was falling. But she did not open her eyes.

“It was not the wrong thing, Grandpapa,” she said. “It was not wrong.”

She could sense rather than hear him walk away. Then Kit tucked one arm very firmly about her waist and drew her against his side before strolling with her farther along the bank of the lake. She dipped her head sideways to rest on his shoulder.

“She is alive,” she said.

“Yes.”

“She wanted me. She loved me.”

“Yes.”

“And she has never stopped loving me.”

“No.”

She stumbled and he tightened his arm even more firmly about her. They had come to a stop on a particularly lovely stretch of the bank, with cultivated beds of anemones beyond the grassy bank, and trees beyond them. Across the lake the temple folly was visible.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit.”

“Yes, my love.”

She wept. Long and helplessly, a storm of weeping. Grief for the lonely, wounded child she had been, for the girl who had felt so very alone even though she had been surrounded by love, showered with it at every turn. For the terrible cruelty of love—from people who had loved her. For the mother who was not dead. Who had loved her enough to write thirty-two unanswered letters over fifteen years. Who could never come home because she had behaved in ways that were unforgivable in English polite society.

Kit scooped her up and sat down on the grass with her. He held her on his lap, cuddled her, cradled her in his sheltering arms, crooned nonsense into her ear.

She was quiet at last. The sun, peeking out from behind a cloud, shone full on the white marble of the folly. Its bright reflection shivered in the water beneath.

“ Was it the wrong thing to do?” Kit asked softly.

“No.” She blew her nose in her handkerchief, put it back in her pocket, and settled her head against his shoulder again—he must have removed her bonnet when they sat down. “The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is a strange paradox, is it not—full of emptiness?”

He kissed her temple.

“It was you, was it not?” she said. “You talked Grandpapa into it?”

“I advised him to tell you,” he admitted.

“Thank you.” She snuggled closer. “Oh, Kit, thank you.”

He kissed her temple again, and when she lifted her face, he kissed her mouth.

“I must look a dreadful fright,” she said.

He drew his head back and looked closely at her. “Good Lord,” he said, “you do. I am going to have to muster all my courage not to run screaming back to the house.”

She laughed. “Silly!”

He was going to have wrinkles at the corners of his eyes long before he was an old man, she thought as they crinkled with laughter.

And that was only the beginning of her eventful day.

Tomorrow was going to be a day for guests and organized celebrations. Today would be for family. It was what they all agreed upon during luncheon, though it was Sydnam who suggested a picnic out at the hill where the wilderness walk ended. The idea was greeted with enthusiasm and immediately acted upon.

The mothers of young children went up to the nursery to get their children ready, most of the other adults retired to their rooms to change their clothes, Sydnam strode off to the stables to have the gig prepared since he had persuaded his grandmother—with the help of a chorus of supporting pleas from various cousins—to come too, and Lauren and Marjorie Clifford descended to the kitchens to cajole the cook into preparing a picnic tea and a couple of footmen into conveying it out to the hill.

The top of the hill was the highest point in the park and afforded a wide prospect over the surrounding countryside in every direction. For that reason the designer of the park and the wilderness walk had decided that there would be no trees up there and no elaborate folly to obstruct the view. What he had done instead was build a hermit’s cavern into the side of the hill, close to the top. There never had been a hermit, of course, but the children loved it. They were first to scramble to the top.

Everyone else toiled up more slowly. The whole family had come, without exception. Frederick and Roger Butler cupped their hands together at the bottom of the slope and carried their grandmother to the top—despite her protests—after she had been helped out of the gig. Boris Clifford had set up a chair for her on the summit, and Nell had plumped up a cushion for her back. Lawrence Vreemont and Kit carried Lady Irene up while Claude and Daphne Willard prepared her chair. The elderly sisters-in-law sat side by side, like twin queens on their thrones, Clarence Butler remarked. Lauren raised their parasols for them and Gwendoline helped Marianne spread blankets on the grass for any other adults who cared to sit and recover from the walk.

Kit sat down and prepared simply to enjoy himself. Lauren, he noticed, was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and looking remarkably pretty. After they had returned from the lake earlier, she had gone up to her grandfather’s room and remained there with him until luncheon. She had come down on the old gentleman’s arm, and had been looking noticeably happy ever since.

He could not stop himself from remembering some of the words she had spoken— I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness.

It was such a relief to know that he had done the right thing in persuading Baron Galton to tell her what he knew of her mother. To know that he had done some good in his life.

But there was not a great deal of time for reflection— or recovery from the walk and climb. The children, who were perfectly well able to play with one another, could not resist the attraction of a whole host of idle adults, who surely could not possibly have anything better to do than play with them. Before many minutes had passed it was no longer good enough for bandits and crusading warriors to creep up by foot on dragons and kidnapped maidens and hidden robbers in the cavern. Horses were required, and of course adult male cousins and uncles and occasionally fathers made splendid steeds.

Kit galloped around the hilltop for all of half an hour with an assortment of youngsters on his back. But the ladies were not exempt, he saw just before the older children tired of that particular game. Lauren and Beatrice and Lady Muir had been coaxed to their feet by some of the infants and were playing some circle game with them, all their hands joined—ring around the rosy, he guessed when they all fell down. Lauren was laughing, and little Anna jumped on her, followed by David and Sarah. She wrapped her arms about them while their mothers scolded and told them not to hurt Lauren.

But their attention was soon distracted. Young Benjamin had discovered that the slope behind the hill was broken halfway down by a wide, flat ledge before it continued its descent to the plain below, and that the upper slope was just long enough and smooth enough and grassy enough to be perfect for rolling down. He tested his theory with shrieks of exuberance, and soon all the tiring human horses were abandoned in favor of the new game. Even the little children could join in this one and did.

And then Sarah was tugging at Lauren’s hand, while Kit watched, grinning, from a short distance away. She laughed and shook her head, but then David was pulling at her other hand, and she was walking closer to the edge of the slope.

“Do it!” Frederick called, distracted from the conversation he was having with Lady Muir.

Sebastian put two fingers to his lips and whistled. Phillip whooped. Everyone turned to look.

Lauren was laughing.

“I dare you!” Roger said.

She took off her bonnet, sat down on the grass and then lay down, and rolled to the bottom, all light muslin skirts and bare arms and trim ankles and tumbling dark curls and shrieking laughter.

Kit stared after her, utterly enchanted. But it was Lady Muir, moving to his side and setting one hand on his sleeve, who voiced his thoughts.

“ That is Lauren?” she said. “I can scarcely believe it. Lord Ravensberg, I bless the moment she met you.”

Lauren was up on her knees, brushing the grass from her dress, looking upward, and still laughing.

“It would be a great deal easier,” she said, “if one did not have arms to get in one’s way.”

Yes, there had been that moment when they had met—that first moment in Hyde Park when their eyes had met. And there was this moment, when the truth finally burst in on him. Of course she had become precious to him. Of course she had. He was head over ears in love with her.

He loved her.

Sydnam was standing watching too.

“Oh, well,” he called down cheerfully, “if a lack of arms makes for easier rolling, I should be halfway decent at it.” And surrounded by shrieking, exuberant children, who were absorbed in their own pleasure, he rolled down the hill to come to rest a few feet from Lauren.

Kit tensed while all around him the relatives whistled and applauded. And then as Syd scrambled to his feet and offered his hand to Lauren, he looked up at Kit and their eyes met. He was laughing.

They toiled up the slope, hand in hand, while the children continued the game and most of the adults turned their attention to the approach of their tea from the opposite direction. They stood before Kit, still hand in hand. There was a moment of awkwardness.

“I need to tell you,” Sydnam said, his voice pitched low so that only Kit and Lauren would hear, “that I lied to you, Kit. When I told you the night you came home that I wanted nothing of you, you asked me if that included your love. I said yes. I lied.”

Kit swallowed hard, terrified that the sudden ache in his throat would translate into tears that everyone would see.

“I see,” he said stiffly. “I am glad.”

This, he thought, was the first time Syd had spoken voluntarily to him since that night three years ago when he had told Kit to leave and not come back. Why was he holding Lauren’s hand? He released it even as Kit thought it, smiled rather awkwardly, and would have turned away.

“Syd,” Kit said quickly, “I . . . er . . .”

Lauren, looking most unlike her usual immaculate self—bonnetless, her hair untidy and strewn with grass, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright—linked one arm through Syd’s and one through his and turned to stroll away from the chairs and blankets and rolling, noisy children.

“I have been thinking,” Kit said, “about something Lauren said this morning. I have not been able to get it out of my head, in fact, even though she was not talking about either you or me, Syd. She said that the people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. You are, are you not? And God knows I love you.”

“Yes,” Syd said.

“And I humiliated you the other night, coming to your defense when Catherine wanted you to waltz with her.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose,” Kit said, “it happens over and over again—with Mother and Father, with all your old friends and neighbors.”

“Yes,” Syd admitted. “But with you most of all, Kit.”

They did not descend the slope. They stood looking out across the fields below, across the pasture where Kit and Lauren had raced a few days before.

“You are an artist, Syd.” Pain was back in his throat and chest, the terrible, impotent pity for the brother he had adored from childhood on. “But you are condemned to be a steward.”

“Yes,” Syd said. “It has not been easy to adjust. Perhaps the adjustment will never be fully made. Perhaps being an excellent steward will never quite make up for the fact that I can never paint again. But it is my problem, Kit, my adjustment to make. This is my body, my life. I’ll cope with it. I have done rather well so far. I would appreciate a little credit. I don’t need your pity. Only your love.”

Lauren still had an arm linked through each of theirs, creating a physical connection between them, a sort of bridge, Kit thought, realizing suddenly that it was quite deliberate. Her hand crept into his, and she laced her fingers with his.

“I can’t forgive myself,” Kit said. “I can’t, Syd. You ought never to have been in the Peninsula. You certainly ought not to have been on that mission with me. It was my carelessness that led us into that trap. And then I left you to suffer . . . this while I escaped. Don’t tell me it is your life and not my concern. It is my concern. I doomed you to half a life and got off scot-free myself.”

“I would find that almost insulting if I did not recognize your agony,” Sydnam said. “Kit, I chose to become an officer. I chose to be a reconnaissance officer. The trap was unforeseeable. I volunteered to be the decoy.”

Was that true? Of course it was. But did it make a difference? Had Syd had any choice? If he had not volunteered, Kit would have had to command him to take that role. Syd had saved him from having to do that.

“I’ll not say I enjoyed what followed,” Sydnam continued. “It was sheer hell, in fact. But I was proud of myself, Kit. I had finally proved myself your equal, and Jerome’s. Perhaps I had even surpassed both of you. In my conceit I expected you to be proud of me too. I expected when you brought me home that you would tell everyone here how proud you were. I thought you would have extolled my courage and endurance. It was very conceited of me.”

“And instead I belittled you,” Kit said quietly, “by taking all the blame and focusing everyone’s attention on myself as I went noisily mad. I made you seem no better than a victim.”

“Yes,” Sydnam said.

“I have always, always been proud of you,” Kit said. “You did not have to prove anything, Syd. You are my brother.”

They stood gazing out across the countryside, the breeze at their backs, the noise of merry voices and laughter behind them.

Kit chuckled softly. “You were talking about me, Lauren,” he said. “What else did you say this morning? ‘It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer.’ In some ways, Syd, my role was as hard as yours. That may seem insulting, but there is truth in it.”

“Yes, I know,” his brother agreed. “I have always been thankful that I was not the one appointed to escape. I could not have borne to see you like this. It is easier to suffer something oneself than see a loved one do it.”

“I don’t know about either of you,” Lauren said after a short pause, “but I am very hungry.”

Kit turned his head to smile at her and then met his brother’s eye beyond her. He wondered if he looked as sheepish as Syd did, and decided that he probably did.

“Come on, Syd,” he said, “let’s see how well you can eat chicken with just one hand—and the left one to boot.”

“I have one distinct advantage if it is greasy,” Syd replied. “I have only one hand to wash afterward.”

Kit pressed his fingers tightly about Lauren’s and blessed again the moment he had looked up from kissing the milkmaid to find himself locking glances with a prim, shocked Lauren Edgeworth.

Except that she might yet break their engagement.