A Summer to Remember

Chapter 20

Lauren stood at her bedchamber window, still in her nightgown, gazing out on what promised to be a lovely day. There was not a cloud in the sky. The tree branches were still, suggesting that if there was a wind at all it was the merest breeze. All the anxiously conceived alternate plans for the day’s festivities if it rained could be abandoned. The countess would be so relieved. All was going to be perfect for the dowager’s birthday.

Tomorrow Aunt Clara and Gwen were returning to Newbury. Grandpapa too had decided to return home to Yorkshire. He was going to send the bundle of letters from Lauren’s mother by special messenger—to Newbury. She had asked him to send them there rather than here.

She had come here to help Kit avoid an unwanted betrothal. She had done that. She had come to help reconcile him to his family, who had rejected him and sent him away three years ago. She had done that. She had done it in time for this birthday and could feel confident that Kit would be able to celebrate fully and happily with his family and they with him. There was really nothing left to do.

She had come for a little adventure, for a taste of life as other people lived it, those who had not disciplined all spontaneity, all joy, out of their lives. She had found adventure in abundance. She had bathed and swum in the lake—once, naked; she had climbed a tree to the higher branches; she had raced on horseback; she had played with children and rolled down a steep slope with them. Very tiny adventures indeed.

She had gone outside alone one night and spent what remained of it in a hut with Kit. She had slept with him on a narrow bed. She had lain with him on one of the velvet benches in the portrait gallery and given him her virginity. She had lain with him among the wildflowers on the island and made love with him. A momentous adventure.

The sound of laughter and voices had her leaning closer to the window and peering downward. Phillip and Penelope Willard, Crispin and Marianne Butler, were on their way out for an early morning walk. The day was beginning.

The last day.

There was no more to be experienced. Already there had been too much. Far too much. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. Tomorrow she would leave with Aunt Clara and Gwen, though she was not going to tell anyone until today was over. If she did not go soon then she might stay forever, and that would be dishonorable.

She would not cling to what she had found. All her life she had clung with all her might to her only hope of permanent belonging and security, a marriage with Neville. And when that anchor had been snatched from her, she had drifted on a vast, dark, threatening ocean, frightening in its emptiness. She would not cling now, even though she knew Kit’s honor would urge him into encouraging her to do just that, even though she knew he had grown fond of her. She did not need to cling. Not to anyone. She could and would stand alone.

This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.

She had learned something of limitless value here at Alvesley. And she had Kit to thank. It was such a simple, such an earth-shatteringly profound lesson. The world, she had discovered— her world—would not explode into chaos if Lauren Edgeworth laughed.

There was a scratching on the door behind her, and she turned with a smile to watch her maid come in with her morning cup of chocolate.

The morning was to be for the family alone—the calm before the proverbial storm, as it were. They all went into the village for a celebratory service at the church. The plan was that the dowager would then return home in the first carriage in order to rest quietly in her private apartments for a few hours before the afternoon festivities began.

It was a return that was delayed by nearly half an hour. Almost the whole village had spilled out of doors to gather about the churchyard gateway to cheer the dowager and pay their respects and pelt her with flower petals. She would see them all again during the afternoon, but she insisted upon stopping to talk to a number of them—no easy feat for her—and to hand out coins to the children.

Finally she was on her way, Lady Irene beside her. A long line of carriages, barouches, and curricles moved steadily forward to pick up the rest of the family.

Kit took Lauren by the elbow. “Will you mind walking back to the house?” he asked.

“Of course not.” She turned her head to smile at him. Her bonnet and the ribbons that trimmed her light muslin dress exactly matched her eyes. She looked very fetching indeed.

“I want to look at something,” he told her.

He had sat down with his father the night before, after everyone else had gone to bed—and Syd too had stayed on his window seat, a silent listener through most of the conversation that had followed. Kit had begun it by apologizing for his behavior three years before.

“It is best forgotten,” his father had said. “It is over.”

But Kit had disagreed, and they had talked, awkwardly at first, with growing ease as time went on.

“I sent you away,” his father said at one point. “I never meant it to be forever. I never used the word banishment. That was your interpretation, Kit. But I was content to let it stand. I was as stubborn as a mule. You take after me there. When you did not write, your mother wanted me to do it. But I would not. Jerome pleaded with me to do it, but I would not. Neither would he, of course—or your mother. What a parcel of fools we all were. All of us—you too. Family quarrels are the very worst kind. They are so very difficult to end.”

“ Jerome wanted you to write to me?”

There had been an understanding between Jerome and Freyja for several years, apparently. It had been one of those courtships that no one had been in any particular hurry to bring to fruition. But then Kit had come home, half raving and in a towering rage at the whole world, most of all himself. His family had watched helplessly as he flung himself into passionate pursuit of Freyja, which in their opinion had nothing whatever to do with love. Jerome had been particularly alarmed and had ridden over to discuss the matter with Bewcastle—and with Freyja herself. His announcement of their betrothal at dinner had been the result—followed, of course, by Kit’s fight, first with him and then with Rannulf.

“He never blamed you or held a grudge, you know, Kit,” the earl said. “He blamed himself for going about things entirely the wrong way. He should have had a talk with you, tried to explain, he used to say afterward. He should have tried to get you to vent your anger, brother to brother. Though there was really no talking to you that summer, Kit. After you were gone, he kept putting off the nuptials. He wanted you here. He wanted peace with you before he married Freyja. He wanted to know that you had realized she was not the woman for you. He wanted me to write to you. But he was too stubborn to do it himself.”

“And then,” Kit said, “we all ran out of time.”

“Yes.”

“He never stopped loving you, Kit,” Syd said, speaking up at last. “None of us did. And you must stop punishing yourself now. It has gone on long enough. For all of us.”

It was years since Kit had been to the family plot behind the church. His grandfather had been his childhood idol. Kit had visited his grave regularly for a number of years after his death. But he had not been here since he was eighteen, since his commission had been purchased.

“This is where the family ancestors are buried,” he told Lauren, leading her through the gateway between the two halves of the low, neatly clipped hedge that separated the plot from the rest of the churchyard. “I have not been here for eleven years.”

He found his grandfather’s grave immediately. There were fresh roses in the marble vase before the headstone—his grandmother had come here after the picnic yesterday with her two sons and her daughter. There were roses in the vase before another headstone too—the one that had not been here eleven years ago. Kit moved toward it and stood at the foot of the grave, reading the headstone. Only two words out of all those written there leapt out at him.

Jerome Butler.

His hand was in Lauren’s, he realized suddenly, their fingers tightly laced. He was probably hurting her. He eased his hand free and set his arm lightly about her shoulders.

“My brother,” he said unnecessarily.

“Yes.”

“I loved him.”

“Yes.”

He had been afraid that, standing here, he would be overwhelmed by bitter regret, remembering their last encounter, knowing that they had been unreconciled when Jerome died. But it really did not matter, he found now. Love did not die just because of a quarrel. And a relationship was not a linear thing, the last incident defining the whole of it. They had been close, the three of them—Jerome, Kit, Syd. They had played and fought and laughed together. They had been brothers. They were brothers.

He had been afraid he would break down with inconsolable grief at seeing finally the indisputable evidence of Jerome’s nonexistence. He was dead. His remains were beneath the ground here.

Kit smiled. “He used to tease me,” he said, “when I came home on leave and he would have heard of yet another dispatch in which I had been singled out for commendation. I would die a gloriously heroic death, he used to say—when Mother was not around to hear him say it, of course—and there would be no living down my memory. It would be insufferable. I think it might have amused him if he could have known that he was the one destined for the heroism. And the death.”

“There are worse ways to die, Kit,” Lauren said.

“Yes, there are.” He had seen too much of death to cling to any illusion that it was reserved for old age. “Good-bye, brother. Rest in peace.”

He had to blink then, several times. And he had to release the pressure of his grip on Lauren’s shoulder. She was leaning against him. Her arm was about his waist.

Perhaps after all, he thought, he had not lost the right to grasp hold of whatever remained of life and live it to the best of his ability. Jerome had lived his life. Syd was living his. They were his brothers and he would love them both to his dying breath, but when all was said and done he could live only his own life. He had done his share of foolish, even wrong things—but who has not? He had the freedom to live on and try to do better. It was all he could do.

He felt suddenly, strangely happy.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

“Yes.”

He took her hand in his and drew it through his arm.

The afternoon brought friends and neighbors and tenants and laborers and villagers—people of all classes from miles around, in fact—to the lawns of Alvesley for a garden party that was enlivened with contests of all descriptions for all ages.

Lauren had her part to play—almost her final part—and played it to the full. While the earl and countess judged the needlework and baking and woodworking contests and the dowager listened to the poetry contestants proclaim their verses but refused to judge them because all the poems had been written in her honor—they were drawing a great deal of attention and much laughter—Lauren and Kit organized the races and other physical contests.

There were footraces and sack races and three-legged races for the children, though Kit ran the latter too with young Doris, there having been an uneven number of would-be contestants. There was a batting contest for the young boys with a cricket bat and ball. There was a wood-chopping contest for the young men and an archery contest too, though the winner of that was the sole female entrant, Lady Morgan Bedwyn, who had ridden over to Alvesley with Lord Alleyne. She would not be at the ball in the evening, she admitted haughtily when pressed, because Bewcastle had the Gothic notion that at sixteen she was too young. She threatened to put an arrow between Lord Alleyne’s eyes when he laughed.

There was tea for everyone when it was all over, and Lauren circulated among the visitors, plate in hand, making sure that she had a friendly word with almost everyone who had come. But she was feeling hot and nearly exhausted. How was she ever to find the energy to dance during the evening?

It was a feeling shared by others, it seemed. The earl, after the final visitor had left, suggested that they all retire to their rooms for a rest. He would see to it that a bell was rung loudly enough to rouse them all in time to dress for dinner and the ball.

“Come for a walk?” Kit asked Lauren, taking her hand in his.

A walk was the last thing she needed. But it was her final day and already it was late afternoon. There could be panic in the thought if she allowed herself to dwell upon it. But there was still a little time left, this evening and . . . the rest of this afternoon.

She smiled.

He did not take her far. At first when he set out in the direction of the lake she hoped that perhaps he would take her to the island again. She hoped that perhaps they would make love one more time. But although part of her longed for it, she was not sorry when he led her only as far as the secluded spot where they had stood yesterday, across from the temple. The sun was in such a position in the sky that the surrounding trees shaded the bank.

“What a busy day!” she said, sinking to the grass beside him. “I hope it will not prove too tiring for your grandmother.”

“She is lapping up every moment of it,” he said, stretching out on his back and closing his eyes.

Lauren took off her straw bonnet and lay down beside him. He felt for her hand and held it in his. It felt so natural now, she thought, to be alone together like this, and to touch each other with casual gestures of affection. And seductively comforting.

He did not want to talk, it seemed. Neither did she. She wanted to concentrate on this, perhaps their final time alone together. She wanted to memorize it so that she could call it to mind anytime she wished to in future. It was a memory she would avoid for a long time, she suspected, as being just too painful a reminder of a brief summer when life had come vividly alive and love had been born with startling unexpectedness. But eventually she would remember this lazy heat, the cool springiness of the grass, the smell of flowers, the droning of insects, the warmth of his hand.

She slept.

She swatted at the ant or whatever it was crawling across her nose and trying to wake her when she had no wish to awake. But it was a persistent insect and trailed boldly across her nose again. She brushed it away crossly and then someone chuckled softly and kissed her warmly on the lips.

“It was you!” she accused sleepily, seeing the telltale blade of grass in his upraised hand. “Horrid you.”

“There is a ball to attend, Sleeping Beauty,” he said.

“That was Cinderella.” Her eyes drifted closed again. “Wrong story. Sleeping Beauty did not attend any balls. She was allowed to sleep for a hundred years.”

“I wonder,” he said, “if she was this cross with the prince who kissed her.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him again. “Was I really sleeping?”

“Snoring like thunder,” he said. “I could not snatch a wink myself.”

“Silly.” She sighed with contentment. For the moment she had forgotten that this was the final day.

“Lauren,” he said, “I would like to have our wedding date announced tonight.”

She was finally, irrevocably awake.

“No, Kit.”

“Why not?” he asked. “We are betrothed, and I thought you had perhaps grown fond of me—and of my family. You must know I have grown fond of you.”

“Yes.” She lifted a hand to push aside a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. It fell back as soon as she had removed her hand. “But it was not part of our bargain, Kit.”

“To hell with our bargain.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said. “It is not nice language.”

“My abject apologies, ma’am.” He grinned at her. “Neither was it a part of our bargain that we indulge in carnal relations. We must marry, you know. You may very well be with child.”

“I hope I am not,” she said. “It would spoil everything. I think a wonderful thing has happened here, Kit, much more than we could ever have anticipated. I believe we have helped set each other free. Really free, not just of certain social restraints, but of all that has held us back from happiness—for years in your case, all my life in mine. We must not snare each other now before we have even had a chance to test our wings.”

He stared down at her, his eyes suddenly blank and unfathomable.

“Is that what you really think?” he asked her. “That we have found our separate freedoms? That marriage with each other would be an undesirable trap?”

Yes, it was what she believed—with her intellect. Her heart was a different matter altogether. But her heart had no part at all in their bargain. And it would be grossly unfair to explain that fondness was no basis for marriage. It had been altogether enough for her once. But Kit was not Neville. He was not someone with whom she had grown up as a sister grows up with a brother. Kit was different. Fondness would not be enough with him, not when there was something much different from fondness on the one side.

“It is what I really think,” she said, forcing herself to look steadily back into his eyes. “It was our bargain, remember? That for you the betrothal would be real, that in your gallantry you would try to persuade me not to break it. That for me it would be a charade. That I would break it when the time was right.”

“Not yet,” he said quickly.

She drew breath to tell him she would be leaving tomorrow, but did not say the words.

“Not yet,” she agreed softly, and he lay back on the grass again.

She did not turn her head, but she knew that he stared at the sky as she did, sleep and relaxation forgotten, even though it was a long time before he got silently to his feet and reached down a hand to help her up.