A Summer to Remember

Chapter 23

How is your grandmama?” “Busy setting out the family christening robes.” “Oh.”

“I am to marry you before Christmas, get you with child by Christmas, and be pacing the floors of Alvesley by this time next year, tearing out my hair in clumps and wearing out my boot leather while you deliver our first boy. Strict orders. Why do you think I really came? Just to tell you that I love you?”

“Foolish of me.”

By the time sanity had returned down on the beach, it was raining in earnest and they had linked hands and made a dash for the cottage. Lauren had thrown off her cloak and shoes—her bonnet and gloves, she remembered too late, were still wedged in somewhere at the foot of the great rock. She was rubbing her hair with a towel and watching Kit, minus his drab riding coat, stooping down on his haunches before the fireplace, building a fire with the wood and kindling beside it.

If this were a dream, she thought, she hoped she would not wake up for a long, long while—like the rest of her life.

“Have you read your mother’s letters?”

“Yes, all of them. She is not at all respectable, Kit. And that is a massive understatement. She sounds so delightful that my heart aches. But you may want to think twice about allying yourself with her daughter.”

“Ah,” he said, reaching for the tinderbox and setting a light to the fire, “that explains a few things. It was her daughter, I believe, who swam naked in the lake at Alvesley, almost casting me into a fit of the vapors and drowning me. It was her daughter who came after me on one occasion to spend the night alone with me in the gamekeeper’s hut. Perhaps she is too shockingly fast for me.”

“Ki-it—”

He got to his feet, brushed his hands together, and turned a laughing face to her. She rubbed harder with the towel.

“And just look at you now,” he said.

She looked downward and saw in some embarrassment that her damp dress had molded itself to her body. She laughed.

“We cannot have you catching a chill,” he said, glancing through the open doorway into the small bedchamber within, “and coughing and sneezing your way through our wedding. It would just not be romantic.” He strode off into the bedchamber and came back with a blanket. “Come here by the fire.”

She came and stood meekly before him while he stripped off her clothes, looking at her frankly and appreciatively as he did so and before he wrapped the blanket about her. He talked to her all the while.

“Portfrey was clutching an infant,” he said. “They cannot afford a nurse?”

She chuckled. “The baby is absolutely adorable,” she said, “and is shamelessly spoiled by us all. I have never seen Elizabeth happier or his grace so relaxed. And Lily can never have enough of her new half-brother.”

“Are you now in charity with the countess, then?” he asked.

“I have always recognized that under other circumstances I would have liked her enormously,” she said. “She is sunny-natured and unaffected and loving. She has always been unfailingly kind and sympathetic to me. Now I can love her.”

“And Kilbourne?”

He drew her against him, opening back the edges of the blanket as he did so. She could feel his superfine coat, his riding breeches, his leather boots against her naked flesh and felt a rush of awareness more intense than if he had been unclothed.

“I love him too, Kit,” she said. “I always have and always will. If we had married on that day, I believe we would have had a good marriage. I believe I would have been content and would have thought myself happy. I would never have realized that my love for him was that of a devoted sister. I would never have wondered why I could feel no—no passion for him. I would simply have thought that was my nature.”

“But it is not?” She had tipped her face up, and he was bent over it, his eyes roaming it.

“No.” She shook her head.

“Lord help me,” he said. “You don’t feel a passion for me, do you, Lauren? And expect me to act on it?”

She laughed. And she did something quite outrageous—she rubbed herself against him and gazed at him through half-closed eyes. Desire stabbed down along her inner thighs.

“Devil take that rain,” he said. “It has trapped me in a deserted cottage with a woman who has conceived a passion for me. And no one is going to come riding to my rescue either. I distinctly remember someone up at the house telling someone else that you had asked not to be disturbed down here. And then someone telling me that I would have all the privacy I needed to say what I had to say to you. Now what do I do?”

She loved the way he could hold his features solemn, even alarmed, while his eyes danced with laughter.

“Absolutely nothing at all,” she told him. She lowered her voice as her hands found the top buttonhole of his coat. “Yet.”

He shivered elaborately and his eyes danced.

“I begin to think,” he said, “that I could grow to like women who are free to love.”

“And I begin to think,” she said, still in her low, velvet voice, “that you are about to be driven to the brink of madness by one of them, my lord.”

“Oh, goody,” he murmured agreeably.

She opened back his coat and pushed it off his shoulders and down his arms while he stood relaxed and unmoving. Waistcoats, she discovered then, had far too many buttons, all of them small, each with an accompanying buttonhole that seemed smaller yet. She did not hurry. She occupied herself while her hands worked by feathering kisses over his throat and neck above his cravat. She ran her tongue along the seam of the long scar beneath his jaw and surprised an epithet from him that was definitely not suitable for the ears of a lady. She kissed his mouth, which he held relaxed. She prodded her tongue beyond his lips, exploring the soft, moist inner flesh with its tip. She stretched her tongue deep into his mouth.

“I have won praise and commendation from high places,” he said conversationally when his mouth was free, her eyes being needed to discover the secrets of the front flap of his breeches, “for military feats that required only half the courage and discipline I am displaying this afternoon. I hope you realize that you are in the presence of extraordinary heroism.”

Sometime during the last ten minutes or so, she had lost her blanket, Lauren realized. It did not matter. The fire had burned up and taken the damp chill from the air. In fact the cottage felt almost uncomfortably warm.

“A word of advice,” he said, “from a man who has been undressing me for almost thirty years. Tackle the boots first. Would you like me to be a participant yet? Shall I haul them off for you?”

“No.” She kneeled down on the floor.

“An erotically submissive posture,” he commented with a sigh, raising one foot. “Entirely deceptive, of course. Yes, you have to tug hard. You are not about to break my ankle, I assure you. I feel inclined to urge you to hurry so that we can reach the good part. But alas, you are turning all my preconceptions on their head, Lauren. This tortoiselike seduction feels excruciatingly good.”

“And this is only the beginning,” she promised, looking up at him from beneath her lashes before pulling off the second boot and standing up again.

“Witch!” he said. “I strolled into Lady Mannering’s ballroom that night all unsuspecting, poor innocent that I was. You looked like a perfectly harmless lady. Respectable, prim.”

“Prudish,” she said.

“Precisely.”

“I should be calling for the hartshorn now, then,” she said. “You look neither innocent nor harmless, Kit.” She had pulled off first his breeches and then his drawers.

He looked down at himself and she touched him at the same moment, cupping him lightly in both hands, amazed at her own brazenness, half crazed with suppressed desire. He looked up and their eyes met.

“You can continue this game all afternoon and all evening if you wish, love,” he said. “Sex games are delicious. I look forward to playing an infinite variety of them with you for the rest of our lives. But unless you have a definite preference for prolonging this, I think we might be better occupied on the bed in there. I would very much like to put that inside you.”

The greatest surprise of all was the discovery that not being touched could be every bit as arousing as having his hands and mouth all over her. He was still standing motionless, his arms loose at his sides, his eyes, heavy-lidded, devoid of laughter, gazing into her own. But his words were her undoing. She was suddenly weak-kneed.

“I thought,” she said, “you would never ask. A lady never invites a gentleman to bed.”

His hands did not touch her until she had pulled back the blankets and lain down on her back on the bed and reached up for him. They touched her then only at her hips and beneath her buttocks as she spread her legs wide. He came down on top of her and mounted her with one deep, hard, satisfying thrust.

She drew a few slow breaths.

“We can do this the easy way,” he said, raising his head and grinning down at her, all the old roguery back in his eyes, “or I can aim at the highest medal of honor and ride the long, hard route home. Very long and very hard. Which shall it be?”

“Which is the road to near madness?” she asked, hooking her legs snugly about his and tilting herself slightly so that she could receive him more deeply.

“The less easy road,” he said.

“The long, hard ride, then, please,” she said, using her low voice again and running her palms over the muscles of his shoulders as she watched the laughter fade from his eyes. “Please, my love.”

It was very long. And very hard. It took a great deal of energy. After a while she became aware of the dampness of their sweat, the heat of their bodies, the heavy, labored sound of their breathing, the silken pounding of their joining, the erotic sound of wetness, the rhythmic squeaking of the bed.

For a while her enjoyment was tempered by the fear that it would end too soon, that she would not reach the startling explosion of pleasure she had experienced on the island bank among the wildflowers when he had touched her with his hand and then taken her on top of him. But after a while she knew with an instinct born of love and trust that he did indeed have the fortitude and the sensitivity to wait for her—as he had at the lake.

It came slowly. Achingly slowly, first with an intense physical yearning in the place where they rode together, and then swirling in slow spirals, down into her legs, back into her bowels, up into her stomach, her breasts, her throat, her nose. It came so slowly she feared there could be no ending, no climax, no fulfillment.

“Relax now, love,” he murmured against her ear. “Let me do the rest for you. Let yourself open and I’ll come to you. Trust me.”

Words dimly remembered. Had he spoken them to her before? She was afraid. Mortally afraid. He might as easily have asked her to leap off a high cliff into his waiting arms. But she had known long ago that she would trust him with her life. She had given him her love since then and had accepted his this very day. All that was left to do was to trust him with her heart, to withhold nothing that was herself—to believe with her heart, as she already did with her intellect, that he would never abuse the gift, that he would never hold her love imprisoned.

She launched herself forward off the cliff, trusting, never doubting, that he would catch her.

“Ah, love.” He was thrusting faster, deeper into her. “Oh, God!”

She was falling, shuddering out of control, never fearing for a moment, never doubting. He cried out, and his arms and his body caught her at the bottom of her descent, wrapping firmly about her, pinning her safe and warm and sated against the mattress. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. And his too. They beat as one.

He was very heavy. She could scarcely breathe. Her legs were stiff from being pressed apart for so long. She was sore inside. And she had never been more comfortable in her life.

“We,” he said, his voice sounding shockingly normal, “are going to have the first banns read next Sunday. It is high time I made an honest woman of you. Besides, it may be possible to pass off an eight-month child as an early bird, but a seven- or six-month child would look scandalously suspicious. It might even be whispered that we had anticipated our wedding night.”

“Shocking indeed.” She sighed with contentment. “Sunday it will be, then.”

“A big ton wedding one month from now,” he said. “Both our families will be set on it, and frankly I do not have the energy to argue. Do you?”

“I would like a big wedding,” she admitted.

“Good. That is settled, then.” He kissed her temple. “I have just made a delightful discovery, considering the fact that we are going to be sharing a bed for the rest of our lives. You make a wonderfully comfortable mattress.”

“And you make a tolerable blanket,” she said, untwining her legs and stretching them luxuriously beside his. She yawned lazily. “Stop talking, Kit, and let’s sleep.”

“Sleep?” He lifted his head and grinned down at her. She was filled with instant alarm. “ Sleep, Lauren? When we are both stale with sweat and sex and there is a perfectly decent pool out there, complete with waterfall?”

“Ki-it—”

He just grinned.

“I am not,” she said. “I am absolutely, definitely not going to swim out there. It is raining.”

“A definite problem,” he conceded, disengaging from her and lifting himself off both her and the bed. “You might get wet.”

Had she not giggled, she might have been saved. Though probably not, she admitted a couple of minutes later as her naked body plummeted into ice-cold water and she came up gasping, her hands with a death grip on Kit’s. She wished fervently that she knew a few foul curse words. But her teeth were probably clacking too loudly for them to be heard, anyway.

She shook her head to clear the water from her eyes and laughed at him before doing the most foolish thing she had done all day. She challenged him to a race to the waterfall and—of course—he accepted, another bedding in the cottage to be his prize if he won.

If he won!

She was still getting her arms and legs organized when he was nonchalantly treading water right under the waterfall and grinning despicably.

A wedding eve ball had been the tradition at Newbury Abbey for a number of generations. It seemed rather strange to Kit when the bride and groom might be expected to want as much sleep as they could get the night before their wedding night, but perhaps the Newbury bridegrooms who had allowed the tradition to develop had not been particularly lusty men. Or perhaps it had been a clever ruse of Newbury brides to take the edge off their lust.

However it was, his own wedding eve ball and Lauren’s was in full swing. The abbey was packed to the rafters with Kilbourne and Redfield family and friends. The dower house too, and the village inn. Even by the standards of a London Season, the gathering in the ballroom, on the balcony beyond the French windows, and on the landing and winding stairs beyond the ballroom might be called a very creditable squeeze. How everyone was expected to fit inside the village church tomorrow morning he could not begin to guess.

Lauren, with whom a mere bridegroom was expected to dance only once—and he had already been allotted his quota—was flushed and looking radiantly happy. She was also many times lovelier than the next loveliest lady in the room. She literally shimmered in a satin gown of such a deep violet that some might call it purple. The diamond necklace his mother and father had given her as a wedding present sparkled in the light of hundreds of candles. His ring—the diamond was so large and many-faceted that he had distinctly overheard one of his least favorite females, the former Lady Wilma Fawcitt, more recently the Countess of Sutton, describe it as vulgar—his ring glinted on her finger.

“You cannot get close enough for another dance, Ravensberg?” Lord Farrington asked him.

“An abomination, is it not?” Kit said cheerfully.

“Does the delectable Lady Muir dance?” Farrington asked. “One would hate to risk a faux pas when she has that limp.”

“She dances,” Kit said.

Farrington, it appeared, had escaped the clutches of the ambitious Merklingers during the spring. He was footloose again, his roving eye intact.

“I’ll go and try my luck with her, then,” he said, “and see if I can charm her away from that great handsome Viking.”

“Ralf Bedwyn?” Kit grinned—and then turned his attention to a footman who had touched his sleeve. There was a gentleman newly arrived and waiting downstairs. He had requested a word with Lord Ravensberg.

Yet another guest? Kit strode off in the direction of the staircase.

The new arrival was a very young man. He was tall and overslender as if he had not yet quite grown into his body. He was also fresh-faced. If he shaved at all yet, it was clearly not a daily necessity. He was a good-looking boy, though. Kit assessed him in one quick glance, as he had once been accustomed to doing with scores and even hundreds of new recruits.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Ravensberg?” The young man strode toward him, his right hand outstretched. “I read your invitation less than a week ago. By that time the notice of your wedding was in the papers. I came as quickly as I could.” He flushed when Kit regarded him blankly. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I am Whitleaf. Viscount Whitleaf.”

“Whitleaf?” Kit took his hand. “The invitation was to my betrothal celebrations at Alvesley Park. My grandmother’s birthday party, actually.” He had sent it off at the same time as he had sent one to Baron Galton, before Lauren had arrived at Alvesley, before he had known of her total estrangement from her father’s family. He had been more relieved than disappointed when no one had shown up.

“I have been in Scotland ever since coming down from Oxford in the spring,” the young man explained, “on a walking tour with my old tutor and a couple of friends.”

And where have you been for the rest of Lauren’s life?

Kit did not ask the question aloud. He clasped his hands behind him.

“I asked my mother who Lauren Edgeworth was after reading your invitation,” Viscount Whitleaf said. “It was obvious she must be a relative. I am an Edgeworth too.”

“You did not know who she was?” Kit asked.

“No, not really,” the young man replied. “Maybe she was mentioned when I was a lad. I don’t remember. I was sorry I had missed the celebrations at Alvesley. But when I read the notice in the paper, I thought it would be rather jolly to come down here to pay my respects to my cousin on the occasion of her wedding.”

“Jolly?” Kit frowned.

The young man flushed again. “You are not pleased to see me,” he said.

“How long have you held the title?” Kit asked.

“Oh, forever.” Whitleaf made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “My father died when I was three. I was the last of six children—the only boy. I’ll reach my majority in January. I’ll be free of all my guardians then. That will be jolly, let me tell you. Are you really not glad I have come? Was my cousin offended when I did not even reply to the invitation? Should I leave?”

“Guardians,” Kit said quietly. “Since you were three.”

“Lord, yes,” the young man said, grimacing. “Three of them. A humorless lot. Not one funny bone among the lot of them. And my mother too, though she does occasionally laugh, to give her her due. And mothers do not have a great deal of say in their minor sons’ lives, you know. For some peculiar reason they are supposed not to have brains. Anyway, for most of my life I have had leading strings projecting from all parts of my body, like the spokes of an umbrella.”

“Did you know,” Kit asked, “that these guardians have been writing letters in your name? Declining the chance to take Lauren in as a child when her mother apparently disappeared during a long journey overseas, for example—even though her father had been a Viscount Whitleaf, presumably your uncle? Replying to her own overture of friendship when she was eighteen—eight years ago—with the information that you did not encourage indigent relatives or hangers-on?”

Viscount Whitleaf flushed and winced. “If ever I used to ask to see my correspondence or their replies,” he said, “they would call me a precocious cub or something equally endearing and look at me as if I were a particularly nasty insect that had crawled out from beneath the nearest piece of furniture. But that sounds just like them—what you just described, I mean. My mother told me last week that my aunt, Miss Edgeworth’s mother, was not highly regarded. She flirted with everything in breeches—according to my mother. And then she went off and married Wyatt before my uncle was cold in his grave. There was even a suspicion—er, perhaps I ought not to mention this. It’s doubtless nonsense, dreamed up by old tabbies who had nothing better to do with their time. It was even said, anyway, that her daughter—that is this Miss Edgeworth—was his. The new husband’s, I mean, and not my uncle’s.”

Kit, inclined to fury, decided on amusement instead. “But you still thought it might be jolly to meet her?” he asked.

“Oh, I did.” The young man smiled. “The family black sheep are invariably more interesting than the white sheep. They tend to be dead bores. Or worse.”

“Stay here,” Kit said. “Make yourself comfortable. Lauren is probably dancing with someone. I’ll fetch her down as soon as she is free. I can assure you beyond any reasonable doubt that my bride is indeed a legitimate member of the Edgeworth family.”

“Oh, I daresay,” the viscount said good-naturedly. “But I really wouldn’t care a fig if she wasn’t, you know.”

“She has your color eyes,” Kit said, smiling. “I should have realized who you were as soon as I walked through the door. But the light was behind you then.”

“Ah, the Edgeworth eyes,” the young man said. “They always look better on the women than the men.”

Kit chuckled to himself as he made his way back upstairs, greeting guests as he went, acknowledging their congratulations and good wishes. The stripling was surely going to discover within the next three or four years that women would fall all over themselves for just a single glance from Viscount Whitleaf’s violet eyes.