A Summer to Remember

Chapter 6

Lauren had always loved beauty. The park at Newbury Abbey was beautiful, especially on a sunny summer’s day when the wind off the ocean was not too blustery. It was the inner lawns and flower gardens that she loved best, though, those parts of the park that had been tamed and cultivated. Those parts that were civilized. She had never really liked the wilder valley and beach, which were all a part of the park. They were untamed and disordered. Sometimes they frightened her in a way she could never quite explain. They reminded her, perhaps, of how little control humankind has over its own destiny. Of how close we always are to chaos.

She was terrified of chaos.

Vauxhall Gardens was a sheer delight. Nature had been tamed here and made lovely. The forest was lit by lamplight and traversed by wide, well-illumined paths with sculptures and grottos to add interest and elegance. The paths were crowded with strollers, all of whom were behaving in a perfectly civilized manner.

And yet she was aware of danger. Miss Merklinger and Lord Farrington, Miss Abbott and Mr. Weller, walked ahead of them, talking and laughing among themselves. Lord Ravensberg made no attempt to join in their conversation even though Lord Farrington was a personal friend of his. And every minute set the two of them at a slightly greater distance behind the other four.

Every so often narrower paths wound away into the trees. They were darker, lonelier than the main thoroughfare.

Lauren could almost read Lord Ravensberg’s mind. He intended that they take one of those side paths. Just the two of them. She shivered. She could increase her pace and close the distance with the others. She could herself join in their conversation. Or she could, when the time came, firmly refuse to leave the main path. He would hardly try forcing her to comply with his wishes, after all. The fact that she was even having this inner debate with herself bewildered her. Lauren Edgeworth had always known what was what, and it would certainly not be the thing to go off with a virtual stranger along a deserted path when he could have nothing but dalliance on his mind.

But she was horrifyingly tempted. What was it like—dalliance? It must be different from simple flirtation, certainly. One could flirt in company with other people. One needed to be alone with another in order to dally. She had never wondered about it before. She had never been even faintly curious.

But tonight she was.

“The path grows crowded,” Viscount Ravensberg said, dipping his head closer to hers. “Perhaps you would like a quieter, more leisurely stroll along one of the side paths, Miss Edgeworth?” His eyes, dancing with merriment, mocked her. He knew, of course, that she knew. Did he know too that she was tempted?

She felt as if she had come to some crossroads in her life. She could and should say no and there would be an end of the matter. Or she could say yes. She could simply say yes and risk . . . what? Detection? Exposure? Scandal? They would be unchaperoned. Did he intend to steal a kiss from her? It was a shocking thought. She had only ever been kissed by Neville. She was six and twenty and had only ever been kissed—chastely—by a former betrothed. Perhaps he intended more than kisses. Perhaps . . .

“Thank you,” she heard herself say before she could talk herself into making an acceptance impossible. “That would be pleasant.”

He turned without further ado onto a narrow path to their left. The other two couples strolled onward, unaware that they had been abandoned.

The path was narrow—only just wide enough for two people to walk side by side if they were close together. Lord Ravensberg pressed her arm firmly against his side so that she had no choice but to rest her shoulder just below the level of his. It was the path that gave her no choice—the path and the tall, silent trees that grew to its very edge and met overhead, almost totally blocking out the moonlight. The only light came from the occasional lamp in a tree.

She ought not to have agreed to this, Lauren thought. There was a feeling of even greater aloneness and intimacy than she had expected. The sounds of voices and music seemed to grow instantly fainter. There was no one else on this particular path.

Why had she agreed? Curiosity? A desire to be kissed?

She wished he would say something. She thought of all sorts of things she might say—she was adept at making polite social conversation, after all, but any topic that came to mind would have sounded ridiculous under the present circumstances.

“I want to kiss you,” he said in a voice that was so calmly conversational that for a moment his meaning did not quite penetrate her mind. It was her heart that comprehended first as it thumped uncomfortably against her rib cage, half robbing her of breath.

What would it be like, being kissed by a man who was not Neville? Being kissed by a notorious rakehell? By Viscount Ravensberg? And why had she not spoken up instantly with a firm and frosty refusal?

“Why?” she asked instead.

He laughed softly. “Because you are a woman—a beautiful woman—and I am a red-blooded male,” he said. “Because I desire you.”

Lauren wondered if her legs would continue to support her. They seemed suddenly turned to jelly. This was dalliance?

. . . I am a red-blooded male.

Because I desire you.

His choice of words paralyzed her mind with shock. Yet they strolled onward as if they had just exchanged comments on the weather. He did not just wish to kiss her. He desired her. Could she possibly be desirable? Was she really beautiful? Was it possible after all that this was not simply dalliance? Or was she turning into the mindless dupe of an experienced rake?

They stopped walking as if by mutual consent, and somehow they were standing facing each other. The faint light of a distant lamp danced across his shadowed features. He lifted a hand and ran the backs of his knuckles feather-light down one side of her jawline to her chin.

“Let me kiss you,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes and nodded—as if being unable to see and giving no verbal answer somehow absolved her from responsibility for whatever would follow.

She felt his hands coming to rest on either side of her waist. They drew her forward so that, even though she did not move her feet, her bosom brushed against his chest and then pressed closer. For balance she lifted her hands to grasp his shoulders—and felt again the strange intimacy of being with a man who was no more than two or three inches taller than she. She opened her eyes and saw his face very close to her own, his eyes intent upon her mouth. And then his own covered it.

His lips were parted. She felt with shock the moist heat of the inside of his mouth and the warmth of his breath against her cheek. For a few moments she was lost in wondering contemplation of sensations more carnal than she had ever suspected possible. And then she became aware of two other things simultaneously. His tongue was tracing the seam of her lips, causing a terrifyingly raw sensation to rush aching into her throat and down into her bosom and down . . . And one of his hands was spread firmly behind her waist—no, below it—and had drawn her against him so that her thighs rested against his and . . .

She pushed away from him and fought the chaos of unfamiliar sensations and emotions that whirled through her brain. How much sense it made that unmarried ladies were never allowed to be alone with a man until they were betrothed. But she had felt none of these things with Neville. Neville had been . . . a gentleman.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, relieved at the calm coolness of her voice, quite at variance with the turmoil of her emotions. “That will be quite enough.”

“Miss Edgeworth.” He was regarding her closely, his head tipped a little to one side. He made no attempt to grab her again. He was not even touching her. His hands were clasped at his back. Even so she would have taken a step back to set more distance between them if the trees had allowed it. “Would you do me the great honor of accepting my hand in marriage?”

What? She stared at him, speechless. His question was so unexpected that her mind could not grapple with it for the moment. This was not dalliance, surely. He had asked her to marry him.

“Why?” The question was out before she could curb it.

“I saw you across Lady Mannering’s ballroom,” he said, “and knew that you were the woman I would marry—if you would have me.”

It was every girl’s dream, surely, to be singled out across a crowded room, Cinderella one moment, the love of Prince Charming’s soul the next. There was no more romantic myth. And despite herself, Lauren was not immune to it. But she was no girl. There was all the difference in the world between myth and reality. Life had dealt her enough doses of reality that she felt no doubt of that. She did not believe in love at first sight. She did not even believe in romantic love.

“Since then,” he said, “my regard for you has deepened every day. Every hour.”

“Has it?” She almost wished for the foolish girlhood she had never known—for the gullible belief in fairy-tale romance. She almost wished she could believe. “Why?” It was a question she seemed to have asked a great deal lately.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “You are elegant and graceful and dignified. You are a perfect lady, in fact. I have fallen head over ears in love with you.”

Those were the words that released her from her mental torpor. Men simply did not fall head over ears in love. Young girls might, but if love happened at all for men, it did so far more slowly and pragmatically. Lord Ravensberg was not the type to fall violently in love with any woman. He loved himself far too much, she suspected. And Lauren Edgeworth was not the type of woman to inspire soaring flights of emotion in any man.

“My lord,” she asked him, looking him directly in the eye and wishing there were more light, “what is your game?”

“Game?” He leaned a little closer and she turned sharply away and took a few steps along the path. She stood with her back to him.

“Is it my fortune?” she asked him. “Do you need to marry money?”

“I have all the wealth I need,” he said after a short pause. “And I am heir to a great deal more.”

“Then why?” She gazed ahead along the path and absently noted the shifting patterns of bluish light and shade cast across it by the distant lamp. “Why did you attend Lady Mannering’s ball? I have been told that you had been to no other before it this Season. Why did you dance only with me? You went there with that specific intention, did you not? You intended to offer for me before you even saw me. Am I right?”

“I had seen you in the park before then,” he said. “Remember? You are hard to forget.”

London during the Season was the great marriage mart. Viscount Ravensberg must be in his late twenties, perhaps older. He was heir to an earldom. It was perfectly conceivable that he had decided it was time to take a bride. But why her? And why sight unseen? She did not believe for a moment that he had conceived a passion for her during that brief meeting of their eyes in the park while he was holding and kissing the milkmaid. She did not believe he had conceived a passion for her at all. She turned to look back at him. From this angle his face was more in the light. There seemed less laughter there than usual.

“Your pretense of passion is insulting, my lord,” she said. “Lies are surely unnecessary. Why not simply the truth?”

His features looked hard and chiseled without the customary expression of good humor. She could imagine him now, as she had never been able to before, as a military officer.

“Insulting,” he repeated softly. “I have insulted you. And indeed you are right. I have.”

She had the distinct impression that her heart plummeted all the way down from her chest to her feet. She was right, then. He felt nothing for her. Of course he did not. And she did not want him to, anyway. She did not want his love or any man’s. Especially not his. But she felt suddenly chilled. She was not beautiful. She was not desirable. She was simply Lauren Edgeworth, perfect lady and eligible bride for an earl’s heir—as she had been all her life, unless the man happened to find a more appealing bride before it was too late. She turned her head to confirm what her eyes had seen earlier without really noticing—a rustic seat. She walked toward it and seated herself, arranging her skirts carefully about her so that she would not have to look at him. He moved closer, but made no attempt to seat himself beside her.

“Honor has always been enormously important to me,” he said, his voice so devoid of laughter that she scarcely recognized it. “There was a time—while I was commissioned—when honor meant more to me than life itself, even the lives of those I loved. But—” There was a short silence before he continued. “In all my dealings with you I have acted completely without honor. I am deeply ashamed and I beg your pardon. Perhaps you will allow me to escort you back to Mrs. Merklinger?”

She gazed up at him. Without honor? Merely because he had pretended a love he did not feel? And why did that fact make her feel so very bleak? She had never believed him.

“I believe you owe me an explanation first,” she said though she was not sure she wanted to know.

For a long time it seemed to her that he would not answer. Footsteps approached along the path, accompanied by soft whispers and laughter. But whoever it was must have spotted them from a distance and turned to go back. The music of another waltz intruded from what seemed to be a long distance away.

“Suffice it to say,” Lord Ravensberg said at last after inhaling audibly, “that I have wagered against three other men that I will have wooed you and wed you by the end of this month.”

Lauren imposed control over herself by trying—and failing—to describe her feelings to herself with one word. Shock? Anger? Bewilderment? Hurt? Humiliation?

“A wager?” She was whispering.

“You were chosen,” he said, “because you have a reputation for unshakable dignity and gentility and respectability. For being the perfect lady, in fact. My . . . friends considered you to be the lady least likely to accept my proposal.”

“Because you are a rake? This was all a game, then?” Her tone, she realized, matched his own in flatness. “But a remarkably foolish one. What if you had won? You would have been stuck for life with a prim, respectable wife. A perfect lady. A perfectly dull lady. That is what I am, Lord Ravensberg.”

The sharpness of her pain was ridiculous. She had never respected this man or believed his preposterous flatteries. She respected him even less now. What did it matter that he had made a wager concerning her only because she was dull, dull, dull? For that was what dignity, gentility, and respectability added up to for him. And he was quite right. She was exactly what he thought her to be. She had always been proud of being a lady. She was still proud. So the pain was not valid. She was not really feeling it. Only anger—against herself more than against him. She had known from the start who and what he was. She had deliberately chosen not to listen to her family. She had wanted to assert her independence. And all the time she had been persuading herself that she was immune to his charm.

“No,” he said. “You do yourself an injustice. And it was not just a game. I really did— do—need a bride. Someone like you. But I should not have courted you with such . . . insensitivity. With such careless disregard for you as a person. I should not have allowed you, or any other lady, to become the object of a wager. You may be the perfect wife for me, but I would be just the worst possible husband for you.”

She should have risen to her feet then, the explanation given, and made her way back to the main path and the box where Mr. and Mrs. Merklinger waited. For very pride’s sake she should have left—and refused his escort. But she did not move.

“Why do you need a bride by the end of June?” she asked him. “That is less than two weeks away. And why a—a perfect lady?” She could not quite keep the bitterness from her voice.

“I had better tell you everything.” He sighed and took a step closer. But he did not sit down beside her. He set one foot on the wooden seat instead and draped an arm over his raised leg. His face, only inches from her own now, was as serious as she had ever seen it.

“I have been summoned to Alvesley for the summer,” he said. “My father’s principal seat, that is. My brother’s death almost two years ago made me his heir and forced me to sell my commission since he pointed out to me that I was no longer free to put my life at risk every day. My life was suddenly valuable to him, you see, even though he banished me forever the last time I saw him.”

“You did not wish to sell out?” she asked, noting the unusually bitter tone of his voice.

“As a younger son, I was brought up for a military career,” he said. “It was what I wanted anyway. And I enjoyed it, all things considered. It was something I did well.”

She waited.

“There is to be a house party in celebration of my grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday this summer,” he told her. “My banishment has been revoked. The prodigal is to be allowed home after all. He is to learn his duties as the future earl, you see. And one of those duties is to take a bride and set up his nursery. It is my father’s intention, in fact, to make my betrothal the central event of a summer of festivities. It is to be a birthday gift to my grandmother.”

All was beginning to make sense. Her respectability, her reputation as a perfect lady, made her a good candidate. She had been chosen with cold calculation. As most brides of her class were, of course. Had he been open about his intentions from the start she would not have been offended. There was nothing intrinsically offensive about them.

“The Earl of Redfield has instructed you to choose a respectable bride?” she asked. “Was it he who suggested my name?”

“No.” He tapped his free hand against the leg on which he stood. “Actually he has another prospect in mind.”

“Oh?”

“My dead brother’s betrothed.”

“Oh.” Lauren clasped her hands tightly in her lap. How very distasteful for both Lord Ravensberg and the poor lady, who was being handed from one brother to the next like a worn inheritance.

“And my own before him,” he said after a slight pause. “But when given the choice three years ago, she chose the heir rather than the second son, the mere cavalry major. Ironic, is it not? She might have had both me and the title. But I no longer wish to marry her. And so I decided to choose my own bride and take her with me when I go as a fait accompli. I wanted a bride to whom my father could not possibly object. Your name was suggested to me—not as someone who would surely accept, but as a lady of perfect gentility who probably would not. Hence the wager.”

Lauren looked at her hands in her lap. She was not sure he spoke the strict truth. She thought it more likely that she had been named as someone who would almost certainly accept his proposal with alacrity. Was she not a jilted, abandoned bride, after all? A woman past the first blush of youth who would surely grab with desperate gratitude the first man who asked? But if that were so, why would three gentlemen have wagered against his success?

But did it matter?

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “You have been the victim of my unpardonable lapse of honor. I owed you honesty from the start. I should have approached the Duke of Portfrey with my offer and been content with whatever he might have said. But it is too late now to court you the right way. You have done nothing to deserve such shabby treatment. Please believe me to be truly contrite and most humbly your servant. May I escort you back to the box?” He returned his foot to the ground and offered his arm.

She continued staring at her hands while he waited. Another crossroads. Yet there was nothing further to decide, nothing more to say.

Because you are a woman—a beautiful woman—and I am a red-blooded male. Because I desire you.

All a lie. And she was undeniably hurt by it. It had all been a ruse to lure her into accepting him and winning his wager for him.

But still . . . a crossroads.

“No, wait,” she said softly, even though he was already doing that—waiting to escort her out of his life. “Wait a moment.”

Kit watched her spread her fingers in her lap. She did not speak again for a long while. He felt damnably wretched. All he wanted to do, if the truth were known, was take her back to Mrs. Merklinger’s side and wait out the evening with all the patience he could muster. And to seek out his three friends in the morning to pay his debts before taking himself off to Alvesley.

He was deeply mortified to realize that in consenting to make a lady—a perfectly innocent lady—the subject of a sordid wager he really had tainted the honor he held so dear. It had seemed faintly amusing at the time, before she had become a person to him.

Another group was approaching along the narrow path, this one more boisterous than the couple before them. And they came right along even when they saw that they were interrupting a tкte-а-tкte. Kit sat down beside Lauren, and the four revelers walked past in loud silence, their eyes carefully averted, and then laughed and snickered before they were quite out of earshot. Kit stayed where he was.

“Will you go to Alvesley, then,” Lauren Edgeworth asked, “and betroth yourself to your former fiancйe after all?”

“I hope I may avoid that fate,” he said.

“Does she wish to marry you?” she asked.

“I very much doubt it,” he said. “She preferred Jerome to me three years ago.” Though one never quite knew with Freyja.

“I will make a bargain with you, Lord Ravensberg,” Lauren Edgeworth said, her voice quite steady and calm, “if you will agree to it.”

He turned his head to look at her, but her eyes were still directed downward at her spread fingers.

“I will go to Alvesley with you,” she said very deliberately, “as your betrothed.”

He sat very still.

“As your temporary betrothed,” she explained. “I will go with you and be presented to your family and be everything you hoped I would be. I will be there while you establish yourself again as your father’s son and while you take your rightful place in his home as his heir. I will be there so that a distasteful engagement will not be pressed upon either you or the lady who once chose your brother rather than you. I will give you some breathing room, so to speak, during the house party and the birthday celebrations. But I will not marry you. At the end of the summer I will leave Alvesley and break the engagement. I will do it in such a way that no censure will fall upon you. By that time it is to be hoped that your family will have accepted your right to choose your own bride in your own time.”

He could not possibly be misunderstanding her. She spoke very precisely. But what the devil?

“You would break the engagement?” he said, frowning. “Do you realize what a scandal that would cause? You would put yourself beyond the social pale.”

“I think not,” she said with a faint smile for her hands. “There would be those who would congratulate me upon having freed myself just in time from marriage to a rakehell. But I care little anyway. I have told you that I am not in search of a husband, that I have no intention of marrying. What I have realized only very recently is that I need to break free of my well-meaning relatives, who treat me as if I were both a green girl and excessively fragile goods. In reality I am a woman who long ago reached her majority, and I have a comfortable independence. I intend to set up my own home, perhaps in Bath. After spending the summer at Alvesley, supposedly as your betrothed, and then breaking the connection, I will find it far easier to do what I ought to have done a year ago. None of my relatives will argue with me. I will be demonstrably unmarriage-able.”

What the devil? He stared at her profile and realized fully what he should have realized long ago—that he did not know this woman at all. Yet he had been prepared to marry her within the next two weeks.

“Were you deeply attached to Kilbourne, then?” he asked her.

Her head dipped a little lower. Her fingers closed and then spread again.

“I grew up with him at Newbury Abbey,” she said, “from the time I was taken there at the age of three. In some ways he seemed like my brother as much as he was Gwen’s. But I always knew too that we were intended for each other when we grew up. I shaped my life to the expectation that one day I would be his countess. Even when he bought his commission and went away, telling me not to wait for him but to feel free to marry someone else if I wished, I remained loyal. I waited. But while he was gone he married secretly and then watched his wife die in an ambush in Portugal—or so he thought. He came home and would have married me after all. It seemed as if life would proceed in the direction I had always expected it to take. But Lily did not die. She came home to Neville—on my wedding day.”

He was not deceived by the lack of emotion in her voice. This story had been the sensation of last year. But almost all the gossip, he guessed, had focused upon the glorious love story that was Kilbourne and his lady’s. Lauren Edgeworth had been pitied, spoken of, no doubt, in hushed, shocked whispers. How many people, himself included, Kit thought, deeply ashamed, had really considered the pain the woman must have suffered and must still suffer? She had been within a few minutes of fulfilling a lifetime’s dream only to have it shattered most cruelly.

“You loved him?” he asked. Though he was not sure the past tense was strictly appropriate.

“Love,” she said softly. “What is love? The word has so many meanings. Of course I loved him. But not in the way Neville and Lily love each other. Love of that sort is a disordered, undisciplined emotion, best avoided. I would have remained loyal and faithful and . . . Of course I loved him.” She sighed. “I will contemplate no other marriage, Lord Ravensberg.”

He gazed at her, deep pity—and guilt—holding him silent. But she appeared to read his thoughts.

“I am not asking for your pity,” she said. “Please do not offer it or even feel it. I need only to be accorded the privilege that men expect as a natural right—to be allowed to live my life my way without having those who claim to love me forever knowing better than I what it is that will make me happy. I want to be alone and independent. If I ruin my reputation this summer, I will achieve that for which I ought not to have to fight.”

“Good Lord,” he said, running the fingers of one hand through his hair and then leaning forward to rest his forearms across his legs. “How can I agree to this? Having spoken of honor just a few minutes ago, how can I now agree to deceive both my family and yours? And how can I leave all the burden of breaking our betrothal to you? You do understand, do you not, that as a gentleman I could not possibly break it myself?”

“And therein is your answer,” she said. “To you the betrothal would have to be a real one, my lord, would it not? If I were to behave dishonorably, you see, and refuse to break it off even after striking a bargain with you, you would have no choice but to marry me. And so you would be involved in no deception if you were to agree to my suggestion.”

He tried to find a flaw in her argument. But really there was none. Of course if he agreed to her strange proposal the betrothal would be a real one for him. And perhaps—yes, perhaps he could redeem the honor he had lost in the past few weeks and persuade her after all during the summer to marry him. Perhaps he could persuade her that what he had to offer was slightly more appealing than a life alone. Women, even those with the means to live independent lives, had very little real freedom.

He did not love Lauren Edgeworth. He did not even know her, he admitted ruefully. But of one thing he had grown painfully aware during the past half hour or so. She was a very real person with very real feelings. And she was one for whom he felt a certain regard. And one to whom he owed a debt.

“Are you sure a large house party would be to your taste?” he asked her, sitting upright again.

For the first time she turned her head to look at him. “I believe it would suit me admirably,” she said. “I was brought up to be a countess, remember? I was brought up to expect to run Newbury Abbey one day, to be the lady of the manor. Going to Alvesley as the betrothed of the Earl of Redfield’s heir would be something I could contemplate with the greatest confidence and ease. You would not be disappointed in me.”

He frowned into her eyes. “But why would you do all this merely to convince your family to leave you to your chosen way of life?” he asked. “Pardon me, but you are no timid or easily dominated female, Miss Edgeworth. All you really need to do, surely, is tell them that you have made up your own mind about your future and they might as soon save their breath to cool their porridge as seek to change your mind.”

She looked away again—to the dark trees at the other side of the path, to the sky above, just visible through the branches of the trees.

“Your confession tonight confirmed me in all the bad things I have thought or been told about you,” she said. “For a while I could think of nothing but getting away from you and never seeing you again. But . . .”

For a while it seemed that she would not continue. He waited.

“My life has been quiet and decorous,” she said. “I have only recently realized that it is also dull. Its dullness suits me. It is what I know, what I am comfortable with, what I will live with quite contentedly for the rest of my life. But recently I have felt a craving to know just once what it would be like to have some sort of adventure. To . . . Ah, I do not know how to put the feeling into words. I think that spending a summer in your company, masquerading as your betrothed, would be rather . . . adventurous. This all sounds very lame put into words.”

But she was saying much more than the words themselves conveyed. She was, obviously, a woman who had never known joy, who had long ago repressed all her potential for spontaneity and happiness.

“What I would get out of this bargain,” she continued, “would be your promise, Lord Ravensberg, to give me a summer I would not forget for the rest of my life. Adventure and . . . well, adventure. It is what I want in exchange for extricating you from an unwanted marriage.”

He thought she was finished, but she held up a staying hand when he would have spoken. She was looking at her other hand again, spread palm-up in her lap.

“There was a morning,” she said. “At Newbury just a few days after my wedding—the wedding that never was. I was walking early and alone down toward the beach—three things I almost never do. When I was descending the hill into the valley leading to the beach, I grew aware of voices and laughter. It was Neville and Lily, bathing together in the pool at the foot of a waterfall there beside a little cottage Neville’s grandfather built for his wife. The door was open. They had spent the night there. They were . . . Well, I believe they were both unclothed. And they were . . . I think the only suitable word is frolicking. It was the moment when I realized that she had won in more ways than one. He was blissfully happy, you see. And I could never have done that. I could never have behaved with such total . . . abandon. At least, I do not believe I ever could. It was passion I witnessed for a mere few seconds before I ran away as fast as I could.”

She drew breath to continue but shook her head and stopped.

“Are you asking,” he said, “for a summer of passion as well as adventure?”

“Of course not.” She seemed more herself for a moment, straightening her spine and lifting her chin, looking shocked. “I just want to know what—what it feels like to throw off some of the shackles that bind me. Just fleetingly. I am not a person made for wild, passionate emotions. Or for vivid happiness. I just want a summer to remember. Can you give it to me? If so, I will come to Alvesley with you.”

Good Lord! He sat back on the seat and looked at her averted face. She was a far more complex person than he had ever dreamed. A wounded person. One who for some reason he did not understand had never been whole, and never free. Even if she had married Kilbourne, he suspected, she would have lived a half existence hidden behind her mask of perfect gentility. What exactly was she asking of him? To bring her out from the shadows in which she had dwelled all her life? To teach her spontaneity and passion and laughter? Joy? So that she could then abandon him and proceed with the lonely spinster existence that was all that remained of her dreams?

Did he want to take on such a challenge and responsibility? What if he could not do it? Worse, what if he could? But a good challenge had always been the breath of life to him. And if he agreed to this bizarre proposal, he would, of course, go into it full tilt, determined to win her as his wife. She loved Kilbourne—always had, always would. He was not looking for love. But could he . . . bring her out into the light?

“I can give you a summer to remember,” he said.

She turned her head sharply in his direction. “You agree, then?”

He nodded. “I agree.”

It was the precise moment at which the first fireworks exploded with a series of loud cracks. Even within the shaded grove where they sat they could see the night sky suddenly lit up with great arcing rays of dazzling color.