A Summer to Remember

Chapter 9

Kit was out in the stables when Lauren appeared there. It was only a little after six o’clock in the morning. Before leaving the house he had sent his valet to instruct her maid to wake her, but she must have been up already to have arrived here so soon—and looking like elegance itself in a forest green riding habit with a matching hat set just so on her carefully styled dark hair, its lavender feather curling invitingly about one ear.

He had been looking forward to going to wake her himself. He would have dared. Her outrage would have been something to behold.

“Good morning.” He grinned at her. “I have had the quietest mare in the stables saddled for you. The only tamer animal would have to be lame in all four legs. I will be riding beside you. You have nothing whatsoever to fear.”

“I am not afraid of riding,” she said. “I just do not enjoy it as an exercise. I resent this, you know. You are supposed to give me an enjoyable summer—enjoyable to me—not force me into doing things I distinctly dislike, like rising at this hour to ride.”

“No, no,” he said, chuckling. “I promised you a memorable summer, and I always keep my promises. But if it will make you feel better, I can tell you that we will be riding only a short distance. I have something altogether more pleasurable planned for you. We are going to swim.”

“What?” She looked disdainfully at him instead of recoiling in horror as he had expected. It was very difficult to ruffle the outer feathers of Lauren Edgeworth. Good Lord, he had been aroused by her last evening, and she had been standing flush against him and must have realized it unless she was more of an innocent than she could possibly be at her age. Yet she had appeared as cool as a spring breeze when she drew away from him and informed him that his duty was done for one day. “I absolutely do not swim, my lord.”

“Kit.”

“Kit. I do not swim, Kit. That is my final word.”

“Two strokes and a bubble?” he asked sympathetically, cupping his hands for her booted foot and tossing her up into the saddle. “You sink like a stone?”

“I really would not know,” she said, arranging her skirts and sitting so gracefully that she looked as if she might have been born in the saddle. “I have never tried.”

Never tried. Good Lord! What kind of childhood had she had? Or had she skipped childhood altogether? Perhaps she had been born a lady.

“Then you will start this morning,” he told her, swinging up onto his own mount and leading the way out of the cobbled yard. “I will be your instructor.”

“I will not.” She rode after him. “And you will not.”

If Vauxhall had not happened, he might have been repelled by her. So coldly dignified. So perfectly ladylike. So lacking in spirit and humor. So absolutely joyless. Though even then, perhaps, he would not be able to resist goading her. But Vauxhall had happened. And he knew that somewhere beneath layers and layers of cool decorum, behind mask upon mask of gentility, lay a woman desperate to come out into the light but not knowing the way. Like a child waiting to be born but clinging to the familiar, confining safety of the womb.

Keeping his promise to her was the one redeeming act he could do in his life. One small act, which would bring him no personal absolution, but which might set a fellow mortal free. He could teach her to embrace joy. It was something he could never do for himself, though his acquaintances might be skeptical if ever he were to say so. He wore very different masks from Lauren’s. But it was possible to teach what one could not practice. It must be possible.

He led the way down the drive and across the bridge before turning to his right onto the path that followed the river and then skirted the bank of the lake. The trees were denser on this side than on the side closer to the house. Sometimes the path wove deeper into the wood so that the water was lost to sight altogether for a minute or two. He stopped at one such point and looked back to make sure Lauren was having no trouble following.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

She looked reproachfully at him. “I think,” she said, “that all civilized mortals are still in their beds at this hour. And I seem to remember that you promised to show me the formal gardens today, not the wild woods. If this is your idea of giving me enjoyment, I made a sad bargain.”

He was getting under her skin, then. The oh-so-proper Miss Lauren Edgeworth had allowed annoyance to creep into her voice. Kit grinned.

His destination was the temple folly. It had been built close to the water’s edge years ago for picturesque effect, mainly for viewing from the opposite bank, where its marble perfection could be seen reflected in the lake on a calm day. But it also had a practical function as a resting place for those energetic enough to stroll all about the lake’s perimeter. It had been used by his brothers and his boyhood self as a bathing hut. Bathing had always been permitted in the lake—provided they were supervised by an adult. The catch had been that only very rarely had any adult been available and willing to accompany them, and even then there had always been an adult voice yelling at them not to dive off tree branches, not to swim underwater, not to go out of their depth, not to ambush one another or squirt water at one another or pull one another under. So they had bathed here, where they were out of sight from the house and were likely to remain undetected.

He dismounted when they reached the folly and tethered his horse to a tree branch. Then he lifted Lauren down before untying the bundle that he had secured behind his saddle. He led the way around to the front of the folly and up the shallow flight of marble steps to open back the double doors beyond four pillars.

A wooden bench lined the three interior walls. The floor was tiled, the walls plain except for an intricately carved frieze, across which naked, curly haired youths chased fleet-footed nymphs through unlikely groves of riotous flowers and ripe fruit. He and his brothers had more than once stood on the bench in order to ogle and snicker over the nymphs, whose flimsy, diaphanous garments hid nothing whatsoever of the feminine charms beneath. Small wonder that the youths were in eternal pursuit.

“Have a seat,” he offered, and Lauren sat against the inside wall, facing out toward the lake view, her feet set neatly side by side, her hands cupped one on top of the other in her lap. Kit set his bundle down and seated himself on one of the side benches. She looked severe and somewhat brittle.

“Newbury Abbey is close to the sea, is it not?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “The beach is part of the park.”

“But you never swam there?”

She shook her head. “I have never liked the beach,” she said. “Sand gets in one’s shoes and clothes, and the salt wind off the water dries one’s complexion. And the sea itself is . . . wild.”

“Wild.” He looked curiously at her. “You do not like wild nature?” Did not everyone love the sea? Was there really, perhaps, nothing but primness to the very core of her?

“Not the sea.” She gazed out at the lake, which this early in the morning was like a smooth mirror reflecting the rays of the sun. “It is so vast, so unpredictable, so uncontrollable, so . . . cruel. Nothing comes back from the sea.”

What or who had not come back? Had someone she knew drowned? And then he had an inkling.

“When your mother and your stepfather went away on their wedding trip,” he asked her, “did they go overseas?”

She turned her head to look at him, rather startled, as if he had changed the subject.

“They went to France first,” she said, “during a lull in the wars, and then gradually south and east. They were in India the last time I ever heard from them.”

The sea had not brought her mother back.

“I am told that my uncle and aunt took me to see them on their way,” she said. “Apparently I waved my handkerchief until the ship had disappeared beyond the horizon. It must have taken a very long time. But I have no memory of the event. I was only three years old.”

No memory? Or a memory pushed so deep that it could not surface into her conscious mind?

The sea had never brought her mother back.

But this was not the sea, and he had not brought her here to make her melancholy. He got to his feet and stood in the doorway, looking out.

“Did none of your childhood playmates swim either?” he asked her. “Even in that pool you told me about?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Neville and Gwen both did. It was forbidden, of course, but whenever they arrived back at the house with wet hair on a particularly hot and sunny day Aunt Clara would pretend not to notice and my uncle would purse his lips and ask if it was raining.”

“But you never broke the rules yourself?”

“It was different for me,” she said.

He looked back over his shoulder. “How so?”

“I was not their child,” she explained. “I was not even a blood relation. I was a stranger foisted upon them by circumstances.”

He felt angry on her behalf. “They treated you like an outsider, then?” he asked.

“No.” Her answer was very firm. “They showered me with love. They treated me no differently than the way they treated their own. I was as much Neville’s sister as Gwen was. And Gwen and I were bosom friends almost from the day of my arrival. You must have seen yesterday that Aunt Clara and Gwen both hold me in affection. They came here with me. But they . . . Well, I owed them so much, you see. How could I disobey my uncle and aunt? How could I not every day of my life do everything in my power to show my gratitude, to prove myself worthy of their affection?”

He believed that Lauren Edgeworth had just presented him with an answer to some of the questions he had about her. This was why she had shaped herself into being the woman she was—no, not woman. Lady was a far more appropriate word. In order to earn acceptance and love? This was why her whole life until a year and a half ago had been devoted to Kilbourne, who apparently had told her when he went off to the Peninsula that she was not to wait for him? Because her adopted parents had planned a match between them? Because in a marriage to Kilbourne she had foreseen final acceptance, final security?

But that security had been cruelly destroyed.

Was she in fact, despite all her control and dignity, the most insecure person he had ever known?

“Do you have much to do with your father’s family?” he asked her.

“No. None whatsoever,” she said. “After my mother had been gone for a year or so, my uncle wrote to ask if my own family wished me returned to them until she did come home. Viscount Whitleaf, my uncle, who succeeded to the title after my father’s death, said no. But I did not know this until after I wrote to him myself when I was eighteen and he wrote back to tell me that—that it was a practice of his never to encourage hangers-on or indigent relatives.”

Kit stared at her over his shoulder, but she was looking at the hands spread in her lap, as she had done at Vauxhall, he remembered. What the devil? He certainly wished he had known this two weeks ago.

“My grandfather would have taken me, I believe, if he had been asked,” she said, looking up at him again, a slightly defiant tilt to her chin, as if she expected him to argue the point. “But he would have thought, correctly, that I was better off with children of roughly my own age.”

Galton had never offered to take her, then?

Kit grinned at her suddenly. “We are wasting the best part of the morning,” he said, “when the water is at its calmest and freshest.”

“Go and enjoy it, then,” she said somewhat tartly. “I will sit here and watch you, though I would ask that you not remove your shirt. It would be most improper.”

He laughed outright. “For propriety’s sake,” he said, “I must bathe in my coat and boots, then, and you in your habit and feathered hat? We would ruin perfectly decent clothes and look like a couple of drowned rats at the end of it all.”

“I am not bathing at all,” she said. “You may get that notion out of your head, my lord. And you might have the decency to do that outside where I will not have to watch you.”

He had stripped off his coat and flung it onto the bench. He was tugging at one of his boots.

“What are you more afraid of?” he asked. “Getting your toes wet? Or allowing me to see them bare?”

Her cheeks turned slightly pinker. “I am not afraid of anything,” she said.

“Good.” He tossed his one boot under the bench and tackled the other. “You have five minutes to get down to your shift. After that you are going to be tossed in, ready or not.”

“What?”

“Four minutes and fifty seconds.”

“My sh-shift?” Her cheeks were flaming.

“I suppose,” he said, “you are wearing one. I perceive a slight problem if you are not. I may not be able to restrain my blushes.”

She stood up, all polar righteousness as his second boot disappeared beneath the bench. He was unbuttoning his waistcoat.

“I am going back to the house,” she announced. “I begin to see that I should have listened to my relatives in London after all. Stand out of the doorway, if you please, my lord.”

He grinned, and his waistcoat landed on top of his coat. He began tugging his shirt free of his riding breeches. “Four minutes.”

Her nostrils flared. “You would not dare.”

“Ah. That ill-advised word again.” His shirt came off over his head and he wondered if she would swoon.

But she was made of sterner stuff. “You are no gentleman, my lord.”

He tipped his head to one side as he mentally debated with himself whether he would bathe in his breeches or—far more sensibly—in his drawers. “You really ought to aim for some originality, you know. Three minutes fifteen seconds.” He decided reluctantly on the breeches. He had brought an extra pair with him, after all. He lifted one leg to peel off his stocking.

“Please,” she said quietly, “let me go.”

Would he really toss her in, fully clothed? Probably not, he decided. Undoubtedly not, in fact.

“You wanted an adventure, Lauren,” he said. “You wanted a summer quite different from any other you have ever known. You wanted to know what it feels like to live as other people live—people who do not have to earn the respect and love of those who nurture them. You wanted to know exuberance and happiness and freedom from restraint. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot expect these things to drop into your lap if you do not reach out to embrace them. I cannot keep my side of our bargain if you will not allow me to.”

“I do not know how to swim,” she said.

“I will teach you,” he told her. “The water is not even very deep at this point. It is less than shoulder deep.”

“I cannot remove my . . . I cannot,” she said.

It was a definite problem. He could see that, given the type of woman she was.

“I’ll jump in and swim for a few minutes,” he said. “I’ll not even glance in this direction. I’ll not even know it for a while if you decide to steal off back to the house. When you are ready, wrap one of the towels about you—they are large—and come to the bank. I’ll help you into the water. Or you can jump in unassisted if you prefer and I’ll not see you at all.”

“Kit,” she said, “I did not know it was going to be like this. I did not mean this.”

“Or kisses. Or passion. Or riding. What did you mean, then?” he asked her. “Go back to the house if you wish. I will not stop you.”

He turned and strode away to the bank. He dived in headfirst and came up a short distance out into the lake, gasping from the shock of the water’s coldness. He shook the drops out of his eyes and then put his face back under and began a slow crawl in the direction of the opposite bank.

“Kit?”

Several minutes had passed and, though he had not looked back to the folly, he was convinced that she must have started back to the house, probably on foot. But before he could turn his head to look, she called his name again.

“Kit.”

She was huddled over at the edge of the bank, kneeling, all except her head from the chin up wrapped inside the blanket in which he had rolled the towels. He swam a few strokes closer to her.

“The water is freezing,” she said. “I cannot do this. Please don’t make me.”

What she could not do, he guessed, was take off that blanket and expose herself to his view, clad only in her shift. He felt his temperature rise a notch, cold water notwithstanding, at the realization that she must indeed have removed most of her clothes. He swam the rest of the distance and stood a couple of feet from her, both his hands outstretched.

“The moment of truth,” he said. “How strong is your desire for adventure? How great is your courage to attempt something new and different? And undeniably daring. This is it, Lauren. Now or never.”

She drew the blanket tighter about herself, if that were possible.

“Take my hands,” he said. “Or go back home.”

Back home, he had said deliberately. Not back to the house. He could see from the look in her eyes that she understood him. If she wished it, the whole charade could be over with this morning, almost before it had begun. She could return to Newbury or to London with her aunt and cousin.

She moved into a crouch and set first one and then the other hand in his, and with nothing left to hold it about her, the blanket slipped to the grass. Her cheeks flamed, he tightened his grasp on her hands, and she jumped—the lesser of two evils, he supposed, since her slim, shapely legs had been suddenly exposed from the knees down as well as her arms and shoulders and a generous expanse of bosom. She looked a good deal younger than usual.

And then she was gasping convulsively and clawing at him with both hands in utter panic. He grasped her waist and drew her under with him until the water covered their shoulders and she would have only its temperature to contend with and not the morning air as well. He was laughing—mainly at the impropriety of what he had coaxed her into. Her bare legs brushed against his and he was very aware that there was almost nothing between his hands and bare, inviting flesh.

“You are not going to drown,” he assured her, “or freeze to death. You will be used to the water soon. It is not so very cold. Hold your breath.”

He drew her down with him until they were fully submerged. He felt her fingernails dig into his arms and saw that her eyes were tightly closed and her hair floating in a dark cloud about her face. He lifted them both to the surface almost immediately.

She surprised him then. She opened her eyes, stared at the bank and at the water, and then into his eyes, droplets gleaming on her thick lashes. “I did it,” she said. And then again, as if it were a moment of immense triumph, “I did it.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

He began her first lesson, teaching her how to put her face in the water without panicking, how to blow out through both her nose and her mouth. She was a surprisingly apt pupil. Though perhaps it was not so very surprising. He suspected that she had always been diligent in her efforts to master whatever she set out to accomplish.

Finally he taught her how to float on her back. Once he had convinced her that she would not simply sink like a leaden weight to the bottom and neither be seen nor heard from ever again, she relaxed and followed his instructions. But she would do it only as long as he had a firm hold on her back beneath her shoulders. The last time she tried, he kept his hands braced beneath her until he knew she was relaxed and buoyant, then he slipped them away. She floated alone, her arms stretched out to the sides, her eyes closed. After a few seconds he stepped away and waded around until he was a little way in front of her feet.

“The sky is lovely this morning,” he said. “There are just enough fluffy white clouds up there to accentuate the blue.”

She opened her eyes and gazed upward. “Yes,” she agreed—and then realized where he was. She sank, came up sputtering, and wiped water from her eyes with both hands.

“I might have drowned!” she scolded. And then she lowered both hands, fixed him with a wide gaze of astonishment from her lovely violet eyes, and . . . smiled. A full, sunny smile that lit up her face and made her suddenly and radiantly pretty. “I did it, Kit. I floated alone.”

She came wading toward him and somehow—his mind did not follow the full sequence of events—her arms were twined tightly about his neck and his about her waist and he was twirling her in the water, taking them downward as he did so, and covering her mouth with his own just before they went right under.

Sounds were muted. Time was suspended. There was body heat and there was mouth heat and for the timeless moments while they were submerged there were triumph and exuberance and pride and even joy all mingled together with raw lust.

And then they broke above the surface and were drawing apart and she was herself again—and he was himself once more.

“Your first adventure, ma’am,” he said, deliberately careless laughter in his voice, “safely accomplished and duly rewarded.”

“ Scandalously rewarded,” she said, eyeing him warily. “But what could I expect from the infamous Viscount Ravensberg? It must be getting late.”

“Lord, yes,” he said. “And any or all of our relatives might be given the impression that you have been out enjoying the morning air with your betrothed. That would be shocking indeed.”

“I came to Alvesley to lend you countenance,” she reminded him, “not to embroil you in further scandal.”

He chuckled and pulled himself up onto the bank. He ran the few steps to the temple and came back with one towel wrapped about himself and the other in his hand. It was devilish cold out of the water.

“Take my hand.” He bent to haul her out.

She might as well have been wearing nothing at all. He was uncomfortably reminded of the nymphs on the frieze inside the folly—and of his reaction to them as a boy. Clothed, she was a beautiful lady. Wearing only a soaking wet shift, which clung to every slender curve, she was woman and wanton and siren—and eminently beddable. He tossed her the dry towel, stalked off to fetch his clothes from inside, and without a backward glance took them around into the trees in order to dress and leave her some privacy to do the same.

They were on their way back to the house ten minutes later, her horse ahead of his. Apart from the fact that her hair was damp and curlier than usual, she looked like the elegant ice maiden to whom he had grown accustomed. Her towel was rolled up in front of her sidesaddle. She had refused to give it to him, probably, he thought, trying not to dwell on the images that came to mind, because her wet shift was wrapped inside it. Which meant, of course, that she was wearing nothing beneath that very fetching riding habit.

It was all very well, he thought, to have agreed to give her a memorable summer and even a taste of passion. It was quite another thing to find himself with lascivious designs on a woman whose avowed ambition was to live an independent existence as a spinster. His mind needed some distraction.

“Did Lady Muir hurt herself recently?” he asked her. “Or is the limp habitual?”

“She was thrown from her horse,” she told him, “while she was married. Her leg was broken and apparently not set properly. She also suffered a miscarriage.”

“And widowhood not long after?” he asked. “She cannot be any older than you.”

“One year older,” she said. “Lord Muir died as the result of a horrible accident in their home. He fell over a balustrade into the hall below. She was with him at the time. As you may imagine, it took her a long, long while to recover—if she has fully recovered even now. It was a love match, you see.”

Kit did not comment. What was there to say about a young woman whose life had been so dogged by tragedy? Apart from the limp, one would not know she had suffered at all. She smiled a great deal and was charming and personable.

How impossible it was, he thought just as if he were making a startling new discovery, to know people from their outer demeanor. How myriad were the masks people wore.

Lauren Edgeworth’s back was rigid with ladylike dignity. Yet less than half an hour ago she had smiled with sunny exuberance and flung herself into his arms. Simply because for the first time in her life she had floated on her back.

He smiled with silent amusement and at the same time felt a curious ache in his throat, almost as if he were on the verge of tears.