Mary Balogh - A Summer to Remember

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.

Lauren was on her way to Alvesley Park. The long journey into Hampshire must be almost over, in fact, she thought. The afternoon was well advanced.

More than two weeks had passed since the evening at Vauxhall when all this madness had begun. And madness it surely was. At the time she had imagined—if she had stopped to think at all—that she would simply ride off with Viscount Ravensberg on their masquerade, that they would proceed the very next day to Alvesley and her summer of adventure.

It had not turned out that way. Of course it had not. Even before she had tossed and turned her way through a sleepless night after the Merklingers had conveyed her home, she had realized that what she had agreed to—no, what she had suggested—was not just a carefree fling for the two of them but a huge lie that was to involve a large number of people. Common sense and a regard for propriety almost prevailed at that point. She almost dashed off a note to Lord Ravensberg, canceling all their plans.

Almost. But she had gone down to breakfast first, and Elizabeth had asked her about the evening at Vauxhall.

“It was very enjoyable,” she had replied—and after a moment’s hesitation, “Elizabeth, he asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

Elizabeth had risen hurriedly to her feet despite her bulk and hugged Lauren and laughed with delight and assured her that she had made a wise choice despite anything that Aunt Sadie and her ilk might say to the contrary.

“You have chosen to go with your heart after all, Lauren,” she had said. “I am so very proud of you and happy for you.”

Lord Ravensberg had called only an hour or so later to speak with the Duke of Portfrey, though he was not in any way Lauren’s guardian. It was a visit Lauren had not expected him to make, but one that Elizabeth had commented upon with approval.

Suddenly it had seemed out of the question simply to ride off for Alvesley with her betrothed. How could she, Lauren Edgeworth, have thought for a single moment that it might be possible? Suddenly everything had become very formal and correct.

Announcements had had to be made—to Lord Ravensberg’s family to expect her, to her grandfather in Yorkshire, to her family at Newbury Abbey, to her relatives in London, to the ton at large.

The betrothal—the fake betrothal—had become alarmingly real and no carefree adventure at all. Uncle Webster had rumbled with displeasure and called the viscount—in his absence—an impudent puppy. Aunt Sadie had called for the hartshorn, and Wilma had volubly declared herself speechless. Joseph had looked faintly amused but had offered no comment beyond a wish for Lauren’s happiness. The Duke of Portfrey had given it as his opinion that Lord Ravensberg’s notorious exploits amounted to nothing more than a sowing of wild oats. His military record told its own impressive story, he had added. He and Elizabeth had hosted a grand family dinner in celebration of the event the day before Lord Ravensberg left for Alvesley to break the news to his parents and two days before the announcement appeared in all the morning papers.

It had been impossible to come to Alvesley alone or with only a maid for company, of course, even though the journey could be made in one day. And impossible too to make the journey with Lord Ravensberg’s escort. Such behavior simply would not be proper—they were not wed. Elizabeth was within a month of her confinement and quite unable to travel. Lauren would not even ask Aunt Sadie to accompany her.

It was Aunt Clara, the Dowager Countess of Kilbourne, who was doing that. And Gwendoline, the widowed Lady Muir. They had come all the way from Dorsetshire to London in order to cry over her and laugh over her and hug her until her ribs felt bruised—and to accompany her to Alvesley at the invitation of the Countess of Redfield.