Mary Balogh - A Summer to Remember

“Nothing could make the climb worthwhile,” she said severely, “though the prospect is a good one, I will concede.”

Well. Cool praise indeed. But a moment later she ruined the effect of her words. He felt a slight tremor beneath his hands, and then she was laughing softly. Lauren Edgeworth was laughing!

“I am up in a tree,” she said. “Gwen and Aunt Clara will not believe it even if I should tell them. No one who knows me would believe it. Lauren Edgeworth up a tree, without a bonnet.”

She seemed to find the idea enormously tickling. For a few moments her laughter was almost silent. But she could not contain it. She burst into peals of glee, gales of merriment. And Kit, holding her safe, joined her.

“And loving every moment of it?” he asked when he could.

“Now that I will never admit to,” she said and laughed again. But finally they were both quiet, and when she spoke again her voice held more wistfulness than humor. “I will remember today. All of it. For the whole of the rest of my life. Thank you, Kit.”

He settled his cheek against the top of her head— her hair was warm from the sunshine. The pleasures he had given her today— if they had given her pleasure—were such simple things. But she would remember them for the rest of her life? Strangely enough, he believed he would too.

He bent his legs at the knee, braced his feet against the branch on either side of her, and relaxed. When had he last done this? Just sat, that was, soaking up sunshine and heat, feeling the sheer comfort of another human presence? It seemed that perhaps he had never done it. Certainly not in recent years. He was always busily intent upon filling in every idle moment, avoiding every chance that he might inadvertently come face-to-face with his own thoughts. He even avoided lying in bed at night until he was too exhausted to do anything but fall into instant sleep. Though even then there were the dreams. . . .

But he abandoned all thought, all his cautious defenses, as he closed his eyes.

He had always favored small women, not being a particularly tall man himself. He had always been attracted to voluptuous women. And passionate women. He had had several affairs over the years, most of them tumultuous in nature, intensely satisfying, soon over. His summer with Freyja had followed much the usual pattern, though he had always denied it to himself, the only real difference being that his passion had not been satisfied physically and therefore had never been slaked. It had been over before he was ready to see it end. At the time he had thought he never would want it to end, that she was the woman to whom he could pledge his lifelong devotion. But had he not thought so with numerous mistresses before her?

Lauren Edgeworth was tall for a woman. She was slender. She was cool in nature. Not frigid. No, not that. But probably incapable of hot physical passion. She should have been unattractive to him despite her undeniable beauty.

But he desired her. He turned his head slightly, buried his nose in her hair, breathed in the scent of her. He desired her in an unfamiliar, controlled way. Without the usual burning need to mount her body to satisfy his hunger. It was a curiously uncarnal desire. And yet it was physical. It was desire he felt, not just admiration or affection.

He nudged her hair back from her face with his cheek and kissed her temple, her cheek, her jaw. He kissed her earlobe and sucked it gently between his teeth.

She sat motionless, her eyes closed again. Yet not quite motionless either. She tipped her head slightly toward his arm, allowing him easier access to the side of her face closer to him. He kissed her neck, nuzzling it softly.

She somehow fit him like a glove, he thought. A comfortable kid glove. And yet he felt definite desire—an invigorating surging of the blood and tightening of the groin. Desire mingled with tenderness, two feelings that had never coincided in him before now. He was on unfamiliar ground.

He settled his cheek against her head again and spread his palms over her waist and abdomen. They were flat, and yet soft and womanly too. He lifted his hands to cup her breasts lightly. He paused, giving her a chance to protest, to push his hands away, to break the drowsy spell of desire he was exploring. Drowsiness and desire as simultaneous feelings? Strange indeed! She spread her hands over his Hessian boots, just above the ankles.

They were small breasts, but firm and lovely. They fit his hands as if made for them. She seemed perfectly relaxed, yet her nipples, he found, touching them lightly with the pads of his thumbs, were peaked and hard. He lowered his head once more to kiss her in the warm hollow between her neck and shoulder. He opened his mouth, licking her, tasting her, breathing warm air against her silky flesh.

For the first time she made a sound—a soft whimpering sigh deep in her throat. She may not be a woman of passion, he thought, but she was certainly capable of desire. Loving her would be a somewhat tender experience. One would need to awaken her slowly, patiently, with gentle consideration. One would need to cherish her, to subdue one’s own need in order to nurture hers. One would need to make love to her in ways he had never before made love. There was something strangely arousing in the thought.

He slid his palms downward and curved the fingertips of one hand into the soft, warm juncture of her thighs. She drew in a breath, not noisily but with slow deliberation, and pressed her head more firmly back against his shoulder. The soft muslin of her skirt gave before the pressure of his fingers, and he rubbed her lightly.

It was as well, he thought, that they were where they were. They were not really betrothed. They were not going to be married. And though he was honor-bound to try to persuade her to change her mind during the coming weeks, he had no wish to coerce her. He would not violate her and so give her no choice in her own future. The knowledge of where they were was its own limit on how far he could carry this encounter. He ran his palm along one of her inner thighs but made no attempt to reach down for her hem to lift her skirt.

He wanted her. He desired her. It would feel good to be inside her body. And yet his desire was curiously lacking in physical urgency. It felt more like a yearning of the heart. For her innocence, perhaps? For the sweet, quiet discipline that could so easily be mistaken for cold passivity?

“Kit,” she said, “no. Really you need not.”

“ Need not?” Reluctantly he wrapped his arms safely about her waist again. “What do you know of my needs?”

“Enough to be quite certain that I am not the woman to satisfy a single one of them,” she said. “You have been wonderful to me today. Horrid but wonderful. I will remember swimming and climbing trees, you see. I will remember with pleasure. But I did not ask for passion, not of—not of this nature anyway. It is improper. We are strangers really, are we not? We will be strangers in future. If our families knew that we were not really betrothed, they would never allow us to be alone together like this. And it is easy to understand why. I have never . . . Kit, I have never done these things before. And I must not again. Please.”

“You must not be a woman?” he murmured against her ear. “Only a lady?”

She did not answer for a few moments. “Yes,” she said at last. “I choose to be only a lady.”

“You cannot be both?”

“Only if I were married,” she said. “To someone I loved and to someone who loved me in return.”

“You believe Kilbourne loved you?”

He felt her swallow. “He did,” she said. “He always did. We always loved each other. Not as he loves Lily or as she loves him, but . . . Kit, I do not want to be having this conversation. I cannot ever love you, that is all. And you certainly could never love me. Without love, what we have been doing is wrong. Even perhaps a little sordid, though it did not feel that way. Take me home, please. But how on earth are we to get down?”

“Now that you mention it,” he said, “how are we?”

She turned her head sharply to regard him with wide, dismayed eyes. He grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows.

“I am s-s-scared,” he wailed.

“Oh, Kit!” And she laughed again, as she had earlier, her whole face lighting up with glee as she punched his shoulder with the side of her fist. “Never fear. I will rescue you. I will open my mouth and screech for help.” She laughed again—no, she giggled. Like a girl. Like the child she had never been, perhaps. She drew breath as if she were an operatic soprano about to hit a high C, and he clapped a hand over her mouth.

“If it comes to a choice between breaking both my legs on the one hand and watching an army of gardeners charge up here to the rescue,” he said, “I think I will sacrifice my legs. Here we go, then. Hang on tight and trust me. Sir Galahad is my middle name.”

She laughed once more.

We have scarcely had a private moment together. But I daresay I must accustom myself to losing you.” Gwendoline linked her arm through Lauren’s. “It is all in a good cause, fortunately. I like Lord Ravensberg exceedingly well.”

“Do you, Gwen?”

They were on the wilderness path, taking advantage of a quiet morning before the expected onslaught of arrivals later in the day. Kit had gone off with his father to inspect the hay crop on some distant field. Lauren was pleased about that. She just hoped they would talk. She had maneuvered them together last evening. The earl had been turning the pages of her music at the pianoforte, and after finishing her piece she had smiled deliberately at Kit, who had been talking with Gwen and his grandmother, almost forcing him to her side. She had known that he was reluctant to come—and that his father too would be feeling somewhat trapped. They always avoided each other as much as they could, father and son, even though Lauren had witnessed no open hostility on either side.