Mary Balogh - A Summer to Remember

Lauren could hardly believe she had spent the night in bed with a man. Even more amazing was the fact that she was feeling no shock, no horror, no sense of humiliation.

It would be as well for this masquerade to end as soon as possible, she thought as he got to his feet and she felt beside the bed for her shoes. She was turning into a wanton.

He smiled at her as he held open the hut door and she stepped out to the freshness of the morning air and the sound of the birds chirruping a dawn chorus from the treetops. It was his smile—and his laughter—that she would remember long after her other memories had faded, she thought. It was a memory that would surely bring a smile to her own lips down the long years ahead.

He took her hand in his as they began to walk.

“For the benefit of anyone who happens to be watching,” he explained. “There is no more tender sight than that of a betrothed couple holding hands.”

“Kit,” she said reproachfully, but she made no effort to pull her hand away.

The sun was shining the next day and it was possible to seek amusement outdoors. Lauren herself did not go out until afternoon—if one discounted a walk with Kit back to the house from the gamekeeper’s hut at a little after six in the morning. She helped the countess look over her plans for the birthday celebrations and offered to take over some of the responsibility for the daytime events. She spent an hour in the nursery at Nell Clifford’s invitation. And she sat conversing for a while, first with her grandfather and then with the dowager and Lady Irene.

A group of the younger people had agreed to go riding in the afternoon. They were loud in their insistence that Gwendoline and Lauren accompany them. Gwen was quite firm in her refusal, but Lauren’s objections were overridden.

“Oh, do come,” young Marianne Butler begged. “I want to see your riding habit. I’ll wager it is ravishing.”

“Ladies do not make wagers,” her brother Crispin reminded her and won for himself a rude, cross-eyed stare, which Lauren pretended not to notice—and which she was surprised to find amusing.

“Of course you will come,” Daphne Willard said briskly. “If it is to be just the very young things, I will have no one sensible to talk to.”

“And Kit will pine away if you are not there,” Frederick Butler added, “and likely fall off his horse.”

“We would have to carry him back on a door,” Phillip Willard said, adding to the nonsense.

“Of course Lauren will be coming,” Kit said with a grin. “I have promised to make this summer more enjoyable for her than any other she has known. How can one enjoy oneself if one does not get out for at least one respectable gallop?”

She looked reproachfully at him, but he was his usual merry-eyed self today and there would be no reasoning with him, she knew. Her stomach fluttered with awareness when she remembered that she had spent the night with him, pressed against his warmth, listening to his deep, even breathing the few times she surfaced to near-consciousness. She had slept with him. How much more scandalous could her behavior become this summer? And how much more enjoyable, added a little inner voice that she was beginning to recognize as her emerging rebellious self. It had been the most wonderful night of her life.

“Oh, very well,” she said weakly. “I will ride. But I will not gallop, Kit. The very idea! I would be the one coming home on a door.”

Kit winked at her and the cousins chose to find her words amusing. The dowager and Aunt Clara, both of whom were present, smiled indulgently.

The pace set by Claude Willard, who led the way out of the stables, was reassuringly sedate. Lauren rode between Marianne, who lamented the fact that she did not have the figure to wear anything as divinely elegant as Lauren’s riding habit, and Penelope Willard, who wanted to know—among numerous other things—if the gentlemen in London were more handsome than those in the country. It was a novel, rather pleasant experience to Lauren to be the admired idol of young girls who were not yet “out.”

Kit was riding a little way ahead, in the midst of a group that was indulging in a great deal of laughter. He did glance back quite frequently, though, to smile. And to check to see that she was still firmly planted on her horse’s back? Lauren wondered. But she was beginning to enjoy both the ride and the company.

Until, that was, Lady Freyja Bedwyn and Lord Rannulf hove into sight, also on horseback, and chose to join the party after exchanging loud greetings with the group, with all or most of whose members they appeared to have an acquaintance.

Suddenly, and without knowing quite how, Lauren found herself riding between the two of them.

“You really do ride, then, Miss Edgeworth,” Lady Freyja observed, controlling with consummate skill her magnificent, spirited mount, which was clearly accustomed to a far quicker pace.

“And with a remarkably elegant seat,” Lord Rannulf added, his mocking eyes sweeping over her and making of his words a double entendre.

“I expected to find you at Alvesley, hard at work on your sampler,” Lady Freyja said.

“Indeed?” Lauren replied coolly. “How very peculiar.”

“You are exposing your ignorance, Free,” her brother told her. “Even I know that only very little girls work on samplers. Miss Edgeworth doubtless graduated long ago to tatting and weaving and lace-making and knitting and knotting and all those other fascinating accomplishments that true ladies spend their time so usefully about.”

“Oh, do you do all those things, Miss Edgeworth?” Lady Freyja asked. “How you put me to shame. I always find them so dull.”

“Fortunately,” Lauren said, “the world offers enough variety of activities to suit every taste.”

“Well, my taste does not run to crawling over the earth’s surface when I have a good mount beneath me,” Lady Freyja said. “If we were to go any more slowly we would be in danger of going backward. Race with me, Miss Edgeworth. To the top of that hill?” She pointed with her whip across the pasture they were traversing to a hill maybe a couple of miles distant—Lauren rather thought it was the hill behind Alvesley on which the wilderness walk came to an end.

“I am afraid I cannot oblige you,” Lauren said. “This pace suits me admirably.”

“I must confess, Miss Edgeworth,” Lord Rannulf said, lowering his voice, the mockery in his eyes turning to laughter, “that a slow ride can occasionally be every bit as satisfying as a vigorous gallop to the finish. Provided the mount is worth the effort of restraint, that is.”

He could not possibly mean . . . But Lauren had no chance to digest her shock.

Lady Freyja had raised her voice to command the attention of the whole group. “Miss Edgeworth will not race against me,” she cried. “Will no one accept my challenge? Kit? You could not possibly say no. Though on that horse you would not be able to beat a mule to the top of the hill.”

“Ah, a challenge,” Lord Rannulf murmured.

Kit was grinning. “You are going to have to eat those words within a few minutes, Freyja,” he said. He made an extravagant gesture with one arm. “Lead the way.”

A few of the cousins whooped with enthusiasm as Lady Freyja dug her spurs into her horse’s side and, bent low over her sidesaddle, went streaking off in the direction of the hill. With a laugh, Kit went after her.

“She always was an outrageous hoyden,” Daphne Willard remarked cheerfully.

“And more often than not Kit’s equal,” Lord Rannulf added.

Lauren watched them go in a race that had been deliberately orchestrated for her benefit, she knew. It did not matter. They looked just as she had imagined them that day up on the hill with Gwen. They were galloping side by side, flying like the wind. They looked magnificent together.

They would be magnificent together once this summer was over and they were both free and under no pressure to make a dynastic alliance. They were each other’s equal in passion and daring.

She did not mind, Lauren told herself. She had no claim on Kit herself. She had no wish to have any claim on him. She wanted only to be free herself. But she could not stop remembering last night—the shared stories, the gentle, shared laughter, the rhythmic squeaking of the rocking chair, the lazy wonder of waking to find him lifting her out of the chair and laying her on the bed, the cozy comfort of sleeping with her body pressed against his.

The racers were sitting side by side at the bottom of the hill when the rest of the group came up to them. Their horses were grazing untethered nearby. Lauren met Lady Freyja’s glance and saw challenge and triumph and faint malice there.

“Well, who won?” Claude Willard called.

“Kit did,” Lady Freyja called back. “He would have pulled back at the end to let me win, but I told him I would shoot him between the eyes if he ever stooped to such condescension.”

“What was the prize, Kit?” Lord Rannulf asked.

“Alas,” he said, getting to his feet, mounting his horse, and riding toward Lauren, “we did not agree upon anything in advance. Now, if no one has any objection, my betrothed and I would like a little time alone together.”

Lauren turned her horse without comment and rode off with Kit while Daphne behind them was suggesting that they all climb the hill and rest on the summit.

“Were Freyja and Ralf annoying you?” Kit asked.

“Not in any way I could not handle,” she said.

He looked across at her, a smile in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I have realized that about you. Has this afternoon brought you any enjoyment at all?”