Mary Balogh - A Summer to Remember

“Well,” Kit said, turning and smiling cheerfully at her, “we are going to have to decide upon a wedding date, aren’t we?”

The rain stopped during the night, though it was the middle of the morning before the sun shone and dried the grass and promised summer heat for the afternoon.

Kit suggested and organized a game of cricket out on the long front lawn. It was intended originally just for the children, but all the young people and even some of the older gentlemen greeted the idea with such enthusiasm that the scope of the game was quickly extended. And almost everyone who was not playing—all except the dowager, Lady Irene, and Baron Galton, in fact, who retired for an afternoon nap—agreed to play the essential role of spectator.

The men busied themselves setting up the pitch while Kit divided the prospective players into teams of roughly equal ability and experience. Lauren, Gwendoline, and Daphne meanwhile spread blankets on the lawn for the spectators, a safe distance from the wickets. Several of the younger children dashed about, getting under everyone’s feet, tolerated only because the sun was shining and soon their energies would be channeled into the game. In all the noise and bustle no one noticed three riders approach up the driveway and onto the terrace until Daphne Willard hailed them.

Lord Rannulf Bedwyn had already dismounted and was lifting Lady Freyja to the ground. Lord Alleyne was surveying the chaos before him.

“Ah,” he said. “A cricket match, I perceive, and not yet begun. Good afternoon, ma’am.” He addressed himself to the countess, sweeping off his hat and inclining his head as he did so. “Might one be permitted to join the fun, even though one came merely to pay one’s respects?”

The countess introduced them to Gwendoline, whom they had not yet met. Lord Rannulf bowed over her hand and retained it while he exchanged civilities with her.

“You are quite sure you will not play?” Kit asked, coming toward Lauren and grinning down at her.

It seemed to her suddenly that last night could not possibly have happened—none of it. He looked so normal, so much his usual self. And she was very much her usual self.

“Quite sure,” she said firmly. “I would not have the smallest idea what to do.”

“You can catch a ball, surely?” he coaxed. “You can run. I can teach you how to wield the bat.”

“Kit,” she said, “if this is another of your ideas for forcing me to enjoy myself, you are going to forget it right now. I am going to enjoy myself immensely sitting here. Besides, not one of the other ladies over the age of eighteen is out there to make a spectacle of herself.”

But even as she spoke Lady Freyja Bedwyn strode out onto the lawn with Lord Alleyne and announced her intention of playing on whichever side was not Kit’s. Lord Alleyne joined Kit’s team.

“There is no persuading you?” Kit laughed and turned his attention back to the cricket match, which was about to begin.

Lauren adjusted her wide-brimmed straw hat to shade her complexion more effectively from the sun and permitted herself a sigh of relief. She had feared for one moment that he was going to insist. She needed to think. No, she did not! Not now. She felt color flood her cheeks at the memory of last night. She must not think about any of it until she was alone again—or of the fact that she had said no. God help her, she had said no.

The cricket match was lively and merry. Kit, whose side was fielding first, did a great deal of yelling and laughing. He was bowling, and he was annoying some of the more serious members of his team by deliberately allowing the smaller, weaker players to score against him while reserving his more lethal skills for the experienced players. When young David Clifford, standing at the wickets closest to him, his bat almost as big as himself, had to run the length of the pitch in order not to be thrown out by Sebastian Willard, a member of Eton’s first eleven last term, Kit picked the child up bodily and ran with him, laughing gaily all the way. They raced the ball by perhaps half a second.

“Dear me. Thus far Kit is the star of both teams,” Lord Rannulf remarked. “He must be inspired, like the knights of old, by the admiring eye of his lady. Does he wear your favor in his bosom by any chance, Miss Edgeworth? But we are about to see what he can accomplish against Freyja.”

Crispin Butler having just been bowled out, it was indeed Lady Freyja who had come up to bat. Lauren had been very aware of her from the start, standing on the sidelines some distance from the blankets with the rest of her team, bareheaded, her mane of unruly hair shining golden in the sun, smiling occasionally in the direction of the spectators, a challenge in her eyes as they met Lauren’s.

She was, of course, perfectly at her ease on the cricket pitch. She settled her bat before the wickets and squinted off in the direction of Kit, who was running in to the far wickets to bowl to her. It was clear that he knew her to be an accomplished player. He bowled his best ball at her. She hit it for a six. The ball arced up into the sky and landed way off on an undefended expanse of lawn. Benjamin went racing after it while the spectators applauded, the fielders groaned, Claude’s team jumped up and down with loud, unrestrained glee, and Lady Freyja hitched her riding habit with one hand and dashed between the wickets, laughing triumphantly, her hair streaming out behind her.

Kit was laughing too. “That was your free hit,” he called to her. “After this one we get serious.”

“Serious is not nearly good enough for me,” she called back. “Bring on a better bowler.”

Flushed, animated, and magnificent, she turned her head in the direction of the blankets again and her eyes mocked Lauren’s prim, ladylike presence.

“Ah, a gauntlet has been tossed down,” Lord Rannulf murmured. “This is quite like old times.”

Lady Freyja blocked the next ball and the wickets stood.

She got a hit off the next one, a perfectly catchable hit, but it sailed in the direction of four-year-old Sarah Vreemont, who watched it come in evident dismay, clapped her hands together at just the wrong moment while her teammates screamed at her to catch it, and burst into tears as the ball thudded onto the grass at her feet.

Lauren, twenty-two years her senior, knew just exactly how she felt.

“Hmm.” Kit trotted toward the child. “That was a mis-hit, Freyja. It was not Sarah’s fault at all that she did not catch it. You had better hit it again.”

Someone threw the ball back to Lady Freyja, and she tossed it up and hit it in a slow arc. Kit scooped up Sarah with one arm, cupped her little hands in his free one, and caught the ball.

“Out!” he yelled, and all his teammates cheered wildly.

Lady Freyja made a fuss—a loud one, as did the rest of her team. She stood, hands on hips, her bat dangling from one of them, her head thrown back, complaining that Kit was sly and conniving while he laughed at her and accused her of being a poor sport. But it was perfectly clear to Lauren that there was nothing serious about the quarrel, that they were deliberately insulting each other for their teams’ amusement, that they were really enjoying themselves. They were a perfectly matched couple, in fact, as she had seen from the start.

It was an undeniably depressing realization. Not because she was in any way in competition with the lady, despite the mocking glance Lady Freyja threw her way as she stalked off the field, apparently in high dudgeon. But merely because—again!—Lauren knew that she never could be in competition even if she wished to be. She had looks and breeding, yes, but she was completely lacking in that certain something that could win and hold a man’s admiration and arouse his passion. Despite last night, when all was said and done she was merely Lauren Edgeworth.

Sarah, her moment of triumph over, came wandering toward the blankets, looking for her mother, who had already gone back indoors out of the heat. There were still tears on her cheeks. Lauren drew her handkerchief out of an inner pocket and dried the child’s eyes.

“That was a wonderful catch,” she said. “Are you tired of cricket?”

The child nodded. “Come and play,” she invited.

Lauren hesitated. She had been to the nursery a few times during the past few days and had been surprised to find that children seemed to take to her. But she had not been alone with any of them.

“What would we do?” she asked.

“Push me on the swing.” Sarah had hold of her hand now and was tugging at it.

“There is a swing?” She got to her feet.

There was indeed. It was suspended on long ropes from a high branch of one of the great oak trees close to the parterre gardens. Lauren had not noticed it before. Sarah, who held her hand as they crossed the lawn, climbed on, and Lauren pushed her, at first tentatively, and then higher at the child’s urging.

Sarah whooped with glee. “Higher.”

Lauren laughed. “If you go too high,” she said, “you will kick your way right through into the treetop land and I will be left with an empty swing and no Sarah.”

And then she noticed that their progress across the lawn had not gone unobserved. Other small children, bored with cricket, were approaching and demanding their turn on the swing. Lauren was soon busy pushing the swing, making sure that everyone had an equal turn, helping the idle ones climb onto the lower limbs of the tree, jumping them down to the ground so that they could scramble up and do it all over again, and laughing with them. At least they were in the shade here, she thought gratefully, sheltered from the full force of the sun.