The mothers of young children went up to the nursery to get their children ready, most of the other adults retired to their rooms to change their clothes, Sydnam strode off to the stables to have the gig prepared since he had persuaded his grandmother—with the help of a chorus of supporting pleas from various cousins—to come too, and Lauren and Marjorie Clifford descended to the kitchens to cajole the cook into preparing a picnic tea and a couple of footmen into conveying it out to the hill.

The top of the hill was the highest point in the park and afforded a wide prospect over the surrounding countryside in every direction. For that reason the designer of the park and the wilderness walk had decided that there would be no trees up there and no elaborate folly to obstruct the view. What he had done instead was build a hermit’s cavern into the side of the hill, close to the top. There never had been a hermit, of course, but the children loved it. They were first to scramble to the top.

Everyone else toiled up more slowly. The whole family had come, without exception. Frederick and Roger Butler cupped their hands together at the bottom of the slope and carried their grandmother to the top—despite her protests—after she had been helped out of the gig. Boris Clifford had set up a chair for her on the summit, and Nell had plumped up a cushion for her back. Lawrence Vreemont and Kit carried Lady Irene up while Claude and Daphne Willard prepared her chair. The elderly sisters-in-law sat side by side, like twin queens on their thrones, Clarence Butler remarked. Lauren raised their parasols for them and Gwendoline helped Marianne spread blankets on the grass for any other adults who cared to sit and recover from the walk.

Kit sat down and prepared simply to enjoy himself. Lauren, he noticed, was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and looking remarkably pretty. After they had returned from the lake earlier, she had gone up to her grandfather’s room and remained there with him until luncheon. She had come down on the old gentleman’s arm, and had been looking noticeably happy ever since.

He could not stop himself from remembering some of the words she had spoken— I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness.

It was such a relief to know that he had done the right thing in persuading Baron Galton to tell her what he knew of her mother. To know that he had done some good in his life.

But there was not a great deal of time for reflection— or recovery from the walk and climb. The children, who were perfectly well able to play with one another, could not resist the attraction of a whole host of idle adults, who surely could not possibly have anything better to do than play with them. Before many minutes had passed it was no longer good enough for bandits and crusading warriors to creep up by foot on dragons and kidnapped maidens and hidden robbers in the cavern. Horses were required, and of course adult male cousins and uncles and occasionally fathers made splendid steeds.

Kit galloped around the hilltop for all of half an hour with an assortment of youngsters on his back. But the ladies were not exempt, he saw just before the older children tired of that particular game. Lauren and Beatrice and Lady Muir had been coaxed to their feet by some of the infants and were playing some circle game with them, all their hands joined—ring around the rosy, he guessed when they all fell down. Lauren was laughing, and little Anna jumped on her, followed by David and Sarah. She wrapped her arms about them while their mothers scolded and told them not to hurt Lauren.

But their attention was soon distracted. Young Benjamin had discovered that the slope behind the hill was broken halfway down by a wide, flat ledge before it continued its descent to the plain below, and that the upper slope was just long enough and smooth enough and grassy enough to be perfect for rolling down. He tested his theory with shrieks of exuberance, and soon all the tiring human horses were abandoned in favor of the new game. Even the little children could join in this one and did.

And then Sarah was tugging at Lauren’s hand, while Kit watched, grinning, from a short distance away. She laughed and shook her head, but then David was pulling at her other hand, and she was walking closer to the edge of the slope.

“Do it!” Frederick called, distracted from the conversation he was having with Lady Muir.

Sebastian put two fingers to his lips and whistled. Phillip whooped. Everyone turned to look.

Lauren was laughing.

“I dare you!” Roger said.

She took off her bonnet, sat down on the grass and then lay down, and rolled to the bottom, all light muslin skirts and bare arms and trim ankles and tumbling dark curls and shrieking laughter.

Kit stared after her, utterly enchanted. But it was Lady Muir, moving to his side and setting one hand on his sleeve, who voiced his thoughts.

“ That is Lauren?” she said. “I can scarcely believe it. Lord Ravensberg, I bless the moment she met you.”

Lauren was up on her knees, brushing the grass from her dress, looking upward, and still laughing.

“It would be a great deal easier,” she said, “if one did not have arms to get in one’s way.”

Yes, there had been that moment when they had met—that first moment in Hyde Park when their eyes had met. And there was this moment, when the truth finally burst in on him. Of course she had become precious to him. Of course she had. He was head over ears in love with her.

He loved her.

Sydnam was standing watching too.

“Oh, well,” he called down cheerfully, “if a lack of arms makes for easier rolling, I should be halfway decent at it.” And surrounded by shrieking, exuberant children, who were absorbed in their own pleasure, he rolled down the hill to come to rest a few feet from Lauren.

Kit tensed while all around him the relatives whistled and applauded. And then as Syd scrambled to his feet and offered his hand to Lauren, he looked up at Kit and their eyes met. He was laughing.

They toiled up the slope, hand in hand, while the children continued the game and most of the adults turned their attention to the approach of their tea from the opposite direction. They stood before Kit, still hand in hand. There was a moment of awkwardness.

“I need to tell you,” Sydnam said, his voice pitched low so that only Kit and Lauren would hear, “that I lied to you, Kit. When I told you the night you came home that I wanted nothing of you, you asked me if that included your love. I said yes. I lied.”

Kit swallowed hard, terrified that the sudden ache in his throat would translate into tears that everyone would see.

“I see,” he said stiffly. “I am glad.”

This, he thought, was the first time Syd had spoken voluntarily to him since that night three years ago when he had told Kit to leave and not come back. Why was he holding Lauren’s hand? He released it even as Kit thought it, smiled rather awkwardly, and would have turned away.

“Syd,” Kit said quickly, “I . . . er . . .”

Lauren, looking most unlike her usual immaculate self—bonnetless, her hair untidy and strewn with grass, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright—linked one arm through Syd’s and one through his and turned to stroll away from the chairs and blankets and rolling, noisy children.

“I have been thinking,” Kit said, “about something Lauren said this morning. I have not been able to get it out of my head, in fact, even though she was not talking about either you or me, Syd. She said that the people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. You are, are you not? And God knows I love you.”

“Yes,” Syd said.

“And I humiliated you the other night, coming to your defense when Catherine wanted you to waltz with her.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose,” Kit said, “it happens over and over again—with Mother and Father, with all your old friends and neighbors.”

“Yes,” Syd admitted. “But with you most of all, Kit.”

They did not descend the slope. They stood looking out across the fields below, across the pasture where Kit and Lauren had raced a few days before.

“You are an artist, Syd.” Pain was back in his throat and chest, the terrible, impotent pity for the brother he had adored from childhood on. “But you are condemned to be a steward.”

“Yes,” Syd said. “It has not been easy to adjust. Perhaps the adjustment will never be fully made. Perhaps being an excellent steward will never quite make up for the fact that I can never paint again. But it is my problem, Kit, my adjustment to make. This is my body, my life. I’ll cope with it. I have done rather well so far. I would appreciate a little credit. I don’t need your pity. Only your love.”

Lauren still had an arm linked through each of theirs, creating a physical connection between them, a sort of bridge, Kit thought, realizing suddenly that it was quite deliberate. Her hand crept into his, and she laced her fingers with his.

“I can’t forgive myself,” Kit said. “I can’t, Syd. You ought never to have been in the Peninsula. You certainly ought not to have been on that mission with me. It was my carelessness that led us into that trap. And then I left you to suffer . . . this while I escaped. Don’t tell me it is your life and not my concern. It is my concern. I doomed you to half a life and got off scot-free myself.”

“I would find that almost insulting if I did not recognize your agony,” Sydnam said. “Kit, I chose to become an officer. I chose to be a reconnaissance officer. The trap was unforeseeable. I volunteered to be the decoy.”