“Ah, Katherine,” he said, his voice and eyes openly mournful now, “I was not wise enough to fall in love with you then and so prevent the disaster of Vauxhall. What is it about your eyes, though? Is it that they reveal or hint at a person well worth knowing? Someone whose love is well worth courting? Someone who is well worth loving?”

She felt more like crying than thinking of a suitably spirited retort.

“You are going to have to do considerably better than that, you know,” she said. “A Cheltenham tragedy will not do it.”

“Ah. Will it not, cruel heart?”

He removed his hand and grinned at her.

“And you are not your father, Jasper,” she said. “You are yourself.”

For a moment his eyes looked curiously bleak despite the grin. Then he took her hand in his and raised it so that he could kiss the inside of her wrist.

“I am, as you say, myself,” he said. “A fact for which I am remarkably thankful, especially at this moment.”

He raised her hand and set it on his shoulder. He took a half step forward and slid his other arm about her waist, so that they were lightly touching along their full length.

He was, she supposed, going to kiss her. Their wager had not forbidden kisses, had it? But she could not bear to be kissed at this precise moment. Her emotions were feeling rather raw.

“It would be desirable,” she said, “for us to concentrate upon becoming friends before we even think of love.”

“Friends?” He chuckled. “After this month is over, Katherine, I intend to take you to bed every night and all night-and often during the days too. I would find it inordinately embarrassing to take my friend to bed. Con is my friend, and Charlie Field and Hal Blackstone and half a dozen other fellows. All male. I believe you might find me a mite impotent if I got into bed with you and then discovered that I had got in with my friend.”

She could not help laughing.

“Is it easier, then,” she asked him, “to make love to your enemy?”

“Enemy be damned,” he said. “Pardon my language. I would rather make love to my lover, Katherine. To you, since you are my wife and sex is one of the definite advantages of being married, provided one can tolerate one’s wife.”

“And provided she can tolerate her husband,” she said.

“Neither of which provideds poses any problem in this particular marriage,” he said. “Do they?”

He waited for her answer. And there was no witty response to that particular question, was there?

“No,” she said.

He smiled slowly, his eyelids drooping over his eyes, which focused on her lips.

“I do not suppose,” he said, “I can persuade you to forget the one condition of our wager, can I?”

“That it will take you one month to win my love?” she said. “Oh, very well, then. We will make it five weeks if you feel you need more time.”

He threw back his head and laughed, startling her.

“You minx, Katherine,” he said. “I adore you. Do you know that?”

“You would have to define the word adore,” she said. He leaned forward again and kissed her-on the tip of her nose.

“The wager will remain as it is, then,” he said. “We will make up for lost time when the month is over. But we are wasting a lovely day standing here. Come and sit in the parterre garden. You have not even smelled it yet-all those herbs.”

And he took her hand in his and laced their fingers together before leaving the gallery with her and descending the stairs and stepping out onto the upper terrace.

Just like lovers.

Or newlyweds.

With nothing to care about but their absorption in each other.


They spent an hour or more in the garden, first strolling along the graveled walks, examining the statues, admiring the flowers, and the neatly clipped hedges, smelling the herbs, reading the time by the sundial, and then sitting on one of the seats that were half hidden against the banks of wallflowers.

They breathed in the mingled scents of sage, mint, lavender, and myriad flowers, and Katherine closed her eyes and sighed with what sounded very like contentment.

Jasper had never really understood what had drawn him to that old painting in the attic to the extent that he had almost instantly determined to restore the parterres as they had been a century ago, with adaptations of his own. If he had thought of it at all, he would have given a negative reason-the artificiality of such a garden beyond the front doors and directly below the drawing room windows would have horrified his mother’s second husband and therefore must be recreated. Perhaps his decision to make it a sunken garden and therefore very difficult to remove and obliterate at any future date had been a final act of defiance to the hated memory.

But a positive had come out of that negative motive. The garden was both beautiful and peaceful, though he had never thought of that latter fact until Katherine had used the word.

Strange that, when the garden was in full view of the house and of any carriage approaching it.

“Is solitude necessary for peace?” he asked her.

She opened her eyes.

“Perhaps not,” she said, “if one is in harmony with one’s surroundings and any companion with whom one shares them.”

“But not someone who talks a great deal?” he said.

She smiled.

“Is this,” he asked her when she said nothing, “another case of wearing the boot if it fits?”

“No,” she said. “I am feeling perfectly at peace even when you talk. I love it here.”

“Do you?” he asked her. “Here in the garden? Or here at Cedarhurst?”

“Both,” she said.

“And with present company?” he asked her.

“You remind me,” she said, still smiling, “of a little boy seeking approval.”

Good Lord!

“Whereas in reality,” he said, “I am a big, bad boy wondering if he dares steal a kiss-if kissing is permitted, that is. Is it?”

“In full view of the house?” she said. “And any servants who happen to be peeping out at us? It is said that servants know their employers better than anyone else, that there is no hiding anything of significance from them. How long will it be before they know us and our marriage as well as we do? Even as long as a month?”

She had not answered his question about kissing.

He was feeling remarkably contented, considering the fact that he had got married just two days ago under the worst possible circumstances and agreed on his wedding night to a whole month of celibacy.

It felt surprisingly good to be home.

With Katherine.

Despite what he had said in the gallery about friendship with women, he had the odd feeling that he could become comfortable with Katherine’s companionship.

Comfortable?

Companionship?

Peace was shattered in a sudden surge of panic.

Good Lord and devil take it, he was a married man.

And if that realization was not terrifying enough, there was the added conviction-it suddenly occurred to him and took him completely by surprise-that he did not really approve of adultery. One reason he had hated that viper of a second husband of his mother’s with such intensity was that for all his piety and righteousness he had kept a mistress not twenty miles away and had visited her regularly twice a week from the time of his marriage until his death.

Oh, yes, Katherine had spoken a greater truth than she realized just a moment ago. Servants did indeed know all there was to know about their masters-or, in this case, about their master’s stepfather and self-appointed guardian.

No, dash it all, he did not believe in adultery.

Comfort and companionship would be something, he supposed. But there was going to have to be more. There was going to have to be. He was definitely not cut out for either celibacy or a companionable, decorous exercise of his marital rights once a week or so.

“This,” she said, indicating the parterres, “was what you described as your first tentative step to making Cedarhurst your own. And it was a magnificent step. What will your second be, Jasper? And your third?”

“Must there be a second and third?” he asked with a sigh. “Have I not exerted myself enough for one lifetime?”

“Is everything about the house and the park perfect, then?” she asked him. “Are you content to live with everything as it is for the rest of your life?”

“Well,” he said, “since moving into the east wing-and exerting myself to refurbish my bedchamber, I would have you know-I have been dissatisfied with the sight of the long stretch of lawn below my window. There is nothing to look at but grass and trees in the distance. But I can hardly have parterres put there too.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. “I had the same thought, though, when I looked out of my window this morning. There ought to be flowers down there so that they can be smelled from the bedchambers. And seen, of course. A rose garden, perhaps, though I would prefer to keep a rose garden small rather than have it fill that whole space-a rose arbor rather than a full garden.”

“With an apple orchard beyond it,” he said. “There is no orchard in the park. I always rather like seeing trees planted in straight rows like soldiers.”

“And blooming in the spring,” she said, turning a glowing face his way. “Oh, there is nothing more magical.”

“And heavy with fruit in the late summer,” he said. “To be plucked at will.”

She jumped to her feet and reached out a hand to him. “Let us go and look,” she said. “Let us go and see if it will be possible to have both. Though I am sure it will.”