A Summer to Remember (8 page)

“Surely,” she said, “one fights for what is right. One fights on the side of goodness against the forces of evil.”

If that were so, why was insomnia such a problem for him? And the frequent nightmares when he
did
sleep?

“Do you believe, then,” he asked her, “that every Frenchman—and every Frenchwoman—is evil, that every Briton and Russian and Prussian and Spaniard is good?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But Napoléon Bonaparte is evil. Anyone who fights for him is evil by association.”

“I suppose,” he said, “France is full of mothers with sons slain in battle who believe the British soldier to be evil incarnate.”

She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.

“It is
war
that is evil,” she said at last. “But then wars are provoked and fought by men. Did you acquire the scar beneath your jaw in battle?”

It ran from the hinge of his jaw on the left side to the point of his chin. “At Talavera,” he said. “I did not complain too loudly about it even at the time. Two inches lower and I would have been playing a harp for the rest of eternity.” He grinned at her and ran one knuckle lightly down the arm that held her fan, from the edge of her short, puffed sleeve to the top of her glove. Her skin was silky and warm.

All around them was a loud hum of conversation as members of the audience visited one another and shared impressions of the play and other gossip. And yet suddenly the two of them seemed very alone. He felt a totally unexpected stirring of sexual desire for this woman who did nothing whatsoever to arouse it. She possessed beauty in abundance but no overt femininity. He had not even seen a genuine smile on her face. Yet his body wanted hers.

She drew her arm away from him. “I have given you no permission to touch me, my lord,” she said. “In fact, I have given you no encouragement at all. Why did you arrange this . . . stratagem tonight?”

“I was tired of attending every interminable social event of the Season,” he said. “I have been becoming alarmingly respectable. How dull for the
ton
to have had no outrageous exploit of mine with which to titillate its conversations during the past week or so. I have been compelled to take action.”

“If I had smiled and fawned over you at Lady Mannering’s ball,” she said, “and if I had simpered and giggled during the drive in Hyde Park, you would have lost interest in me in a moment, Lord Ravensberg.”

“Good Lord, yes,” he agreed. Perceptive of her.

“I would thank you not to take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said so primly that he was momentarily enchanted. “I see that I have behaved in quite the wrong manner with you. I should have
encouraged
you.”

“There is always time,” he suggested, moving his chair half an inch closer to hers, “to mend your ways, Miss Edgeworth.”

“You mock me,” she said. “You laugh at me—constantly. Your eyes never stop laughing.”

“Smiling,”
he said. “You do me an injustice. My eyes smile with delight because every time they behold you they see a woman so beautiful that no one after her is worth looking at—or thinking of or dreaming about.”

He was enjoying himself enormously, he realized—and wooing her in quite a different way than he had planned, with a quite blatant lack of subtlety. But there
was
no conventional way of wooing this woman, he suspected.

“I rest my case,” she replied, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. “There is no common ground between us, my lord, upon which any sort of meaningful relationship might be built—if that is your intent. We are as different as night and day.”

“And yet night and day meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn,” he said, lowering his voice again and narrowing his eyes and moving his head a quarter of an inch closer to hers. “And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty-four hours. A sunrise or a sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.” He grinned wickedly at her and touched his fingertips to the back of her gloved hand.

She moved her hand sharply away and then, seeming to recollect that they were on public view, raised it gracefully in order to fan her flushed cheeks. “I know nothing of passion,” she said. “You are wasting your time with me, my lord. I am not the sort of woman on whom words like these will have any effect whatsoever.”

“The theater is certainly overwarm,” he said softly, his eyes on her fan.

She ceased her movements abruptly and turned her head to look directly into his eyes. He expected her to move back when she saw how close they were, but she stood her ground, so to speak. He could sense anger hovering behind her control, and willed it to burst forth, even in this very public setting. Especially here, perhaps. They would instantly become a spectacular
ondit
. But he could almost see her reining in her temper before she spoke.

“You would be well advised not to continue pursuing me after tonight,” she said. “I will not accept any future invitation that includes you, my lord. I am accustomed to moving in circles where gentlemen are unfailingly gentlemanly.”

“How intolerably dull for you,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said, plying her fan again, “I like a dull life. Dullness is much underrated. Perhaps I am a dull person.”

“Then perhaps,” he suggested, “you should marry someone like Bartlett-Howe or Stennson. Every time they move they are lost to view within a cloud of dust.”

He thought for an intrigued moment that she was going to laugh. Then he was convinced that she was drawing breath in order to deliver the blistering setdown he had been trying his damnedest—Lord knew why!—to provoke. But dash it, the door of the box opened before she could either laugh or explode, and she turned her head away sharply to gaze down into the pit again.

Kit rose and bowed to Mrs. and Miss Merklinger, helped them resume their seats, and asked them how they had enjoyed the first act. He grinned and winked at a poker-faced Farrington, and resumed his seat beside Lauren Edgeworth only moments before Sutton and Lady Wilma returned and regaled everyone with a résumé of every topic of conversation they had pursued with Lady Bridges and her party.

The second act of the play rescued them all from death by boredom.

5

I
t rained intermittently for five days straight. It was impossible to walk any farther abroad than the back garden of the Duke of Portfrey’s house during the brief intervals between heavy downpours of rain. Lauren would have been perfectly content to remain quietly indoors, keeping Elizabeth company and busying herself with her needle and her pen, but everything around her seemed to conspire against any such hope.

The Duchess of Anburey came the morning after the theater visit with gentle reproof for Lauren’s having agreed to remain alone with Viscount Ravensberg when Wilma had very properly tried to draw her away to call at Lady Bridges’s box. Even when Lauren pointed out that she had stayed in Lord Farrington’s box from choice and that their tête-à-tête had been conducted in full view of any of the theater patrons who had cared to look, her aunt informed her that a lady could never be too careful of her reputation. Especially Lauren, under the circumstances, she added significantly.

She invited the Duke and Duchess of Portfrey and Lauren to dine the following evening. It would have been a reasonably pleasant family event, Lauren thought afterward, if it had not been for the presence of the lone outsider, another of the Earl of Sutton’s worthy, dull friends, who was seated next to Lauren at dinner and scarcely left her side all evening. It was most provoking to be six and twenty years old, a jilted bride, so to speak, and the object of all the determinedly well-meaning matchmaking efforts of several of one’s relatives.

Viscount Ravensberg did not remain without a mention. Lord Sutton regaled the company in the drawing room after dinner with an account of the viscount’s latest scandalous escapade. He had made a spectacle of himself the day before by going for a swim in the Serpentine in Hyde Park in the middle of the day between rain showers, wearing only—well, the earl did not care to elaborate on
that
topic in the presence of ladies. Lord Ravensberg had been laughing merrily when he got out of the water and revealed himself in all his shocking dishabille—he had not even been wearing his boots! He had sketched a deep, mocking bow to Lady Waddingthorpe and Mrs. Healy-Ryde, who had stopped, despite the mortification of being witness to such a shocking sight, to do their duty and inform him that he was a disgrace to his name and his family and the uniform he had worn until so recently. It was they who had spread the story, of course, beginning in Lady Jersey’s drawing room no more than an hour later.

The worthy young man assured Lauren with hushed solemnity that some gentlemen were not deserving of the name.

There were letters to and from home during that week, including one from Gwendoline, Lauren’s cousin and dearest friend—more sister than either cousin or friend, in fact. They had grown up together and had been virtually inseparable for most of their lives. Gwen referred to a letter her mother, the dowager countess, had received from Aunt Sadie.

“It is evident that she is surrounding you with a veritable army of eligible suitors,” Gwen had written. “Doubtless worthy and impossibly stuffy to a man. Poor Lauren! Is there anyone special—anyone
you
consider eligible? Oh, I know you have no wish for a beau, eligible or otherwise, but . . .
is
there?”

Lauren could picture the bright, mischievous grin Gwen would have worn while writing those words. But of course there was no one. Did he deliberately court notoriety? she wondered, her thoughts going off at a tangent. Swimming half naked in the Serpentine, indeed!

Gwen’s letter ended with a sentence written in slightly darker ink, as if she had sat at the escritoire for a long time before adding it to the rest, dipping and redipping her pen into the inkwell as she did so.

“Lily and Neville called at the dower house this morning,” the sentence read, “to bring the happy news that Lily is increasing.”

That was all. No details. No description of how Lily must have been glowing with joy and Neville bursting with pride. No description of how Aunt Clara must have wept with delight at the prospect of holding her first grandchild—or of the pang of grief Gwen must have felt at the memory of losing her own unborn child in a miscarriage following the riding accident that had left her permanently lame.

Just the bare fact that Lily was going to have a baby. Lily and Elizabeth both—newly married and increasing and as happy as the day was long. While Lauren was planning to set up her own very lone spinster establishment later in the summer and convincing herself that it was what she wanted most in life.

Lily had written to her father with the news, of course. Lauren was with Elizabeth in the morning room when he brought the letter to share with his wife.

“Oh, has it happened, then, Lyndon?” Elizabeth asked, clasping her hands to her bosom. “Lily was quite convinced she was barren.” Then she bit her lip and looked at Lauren, her eyes troubled.

Lauren smiled with all the warmth she could muster. “You must be very happy, your grace,” she said.

“Indeed I am, Lauren.” But he laughed ruefully. “Or I was until I recollected but a moment ago that now I will be plagued with anxieties for both my wife
and
my daughter.”

Lauren put away the embroidery she had been working on and got to her feet to leave Elizabeth and the duke alone together.

And then on the sixth day a card was delivered to Lauren at breakfast. It was an invitation from Mrs. Merklinger to dine the following evening and then proceed with their party to the private box Mr. Merklinger had reserved at Vauxhall Gardens, where there was to be dancing as well as fireworks.

She had spoken very little with the Merklingers at the theater. She had no other acquaintance with them. The only explanation for their invitation to join what must be a small, select party was that Viscount Ravensberg was to be another of their guests. Somehow he had maneuvered this.

She had told him quite firmly that she would have nothing further to do with him. For six days it had seemed that he must have accepted her dismissal. She had been relieved. Oh, whom was she trying to deceive? The past six days had been almost intolerably tedious, though they had been no different from much of her life before them. She must refuse the invitation. It just would not do to fall prey to Viscount Ravensberg’s mocking flatteries and deliberate attempts to shock her. They were so obviously insincere. She must refuse. And yet . . .

And yet Vauxhall Gardens of an evening were said to be enchanting.

And she had a curiosity to know how he meant to proceed with her now that she had made it quite clear that she was not susceptible to his flatteries.

And Aunt Sadie, Wilma, and Lord Sutton disapproved so very strongly of him. That was almost a recommendation in itself, she thought with guilty self-reproval.

And soon now Elizabeth’s confinement would be over and Lauren must move on to . . . well, to the life she had chosen as the most desirable for herself.

And Lily was increasing. Neville was a married man, soon to be a father.

“What ought I to do?” She showed the invitation to Elizabeth, who read it through and handed it back.

“You are assuming Lord Ravensberg will be of the party?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Elizabeth looked kindly at her. “What do you
want
to do?”

“He is an infamous rakehell,” Lauren said. “Why would he feed gossip by swimming in the Serpentine and then laugh about it when caught and scolded?”

“He is also a remarkably attractive young man,” Elizabeth said. “Attractive to
you,
Lauren. What are your wishes? I cannot tell you what to do. Is your disapproval of Viscount Ravensberg stronger than your attraction to him? That is the real question that needs answering.”

“I am
not
attracted to him,” Lauren protested.

“Then there is no harm, surely, in taking advantage of an opportunity to enjoy an evening at Vauxhall,” Elizabeth said. “Unless you are actively repelled by him, that is.”

“I am
not
repelled by him.”

Elizabeth set her folded napkin beside her plate and rose from the table, spreading a hand over her swollen abdomen as she did so. “Lauren,” she said, “both Lyndon and I are distressed for you that Lily’s news has followed so soon upon your arrival here that you must wonder if you will ever escape your painful memories. No.” She took Lauren’s arm and led her in the direction of the morning room. “You must not deny it. I am perfectly well aware of how deeply attached you were to Neville. But please—oh, dear me, I have sworn to myself that I will not make the mistake Sadie is making and try to order your life for you.” She sighed. “But I cannot altogether resist. Please, Lauren, do not imagine that your life is over or at least your chance for a happy, productive life. Only you can know what will make you happy, and if a quiet retirement from society is what will do it, then I will support you against all the Sadies of this world. But . . . No, I will positively say no more. Do you
really
want my advice concerning that invitation?”

“No,” Lauren said after a moment’s consideration. She smiled ruefully. “It was unfair of me to ask. I shall go. I have always wanted to see Vauxhall. And I am neither attracted to nor repelled by Lord Ravensberg, Elizabeth. It is quite immaterial to me that he too will be one of Mrs. Merklinger’s guests.”

Elizabeth patted her arm.

Alone in her room a few minutes later, Lauren was suddenly struck by a memory—of words to which she had not been given a chance to respond at the time.

Then perhaps you should marry someone like Bartlett-Howe or Stennson. Every time they move they are lost to view within a cloud of dust.

How incredibly rude! How cruelly unkind! How absolutely delicious!

Lauren suddenly grabbed a cushion from a chair within reach and stuffed it against her mouth as she went off into whoops of laughter. Then she had to drop the cushion in order to find a handkerchief with which to mop at her brimming eyes.

He ought not to be encouraged, she told herself severely, even by this secret laughter.

It was already dark when they approached Vauxhall Gardens by boat. There was a bridge that could take them across the Thames by carriage, Merklinger had explained at dinner, but why waste a perfectly good opportunity to do the romantic thing and cross by boat, especially as all that infernal rain seemed to have ceased at last and it looked to be a bright night with all the stars out and the moon approaching the full?

Why indeed, Kit thought as he handed Miss Edgeworth into the boat and took his seat on the bench beside her. He had sat beside her at dinner too, Mrs. Merklinger having apparently made the assumption that they were a couple—just as she was determinedly making it about Farrington and her pretty little chit of a daughter. Farrington was being roundly ribbed about it among their circle of acquaintances.

“And so,” Kit said, “they sailed away over the edge of the world to a land of wonder and enchantment. And carefree dalliance.”

“We are merely being rowed across the River Thames to Vauxhall Gardens, my lord,” she said. “A journey of ten minutes or so, I daresay.”

At least she was speaking directly to him. She had avoided a tête-à-tête during dinner, pointedly directing most of her conversation to Merklinger on her other side.

“Ah, but Vauxhall
is
a wonderful, enchanted land,” he told her. “And famous as a setting for dalliance and other romantic capers. Have you been there before?”

“No. And your conversation borders upon the offensive, my lord.”

He wondered if she knew how delectable she looked when she was at her most prim and indignant, as she was now. Her already upright posture had taken on a distinct resemblance to a poker at the mention of dalliance. Her chin had lifted an inch. She gazed disdainfully off across the water instead of looking back at him. She was wearing the lavender cloak she had worn to the theater, its wide hood pulled halfway over her dark curls for the river crossing, though the evening was balmy. Beneath it she wore a high-waisted, long-sleeved gown of ivory lace over silk. He had wondered, when he first set eyes upon her earlier in the evening, how she could always appear to be the best-dressed lady at any gathering despite the comparative simplicity of her dresses. But the answer had come to him almost immediately. To add to her other ladylike perfections, she was also a woman of exquisite taste.

The realization somehow made this evening’s task more daunting. There were ten days of his wager remaining. He was to be married to her within ten days or else be three hundred pounds the poorer.
Married
to her? Within ten days? Was it possible? But the word
impossible
had never been part of his vocabulary.

Kit listened to the babble of voices around them. Miss Merklinger and her cousin, Miss Abbott, were commenting on everything they saw with bubbling, youthful enthusiasm. But Lauren Edgeworth, having allowed plenty of time for her last scolding words to sink home, was speaking again, her face still half turned from him.