No memory? Or a memory pushed so deep that it could not surface into her conscious mind?
The sea had never brought her mother back.
But this was not the sea, and he had not brought her here to make her melancholy. He got to his feet and stood in the doorway, looking out.
“Did none of your childhood playmates swim either?” he asked her. “Even in that pool you told me about?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Neville and Gwen both did. It was forbidden, of course, but whenever they arrived back at the house with wet hair on a particularly hot and sunny day Aunt Clara would pretend not to notice and my uncle would purse his lips and ask if it was raining.”
“But you never broke the rules yourself?”
“It was different for me,” she said.
He looked back over his shoulder. “How so?”
“I was not their child,” she explained. “I was not even a blood relation. I was a stranger foisted upon them by circumstances.”
He felt angry on her behalf. “They treated you like an outsider, then?” he asked.
“No.” Her answer was very firm. “They showered me with love. They treated me no differently than the way they treated their own. I was as much Neville’s sister as Gwen was. And Gwen and I were bosom friends almost from the day of my arrival. You must have seen yesterday that Aunt Clara and Gwen both hold me in affection. They came here with me. But they . . . Well, I owed them so much, you see. How could I disobey my uncle and aunt? How could I not every day of my life do everything in my power to show my gratitude, to prove myself worthy of their affection?”
He believed that Lauren Edgeworth had just presented him with an answer to some of the questions he had about her. This was why she had shaped herself into being the woman she was—no, not woman. Lady was a far more appropriate word. In order to earn acceptance and love? This was why her whole life until a year and a half ago had been devoted to Kilbourne, who apparently had told her when he went off to the Peninsula that she was not to wait for him? Because her adopted parents had planned a match between them? Because in a marriage to Kilbourne she had foreseen final acceptance, final security?
But that security had been cruelly destroyed.
Was she in fact, despite all her control and dignity, the most insecure person he had ever known?
“Do you have much to do with your father’s family?” he asked her.
“No. None whatsoever,” she said. “After my mother had been gone for a year or so, my uncle wrote to ask if my own family wished me returned to them until she did come home. Viscount Whitleaf, my uncle, who succeeded to the title after my father’s death, said no. But I did not know this until after I wrote to him myself when I was eighteen and he wrote back to tell me that—that it was a practice of his never to encourage hangers-on or indigent relatives.”
Kit stared at her over his shoulder, but she was looking at the hands spread in her lap, as she had done at Vauxhall, he remembered. What the devil? He certainly wished he had known this two weeks ago.
“My grandfather would have taken me, I believe, if he had been asked,” she said, looking up at him again, a slightly defiant tilt to her chin, as if she expected him to argue the point. “But he would have thought, correctly, that I was better off with children of roughly my own age.”
Galton had never offered to take her, then?
Kit grinned at her suddenly. “We are wasting the best part of the morning,” he said, “when the water is at its calmest and freshest.”
“Go and enjoy it, then,” she said somewhat tartly. “I will sit here and watch you, though I would ask that you not remove your shirt. It would be most improper.”
He laughed outright. “For propriety’s sake,” he said, “I must bathe in my coat and boots, then, and you in your habit and feathered hat? We would ruin perfectly decent clothes and look like a couple of drowned rats at the end of it all.”
“I am not bathing at all,” she said. “You may get that notion out of your head, my lord. And you might have the decency to do that outside where I will not have to watch you.”
He had stripped off his coat and flung it onto the bench. He was tugging at one of his boots.
“What are you more afraid of?” he asked. “Getting your toes wet? Or allowing me to see them bare?”
Her cheeks turned slightly pinker. “I am not afraid of anything,” she said.
“Good.” He tossed his one boot under the bench and tackled the other. “You have five minutes to get down to your shift. After that you are going to be tossed in, ready or not.”
“What?”
“Four minutes and fifty seconds.”
“My sh-shift?” Her cheeks were flaming.
“I suppose,” he said, “you are wearing one. I perceive a slight problem if you are not. I may not be able to restrain my blushes.”
She stood up, all polar righteousness as his second boot disappeared beneath the bench. He was unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“I am going back to the house,” she announced. “I begin to see that I should have listened to my relatives in London after all. Stand out of the doorway, if you please, my lord.”
He grinned, and his waistcoat landed on top of his coat. He began tugging his shirt free of his riding breeches. “Four minutes.”
Her nostrils flared. “You would not dare.”
“Ah. That ill-advised word again.” His shirt came off over his head and he wondered if she would swoon.
But she was made of sterner stuff. “You are no gentleman, my lord.”
He tipped his head to one side as he mentally debated with himself whether he would bathe in his breeches or—far more sensibly—in his drawers. “You really ought to aim for some originality, you know. Three minutes fifteen seconds.” He decided reluctantly on the breeches. He had brought an extra pair with him, after all. He lifted one leg to peel off his stocking.
“Please,” she said quietly, “let me go.”
Would he really toss her in, fully clothed? Probably not, he decided. Undoubtedly not, in fact.
“You wanted an adventure, Lauren,” he said. “You wanted a summer quite different from any other you have ever known. You wanted to know what it feels like to live as other people live—people who do not have to earn the respect and love of those who nurture them. You wanted to know exuberance and happiness and freedom from restraint. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot expect these things to drop into your lap if you do not reach out to embrace them. I cannot keep my side of our bargain if you will not allow me to.”
“I do not know how to swim,” she said.
“I will teach you,” he told her. “The water is not even very deep at this point. It is less than shoulder deep.”
“I cannot remove my . . . I cannot,” she said.
It was a definite problem. He could see that, given the type of woman she was.
“I’ll jump in and swim for a few minutes,” he said. “I’ll not even glance in this direction. I’ll not even know it for a while if you decide to steal off back to the house. When you are ready, wrap one of the towels about you—they are large—and come to the bank. I’ll help you into the water. Or you can jump in unassisted if you prefer and I’ll not see you at all.”
“Kit,” she said, “I did not know it was going to be like this. I did not mean this.”
“Or kisses. Or passion. Or riding. What did you mean, then?” he asked her. “Go back to the house if you wish. I will not stop you.”
He turned and strode away to the bank. He dived in headfirst and came up a short distance out into the lake, gasping from the shock of the water’s coldness. He shook the drops out of his eyes and then put his face back under and began a slow crawl in the direction of the opposite bank.
“Kit?”
Several minutes had passed and, though he had not looked back to the folly, he was convinced that she must have started back to the house, probably on foot. But before he could turn his head to look, she called his name again.