She had folded her music, turned on the bench, smiled at both Kit and his father, and asked the latter questions about the home farm while they stood awkwardly side by side. Fortunately she had not had to suggest quite blatantly that Lord Redfield show Kit some of its operations. The earl himself had suggested that, and Kit had agreed. Oh, she was very skilled indeed at conversation, at steering it in directions she wished it to take. She knew it was one of her best accomplishments.
Perhaps they did not even realize they had been maneuvered. But it was one reason she had come here—to reconcile Kit with his family.
“He is such a perfect foil for you that your meeting must be considered a happy stroke of fate,” Gwendoline said while Lauren shortened her stride to accommodate her cousin’s limp. “His carefree, laughing manner balances your quiet good sense and makes for one pleasing whole. I am very happy.”
“Thank you.” Lauren was not sure the steep path she had taken with Kit the afternoon before would be good for Gwen, but she turned onto it anyway and they labored slowly upward.
Gwendoline laughed merrily. “Oh, so grave, Lauren,” she said, “just as if you were not bubbling with happiness inside. This is me, Gwen. And I noticed your damp hair at breakfast, just as I noticed it yesterday. I thought then that you had got up early to wash it until Lord Redfield mentioned seeing you ride out with Lord Ravensberg. I am quite capable of adding two to two and coming up with a sum of four. Lauren, you have been swimming. Oh, this is famous!”
“And not at all the thing,” Lauren said, pausing on a large, flat stone so that they could catch their breath. “But he insists that I be made to enjoy myself. Can you imagine anything more absurd, Gwen, than the notion that I might find riding in the early morning and swimming in the lake enjoyable?”
“Oh, Lauren,” Gwen said, “I love him. I do. You had better marry him quickly, or I will steal him for myself.”
“Gwen,” Lauren said, resuming the laborious climb, “I can float. On my back and even on my stomach—with my face in the water. I sink like a stone, though, when I try to kick my legs to propel myself forward. He laughs at me.” That was not strictly true. He had laughed with her. She must have laughed more in the last two days than she had done in her whole life before, in fact. Not just the laughter of polite amusement, but the helpless, straight-from-the-stomach merriment that had her doubled over and helpless with mirth, tears streaming down both cheeks.
“Oh, goodness,” Gwen said, stopping and glancing upward. “Look at that tower. Is it a real ruin, do you suppose?”
“A folly,” Lauren said. “It was built to look like a ruin. But it is rather picturesque.”
She had had to come back here. She had to free her mind of a certain spell that appeared to have been cast over it. There had been nothing magical about yesterday afternoon. They had merely sat on a tree branch looking at the view. She had merely allowed him to fondle her in a manner that was so startlingly improper that even now she could not believe she had not stopped him far sooner than she had. It was ridiculous to remember that hour together as one of the most enchanted hours of her life. It was pathetic, if the truth were known.
Poor deprived twenty-six-year-old virgin!
She might have been a mother by now, almost sixteen months after her wedding. The duties of the marriage bed might have become routine to her by now. She might have been proof against such foolish unidentified yearnings as had kept her awake half the night before. Though she had not been the only one up. She had seen Kit walking in the darkness outside, striding down the driveway and across the bridge until he had passed from sight.
“We came up here yesterday,” she told Gwen. “We climbed high enough to see over the tops of the trees.”
Gwendoline looked up. “The view from the top must be breathtaking,” she said. “But I would rather imagine it than see it. I believe I will sit down on the grass for a while.”
She was looking at the tower.
“I mean the tree,” Lauren said. “We climbed up the tree.” The branch on which they had sat did not look so very high when viewed from the ground, but it was certainly high enough. Higher than the tower. Her knees turned weak.
Gwen looked and chose to be amused again. “You really are in love,” she said. “Neville and I could never persuade you to do anything remotely daring when we were all younger. Oh, Lauren, what a relief it is to be able to mention his name to you without fear of seeing that stricken look in your eyes, so quickly veiled even from me. And to be able to mention Lily. She really is a joy, you know. I saw them the day after they announced to Mama and me that she is increasing. They were down on the beach, and Lily was twirling about and about on the sand, her arms stretched to the sides, without either a bonnet or shoes and stockings while Neville stood against the great rock, his arms crossed over his chest, laughing at her. I did not intrude.”
Lauren drew a slow breath and set her palm against the great trunk of the old oak. It was not painful. It was not.
“She will be a good mother,” she said.
The magic was still here this morning. She closed her eyes. He was not nearly as big as Neville. She had always thought she liked big, tall men. But she fit against Kit so very comfortably. He had lovely hands—not large, but nimble, strong, expressive. They had felt good. . . . He ought not . . . And she ought not to have allowed it. He had held her breasts, and for a moment it had felt so right. And he had put one of his hands there. But instead of feeling horror she had felt . . . pleasure. And something more than pleasure.
But that had not been the magic. Not really. There had been the exhilaration, the sense of daring and achievement, the sense of safety despite danger. She would trust him with her life, she realized suddenly. And there had been the laughter. Ah, yes, the laughter.
The seductive enchantment of sheer joy.
“ Shall we sit for a while?” Gwendoline suggested.
Something Lauren had not noticed the day before was that both the hill and the trees fell away behind the slope they had climbed. The drop was a steep one, allowing for only a few hardy shrubs to cling to its side. Below and for miles into the distance was rolling farmland bordered with neat hedgerows, some of the fields under cultivation, some dotted with sheep. It was like a patchwork quilt, interrupted here and there by little cottages with accompanying clusters of farm buildings.
“What a blustery day after yesterday,” Gwendoline said. “And cooler too. I hope those clouds do not intend to bring rain later. This is a lovely place, Lauren. Your future home. And not too far distant from Dorsetshire, thank goodness. We will be able to see each other occasionally.”
“Unless you marry someone who will carry you off to the farthest Hebridean island,” Lauren said. “Or to the westernmost coast of Ireland.”
“I think not,” Gwen said. “Indeed I know not.”
“You cannot forget Lord Muir?” Lauren asked sadly. “No one can ever take his place in your affections?”
“I will never forget Vernon,” Gwen said with quiet conviction. “I will never remarry. But Neville is happy and you will be and Mama needs companionship. And so I will be content. I will, Lauren.”
Lauren lifted her face to the wind, heedless of the danger to her complexion. Yes, Alvesley was lovely. Rural and peaceful and beautiful and vast. But not her future home. That would be somewhere in Bath, she hoped. She would make a place for herself in the restricted, staid society of the spa, which was no longer as fashionable as it had used to be. It was inhabited mainly by the elderly. It would suit her. It would be safe.