He could not possibly mean . . . But Lauren had no chance to digest her shock.
Lady Freyja had raised her voice to command the attention of the whole group. “Miss Edgeworth will not race against me,” she cried. “Will no one accept my challenge? Kit? You could not possibly say no. Though on that horse you would not be able to beat a mule to the top of the hill.”
“Ah, a challenge,” Lord Rannulf murmured.
Kit was grinning. “You are going to have to eat those words within a few minutes, Freyja,” he said. He made an extravagant gesture with one arm. “Lead the way.”
A few of the cousins whooped with enthusiasm as Lady Freyja dug her spurs into her horse’s side and, bent low over her sidesaddle, went streaking off in the direction of the hill. With a laugh, Kit went after her.
“She always was an outrageous hoyden,” Daphne Willard remarked cheerfully.
“And more often than not Kit’s equal,” Lord Rannulf added.
Lauren watched them go in a race that had been deliberately orchestrated for her benefit, she knew. It did not matter. They looked just as she had imagined them that day up on the hill with Gwen. They were galloping side by side, flying like the wind. They looked magnificent together.
They would be magnificent together once this summer was over and they were both free and under no pressure to make a dynastic alliance. They were each other’s equal in passion and daring.
She did not mind, Lauren told herself. She had no claim on Kit herself. She had no wish to have any claim on him. She wanted only to be free herself. But she could not stop remembering last night—the shared stories, the gentle, shared laughter, the rhythmic squeaking of the rocking chair, the lazy wonder of waking to find him lifting her out of the chair and laying her on the bed, the cozy comfort of sleeping with her body pressed against his.
The racers were sitting side by side at the bottom of the hill when the rest of the group came up to them. Their horses were grazing untethered nearby. Lauren met Lady Freyja’s glance and saw challenge and triumph and faint malice there.
“Well, who won?” Claude Willard called.
“Kit did,” Lady Freyja called back. “He would have pulled back at the end to let me win, but I told him I would shoot him between the eyes if he ever stooped to such condescension.”
“What was the prize, Kit?” Lord Rannulf asked.
“Alas,” he said, getting to his feet, mounting his horse, and riding toward Lauren, “we did not agree upon anything in advance. Now, if no one has any objection, my betrothed and I would like a little time alone together.”
Lauren turned her horse without comment and rode off with Kit while Daphne behind them was suggesting that they all climb the hill and rest on the summit.
“Were Freyja and Ralf annoying you?” Kit asked.
“Not in any way I could not handle,” she said.
He looked across at her, a smile in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I have realized that about you. Has this afternoon brought you any enjoyment at all?”
“Of course it has,” she assured him. “I like all your relatives, Kit. I like their company.”
“But it has not been the sort of memorable stuff I promised you.” He grinned at her. “We will pass sedately through that gate into the pasture, and then we will see.”
“Kit!” she protested. “Please don’t get any ideas. I am quite perfectly happy as I am.”
But he would only chuckle.
“Now.” He closed the gate behind them a couple of minutes later and gazed off into the distance—it seemed a vast expanse of distance. “There is another gate at the other side, which you may remember even though it is not visible over that slight rise in the land. We will race to it.”
“Kit!”
“And this time,” he said, “we will agree upon a prize in advance. A kiss if I win. And— what if you win?”
“There is not even any point in naming anything,” she said indignantly. “ Of course you will win, or would if I were to be foolish enough to accept your challenge. I never race, Kit. I never take a horse to a gallop.”
“Then it is time you did,” he said. “I will be sporting about it, though. I will give you an early start. I’ll count slowly to ten.”
“Ki-it!”
“One.”
“I will not do it.”
“Two.”
“You will not be satisfied until I have broken my neck, I suppose.”
“Three.”
She took off.
She knew her horse could gallop at least twice as fast as it did. She did not by any means give it its head. Even so, it felt to her as if the ground were flying by beneath its hooves, as if the wind would whip off her hat despite the pins, as if she had never done anything nearly as dangerous or exhilarating in her life before.
He did not pass her. It was quite a while before she realized that he was just behind her left shoulder—in position to catch her if she fell? She started to laugh.
By the time the gate came into sight—reassuringly close once they had topped the rise—she was laughing helplessly, and she could hear Kit laughing behind her.
“I am going to beat you,” she shrieked with just a few yards to go. “I am going to—”
He went past her as if her horse were standing still.
She bent forward until her nose almost touched the horse’s neck. She could not seem to stop laughing.
“If you would just raise your head,” he said at last, “I could claim my prize.”
“Unfair!” she said, straightening up. “You were just toying with me. I should be the one putting a bullet between your eyes. Oh, Kit, that was such fun!”
“I always thought,” he said, riding up alongside her until one of her knees was pressed against his thigh, “nothing could be lovelier than your eyes. But they can be lovelier than themselves when they sparkle, as they do now.”
“Oh, foolish,” she said at the silly flattery, warmed through to the very center of her heart by it.
And then his mouth was on hers, firm, warm, his lips parted. He took his prize with slow thoroughness while she thought again of the loveliness of last night and realized in some shock that she was in danger of coming to care rather too much for comfort.
“There!” she said briskly when he had finished. “The debt is paid, you foolish man.”
She expected him to grin. He smiled softly instead.
“Foolish,” he murmured. “Yes, I suppose I am that.”
She was in grave danger indeed.
The family gathering in the drawing room that evening was a merry one. Two tables of cards had been set up for the older people. Several of the younger people took their turn at the pianoforte while others gathered around the instrument to listen, to sing, to joke, and to laugh. Still others stood or sat in groups, sipping their tea, catching up on family news and other assorted gossip.
Kit’s grandmother was at the heart of it all, in her chair beside the fire, nodding and contented despite the fact that she had used to enjoy playing cards. Lauren sat on a stool beside her, massaging her bad hand, as had become her daily custom. She was a pretty child, the old lady told her, not for the first time.
“Hardly a child, ma’am,” Lauren said in her usual quiet, matter-of-fact way. “I am six and twenty.”
“But very definitely pretty, Grandmama,” Kit said from his standing position before the fireplace. “I am in full agreement with you on that point. Not on the other, though. What, might I ask, would I want with a child bride?”
His grandmother chuckled. She had become deeply attached to Lauren already, he knew.
Baron Galton was at one of the card tables, partnered by Kit’s mother, while the Dowager Lady Kilbourne and Uncle Melvin Clifford pitted their skills against them. Lady Muir was conversing with Sydnam in the window embrasure, his usual spot in the evenings.