She had come here to help Kit avoid an unwanted betrothal. She had done that. She had come to help reconcile him to his family, who had rejected him and sent him away three years ago. She had done that. She had done it in time for this birthday and could feel confident that Kit would be able to celebrate fully and happily with his family and they with him. There was really nothing left to do.
She had come for a little adventure, for a taste of life as other people lived it, those who had not disciplined all spontaneity, all joy, out of their lives. She had found adventure in abundance. She had bathed and swum in the lake—once, naked; she had climbed a tree to the higher branches; she had raced on horseback; she had played with children and rolled down a steep slope with them. Very tiny adventures indeed.
She had gone outside alone one night and spent what remained of it in a hut with Kit. She had slept with him on a narrow bed. She had lain with him on one of the velvet benches in the portrait gallery and given him her virginity. She had lain with him among the wildflowers on the island and made love with him. A momentous adventure.
The sound of laughter and voices had her leaning closer to the window and peering downward. Phillip and Penelope Willard, Crispin and Marianne Butler, were on their way out for an early morning walk. The day was beginning.
The last day.
There was no more to be experienced. Already there had been too much. Far too much. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. Tomorrow she would leave with Aunt Clara and Gwen, though she was not going to tell anyone until today was over. If she did not go soon then she might stay forever, and that would be dishonorable.
She would not cling to what she had found. All her life she had clung with all her might to her only hope of permanent belonging and security, a marriage with Neville. And when that anchor had been snatched from her, she had drifted on a vast, dark, threatening ocean, frightening in its emptiness. She would not cling now, even though she knew Kit’s honor would urge him into encouraging her to do just that, even though she knew he had grown fond of her. She did not need to cling. Not to anyone. She could and would stand alone.
This time her heart would not break, even though it would hurt and hurt for a long time to come. Perhaps for the rest of her life. But it would not break. She had the strength to go on alone.
She had learned something of limitless value here at Alvesley. And she had Kit to thank. It was such a simple, such an earth-shatteringly profound lesson. The world, she had discovered— her world—would not explode into chaos if Lauren Edgeworth laughed.
There was a scratching on the door behind her, and she turned with a smile to watch her maid come in with her morning cup of chocolate.
The morning was to be for the family alone—the calm before the proverbial storm, as it were. They all went into the village for a celebratory service at the church. The plan was that the dowager would then return home in the first carriage in order to rest quietly in her private apartments for a few hours before the afternoon festivities began.
It was a return that was delayed by nearly half an hour. Almost the whole village had spilled out of doors to gather about the churchyard gateway to cheer the dowager and pay their respects and pelt her with flower petals. She would see them all again during the afternoon, but she insisted upon stopping to talk to a number of them—no easy feat for her—and to hand out coins to the children.
Finally she was on her way, Lady Irene beside her. A long line of carriages, barouches, and curricles moved steadily forward to pick up the rest of the family.
Kit took Lauren by the elbow. “Will you mind walking back to the house?” he asked.
“Of course not.” She turned her head to smile at him. Her bonnet and the ribbons that trimmed her light muslin dress exactly matched her eyes. She looked very fetching indeed.
“I want to look at something,” he told her.
He had sat down with his father the night before, after everyone else had gone to bed—and Syd too had stayed on his window seat, a silent listener through most of the conversation that had followed. Kit had begun it by apologizing for his behavior three years before.
“It is best forgotten,” his father had said. “It is over.”
But Kit had disagreed, and they had talked, awkwardly at first, with growing ease as time went on.
“I sent you away,” his father said at one point. “I never meant it to be forever. I never used the word banishment. That was your interpretation, Kit. But I was content to let it stand. I was as stubborn as a mule. You take after me there. When you did not write, your mother wanted me to do it. But I would not. Jerome pleaded with me to do it, but I would not. Neither would he, of course—or your mother. What a parcel of fools we all were. All of us—you too. Family quarrels are the very worst kind. They are so very difficult to end.”
“ Jerome wanted you to write to me?”
There had been an understanding between Jerome and Freyja for several years, apparently. It had been one of those courtships that no one had been in any particular hurry to bring to fruition. But then Kit had come home, half raving and in a towering rage at the whole world, most of all himself. His family had watched helplessly as he flung himself into passionate pursuit of Freyja, which in their opinion had nothing whatever to do with love. Jerome had been particularly alarmed and had ridden over to discuss the matter with Bewcastle—and with Freyja herself. His announcement of their betrothal at dinner had been the result—followed, of course, by Kit’s fight, first with him and then with Rannulf.
“He never blamed you or held a grudge, you know, Kit,” the earl said. “He blamed himself for going about things entirely the wrong way. He should have had a talk with you, tried to explain, he used to say afterward. He should have tried to get you to vent your anger, brother to brother. Though there was really no talking to you that summer, Kit. After you were gone, he kept putting off the nuptials. He wanted you here. He wanted peace with you before he married Freyja. He wanted to know that you had realized she was not the woman for you. He wanted me to write to you. But he was too stubborn to do it himself.”
“And then,” Kit said, “we all ran out of time.”
“Yes.”
“He never stopped loving you, Kit,” Syd said, speaking up at last. “None of us did. And you must stop punishing yourself now. It has gone on long enough. For all of us.”
It was years since Kit had been to the family plot behind the church. His grandfather had been his childhood idol. Kit had visited his grave regularly for a number of years after his death. But he had not been here since he was eighteen, since his commission had been purchased.
“This is where the family ancestors are buried,” he told Lauren, leading her through the gateway between the two halves of the low, neatly clipped hedge that separated the plot from the rest of the churchyard. “I have not been here for eleven years.”
He found his grandfather’s grave immediately. There were fresh roses in the marble vase before the headstone—his grandmother had come here after the picnic yesterday with her two sons and her daughter. There were roses in the vase before another headstone too—the one that had not been here eleven years ago. Kit moved toward it and stood at the foot of the grave, reading the headstone. Only two words out of all those written there leapt out at him.
Jerome Butler.
His hand was in Lauren’s, he realized suddenly, their fingers tightly laced. He was probably hurting her. He eased his hand free and set his arm lightly about her shoulders.
“My brother,” he said unnecessarily.
“Yes.”
“I loved him.”
“Yes.”
He had been afraid that, standing here, he would be overwhelmed by bitter regret, remembering their last encounter, knowing that they had been unreconciled when Jerome died. But it really did not matter, he found now. Love did not die just because of a quarrel. And a relationship was not a linear thing, the last incident defining the whole of it. They had been close, the three of them—Jerome, Kit, Syd. They had played and fought and laughed together. They had been brothers. They were brothers.