He stared down at her, his eyes suddenly blank and unfathomable.
“Is that what you really think?” he asked her. “That we have found our separate freedoms? That marriage with each other would be an undesirable trap?”
Yes, it was what she believed—with her intellect. Her heart was a different matter altogether. But her heart had no part at all in their bargain. And it would be grossly unfair to explain that fondness was no basis for marriage. It had been altogether enough for her once. But Kit was not Neville. He was not someone with whom she had grown up as a sister grows up with a brother. Kit was different. Fondness would not be enough with him, not when there was something much different from fondness on the one side.
“It is what I really think,” she said, forcing herself to look steadily back into his eyes. “It was our bargain, remember? That for you the betrothal would be real, that in your gallantry you would try to persuade me not to break it. That for me it would be a charade. That I would break it when the time was right.”
“Not yet,” he said quickly.
She drew breath to tell him she would be leaving tomorrow, but did not say the words.
“Not yet,” she agreed softly, and he lay back on the grass again.
She did not turn her head, but she knew that he stared at the sky as she did, sleep and relaxation forgotten, even though it was a long time before he got silently to his feet and reached down a hand to help her up.
Chapter 21
After dinner Lauren stood with Kit and the earl and countess in the receiving line at the ballroom doors. The dowager was seated on a comfortable chair inside surrounded on three sides by great banks of flowers—her own private bower, she had said when she saw it. There she was greeted and kissed by everyone who passed and showered with gifts.
There had been no rest at all for Lauren after returning from the lake. Apart from having to bathe and dress and have her hair done, she had taken it upon herself to help the countess check the decorations the servants had worked upon during the afternoon. The ballroom was like a garden. It had been Lauren’s idea to confine the colors to varying shades of pink and purple, together with white. And green, of course, so often neglected in floral arrangements. She definitely had a gift for color and design, the countess had told her approvingly.
It was not exactly the squeeze of a London ball. But the room was pleasingly full nonetheless before the dancing began. Most of the guests were not quite as fashionably dressed as their London counterparts would have been, or as bedecked with costly jewels, but all were wearing their best and looked bright and festive. She liked country gatherings better than town ones, Lauren decided as Kit led her into the ballroom and onto the floor to signal the imminent opening of the ball. There was something warm and intimate about them.
Kit looked very handsome in shades of gray and silver and white. She was wearing the violet gown she had worn to the Mannering ball, a deliberate choice. It seemed fitting somehow that she should wear it the last time she danced with him as she had worn it the first. More than one of the guests, as well as a few family members, had commented on how well they complemented each other in appearance, on what a handsome couple they made.
She was going to enjoy the evening, Lauren decided as other couples gathered around them. Every single moment of it. Her maid was above stairs, packing her trunks. But there was this evening left.
“You look particularly lovely tonight,” Kit said, leaning a little closer so that only she would hear his words. “And do I mistake, or— No, indeed I do not. Your gown really does match the color of your eyes.” His own eyes laughed into hers.
“Absurd.” She smiled back. How much had happened since the first time he had spoken those words to her! And yet not so very much time had passed. He had been a roguish, unwelcome stranger then. Now he was . . . well, now he was Kit. And achingly dear to her.
The music began and she concentrated on the steps and figures of the quadrille. She could never be happier than she was at this moment, she thought—and realized in some shock that it was precisely what she had told herself on her wedding eve ball when she had been in company with Neville.
The day following that had been the bleakest of her whole life. . . .
She smiled more brightly and noticed that the Duke of Bewcastle had just stepped into the ballroom with his brothers and Lady Freyja.
Sleeping Beauty, Kit had called her this afternoon. She felt more like Cinderella, dancing at the ball with her prince—with the knowledge that midnight would inevitably come and turn everything into rags and pumpkins.
But she had no glass slipper to leave behind on the stairs.
Lauren had taken to the floor with Bewcastle, who was looking elegant, austere, almost satanic in black and white. Kit had never seen him dance at any assembly or ball before this. He did so now, it would seem, to allay any lingering suspicion there might be in the neighborhood that he nursed some resentment against the Earl of Redfield and his family. Ralf was leading out Lady Muir while Alleyne bent his head close to Kit’s grandmother to hear what she was saying.
“May I have the honor, Freyja?” Kit bowed to her and extended his hand. She was looking particularly handsome tonight in gold satin overlaid with blond lace. Her hair was tamed and dressed high on her head with gold ornaments that gleamed in the candlelight.
She was small—smaller than Lauren, but fuller figured. Quite voluptuous, in fact. And she had the boldness, the energy, the vitality, to which he had always responded. As they danced without talking, he tried to re-create in his mind and his emotions the madness that had possessed him three years before when he had been consumed by passion for her. He could do it with his mind. She had always been his friend—and he had needed a friend that summer. A male friend would not do, as he had discovered when he had tried pouring out his woes to Ralf, and Ralf had told him rather impatiently not to be an ass. He had done his duty and also saved Syd’s life, had he not? And brought him home? What did he find to blame himself for? Freyja had shown no greater sympathy, but Freyja was a woman. All his grief, all his anger, all his guilt, had been converted to physical, sexual passion and focused on her person.
If he had anything to remember with guilt from that summer, it was surely the way he had used Freyja. It had been unconscious and quite unintentional, of course. But that was what had happened. She had been there, and he had used her.
“It is too warm in here,” she said when the set was almost at an end. The words, typical of Freyja, were issued almost like a challenge.
“It is,” he agreed. “It has been a hot day. It probably still is warm outside.”
“At least,” she said, “the air must be fresh out there.”
“Do you want to find out?” He grinned at her. “You are not about to faint, are you?”
She looked at him with mingled haughtiness and contempt.
The ballroom was at the east side of the house, on the ground floor. The east entrance was close to it, and on such a warm night the doors stood open and several guests had stepped outside, some merely to stand in the cooler air, a few to stroll among the parterres of the formal gardens. There was no one in the rose arbor, toward which Freyja turned. Kit walked beside her, hoping she would turn back before they actually reached the arbor.
“We need to talk,” she said.
The arbor it was, then. She sat on the very seat where Lauren had sat the evening of her arrival at Alvesley, and Kit stood looking down at her, his hands clasped at his back.
“What is it?” he asked. But he did not wait for her to reply. “Freyja, allow me to apologize—for three years ago. You never did say you loved me, did you? You never did say you would marry me and come with me to follow the drum. It was all in my imagination. I had no right to come banging on the door at Lindsey Hall and to force that fight on Ralf and create such an atrocious scene. Please forgive me.”