She hugged her knees and smiled at him.
“I always fall head over ears in love with flatterers,” she said.
“Ah, do you?” he said. “But not with those who speak from the sincerity of a pure, adoring heart? How cruel of you.”
She half wished she had not grown to like him so much. One ought not to like a man who had flatteries and deceits at his fingertips-or at his tongue’s end. But then, he always spoke them with humor and perhaps no real intention of deceiving her. He seemed to enjoy the game for its own sake.
“I suppose,” he said, “I will not make nearly as romantic a figure sprawled on the bank as you make perched on the jetty, but I will try my best notwithstanding.”
And he sat down on the bank, reclined on one side, tossed aside his hat, propped one elbow on the ground, and cradled his head in his hand. He looked lazy and relaxed and impossibly handsome. Katherine turned to face him so that she would not have to keep her head turned over her shoulder. She raised her parasol again-it was pale blue to match her sash and the ribbons and cornflowers in her bonnet.
“Not so romantic, perhaps,” she agreed. “But a tolerably pretty picture nonetheless.”
“Pretty?” He lofted his right eyebrow. “Tell me you chose the wrong word, Katherine, or I shall dive into the lake without further ado and sit sulking on the bottom until I am well and truly drowned.”
She laughed.
Laughter was the last thing she had expected of the days following her wedding. But she had been doing a great deal of laughing during the past week, she realized. But of course, he always had been able to provoke laughter in her.
“Handsome, then,” she said. “There, you have had your compliment for the day.”
They sat looking at each other. Somewhere behind her the family of ducks she had been watching earlier were having a conversation in which all seemed to be quacking at once. In the grass unseen insects were whirring and chirping. From the direction of the stables came the occasional, distant clang of a hammer upon metal. All the sounds that had accentuated the peace of this particular place in the park just a few minutes ago now drew attention to the silence between them.
Jasper plucked a blade of grass from beside him and sucked on it while he gazed at her with narrowed eyes.
And she wanted him-sharply and shockingly.
“What would you be doing now,” he asked her, “if you had not married me? If that scoundrel Forester had not stirred up scandal and forced you into it?”
“I would be at Warren Hall preparing to come here,” she said, “with Meg and Stephen.”
“And afterward,” he said, “what would you have done?”
“Gone back home to Warren Hall,” she said. “Lived there quietly until someone suggested leaving again-to go and visit Nessie and Elliott and the children, perhaps, or to go to London.”
“Your eldest sister will miss you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why is she not married?” he asked her. “She is several years older than you, is she not, and just as beautiful in her own way. Rumor has it that Allingham made her an offer, which she refused. Is she holding out for love, as you were doing?”
“She was in love,” she said, “with Crispin Dew of Rundle Park near Throckbridge. Nessie married his younger brother, but he was consumptive and died within a year. She knew when she married him that he was dying. She loved him dearly, and he her.”
“Three romantics,” he said, “and only one got her wish. But even she married a dying man. There is a lesson for you somewhere in all that, Katherine.”
“Nessie and Elliott love each other dearly too,” she said.
“But the elder Dew did not love your eldest sister?” he asked.
“He did,” she said. “They would have married when she was very young, and I daresay they would have been happy for a lifetime. But my father had died and Meg had promised to look after us until we had all grown up and could look after ourselves. She refused to marry Crispin until much later. But he would not wait. He joined a regiment and went off to war and married a Spanish lady and broke Meg’s heart. You may laugh now, if you wish. Women are very foolish.”
“They frighten the devil out of me if you want the truth,” he said.
“Well, that, at least,” she said, “is a positive sign. With the devil gone, there is hope for you.”
He chuckled softly and sucked on his blade of grass again.
“Selfless love,” he said. “The supreme virtue. Or is it? In choosing you and your sister and brother rather than love, did Miss Huxtable perhaps doom a decent man to a life that can never bring him the happiness he might have had with her?”
She was instantly indignant. Trust Jasper to take the man’s part. Crispin might have had the patience and fortitude to wait. The wait would be almost over by now-Stephen was almost twenty-one.
“Do not people who selflessly choose the path of servitude to one or more individuals often neglect other paths and other individuals who need them just as much?” he asked her.
“Like a nun going into the convent and leaving a family bereft of her presence?” she said.
His eyes smiled.
“That would be one illustration, I suppose,” he said, “though I confess I would not have thought of it myself.”
“Or a mother so devoted to her children that she would neglect her husband?” she said.
He pursed his lips and tossed the blade of grass aside.
“That would be the husband’s fault for not paying enough attention to pleasuring her,” he said.
And trust him to give a sexual slant to what was really an interesting topic.
“Or a mother so devoted to her husband, then,” she said, exasperated, “that she would neglect her children.”
“There could never be such a mother, could there?” he said softly.
“No.”
He sat up, crossed his legs, draped his wrists over his knees, and squinted out over the water.
And she realized something. There could. Be such a mother, that was. His own mother? Had that happened to him?
“Miss Daniels,” he said in what seemed like a complete change of subject, “has been Charlotte’s governess, more lately her companion, since she was four years old. They have both been very fortunate. They are extremely fond of each other. And now, when Charlotte is ready to spread her wings, Miss Daniels is to marry the local vicar.”
“And Rachel?” she said.
“The world was a wide and wicked place,” he said, “and so Miss Rachel Finley of Cedarhurst Park remained at home. And then she remained because she was in mourning-and then because our mother had collapsed so almost completely that she needed a constant companion. And then there was the mourning again for her death. Rachel was twenty-four when she finally had a Season and made her come-out. Shocking, was it not? She was fortunate to meet Gooding. He is a thoroughly dull dog, but he is of steady character and fortune, as dull dogs tend to be, and I suspect they have an affection for each other.”
Katherine had lowered her parasol again so that she could hug both legs.
And what of him? How had his mother neglected him?
Had she been so besotted with his stepfather?
He was looking directly at her again, his eyelids drooping, a lazy smile in his eyes. But there was a tension about his shoulders and arms that told her more than ever that he wore that look as a mask when he did not wish to reveal too much about himself.
“Are you in love with me yet?” he asked her. “Can we dispense with the next three weeks? I have already told you more than once that I adore you.”
It was not a serious question-or a serious declaration. He just did not want to pursue the line the conversation had taken. She realized that.
“I am not, and will never be, even one modicum of one iota in love with you, Jasper,” she said. But she was half smiling at him.