“There are really none,” she said. “My life has been privileged indeed. Oh, I have lived through the unspeakable grief of losing my mother when I was just a child and then my father when I was only twelve. They were desolate times-and that word does not begin to describe them. But I always had my sisters and brother, and none of us ever doubted that we were loved or wanted. Even though Meg gave up her future with Crispin Dew for us, she never made us feel that it had been a sacrifice for which she partly resented us. Indeed, I did not even know about it until a few years ago when Nessie told me. I was always so secure in the love of my family that I find it hard even to imagine being a child and not having that security. I cannot imagine anything worse than a child feeling himself to be unloved and unlovable. I cannot bear the thought.”
Her voice had become thinner, higher pitched.
He could not blame circumstances for anything, though, could he? For making him who he was? That would be a sniveling thing to do. They were the circumstances with which he had been presented, and at any moment in his life-child, boy, or adult-the choice of how to think, speak, and behave had been his.
Still was.
He drew his hand from hers, raised himself onto one elbow, and smiled lazily down at her. It was time to recover himself.
“Has my sad story moved your tender heart, Katherine?” he asked, his eyes roaming over her face to come to rest on her mouth. “And is that heart smitten with love for me as a result? Are you ready to confess all? That I am one step closer to winning our wager? Two steps? Or that I have won it outright?”
He realized his mistake immediately. She would not view that as gentle teasing. It was too reminiscent of what had happened at the lake, by Jove. And it was unfair, dash it all.
Would he never learn?
But the words could not be unsaid, and all he could do was wait for her reply, his right eyebrow cocked, his eyelids hooded over his eyes, the corners of his lips drawn up into a half-smile.
One devil of a fine fellow.
God’s answer to the prayers of lonely, lovelorn womankind.
Or perhaps not.
She raised one hand as if to set it tenderly against the side of his face. Instead, her open palm cracked hard and painfully across his cheek.
22
SHE rolled away from him, scrambled to her feet, jumped down from the stone, and strode halfway across the clearing before stopping almost knee-deep among the grass and wildflowers.
She had never in her life hit anyone. She had slapped him across the face. Her hand was still stinging. Her heart was pounding up into her throat and her ears, almost choking and deafening her.
She whirled on him.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she cried, her voice breathless and shaking. “Not ever. Do you hear me?”
He was sitting up, propped on one arm while two fingers of the other hand were poking gingerly at his reddened cheek.
“I do indeed,” he said. “Katherine-”
“You took me in,” she said, “you invited me in, and then you slammed the door shut in my face. If you do not want me to have any part in your life, then shut me out altogether, stay hidden behind the wit and the irony and the hooded eyes and the cocked eyebrow. Go away. Leave me here to live my life in peace. But if you choose to let me in, then let me all the way in. Don’t suddenly pretend this has all been about the winning of a stupid wager.”
She was panting for breath.
He gazed at her for a few moments, his lips pursed. Then he got to his feet and crossed the clearing to stand in front of her. She wished he were wearing his coat and hat. He was too disconcertingly… male in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.
“They were just a few random comments about my family,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing to get excited about. I thought you might be amused by them. No, I thought you might be touched. I thought you might pity me. Is pity not halfway to love? I thought you might-”
Crack!
Oh, dear God, she had done it again-the same hand, the same cheek.
He closed his eyes.
“That does hurt, you know,” he said. “And you have me at a disadvantage, Katherine. As a gentleman, I cannot retaliate, can I?”
“You know nothing-nothing!-about love,” she cried. “You have been loved, and you are loved. You even love without knowing it. But you shut yourself away from it as soon as it threatens to break through the barriers you erected about your heart years and years ago lest you be hurt more and more until you could not bear even to live. Those days are over if you would just realize it.”
He half smiled at her.
“You are lovelier than ever when you are angry,” he said.
“I am not angry,” she cried. “I am furious! Love is not a game.”
Still that half-smile and the hooded eyes, which were hooded indeed now. There was not even a glimmering of mischief or humor in them.
“What is it, then, if not a game?” he asked softly.
“It is not even a feeling,” she said, “though feelings are involved in it. It is certainly not all happiness and light. It is not s-sex either, though I know you must be about to suggest that. Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability. Oh, I know I have had life easy in the sense that there has always been unconditional love in my life. I know I cannot even begin to understand what it was like to grow up with very little love at all. But are you going to let that upbringing blight your whole life? Are you going to give your stepfather that power, even from the grave? And you were loved, Jasper, perhaps by everyone except him. All your servants and I daresay all your neighbors have always loved you. Your mother did. Charlotte adores you. I am going to stop talking now because really I do not know what I have been saying.”
His smile was twisted, lifting one corner of his mouth higher than the other, and she realized that there was a great tension in him, that his facial muscles were not perhaps quite within his control. The two slaps had probably not helped either.
“If I can persuade you to love me too, Katherine,” he said, “my life would be complete. Happily ever after. I will-”
“That wager!” She almost spat out the words. “I am mortally sick of that wager. I’ll have no more of it, do you understand? It is over with. Done. Love is not a game, and I will no longer have any part in pretending that it is. The wager is obliterated. Null and void. Gone. Go back to London with your stupid wagers if you must and to your equally stupid gentlemen friends who think it fun to bet money on whether or not you can persuade a woman who has done nothing to offend any one of you to… to debauch herself with you. Even to allow it to happen up against a tree in a public pleasure garden. Go, and never come back. I will never miss you.”