The insects chirped on. The single bird must now have alit on a branch somewhere close by and was singing its heart out. A piece of grass or the stem of a flower was tickling her ear. She could smell the vegetation, all mixed up with the fragrance of his cologne.
He had straightened her legs so that they lay flat and comfortably on either side of his. She could feel the leather of his boots again against her stockinged legs. She could easily, easily drop off to sleep.
He kissed the side of her face.
“I love you,” he said.
For a few moments she let the words wash about her like a caress. She smiled.
“There is no need,” she said then. “They are just words.”
“Three of them,” he said, “which I have never strung together before now. Shall we see if I can do it again? I love you.”
She crossed her arms over his chest and lifted her head to look down into his face.
“There is no need,” she said again. “They are just words, Jasper. You have said you will not leave me. We have resumed our marriage. Perhaps soon we will have a child and start our own family in earnest. And we will remain here for much of each year and make it home. We will work at our marriage to make it one that will bring us both contentment-and some pleasure too. It will be enough. It will be enough. You must not feel that you need to say-”
“I love you?” he said, interrupting her.
“Yes,” she said, “that. It is not necessary.”
“You cannot say the words to me, then?” he asked.
“Just to have you say that you had only pretended to agree to end our wager?” she said. “Just to hear you claim the victory? No, indeed. You will never hear those words on my lips, Jasper.”
She smiled dazzlingly at him, and he pulled his lips down into a mock pout.
She laughed.
“Katherine,” he said, suddenly serious again, “I am sorry about Vauxhall. An apology does not even begin to be adequate, but-”
She set two fingers across his lips.
“You are forgiven,” she said. “And there is an end of it.”
He kissed her fingers.
And then panic assaulted her as if from nowhere. How long had they been up here? How long ago was it since they had left the others down at the waterfall?
“Jasper,” she said, rolling away from him and trying to lift her bodice and push down her skirt at the same time, “what are we thinking of? Everyone must be back at the house and waiting for their tea and no host and hostess in sight.”
“Charlotte will be delighted to play hostess in our absence,” he said, “and everyone will be fed. And if they believe our absence is due to a pair of lovers’ unawareness of the passing of time, not only will they be quite right, they will also be charmed. Think of the stories they will be able to take back home with them to feed to the avid gossipmongers.”
“My hair!” she cried. “I have no brush or mirror with me. However am I to put it up into any respectable style? I will have to cover it all up with my bonnet.”
“No such thing,” he said, getting up and adjusting his clothing before crossing to the stone, putting on his hat at a slightly rakish tilt, and picking up his coat and her bonnet. He wrapped the ribbons of the bonnet around one wrist and then hooked his coat over one finger of the same hand and slung it over his shoulder. He offered her his free hand. “Your hair is beautiful as it is. You may dart up to your room as soon as we get home and have your maid do it up properly.”
She shrugged and took his hand. She was feeling too happy to argue, though she hoped no one would see her before she had had a chance to tidy herself in the privacy of her own room. She was feeling wonderfully lethargic after their lovemaking. She was feeling all tender inside, where he had been.
They walked home hand in hand, both of them looking sadly creased and rumpled, she saw when they came out of the trees and were walking past the beach. They had both better hope very fervently that no one saw them. In fact, they had better make for a side door rather than the main ones.
But as they climbed the slope of the lawn and drew level with the stables, Katherine could see that a carriage was approaching up the driveway-a traveling carriage, which surely did not belong to any of their neighbors.
She clasped Jasper’s hand more tightly. It was more imperative than ever that they sneak off to a side door.
But there were two other people on the upper terrace-Jasper’s Uncle Stanley and Mr. Dubois. And both gentlemen had seen them. Uncle Stanley had raised a hand to greet them. And the carriage was turning onto the terrace close by them. The occupants had doubtless seen them too.
It was too late to hide.
“Oh, dear,” she said in dismay, “whoever can this be? Are you expecting anyone?”
But the carriage door was already open and the coachman was reaching up a hand to help someone alight.
Mr. Dubois was looking upward with amiable politeness.
Uncle Stanley was frowning.
And out stepped Lady Forester.
Closely followed by Sir Clarence Forester.
“What in thunder?” Jasper said.
Katherine might have turned and fled ignominiously if he had not gripped her hand more tightly and stridden forward with her. But he stopped in his tracks when the coachman turned to help yet a third passenger out.
An elderly gentleman whom Katherine did not know.
“God damn it all to hell!” Jasper exclaimed. “What now?”
23
LADY Forester and Clarence.
The bald-faced gall of it!
But before Jasper could express any of the outrage he felt…
Seth Wrayburn too!
“Be civil, Jasper,” Katherine murmured to him. “Do, please, be civil.”
After what the two of them had done to her? But God bless us, Seth Wrayburn! The man never stepped beyond the threshold of his own London house. Yet here he was in Dorsetshire, in company with Lady Forester and Clarence, of all people.
Jasper took himself in hand. What would more disconcert the latter two more than civility, after all?
“Ma’am? Sir? Clarrie?” he said in cheerful tones. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
It would probably have been obvious to an imbecile, of course, that it was anything but. He had been unable quite to unclench his teeth as he spoke.
“Pleasure you may call it, Montford,” Wrayburn said, making no attempt to smile or to look anything other than thoroughly irritated. “I call it a decided displeasure, being dragged half across England over roads that are a disgrace and past tollbooths that seem to have sprouted up every half mile or so and being talked to every mortal inch of the way. I am not in any way pleased, I would have you know.”
He frowned ferociously.
“We have come, Jasper,” Lady Forester said, “to take dear Charlotte away to a home where she will be properly cared for and carefully guarded until her come-out next year. We have come-”
“If I have to listen to one more of your rehearsed monologues, Prunella,” her uncle declared, cutting her off in the middle of a sentence, “I swear I will hire a post chaise without further ado and take myself off back to the sanity of my own home in London, and the whole pack of you will find the doors barred against you for the rest of my natural life. We have come, Montford, to settle this matter of Charlotte once and for all. Prunella and Clarence claim this is an unfit home, and they are like flies in autumn, the two of them, buzzing about one’s head and trying to fly into one’s mouth and up one’s nostrils no matter how many times one tries to bat them away. I have come to see for myself. I shall see and I shall decide and then I shall go home and hope never to set eyes upon a single one of you ever again.”