She was looking at the painting again.
“But here,” she said, “there is only one terrace with the parterres below it. And they are not sunken. They are not surrounded by a wall and banks of flowers.”
“For very pride’s sake,” he said, “I could not just make a slavish copy. I had to add something of my own.”
“Or something of yourself,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Adding a lower terrace and sinking the garden below ground level are brilliant adaptations.”
“Are they?” he said. He felt absurdly pleased. “How kind you are, Katherine.”
She clucked her tongue and turned to face him again.
“I thought so from the sound of your voice,” she said. “You have retreated behind your usual disguise to deceive me into thinking that you do not care. This garden was not just one small, tentative step, was it? It was a bold stride to assert your personhood.”
He grinned at her-though he actually felt as far from being amused as he had ever felt. He felt rather exposed, actually. And slightly foolish. Perhaps he ought not to have brought her here.
“There must be a wonderful feeling of seclusion and peace in that garden,” she said.
“It is my hope,” he said, “that you will find both there in the coming years, Katherine. Though I hope too that your desire for seclusion will not always exclude me.” He raised his eyebrows.
She gazed at him without speaking for a few moments.
“I realize,” she said, “that I dug a deep hole for myself last night when I made that wager with you. For the next month I will not know when you speak sincerely or when you speak merely to win the wager.”
He almost fell in love with her then. Her eyes looked sad.
He smiled slowly, deliberately drooping his eyelids again just because he knew it would annoy her and make her forget to be sad.
“That,” he said, possessing himself of her right hand, “is the challenge of the game, Katherine. The fun of the game, if you will. And there is a third alternative, you know. Perhaps I speak from both sincerity and a determination to win my bet.”
“Hmm,” she said, a quirk to her lips.
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. Then he folded her fingers one at a time over the spot he had kissed.
“Keep it safe,” he said. “It is a small token from someone who adores you.”
She laughed softly.
“You are a rogue,” she said. “You really are.”
“Come,” he said. “I will show you your own apartments.”
She liked the parterre gardens. No, she loved them. And she got the point of them. Beauty and peace. He had never assigned those actual words to what he had done to his home, but they were perfect.
That was exactly what he had tried to impose upon a place that had always belonged to him yet had never been quite his.
17
“THE housekeeper-Mrs. Siddon,” Katherine said at breakfast the following morning, determined to use names from the start so that she would not forget them, “sent word to my room that she is willing to show me the house this morning if you need to be busy with your steward-Mr. Knowles, I believe?”
“Hang Knowles,” Jasper said. “Or rather, since I cannot think the man guilty of any capital offense, hang the idea of my spending my first morning at home with him and the account ledgers. I would rather spend it with you. I will show you the house myself.”
And they spent the bulk of the morning wandering from room to room while Katherine became aware of just how grand a mansion Cedarhurst Park was-and of how surprisingly knowledgeable he was about it.
She was awed by the state apartments on the ground floor, where he took her first, and their gilded splendor. She gazed at carved friezes and elaborately painted coved ceilings, at heavy velvet draperies and brocaded bed hangings and wooden floors so shiny that she could almost see her face in them when she leaned forward, at elegant, ornate furnishings. She was amazed at the size of each room, particularly the ballroom, which was vast.
“Is it ever used?” she asked as they stepped inside the double doors. “Are there ever enough people to fill it?”
French windows stretched along much of the wall opposite. There was a small balcony beyond them, she could see. The wall on either side of the doors was all mirrors. If one stood in the middle of the room, Katherine thought, one would have the impression of doors and light and openness stretching in both directions.
“Not by London standards,” he said. “Nothing that could be called by that flattering term a great squeeze. But there used to be a Christmas ball to impress all the local gentry for miles around. There was even once a tradition, I have been told, of inviting everyone to Cedarhurst-not just the gentry but everyone-for a summer fete and ball in the gardens and the ballroom.”
“You have been told,” she said. “You do not remember those fetes, then?”
“Oh, goodness me, no,” he said. “We were of far too great a consequence to continue that vulgar tradition. Besides, worse than being vulgar, it was sinful. Evil. The work of the devil.”
Who were we? She did not ask. But she could guess that he spoke of his stepfather.
“And are you of too great a consequence?” she asked him.
“To revive the tradition?” he asked her. “It sounds like a great deal of hard work, Katherine. I am not sure I am up to it.”
“You do not need to be,” she said. “You have a wife now.”
He grimaced.
“Thank you for reminding me,” he said. “That fact caused me a rather restless night, you know. I suppose you slept like the proverbial baby?”
“I slept very well after the long journey, thank you,” she lied. She had actually been terribly aware that it was the second night of her marriage but that her bridegroom was sleeping-or not sleeping-alone just two rooms removed from hers when just the night before…
“As I thought,” he said, “cruel heart.”
And he looked soulfully at her and then grinned.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we could revive it for Charlotte’s birthday and give her a party that will be grander and more memorable than anything she has imagined.”
“The fete?” he said, raising both eyebrows. “The ball? This year? In less than one month’s time?”
“Why not?” she said, suddenly caught up in the excitement of such a wildly impossible scheme. “It would be a wonderful way to involve the whole neighborhood and countryside in a joint celebration of Charlotte’s growing up and our marriage.”
He looked at her and cocked one eyebrow.
“I have an alarming suspicion,” he said, “that I have married an enthusiastic wife. Do tell me I am wrong.”
She laughed.
“I think it would be a splendid idea,” she said. “If you will agree, that is.”
He raised both eyebrows.
“If I agree?” he said. “I am merely the master here, am I not-as I always have been? You are the mistress, Katherine. You will do as you please.”
Oh, she would indeed. But although he had spoken with the sort of lazy irony that was characteristic of him, there was something about the words themselves that caught her attention and made her look more closely at him-you will do as you please rather than you may do as you please.
“You are not merely the master here,” she said. “You are the master. It must be what you wish too.”
“To run three-legged races and egg-and-spoon races all afternoon and taste two dozen fruit tarts and view twice that many embroidered cloths and handkerchiefs before naming a winner and have my ears murdered by the shrieking of children at play?” he said with an elaborate shudder. “And then to trip the light fantastic all evening in a succession of vigorous country dances? Katherine, you know how much I love to dance.”