“Perhaps, Miss Dubois,” Katherine said, “you will play for us now? You always do it so well. And, Jasper, I believe Lady Hornsby and Miss Daniels would like to play cards if there are two gentlemen wishful of joining them. Sir Clarence, perhaps? And Mr. Gladstone? Is anyone ready for more tea?”
Lady Forester pressed her lips together and said no more. Margaret sat beside her and engaged her in conversation. Mrs. Dubois joined them.
Katherine was standing by the window in her bedchamber later that night, brushing out her hair, when Jasper opened the door from the private sitting room without knocking. He had seen beneath the door that a candle was still burning.
She was wearing the nightgown she had worn on their wedding night.
Come to me tonight, she had said out on the hill.
Well, here he was.
He propped one shoulder against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest, his bare feet crossed at the ankles.
This afternoon had been just an appetizer. He wondered if she realized that.
She smiled at him, and the brush stilled in her hair.
“Is this what women who are no better than they ought to be do to entice their lovers?” he asked.
“You ought to know the answer to that better than I,” she said.
“Minx!” He pursed his lips and pushed himself away from the door frame to advance farther into the room. “Did that charge hurt you? And the accusation of being a social upstart?”
“I can be hurt,” she said, “only by people I respect.”
Which was probably as big a lie as she had ever told. It had made him see red.
“And you do not respect poor Clarrie.” He took the brush from her hand, turned her to face the window again, and drew it down the back of her head and all the way to the ends of her hair at her waist. “I did not avenge you very thoroughly, did I?”
“I found myself wishing,” she said, “that you would punch him in the nose, as Stephen once did, and hoping that you would not. It is precisely what Lady Forester and her like would expect you to do. I am glad you rose to the occasion and played the well-mannered host instead-though you did call him a nasty little beast. Which he is.”
She laughed softly, and he drew the brush through her hair again.
“I will avenge the insult,” he promised her.
“The baser part of my nature is glad to hear it,” she said. “But there must be no violence here, Jasper. It would be unseemly. And it might be the very thing that will cause Mr. Wrayburn to decide that this is indeed an unfit home for Charlotte.”
He set the brush down on the windowsill, moved the heavy column of her hair to one side, and set his lips against the back of her neck. She was warm and smelled of soap.
“Mmm,” she said, lifting her shoulders.
“There will be no violence,” he said. “Not, at least, anything anyone would classify as wanton viciousness. I have just the plan.”
“Oh, what?” She turned to face him, all eager curiosity, the bloodthirsty wench, and, when he did not step back, she set her hands on his shoulders.
“You will know when the time comes,” he said. “It will be quite unmistakable.”
And reasonably satisfying since he could not in all conscience use his fists while Clarence was a guest in his home. Quite satisfying, in fact.
“But you are not going to tell me now,” she said.
“I am not.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “But must we talk about Clarrie Forester? I seem to recall that I had other plans when I came here.”
“Did you?” she said. “What?”
He smiled at her and kissed her mouth softly as he grasped the sides of her nightgown and lifted it up off her body. Not to be outdone, she pulled free the sash that bound the waist of his silk dressing gown and it fell open. He was wearing nothing beneath it.
“This, I believe,” he said, tossing her nightgown aside and shrugging out of his dressing gown.
“Ah,” she said and set her hands on his shoulders again.
Whatever had once made him believe that he liked heavily voluptuous women best when there were slenderly curvaceous, long-legged women like Katherine in existence? With gold-flecked hair that smelled of soap?
He drew her against him and ran his hands down her back from her shoulder blades to her buttocks. He opened his mouth over hers and she kissed him back.
I love you, he had told her this afternoon, and she had told him there was no need to say the words. She did not believe that he meant them.
And did he?
Would he be in any doubt if he did ? But did it matter anyway? He was committed to her happiness for the rest of his life. He might as well call it love. What else could he call it?
“Jasper,” she said when he was kissing his way along her throat, “take me to bed.”
He raised his head and smiled down at her.
“Ah,” he said. “I had almost forgotten again. That is why I came to your room.”
And he scooped her up in his arms and strode toward her bed.
He followed her down onto it after dropping her there.
“I love you,” he said just before engaging her mouth with his own again.
“Oh, silly,” she said.
Well. Monty the great lover-silly!
“There has to be punishment for that insult,” he said.
“Show me.” She pulled his head down to her own.
She was laughing.
24
THE great fear for the past month had been that the day of the fete would turn out to be a wet one. Many of the activities could be moved indoors, of course, and careful plans had been made for that eventuality. But it would not be the same. The day as Katherine had envisioned it would be effectively ruined.
What a relief it was, then, to awake early, to jump out of bed and hurry to the window and throw back the curtains to discover that the early morning sun was beaming down from a cloudless sky-and to know that other people in other rooms and throughout the surrounding countryside and in the village would be doing the same thing and feeling a similar happy relief and surge of excitement and joy to know that this was the day.
Katherine looked back over her shoulder to find Jasper squinting at her, his hands laced behind his head on the pillow. The sun was shining directly into his eyes.
“Oh, I am sorry,” she said, pulling one of the curtains halfway across the window to put his face in shadow.
“No need,” he said. “I like being awoken at the crack of dawn after a night of disturbed sleep.”
She looked at the clock on the mantel. It was not quite six o’clock.
“Oh, I am sorry,” she said again.
“About the disturbed night?” he said. “It was in a worthy cause. Or about waking me early? It means that there is a little more night left to be disturbed before it is time to get up. Or were you apologizing for standing there in the sunlight? And so you should apologize. Have you no modesty?”
She had been so anxious about the weather that she had forgotten to pull her nightgown on over her head as she got up.
“Oh,” she said.
“If you are embarrassed,” he said, holding back the bedcovers on her side of the bed, “you had better jump under here to hide yourself.”
Which she did.
It was almost seven o’clock before they both got up. She had even dozed for ten minutes or so of that hour.
There was to be no dozing for the rest of the day. By the time they had got dressed and had a quick breakfast and stepped outside, there were already servants out there, carrying tables and blankets, and already a few committee members were arriving to set up tables and booths and exhibits and to mark out a racecourse and an archery range and a picnic area and everything else that would be needed during the day. Katherine stayed in the area of the house. Jasper strode off with a few of the men to inspect the mud pond that had been created at the marshy end of the lake. It was rather horrifying to think that there was to be mud wrestling and a tug-of-war there today. But it had made the fete irresistibly appealing to the men.