Indeed, it was a very good thing in light of what had just happened. A man informing his wife that he loved her and actually kissing her in public, for the love of God. Lady Forester would have swooned quite away if she had witnessed it.
There were all the usual races-simple footraces, sack races, egg-and-spoon races, hop, skip, and jump races, leapfrog races to name a few-but everyone enjoyed them as much as they ever did if the shouting and shrieking and laughter were anything to judge by. There were distinct advantages, Jasper decided, to being the host and stuck with the starting gun. Merton fell so many times during the sack race that finally he rolled to the finish line, only to be disqualified when he arrived there for not being on his feet. Thane got egg down both boots during his race and made matters worse by trying to clean the mess off with his handkerchief. Araminta Clement caught a foot in her skirt as she leapfrogged over Smith-Vane and they were both covered with grass when they finally left off their laughing and struggled to their feet. She had lost the race long ago to an exuberant Charlotte.
But there was the three-legged race still to be run. And there was a certain bright-eyed sun goddess, who had finished playing with the infants and was standing watching the races and applauding the winners.
He caught her eye, crooked one finger to beckon her, and handed the gun to one of the strapping young laborers from the home farm.
“My race, I believe, ma’am,” he said when Katherine came close.
“The three-legged race?” she said. “Oh, dear.” And she laughed.
The children under twelve ran it first. Then it was time for the adults.
Katherine laughed again as he tied his left leg to her right. To one side of them were Charlotte and Merton. On the other side were Margaret and Fletcher. Then there were villagers and country people-the serious contenders.
“Right,” Jasper said, wrapping one arm about Katherine’s shoulders while she set one about his waist. “We will do this on a one-two count, one being our bound legs and two our outside legs. We will take it slowly to start and then speed up. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said, and laughed.
“We will start on a one,” he said.
“That sounds sensible.” She laughed again and he grinned at her.
A larger crowd was gathering, he noticed. Perhaps word had spread that Lord Montford was in love and was about to run the three-legged race with the object of that love, his wife, whom he had so brazenly kissed an hour ago.
“Oh, dear,” she said, noticing the same thing, “look at the crowd.”
And she laughed again.
He remembered then that during the month preceding their marriage, after he had pressed his suit on her, he had believed he had killed all laughter in her, all possibility of joy.
Was he after all to earn forgiveness? Not from her-she had already forgiven him. But from himself?
“It is time, my baroness,” he said sternly, “to put on a good show.”
Lady Forester was there, he saw, and-good Lord!-Seth Wrayburn, looking his usual sour self. It was doubtful he would look kindly upon a man who kissed his wife in full view of a large crowd of his guests and neighbors-and then ran a three-legged race with her.
“Take your marks,” the laborer called-he was Hatcher, was he not? “Get set.”
The gun fired with a loud pop.
Charlotte and Merton tumbled to the grass with a shriek and a shout. Margaret and Fletcher seemed just to have realized that they would have to hold on to each other if they hoped to proceed.
“One,” Jasper said, and by some miracle their bound legs moved forward in unison.
“Two.” Their outside legs moved past the bound ones.
“One.”
She was laughing.
Most of the field was on the ground within two strides. What was left of it was soon left behind as they forged ahead to the finish line in perfect unison with each other, cheered onward by the crowd.
And then it struck Jasper that the first prize in the race was to be three guineas, nothing at all to him, especially as the money was his to start with, but a truly enormous sum to Tom Lacey, one of his laborers, who was coming along several paces behind them with his wife while three of their five children screamed encouragement from the sidelines and the fourth watched with wide eyes and thumb firmly lodged in his mouth and the fifth lay fast asleep in the arms of the eldest.
“Two,” Jasper said, and their outside legs moved.
“Two-ah, I mean one.”
But Katherine had already hesitated, and he had performed a little stutter step, and they tumbled to the grass a mere three or four strides from the finish line.
“One comes after two,” she cried.
“No, it does not. Whoever did you have as a childhood teacher?” he asked her, tutting. “Three comes after two.”
And they lay there laughing helplessly, their arms wrapped about each other as Tom and his wife jogged across the finish line, closely followed by Margaret and Fletcher.
The crowd was applauding loudly and laughing hard too at the spectacle their baron and his wife had just made of themselves-again.
Somehow they got back to their feet and hobbled the rest of the way to come in fourth out of a field of ten. Not bad. Merton and Charlotte were still about six feet from the starting line and down on the grass again.
Lady Forester was purple in the face. And, silly woman, she was talking to Wrayburn, who had brows of thunder. Jasper did not hear what she said. Strangely, he did hear her uncle’s reply.
“You would not recognize simple fun, Prunella,” he said, “if it reared up and bit you on the arse.”
The lady would have swooned without further ado, Jasper guessed, if she could have trusted that someone would catch her. But Clarence was nowhere in sight, and Uncle Stanley was looking openly delighted.
“We could have won,” Katherine said when she had recovered somewhat from her laughter. She looked at Tom lift his wife from the ground after releasing their legs and swing her once about with a whoop while their children dashed up to them. “But I am very glad we did not. That was deliberate, was it not?”
“Me?” he said. “Deliberately losing a race? Do you have windmills in your head?”
“No,” she said. “And I am on to you, Jasper Finley. I am on to you.”
Whatever the devil she meant by that.
He bent to untie the bond that held their legs. He touched the soft flesh behind her knee in the process.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Liar.”
“Three guineas, girl,” Tom was saying. “Three guineas.”
And he had dared to complain, Jasper thought, about the lack of freedom that wealth and position and property could bring to a man.
“I have some baking to judge,” he said.
“And I have some needlework to judge,” she said. “Shall we go together?”
It took them a while to get to the lower terrace. People who had kept a respectful distance earlier in the afternoon were suddenly eager to joke with them and tell them what a wonderful time they were having and beg them to please please make the fete an annual event again.
It was already late in the afternoon. The races had all been run, the archery competition was over, the exhibitions had been judged, and the prizes awarded. Most people had eaten and drunk their fill, either standing on the terrace with friends and neighbors or sitting in the parterre garden or on one of the blankets spread on the lawn. All that was left apart from the ball tonight and the simple enjoyment of the park for those who chose to stay instead of going home to change were the mud sports.
And those were to be, Katherine had come to realize, the highlight of the day. Everyone was going to watch the eight men who had entered the mud-wrestling competition and the tug-of-war that was to follow and would involve a large number of the men. Several of the houseguests had already changed from their best clothes for fear they might be on the losing team and be dragged through the mud.