Crispin Butler having just been bowled out, it was indeed Lady Freyja who had come up to bat. Lauren had been very aware of her from the start, standing on the sidelines some distance from the blankets with the rest of her team, bareheaded, her mane of unruly hair shining golden in the sun, smiling occasionally in the direction of the spectators, a challenge in her eyes as they met Lauren’s.

She was, of course, perfectly at her ease on the cricket pitch. She settled her bat before the wickets and squinted off in the direction of Kit, who was running in to the far wickets to bowl to her. It was clear that he knew her to be an accomplished player. He bowled his best ball at her. She hit it for a six. The ball arced up into the sky and landed way off on an undefended expanse of lawn. Benjamin went racing after it while the spectators applauded, the fielders groaned, Claude’s team jumped up and down with loud, unrestrained glee, and Lady Freyja hitched her riding habit with one hand and dashed between the wickets, laughing triumphantly, her hair streaming out behind her.

Kit was laughing too. “That was your free hit,” he called to her. “After this one we get serious.”

“Serious is not nearly good enough for me,” she called back. “Bring on a better bowler.”

Flushed, animated, and magnificent, she turned her head in the direction of the blankets again and her eyes mocked Lauren’s prim, ladylike presence.

“Ah, a gauntlet has been tossed down,” Lord Rannulf murmured. “This is quite like old times.”

Lady Freyja blocked the next ball and the wickets stood.

She got a hit off the next one, a perfectly catchable hit, but it sailed in the direction of four-year-old Sarah Vreemont, who watched it come in evident dismay, clapped her hands together at just the wrong moment while her teammates screamed at her to catch it, and burst into tears as the ball thudded onto the grass at her feet.

Lauren, twenty-two years her senior, knew just exactly how she felt.

“Hmm.” Kit trotted toward the child. “That was a mis-hit, Freyja. It was not Sarah’s fault at all that she did not catch it. You had better hit it again.”

Someone threw the ball back to Lady Freyja, and she tossed it up and hit it in a slow arc. Kit scooped up Sarah with one arm, cupped her little hands in his free one, and caught the ball.

“Out!” he yelled, and all his teammates cheered wildly.

Lady Freyja made a fuss—a loud one, as did the rest of her team. She stood, hands on hips, her bat dangling from one of them, her head thrown back, complaining that Kit was sly and conniving while he laughed at her and accused her of being a poor sport. But it was perfectly clear to Lauren that there was nothing serious about the quarrel, that they were deliberately insulting each other for their teams’ amusement, that they were really enjoying themselves. They were a perfectly matched couple, in fact, as she had seen from the start.

It was an undeniably depressing realization. Not because she was in any way in competition with the lady, despite the mocking glance Lady Freyja threw her way as she stalked off the field, apparently in high dudgeon. But merely because—again!—Lauren knew that she never could be in competition even if she wished to be. She had looks and breeding, yes, but she was completely lacking in that certain something that could win and hold a man’s admiration and arouse his passion. Despite last night, when all was said and done she was merely Lauren Edgeworth.

Sarah, her moment of triumph over, came wandering toward the blankets, looking for her mother, who had already gone back indoors out of the heat. There were still tears on her cheeks. Lauren drew her handkerchief out of an inner pocket and dried the child’s eyes.

“That was a wonderful catch,” she said. “Are you tired of cricket?”

The child nodded. “Come and play,” she invited.

Lauren hesitated. She had been to the nursery a few times during the past few days and had been surprised to find that children seemed to take to her. But she had not been alone with any of them.

“What would we do?” she asked.

“Push me on the swing.” Sarah had hold of her hand now and was tugging at it.

“There is a swing?” She got to her feet.

There was indeed. It was suspended on long ropes from a high branch of one of the great oak trees close to the parterre gardens. Lauren had not noticed it before. Sarah, who held her hand as they crossed the lawn, climbed on, and Lauren pushed her, at first tentatively, and then higher at the child’s urging.

Sarah whooped with glee. “Higher.”

Lauren laughed. “If you go too high,” she said, “you will kick your way right through into the treetop land and I will be left with an empty swing and no Sarah.”

And then she noticed that their progress across the lawn had not gone unobserved. Other small children, bored with cricket, were approaching and demanding their turn on the swing. Lauren was soon busy pushing the swing, making sure that everyone had an equal turn, helping the idle ones climb onto the lower limbs of the tree, jumping them down to the ground so that they could scramble up and do it all over again, and laughing with them. At least they were in the shade here, she thought gratefully, sheltered from the full force of the sun.

“The swing goes to a magic land at the top of the tree,” Sarah announced after a while.

“Who says so?” Henry Butler demanded scornfully.

“I say so.” Lauren looked at him, all amazement. “You mean you have never heard of it? You did not know there is a magic land above swings?”

“Tell us.”

“Tell us.”

All five children took up the chant and Lauren laughed again. Now what had she started? It was years since she had entertained herself and helped lull herself to sleep with stories in which little girls were never left behind by their mothers, in which life was always a vivid adventure, in which one could sail beyond the farthest horizon and always come back safely again, in which there was always a happy ending. She had never told such stories aloud. And yet there was a time when she had dreamed of doing so, of sitting on the side of her own child’s bed—hers and Neville’s—telling bedtime stories.

“I am going to sit down here in the shade,” she said, suiting action to words. “Gather around if you want to hear.”

The children sat on the ground and raised eager faces to her. The youngest, three-year-old Anna Clifford, came and cuddled into the crook of her arm.

“Once not so very long ago . . .”

She began to spin a tale of two young children—a boy and a girl—who had sat side by side on the swing and swung themselves so high that they had pushed aside the branches and the air and slipped between the curtains of the world straight through to the magic treetop land, which could not be seen from the ground, and which was different in every possible way from the land below—the grass was different and the houses and animals and people. It was a place of eye-popping novelty and hair-raising adventure and heart-pounding danger.

“And then in the nick of time,” she said at last as they all gazed at her, spellbound, “they spied the empty swing come soaring up through the red grass and they climbed on quickly and clung to the ropes and each other’s hand and came swooshing back down to the foot of the tree, where their mama and papa were waiting anxiously for them. They were safe again and had such a story to tell.”

There was an audible sigh of satisfaction from the children.

“Did they ever go back up?” Sarah asked.

“ Did they?”

“Oh yes, indeed,” Lauren assured them. “Many times. And had all sorts of exciting adventures. But those are stories for another time.”

“Ahhh,” the children protested while Lauren laughed and hugged Anna to her side.

“Which we must all hope will come very soon.”

Lauren looked up to see Kit standing bareheaded out in the sunlight, still in his shirtsleeves, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked as if he must have been standing there for a while. The lawn behind him was deserted, she could see. The cricket match had ended without her noticing. He was smiling at her, a look of unmistakable affection in his eyes.

Her stomach performed a complete somersault—or felt as if it did—and left her feeling slightly breathless. She recognized that it was desire she felt. She knew too in that moment that it was more than just desire. It was knowledge. She knew that lithe, handsome body. More, she knew the man inside. She knew him as a complex person, who hid so much of himself away behind the surface gaiety. And yet the gaiety was real too. It was not just a mask.

“Everyone has rushed off to the lake for a swim,” he said. “Is anyone here interested?” He grinned about at all the children, who were on their feet and dashing off in the direction of the water almost before he had finished speaking.

“Not me,” Lauren said hastily.

He stood where he was, still smiling. “You continually surprise me,” he said. “I did not know you were so wonderful with children.”

“Oh, I am not,” she assured him. “I have never had anything to do with them.”

“Allow me to contradict you,” he said. “You have been playing here for almost an hour with five toddlers—no easy task on such a hot afternoon. I observed no sign of any quarrel despite the fact that there is only one swing and there are always quarrels over it.”

“Has it been that long?” she asked. “And how do you know there were no quarrels? You have been playing cricket.”

“Oh, I know,” he assured her, causing that strange somersaulting in her stomach again. He came closer and offered his hand to help her to her feet. “Where did the story come from? A book?”

“No, of course not,” she said with a laugh. “I made it up as I went along. It is not difficult to create a magic land in which anything can happen and usually does.”

“I do believe,” he said, “you have been enjoying yourself and I cannot claim any credit for it.”

“Yes, you can,” she said earnestly. “I would still be in London, Kit, if you had not brought me here. I would still be fending off all the worthy gentlemen the Earl of Sutton and Wilma consider eligible for me. And hating every moment.”

“They are a pair of prize idiots,” he said. “They thoroughly deserve each other.”

She laughed again.

“There are enough supervisors and to spare for the children at the lake,” he said. “Let’s play truant for an hour or two, Lauren.”

“Is . . . Are . . . Is everyone swimming?” she asked. “The visitors too?”

“I daresay.” He grinned. “A little matter of propriety will not deter Freyja, you may be sure. The other girls will doubtless follow her lead and give their mothers heart palpitations. But it is a hot day and we all used up a great deal of energy playing cricket.”

“Are you sure you would not rather be there with h—with everyone else?” Lauren asked.

He tipped his head to one side as she brushed grass and twigs from her skirt. “I think we should go somewhere quiet together,” he said. “It is what everyone will expect of us, you know. No.” He held up one hand as she looked up at him. “Don’t stop smiling. We are betrothed. And despite the firmness of your answer last night, we are going to be married, I believe. But we need not discuss that again yet. Play truant with me?”

Yearning hit her hard, low in the abdomen. Caution knocked on the door of her mind at the same moment. She had gone too far last night. She did not regret it in the obvious way—she had been unable in all the hours since to be morally shocked by what she had done. But she regretted it in another way. Her femininity had been dragged out of hiding last night. She had given in to needs she had kept carefully locked inside herself before her wedding day and since, needs she had ruthlessly denied, needs she had always believed only Neville could satisfy.

The need to be fully and openly a woman.

She could very easily come to need Kit. She could very easily fall in love with him. It was a new and alarming possibility. She had never doubted until last night that she was a one-man woman, that she could never love any man but Neville.

She could fall in love with Kit.

But she must not allow herself to do so. For she was not at all the right woman for him. She was as different from Lady Freyja Bedwyn as it was possible to be. Yet Lady Freyja was so patently right for him. It was with her he had laughed and come vibrantly alive this afternoon. She must not fall in love. She must not risk having to cope again with the sort of heartbreak she had hardly expected to survive last year.