Mary Balogh - A Summer to Remember

Kit sat down and prepared simply to enjoy himself. Lauren, he noticed, was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and looking remarkably pretty. After they had returned from the lake earlier, she had gone up to her grandfather’s room and remained there with him until luncheon. She had come down on the old gentleman’s arm, and had been looking noticeably happy ever since.

He could not stop himself from remembering some of the words she had spoken— I have been so empty, Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness.

It was such a relief to know that he had done the right thing in persuading Baron Galton to tell her what he knew of her mother. To know that he had done some good in his life.

But there was not a great deal of time for reflection— or recovery from the walk and climb. The children, who were perfectly well able to play with one another, could not resist the attraction of a whole host of idle adults, who surely could not possibly have anything better to do than play with them. Before many minutes had passed it was no longer good enough for bandits and crusading warriors to creep up by foot on dragons and kidnapped maidens and hidden robbers in the cavern. Horses were required, and of course adult male cousins and uncles and occasionally fathers made splendid steeds.

Kit galloped around the hilltop for all of half an hour with an assortment of youngsters on his back. But the ladies were not exempt, he saw just before the older children tired of that particular game. Lauren and Beatrice and Lady Muir had been coaxed to their feet by some of the infants and were playing some circle game with them, all their hands joined—ring around the rosy, he guessed when they all fell down. Lauren was laughing, and little Anna jumped on her, followed by David and Sarah. She wrapped her arms about them while their mothers scolded and told them not to hurt Lauren.

But their attention was soon distracted. Young Benjamin had discovered that the slope behind the hill was broken halfway down by a wide, flat ledge before it continued its descent to the plain below, and that the upper slope was just long enough and smooth enough and grassy enough to be perfect for rolling down. He tested his theory with shrieks of exuberance, and soon all the tiring human horses were abandoned in favor of the new game. Even the little children could join in this one and did.

And then Sarah was tugging at Lauren’s hand, while Kit watched, grinning, from a short distance away. She laughed and shook her head, but then David was pulling at her other hand, and she was walking closer to the edge of the slope.

“Do it!” Frederick called, distracted from the conversation he was having with Lady Muir.

Sebastian put two fingers to his lips and whistled. Phillip whooped. Everyone turned to look.

Lauren was laughing.

“I dare you!” Roger said.

She took off her bonnet, sat down on the grass and then lay down, and rolled to the bottom, all light muslin skirts and bare arms and trim ankles and tumbling dark curls and shrieking laughter.

Kit stared after her, utterly enchanted. But it was Lady Muir, moving to his side and setting one hand on his sleeve, who voiced his thoughts.

“ That is Lauren?” she said. “I can scarcely believe it. Lord Ravensberg, I bless the moment she met you.”

Lauren was up on her knees, brushing the grass from her dress, looking upward, and still laughing.

“It would be a great deal easier,” she said, “if one did not have arms to get in one’s way.”

Yes, there had been that moment when they had met—that first moment in Hyde Park when their eyes had met. And there was this moment, when the truth finally burst in on him. Of course she had become precious to him. Of course she had. He was head over ears in love with her.

He loved her.

Sydnam was standing watching too.

“Oh, well,” he called down cheerfully, “if a lack of arms makes for easier rolling, I should be halfway decent at it.” And surrounded by shrieking, exuberant children, who were absorbed in their own pleasure, he rolled down the hill to come to rest a few feet from Lauren.

Kit tensed while all around him the relatives whistled and applauded. And then as Syd scrambled to his feet and offered his hand to Lauren, he looked up at Kit and their eyes met. He was laughing.

They toiled up the slope, hand in hand, while the children continued the game and most of the adults turned their attention to the approach of their tea from the opposite direction. They stood before Kit, still hand in hand. There was a moment of awkwardness.

“I need to tell you,” Sydnam said, his voice pitched low so that only Kit and Lauren would hear, “that I lied to you, Kit. When I told you the night you came home that I wanted nothing of you, you asked me if that included your love. I said yes. I lied.”

Kit swallowed hard, terrified that the sudden ache in his throat would translate into tears that everyone would see.

“I see,” he said stiffly. “I am glad.”

This, he thought, was the first time Syd had spoken voluntarily to him since that night three years ago when he had told Kit to leave and not come back. Why was he holding Lauren’s hand? He released it even as Kit thought it, smiled rather awkwardly, and would have turned away.

“Syd,” Kit said quickly, “I . . . er . . .”

Lauren, looking most unlike her usual immaculate self—bonnetless, her hair untidy and strewn with grass, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright—linked one arm through Syd’s and one through his and turned to stroll away from the chairs and blankets and rolling, noisy children.

“I have been thinking,” Kit said, “about something Lauren said this morning. I have not been able to get it out of my head, in fact, even though she was not talking about either you or me, Syd. She said that the people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. You are, are you not? And God knows I love you.”

“Yes,” Syd said.

“And I humiliated you the other night, coming to your defense when Catherine wanted you to waltz with her.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose,” Kit said, “it happens over and over again—with Mother and Father, with all your old friends and neighbors.”

“Yes,” Syd admitted. “But with you most of all, Kit.”

They did not descend the slope. They stood looking out across the fields below, across the pasture where Kit and Lauren had raced a few days before.

“You are an artist, Syd.” Pain was back in his throat and chest, the terrible, impotent pity for the brother he had adored from childhood on. “But you are condemned to be a steward.”

“Yes,” Syd said. “It has not been easy to adjust. Perhaps the adjustment will never be fully made. Perhaps being an excellent steward will never quite make up for the fact that I can never paint again. But it is my problem, Kit, my adjustment to make. This is my body, my life. I’ll cope with it. I have done rather well so far. I would appreciate a little credit. I don’t need your pity. Only your love.”

Lauren still had an arm linked through each of theirs, creating a physical connection between them, a sort of bridge, Kit thought, realizing suddenly that it was quite deliberate. Her hand crept into his, and she laced her fingers with his.

“I can’t forgive myself,” Kit said. “I can’t, Syd. You ought never to have been in the Peninsula. You certainly ought not to have been on that mission with me. It was my carelessness that led us into that trap. And then I left you to suffer . . . this while I escaped. Don’t tell me it is your life and not my concern. It is my concern. I doomed you to half a life and got off scot-free myself.”

“I would find that almost insulting if I did not recognize your agony,” Sydnam said. “Kit, I chose to become an officer. I chose to be a reconnaissance officer. The trap was unforeseeable. I volunteered to be the decoy.”

Was that true? Of course it was. But did it make a difference? Had Syd had any choice? If he had not volunteered, Kit would have had to command him to take that role. Syd had saved him from having to do that.

“I’ll not say I enjoyed what followed,” Sydnam continued. “It was sheer hell, in fact. But I was proud of myself, Kit. I had finally proved myself your equal, and Jerome’s. Perhaps I had even surpassed both of you. In my conceit I expected you to be proud of me too. I expected when you brought me home that you would tell everyone here how proud you were. I thought you would have extolled my courage and endurance. It was very conceited of me.”

“And instead I belittled you,” Kit said quietly, “by taking all the blame and focusing everyone’s attention on myself as I went noisily mad. I made you seem no better than a victim.”

“Yes,” Sydnam said.

“I have always, always been proud of you,” Kit said. “You did not have to prove anything, Syd. You are my brother.”

They stood gazing out across the countryside, the breeze at their backs, the noise of merry voices and laughter behind them.

Kit chuckled softly. “You were talking about me, Lauren,” he said. “What else did you say this morning? ‘It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer.’ In some ways, Syd, my role was as hard as yours. That may seem insulting, but there is truth in it.”

“Yes, I know,” his brother agreed. “I have always been thankful that I was not the one appointed to escape. I could not have borne to see you like this. It is easier to suffer something oneself than see a loved one do it.”

“I don’t know about either of you,” Lauren said after a short pause, “but I am very hungry.”

Kit turned his head to smile at her and then met his brother’s eye beyond her. He wondered if he looked as sheepish as Syd did, and decided that he probably did.

“Come on, Syd,” he said, “let’s see how well you can eat chicken with just one hand—and the left one to boot.”

“I have one distinct advantage if it is greasy,” Syd replied. “I have only one hand to wash afterward.”

Kit pressed his fingers tightly about Lauren’s and blessed again the moment he had looked up from kissing the milkmaid to find himself locking glances with a prim, shocked Lauren Edgeworth.

Except that she might yet break their engagement.

Lauren stood at her bedchamber window, still in her nightgown, gazing out on what promised to be a lovely day. There was not a cloud in the sky. The tree branches were still, suggesting that if there was a wind at all it was the merest breeze. All the anxiously conceived alternate plans for the day’s festivities if it rained could be abandoned. The countess would be so relieved. All was going to be perfect for the dowager’s birthday.

Tomorrow Aunt Clara and Gwen were returning to Newbury. Grandpapa too had decided to return home to Yorkshire. He was going to send the bundle of letters from Lauren’s mother by special messenger—to Newbury. She had asked him to send them there rather than here.

She had come here to help Kit avoid an unwanted betrothal. She had done that. She had come to help reconcile him to his family, who had rejected him and sent him away three years ago. She had done that. She had done it in time for this birthday and could feel confident that Kit would be able to celebrate fully and happily with his family and they with him. There was really nothing left to do.

She had come for a little adventure, for a taste of life as other people lived it, those who had not disciplined all spontaneity, all joy, out of their lives. She had found adventure in abundance. She had bathed and swum in the lake—once, naked; she had climbed a tree to the higher branches; she had raced on horseback; she had played with children and rolled down a steep slope with them. Very tiny adventures indeed.

She had gone outside alone one night and spent what remained of it in a hut with Kit. She had slept with him on a narrow bed. She had lain with him on one of the velvet benches in the portrait gallery and given him her virginity. She had lain with him among the wildflowers on the island and made love with him. A momentous adventure.

The sound of laughter and voices had her leaning closer to the window and peering downward. Phillip and Penelope Willard, Crispin and Marianne Butler, were on their way out for an early morning walk. The day was beginning.