Mary Balogh - A Summer to Remember

Her voice was quiet and sensible. There was no trace of regret there, of pain, of any emotion whatsoever.

“Stay a little longer,” he said. “A week. Give me one week to persuade you. Don’t leave tomorrow, Lauren. It is too soon.”

“I have accomplished everything I came here to do,” she said. “And I have had my adventure, my summer to remember. There is no good reason to prolong it and every reason to end it. It is time, Kit. You will soon realize it for yourself.”

“Stay,” he urged her, “until we know for sure whether or not you are with child.”

“If I am,” she said just as coolly as before, “I will write to you immediately. If I am not, I will write to cancel our betrothal. I will wait until I know, Kit. I can do that just as easily at Newbury. And I really believe I am not. There were only two occasions, after all.”

One. There had been only one occasion when she might have conceived. “I hope you are,” he said, gripping her hand even more tightly. “I hope you are with child.” Did he? Was he so desperate that he wanted her to be coerced?

“Why?” she asked.

Because I love you. Because I cannot bear the thought of life lived without you. But he could not hang that albatross about her neck. It would be horribly unfair. She might somehow feel honor-bound to stay with him, to marry him, to give up the life she dreamed of, now so close to being in her grasp.

“It is because you have . . . possessed me, is it not?” she said. “As a gentleman you feel you must persuade me to marry you at all costs. There is no need—not unless I am with child. It was not seduction. What I did, I did freely. It was part of the adventure, part of the memorable summer. I will never regret it. I will always be glad that I—that I know. And that it was with you. And that it was so . . . wonderful. But you owe me nothing, certainly not a lifetime of devotion. You are free, Kit. So am I. Free!”

She made freedom sound like the most desirable state of the human condition. He might have agreed with her a month or so ago.

He tasted defeat. How could he argue against a plea for freedom?

“There is nothing I can say to change your mind, then?” he asked.

“No.”

He lifted her hand, set his forehead against it, drew a slow breath.

“Thank you,” he said. “For all you have done for me and my family, thank you, Lauren. You have been sweetness and patience and generosity and unfailing dignity.”

“And thank you.” She set her free hand on his arm. “For my adventure, Kit. For the swimming and riding and tree-climbing. For the—for the laughter. And for persuading Grandpapa to tell me the truth about my mother. That is a more precious gift than I can put into words. Thank you.”

He felt her lips against his cheek and fought the urge to pull her into his arms, to use his superior physical strength, to flatly refuse to let her go—ever.

“Tomorrow morning, then?” he said, his eyes tightly closed. “We will need to be cheerful, will we not? Regretful for the brief parting, but cheerful because wedding plans are being set in motion. Basically cheerful, yes. I’ll kiss you, I believe. On the lips. It will seem appropriate.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “There will be others gathered to see us on our way, I daresay. There will be others watching.”

“But now,” he said, bringing her hand to his lips, “we are alone together. For the last time. Good-bye, then, my friend. Good-bye, Lauren.”

“Oh, my dear,” she said, and for the first time it seemed to him that her voice faltered and emotion crept in. “Good-bye. Have a good life. I will always remember you with—with deep affection.”

He stood there for several silent moments, his back to the house, his eyes closed, her hand to his lips, memorizing the feel and the soap fragrance of her and the gentle aura she seemed to cast about him, before escorting her back for what remained of the birthday ball.

Summer had lingered on through the hot, lazy days of August and well into September. But it was finally giving place to autumn, it seemed. There was a distinct chill in the air and clouds were gathering overhead, low and heavy. It was going to rain.

She was in the very worst place she could be on such a day, Lauren thought. She was on the beach at Newbury Abbey. Not only on the beach, but perched on the very top of the great rock that appeared for all the world as if a giant must once have hurled it there from the cliffs above to land in the middle of the wide expanse of golden sand. She was sitting with a cloak wrapped warmly about her, her arms clasping her updrawn knees beneath its folds. But she was hatless—her bonnet lay at the foot of the rock, wedged into a narrow cranny with her gloves, where they would not blow away. The wind—no, it was more like a gale—whipped her hair back from her face and tasted of salt. The sea, on the ebb and halfway out along the sand, was slate gray and rough and flecked with angry white foam.

She was feeling almost happy. She allowed herself the qualifier of almost because she had accepted the fact that self-deception was also self-destructive. She would not deceive herself any more or hide behind any mask in an attempt to shield herself from the reality of her life.

Hence the beach, which she had never liked until recently, especially on a wild day. And hence her perch on top of the rock, which she had never climbed before today. Climbing it had been forbidden when she was a child, and so of course both Neville and Gwen had scaled it several times. Equally inevitably, she never had. Climbing it more recently had been unladylike. She could remember her shock at seeing Lily sitting up here one day, not long after her arrival at Newbury.

And hence too her bonnetless state. The wind and the sea air would do dreadful things to both her complexion and her hair. She tipped her face higher into the air and shook out her tangled hair with smiling defiance.

Hence also the fact that the likelihood of rain was not sending her scurrying back to the dower house for shelter. If she got wet, she would also feel cold and uncomfortable and might ruin her bonnet and her good shoes. She looked up at the clouds and challenged them to rain torrents on her head.

She was not with child. She had wept in the privacy of her own room when her courses had begun less than a week after her return from Alvesley. She had grieved for the child who had never been and the marriage that would never happen. At the same time she had been overwhelmingly relieved. She had written the next day to Kit, breaking off their engagement—the most difficult task she had ever undertaken in her life.

The thought of it—of the moment the letter had left her hands—could still make her chest tighten with an almost unbearable pain. She would not allow herself to think of it. At some time in the future—still rather far in the future, she believed—she would be able to look back on the brief summer at Alvesley and remember with pleasure what had surely been the happiest time of her life.

But not quite yet. At this precise moment in her life she was almost happy. She accepted with quiet patience that she was not entirely so.

Tomorrow she was going to Bath. Oh, not permanently yet, but the wheels were being set in motion. Gwen and Neville were going to accompany her. An agent had found four different houses he considered suitable residences for a single lady of modest fortune. She was going to view them all and make her choice. Against the advice of everyone except Elizabeth, but with the reluctant support of all, she was about to embark upon the rest of her life. Not a passive observer any longer, but an active participant.

The mist of spray from the sea—or perhaps it was the beginning of the rain—was dampening her face. Her hair was going to be impossibly curly when she got back home and her poor maid was called upon to do something with it. Lauren closed her eyes and felt enclosed by wind. Exhilarated by the wildness of it. Empowered by it.

She had read fifteen years’ worth of letters from the stranger who was her mother. Cheerful, careless, untidily scrawled letters from a woman who was clearly enjoying her life even though she complained freely about anything and everything—particularly about the men on whom she had heaped rapturous praises in an earlier letter, and consistently over the fact that her beloved Lauren never wrote back to her, never came to live with her. They were letters that would have shocked Lauren to the core even a few months earlier. But she had acquired a new tolerance, an acceptance of the myriad ways in which other people coped with the one life allotted them. She felt an aching love for the mother she remembered so dimly that none of the memories was concrete. She had written a long, long letter and sent it on its way to India. She could not expect any reply until sometime next year, but she felt a connection with the woman who had borne her.

She should climb down, she supposed, looking with some misgiving at the footholds and handholds that had appeared perfectly manageable when she had examined them from the beach. But she had been looking up then, not down. If she waited until the rain was falling in earnest, the rock might become slippery and she would be stranded.

For a moment her mind touched upon the memory of Kit helping her descend the tree at Alvesley, his body and arms cradling her protectively from behind, though she had forbidden him to touch her or carry her down. She pushed the memory aside. She was not ready for it yet. It was still too painful.

Something caught at the edge of her vision, and she turned her head to look. There was a steep path down from the cliff top to the valley where the waterfall and pool and cottage were, just out of her range of vision from where she sat. But she could see the bridge that crossed the river as it flowed the last few yards to the beach and the sea. He was just stepping onto the bridge, his long drab riding coat billowing out to one side, his tall hat pulled low over his brow.

A mirage, she thought foolishly, whipping her head downward to rest on her knees. Her heart thumped uncomfortably, as if she had been running too fast. It was just Neville, sent by Aunt Clara to discover what kept her so long on the beach. But it was not Neville. The Duke of Portfrey, then, sent by Elizabeth and Lily on the same errand. No. No, it was not he. Besides, none of them would have come looking for her. She had told them she wanted to be alone.

She lifted her head again and turned it casually, so as not to disappoint herself when she saw empty beach and bridge and path.

He was on the beach, striding toward her.

Lauren clasped her knees more tightly.

All the guests had left Alvesley within two weeks of the birthday party. Sydnam had left a week after that, bound for one of the Duke of Bewcastle’s larger estates in Wales. He had been very cheerful about it. Doing a good job as someone else’s steward was a challenge he needed to take on, Kit had realized. Syd certainly had no need of the extra income.

Life at home would have been tranquil and happy except for one thing. His relationship with his father was better than it had ever been. They could communicate man to man. They could relate as father and son. His father was eager to teach; he was eager to learn. And he brought with him skills acquired during years of commanding men and shouldering life-and-death responsibilities, and a young man’s energy to complement his father’s slower, more deliberate wisdom. His mother was cheerful and affectionate. He was once again his grandmother’s favorite, though he had little competition, of course. He had come face-to-face with Rannulf when both were out riding alone one day. They had talked for a few hours, Ralf turning his horse to ride alongside his erstwhile friend since neither of them had had any particular destination in mind. They had fallen back into the easy camaraderie they had enjoyed throughout their boyhood years. They had met several times since then. Their friendship had resumed.

There was only one thing to mar the tranquillity, though to call it one made it sound small, insignificant, unimportant. It was the consuming fact of Kit’s life. Lauren had written a formal little note from Newbury, breaking their engagement, citing incompatibility and personal fickleness. Right to the end she had kept her part of the bargain, careful to assume all the blame for the breakup. And the letter was designed for other eyes in addition to his own. There was not a whisper of a mention of pregnancy. He had to assume from the nature of the letter that she was not with child. He had opened it not knowing which of two quite opposite fates he was going to be facing.