After reading it he had stridden down to the lake, torn off all his clothes—even though it had been daytime and total privacy had been by no means guaranteed—and swum the whole length of the lake, using every last ounce of his energy so that by the time he reached the far side of the island he had had to half stagger, half drag himself up the sloping bank to fall in a panting stupor facedown on the grass among the wildflowers. He did not even know for how many hours he had lain there.

The foolish part—the really stupid part—was that after he had returned to the house he had not immediately told anyone. He could not face the questions, the explanations, the emotion, the recriminations, the sympathy, the whatever it was he would have been called upon to face if he had told. He had postponed the telling until the evening, and then until the next morning, and then . . .

He had not told at all.

One morning when they were riding home from an inspection of the ripening crops on the home farm, his father admitted to him that he had arranged the marriage with Freyja only because he had thought it would please Kit. Left to himself, he had added, Kit had chosen far more wisely and well than anyone else could have done for him. He had matured into a sensible, dependable man despite the wild oats he had been sowing in London even as late as this spring. Miss Edgeworth would be a fine viscountess and a worthy countess when the day came.

The day Syd left, their mother linked an arm through Kit’s after drying her tears and strolled with him in the parterre gardens. She had had misgivings at the prospect of sharing a home with Freyja, she admitted, though she was very fond of her and of all the Bedwyns, who had suffered only from not having had a mother through their most formative years to curb their wildness and teach them some restraint. But she simply loved Lauren. She had done almost from the first, though she confessed that she had been predisposed to dislike her intensely. Lauren already felt like the daughter she had never had but had always longed for.

Kit’s grandmother spoke of Lauren when she got up in the mornings and Lauren was not there to accompany her on her walk, when she sat by the fire in the evenings and Lauren was not there to listen to her or to entertain her with conversation or massage her bad hand, and whenever she fancied that Kit was looking restless, which was almost every time she set eyes on him.

He had been able to find neither the courage nor the heart to tell them that the engagement was over, that they would never see Lauren again, that he would not either.

By the middle of September, with his mother asking almost daily when the wedding date was to be set and his grandmother urging that it be before Christmas so that they would have Lauren with them for the holiday—and so that they could start airing out the family christening robes—he knew that he was going to have to do something decisive. He was going to have to tell them.

It was during a lapse in the conversation at dinner one evening that he finally steeled himself and drew breath to speak.

“I’ll be going down to Newbury Abbey,” he said abruptly. “Tomorrow, I think. I need to . . . see Lauren.”

His words surprised him as much as they did his family. More so, in fact. They were all delighted. They had been expecting it, in fact. They thought it was high time. Lauren would be thinking he was having second thoughts.

It was only when the unexpected, unplanned words were spoken that he understood why he had not broken the news to his family, why he had been unable to let go of the charade. He had learned something of infinite value during the summer—he and Lauren had both learned it, he believed. He had learned the importance of openness, of talking to the people he loved, even when habit urged him to keep everything locked up inside himself. He had a good relationship with his father and with Syd today because Lauren had coaxed him into talking with them after a three-year estrangement.

Yet he had never spoken the full truth to Lauren herself. He had withheld it for her sake, because it was something she did not want to hear, because she might find the knowledge a burden, because it might influence her into sacrificing what was of greatest importance to her—her freedom.

But perhaps she had a right to the truth. Freedom surely involved the right to choose.

Or perhaps he was simply deluding himself into self-indulgence.

But if it was self-indulgence, he thought as he rode into the village of Upper Newbury two days later on a blustery day and took a room at the inn on the green, it felt remarkably uncomfortable. The village was picturesque, and there was another part of it—Lower Newbury?—at the bottom of a steep hill, he could see from his room, its small houses clustered about a sheltered harbor, which nevertheless could not disguise the roughness of the sea.

He was undecided about whether he should call first at the dower house or at Newbury Abbey itself. But the dower house, he found, was just a short distance inside the gates of the park. He went there first. The ladies were at the abbey, a servant informed him, and so he rode the rest of the way along a lengthy, winding driveway and presented his card at Newbury Abbey with the request that the Countess of Kilbourne receive him.

He was kept waiting for only a couple of minutes before being ushered up to the drawing room, where several people were awaiting his appearance, all on their feet. Lauren was not among them.

She had not been as reticent as he, he could see immediately. These people all knew. Lady Muir was looking pale, the Dowager Lady Kilbourne grave, Portfrey poker-faced. But the small, blond-haired, exquisitely pretty young lady who hurried toward him, her hand extended, was smiling.

“Lord Ravensberg?” she said. “What a pleasure this is.”

“Ma’am?” He bowed over her hand.

“Ravensberg?” A tall, blond man, about Kit’s own age, came up beside her and bowed without offering his hand.

“Kilbourne?”

He was in the presence, Kit realized, of the man who had meant so much to Lauren all her life, whom she had been within a few minutes of marrying, whom she had loved and probably still did. And of the infamous Lily, who had blighted all Lauren’s hopes and dreams.

“What a pleasant surprise,” the countess said. “Do come and have a seat. It is rather chilly outside today, is it not? You know everyone else, I believe?”

The ladies curtsied. Portfrey inclined his head. He was holding a small child against one shoulder, Kit noticed for the first time. The duchess smiled warmly.

“You have come, Lord Ravensberg,” she said. “I am so glad as I have predicted it.”

“And I,” the countess added, taking Kit’s arm and leading him toward a chair. “Lauren wrote to you before telling any of us—even Gwen—that she was going to end her betrothal. We have all been mystified and very sad because Gwen and my mama-in-law were both firmly of the opinion that it was a love match and very much approved of by your family. Lauren insisted that the breakup was all her idea, that none of the blame must be laid at your door, but of course we have been doing just that. We love Lauren very dearly, you see, and it is always easier to blame strangers. But now you have come, and you may defend yourself in person.”

“Lily!” Kilbourne said. “Ravensberg owes us no explanation at all. We do not even know why he has come.”

“I came,” Kit said, “to speak with Lauren. Where is she?”

“What is it you wish to say?” Kilbourne asked. “She has ended the betrothal. None of us knows why exactly, but we can safely guess that she has no further wish to see or speak with you.”

“She is best left alone, Lord Ravensberg,” the dowager added. “She was quite adamant in her insistence that she had not acted out of impulse when she wrote to you. I do not know what happened at Alvesley, but she is quite determined not to have you despite the social stigma of a broken engagement. If this is a courtesy call, I thank you on behalf of my niece. If it is not, you see a formidable array of her concerned relatives before you ready to protect her from you.”

“Poor Lord Ravensberg,” the duchess said with a sympathetic laugh. “You will be thinking you have stepped onto an Arctic continent. We are being unfair to you. Lauren really has insisted that none of the blame for what has happened is yours.”

“She is down on the beach,” Lady Muir said quietly from some distance away.

Kit looked at her and inclined his head. He still had not sat down.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

“She said she wanted to be alone,” Kilbourne said. “She said she did not want to be disturbed.”

“And so, Lord Ravensberg,” the countess added, smiling, “you will have all the privacy in the world to say to her what you have come to say.”

“I’ll not have her upset,” Kilbourne said.

The countess relinquished Kit’s arm in order to take her husband’s. She smiled up at him. “Lauren is twenty-six years old, Neville,” she said. “She is very sensible and has just spent weeks convincing us that she is in control of her own life and can make her own decisions. If she does not want to speak to Lord Ravensberg, she will tell him so.”

When Kilbourne looked down into his wife’s eyes, Kit realized two things. Lauren was very much loved here at Newbury Abbey, especially perhaps by the two who had caused her the most pain. And Kilbourne was consumed by guilt for what he had made her suffer. Consequently he was doing all in his power to see to it that she did not suffer again.

“I will walk down to the beach if someone will show me the way,” Kit said.

“It is going to rain,” Kilbourne said, glancing toward the window. “Tell her to come home without delay.”

The countess smiled dazzlingly at her husband though she spoke to Kit. “Tell her to take shelter in the cottage, Lord Ravensberg. It is closer.”

“Walk down over the lawn,” Lady Muir instructed him, “bearing right as you go until you reach the cliff path.”

Kit bowed to them all and made his exit.

It was not really raining when he reached the steep path down the side of the cliff. It was not even quite drizzling. But his face felt damp and his ungloved hands clammy. It was certainly going to be raining soon.

He realized where he was when he was halfway down. Lauren had described it once—the short valley with a waterfall and pool at the inner end and a picturesque cottage beside the pool. It was where she had once seen Kilbourne and his countess frolicking and had concluded that she was incapable of that kind of passion herself. There was no sign of Lauren. He turned his gaze to the beach and shaded his eyes as he looked along the wide stretch of golden sand.

And then he spotted her. And smiled. And knew beyond all doubt that the summer had not been in vain for her. Wearing a cloak but no bonnet on a blustery, damp day, she was in the middle of the beach, facing a wild, tumultuous sea, and perched at the very pinnacle of a great tall rock, which from this angle appeared to have almost sheer sides.

At the same time the scene chilled him. This she had done alone. She had not needed help or support—not from him or anyone else. Seeing her thus, he knew that she had achieved self-knowledge and peace. That she was capable of living her life her way. That she needed no one.

That she did not need him.

Foolishly, he was tempted to turn back before she saw him. But he had something that needed to be said. Something he must say.

He thought the wind might blow him over when he stepped out of the relative shelter of the path onto the bridge over the shallow river. He lowered his head so that he would not lose his hat. He was on the beach, plodding over the sand, when he finally looked up again. She had seen him. She was watching him approach, sitting quietly at the top of the rock, clasping her knees. It seemed to take forever to walk the rest of the way.

He looked up at her and grinned. “Stuck?” he asked. “Do you need rescuing?”

“No,” she said with all her characteristic quiet dignity, “thank you.”

And she moved from her place to descend the other side of the rock. It was far more scalable than the side by which he had approached, he saw when he walked around it. Even so, she descended at a pace that would have put a tortoise to sleep. He would have climbed up to be close enough to catch her if she slipped, but something told him that it would be entirely the wrong thing to do. Finally first one foot and then the other was on firm ground—or on shifting sand, at least. She turned and looked at him.