Mary Balogh - Then Comes Seduction

And surely he loved her too. But that was foolishness. No, it was not. Surely he did.

She turned her head to find him smiling lazily at her.

“I have swum here a thousand times,” he said, “but always alone until today.”

“Your sisters did not swim?” she asked him.

“Goodness, no,” he said. “It was strictly forbidden.”

“Even for you?” she said.

He laughed softly. “Even for me. We will teach our children to swim here, Katherine-and then we will strictly forbid them to swim here alone.”

“They will not need to,” she said. “We will come with them whenever they wish.”

“Or if we cannot,” he said, “there will always be a brother or sister to accompany them.”

“Yes.” She smiled and draped an arm over her eyes. The sun was bright.

“Happy?” he said.

“Mmm,” she said. “Yes. And you?”

“Happy,” he said.

It seemed to Katherine that she had never been happier in her life. Just over a week ago she had walked into a marriage that she had expected to bring her nothing but misery. Yet now…

The sunshine was blocked, and she removed her arm to find him leaning over her.

“In love?” he asked. “Do you love me, Katherine?”

Of course I do. How the words did not escape her lips she would never know. But-

Do you love me, Katherine?

Not I love you, Katherine.

“Have you won your wager, do you mean?” she asked him.

He smiled slowly at her, knowingly, sure of her answer. Sure of her.

“Have I?” he asked her, his eyes full of amusement. “I will not hold it against you. But it is confession time. Have I won?”

She closed her eyes for a few moments.

She had been duped. He had been working hard today-just as he had worked hard that evening at Vauxhall. That mention of children, those few tears, their swim, this lying side by side in the sunshine-all part of an elaborate campaign.

And she was as green now as she had been that night.

This was not about love or even about affection and spontaneity and the enjoyment of a sunny afternoon and each other’s company.

This was about a stupid wager.

She rolled away from him, got unhurriedly to her feet, and dressed as well as she could without assistance.

He was still lying naked on the grass.

“Katherine?” he said. “Let’s forget that wager for a while. It was unsporting of me to mention it.”

She wrapped the ribbons of her bonnet about her hand. She would not put it on. Her hair was still wet. She set off alone back to the house without saying a word or looking back. He could not hurry after her. He had to get dressed first.

Perhaps he would not have come after her anyway.

He would be berating himself for jumping his fences too early, for asking her just a little too soon.

Had he waited, she might have volunteered the information he wanted. She might have turned her head and told him that she loved him.

How excruciatingly humiliating that would have been.

She was as miserable as she had been happy just a few minutes ago.

He would never change.

They could never be happy together.

All the warmth and brightness seemed to have gone from the sun. It seemed only hot and glaring, and the route back to the house seemed interminable.

DAMN him for an idiot!

In the game of seduction his skills and his timing were unsurpassed.

In the game of love he was the veriest dunce.

He had asked her if she loved him.

Instead of telling her that he loved her.

He was worse than an idiot. Even an imbecile would have known better.

It ought not to have mattered that he still did not know quite what he was supposed to have meant by professing love for her. He ought to have done it anyway. And he had been feeling an affection for her that he had never felt for anyone else his whole life. He had been feeling relaxed and even happy-whatever the devil that meant. He had been feeling that all was well after all, that marriage was not all that bad. No, he had been feeling more positive than that. He had been feeling that his marriage was a good thing, that it was going to bring him a contentment he had never yet known, that it was going to bring her contentment too.

He was going to suggest that they consign that wager to the devil. Instead…

In love? Do you love me, Katherine?

And then, even worse…

Did I say something wrong?

He was an embarrassment to himself. If Con could have heard him or Charlie or Motherham or Isaac… It did not bear even thinking of.

And the consequences were that for what remained of the week before Charlotte came home and all the guests arrived, they lived together like polite, amiable strangers, he and Katherine.

He could not think of a way of putting right what had gone wrong down at the lake. He could not suddenly blurt out I love you, could he? She might ask him what he meant, and then he would be left gaping like a fish with nothing to say. What would he mean?

And she made no attempt to put things right. She dived into plans and preparations for the house party and fete so that he hardly saw her. When he did, she was the vicar’s daughter-the sort of prunish woman who would not even have known the meaning of the word shift if someone had asked her, let alone cavort about in one by a lake and frolic and shriek in the water with nothing on but.

He busied himself with his steward. The man took to looking at him every time he hove into sight as if he must be suffering from a touch of sunstroke.

Deuce take it, but this marriage business was nothing but trouble after all. Not that she had done anything wrong. He might at least have enjoyed feeling aggrieved if she had. But it was him. He had been an ass.

And Couch was starting to give him wooden-faced, sour looks. So were Mrs. Siddon and even Mrs. Oliver when he went down to the kitchen one day to steal an apple. Even Cocking, for the love of God.

Mutiny at Cedarhurst!

And if anyone thought that that was a contradiction in terms-wooden-faced and sour, that was-then that person had not seen his upper servants when their eyes alit upon him.

Knowles was merely wooden-faced.

But the day of the expected arrivals came at last, and Jasper remembered the and one other thing that Katherine had mentioned when they were coming here from London. He had promised to convince her family and his that theirs was a happy, love-filled marriage.

Well, then!

He dressed with special care after an early luncheon. Cocking tied his starched neckcloth in a perfectly symmetrical knot. And he discovered when he went downstairs to the hall that Katherine too was looking her very best in a pale green cotton dress that fell in soft folds from its high waist, which was tied with a cream-colored silk ribbon. The hem and short, puffed sleeves were trimmed with narrower bands of the same ribbon. Her hair was arranged in soft, shining curls on her head with a few wavy strands arranged enticingly along her neck.

And she was smiling.

So was he.

That was the thing, though. They had smiled all week. How the devil his servants could have the gall to look sourly upon him, he did not know.

“I suppose,” she said, “that if we stand here all afternoon, no one will come. But the minute we go about our business elsewhere, there will be a half dozen or more carriages bowling up the driveway.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “we ought to go and stroll in the parterre garden and pretend that we are expecting no one. Perhaps in that way we can trick at least one carriage into showing its face.”

“A splendid idea,” she said, taking his arm. “We are not expecting anyone, are we?”

“Never heard of him,” he said. “Never expect to set eyes on him. And what a foolish name to have-Anyone. He could be anyone, after all, with a name like that, could he not?”

For the first time in a week he heard her laugh.

They stepped out of doors and descended the marble steps together to the upper terrace.

“I have heard,” she said, “that he is a very bland gentleman with an equally bland wife. The sort one might pass on the street and hardly notice at all. Which is very unfair really. Everyone is precious and really ought to be noticed.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “he ought to change his name to Someone.”

“I believe he ought,” she said. “And then everyone will notice him, and his wife, because he will be someone.”

Which silly nonsense set them both to snorting and laughing like a pair of idiots. It felt good to laugh again-with her.

“And just look,” he said, pointing beyond the parterres. “While we have been deep in intellectual discussion, a carriage has come into sight-no, two.”

“Oh,” she said, gripping his arm more tightly, “and the first carriage is Stephen’s. They are here, Jasper. And look, Stephen is riding beside it. Meg and Charlotte will be inside.”

He released her arm in order to clasp her hand and lace their fingers. Then he tucked her arm beneath his again. She was glowing with excitement, he saw, and he felt an unfamiliar fluttering of… something low in his stomach. Tenderness? Longing? Both? Neither?

Actually, though, it was not a totally unfamiliar feeling. He had felt something similar on the beach that day.

Merton reached the terrace first with Phineas Thane, who could be no more than seventeen, if that, and had the spots to prove it. Merton’s carriage was close behind them. Sir Michael Ogden rode beside the second carriage, which contained his betrothed, Miss Alice Dubois, as well as her younger sister and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dubois. Thane must have come with them.

Merton was off his horse in a moment. He threw a grin Jasper’s way and then caught Katherine up in a hug and swung her off her feet and in a complete circle. She wrapped her arms about his neck and laughed.

Jasper did not wait for the coachman to descend from his perch. He opened the door of the carriage and set down the steps. He offered his hand to Miss Huxtable and smiled at her.

“Welcome to Cedarhurst, Miss Huxtable,” he said.

“Oh,” she said as she descended the steps, “I think that had better be Margaret, Lord Montford. Or, better yet, Meg.”

“In which case, Meg,” he said, “I am Jasper.”

She turned to Katherine, and they held each other in a wordless hug while Jasper turned back to the carriage. But Thane had already offered his hand to Charlotte, who was smiling at him and blushing.

Well, Jasper thought, already supplanted by a spotty youth. He helped Miss Daniels alight.

But Charlotte turned to him as soon as her feet had hit the terrace, and she squealed and threw herself into his arms.

“Jasper!” she cried. “I have had such a wonderful time at Warren Hall. And really the journey here was not tedious at all, was it, Danny? There was Meg to talk to, and sometimes we let down the window and talked with Lord Merton, and then when we were changing horses at-oh, I cannot even remember where. It was three or four hours ago anyway. Along came the Dubois and Sir Michael and Mr. Thane, and we all came along together in one merry party. Oh, Kate! I have longed to see you again. And how lovely you look. But you always look lovely.”

Jasper turned to greet the other new arrivals and to welcome them to Cedarhurst. After a few moments Katherine joined him and slipped her hand into his.

The guests were shown to their rooms, and Katherine and Jasper awaited the arrival of the others. They all came before tea, one after the other.

The Countess of Hornsby was in the next carriage to arrive with her daughter, Lady Marianne Willis, and not far behind them were Sidney Shaw and Donald Gladstone, riding side by side, and Sir Nathan Fletcher and Bernard Smith-Vane, one on each side of the carriage that brought the former’s sister, Louisa Fletcher, and Araminta Clement. They had all traveled together.

Miss Hutchins came up from the village in the Reverend Bellow’s gig and was immediately claimed by Charlotte, who had come running downstairs to meet her and take her to her room.

They both squealed before they disappeared.