by Mary Balogh
There was no pain.
And surely-oh, surely!-there was no lovelier feeling in the world. And in the outdoors too. She opened her eyes and was aware of the pinks and mauves of the wildflowers that bloomed in the grass all around their heads.
She closed her eyes again, relaxed her inner muscles, and lifted herself half off him for the sheer pleasure of pressing downward again and clenching her muscles once more. She did it again. And again.
Perhaps a minute passed-or two or ten-before she realized that he lay still beneath her, that she rode him for her own pleasure. His hands were spread warm and firm over her outer thighs.
She opened her eyes once more and looked down at him. He was gazing back, and she knew that she was riding him to pleasure too, that there was a mutual delight in lovemaking no matter which of them it was who was making the primary moves. There was power in being a lover, man or woman. She smiled down at him as she rode on, and his lips lifted ever so slightly at the corners.
But there was pain too. Or, if not exactly a pain, then an ache that threatened to turn into pain. And a recklessness in continuing to lift herself off him only to impale herself on the pain again.
His hand came to the back of her head and drew it down, first to his opened mouth, and then to his shoulder. Then both hands went to her buttocks, grasping firmly and holding her half off him while he moved at last, driving hard and fast up into her until he pulled her down and stopped all movement so abruptly that she shattered without warning and cried out.
The insects chirped on. The single bird must now have alit on a branch somewhere close by and was singing its heart out. A piece of grass or the stem of a flower was tickling her ear. She could smell the vegetation, all mixed up with the fragrance of his cologne.
He had straightened her legs so that they lay flat and comfortably on either side of his. She could feel the leather of his boots again against her stockinged legs. She could easily, easily drop off to sleep.
He kissed the side of her face.
“I love you,” he said.
For a few moments she let the words wash about her like a caress. She smiled.
“There is no need,” she said then. “They are just words.”
“Three of them,” he said, “which I have never strung together before now. Shall we see if I can do it again? I love you.”
She crossed her arms over his chest and lifted her head to look down into his face.
“There is no need,” she said again. “They are just words, Jasper. You have said you will not leave me. We have resumed our marriage. Perhaps soon we will have a child and start our own family in earnest. And we will remain here for much of each year and make it home. We will work at our marriage to make it one that will bring us both contentment-and some pleasure too. It will be enough. It will be enough. You must not feel that you need to say-”
“I love you?” he said, interrupting her.
“Yes,” she said, “that. It is not necessary.”
“You cannot say the words to me, then?” he asked.
“Just to have you say that you had only pretended to agree to end our wager?” she said. “Just to hear you claim the victory? No, indeed. You will never hear those words on my lips, Jasper.”
She smiled dazzlingly at him, and he pulled his lips down into a mock pout.
She laughed.
“Katherine,” he said, suddenly serious again, “I am sorry about Vauxhall. An apology does not even begin to be adequate, but-”
She set two fingers across his lips.
“You are forgiven,” she said. “And there is an end of it.”
He kissed her fingers.
And then panic assaulted her as if from nowhere. How long had they been up here? How long ago was it since they had left the others down at the waterfall?
“Jasper,” she said, rolling away from him and trying to lift her bodice and push down her skirt at the same time, “what are we thinking of? Everyone must be back at the house and waiting for their tea and no host and hostess in sight.”
“Charlotte will be delighted to play hostess in our absence,” he said, “and everyone will be fed. And if they believe our absence is due to a pair of lovers’ unawareness of the passing of time, not only will they be quite right, they will also be charmed. Think of the stories they will be able to take back home with them to feed to the avid gossipmongers.”
“My hair!” she cried. “I have no brush or mirror with me. However am I to put it up into any respectable style? I will have to cover it all up with my bonnet.”
“No such thing,” he said, getting up and adjusting his clothing before crossing to the stone, putting on his hat at a slightly rakish tilt, and picking up his coat and her bonnet. He wrapped the ribbons of the bonnet around one wrist and then hooked his coat over one finger of the same hand and slung it over his shoulder. He offered her his free hand. “Your hair is beautiful as it is. You may dart up to your room as soon as we get home and have your maid do it up properly.”
She shrugged and took his hand. She was feeling too happy to argue, though she hoped no one would see her before she had had a chance to tidy herself in the privacy of her own room. She was feeling wonderfully lethargic after their lovemaking. She was feeling all tender inside, where he had been.
They walked home hand in hand, both of them looking sadly creased and rumpled, she saw when they came out of the trees and were walking past the beach. They had both better hope very fervently that no one saw them. In fact, they had better make for a side door rather than the main ones.
But as they climbed the slope of the lawn and drew level with the stables, Katherine could see that a carriage was approaching up the driveway-a traveling carriage, which surely did not belong to any of their neighbors.
She clasped Jasper’s hand more tightly. It was more imperative than ever that they sneak off to a side door.
But there were two other people on the upper terrace-Jasper’s Uncle Stanley and Mr. Dubois. And both gentlemen had seen them. Uncle Stanley had raised a hand to greet them. And the carriage was turning onto the terrace close by them. The occupants had doubtless seen them too.
It was too late to hide.
“Oh, dear,” she said in dismay, “whoever can this be? Are you expecting anyone?”
But the carriage door was already open and the coachman was reaching up a hand to help someone alight.
Mr. Dubois was looking upward with amiable politeness.
Uncle Stanley was frowning.
And out stepped Lady Forester.
Closely followed by Sir Clarence Forester.
“What in thunder?” Jasper said.
Katherine might have turned and fled ignominiously if he had not gripped her hand more tightly and stridden forward with her. But he stopped in his tracks when the coachman turned to help yet a third passenger out.
An elderly gentleman whom Katherine did not know.
“God damn it all to hell!” Jasper exclaimed. “What now?”
23
LADY Forester and Clarence.
The bald-faced gall of it!
But before Jasper could express any of the outrage he felt…
Seth Wrayburn too!
“Be civil, Jasper,” Katherine murmured to him. “Do, please, be civil.”
After what the two of them had done to her? But God bless us, Seth Wrayburn! The man never stepped beyond the threshold of his own London house. Yet here he was in Dorsetshire, in company with Lady Forester and Clarence, of all people.
Jasper took himself in hand. What would more disconcert the latter two more than civility, after all?
“Ma’am? Sir? Clarrie?” he said in cheerful tones. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
It would probably have been obvious to an imbecile, of course, that it was anything but. He had been unable quite to unclench his teeth as he spoke.
“Pleasure you may call it, Montford,” Wrayburn said, making no attempt to smile or to look anything other than thoroug
hly irritated. “I call it a decided displeasure, being dragged half across England over roads that are a disgrace and past tollbooths that seem to have sprouted up every half mile or so and being talked to every mortal inch of the way. I am not in any way pleased, I would have you know.”
He frowned ferociously.
“We have come, Jasper,” Lady Forester said, “to take dear Charlotte away to a home where she will be properly cared for and carefully guarded until her come-out next year. We have come-”
“If I have to listen to one more of your rehearsed monologues, Prunella,” her uncle declared, cutting her off in the middle of a sentence, “I swear I will hire a post chaise without further ado and take myself off back to the sanity of my own home in London, and the whole pack of you will find the doors barred against you for the rest of my natural life. We have come, Montford, to settle this matter of Charlotte once and for all. Prunella and Clarence claim this is an unfit home, and they are like flies in autumn, the two of them, buzzing about one’s head and trying to fly into one’s mouth and up one’s nostrils no matter how many times one tries to bat them away. I have come to see for myself. I shall see and I shall decide and then I shall go home and hope never to set eyes upon a single one of you ever again.”
“Sir.” Jasper found that his good humor was being restored. “May I have the honor of presenting Lady Montford to you? Charlotte’s great-uncle, Katherine, Mr. Seth Wrayburn.”
Katherine curtsied and Wrayburn looked at her fiercely. She was looking more than usually beautiful in her creased green dress and with her hair down and one long piece of grass clinging to a lock of it behind one ear. She also looked like someone who had been recently tumbled in the hay.
“And have you met Stanley Finley, my father’s brother?” Jasper asked. “And Mr. Dubois?”
“An unfit home?” Uncle Stanley said, ignoring the introduction. He was looking thunderous. “An unfit home when my brother’s own son is heading it with his new wife, who is the sister of the Earl of Merton? Unfit in what way, I would like to know?”
He had turned his frown upon Lady Forester and Clarence.
“Where is Charlotte,” Lady Forester asked pointedly, “while her half brother and his new wife have been off… romping together?” Her eyes raked over them with haughty contempt. “And where are all the houseguests, including all the gentlemen?”
Katherine spoke for the first time since she had murmured to him to be civil.
“They are at tea in the drawing room, I do believe, ma’am,” she said. “All the very young people will be there with Charlotte as hostess for the occasion and Miss Daniels as her chaperone. Mrs. Dubois and Lady Hornsby will be there too-they have come with their daughters to stay with us. You must all be weary after your journey. Allow us to take you up there for some tea while rooms are being prepared for you. And welcome to Cedarhurst.”
“I am surprised, Lady Montford, that you are prepared to appear in the drawing room before guests looking as you do,” Lady Forester said.
“She does indeed look almost too charming, ma’am,” Dubois said. “I quite agree with you. But indeed, my wife and I are charmed by the beauty of all the young ladies here and delighted with the good manners and breeding of all the young gentlemen. It was a splendid idea to gather them all together here in the country for a bit of summer fun. Life can be lonely and dreary for the very young.”
“What makes this an unfit home,” Clarence said, as usual speaking when he really ought to know that the best policy was to maintain a silence, “is that everyone knows Jasper’s marriage is a sham, that he married only because society demanded it of him. And that he married a social upstart who is no better than she ought to be.”
That did it!
Jasper released Katherine’s arm and strolled forward until the toes of his boots almost touched those of Clarence, who could not step back because the carriage was still directly behind him.
“Clarrie,” Jasper said in the soft, pleasant voice he reserved for those with whom he was not pleased at all, “you are a nasty little beast and I have a few scores to settle with you when the time is ripe. That time, for the sake of civility, is probably not yet, alas. But if the time is not to be now, you will apologize to my wife with abject humility so that we may proceed into the house and make you and your mama comfortable as we do with all our guests.”
“You will make the apology, Forester,” Uncle Stanley said, “if you do not want me to knock every tooth in your head down your throat.”
“And make it quick, Clarence,” Wrayburn said, sounding more irritated than ever. “I want my tea even if it does have to be taken in a roomful of people, most of them very young. And silly, I do not doubt.”
Clarence looked at Katherine before allowing his eyes to slide off to one side of her.
“I am sorry, ma’am,” he muttered.
Jasper moved his face half an inch closer.
“With abject humility, Clarrie,” he said in the same quiet, pleasant voice. He was slowly swinging Katherine’s bonnet by its ribbons.
“I beg you will forgive me, ma’am,” Clarence said, his eyes darting at her and then away again. “What I said was uncalled for.”
“How lovely it is,” Katherine said before Jasper could object further, “that Charlotte is to have her family about her for her birthday the day after tomorrow. Do come inside, all of you. You look very weary, Mr. Wrayburn. May I take your arm?”
He still looked irritated, but he allowed her to do so and they proceeded up the steps. Jasper offered his arm to Lady Forester, raising one eyebrow as he did so.
So here he was welcoming Clarrie and his mother beneath his own roof. Because Katherine had asked him to be civil. And because they had had the forethought to bring Wrayburn with them.
Perhaps the moon was made of cheese after all.
Clarence had a new, quite unbecoming bend in his nose. If he did not want another, he had better learn to keep his tongue clamped between his teeth, by Jove.
Jasper hoped fervently that he would not do so.
Provoke me, Clarrie, he thought. Please?
But there had already been provocation enough. There was no need for more.
All there was need of was the right time and place.
The conversation in the drawing room had obviously been lively enough to prevent anyone from noticing the arrival of a new traveling carriage beneath the window. It was still merry with the sort of chatter and laughter only the very young were capable of producing.
Charlotte at first looked thunderstruck when she saw her aunt and cousin appear in the doorway. Then she got to her feet and hurried across the room.
“Lady Forester and Clarrie have come to join in your birthday festivities, Char,” Jasper said.
Katherine noticed that Stephen had also got to his feet, his hands balling into fists at his sides, his eyes fixed upon Sir Clarence.
“Aunt Prunella?” Charlotte smiled at her and curtsied. “Clarence?” She nodded to him with an only slightly fading smile. “How lovely!”
“Charlotte?” Lady Forester looked about the room as if she were gauging the ages of all the gentlemen present. They paused for a moment upon Stephen. “We have come to rescue you.”
Katherine caught Stephen’s eye and shook her head slightly. But Meg already had one hand on his arm, and his hands had relaxed at his sides.
“And here is your great-uncle too, Charlotte,” Katherine said.
“Great-Uncle Seth?” Charlotte’s eyes widened, and then she smiled radiantly. “You have come to see me? You have come for my birthday?”
He looked sourly at her.
“So you are Charlotte, are you?” he said. “And a parcel of trouble you have been to me, girl, though I daresay you are not to blame for that. You are a pretty enough little thing.”
She blushed.
“Oh, thank you, Great-Uncle,” she said. “You must be tired. May I pour you a cup of tea?”
What she ought to have done wa
s offer to introduce him to everyone else in the drawing room. But it appeared that she had done the right thing.
“One small splash of milk and two spoonfuls of sugar, slightly heaped,” he said.
“Let me have the pleasure,” Katherine said while Charlotte went darting off to the tea tray, “of introducing everyone to you, sir. And to you, ma’am, and to you, Sir Clarence, if there is anyone here you do not know.”
She proceeded to do so even though outrage over the arrival of two of them warred for the main part of her attention with a terrible awareness of how she looked-and of how Jasper looked without his coat and with her bonnet still dangling from one of his hands. She did not believe she had ever felt more uncomfortable in her life. She also had a ghastly urge to burst into laughter. She dared not look anywhere near Jasper’s face.
Civility, though, had been preserved. How they had managed it, she and Jasper, she did not know. But she felt somehow as if they had just passed one of the first great tests of their marriage and their position as lord and lady of Cedarhurst.
She could not pretend to be delighted by the unexpected, and uninvited, arrival of three new guests. She could not pretend that she had not been deeply insulted by the words Sir Clarence Forester had uttered out on the terrace. And she could not pretend either that for one shameful moment when Jasper had left her side to stride over to him, she had not hoped he would knock him senseless and evict him from his land without further ado.
But civility had called for better, and they had both risen to the occasion. She was proud of them both.
Katherine forced herself to relax as afternoon turned to evening-especially after she had finally been able to escape to her room to change her dress and repair her appearance. There was really nothing to which Lady Forester and her son could take exception. Almost all the female guests were girls more than young ladies. Almost all the male guests were well below the age of majority and were boys more than men. Even Sir Nathan Fletcher, who was a friend of Stephen’s from university, was only twenty-one. Stephen himself was not quite that.