by Mary Balogh
And the young people were very well chaperoned indeed. The Countess of Hornsby, Mr. and Mrs. Dubois, Uncle Stanley, Miss Daniels, not to mention Jasper and Katherine herself-all of them kept an eye upon their own charges and everyone else’s. No, Lady Forester would have nothing about which to object.
She found something anyway.
It happened in the drawing room after dinner, just before the gentlemen joined the ladies. Someone in the group of young ladies that had gathered about the pianoforte mentioned the fete and the ball. The older ladies were gathered about the fireplace, conversing about something else.
“Mr. Shaw and Mr. Thane,” Hortense Dubois said, “are going to join in the tug-of-war at the fete. I do not know if any of the other gentlemen will find the courage to join them. I can scarcely wait to see it.”
“I would join in myself,” Jane Hutchins said, “if I could be sure of being on the winning side.”
There was a gust of girlish laughter.
“Girls-ladies-are not allowed,” Lady Marianne said, pulling a face. “We might get muddy. Men have all the fun.”
“But just imagine, Marianne,” Araminta Clement said, “losing the pull and being dragged into a mud bath. In one’s best dress.”
“But everyone who is to be in the tug-of-war and in the mud wrestling,” Louisa Fletcher said, “is to bring old clothes to wear. And then, if they get muddy-or when they get muddy if they are wrestling-they are to swim in the lake to clean themselves and change into their good clothes.”
“Not on the bank in full sight of everyone, I hope,” Beatrice Finley said, fanning her face vigorously with a sheet of music.
“Oh, my!” Alice Dubois exclaimed, a hand over her heart. “Perhaps I can persuade Michael to join the tug-of-war.”
There was another flurry of girlish giggles.
“Fete?” Lady Forester said sharply from the other group of ladies. She looked at Katherine. “Fete? What fete?”
Katherine smiled.
“Jasper and I have decided to revive an old tradition of holding an annual summer fete and ball at Cedarhurst,” she explained. “There has not been much time to organize it this year, but everyone for miles around has pitched in to help so we are able to combine it with the celebration of Charlotte’s birthday the day after tomorrow.”
Lady Forester’s bosom had swelled.
“Ball?” she said. “In the ballroom? For girls who are not even out yet?”
It will be the only room large enough,” Katherine said. “All our neighbors will be attending as well as the houseguests. And all ages, too.”
“There cannot be that many people of genteel birth living close enough,” Lady Forester said.
“Everyone has been invited,” Katherine said.
“Everyone?” Lady Forester’s bosom swelled even further. But she was prevented from making any other comment by the arrival of the gentlemen from the dining room.
It was a few minutes before everyone had settled with their tea and Alice Dubois had taken her seat at the pianoforte with her betrothed standing behind her to turn the pages of her music. But as soon as everyone had settled and before the music could begin or any sustained conversation, Lady Forester spoke up again for all to hear.
“Uncle Seth,” she said, “did you realize that instead of a discreet birthday party here the day after tomorrow for dear Charlotte’s birthday, there is to be a fete and a ball?”
“I did not, Prunella,” he said with a scowl. “But thank you for the warning. I shall be sure to spend the day in my room-with the window closed.”
“Everyone is invited,” she said. “Everyone. That includes tenants and laborers and shopkeepers and other such, I presume. And Charlotte is to be allowed to dance in the ballroom during the evening. Surrounded by riff-raff. And there is to be mud wrestling and a tug-of-war over mud. Is this a fitting home for your great-niece and my niece and my dear dead brother’s daughter?”
“Clarrie,” Jasper said pleasantly, “there is room for another man or two on the tug-of-war teams, I believe. I daresay we can find you a place at the back of one of the lines-or at the front if you prefer.”
“Uncle Seth,” Lady Forester said, “my brother banned the annual fete when he married Charlotte’s dear mother. He banned it because it was vulgar. But more than that, it was sinful. He took a moral stand and refused to have Rachel and Jasper and Charlotte exposed to something so wicked.”
“I believe, ma’am,” Jasper said, “you would wish our guests to understand that your esteemed brother had the state of Rachel’s immortal soul in mind and mine when he announced the ban, but not Charlotte’s. It would have been nothing short of scandalous if she had been in existence at the time, just after his marriage to my mother.”
Mr. Dubois laughed aloud, and Mrs. Dubois silenced him with a pointed look. The young ladies all blushed and the young men looked interested.
“For the love of all that is wonderful, ma’am,” Uncle Stanley said, sounding thoroughly exasperated, “what Wrayburn did do with his pious ways was kill all the joy that had ever existed at Cedarhurst and besmirch my brother’s name. All in the name of a god of wrath I would not worship even if he heated up hell ten times over for my benefit.”
“Our papa,” Arnold Fletcher said from the far side of the pianoforte, his voice shaking slightly, “has told us so many grand tales of the Cedarhurst fetes that I can almost imagine that I had been at one. I cannot wait for the day after tomorrow.”
“Katherine and Jasper have worked very hard,” Margaret said quietly, “so that everyone in the neighborhood from the youngest child to the oldest grandparent can have a day of pure enjoyment.”
There was a general murmur of agreement.
“It is too bad, Prunella,” Mr. Wrayburn said, “when a man may not enjoy his after-dinner tea without being talked to and appealed to when he has said that he will make his decision in his own good time and with his own perfectly capable powers of observation. I’ll be damned before I leave home again.”
“Perhaps, Miss Dubois,” Katherine said, “you will play for us now? You always do it so well. And, Jasper, I believe Lady Hornsby and Miss Daniels would like to play cards if there are two gentlemen wishful of joining them. Sir Clarence, perhaps? And Mr. Gladstone? Is anyone ready for more tea?”
Lady Forester pressed her lips together and said no more. Margaret sat beside her and engaged her in conversation. Mrs. Dubois joined them.
Katherine was standing by the window in her bedchamber later that night, brushing out her hair, when Jasper opened the door from the private sitting room without knocking. He had seen beneath the door that a candle was still burning.
She was wearing the nightgown she had worn on their wedding night.
Come to me tonight, she had said out on the hill.
Well, here he was.
He propped one shoulder against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest, his bare feet crossed at the ankles.
This afternoon had been just an appetizer. He wondered if she realized that.
She smiled at him, and the brush stilled in her hair.
“Is this what women who are no better than they ought to be do to entice their lovers?” he asked.
“You ought to know the answer to that better than I,” she said.
“Minx!” He pursed his lips and pushed himself away from the door frame to advance farther into the room. “Did that charge hurt you? And the accusation of being a social upstart?”
“I can be hurt,” she said, “only by people I respect.”
Which was probably as big a lie as she had ever told. It had made him see red.
“And you do not respect poor Clarrie.” He took the brush from her hand, turned her to face the window again, and drew it down the back of her head and all the way to the ends of her hair at her waist. “I did not avenge you very thoroughly, did I?”
“I found myself wishing,” she said, “that you would punch him in the nose, as Stephen once did, and hopi
ng that you would not. It is precisely what Lady Forester and her like would expect you to do. I am glad you rose to the occasion and played the well-mannered host instead-though you did call him a nasty little beast. Which he is.”
She laughed softly, and he drew the brush through her hair again.
“I will avenge the insult,” he promised her.
“The baser part of my nature is glad to hear it,” she said. “But there must be no violence here, Jasper. It would be unseemly. And it might be the very thing that will cause Mr. Wrayburn to decide that this is indeed an unfit home for Charlotte.”
He set the brush down on the windowsill, moved the heavy column of her hair to one side, and set his lips against the back of her neck. She was warm and smelled of soap.
“Mmm,” she said, lifting her shoulders.
“There will be no violence,” he said. “Not, at least, anything anyone would classify as wanton viciousness. I have just the plan.”
“Oh, what?” She turned to face him, all eager curiosity, the bloodthirsty wench, and, when he did not step back, she set her hands on his shoulders.
“You will know when the time comes,” he said. “It will be quite unmistakable.”
And reasonably satisfying since he could not in all conscience use his fists while Clarence was a guest in his home. Quite satisfying, in fact.
“But you are not going to tell me now,” she said.
“I am not.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “But must we talk about Clarrie Forester? I seem to recall that I had other plans when I came here.”
“Did you?” she said. “What?”
He smiled at her and kissed her mouth softly as he grasped the sides of her nightgown and lifted it up off her body. Not to be outdone, she pulled free the sash that bound the waist of his silk dressing gown and it fell open. He was wearing nothing beneath it.
“This, I believe,” he said, tossing her nightgown aside and shrugging out of his dressing gown.
“Ah,” she said and set her hands on his shoulders again.
Whatever had once made him believe that he liked heavily voluptuous women best when there were slenderly curvaceous, long-legged women like Katherine in existence? With gold-flecked hair that smelled of soap?
He drew her against him and ran his hands down her back from her shoulder blades to her buttocks. He opened his mouth over hers and she kissed him back.
I love you, he had told her this afternoon, and she had told him there was no need to say the words. She did not believe that he meant them.
And did he?
Would he be in any doubt if he did ? But did it matter anyway? He was committed to her happiness for the rest of his life. He might as well call it love. What else could he call it?
“Jasper,” she said when he was kissing his way along her throat, “take me to bed.”
He raised his head and smiled down at her.
“Ah,” he said. “I had almost forgotten again. That is why I came to your room.”
And he scooped her up in his arms and strode toward her bed.
He followed her down onto it after dropping her there.
“I love you,” he said just before engaging her mouth with his own again.
“Oh, silly,” she said.
Well. Monty the great lover-silly!
“There has to be punishment for that insult,” he said.
“Show me.” She pulled his head down to her own.
She was laughing.
24
THE great fear for the past month had been that the day of the fete would turn out to be a wet one. Many of the activities could be moved indoors, of course, and careful plans had been made for that eventuality. But it would not be the same. The day as Katherine had envisioned it would be effectively ruined.
What a relief it was, then, to awake early, to jump out of bed and hurry to the window and throw back the curtains to discover that the early morning sun was beaming down from a cloudless sky-and to know that other people in other rooms and throughout the surrounding countryside and in the village would be doing the same thing and feeling a similar happy relief and surge of excitement and joy to know that this was the day.
Katherine looked back over her shoulder to find Jasper squinting at her, his hands laced behind his head on the pillow. The sun was shining directly into his eyes.
“Oh, I am sorry,” she said, pulling one of the curtains halfway across the window to put his face in shadow.
“No need,” he said. “I like being awoken at the crack of dawn after a night of disturbed sleep.”
She looked at the clock on the mantel. It was not quite six o’clock.
“Oh, I am sorry,” she said again.
“About the disturbed night?” he said. “It was in a worthy cause. Or about waking me early? It means that there is a little more night left to be disturbed before it is time to get up. Or were you apologizing for standing there in the sunlight? And so you should apologize. Have you no modesty?”
She had been so anxious about the weather that she had forgotten to pull her nightgown on over her head as she got up.
“Oh,” she said.
“If you are embarrassed,” he said, holding back the bedcovers on her side of the bed, “you had better jump under here to hide yourself.”
Which she did.
It was almost seven o’clock before they both got up. She had even dozed for ten minutes or so of that hour.
There was to be no dozing for the rest of the day. By the time they had got dressed and had a quick breakfast and stepped outside, there were already servants out there, carrying tables and blankets, and already a few committee members were arriving to set up tables and booths and exhibits and to mark out a racecourse and an archery range and a picnic area and everything else that would be needed during the day. Katherine stayed in the area of the house. Jasper strode off with a few of the men to inspect the mud pond that had been created at the marshy end of the lake. It was rather horrifying to think that there was to be mud wrestling and a tug-of-war there today. But it had made the fete irresistibly appealing to the men.
Men were funny that way.
By the middle of the morning most of the young guests were outside too, exclaiming with delight over all that had suddenly appeared around them, and choosing the activities in which they planned to participate. Several of them offered to help.
Charlotte was more excited than anyone else. This was her eighteenth birthday, and after today no one could deny that she was old enough to be considered a young lady. And what a birthday it was. She came and linked her arm through Katherine’s while the latter was admiring the needlework table that Mrs. Bonner and one of her daughters was arranging with an eye for artistry and color.
“Kate,” Charlotte said, squeezing her arm tightly. “I love you. I really, really do. And I know I have you to thank for all this-for the houseguests, for the fete, for the ball tonight. There has surely never been a birthday party to match this one.”
“You are happy, then?” Katherine asked unnecessarily.
“I am happy,” the girl said with a sigh. “I am even happy that Aunt Prunella and Clarence have come and Great-Uncle Seth, though he swore last evening that he would not come out of his room today. They are my family, and family is important, is it not?”
“It is,” Katherine said, patting her hand.
“And Aunt Prunella cannot take me away from here,” Charlotte said. “How could she when you have come here to be such a steadying influence on Jasper? You are happy, are you not?”
“I am,” Katherine said. “We are.”
And it was not even an untruth. Not for now, anyway. What would happen when the honeymoon was over, she did not know. That was undoubtedly what they were living through, she and Jasper. It could not last, this amity between them, this… Well, this honeymoon. But for now she was happy, and she believed he was too.
Charlotte was laughing.
“Jasper used to call her Aunt Prune,” she said. “Was
he not dreadful?”
“Indeed,” Katherine said.
And then Charlotte went dancing off to link her arm through Stephen’s, and they both went off to join some of the other young people.
Meg was helping Mrs. Penny arrange the baking items on a long table on the lower terrace.
There was no time for luncheon. There were too many last-minute details to attend to. But Katherine did not even realize she had missed the meal. Any minute now the outside guests would begin to arrive and there was only time to rush upstairs to change into her lemon yellow muslin with the blue sash and to have her hair properly styled beneath her wedding hat.
Jasper was standing propped by one shoulder in the doorway of her dressing room when she was ready to leave again, looking handsome and immaculate in blue and cream. He raised one eyebrow.
“It is to be my sun goddess today, is it?” he said.
She smiled and he offered his arm and led her down the stairs and out to the upper terrace, where Charlotte was already waiting. The three of them would greet all the visitors as they arrived.
“Happy, Char?” Jasper asked.
“Oh, I am,” she said, turning a glowing face to him and wrapping her arms about his neck. “If I were any happier I would burst.”
“Sounds messy,” he said, patting her back. “Enjoy your birthday anyway. This is all for you, Char. Katherine’s idea. Blame her if you burst.”
And if he thought he knew nothing about love, Katherine thought, watching him with his half sister, then the foolish man ought to see his face now.
And as good fortune would have it, Lady Forester was coming out onto the terrace with Clarence, and Mr. Wrayburn was coming out with Uncle Stanley and Lady Hornsby. They would all see the hug and the look on both faces.
Suddenly people on foot and people in gigs and two or three on horseback were approaching along on the driveway.
The outside guests were coming, and the fete was about to begin.