by Mary Balogh
“Well, Katherine,” he said.
“Well, Jasper.”
“Happy?” he asked.
“Happy,” she said.
But the question and its answer brought to mind the next question he had asked down at the lake. And he could see that she had the same thought.
He patted her hand.
“We had better go up to the drawing room,” he said.
“Yes.”
* * *
It was very easy to feel happy, Katherine discovered over the next week or so, when one was mistress of one’s own home, when that home was filled with guests and it was summertime and they could amuse themselves every moment of every day with walks and rides and picnics and a few excursions, with tours of the house and musical evenings and charades and a thousand and one other activities.
It was easy to feel happy when one was planning a combined birthday party and fete and ball and when the whole neighborhood was buzzing with excitement and pitching in to plan and help. And when all the houseguests were filled with enthusiasm too and could not wait for the day to arrive—except that it would be the next to last day of their stay and they were not at all anxious to return home.
It was easy to feel happy when one had family close by. It was not just her own family whose company she enjoyed. She delighted in Charlotte’s enthusiasm and she loved sitting or strolling and talking with Jasper’s Uncle Stanley, who told her tales of his own childhood at Cedarhurst, many of them involving his elder brother, Jasper’s father.
But, oh, to have Meg at Cedarhurst! And to show Meg how well she was managing the household and how well she was hosting the house party and planning the fete! And just to be able to talk to her, to sit in Meg’s room with her and just talk the old, familiar talk.
“Are you happy, Kate?” Meg asked her one day when they were sitting in her room. “Oh, I know you are enjoying these weeks, and I know you and Jasper have a fondness for each other. But is it going to be enough afterward? Kate…Oh, I do not know quite what to ask. Are you going to be happy?”
Katherine, who was sitting on the bed, hugged her knees to her chest.
“Meg,” she said, “I love him.”
It was the first time she had said it aloud. She had tried not even to think it since that day at the lake.
“Yes.” Meg smiled. “I know you do, Kate. And does he love you? I believe he does, but one can never really tell with men, can one?”
“He will,” Katherine said.
And almost she believed it. When they joked and laughed and talked nonsense together, when he pursed his lips sometimes when he looked at her, when he took her hand and laced their fingers together and held her arm to his side, even if it was done primarily to impress their guests—oh, then, sometimes, just occasionally, she believed that one day he would love her.
And, really, love was just a word. She would never demand that he use it. She would never allow herself to feel rejected and unloved if he did not. But she would know. When he loved her, she would know it.
When?
Not if?
Sometimes she was optimistic enough to say when. More often it was if.
“And what of you, Meg?” she asked.
“What of me?” her sister asked, smiling. “It was good to be back at Warren Hall, Kate. Though I missed you—even though I had Charlotte and Miss Daniels with me.”
“The Marquess of Allingham?” Katherine asked tentatively. “Did you see him again after I left London?”
“He was at the wedding, of course,” Meg said. “He took me driving in the park the next day, but we left for home the day after that.”
“And has he said anything?” Katherine asked.
“By way of a declaration?” Meg asked. “No. I refused him once, remember.”
“But that was more than three years ago,” Katherine said.
“We are friends.” Meg smiled. “I like him and he likes me, Kate. Nothing more.”
Katherine would not press the matter further. But she did wonder about her sister’s feelings. Close as they had always been as sisters, there was the age gap between them, and she had always been aware that she was not quite Meg’s confidante. She doubted anyone was. Meg and Nessie had been close when they were younger, but Nessie had been married for a number of years, first to Hedley Dew and then to Elliott.
“Nessie is taking the children to Rundle Park for a few weeks,” Katherine said, “for Sir Humphrey and Lady Dew to see them.”
“Yes,” Meg said. “They were always terribly fond of her. They were genuinely glad for her when she married Elliott. They told her, though, that she would always be their daughter- in- law and that they would consider any children of her marriage to be their grandchildren.”
They smiled at each other.
“I am going to go with her,” Meg said. “I will stay at the cottage in Throckbridge with Mrs. Thrush. It will be good to be there for a while and to see all our old friends.”
“You must give everyone my love,” Katherine said. “I am sorry there is no one eligible for you here, Meg. All of Charlotte’s guests are very young. We did think perhaps Mr. Gladstone would single you out for attention since he is older than everyone else, but Sir Nathan Fletcher has taken to monopolizing your company instead, and he is hardly any older than Stephen.”
Meg laughed.
“He is a charming and eager boy,” she said, “and I am flattered by his attentions. I like him—as I do everyone here. It is a happy group, Kate, and much of the credit must go to you and Jasper. You are keeping us all well entertained every moment of every day.”
It was lovely to have Stephen at Cedarhurst too. He was extremely popular, as he seemed to be wherever he went. The gentlemen tended to look to him to take the lead, and all the ladies gazed at him with thinly disguised adoration. Had Katherine drawn his attention to the fact he would have replied as he always did that of course he was an earl and such an exalted title tended to dazzle people. But it was more than that. There was something… oh, what was the word? Charismatic? There was something in her brother’s very character that drew people to him.
There was a joy for life in Stephen.
Charlotte was his favorite. Or he was hers. Although all the guests mingled with all the others, more often than not it was beside Charlotte that Stephen sat or beside her that he walked or rode.
It was easy to feel happy for these two weeks. And if there was some apprehension about what would happen afterward, when all the guests had left and all the excitement was at an end and life settled, as it inevitably must, into a fixed routine, then Katherine firmly set aside her anxiety. That time would come soon enough. She would deal with it when it came.
Meanwhile she dreamed that perhaps Jasper would love her someday—even if he never said so.
Jasper could not remember a time when Cedarhurst had been so filled with guests, though his staff assured him that in his father’s day and his grandfather’s there had always been people coming and going and sometimes there had been great house parties that had brought every guest room into use.
He had been forbidden to mention his father when he was a boy. Strangely, it was one order he had obeyed—perhaps because he had not wanted to know any more about him than he already did. And perhaps because every servant had been forbidden to mention his name too. He was surprised to hear him mentioned now
It happened one morning more than a week after the house party had begun, when he had wandered down to the kitchen in search of Katherine—she was not there—and had stayed to eat two currant cakes, fresh out of the oven. Someone mentioned the upcoming fete and someone else mentioned his father as the host of the last one.
“Did he even attend it?” Jasper asked. “He was a wastrel, was he not?”
At which Mrs. Oliver lifted the utensil she happened to be holding in her hand at that moment, a rather lethal-looking carving knife, and pointed it directly at his heart from no more than three feet away.
“I heard quite enough of that no
nsense when Mr. Wrayburn was alive,” she said, “God rest his soul. But just because Mr. Wrayburn liked his Bible and his sermons and did not like liquor or dancing, that does not mean everyone who enjoyed a bit of fun now and then was the devil incarnate. You were not the devil, my lord, even though you was bad enough to grow gray hairs on the heads of everyone that cared for you. And your papa was not the devil either even though he liked his drink and his wild ways and, yes, even his women before he married your mama. At least there was laughter in this house while he was still alive, which there was precious little of after he died, Lord knows—and no one has ever persuaded me that the good Lord does not enjoy a good belly laugh from time to time. And if her ladyship, God bless her, is aiming to bring the laughter back, and even a bit of the wildness, then good for her, says I.”
Her eyes fell upon the wicked blade of the knife she had been wagging at him, and she had the grace to lower it hastily. She was flushed and out of breath.
“And so says everyone in these parts,” Couch added. “Begging your pardon, my lord, for expressing an opinion in your hearing unasked.”
“That never stopped you when I was a lad,” Jasper said. “I seem to remember growing heartily tired of hearing your opinion, Couch.”
“Well,” the butler said, looking somewhat abashed, “if you would tie the footman’s wig to the back of his chair when he nodded off in the hall, and if you would ride down the waterfall when you were wearing your good clothes and tear holes in your coat and your breeches when they caught on branches and stones on your way down, you had to expect to hear my opinion, my lord.”
“Let me hear it now again, then,” Jasper said, grinning and sitting down on one of the long benches that stretched the length of the kitchen table and helping himself to an apple, into which he bit with a loud crunch. “Tell me about my father.”
They both told him a good deal even though they exchanged a look first, as if even now they were afraid of breaking a rule set by a dead man. His mother’s second husband had cast a long, dark shadow, Jasper reflected.
He could not stay in the kitchen for long. Charlotte had borne off the young people in gigs and on horseback to the village, where they intended to look at the church—probably very briefly if Jasper knew anything about young persons—before taking refreshments in the taproom at the inn. He had promised to show the gallery to Lady Hornsby and Dubois and his wife and give them a bit of a history lesson about his family and Cedarhurst. His uncle was going to join them too.
He had hoped that Katherine would accompany him—that was why he had been looking for her—but she had vanished, probably into the village for one of her committee meetings.
The young people had in no way been tired out by their outing, it appeared later at luncheon. It was decided that they would walk about the lake during the afternoon. They had been down to the water several times, to stroll along the near bank and to picnic there and take out the boats on one occasion, but they had never yet found the time to walk to the far side—or to take the wilderness walk.
“It is really very pretty on the other side,” Charlotte explained. “There are lovely views from every point, and there are several places to sit and rest—including the little cottage, which is really just a folly. We will save the full wilderness walk through the hills for another day”
“I would think so too,” Miss Fletcher said. “My shoes will be all worn out before I return home, not to mention my feet.”
“You must allow me to escort you, then, Miss Fletcher,” Thane said, his voice half cracking over the words, as the voices of very young gentlemen frequently did, “and you may lean upon my arm.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Thane,” she said, blushing while the younger Miss Dubois giggled.
Why did very young ladies giggle so much? And why did they do it almost without ceasing when other young ladies were with them—and even more so when there were young gentlemen within earshot? But Jasper listened to it all with an amused indulgence.
“Miss Huxtable,” young Fletcher said, “may I have the honor of escorting you?”
The poor boy had been suffering from a severe case of infatuation for Margaret all week, even though he must be at least six years her junior and in no way her match in the looks department.
She smiled kindly at him. “It would be my pleasure,” she said.
She was a kind lady.
“Shall we walk to the far side of the lake too, Jasper?” Katherine asked. “It is the one part of the walk we have not yet done.”
All heads, it seemed, turned first her way and then his, as if his answer was of the utmost importance to them all. No one had forgotten the circumstances of their marriage, of course, when so little time had passed since their wedding. Everyone’s eyes had been upon them for more than a week. They had done a great deal of smiling at each other, he and Katherine.
“We certainly shall, my love,” he said. “Especially if I may have you on my arm.”
“Of course,” she said.
21
T H E walk took them down the lawn to the jetty, around the grassy bank of the lake to their left, past reeds and a noisy family of ducks, into the trees on the far side, and onto the beginnings of the wilderness walk. Sometimes the trees enclosed them and offered a welcome shade from the sun. At others they opened out and afforded views of the water and the house. At one point it led to the tiny cottage at the top of the steepest part of the bank and the waterfall beside it.
Lady Hornsby and Mrs. Dubois had remained behind to sit in the parterre garden. Mr. Dubois had walked into the village with Mr. Finley to call upon a few former acquaintances of the latter. Everyone else had come on the walk, even Miss Daniels and the Reverend Bellow
It took close to an hour just getting as far as the waterfall since there was so much to stop for and admire and exclaim over on the way and so many seats on which to sit to rest from their exertions. And at every moment there was a great deal of animated chatter and laughter to delay them even further.
“I am well aware,” Jasper said to Katherine while Miss Fletcher and Miss Hortense Dubois were stretching their hands gingerly into the waterfall and then shrieking at their own daring and exclaiming loudly at the coldness of the water, “that this house party is for Charlotte’s sake and that both she and the infants are enjoying themselves enormously But I am an elder and bored almost to tears by it all. Are you?”
“Not at all,” she said. “I like all our guests very much indeed and the surroundings are lovely and the weather is perfect. I daresay a curricle race to Land’s End and back would be more to your taste.”
“If you would come with me,” he said. “Would you?”
“I am afraid not,” she said. “I have no desire to break my neck and both my legs.”
“Coward,” he said.
“Besides,” she said, “it would probably rain somewhere along the way and I would ruin a perfectly decent bonnet.”
“No race to Land’s End and back, then,” he said with a sigh. “How about a private walk a little way up into the hills instead? There is somewhere I want to show you.”
“Did I not see it all two weeks ago?” she asked as Charlotte shrieked and Thane bellowed and someone informed him that his sleeve was soaked and everyone shouted with laughter.
“No, you did not.” He offered her his hand. “Come with me. No one will miss us—they are all too busy flirting with one another. And Miss Daniels is here to see that they do not get too enthusiastic about it.”
“It seems very neglectful to abandon all our guests,” she said. But it was a weak protest. She did not resist the pull of his hand, and he walked her briskly away from the waterfall in the direction of the fork in the path, one branch of which led down to the beach while the other climbed up into the hills. He took the latter.
He was feeling too restless for a walk at slower than a snail’s pace. His thoughts had been swirling around in his brain for several hours, and he felt in dire need of peace and qui
et.
They walked rather briskly despite the upward slope until they reached the ancient beech tree at one end of the rhododendron stretch of the walk. He stopped there and leaned back against the trunk for a moment, still holding her hand.
“Winded?” he asked.
He could hear that she was. But she turned to look down at the view, which was admittedly rather splendid. It looked down on the paddocks and kitchen gardens behind the house and over the house itself to the parterre gardens, the lawns and driveway, the village in the distance, and a patchwork of fields stretching into the distance in all directions. Just a little higher, he had always thought, and they would be able to see the sea. He had tried climbing the tree once, but he had sprained an ankle and a wrist as a result and, worse, had scuffed a newish pair of boots so badly that even the combined skills of several servants had not been able to cover up his transgression.
They had been putting on a good front for their family and guests, he and Katherine. But there was still a reserve between them in private that had been there since he had made an ass of himself at the lake. She must think him a sorry wager- winner since there were no more than a few days left in their wager and he had made no real attempt recently to win it.
“Come,” he said after they had their breath back, and he took her hand again and turned off the path to strike straight upward through dense trees until they had reached almost to the top of the rise and into the sudden, unexpected clearing that as far as he knew no one else had ever discovered. It was like a miniature meadow or dell, all lush grass and wildflowers, completely enclosed by trees. Coming here had always felt like walking into another world, in which he was entirely alone and in which time and troubles mattered not at all.
“My most secret retreat as a boy,” he said, stopping at the edge of it. “I came here more often than I can remember, summer and winter.”
He had been somehow afraid that it would be gone. It was years since he had been here last.
“It is always carpeted with snowdrops in the early spring,” he said, “as if it had suffered its own private little snowfall. And with bluebells later on as if a patch of sky had taken refuge in the forest. I wish you could have seen it in the spring.”