Then Comes Seduction

by Mary Balogh

  And looking so handsome and carefree that she could have wept.

  Instead she doused him with water and, while he sputtered in his turn and shook the water out of his eyes, she dived under and swam as fast as she could out into the deeper water of the lake.

  Two hands grasped her ankles and then slid up her legs until they reached her hips. They pressed her under. She performed some sort of somersault as soon as he released his hold on her, came up underneath him, and grasped one of his ankles and hung on.

  It was not a good idea. The fight that ensued was an unequal one in which she spent far more time below the surface of the water than he did. She was soon gasping for breath in earnest. It did not help, of course, that she could not stop laughing whenever her head was above the water.

  “You were right,” she said when the fight came to a natural end after ten minutes or so and they were both floating on their backs, side by side. “We have warmed the water.”

  He turned his face and smiled at her and reached for her hand.

  And it happened.

  Just like that.

  She fell in love.

  Or realized that she had been falling in love with him for some time.

  Or that perhaps she had always loved him, right from that evening in Vauxhall when she had thought that perhaps love was not safe, that perhaps it was the most dangerous thing in the world.

  Love did not have to make sense. It did not have to be worthy. It did not have to be earned. It did not have to woo.

  It just simply was.

  She closed her eyes, held loosely to his hand, and floated beside him as the world changed its course and settled around her again.

  And he was not immune. Surely he was not. He had shed a tear earlier at the thought of having children with her. And now for several minutes he had simply frolicked with her, simply enjoyed being alone with her. He had been laughing and carefree, not hidden behind his habitual mask of hooded eyes and ironical teasing.

  Surely he was growing somewhat fond of her.

  Surely there was hope that disaster might after all turn to glory

  He let go of her hand and turned onto his stomach and swam a lazy crawl. She swam beside him, reveling in the sights she had of well- muscled arms and shoulders and back muscles, of tight buttocks and long, strong legs.

  He was an incredibly beautiful man. Not that she had anyone with whom to compare him, of course.

  And then he swam close to her again, lifted one arm across her back, and rolled her under him, his other hand sliding beneath her buttocks. She wrapped her arms about him and rolled them over, so that she was on the surface, he beneath—until he reversed their positions. And they rolled over and under until they were both breathless again and both smiling into each other’s eyes.

  They swam together to shore and emerged, dripping, onto the bank. Katherine squeezed the water out of her hair while he spread his coat on the grass, and then they lay down side by side, their hands touching. She was aware again of his beautiful nakedness as the initial feeling of cold at coming out of the water gave place to the bright warmth of the sun against her flesh.

  He was her husband.

  And she loved him.

  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 stupidwager.

  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.

  20

  D A M N 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.

  And then, last to arrive, came Uncle Stanley with Cousins Arnold, Winford, and Beatrice—aged seventeen, sixteen, and fourteen.

  It all seemed a little like the infantry brigade, Jasper thought. All the gentlemen except Gladstone, and of course Dubois and his uncle, were years younger than himself. Miss Dubois and Miss Clement had already made their debut in society and therefore must surely be at least eighteen, but the other young ladies, with the exception of Margaret, were younger even than Charlotte. He felt like a veritable
fossil.

  He walked into the house with his uncle while Katherine took Beatrice’s arm and Arnold and Winford fell into step on either side of them.

  “It is good to be here again where I grew up, Jasper,” his uncle said, “and to see you settled at last with a good woman. And despite all that foolish gossip in London, I do believe she is a good woman. Your father would be pleased.”

  Jasper raised his eyebrows but made no comment. He wondered if his father would look somewhat like Uncle Stanley today had he lived—slightly portly but still a fine figure of a man with all his hair. There was a definite family resemblance—as there was with the cousins. He had felt bitter through most of his life about their neglect—abandoning him and Rachel because they could not stand his mother’s second husband. But it was foolish to remain bitter. It was time to mend fences.

  And it struck him suddenly that if he had been born a girl, then Uncle Stanley himself would have inherited the title and property Perhaps he had felt somewhat bitter too.

  “It is good to have you here, Uncle Stanley,” he said. “I look forward to getting to know you better—and my cousins.”

  “You will be shown to your rooms,” Katherine said, addressing them all when they were inside. “I am sure you will want to refresh yourselves. We will wait in the drawing room for everyone to come down for tea. Come when you are ready. There is no hurry today Oh, we are so glad you could come. And, Mr. Finley you look very much like Jasper. As do Arnold and Winford, particularly Winford.”

  “You will call me Uncle Stanley, if you will, my dear,” he said.

  “Uncle Stanley,” she said, stepping up to Jasper’s side and slipping her arm through his. “Family is so terribly important.”

  And then they were alone together, the two of them, though soon everyone would be coming for tea, and the next two weeks were likely to be hectic enough. There would be chance enough to avoid each other’s company if they wished—though he had promised to give a good impression to their families.