by Mary Balogh
Joshua dismounted and turned his horse over to the care of a groom who had come running from the stables.
Freyja came striding over to him when she had completed her flurry of greetings. Her chin was lifted proudly. There was a martial gleam in her eyes. It was not, perhaps, a moment she had anticipated with any great joy. She took him firmly by one hand.
"I want you all to meet the Marquess of Hallmere-Joshua," she said, her voice raised haughtily. "My betrothed. There is no marriage date set. I daresay it will be next year sometime. Perhaps next summer."
There was a chorus of sound, but she held up one hand and it subsided.
"Let me complete the introductions first," she said and proceeded to name all the strangers about him. Lady Morgan Bedwyn, the dark young beauty, curtsied to him and looked him over with frank, dark eyes. Lord Alleyne, the dark-haired young man, looked amused. The fair-haired giant was Lord Rannulf, the gorgeous redhead, his wife, Judith. The pretty, brown-haired lady was Eve, Lady Aidan Bedwyn. Her husband was the dark, dour man, who looked as if he might have spent a year or ten in the military. The children, Davy and Becky, belonged to the latter couple.
"So that is why you dashed away to Bath without a word to anyone just when we were expecting Aidan and Eve and Ralf and Judith to arrive," Lady Morgan said to her eldest brother. "You heard about the betrothal and went to see for yourself. Why is it that Wulf hears all the interesting stories and we do not?"
Lord Rannulf was shaking Joshua's hand with a warm, firm grip.
"This is sudden," he said, grinning. "But we Bedwyns have a recent history of sudden betrothals and marriages. Why would Free be different?"
"Hallmere?" The dark, granite-faced Lord Aidan Bedwyn shook his hand with a nod but no smile.
His wife was hugging Lady Freyja again, tears in her eyes.
"I am so happy for you, Freyja," she said. "I knew it must happen soon."
The little boy had wormed his way between Joshua and Freyja and was pulling on the skirt of her carriage dress.
"Aunt Freyja," he said, and tugged again. "Aunt Freyja, I brought my cricket set with me."
"Hey, rascal." Lord Aidan suddenly looked almost human as he reached down to scoop the child up and deposit him astride his shoulders. "Let your aunt get her foot inside the house before pestering her to play with you. Besides, this is not the season for cricket. We will find something else energetic to do tomorrow."
"But cricket it will be first, in season or out," Lady Freyja said, smiling up at the boy and even winking at him. "I want you on my team, Davy. I'll hit a six in my very first over at bat."
Joshua looked at her with some interest. She played cricket? He might have known it.
"May I play too?" he asked. "I am a famous bowler and have been known to prevent a single six being hit for a whole inning-or even a four."
"Ha!" she said.
The boy was laughing with delight and Lord Aidan made himself look entirely human by smiling.
"I suppose," he said, "any season is good for cricket if the Bedwyns say it is."
"Perhaps," the Duke of Bewcastle said without at all raising his voice, though all of the boisterous Bedwyns fell silent to listen, "we should step into the house and gather for tea in the drawing room in half an hour's time?"
"The master has spoken," Lord Alleyne said with a low chuckle after Bewcastle had preceded them all into the house. He set one arm about Lady Freyja's shoulders and hugged her to his side. "I am happy for you, Free, if you are happy. And you, Hallmere. We had better file inside like docile lambs." He strode off ahead of them.
"Whew!" Joshua said, grinning down at Lady Freyja and offering her his arm.
"I have decided," she said, looking at him haughtily as she took it, "that I will call you Josh. I refuse to 'my lord' you, I do not wish to call you Hallmere, and Joshua is too biblical. You may call me Freyja."
"Or Free, as your brothers do?" he suggested.
"Or Free," she agreed. "But only as long as we are betrothed. Until Christmas at the latest."
"I will make free with Free until then," he said.
She cast him a sidelong look, which assured him that she had not missed either the pun or the double entendre.
They ascended the steps and entered the house. Joshua found himself in an impressive medieval great hall complete with an oak-beamed ceiling, a gigantic fireplace large enough to roast an ox in, whitewashed walls bedecked with coats of arms, banners, and weapons, a minstrel gallery above an intricately carved wooden screen, and a massive oak table filling up much of the floor space.
It looked like the perfect setting for a feast and an orgy.
The christening was to take place two days after her return home, Freyja discovered, and it was to be a grand affair indeed. After the church service late in the morning, all the guests were to proceed to Alvesley Park, home of the Earl of Redfield-and of Kit, Viscount Ravensberg, too-for dinner and a party that would probably last into the evening.
Rannulf and Judith had come all the way from Grandmaison in Leicestershire, where they lived with the Bedwyns' ailing maternal grandmother, whose heir Ralf was-he and Kit had always been best friends. And Aidan and Eve and the children had come because they were not far away in Oxfordshire and because, according to Aidan, he had been away at the wars for so many years that he had missed a decade and more of family and neighborhood events.
It was all going to be a severe trial, Freyja decided. She dreaded the day even with the added security of a betrothed to take along with her. It was stupid to have allowed herself to be so discomposed by an ancient passion-it was four years since she had fallen desperately in love with Kit Butler, and it had lasted for precisely one month. But, of course, there had been the added bother of last year and all its hideous embarrassment. She had behaved badly. She had made an idiot of herself. She had ended up practically begging Kit to give up Lauren in order to marry her and then slamming her fist into poor Ralf's jaw, perhaps because Kit's had not been available at that precise moment.
She would think of tomorrow when tomorrow came, she decided the morning after she arrived home. And she would think of the problem of Josh after tomorrow was over. He was in her debt, she had decided, despite all the walks and rides in Bath. After all, he had enjoyed those walks and rides too. So he owed her his escort for tomorrow. After that she would find some way of drawing him into a ghastly, very public brawl, and she would break off the engagement. She had no intention of waiting until Christmas or later, as Wulfric had suggested. It would be unfair. And she might find it harder to do if she allowed more time to elapse. He was quite alarmingly attractive. That was in addition to his good looks, of course, which had not escaped notice among her family.
"You have been in Bath for a couple of weeks, Freyja," Morgan had said the night before when all the women had gathered briefly in Freyja's bedchamber, "and you have come home with a Greek god. All I will discover when I go to town in the spring for my come-out and exposure to the marriage mart is a whole gaggle of awkward-mannered, pimply youths. It is most provoking."
Both Judith and Eve had laughed.
"But you will wait for your prince to arrive, Morgan," Eve had said. "And he will, you know, just as Freyja's has."
"Freyja's prince just happens to be absolutely gorgeous," Judith had added, her right hand placed theatrically over her heart, her eyelids batting. "All that shining blond hair. Arghhh!"
"And those laughing blue eyes," Morgan had added mournfully. "How will I ever find any man to match him for myself?"
"But one's own particular prince always appears more splendid than any ordinary mortal, Morgan-or even any other extraordinary one," Eve had said kindly. "Aidan does to me, and I am certain Rannulf does to Judith."
Freyja had looked at them both, slightly envious.
She would feel no negative emotion today, though, she decided after getting out of bed early and looking out the window to note that the clouds were high and might even move off by midmorning t
o offer a sunny day. The air coming through her open window was cool but not cold. It was a fine morning for cricket. It was a fine day for all sorts of strenuous outdoor activities.
How wonderful it was to be away from the confining atmosphere of Bath.
They all joined in the game of cricket after breakfast-all except Wulfric, of course, who disappeared into his study. Even Eve and Judith decided to play, though Rannulf tried to talk Judith out of it, directing all sorts of significant glances across the table at her, all of which she ignored.
Gracious heavens! Freyja thought. Was Judith with child? How very interesting that would be if it were true. She and Ralf had been married no longer than a month. Was it possible . . . But that was absolutely none of her business.
Freyja and Joshua were on different teams-deliberately so. He was determined to bowl her out; she was equally determined to hit a six off him. She had Eve, Morgan, Rannulf, and Davy on her team. Joshua had Judith, Aidan, Alleyne, and Becky on his.
Fortunately, Rannulf was a decent bowler. Although he went easy on Judith and very easy indeed on Becky, making sure that she hit a number of balls and scored a total of eight runs while all the fielders became remarkably clumsy and simply could not throw her out, Aidan hit one six and a couple of fours off him before Freyja caught him out close to the boundary, and Joshua hung in for a total of twenty runs. Alleyne went out ignominiously to the very first ball bowled at him-it shattered the wickets behind him while Davy went wild with glee.
Freyja's team needed fifty-two runs to win when they came up to bat. Rannulf scored fifteen before being caught out. Eve scored sixteen and Morgan eleven, both with very lenient bowling from Josh, who looked distractingly virile and handsome without his coat or waistcoat and with his shirtsleeves rolled halfway to his elbows. Davy, also the recipient of friendly bowling, was at nine runs when Morgan finally went out and Freyja came in.
Joshua's first ball came hurtling down between the wickets, a wicked spin making its course almost impossible to judge. Freyja could do nothing better with it than fiercely protect her wickets and then glare at a grinning bowler.
"Can't you do any better than that?" she yelled, and flexed her wrists and made a few showy air shots with the bat.
He could.
The next ball hopped awkwardly just in front of her, sending up a shower of grass and dust and almost taking her front teeth out as it whizzed past her face.
"Can't you do any better than that?" he yelled, while his team catcalled and Freyja's clapped their hands and called out encouraging words to her.
She watched the next ball every inch of the way, saw it as if it were coming at half speed, judged the spin with clear, unhurried mind, adjusted the bat, gripped it tightly, and hit the ball with a satisfying crack. She watched it as it soared over the lawn in a beautiful arc and cleared Aidan's head at the boundary by a good three feet. Then she ran between the wickets, her bat in one hand, her skirts caught up in the other, laughing as she went, passing a wildly whooping Davy halfway down.
The game had been won by Freyja's team.
"I believe," she said, when she had finished running, stopping not far from Joshua, panting, her hands on her hips, her hair in wild disarray about her shoulders-she had pulled out the last of the pins long ago, "I have proved a point."
"You have," he said, with a look of abject dejection belied by his laughing eyes. "You have won our wager, Free. I had better pay the penalty."
And there, before her brothers and sister and sisters-in-law and the two children, he took two long strides forward, tangled his hand in her hair so that he was cupping the back of her head, tipped back her head, and kissed her with lingering thoroughness on the lips.
She was glad she had been running, she thought, when he finally lifted his head and she found herself the interested object of her relatives' grinning attention. It would account for her hot cheeks. It would be just too lowering to be seen to blush.
"I must be suffering from memory loss," she said. "I do not recall any wager."
"I will never again be able to hold up my head among my cricket-playing peers," Joshua said. "I must confess that game was quite fairly won. I had no intention of allowing you to get a hit off me."
"I know." She smiled dazzlingly at him.
"What are we going to do next?" Davy was jumping up and down in his excitement and addressing them all in a piping yell. "You said we would find something else strenuous to do, Uncle Aidan. Can we go riding or play hide-and-seek or climb trees or-"
Aidan caught him up and suspended him by his ankles.
"What we will do next," he said, while Davy squealed and giggled and demanded to be put down, "is have luncheon. And then we will see." He set the boy gently down on the grass and tickled him with the toe of his boot.
"Uncle Aidan?" Joshua asked, as they walked back to the house, taking Freyja's hand in his and lacing his fingers with hers.
"Becky and Davy were Eve's foster children when Aidan met her earlier this year," she explained. "Their parents were dead and none of their relatives were willing to take them in. More recently Eve and Aidan have been given legal custody of them. Becky calls them Mama and Papa. Davy calls them Uncle and Aunt. Eve has told me that they are careful not to try to take their parents' place or to encourage the children to forget their parents. I could never have imagined Aidan with children. But, as you can see, he is as fond of those two as any father."
"He has been a military man?" Joshua asked.
"For twelve years," she said. "From the age of eighteen to a few months ago, after he married Eve." She glanced down at their hands. "Did I give you permission to hold my hand, Josh-and in quite so intimate a manner?"
He looked down too and then up into her face before laughing at her.
"No," he said. "But we have a masquerade to maintain. Apparently you and Bewcastle agreed between you that our betrothal is to appear real to your family. I am merely doing my part."
"If you imagine," she said severely, "that I am going to stand idly by while you maul me about in the name of realism, I am here to tell you that you are mistaken."
"Stand idly by?" He laughed again. "Oh, I hope not. It is no fun mauling about a marble statue or a limp fish. I suppose you were quite a hoyden when you were growing up?"
"Of course," she said.
"Good." He lowered his head closer to hers, and for one moment she thought he was going to kiss her again. "I have a definite weakness for hoydens."
This masquerade, she realized, had given him all the license in the world to flirt outrageously with her-and even to slip beyond flirtation at times.
Why was it such an exhilarating thought?
The Bedwyns were a boisterous, fun-loving family, Joshua had decided before the day was out. The children were not hidden away in the nursery while the adults found something decorously dull with which to occupy themselves. After luncheon they all decided to walk down to the lake, which was hidden from sight among the trees to the east of the house. There were plenty of hiding places there, Rannulf said-all of them had invited Joshua to an informal use of their names-for a game of hide-and-seek. He would take the swing with him, Alleyne added, and set it up in one of the trees. The trees were there to be climbed too, Freyja said.
"And there is always the water," Aidan said.
"In September?" his wife asked.
"A warm September," Aidan said, looking toward the window.
The sun indeed was shining.
"If anyone is going swimming," she said firmly, "I shall sit on the bank watching and attempt to look as decorative as I possibly can."
"Me too, Eve," Judith said. "We can take turns on the swing for exercise."
It was as active and strenuous an afternoon as it had promised to be. The children, Joshua suspected, were merely an excuse for the adults to kick up their heels and have a rollicking good time.
Alleyne and Joshua both climbed a tall, stout tree not far from the picturesque, man-made lake and secured th
e ropes of the swing to a high branch. The children swung there for a while, but inevitably a game of hide-and-seek began and continued for an hour or more until it was Joshua's turn to hunt and he had unearthed everyone but Freyja. He found her eventually perched high in an old oak tree, her back against the trunk, her feet drawn up against her, her arms clasped around her knees. He had already searched around and past that tree half a dozen times.
"Hey!" he called. "That is cheating. One rule was that we must keep in contact with the ground."
"The tree trunk is in contact with the ground," she said, looking down without giving any sign that she might be afraid of heights. "And my back is in contact with the tree trunk."
"Hmm," he said. "There is a flaw in that logic somewhere. But you are fairly caught now."
"You have to touch me first," she said.
"Are you going to make me come up there?" he asked, narrowing his eyes on her.
"Yes." She tipped back her head to admire the sky.
They admired it together after he had climbed up and touched her arm to make her officially out. A few little puffs of white were rolling slowly in a wide expanse of blue.
"Summer is almost over," she said. "Well, it is over, but it is lingering on into autumn. I wish winter were not ahead."
"But there are invigorating walks and rides to take in winter," he said. "And if it snows, there are sled rides and snowball fights and skating and snowmen to build."
"It never snows," she said with a sigh.
He stood on the branch slightly below the level of hers and looked at her. She had left her hair down since the morning. She looked like a wild fairy creature of the woods-but in a pensive mood.
"We will have to stay betrothed, sweetheart," he said. "And I will show you so many interesting ways of using winter that you will want summer never to come."
She turned her head and half smiled at him.
"Don't worry," she said. "I will have decided long before winter arrives in earnest that you have repaid the debt you owe me. Tomorrow will be tedious."
