Then Comes Seduction

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 nonsense 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