Then Comes Seduction

Below the steps were two wide terraces, one below the other, and below them there was a huge and magnificent square garden sunken below ground level and surrounded by low walls over which spilled banks of yellow and red wallflowers in glorious profusion. The garden itself, Katherine could see as the carriage made its way past it on the left-hand side, was arranged in perfect parterres with graveled walks, low box hedges, beds of flowers and herbs, statues-and a stone sundial at the center.

She said not a word because he did not. He sat beside her, looking out, and he had changed completely. She sensed a tension in him.

But this was home. Not just his, but hers too. She was Baroness Montford of Cedarhurst Park. The reality of it had still not quite sunk in despite yesterday, despite last night, despite now.

And yet she felt a tugging at her heart while seeing her new home for the first time-something she could not remember feeling on her arrival at Warren Hall more than three years ago. A sense that her life, all her future hopes lay here. And the house was beautiful. The sunken garden was so lovely that it brought the ache of tears to her throat.

Of course, she was seeing it all at its best. The sun was shining. There was not a cloud in the sky. And it was summertime.

“Ah,” he said, breaking a lengthy silence, and he sounded more himself again. “You see how one’s every actions have repercussions, Katherine? I thought it wise to send word to the housekeeper that I would be bringing a new baroness home with me today as well as a houseful of birthday guests within the next two weeks. And the servants have contrived a way of catching an early glimpse of you without having to peep from forbidden windows or about forbidden screens or doorways.”

The upper terrace had come into full view. The carriage was about to turn onto it. In neat rows, looking more like clothed statues than real people, Cedarhurst’s large staff was lined up on the steps, the menservants on one side all in crisp black, the maidservants on the other side, also in black, with white mobcaps and white aprons that fluttered in the breeze.

“A welcoming reception,” Jasper said, sounding half exasperated, half amused. “I hope you are up to it.”

Katherine remembered that the same thing had happened at Warren Hall when she and her sisters arrived there with Stephen. They had all enjoyed it enormously. Stephen had stopped to have a word with everyone.

“Of course I am up to it,” she said, nevertheless feeling her stomach flutter rather uncomfortably. “I am your wife, am I not? The new mistress of Cedarhurst?”

Unbidden, there was a stirring of excitement at the realization that that was precisely who she was.

“My love.” He was still holding her hand in one of his, she realized as the carriage drew level with the house steps and one of the men, presumably the butler, stepped forward to open the door and set down the steps. “I never did reply to your and one other thing, did I? I agree to your every demand. How could I not when I became your lifelong slave yesterday-entirely from inclination, I must add. And what could be more to my inclination today and every day for the foreseeable future than displaying to my servants, my family and yours, and my friends and yours that I adore you?”

She turned a look of reproach on him, but his head was bent over her hand as he raised it to his lips, the picture of the devoted and besotted bridegroom while every servant from the butler on down to the boot-boy gawked through the open door at them.

She laughed instead.

Trust him to make a joke of it all.

And to look impossibly handsome and-ah, yes-romantic as he did so. She probably imagined the sigh that passed through the ranks of the maids, but it would not be surprising if she had not.

He would give her a tour of the house later, Jasper decided, perhaps tomorrow. She had shown no eagerness to see everything at once. She had shown no eagerness at all, in fact. Not about the house or park, anyway. She had said nothing as they approached and he had sat tensely beside her.

What had he expected? Enthusiasm for the home that had been forced upon her?

And did it matter to him what she thought?

Did Cedarhurst matter to him?

He had brought her up to the drawing room after they had inspected the servants. They had walked up the house steps on one side and then back down them on the other-greeting first the maids and then the menservants.

She had smiled warmly at each of them in turn, repeated their names when his housekeeper or his butler presented them to her, and had a word with each.

So had he, actually. It had rather surprised him to see so many old faces-not necessarily old in years, but old in service at Cedarhurst. Did they like working here? Were they well paid? But had he not given the order to raise their wages after the death of his mother’s second husband? And again after his mother’s death?

He had remembered with some surprise as he greeted them all that he had liked most of these people when he lived here-even loved a few of them. They had fed him in the kitchens and washed and bandaged his scrapes and sometimes washed him and his clothes and polished his shoes before his mother’s second husband could see the mud or lake water on them. They had even mended rents in his clothes. They had listened to his stories, some of them extremely tall tales. The gardeners and grooms had sometimes disciplined him themselves rather than complain at the house about his transgressions, sometimes setting him to work with a brush or hoe, occasionally even giving him a swift walloping when he really deserved it. Sometimes they had lied for him, claiming not to know where he was rather than have any of his favorite haunts and hiding places discovered.

It was strange how one could forget huge chunks of one’s life. Those haunts…

The tea tray and a plate of cakes had followed them into the drawing room. Katherine poured their tea but did not take any of the cakes.

“I do hope,” she said, “I will remember at least some of their names and that I will learn them all soon. There are so many of them.”

“There is no need,” he said. “They will not expect it of you.”

And yet, he thought, he knew almost all the servants by name without ever having made a determined effort to do so. And he believed he might remember the names of those who were new-but only because there were not many of them and most of them bore a family resemblance to former or current servants.

“But I expect it of myself,” she said. “Servants are people.”

He was always amused rather than irritated by her occasional lapses into primness-a product of her upbringing in a country vicarage, he suspected.

After going back down the steps outside the house while talking with the menservants, she had stood on the terrace, looking up at them all and laughing. The breeze had been wafting the brim of her hat, and the sunlight had caught the gold highlights in her hair. And she had addressed them all with similar words to the ones she had just spoken to him.

“Please forgive me,” she had said, “if I do not remember all your names the next time I see you. But if I still ca

There had been a ripple of laughter, and Jasper’s guess was that his whole large staff had fallen instantly in love with the new baroness.

He had been rather charmed himself.

She did not sit down in the drawing room. She walked over to one of the long windows and stood looking out, sipping her tea as she did so.

He went to stand a little way behind her.

“I think,” she said, “that is the loveliest garden I have ever seen.”