"Your brother does not!"

"Jonathan is a clergyman. The cases are different. Once you and Adam are wed..."

"Never! I will never marry a libertine," she cried pa.s.sionately. "Oh, why did you not warn me, Sarah?

Pray stop, I must talk to Mr. Meade."

Since they were about to turn into the drive, Sarah did not heed this request. Lydia jumped down from

the slow-moving gig, stumbled, recovered herself, and ran into the vicarage, leaving the front door open.

Sarah drove round to the stables and left Dapple to Arthur's care. With dragging steps she moved towards the house. It was her duty to rea.s.sure Lydia, to reconcile her to Adam's past misdeeds, yet how could she do so when her heart had leaped with joy at those words of rejection?

Try as she might, she could not forget his brief kiss that misty day.

She paused outside the French doors to the study. Within, her brother and Lydia were standing close together, talking earnestly. Jonathan was far better equipped to help the naive girl understand and forgive

her betrothed, Sarah told herself, and she turned back to enter by the kitchen door. "If anyone asks for me, I am gone walking," she told Mrs. Hicks as she pa.s.sed through. She went upstairs and changed into an old walking dress. The last clouds had blown over and the day was growing warm, so she put on sandals and her straw hat. She longed for the soothing peace of the open hills, the sense of perspective that only age-old Stonehenge could bring to her troubled spirit.

Slipping down the stairs, she saw that the study door was open. She should make sure Lydia was restored to tranquility before she sought her own solace. Sighing, Sarah crossed the hall. There was a murmur of voices in the study. As she reached the door, she heard Jonathan say firmly, "Quite sure." "Then I am free again!" It was Adam. "Ever since Mama decided it was time for me to take a wife, I have felt prison walls closing in. That house party was a c.o.c.kle-headed notion at best." His laugh was joyous, unconstrained.

It was too much for Sarah's fragile composure. She fled.

Returning to Cheve for Peggy's wedding, Adam had stopped at the vicarage on his way home. The front door was open, so he tethered his team and strolled in. Led to the study by the sound of voices, he had entered the room just in time to see his betrothed fling herself into the arms of his best friend.

"Ahem! I trust I do not interrupt?"

Two startled faces swung towards him. The vicar flushed and released Lydia, but she clung to him.

"I love Jonathan," she told Adam defiantly.

"Betrayed!" He struck a dramatic att.i.tude, clutching his chest. "Don't look so alarmed, Miss Davis, I am

roasting you. To tell the truth, I suspected this might happen. Jonathan has been your fervent admirer for weeks, if I am not mistaken?"

"Was it so obvious? I had not intended to steal your bride, and I doubt her parents will thank me for it."

"No need for them to know we were ever betrothed."

"I do not care if you are not rich and t.i.tled, Jonathan. I shall like being a vicar's wife. I am sorry to disappoint Lord Cheverell, but I do not want to be married to him."

"You are quite certain?" Adam wanted no misunderstandings to bedevil him at a later date. When Jonathan answered for his beloved, "Quite sure," Adam laughed. "Then I am free again!" After some remarks on his mother's folly in thinking his sisters capable of finding him a wife, he went on to enquire, "Have you come to a decision about the cathedral post, Jonathan? I mean to try to bribe you to stay here. It is time the living was increased, and even with Sarah gone you will need a bigger house once your family begins to grow."

"Where is Sarah going?" asked Lydia in dismay. "I shall need her to show me how to go on."

"Not far. To Cheve, I hope."

Jonathan looked at him in astonishment. "You want to marry Sarah?"

"If she will have me."

"There can be no doubt of that. I never dreamed there was the least chance of your offering, and I warned her not to wear her heart on her sleeve."

"But I have done my best, these past few weeks, to destroy any regard she may have had for me. I have wasted years. Now I have come to my senses, I shall woo her and win her if it takes the rest of my life. Where is she?"

A short time later, Adam drove down the Amesbury road, praying he was right in guessing that Sarah was bound for Stonehenge. He did not pa.s.s her on the road, but on so fine a day she would have walked cross-country.

He paced among the towering stone arches, with growing impatience, for half an hour before he saw her limping towards him. He hurried to meet her.

"You have hurt yourself!"

"No, it's that dratted sandal strap the cobbler mended. It has just this minute broken again. What are you doing here?"

"I came to drive you home. I feel it is my duty to rescue you whenever your sandal strap breaks."

He swept her up in his arms, carried her to the altar stone, set her down and sat beside her. Close beside her.

"Adam?" She was breathless and confused, and adorably flushed.

"Will you marry me?"

"Adam! What of Lydia?"

"A momentary folly, now happily rectified, for I left her in your brother's embrace. They will make a match of it. Will you marry me?"

"Why?" she asked bluntly.

"Because I love you." He reached for her hand but she moved away.

"How many women have you said that to?"

"None, before you. Sarah, I have done many foolish things in my life, but none that I am ashamed of.

You know all there is to know. Can you not forgive and forget?"

"The past is not mine to forgive. It is the future I am thinking of." She raised her eyes to his, searchingly. "As your wife I could not bear your fickleness ... because I love you."

He took her hands in his and would not let her withdraw, seeking words to rea.s.sure her. "You need not fear ghosts from the past. Janet is content with her husband, Marguerite has a new protector, Peggy will soon be wed to her Billy, and all my betrothals have ended with my being jilted. And you call me fickle! As for the future ... Sarah, you will have to trust me. Is that too much to ask? I love you, and I would never willingly do anything to hurt you."

He let go one of her hands and ran his fingers through his hair. A single corn-gold lock fell back over his forehead. In all the years Sarah had known him that wayward curl had always been there, and suddenly the sight of it crystallized all her feelings for him. She raised the hand he had released and touched it with her fingertip, tenderly. He caught her hand, pressed it to his cheek.

"I trust you," she said. "I will marry you."

Adam gathered her into his arms, and the kiss he gave her then was no fleeting touch. At last she pulled away, breathless.

"I think I have always loved you." She leaned against him, gazing up into his blue eyes. "It has taken you an excessively long time to decide I am the one you want to marry."

"Not so long, if you consider that it is less than two months since first Mama persuaded me to think seriously of marriage. In fact I began struggling towards the correct conclusion immediately-you know the complications which arose. I knew that you were the only one for me as soon as you told me I must marry Lydia. Yes, you may laugh, but why do you think I sent her to stay with you and Jonathan and then kept away?"

"I never guessed there was more than friendship between them. I never dared hope that you might one day feel more than friendship for me."

"A great deal more. After wasting so much time, I cannot wait three weeks to make you mine. Jonathan's bishop must give us a special license. Or did you want a splendid wedding, my darling?"

"A quiet one will be much more to my liking." Happy as she was in his arms, there was something she had to know. She reminded herself of Adam's oft-repeated dictum, that he could say anything to her. What was sauce for the goose, was sauce for the gander. She looked down, fixing her gaze on the daisies and willing herself not to blush. "Adam, Peggy said..."

"Sarah, let the past lie!"

Though he did not move, she felt his disappointed withdrawal and hurried on. "Listen, Adam, please. Peggy said that you are one of a very few men who ... who try to please their pet.i.tes amies. Then she said that even those few would be shocked to discover that their wives took pleasure in ... in you know what."

His hand caressed her chin as he tilted her face towards his. "My dearest girl, I promise upon my honour that my wife shall learn to take pleasure in ... you know what." His grin was wicked. "Now, so that I am not forsworn, you must come closer and I shall begin your lessons this very minute."

And he did.

Visit www.belgravehouse.com for information on additional t.i.tles by this and other authors.

end.