He grunted out a sound of displeasure and went back to his blanket. His friends had departed it, gathering on the other blankets or in small groups standing around the area. The only one left was Meg, who still sat on the checkered fabric, her son James sleeping in her arms.
“Everyone else went off to talk to each other?” Kit asked, trying desperately to keep his tone neutral so his emotional outburst would not be so obvious.
Meg had been looking off in the distance, but she jerked her attention back to him. “Er, yes. Perhaps that is good, though. I wonder if you and I need to have a discussion.”
She shifted the eighteen-month-old in her arms, laying him across the folds of the blanket gently before she got up and offered Kit an arm. “Come, let us walk, shall we? James will sleep a while, and I see Simon has his eye on the boy.”
Kit grunted as he got back to his feet. He did not wish to walk, but there was no polite way to refuse his friend’s wife. He took her arm and they strolled to the edge of the water. It gave them a good view of Sarah and Phoebe as they made their own way around the edge. And he watched. He couldn’t help himself.
“Hmmm.” He glanced down and found Meg was doing the same, her gaze following the pair with a deep frown on her face.
Kit tensed. In all the years that had passed since that night of the ball when Sarah had been so rude, Meg had never brought the topic up. Now he felt that moment coming, Meg’s reminder that Sarah had been unpleasant, and he felt irrationally defensive. He had to shake away the odd sensation and breathe deeply to maintain calm.
“You seem troubled,” Kit said.
He looked again toward the lake’s edge where Sarah stood with Phoebe. From his sister’s animated arm movements, it seemed she was perhaps working herself back into another tantrum, though Sarah seemed to be handling it well. Just as she had earlier. She was right that it had not been his place to intrude.
“I am,” Meg said, and her voice interrupted his thoughts. He glanced down to find Meg’s brow wrinkled. “Though I’m not certain how to even broach the subject.”
He pursed his lips, more certain than ever that the past was about to be thrown in his face. “I think we can be honest with each other—we’ve known each other long enough.”
She nodded, and some of the tension left her slender frame. “Of course. Adelaide always says that honesty is the best policy. Kit, I heard something last night and I cannot stop thinking about it.”
He tilted his head. Their gathering of friends could not have troubled Meg. Of course, when he came back into the room from the terrace, he’d seen her standing with Sarah. Was it possible she’d been impertinent all over again?
He couldn’t picture it, but then again…
“What did you hear?” he asked carefully.
“Where to begin? You see, I saw Diana and Sarah talking, so I joined them. They were discussing…you.”
His eyes went wide. Sarah was talking about him with the wives of his best friends? That could not bode well. “Me?” he repeated. “What could they have to say about me?”
“I don’t know how their conversation started, but you know Diana. She may be the most insightful of us all…I suppose it is the healer in her. Anyway, she was pressing Sarah about why in the world you would not like her. A subject I have a keen interest in, I admit, as it is not your nature to be so judgmental.”
Kit stared at her, uncertain he could have heard that last part correctly. “What?”
Meg gave a smile. “You and Sarah are not entirely unalike. When I asked why your relationship was strained, she gave me rather the same blank, confused look as yours right now and mumbled something about a bad moment in the past.”
Kit swallowed. It seemed Sarah recalled that night and what had transpired between them as keenly as he did. The only person who didn’t was Meg, herself.
She continued, “Soon after, Sarah excused herself, and I was left with no answers, but a niggling feeling that I ought to know what she was talking about. I racked my brain, trying to recall what it was. I talked to Simon about it, even, and he was just as clueless.”
“I…see,” Kit said, uncertain if he should jog Meg’s memory or not. To do so risked a threat to Sarah and her treatment by the duchesses. That should not have mattered, perhaps, but it did nonetheless.
“And then in the middle of the night I was jolted awake,” Meg said. “Bolt upright. I recalled that once upon a very long time ago, Sarah and I had a little…exchange. At a ball at James and Emma’s country home around the time of the mess with Simon and Graham.”
Kit wasn’t certain whether to be relieved she’d come to this conclusion herself or wish she hadn’t recalled it at all. But there was no denying it now. It was not in his nature to lie. “Yes,” he admitted softly.
All the color bled from Meg’s cheeks. “Oh,Kit! Please donottell me that you have disliked Sarah Carlton because of some little encounter you interrupted three years ago.”
He pressed his lips together. “She was very rude to you, Meg.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “As I recall, she was also a little tipsy. James never waters down his punch enough. And at the core of her upset was that she was disappointed. She thought she and Simon might have made a connection that I frankly ruined by being desperately in love with the man.”
“That’s exactly right,” Kit said, throwing his hands up in the air. “She was impolite at the height of your pain. I interrupted. How was I not to think of that after?”
Meg slapped a hand against her eyes and shook her head slowly. “You idiot.”
