The Escape (Survivor's Club) (18 page)

“Even if I were to accompany you on your journey,” he said, “what would you do at the end of it, without any servants except presumably a maid and without friends or a companion? What if the cottage needs a great deal of work before it is habitable, assuming it is habitable at all?”

She would find somewhere else to rent, in a part of the country where half her heritage lay. She had already said that.

“I suppose,” she said, “there are servants there to be hired. And I can make friends. I do not fear being alone. I have been essentially alone for seven years and have survived. Are you thinking of accompanying me, then?”

His legs were aching from standing so long in the same position.

“How can I allow you to go alone?” he asked her.

Her eyebrows shot up. “You have no power to
allow
me to do anything, Sir Benedict,” she said. “Or to prevent me from doing anything. You are not my husband.”

“Thank the Lord,” he said ungraciously.

Her chin went up a notch, but she relented and lowered it again. “How very unjust of me,” she said. “I burst in upon you uninvited and unburdened myself of all my woes, yet now I am taking exception to your concern for my safety. It is kind of you to be concerned. But it is not your problem, you know.
I
am not your problem. I had better return home. Thank you for receiving me. I know you did not wish to do so. You have been avoiding me, and I do not blame you.”

“For your own good,” he told her, exasperated. “How long would it have been before the whole neighborhood was gossiping if we had become friends, Mrs. McKay, and had kept visiting each other without any sort of chaperonage?”

“Not long at all,” she said. “I told you I did not blame you. And I
do
realize that it was you who gave Lady
Gramley the idea of bringing the vicar’s wife to my home so that I could become involved in parish and community activities. I am grateful to you for that.”

He was not really listening. He was thinking of traveling all day with her for a week or more in the close confines of a carriage. Of taking all his meals with her. Of their staying each night at the same inn. And he felt an unreasonable resentment, for she had not asked it of him after that first impulsive suggestion that he must go with her.

Good Lord, her reputation would be in shreds, and that was probably a gross understatement.

“You force me to very bad manners, Mrs. McKay,” he said. “I am entertaining you in my sister’s house, yet I am afraid I will have to sit while you stand.”

“I ought to have noticed your discomfort,” she said, seating herself on the sofa while he returned to his chair. “I am sorry. I have caused you nothing but discomfort since the moment of my arrival. I shall leave, and you must forget I was even here. You are going to Scotland, are you not? I have heard it is lovely there.”

She got abruptly to her feet again, and her dog took up his position beside her, his tail waving hopefully.

Ben regarded her irritably. “I believe,” he said, “I must have been a close personal friend of the late Captain Matthew McKay. I believe I must have promised him when he was on his deathbed that I would escort his widow to Wales, where he wished her to take up residence in the cottage she inherited before her marriage. I believe I must use my full credentials again and be known as Major Sir Benedict Harper.”

She looked down at him, her eyes fathomless.

“We may just get away with it,” he said, “without completely wrecking your reputation.”

“You are coming?” She almost whispered the words.

“We had better take my carriage,” he said. “But we
need to decide how we are to get you away from Bramble Hall tomorrow without causing a great fuss and bother among the servants, especially those burly strangers.”

The dog flopped down onto all fours and proceeded to lick his paws. He had sensed further delay. Mrs. McKay’s hands were clasped so tightly at her waist that Ben could see the whites of her knuckles. But then her eyes brightened and even sparkled.

“With great stealth,” she said.

S
amantha’s longtime maid had left her service after Matthew’s death, when she had married his valet. Her replacement was the young daughter of the cook, a cheerful girl who was well liked by all the other servants. Samantha liked her too, but she dared not confide in her or suggest taking the girl with her when she left Bramble Hall. Everyone in the house would know about it within minutes.

No one could forcibly stop her from leaving, of course, Samantha told herself. She was not a prisoner in her own home. Those servants from Leyland could not literally force her into the carriage and convey her all the way to Kent against her will. But, much as she tried to talk rational common sense into herself, she was not convinced that they would not do just that.

All the other servants at the house were technically the earl’s too. He paid their salaries.

It would be best, she decided, if no one knew she was leaving or where she was going or with whom—especially with whom. There was no point in courting unnecessary scandal. The story of Sir Benedict’s having been a close friend of Matthew’s would not work here.

She had to wait until her maid had left her room for the night, then, before she could begin packing. The silly girl’s head had been turned by the arrival of so many male servants from Leyland, and she felt impelled to discuss at great length the relative merits of each one
with Mrs. McKay and to offer her own opinion on which was the most handsome but which had the most manly physique and which had paid her the most outrageous compliment even if he was not quite the best in either looks or build.

Samantha thought the girl was never going to leave. It was close to midnight when she began packing one large valise and one smaller one. But there was no great problem of room. It was amazing how much she was prepared to leave behind without any qualm of regret. She would leave all her mourning clothes except what she would wear for the first stage of the journey. She had been a dutiful wife to Matthew while he lived. She had mourned him for five months. She had nothing whatsoever with which to reproach herself.

It had been arranged that Sir Benedict Harper would send his valet with a gig at five o’clock in the morning. His man would leave the gig outside the side gate, come into the house through the side door, which Samantha would unlock ahead of time, and carry out her bags. She would accompany him back to Robland Park, where Sir Benedict and his traveling carriage would be waiting.

It seemed too clandestine a scheme to succeed, especially when there was a large, sometimes unruly dog to be smuggled out along with her and her belongings, for of course Tramp could not be left to the mercies of Rudolph and Patience. Besides, Samantha would no more leave him behind than she would her own child, if she had happened to have one. Tramp was family.

The scheme succeeded without mishap, however. At ten minutes past five Samantha waited a moment for an eagerly panting Tramp to finish his business at the side of the lane before shooing him up into the body of the gig with her baggage, and then seated herself beside the large, silent man who had spoken only to introduce himself as Quinn, Sir Benedict’s valet. At a quarter to
six she was being handed into an opulent traveling carriage in the stable yard at Robland. The house was still in darkness.

Tramp scrambled inside after her and settled on the seat opposite. He took up the whole space as if by right.

Mr. Quinn and the coachman loaded her bags and others onto the carriage in near silence. There were no grooms in sight. After a few minutes the carriage door opened again to reveal Sir Benedict. He looked about the interior.

“You have not brought your maid?” he asked.

“I am not sure she would have come,” she told him. “I
am
sure she would have told all the other servants even if I had sworn her to secrecy.”

“This
is
awkward,” he said, but after another moment of standing there, he climbed inside slowly but with practiced skill and took the seat beside her.

The interior suddenly felt only half its former size.
This
felt very awkward indeed. Perhaps after all she ought to have escaped alone and traveled by stage or even post-chaise.

“Good morning to you, sir,” she said briskly.

“Good morning, Mrs. McKay,” he said. “I take it Quinn did not have to fight off all those burly servants in order to spirit you away safely from Bramble Hall? There are a couple of servants rousing here, but none of them have voiced any particular consternation over the discovery that I mean to set out on my travels this early and without waiting for breakfast. I do not believe any of them saw you. We will break our fast when we stop for the first change of horses. Will that suit you? Yes, good morning to you too, wretched dog. You do not need to beat the stuffing out of my cushions with your thumping tail. You are perfectly visible. And I notice that you have commandeered a whole seat for your personal use. If your mistress had indeed brought her maid,
she would have had to sit up on the box with my valet and coachman.”

He sounded deliberately, artificially cheerful just as she had done when she bade him good morning. He had seemed like a trusted friend yesterday. This morning he seemed like a stranger, which indeed he was.

The fever of excitement in which she had conceived this whole grand escapade yesterday had converted to a quite sick anxiety last night. She had been unable to sleep except in fitful snatches and with bizarre accompanying dreams. This morning she had been consumed by terror, as though she really were a convict making a daring escape under the very noses of a dozen fierce jailers. And now, seated inside the carriage with only a single gentleman for company, she was feeling tongue-tied and self-conscious.

Good heavens, they were going to be alone together for as many days as it took to reach the southwest coast of Wales and her cottage. And the same number of nights. And he had expected that her maid would be with her to lend some sort of respectability. His valet was with
him
, of course.

She felt physically sick again.

“I am not at all hungry, Sir Benedict,” she assured him, her hands folded in her lap, her back straight and not quite touching the cushions behind her. As if a strictly ladylike posture and demeanor could miraculously make all proper.

The coachman put up the steps and shut the door with a decisive click, climbed up to the box while Mr. Quinn mounted from the other side, and within moments the carriage lurched into motion.

It was one of the single most panic-inducing moments of Samantha’s life. She had to bite her lower lip in order to prevent herself from yelling to the coachman to stop.

Sir Benedict had turned his head and was looking
steadily at her. She had never particularly noticed until now how very narrow carriage seats were. Their shoulders were almost touching. Their faces were too close for comfort. And the world had grown light since she had come from Bramble Hall. There was no darkness in which to hide.

“You are having second thoughts?” he asked. “It is not too late to turn around, you know. I daresay we could smuggle you back into Bramble Hall without the servants there suspecting that you have been doing anything more startling than taking an early morning walk with your dog. Do you wish to return?”

The suggestion brought her to her senses.

“Absolutely not,” she assured him. “I would not go back for any consideration. I am going to the only place I
can
go to be free. I am going to
live
, not merely exist at the pleasure of my father-in-law. If you have changed your mind about accompanying me, of course—”

“I have not.”

“I feel guilty,” she told him. “You were going to Scotland.”

“I was going to
travel
,” he said. “And that is what I am doing. I could not and would not allow you to travel all the way to Wales alone.”

“You are doing it again,” she said. “Allowing me, not allowing me. I am very glad we are not married. I suspect you would be a tyrant.”

“I hope I would know how to protect my wife, ma’am,” he said stiffly, “even if it was sometimes despite herself. And you could not be more glad of our marital status or lack thereof than I am.”

She pursed her lips.

“If we are going to quarrel all the way to Wales,” he added, “it should be an interesting journey. Especially as we are still no more than a mile or two from Robland.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “if we do not converse, we will not quarrel.”

And she turned her head away and half turned her body too so that she was looking out at the passing scenery. From his silence, she supposed he was doing the same through the window on his side.

Perhaps half an hour passed, though it felt more like an hour. Or three. It became more and more difficult to maintain her posture, to keep her chin from falling, to keep her eyes from closing. She envied Tramp, sprawled out and fast asleep and even snoring on his seat. And then, in a moment of lapsed concentration, she yawned hugely and audibly and felt instantly embarrassed.