The Escape (Survivor's Club) (8 page)

“Beatrice will be happy to hear it,” he said, reaching for his canes and slipping his arms through the straps. “Her own activities have been curtailed by the persistent chill she contracted before Christmas. I thank you for the tea and for listening to me.”

He could not thank her for her forgiveness. She had not given it.

He hoisted himself upright, aware of her steady gaze. He wished he did not now have to shuffle out of the room in his ungainly manner while she watched.

“We have something in common, you know,” he told her, stopping abruptly before he reached the door. “I want to dance too. Sometimes it is what I want to do more than anything else in life.”

She accompanied him in silence to the front door and the waiting carriage. Beatrice was already standing beside it with Lady Matilda. They all said their farewells,
and the carriage was soon on its way down the driveway.

“Well,” Beatrice said on an audible exhalation, “
that
was a gloomy afternoon if ever I have spent one. I do not wonder if that woman has ever laughed, Ben—I am confident she has not. What I do wonder is if she has ever smiled. I seriously doubt it. She spoke of her father with the deepest reverence. I pity poor Mrs. McKay.”

“She asked if we would come again,” he told her. “I suggested she call on you at Robland instead. It seems, though, that neither receiving visitors nor paying calls is quite the thing for ladies in mourning. Was my social education incomplete, Bea? It seems a peculiar notion to me. But she did say she might come anyway. I hope you will not disown me for making so free with your hospitality.”

“She might come?” she asked him. “But
will
she, do you suppose?”

Ben shrugged for answer. But he recalled the unexpected passion with which she had told him that she wanted to
live
. That infamous stroll in the meadow had probably been her way of breaking loose, at least for a short while. And he had ruined it for her.

“Did you make your apology?” Beatrice asked him.

“I did.” He did not add that forgiveness had not been explicitly granted.

“Then duty is satisfied for now,” she said. “It is a huge relief, I must say. And perhaps they will not come.”

“She wants to dance,” Ben said.

“What?” She turned her head to frown at him. “At the assembly next week, do you mean?”

“No. She wants to
dance
, Bea. I do too.
I
want to dance.”

She tipped her head slightly to one side. “We will certainly go to the assembly if you feel up to it,” she said, “though I doubt you will be able to dance to even the
most stately of the tunes, Ben. You do very well walking with your canes. I am prouder of you than I can possibly say. But dancing? I think it wisest to put it from your mind, dearest, and concentrate upon what you
can
do.”

Ah, literal-minded Bea! He did not try to explain.

S
amantha scarcely set foot over the doorstep for the rest of the week. It rained almost without ceasing—though that was not strictly accurate. She might almost have enjoyed an honest-to-goodness rain. This was drizzle and mist and heavy gray skies and chill temperatures. Pea soup weather, she could remember her mother calling it, the sort of weather that seeped beneath doors and around window frames even when they were tightly shut and made one feel damp and cold and miserable despite a fire crackling in the hearth and a woolen shawl drawn about one’s shoulders.

She did not even go to church on Sunday, a rare omission. Matilda had a head cold as well as one of her headaches and submitted to being sent back to bed with a hot brick for her feet. Samantha might have gone to church alone, as she had done for five years, but Matilda became agitated when she suggested it, and she was actually quite glad to avail herself of the excuse not to go out.

She had seen no one but Matilda and the servants since Tuesday. The visit of Lady Gramley and Sir Benedict Harper seemed weeks ago rather than merely days. But when she had broached the idea of their driving over to Robland Park one day next week to return the visit, Matilda had looked pruneish, as Samantha had fully expected she would. It was a courtesy to pay an
occasional call upon a neighbor in mourning, she had explained, but no one would expect a return visit. Indeed, most people of any gentility would be surprised and even shocked if it happened.

Samantha simply did not believe her. Not any longer. And even if Matilda was right about social expectations, how could she possibly submit to remaining inside the darkened house for another eight months with only the occasional foray into the garden for fresh air and one weekly attendance at church? She would go out of her mind with the tedium of it.

She was going to pay that return call, she decided between journeys up and down stairs as she tended to the invalid, a long-familiar role that did nothing to lift her spirits, though she was always careful to be cheerful when she was in her sister-in-law’s room and seeing to her comfort by turning and plumping her pillows or straightening the bedcovers or moving her glass of water closer to her hand or laying a cool cloth on her fevered brow or closing the almost invisible gap between the curtains that was letting in a flood of hurtful light.

She was going to go to Robland Park even if it meant going alone. Indeed, she would far prefer to go without Matilda. Good heavens, she had allowed herself to become a virtual prisoner in her own home since Matthew’s death. And she had somehow relinquished her role as lady of the house.

She liked Lady Gramley, who was refined and elegant with the easy manners of a true lady. She had always been kind, though even after five years of living here Samantha scarcely knew her or any of her other neighbors. She hoped it would be possible to make something of a friend of Lady Gramley in the future, even though there must be a ten-year gap in their ages.

Sir Benedict Harper was a different matter. She had felt considerable antipathy toward him before his visit, and it was only with the greatest reluctance that she had admitted to herself that it had been handsome of him to call on her and maneuver matters in such a way that his apology was made to her alone. He had been sensitive enough to realize that it was altogether possible Matilda knew nothing of her escapade that day. And his apology itself had been irreproachable, for he had taken all the blame upon himself. It had been unhandsome of her, on the other hand, to withhold the words of forgiveness for which he had asked. But it was hard to forgive someone who had ruined the only hour of true freedom she had enjoyed in at least six years.

And now she felt like the guilty one. Perversely, she resented him for that. But he was merely visiting at Robland Park. Perhaps he would be gone soon and she need never see him again. Perhaps he would be out riding again when she called on Lady Gramley.

She remembered with some embarrassment her passionate outburst in Sir Benedict’s hearing. Whatever had possessed her? She had told him she wanted to
live
. She had even told him she wanted to dance. But she knew what had caused her to speak so. He was more than half crippled. He had suffered other injuries, all courtesy of the late wars. If she had had to encounter a stranger, even under the circumstances in which they had met, did he have to be yet another wounded soldier?

She could positively scream!

But he wanted to dance too. She wished he had not said that. The words had unnerved her, for they had expressed such an impossible dream that she had wanted to weep. The last man on earth over whom she wished to shed tears was Sir Benedict Harper.

But he wanted to dance.

Matilda came down to sit in the drawing room early the following afternoon, though she still had a wretched cold, poor thing. She sat near the fire, a shawl drawn closely about her shoulders, a handkerchief clutched in one hand and never too far from her reddened nose.

Samantha mentioned casually that since the rain had stopped at last perhaps she would take the gig and return Lady Gramley’s call.

“Your sense of duty is misplaced,” Matilda said. “But you will not go, of course, especially since I am unable to accompany you. Matthew would forbid it if he could, God rest his soul.”

Quite possibly he would not have done. He had made great demands on her time and presence while he was ill, it was true, but he hated the puritanical, straitlaced attitudes of his family. It was a measure of his annoyance with
her
, after she had kicked up a fuss over his infidelity, that he had decided against taking her to the Peninsula with him or permitting her to go home to her own father, but had sent her to Leyland Abbey to live for that year instead. It was undoubtedly the worst punishment he could devise. It had been downright mean.

“There is an assembly in the village in a few days’ time,” Samantha said. “Attending
that
would be scandalous, Matilda. I do not, however, have the least intention of going. Paying a courtesy visit to a neighbor who paid one here last week, on the other hand, must be quite unexceptionable. And as for going in the gig myself, I did it every Sunday while Matthew lived, until you came a short while before his death, that is, and he never once voiced any objection.”

“Then he ought to have done,” Matilda said sharply before pausing to blow her nose. “
Father
would not have allowed it.”

“The Earl of Heathmoor was not my husband,” Samantha retorted, “or my own father. Oh, Matilda, let
us not quarrel. How tedious this topic is! I need air and a change of scene. And I really ought to show a courtesy to Lady Gramley, who has called here twice since Matthew’s funeral despite the fact that she was not at all well the first time. I am going. I daresay I will not be gone long. The bell pull is within your reach. If you need anything at all, Rose or one of the other servants will bring it.”

Her sister-in-law looked thin-lipped and mulish as Samantha got to her feet. No doubt she would inform her father about this in her next letter home. Well, so be it. The rules he imposed upon his family, even at this distance, were Gothic, to say the least. Samantha was no longer going to accept them without question. She could show respect for the memory of her husband without incarcerating herself in her own home and being slavishly obedient to a family whose standards of propriety went far beyond what society demanded.

These thoughts caused her only a fleeting moment of uneasiness. Bramble Hall, which Matthew had been convinced would be made over to him while he lived, still belonged to the earl. But it had been willed to Matthew—except that Matthew was now dead. It would be her home for life, though, he had assured Samantha shortly before his passing. His father had to look after her since she had no fortune of her own and no relatives who would be glad to take her in, and he never shirked his responsibilities. It would suit his purpose to perfection to keep her far away here in the north of England in a house he had never lived in himself. The very last thing he would want was to have her living as a pensioner at Leyland and as a constant thorn in his side. Her future was quite secured.

S
ir Benedict Harper was riding around the corner of the house at Robland Park as Samantha drew the gig to a halt before the front doors. He looked splendidly virile on horseback, she could not help but notice, his disability not at all apparent. She could have wished, though, that she had come earlier or that he had extended his ride longer.

He reined in his horse beside her and swept off his hat. “Good afternoon, Mrs. McKay,” he said. “You are making the most of this welcome break in the weather too, are you? So is Beatrice, I am afraid. She is out on a round of sick visiting with the vicar’s wife.”

“Oh.” How very unfortunate, and what an anticlimax after all the fuss that had preceded her coming here. “Well, no matter. At least I have had an outing. I would have had no excuse for it if I had known Lady Gramley was from home.”

“There is no need for you to go away,” he told her. “If you will give me a few minutes to stable my horse, I will join you. A groom is already on his way to see to your gig. Do go inside. No, I beg your pardon. That would not do, would it?”