Though, it amused her to realize, her father would enjoy his
hunting skills. A rabbit at fifty yards with a rock! Oh, yes. She smiled. Her
father would have liked to meet Sam, which said a lot for why her father and
mother did not get along: Her mother wouldn't have been able to build up enough
interest in Sam for even a mild dislike; she simply wouldn't have noticed him.
He was not beneath her contempt so much as beneath her awareness. In the
Viscountess Wendt's world, there were the glittering, proper people and all the
rest was furniture, some of which walked around on legs and could be asked to
do things for her.
Lydia
was lost in
this morbid contemplation of the mother she loved, when she heard a sound – so
removed from moors and trains – that her ears simply didn't put it in context.
It registered only, oddly, as a kind of animal cry.
On the second call, it became human. "Miss
Ly-y-y-diya-a-a!" A familiar voice, calling her name.
Lydia
scrambled to
her feet, straightening as she rotated three-hundred-sixty degrees, while the
hair on her arms lifted. She scanned the horizon as if for a ghost.
Nothing. No one.
A second later, her name echoed again across the moor from a
slightly different direction, fainter this time, more distant, but after the
first call, recognizable.
"Ly-y-y-di-ya-a-a!"
Oh, no, was her first coherent thought. Found. Though it was more
a sense of being found
out
– caught –
that hit her. It was like being shot. Guilt and fear, as solid as tiny bullets,
struck suddenly and spread their pain. She wasn't ready—
Sam came up beside her and put his arm about her shoulder, as if
he could protect her. With his other hand, he pointed. "Over there."
He directed her attention across the river toward a hill, to a
rider coming up over it.
A woman on horseback at the summit struggled to control the
animal. It refused the steep descent, turning away. With her back to them, as
she strived to turn it around again, she called to someone else, a second
party, "Here! Oh, here! I've found her! The smoke was her! She's over
here!" Then she wheeled the horse around – it stomped, backed up, kicked a
rock, then did as she encouraged. It carried her down the slope toward the
river, her body thumping up and down wildly in the saddle as she yelled,
exultant, "Miss Lydi-ya-a-ah! Miss Ly-di-ya-a-ah! I've found you!"
It was Rose, valiantly staying atop one of
Lydia
's uncle's
mares.
12
W
hen
Lydia
recognized
Rose, she glanced at Sam, and the words just popped out – in an emphatic,
almost embarrassing whisper. "Don't say anything."
"About what?" Beside her, he was barely paying
attention. She watched him in profile. He'd put on his vest, though it hung
open. He'd set his hat on the back of his head, the brim up as his gaze
followed Rose's progress.
She shrugged out of his grasp. "About – you know – that I –
that we—"
Behind her, he laughed. "Why would I say anything?"
"I don't know, just don't." Even to her own ears, she
sounded curt.
"All right," he said, humoring her.
She made a stiff nod.
On horseback, Rose descended the hillock, she and the animal
skidding down the last of the embankment so quickly they plunged into the river
with a rooster tail of water whooshing, horse and rider screaming.
Lydia
crossed her
arms, hugging herself. There she stood, Sam just behind her, Rose careening
toward her. With a sense of disaster growing in the pit of her own stomach.
Chaos. Fear, worry. Emotions bubbling up so fast she could barely grasp one
before another replaced it: resentment, loss, surprise; discovery, exposure.
Laid open to judgment.
She couldn't remember ever having anything she wouldn't tell Rose
– or if not Rose, Clive or Meredith. Yet at her back stood a secret, six feet
three inches of secret, that she couldn't imagine sharing with anyone. Sam was
a good secret, she told herself. Never had she felt so free and capable and
purely happy as she had with him out here on the moor. Yet she could think of
no acceptable explanation she might offer for what he and she had done out
here, not to Rose or her brother or cousin. Her mind went blank when she tried.
And she loathed the feeling of not wanting them to know something about her.
Little, round Rose was out of breath when she dropped from the
saddle onto the ground. Being winded, though, didn't stop her from running
toward
Lydia
, talking, and
gasping for breath all at the same time.
"Oh, Miss
Lydia
," she
said on the intake, then on the exhale, "I can't tell you how relieved,
why, we thought that, well, just anything could have happened, and Meredith and
her brother and your uncle and aunt, oh, we've all just worried our heads
sick." She stopped in front of
Lydia
, her hand to
her chest as she took another deep breath. "The young Mr. Linton and his
Lordship are on the east road, while Miss Meredith is just over the next ridge,
goodness, we've been searching for days and couldn't even find the coach,
though the horses came back, it just disappeared into the thin air, we didn't
know what to think, then a fog set in, you wouldn't believe, it was so thick we
couldn't see the horses under us, but then today, we'd been riding since dawn,
and we saw a wisp of smoke—"
"Oh, stop,"
Lydia
said, letting
out weak laughter – better than crying, though for the life of her, she wanted
to do both.
Rose halted, took another deep breath, and broke out laughing –
sincere laughter. Standing on tiptoe, she threw her arms around
Lydia
and hugged her
mistress so tightly she cut off air. "Oh, I can't tell you how glad I am
to see you, miss."
"Thank you,"
Lydia
said, pushing
her back. "I'm glad to see you too." It was what she ought to say,
which now added hypocrisy to her list of dissatisfactions with herself.
"Miss Meredith saw me from the other hill. She should be here
shortly." She turned, paused, then, frowning, said to Sam, "You're
the man from the station."
"Mr. Cody,"
Lydia
said quickly.
To Sam, "This is Rose Simms, my lady's maid."
Rose bobbed once, frowned, then said with protective rudeness,
"You were drunk."
"I'm not now. Glad to meet you," Sam said, though he
didn't look at her. His attention fixed on
Lydia
, he asked,
"Can we talk?"
Talk? How were they going to "talk"?
Lydia
made a small
shrug, a show of open palms, toward him.
Sam frowned, a dissatisfied look, while casually with one hand he
buttoned his vest.
Rose meanwhile had marched off after something. At home, she could
make herself all but invisible, while people "talked," by simply
tidying up – it was how she got the best gossip. Of course, so far from their
campsite there was nothing to tidy – until
Lydia
realized her
maid had picked up a whitish splotch, a forgotten wad of wet clothes. Rose
shook out her discarded drawers from yesterday, held them up, then lowered them
enough to stare over their gaping, elephantine waist.
Lydia
said quickly,
"The drawstring broke."
The girl looked at her over then. "Your underwear
broke?"
"It was very rough out here."
Lydia
tried to think
of why else her underwear might suffer. "Look at me. I'm a mess."
Indeed, she was so, especially compared to Rose, whose hair was tied back
neatly, her dress relatively fresh.
Her maid stared at her, eyes wide, then to Sam. Sam with his coat
off, his vest buttoned wrong, the ruined underwear staring them all in the face
– with, God help them, his underwear down there flying from the top of her bow.
Oh, yes,
Lydia
thought, she
could hardly wait till Rose saw that, which she would because they had to go
retrieve it before it stopped a train.
"Doing the 'necessaries,'"
Lydia
added.
"You know. In the wild. It wasn't easy."
The girl pondered the explanation a moment longer, like an
indecipherable conundrum. Then she dropped her head, smiled sheepishly, and
offered, "Of course. Never mind me." She folded the drawers over her
arm. "It's my new status as a wife. It makes my mind wander to the oddest
places." Leaning toward her friend and mistress, she lowered her voice.
"Oh, miss, it was perfect. So perfect. We went to the
Angel
Inn
, their best
room. Oh, Miss
Lydia
, I have so
much to tell you…"
Sweet Rose carried on the conversation alone. She asked questions
without getting answers. (Where are the rest of your things? Did you have
enough tonic?)
Lydia
could only
look fixedly at Sam. It seemed impossible that she was losing him so soon, so
quickly: right now.
Rose continued, "So, you see, I begged Miss Meredith not to
tell anyone I wasn't with you – she rallied her family and wired your parents,
agreeing not to say for your sake. I think it's better for you, too, if people
don't know you were" – she eyed Sam curiously – "on your own."
She bit her lip before she continued. "Now, though, I'm asking for my
sake: If your parents find out I let you travel alone, they'll dismiss me, Miss
Lydia
. It's an awful
thing to ask you to do, but can we say I was with you?"
Lydia
was brought up
short. "My family thinks we're together?"
"So far everyone does, except for Miss Meredith, her brother,
mother, and father."
"Don't people know I went to your wedding?"
"No." Rose corrected, "Well, my family, but they
aren't very likely to talk to anyone." She waited, chewing her lip again.
"Oh."
Lydia
tried to
digest the favor Rose asked. "Yes." Of course. "We'll say we
were lost together. You're right, it's best for both of us if we hold to a
story that you were with me." She looked at Sam, and the idea materialized
– as if conscious thought had been bypassed completely – directly from her
mouth: "And that he wasn't."
They all looked at one another as, simultaneously, they realized that
the best way to guard Lydia's reputation and Rose's job lay within erasing Sam
from the story altogether. But how to go about it?
Lydia
stammered out,
"The – the original lie—" Lies. Oh, dear, now there were layers of
them. "That I – um, didn't go to your wedding, but went to the township
trials for the
Devon
archery championship –
yes, um, that should do. From there, we'll say, at Swansdown, you and I took
your brother's cart to a meet, got lost, then survived on the moor till
Meredith found us."
"Yes!" Rose agreed cheerfully. "And as soon as Miss
Meredith arrives, we'll go back to Bleycott, where we'll put Mr. Cody on the
next train." She looked at him. "We can send him off before anyone is
the wiser."
They both turned to Sam, who said nothing. He stood watching them,
his hat on straighter, the brim shading his eyes, his arms crossed.
Hesitantly, Rose asked him, "Is that all right? Will you do
it?"
"Sure." To
Lydia
, he said,
"Can I talk to you a minute?"
Rose was off again. "We'll say he's a friend of the young Mr.
Linton, that he helped look for us—"
"Liddy," he interrupted.
Both women turned their heads to him abruptly.
"Liddy?" the maid repeated.
Over her head, Sam said, "See me. Let me call on you. I have
money. I can get another post. I'm not completely without references—"
Oh, dear, that again. Before
Lydia
could answer,
however, her maid had stepped squarely between Sam and herself. Rose, who never
said a mean word to anyone, told him with umbrage, "Sir, you find your
place. Just because fate put you alone with one of
England
's daughters
does not give you the right to—"
"I want to see her," he repeated. "See her."
As if he meant it literally, he pushed her out of the way. "Excuse
us." He took
Lydia
by the arm.
"I want to talk to you in private."
She went with him, thinking, Oh, damn you. She was just getting
her balance, and now here he was, sure to throw her off again. Within a few
feet the direction they took – toward the rush of the river's falls – was
obviously going to put any conversation in raised voices. Sam stopped and
called to Rose. "Could you excuse us?" He walked them back further,
motioning her off.
The girl frowned when she realized what he was asking.
"Please," he said stiffly.
She puckered her mouth.
"It's all right,"
Lydia
said. "Go
on."
Rose pivoted around and walked off.
When she was near the far bend in the river, Sam said in a hush,
"I don't want you to disappear. I want to see you."
Lydia
frowned.
"You can't. We've already been through this. My family wouldn't let you in
the door."
"Don't you have some say in the matter?"
"About whether I turn my back on my mother and father and
brother and cousins and aunts and uncles?" She looked at him, staring now.
While Sam said to himself, No? She couldn't mean no.
She squinched up her face, a pained expression. "Sam, I have
to marry where my family approves."
"Well, there you go. I wasn't asking you to marry me."
He shook his head, trying to decide where to begin. "Liddy, I'm just
saying, I'd like to call on you in the good, old-fashioned way, drive up in a
buggy, arrive with flowers—"
Her eyes widened, appalled. "No."
He blinked, trying to absorb the word. A man couldn't get a more
definite answer; no was exactly what she meant. He took a breath. "All
right."
He tried to stay reasonable. It was her right. Her perfect right.
Nonetheless, his blood rushed. The backs of his ears burned.
No
. He couldn't resist saying, "I
thought I was everything you've dreamed of in a man."
"You are," she said. "You just aren't everything
I've dreamed of in a husband."
It was like bricks hitting him in the chest. Fury, hurt. "Oh.
Well. You'll forgive me, Your Majesty, if I mis-con-strue." He said the
word with elaborate drawl. "It must mean something different on this side
of the ocean when a woman bangs a man all night like a shithouse door in a
gale."