Survivors' Club: The Escape Part 9

"Oh," she said, "I do not know. No, perhaps I ought to ..."

This had not been intended as a social visit. Something in her voice told Ben that. There was distress beneath the flatness of tone.

"Who is it, Rogers?" he called loudly enough to be heard downstairs, and he made his way to the head of the stairs so that he could see for himself.

"It is Mrs. McKay, sir," the butler told him, "come to call on Lady Gramley."

The dog was with her. It barked once and wagged its tail at him. Why that wretched hound liked him, he had no idea. Perhaps because he had never kicked him in the chin when that part of his anatomy had rested on Ben's boot?

She looked up at him. Her dark veil had been tossed back over the brim of her bonnet to reveal a very pale face, even allowing for the fact that black tended to leach color from the skin.

"I am so sorry," she said. "I did not know your sister had gone away. I-I will not disturb you. I am sorry. Come along, Tramp."

"Did you walk here?" Ben asked.

"Yes," she said. "We were out for a stroll and I decided on a whim to call here."

"We certainly will not send you away without any refreshments," Ben said, beginning the slow descent of the stairs. "Will we, Rogers? Show Mrs. McKay into the small salon, if you please, and have a tray of tea brought there. And some brandy."

"I-" She did not finish what she had started to say. "Thank you. I will just drink a cup of tea and be on my way. I am sorry for being a nuisance."

She was over by the unlit fireplace, removing her bonnet, when Ben entered the room. Her dog ambled over to greet him, his tail wagging and his rear end wiggling. Ben eyed him with disfavor and scratched him beneath his chin.

"I am sorry ..." she began.

"Yes," he said, closing the door behind him. "You have already made that perfectly clear, Mrs. McKay. What has happened?"

He felt resentful. If she had left this until tomorrow, he would have been gone and known nothing about it. She would have been compelled to cope alone with whatever was troubling her.

"Nothing has happened." She smiled, a sickly expression that reached no higher than her lips. "I did not know Lady Gramley was leaving for London so soon."

"She is on her way to Berks.h.i.+re," he told her, "where Gramley's sister is expecting to give birth any day. Her mother-in-law was supposed to attend her, but she has been detained by illness. Beatrice left here just after noon, only a few hours after receiving her sister-in-law's letter. I am sure she is sitting in the carriage at this very moment thinking of all the people here to whom she ought to have dashed off notes of explanation. What is the matter?"

Something clearly was. She was making an effort to appear composed, but she looked as if she might shatter at any moment. And she was still standing.

"Nothing."

The door opened behind Ben, and a footman set down a large tray. Ben bent over it and poured a little brandy into a gla.s.s. He carried it across the room to her, supporting himself with just one of his canes.

"Drink this," he said.

"What is it?"

"Brandy," he said. "Sit down and drink it. I daresay your walk has chilled you."

"I did not notice," she said as she half collapsed onto a sofa.

"Drink it."

She took the gla.s.s, sipped the brandy, and made a face.

"Toss it back," he told her.

She did so and coughed and sputtered. "Oh, that is vile."

"Pay attention to the aftereffects, though," he told her.

She closed her eyes briefly. Her cheeks gained some color.

"He is throwing me out of Bramble Hall," she said, "and sending his son to live there."

She had not made her meaning at all clear, but it did not take much effort to decipher it anyway. He took the empty gla.s.s from her hand and returned it to the tray. He poured a cup of tea and carried it across to her.

He was presumably the Earl of Heathmoor.

10.

Samantha took the cup and saucer from him with hands she schooled to be steady. Tramp was seated beside her, at attention, his ears c.o.c.ked, his eyes intent on hers. He knew there was something wrong, the poor dear.

"Thank you," she said.

She was dreadfully upset that Lady Gramley had gone away. Although there were other ladies in the neighborhood to whom she supposed she might turn in her distress, none but Lady Gramley felt like a friend. Sometimes friendly acquaintances were simply not enough. Though how she had expected Lady Gramley to help her she did not know.

"Heathmoor is tossing you out without making any provision for you?" Sir Benedict Harper asked, seating himself across from her. "He is literally evicting you?"

"No. He has far too great a sense of family duty to do that," she said. "I am to go to Leyland Abbey in Kent. He has sent his own coachman and outriders back with the carriage Matilda took, and they have orders to escort me there. I am to leave the day after tomorrow. I do not know if their instructions are to coerce me if I will not go voluntarily or I try to delay, but I would not be at all surprised if they are. My father-in-law made it very clear in the letter he sent me that he sees me as a disgrace to his family and that I must be fetched to a place where he can keep a strict eye upon me and correct my waywardness."

"And this is because you returned Bea's visit that one afternoon and agreed to ride with her and with me a few days later?" He was frowning at her as if he did not quite believe his ears.

"They were not small matters to Matilda," she told him. "They are not small matters to Matilda's father. Heaven knows what I may get up to if I am left to my own devices here. I may even take it into my head to go about visiting the sick or arranging flowers on the altar at church."

She took a sip of her tea and discovered gratefully that it was both strong and sweet.

"Perhaps," he said, "it is not quite what you think. Perhaps your father-in-law's annoyance with you arises from a genuine concern that you will be lonely here without the companions.h.i.+p of his daughter. Perhaps he thinks you will be happier surrounded by your late husband's family."

She took another sip of tea. "I think not," she said. "But I am sorry to have made such a nuisance of myself. I came here, I suppose, to unburden myself to Lady Gramley, though to what purpose I do not know. I just did not know what else to do. I do not know what else to do."

"You do not believe you can find any sort of contentment at Leyland?" he asked her. "Even just temporarily, until your year of mourning is at an end?"

"Could you find any sort of contentment in a prison, Sir Benedict?" she asked in return. "Where even smiles are construed as sin, and laughter is unheard of?"

"And it is out of the question to go to your half brother?"

"Yes," she said.

John would perhaps not literally refuse her admission to the vicarage if she turned up on his doorstep, but he would certainly make it clear that she was unwelcome, that she could not stay there beyond a few nights at the longest.

"Forgive my impertinence," Sir Benedict said, "but do you not have an independence? Can you not set up on your own somewhere?"

She stared blankly at him. Her father had left her a small legacy, which Matthew had appropriated. He had left her with a small income, enough for her personal needs since she had never been extravagant. But enough with which to set up her own establishment? She did not know and had never wondered. She had relied upon Matthew's a.s.sumption that his father would be happy to leave her at Bramble Hall. Oh, how foolish of her. How foolis.h.!.+ She ought to have been making plans. But what plans?

"I could not stay anywhere close to here," she said, "where at least I have some friendly acquaintances and some sense of belonging. Rudolph and Patience will be at Bramble Hall within a fortnight. They would make life very difficult for me if I remained here in defiance of my father-in-law's express wishes. And I could not return to the village where I grew up. I had a few friends there, but on the whole I was not well accepted because my mother was not. As for anywhere else, well, I do not know anywhere."

She swallowed awkwardly. She was suddenly very frightened. The world seemed a vast and hostile place. Whatever was she going to do?

"Starting a new life is never easy," he said, "especially when there is no obvious base of operations. You have the rest of today and tomorrow, then, to think of an alternative to Leyland Abbey."

"I cannot go there." She set down her cup and saucer and gripped one arm of the sofa. "I will not. Though I may not have a choice if I am right about those servants the earl has sent. They are all large, severe-looking men. However it is, though, I have to leave Bramble Hall. I expected it to be my home for the rest of my life. It is what my husband expected."

She dipped her head forward in an attempt to cling to consciousness. Tramp whined. She was going to be homeless. And friendless.

"I must count my blessings," she said, smoothing a hand over the dog's head as though to rea.s.sure herself by comforting him. "I am not penniless, after all. There are thousands upon thousands of people who at this very moment are both homeless and dest.i.tute. Oh, the despair of it. How do they go on, Sir Benedict? I must not despair. It would be wicked. I am not dest.i.tute. There must be somewhere I can live, some small country house I can afford."

She frowned in thought for a moment but was distracted when she realized he had got to his feet and come to sit beside her after propping his canes against the far side of the sofa. He took her right hand in both of his while Tramp stretched out at their feet. His hands were blessedly warm.

"I know how it is to feel homeless, even if I do not know how it is actually to be homeless," he said. "It is a wretchedly bleak and lonely feeling. But, as you say, you are not dest.i.tute."

She turned her head and looked at his finely chiseled features and slightly hollowed cheekbones, a strangely appealing, not-quite-handsome face-though his eyes were very blue. He had kissed her almost a month ago and then withdrawn from her life, though she was convinced he had sent his sister to befriend her and involve her in neighborhood and church activities.

"Do you have any other relatives apart from your half brother?" he asked.

"A few aunts and uncles and cousins," she said. "None to whom I have ever been close. They all shared my half brother's outrage over my father's marrying an actress of doubtful origin who was half his age."

"And there is no one else?"

There was the illusion of comfort in his grasp.

"There were friends, other wives, during the first year of my marriage," she said. "But I was not with them long enough to establish any lasting friends.h.i.+ps before the regiment went to the Peninsula and I was sent to Leyland instead of going with them. No, there is no one."

How abject it sounded. After twenty-four years of living, she had no one to whom she could turn for help.

He raised her hand, and she felt the warmth of his lips and his breath against the back of it for a few moments.

"But I have taken enough of your time, Sir Benedict," she said. "You must be wis.h.i.+ng me in Hades though you have been very kind. This is not your concern, and the longer I talk, the more pathetic I sound."

She spoke briskly, and she tried at the same time to repossess her hand. He tightened his hold upon it, however.

"I think," he said, "you had better marry me, Mrs. McKay."

She jerked her hand free then and leapt to her feet. "Oh, no," she cried in great dismay. "No, no, no. Oh, how very good of you. And how excruciatingly embarra.s.sing. I was not in any way hinting at such a thing, you know." She set her palms against her cheeks. As she had suspected, they were hot with shame.

"I am perfectly well aware of that," he said. "But marriage to me would solve your problem, you know. And perhaps it would solve mine too."

"You have a problem?" She frowned down at him.

"An inability to steel myself to rid my home of my younger brother and his family, who have usurped it," he said, smiling a slightly crooked smile, "and an impossibility of living there with them. A restlessness and a depression of spirits at the realization that I will never again be the man of action I used to be. An inability to forge a meaningful new life for myself and settle to it. Beatrice says it is all explained by the fact that I have no woman in my life."

"But you cannot solve a problem-not for either of us," she said, "by creating a new one."

"Marriage to each other would create a problem?" he asked.

"Of course it would." She stretched her fingers and then curled them into her palms at her sides. They were tingling. "It would be very improper for me to marry only five months after the death of my husband. Besides, I do not wish to marry again. Not yet, at least. The fetters of my first marriage were tightly binding and I want to be free. And if and when I do marry, I want it to be to a man who ... who had no connection with the wars. Forgive me, but I am tired of the wars and what they did to so many people. And as for you, it is nothing but sheer gallantry that has put the idea of marrying me into your head. By your own admission you are not yet ready to settle to your own life, Sir Benedict, let alone take on the burden of someone else's. You are not ready for the bonds of marriage. Not with me, certainly, when I am as restless and needy as you are. We would drag each other down into a pit of unending depression if we were to marry."

"Would we?" He was still smiling that crooked smile. "I find you very attractive, you know. And lest you think that not a very strong motive for marriage, I would add that you are the first woman to whom I have been attracted in six years."

"I find you ... personable too," she admitted. Good heavens, how could she deny it? There had been that kiss, had there not? "But attraction is not everything, or even very much. I was attracted to Matthew ... Oh, Sir Benedict, if we are only attracted to each other, then we should go to bed and have our fill of pleasure with each other. We ought not to marry."

His smile had disappeared and his face had flushed. Oh, dear, had she really just said what she knew she had said?

"An affair?" he said. "That would not solve your problem, ma'am. Not unless, that is, you are suggesting that I set you up somewhere as my mistress."

She doubted she had ever felt more mortified in her life. She stared at him and-laughed. And he stared back at her and laughed too.

"With a carriage of my own and four white horses to pull it?" she asked. "And diamonds as large as birds' eggs for my ears and bosom, and a bed draped in scarlet satin with scarlet velvet curtains about it and at the windows? With such inducements you might be able to persuade me."

"I believe," he said, "I might find the four white horses a trifle vulgar."

Incredibly, they both laughed again with genuine amus.e.m.e.nt.

And then that thought that had niggled at her a couple of minutes ago came to the forefront of her mind.

... some small country house I can afford.

She turned away sharply to the fireplace and stood with her hands on the mantelpiece, gazing into the unlit coals with unseeing eyes.

"Just a moment," she said, holding up one hand.

There was the little cottage.

Perhaps.

Her mother had grown up with her paternal aunt in southwest Wales before running away at the age of seventeen to become an actress in London. Not long before she died when Samantha was twelve, word of her aunt's death had reached her, and with it the news that she had been left her aunt's cottage on the coast. That cottage had pa.s.sed to Samantha on her mother's death. She had not even realized it until, after her father's death, John had sent on a letter from the solicitor in Wales who was managing it. Mr. Rhys had written to inform her that the people who had been renting the cottage for a number of years had left and that he would see to its maintenance, using the acc.u.mulated rent money, until he received instructions either to rent it again or to sell it. John had taken it upon himself, he had informed her, to reply with the instructions that the solicitor proceed as he saw fit. Matthew had been brought back from the Peninsula then, and they had just moved to Bramble Hall. He had been desperately ill, and she had been unaccustomed to nursing him. She had set the letter aside, as well as any annoyance she might have felt with John for interfering in her business. It had not seemed important business, anyway. Certainly she had never written to Mr. Rhys herself, as she might have and probably ought to have done.

Her mother, when she had learned of the bequest, had described the cottage with open contempt as a "heap" and a "hovel" that was best left to crumble to dust. That had been a long time ago, maybe fourteen years, and her mother had been remembering it from years before that. It might well have deteriorated to nothing by this time, especially without renters to look after it properly. Besides, the cottage might as well be at the other end of the world for all the good it would do her. Wales! And West Wales at that. It was not even close to the border with England. Samantha had never been there. She knew no one there. As far as she knew, there was no one to know. No one connected to her, anyway.

But it was a house. Perhaps. If it still existed. It had existed in some form five years or so ago, though, otherwise the solicitor would not have written that he would sell it or rent it again if she wished.

She was desperately in need of a home-and she already owned one. If it was still standing. And if it was habitable.

And suddenly its very remoteness became its chief attraction. It was far away from Leyland Abbey.