by Balogh, Mary
There had been nothing but men in her life since she was eight—twenty years ago—until recently. She had decided during the past fifteen months that she had had enough of them, though none of them had ever been openly cruel to her. But there would be no more men—not, at least, men who would own her and have charge of her life and her very mind and person. Freedom was a wonderful thing, she had discovered. It was far too precious to give up. Ever.
Mrs. Bailey, the vicar’s wife, was arranging her considerable bulk on the pianoforte bench, having been invited to play by Tom Corning himself. She was by far the most accomplished pianist in the community. Unfortunately, the instrument was slightly out of tune, as it had been for as long as Lydia had been at Fairfield, and the key of high C stuck whenever it was depressed with any degree of pressure and had to be manually restored to its position before the music could continue. Everyone listened indulgently anyway, while Mrs. Bailey played and Major Westcott stood at her shoulder to turn the pages of the music and lend his assistance with the sticky key.
“Tom,” he called across the room when the first piece came to an end and the smattering of applause had died down. “If you do not hire someone within the next week to overhaul this instrument and repair that key, I swear I will undertake the task myself and you will be sorry.”
“He will probably saw off the key altogether, Tom, and leave a gaping hole in its place for Mrs. Bailey and others to break a finger through,” Dr. Powis warned. “I would not chance it if I were you, though the broken finger would be business for me. Get the dratted piano tuner here.”
“You have been threatening to have the thing tuned for at least the last four years, since I came home,” Major Westcott said. “Hannah must have the patience of Job to put up with it.”
“I am not such a saint, Harry,” Hannah said. “I have been threatening to tune Tom over it for at least that long.”
There was general laughter. Tom Corning and the major had apparently been close friends since childhood and were grinning at each other as they bickered.
Lydia laughed with everyone else.
No, it was not a man that was missing from her life.
It was a lover.
They were one and the same thing, of course, some might argue. But those people would be wrong. A man in her life, whether father, brother, brother-in-law, or husband, would want to own her—they would own her. They would also want to dominate her. She would not allow herself to be owned or dominated ever again. A lover, on the other hand, could be enjoyed and sent on his way when his presence became bothersome.
Mr. Carver, one of Major Westcott’s tenant farmers, who lived a mile or so beyond the village, had come to sit beside Lydia before the music began. As soon as Tom and Major Westcott had finished calling across the room to each other, he launched into an account of the sudden and mysterious lameness of one of his horses in the right foreleg, just when there was a great deal of farm work to be done. Lydia turned her attention to him, though at least part of her mind was imagining how very deeply shocked he and all her neighbors and friends would be if they were aware of her deepest musings.
A lover could be enjoyed and sent on his way . . .
She had been the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor’s wife and helpmeet. That was the word he had liked to use to describe her. It was as though she had had no identity of her own. She was only his helpmeet. For more than six years, first as a curate’s wife, then as a vicar’s, she had cultivated modesty and invisibility because it was what he had expected of her. Not literal invisibility, of course. Everyone had seen her, welcomed her, apparently liked and approved of her. She had forever been busy about parish business and the performance of good works, as befitted the wife of the vicar. But nobody, it seemed to Lydia, not even her closest acquaintances, had really known her. She had had no close friends while her husband lived. She had been too busy, all her time and attention devoted to furthering the work that was his passion. Sometimes she had had the rather dizzying suspicion that she did not know herself. Was there even a self to know? Someone quite separate and distinct from her energetic, zealous, charismatic husband?
Since Isaiah’s death, she had chosen to remain more or less invisible. It had been better thus while she was still in her blacks, and it was easier now so that she could guard her fragile, hard-won freedom. She was known, she supposed, as the amiable, placid, even bland Mrs. Tavernor, the brave, tragic widow and helpmeet of their much-revered deceased vicar. She did not mind. At least for the present, she did not.
Yet here she was, seated in the midst of a number of her fellow villagers, dreaming of a lover.
Specifically, of Major Harry Westcott.
Who very probably scarcely knew she existed.
She had never flirted with him or tried in any way to engage his interest. She would not even know how to go about either one, anyway, if she wished to try. She had no serious designs on him. The chance that she would find a lover, any lover, here in this small village, was slim to none. Actually, slimmer even than that.
But a woman could dream, could she not? Dreams were often ideal pleasures, because one could make of them whatever one wished. And if they never came true, as most did not—and this one certainly never would—then what did it matter? Her real life was very nearly perfect as it was. Her dreams merely brightened it a little more.
Major Westcott was a young man, probably about her own age. He was tall and lean—not thin. That was too negative a word. Besides, his arms and shoulders and chest looked strongly muscled beneath the well-tailored coats and waistcoats he always wore. And his legs were long and shapely and powerful-looking under his pantaloons. They looked even more so in riding breeches and boots, she had noticed on other occasions. He was fair-haired and good-looking, even if not outstandingly handsome. He had a goodhumored face, with blue eyes that almost always smiled. She was not deceived by either his face or his eyes, however. What had always fascinated her most about him was the suggestion of darkness that he kept very well hidden.
Perhaps it did not even exist. His mask—if it was a mask—never slipped in public, or never had when she had been present to witness it, anyway. And he was generally known as an even-tempered, sunny-natured man without a trouble in the world now that he was back home after the Napoleonic Wars in which he had fought. Lydia did not believe it. She knew very little of his past, but she knew enough to understand that there had been much suffering in his life, and that it was unlikely he had either dealt with it all or otherwise put it behind him. It was far more likely that he had repressed most of it. Lydia knew all about repressed suffering.
Once, very briefly, after the death of his father, he had been the Earl of Riverdale, with properties and fortune that had made him a very wealthy and socially prominent young man. He had been brought up and educated for just that life. But he had lost everything after the bigamous nature of his father’s marriage to his mother had been discovered. It all must have been absolutely devastating to his family. And to him. Oh, he was treated here with great deference despite that huge change in his life. Most people here had known him all his life and had always liked him. He was still treated as lord of the manor, somewhat above all of them in rank. He could no longer be called my lord or Lord Riverdale, of course, but he could, and was, called Major Westcott as a mark of their respect, even though he was no longer a military officer.
He had been severely wounded at the Battle of Waterloo and had spent years recovering, first in France and then here at Hinsford Manor. He seemed perfectly fit now and had no visible scars, but Lydia doubted his recovery was complete, or ever would be. Perhaps there were wounds of war that were not entirely physical. She had no evidence of that, but she had always thought it. How could one fight other human beings to the death, slaughter them by the dozens, watch one’s friends and comrades being slaughtered, be wounded almost to the point of death oneself, and come away from it unscathed?
How did one live with memories of hell?
Why
did people speak of battlefields as fields of glory? They must be as close to hell as it was possible to get in this life.
Oh, there was surely darkness in Major Westcott. Lydia could sense it. But it served only to make him more impossibly attractive to her than his appearance and outer manner already made him.
Could something be more impossible than impossible?
Lydia smiled to herself, gave herself a mental shake, and focused more of her attention upon Mr. Carver, who was still speaking even though Mrs. Bailey was playing again.
“Perhaps,” he was saying, “he has just grown too old and is ready to be put out to pasture. Do you think that might be it, Mrs. Tavernor?”
“Perhaps he just needs to rest for a while until his leg is better,” Lydia suggested.
As soon as the music had finished, Mrs. Bartlett, Lydia’s next door neighbor, approached Lydia and smiled apologetically down at her.
“Mrs. Tavernor,” she said, “I am sorry to interrupt your conversation. My daughter-in-law has persuaded me to go out to the farm with her and my son to stay for a few days. There is room in the carriage for me to go with them tonight. I have things out there and will not need to go back home first. I always welcome the chance to spend some time with my grandchildren. I will not need you to walk home with me after all, then. I know you are not afraid of the dark, but I do hope you will not mind going alone.”
“But we can squeeze Mrs. Tavernor into the carriage too, Mother, and give her a ride home,” her daughter-in-law protested, appearing at her side. She smiled at Lydia. “It will be no trouble at all.”
“There really is no need for you to go out of your way,” Lydia assured her as she got to her feet. It was indeed growing late. “I will enjoy the exercise and the fresh air after all the excellent cake I have eaten. And I really do not have far to go.”
“But—” the younger Mrs. Bartlett began, while all about them other guests were also getting to their feet and preparing to leave.
“Mrs. Tavernor will not have to walk alone, Mrs. Bartlett,” Tom Corning called across the room. “I’ll run upstairs and fetch a coat and come with you, ma’am. I doubtless need the exercise, and you really ought not to walk on your own at night.”
Lydia opened her mouth to protest. The main street of the village was not terribly long, after all, even though the Cornings lived at one end of it and she lived a little beyond the other end. A number of people between here and there would be at home, with lamplight or candlelight illumining their windows. There was absolutely nothing of which to be afraid. And then another voice spoke up from the direction of the pianoforte, where Mrs. Bailey was gathering up the music and Major Westcott was putting it away neatly inside the bench.
“I am going in that direction anyway, Tom,” he called, “and would be happy to escort Mrs. Tavernor home. You will be perfectly safe with me, ma’am. I can fight off wild bears and wolves with my bare hands.”
“That would be a sight to behold,” Tom said derisively, grinning as he spoke. “Do you wish to take the risk that he is merely boasting, Mrs. Tavernor?”
“Since I have never in my life seen a wolf or a bear, stray or otherwise, in this neighborhood,” Lydia said, “I believe it is safe to take the chance. Though I hope I am not dragging you away earlier than you intended to leave, Major Westcott.”
“Not at all, ma’am,” he assured her. “Tom and Hannah will probably be glad to see the back of me. And it will be my pleasure to walk with you.”
He smiled at her. A sweet, quite impersonal, devastatingly attractive smile.
“Then thank you,” she said.
Oh goodness.
PRAISE FOR THE WESTCOTT SERIES
Someone to Honor
“A strong, compassionate heroine and a hero who learns to appreciate his worth discover the true meaning of love in this tender, perceptive, and infinitely entertaining romance that delightfully continues the saga of the unconventional Westcotts.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Poignant, heartrending, hopeful, and quietly profound, the latest exquisitely written installment in Balogh’s Regency Westcott series is another sure bet for the author’s legion of fans as well as an excellent introduction for new readers to Balogh’s effortlessly elegant and superbly romantic brand of literary magic.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“This warmhearted addition to the Westcott series adds depth to a complex, congenial family.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Someone to Honor is classic Mary Balogh—the exquisite character development; the slow, romantic angst; the clever plot; the myriad of interesting characters.”
—All About Romance
“Someone to Honor has top-notch characters with a deeply moving story about love and family. This type of storytelling with characters whose stories suck you in is what makes a Mary Balogh novel so addictive.”
—Fresh Fiction
Someone to Trust
“The balance between sweet and bitter produces a complex and winning love story.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The sheer perfection of Balogh’s prose in the fifth superbly written installment in the Westcott series marries her rare gift for crafting realistically nuanced characters to produce another radiant Regency historical romance by one of the genre’s most resplendent writers.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“With tenderness, humor, and infinite finesse, Balogh turns the classic younger woman / older man pairing on its well-worn ear in another sigh-worthy [novel] that readers are sure to savor.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“The quiet, authentic intensity of the characters’ emotions is a hallmark of Balogh’s work, and it is a pleasure to experience each heart-wringing moment in this romance made for warming a winter night.”
—BookPage
Someone to Care
“A love story nearly perfect in every way.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“A story that is searing in its insight, as comforting as a hug, and a brilliant addition to this series. Another gem from a master of the art.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
Someone to Wed
“With her signature voice and steady pace, Balogh crafts a thoughtful, sweet Regency-era love story to follow Someone to Hold.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Balogh’s delightful ugly duckling tale may be the nonpareil Regency romance of the season.”
—Booklist (starred review)
Someone to Hold
“Written with an irresistibly wry sense of humor and graced with a cast of unforgettable characters, the second in Balogh’s exceptional Westcott series, following Someone to Love, is another gorgeously written love story from the queen of Regency romances.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“This ‘Cinderella’ reversal story seethes with desire, painted paradoxically in the watercolor prose that is the hallmark of this author.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This Regency romance dives deeper than most and will satisfy fans and new readers alike.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Balogh is, and always will be, a grand mistress of the genre.”
—RT Book Reviews
MORE PRAISE FOR AWARD-WINNING
AUTHOR MARY BALOGH
“One of the best!”
—New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn
“Today’s superstar heir to the marvelous legacy of Georgette Heyer (except a lot steamier).”
—New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips
“A romance writer of mesmerizing intensity.”
—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney
“Winning, witty, and engaging.”
—New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros
“A superb author whose narrative voice comments on the characters and events of her
novel in an ironic tone reminiscent of Jane Austen.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Mary Balogh reaches deep and touches the heart.”
—New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston
“Thoroughly enjoyable.”
—New York Times bestselling author Janelle Taylor
“Balogh once again takes a standard romance trope and imbues it with heart, emotional intelligence, and flawless authenticity.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“This touching, totally enthralling story overflows with subtle humor, brilliant dialog, breathtaking sensuality, and supporting characters you want to know better.”
—Library Journal (starred review)