by Mary Balogh
Samantha had not missed mingling with society in the form of her neighbors for the obvious reason that she never had mingled with them. She hardly even knew them beyond nodding at church on Sunday mornings. She had been at Bramble Hall for five years, and almost every moment of those years had been devoted to Matthew’s care.
For four months now she had not cared for anything beyond the numbness of her own all-encompassing lethargy and exhaustion. If truth were told, she had been rather glad that Matilda was there to take charge of all that needed to be done, even though she had never liked her sister-in-law any better than her husband had.
But numbness and exhaustion could last only so long. After four months, life was reasserting itself. She was restless. She was ready to fling off her lethargy. She needed to get out—out of the house, out of the park. She needed to walk. She needed to breathe real air.
She gazed outdoors, her fingers drumming, and then looked down at her widow’s weeds and grimaced. She felt the blackness of every ill-fitting stitch of them like a physical weight. She had tried reasoning with Matilda earlier. Surely, she had said, it would be harmless to go out for a walk along country lanes that were rarely traveled. And even if they did encounter someone, surely that person would not think any the worse of them for strolling sedately in the countryside close to their own home. Surely whoever it was would not dash off to spread the word throughout the neighborhood that the widow and her sister-in-law were kicking up a lark, behaving with shocking levity and disrespect for the dead.
Had she really hoped to draw a smile from Matilda with her exaggeration? Had Matilda ever smiled? What she had done was stare stonily back at her smiling sister-in-law, deliberately set aside her unfinished mending task, and announce that she had a sick headache, for which she hoped Samantha was satisfied. She had withdrawn to her room to lie down for an hour or two.
Samantha was glad Matilda had never married. Some poor man had thereby been saved from a life of abject misery. She did not even feel guilty at the uncharitable thought.
Her downward glance at her blacks had also encountered the eager, hopeful expression of a large brown shaggy dog of quite indeterminate breed, a stray that had turned up literally on her doorstep two years ago looking like a gangly skeleton, and had taken up residence there after she fed him out of sheer pity and then tried to shoo him away. He had steadfastly refused to be shooed, and somehow, by means quite beyond either her comprehension or her control, he had taken up residence inside the house and grown more bulky and more thick-and-unruly-coated but never sleek or shiny or graceful as any self-respecting dog ought to look. He was seated at Samantha’s feet now, his tail thumping the floor, his tongue lolling, his eyes begging her to please, please do something with him.
Sometimes she felt he was the only bright spot in her world.
“You would come walking with me if I asked it of you, would you not, Tramp?” she asked him. “Respectability notwithstanding?”
It was a fatal question—it had contained a word beginning with the letter w. Actually, it had contained more than one, but one of them also had the letters a-l-k attached to it. Tramp scrambled to his feet in his usual ungainly manner, yipped sharply as if under the illusion that he was still a puppy, panted noisily as though he had just run a mile at top speed, and continued to gaze expectantly upward.
“How could your answer be anything but yes?” She laughed at him and patted his head. But he was having none of such mild affection. He circled his head so that he could first slobber over her hand and then expose his throat for a good scratch. “And why not? Why ever not, Tramp?”
It was clear Tramp could think of no reason at all why they should deprive themselves merely because Lady Matilda McKay had a sick headache as well as strange notions about air and exercise and correct mourning etiquette. He lumbered over to the door and gazed up at the knob.
It was unseemly for a lady to walk alone beyond the confines of her own park—even when she was not in mourning. Or so Samantha had been taught during the year she had spent at Leyland Abbey while Matthew was away in the Peninsula with his regiment. It was one of the many dreary rules of being a lady that her father-in-law had felt it incumbent upon himself to teach the woman his son had married against his wishes.
Well, she had no choice but to go alone. Matilda was flat on her daybed upstairs and would not have accompanied her anyway—it was the very idea of the walk that had put her on the daybed. If Samantha set one toe beyond the boundary of the park and Matilda and the Earl of Heathmoor found out about it … Well, even if she dug a hole all the way to China and disappeared down it, she would not escape their wrath. And the earl would hear about it if Matilda did. There were many miles of countryside between County Durham in the north of England and Kent in the south, but those miles burned up a few times each week with messengers bearing Matilda’s letters home and the earl’s letters to Bramble Hall.
Why had she allowed this to happen? Samantha asked herself. She was beginning to feel like a prisoner in her own home, under the guardianship of a humorless spy. Matthew would not have tolerated it. He had exercised a sort of tyranny of his own over her, but it was not his father’s. He had hated his father.
“Well,” she said, “since I was foolish enough to use the forbidden word in your hearing, Tramp, it would be nothing short of cruelty to disappoint you. And it would be the ultimate in cruelty to disappoint myself.”
His tail waved, and he looked from the doorknob to her and back again.
Ten minutes later they were striding along the path at the west side of the house toward the garden gate, which they passed through to the lane and meadows beyond. At least, Samantha strode in quite unladylike but equally unrepentant fashion while Tramp loped along at her side and occasionally dashed off in pursuit of any squirrel or small rodent incautious enough to rear its head. Though perhaps it was not lack of caution but merely contempt on their part, for Tramp never came close to running his prey to earth.
Ah, it felt so very good to breathe in fresh air at last, Samantha thought, even if it must be filtered through the heavy black veil that hung from the brim of her black bonnet. And it was glorious to see nothing but open space about her, first on the lane, and then on the daisy-and-buttercup-strewn grass of a meadow onto which they turned. It was sheer heaven to allow her stride to lengthen and to know that at least for a while the horizon was the only boundary that confined her.
There was no one to witness her grand indiscretion, no one to gasp in horror at the sight of her.
She stopped occasionally and gathered buttercups, while Tramp frolicked about her. And then, her little posy complete, she strode along again, a thick hedge to one side, all the fresh beauties of nature spread out on the other, the sky stretching overhead with its high layer of clouds through which she could see the bright, fuzzy disk of the sun. There was a brisk, slightly chilly breeze fluttering her veil about her face, but she did not feel the discomfort of the cold. Indeed, she relished it. She felt happier than she had felt for months, even perhaps for years. Oh, definitely for years.
She was not going to feel guilty about taking this hour for herself. No one could say she had not given her husband all the attention she possibly could while he lived. And no one could say she had not mourned him properly since his death. No one could even say she had been glad of his death. She had never, ever wished him dead, even at those times when she had wondered if she had any reserves of energy left with which to tend him and be patient with his endless peevishness. She had been genuinely saddened by the death of the man she had married just seven years before with such high hopes for a happily-ever-after.
No, she was not going to feel guilty. She needed this—this pleasure, this peace, this quiet restoration of her spirits.
It was precisely as she was thinking these tranquil thoughts that her peace was shattered in a sudden and most alarming manner.
Tramp had just returned with the stick she had thrown for him, and she was bending to
retrieve it with one hand while she held her posy in the other, when it seemed that a thunderbolt came crashing down upon them from the heavens, only narrowly missing them. Samantha shrieked with terror, while the dog went into a frenzy of hysterical barking and leaped aimlessly in every direction, bowling Samantha right off her feet. Her buttercups went flying about in a hail of yellow, and she landed with a painful thud on her bottom.
She gaped in mingled pain and terror and discovered that the thunderbolt was in fact a large black horse, which had just leapt over the hedge very close to where she had been standing. It might have kept on going, since it appeared to have landed safely enough, but Tramp’s barking and leaping and perhaps her own scream had sent it into a frenzy of its own. It whinnied and reared, its eyes rolling wildly and fearfully, as the rider on its back fought for his seat and brought it under control with considerable skill and a whole arsenal of curse words most foul.
“Are you out of your mind? Are you quite insane?”
“Bring that blasted animal under control, woman, damn it.”
Samantha shouted her rhetorical questions and the man bellowed his imperious command simultaneously.
Tramp was standing his ground and barking ferociously, alternately with baring his teeth and growling in a fearsome manner. The horse was still prancing nervously, though it was no longer rearing.
Woman?
Blasted animal?
Damn it?
And why was the man not leaping from the saddle to help her to her feet and assure himself that he had not done her any fatal injury, as any true gentleman would?
“Tramp,” she said firmly, though certainly not in obedience to the rider’s command. “That is quite enough!”
A rabbit chose that moment to pop up on the horizon, ears pointed at the heavens, and Tramp dashed off in joyful pursuit, still barking and still convinced he could win the race.
“You might have killed me with your irresponsible stunt,” Samantha shouted above the din. “Are you quite mad?”
The gentleman on the horse’s back glared coldly at her. “If you are unable to control that pathetic excuse for a dog,” he said, “you really ought not to bring him out where he can upset horses and livestock and endanger human life.”
“Livestock?” She looked pointedly to left and right to indicate that there was nary a cow or bull in sight. “He endangered human life? Your own, I suppose you mean, since mine clearly means nothing to you. Allow me to pose a question. Was it you, sir, or was it Tramp who chose with reckless unconcern to jump a hedge without first ascertaining that it was safe to do so? And was it you or he who then hurled the blame upon the innocent person who was almost killed? And upon a dog which was happily at play until he had the life virtually scared out of him?”
She got to her feet without taking her eyes off him—and without wincing over what felt like a bruised tail-bone. Perhaps it was a good thing he had not dismounted to help her up, she thought as wrath took the place of terror. She might have smacked his face, and that must certainly be against the rules of propriety for a lady, not to mention a widow in deep mourning.
His nostrils flared as he listened to her, and his lips compressed into a thin line as he looked down at her as though she were a nasty worm it might have been better that his horse had trodden upon.
“I trust,” he said with stiff formality, “you have not come to any great harm, ma’am? I assume not, though, since you are quite capable of speech.”
She narrowed her eyes and bent upon him her most cold and haughty stare, though she was aware that the thickness of her veil probably marred its full effect.
Tramp came dashing back without the rabbit. He had stopped barking. She rested a hand on his head as he sat panting beside her, eyeing horse and rider eagerly as though they might be new friends.
Samantha and the rider regarded each other for a few silent moments, which nevertheless bristled with mutual hostility. Then he abruptly touched his whip to the brim of his tall hat, turned his horse, and rode away at a canter without another word, leaving her the clear victor of the field.
Well.
Well!
Her bosom still heaved with ire. Woman, indeed. And blasted animal. And damn it.
He was a stranger—at least she thought he was since she had certainly never set eyes upon him before. A thoroughly disagreeable stranger. She fervently hoped he would keep on riding until he was far, far away and never return. He was no gentleman despite his looks, which suggested the contrary. He had done something unpardonably reckless, with results that might have been fatal had she been standing six feet farther to the east. Yet she and Tramp were to blame. And though he had asked, or rather trusted, that she had taken no harm, he had not got down from his saddle to find out at closer quarters. And then he had had the effrontery to assume that she must be unharmed, since she could still talk. As if she were some kind of shrew.
It really was a shame that good looks and elegance and an overall appearance of masculine virility were wasted on such a nasty, cold, arrogant, villainous sort of man. He was good-looking, she admitted when she thought about him, even if his face was a trifle too lean and angular for true handsomeness. And he was youngish. She guessed he was not much above thirty, if he was even that old.
He had an impressive vocabulary, almost none of which she would have understood if she had not spent a year with Matthew’s regiment before they were sent off to the Peninsula. And he had used it in a lady’s hearing—without apologizing, as the officers of the regiment had always done quite effusively when they realized they had cursed within half a mile of a lady’s ears.
She sincerely hoped she would never encounter him again. She might be tempted to give him the full length of her tongue if she did.
“Well, pathetic excuse for a dog,” she said, looking down at Tramp, “our one foray into the peace and freedom of the outdoors almost ended in disaster. Behold my posy scattered to the four winds. Father-in-Law would lecture me for a fortnight if he were to hear about this adventure, especially if he knew I had scolded a gentleman instead of hanging my head meekly and allowing him to scold me. Do not, I pray you, breathe a word of this to Matilda. She would have a migraine and a sick headache combined—after berating me, that is, and writing a long letter home. You do not suppose they can be right, do you, Tramp? That I am not a proper lady, I mean? I suppose my origins are against me, as the Earl of Heathmoor was pleased to inform me with tedious regularity once upon a time, but really … Woman and damn it. And you a blasted animal. I have been severely provoked. We have been.”
Tramp, apparently more forgiving than she, fell into step beside her and refrained from offering an opinion.
3
Guilt and shame quickly hurled cold water on the embers of Ben’s fury.
The humiliating truth, he admitted, was that he had frightened himself more than half to death when he jumped that damned hedge. He had been back to riding for some time, having discovered that he could both mount and dismount with the aid of a special block. He had learned to ride with some skill and confidence despite the fact that he did not have as much power in his thighs as he had used to have. But today was the first time since his cavalry days that he had challenged himself to jump a fence or hedge.
Perhaps it had been the reaction to that admission he had made to the Survivors at Penderris that he had taken his recovery as far as it could go. Perhaps he had needed to push himself to one more level of achievement just to prove to himself that he had not simply given up. The open meadows bordered by hedges in which he had been riding had tempted him. The hedges were high enough to be a challenge but not high enough to make the attempt to jump one of them entirely reckless. And so he had chosen this particular hedge, set his horse directly at it, and soared over with at least a foot to spare.
The rush of exhilarated triumph that had accompanied the jump had quickly converted to sheer, blind terror, however, and his mind had been catapulted back to that most hellish of black mome
nts in the tumult of battle when he had been shot, his horse had been shot under him at the same time and had fallen on him before he could draw his foot free of the stirrup, and then another horse and rider had come crashing down on top of them both.
He had thought it was happening all over again. There had been that sense of falling, of losing control, of staring death in the eyeballs. Pure instinct had kept him in the saddle and set him to bringing his horse under control, and he had soon realized that the source of the whole near catastrophe was a damned maniacal hound, which was still leaping about, barking ferociously, long after all danger was over. And there was a woman, an ugly old crone, dressed from head to toe in hideous black, seated at her ease on the grass below the hedge, surrounded by wildflowers and not doing a blessed thing to control the beast.
Had he been at liberty to stop and consider, of course, he would have realized a number of other things, as he did now while he rode away from the scene of his guilt. She would not have been sitting on the ground gathering flowers just for the sheer pleasure of it. It was a chilly, blustery day. She must, then, have fallen or been knocked down. Her dog would not have behaved as it had if he had not come flying over the hedge without any warning. And he might easily have killed the woman if he had taken the hedge just to the right of where he had. The fault for the whole debacle had been, in fact, entirely his.