by Mary Balogh
As Jessica and Estelle chatted and laughed over some minor scandal that had erupted during a ball they had both attended last week, Abigail thought again of the plan of escape that had leapt to her mind yesterday. It seemed even more realistic today, for Harry was surely not fit enough to be here alone, even with a houseful of servants to cater to his needs. When everyone returned to London, as everyone must, including her mother, who would need to be there for Estelle’s sake, Harry would need company and nurturing. Not necessarily professional care, as her aunts had advocated last evening. For his wounds were all healed, and he suffered from no definite illness. He just needed space and time and peace and . . . company.
He was sitting beside the fire now, a rug drawn over his knees, though he had not put it there himself. Mama had. Abigail had fully expected that he would push it away impatiently. He had not done so, though he had looked a trifle irritated and had grimaced slightly as his eyes caught Abigail’s across the room. It was an expression she recognized from the old Harry. Mama is fussing again, it seemed to say to her, but I cannot hurt her feelings by complaining.
No, he did not need doctors and nurses. Neither did he need to be coddled. He needed someone who would always be here with him without being intrusive. He needed someone who would encourage him to walk and talk and take some air and exercise even if it was only a drive around the park in the gig, but someone who would also leave him alone at times. He needed someone to reminisce with and laugh with—and even someone to laugh at him when necessary. He needed someone who would give him the chance to restore his soul.
And oh dear me, she needed all those things too.
She needed to be with someone who was not forever looking at her with loving concern. Someone who was not constantly trying to plan a better life for her without knowing what she would consider better. Someone who would not be hurt because she could not seem to respond to his well-meaning efforts. Someone to laugh at her occasionally. Someone to talk and reminisce with her and not fuss over her. Someone who would respect her silences and her gravity. Someone who would make her laugh.
Someone to understand.
But all this was not primarily about her. Indeed, she was in danger of falling into self-pity. This was about Harry, at whom even now she could scarcely bear to look. There was something almost . . . gray about him, as though death, cheated for almost two years since Waterloo, still hovered hopefully over him. But he was not ill, only not well. There was a difference.
She would stay with him when everyone else returned to London. That was what had leapt into her mind yesterday. She would persuade him that she really wanted to stay, that there was no element of martyrdom in her decision. This was home, after all, the place she had longed to be ever since her mother’s marriage, kind as Marcel had always been to her and affectionate as Estelle and Bertrand had been from the start. Hinsford was comfort and security.
It was where she needed to be, for the present anyway. And Harry’s return here had made it possible.
“Dinner is served, sir,” the butler announced from the doorway.
“Oh good,” Bertrand said, getting immediately to his feet and rubbing his hands together. “I am starved.” Then he smiled ruefully down at Anna and Alexander, with whom he had been conversing, and grimaced across the room at his father. “I do beg your pardon. That was not the best-mannered response, was it?”
“I like the enthusiasm of youth,” Aunt Louise, Jessica’s mother, said with a laugh. “You may lead me into the dining room, young man, and tell me what you plan to do with your life now that your studies have been completed.”
“Would you like a tray brought in here, Harry?” Mama suggested. “I will have one brought for myself too if you wish.”
“I dashed well would not,” Harry said with a flash of his old spirit. “I will eat in the dining room with everyone else. But where is Gil?”
Gil? Abigail stared at him blankly as she got to her feet with her cousin and her stepsister.
“A pair of hefty servants were carrying pails of steaming water into his room an hour ago,” Alexander said, offering his arm to Wren, his countess.
“Who is Gil?” Estelle asked.
Harry did not answer directly. “Well, there you are,” he said, addressing a man who was hovering outside the door the butler had left open. “Just in time for dinner. Come inside and be introduced.”
He was a large man, tall, straight backed, broad shouldered, dark haired, dressed neatly though without ostentation in black-and-white evening clothes. For a few moments he remained in shadow, but then he stepped into the room. He had a lean, forbidding countenance, dark eyes, and a scar slashing across cheek and chin.
He was not, apparently, a servant.
“My longtime comrade and friend, Lieutenant Colonel Gil Bennington,” Harry said by way of introduction. “My mother, the Marchioness of Dorchester, Gil, and her husband. My aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Netherby. My half sister, Anna, Duchess of Netherby. You already know Avery. Wren, Countess of Riverdale. You already know Alexander. My cousin Lady Jessica Archer, Aunt Louise’s daughter. My stepbrother and stepsister, Bertrand and Estelle Lamarr. And my sister Abigail.”
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington’s eyes had rested upon each in turn as he acknowledged the introduction with a slight nod of the head. They rested eventually upon Abigail, looking quite unsurprised. He gave her the same nod. Nothing else. No raised eyebrow. No smirk. No hostile glare.
Abigail would have sunk through the carpet and the floor and stayed there if she could. He was a lieutenant colonel. He outranked Harry. He was a longtime comrade and friend. And . . . what had she said to him?
Were you given permission to remove your coat and shirt?
Oh, she could die of mortification.
“There will be a written test later this evening after dinner,” Anna said, smiling as she walked toward him and took his arm. “By then we will have been able to tell you also about the children in the nursery—mine and Wren’s—and about those family members who will be coming tomorrow or the next day.”
He looked sternly down at Anna while the rest of them laughed and moved toward the door. “Does spelling count?” he asked.
“He looks deliciously ferocious,” Jessica murmured as soon as he had left the room.
“He does,” Estelle agreed, laughing softly.
No, Abigail told herself, she would not sink into the floor even if a hole were to open obligingly at her feet right at this moment. Or die of mortification. He had had no business chopping wood beside the stables if he was a guest of Harry’s. A lieutenant colonel, no less. He had had even less business stripping to the waist for anyone to see who strayed even a short distance from the house. And he must have known perfectly well about Harry’s guests and that some of them had already arrived. He had looked her over quite deliberately from head to foot, as no true gentleman ought to do. Any other gentleman would immediately have dived for his shirt and apologized profusely and explained who he was. He would have been intent upon saving her from further embarrassment.
It had been quite deliberate, that insolent behavior of his. He had meant to embarrass her and cause her humiliation when she realized her mistake.
Well, she was not going to be embarrassed. Or humiliated.
“There is nothing the least bit attractive about him,” she said, though she was careful to keep her voice low. “He looks like a barbarian. And he is ugly.”
She was being petty. And untruthful.
Jessica laughed. “But deliciously barbaric, you must confess, Abby,” she said.
“And deliciously ugly,” Estelle added.
“I am hungry,” Abigail informed them as they laughed with delight at their own wit.
* * *
• • •
He had, of course, been ridiculously unfair earlier, Gil admitted to himself later in the evening. I
t was never sensible to make a sweeping statement about half the world’s population—perhaps more than half since the male portion of it was more often than not intent upon killing itself off during endless wars.
He did not dislike all women.
He never had. He had generally liked the camp followers, the crowds of women—wives, widows, cooks, washerwomen, whores, and others—who had tailed the armies about in droves wherever they went, many of them loud, coarse, slatternly, cheerful, cursing, generous with their favors, courageous, lusty, undemanding, and tough. It was the ladies he had disliked, the wives and daughters of officers who had insisted upon bringing their families to war. They were almost invariably haughty and demanding. Often they were helpless and clinging and inclined to the vapors and expected every man to dash to their assistance, bowing and scraping and generally debasing himself as he did so. Almost to a woman they had despised those colleagues of their husbands and fathers who were of lower rank or—far worse—not true gentlemen at all.
He had despised the lot of them heartily in return.
Except one . . .
Except Caroline, Lord help him.
Even with ladies, however, it was unfair to generalize. There had been a few among them whom he had respected, even liked.
He liked most of the ladies here at Hinsford, grudgingly, it was true, since their very presence dismayed him on his own account and worried him on Harry’s. A crowd of visitors was exactly what Harry did not need. It was why he had decided to come home to the country rather than go to London. But these people were at least amiable.
He sat between the Duchess of Netherby and Lady Jessica Archer at dinner, and they both conversed intelligently with him. The duchess was Harry’s half sister. She explained to Gil how she had grown up at an orphanage in Bath, unaware of her true identity. She had been twenty-five and teaching at the orphanage school when she was summoned to London to learn that she was in fact the legitimate daughter of the recently deceased Earl of Riverdale.
“A Cinderella story,” Gil said.
“In many ways yes,” she agreed. “But Cinderella was unhappy with her life before she met Prince Charming. She lived with a wicked stepmother and wicked stepsisters and was given grueling chores she did not enjoy. I was well cared for at the orphanage and had good friends there, including the one who later married my half sister Camille. I enjoyed teaching. I actually liked my Spartan little room and my few possessions, which were very precious to me. I was not entirely delighted to learn the truth about myself.”
“You would go back, then, if you could?” he asked.
“Oh, by no means. I did marry Prince Charming, after all.” She laughed and her eyes twinkled, and Gil liked her.
“You spent time with the garrison on St. Helena, Lieutenant Colonel?” Lady Jessica Archer asked him. “What is Napoleon Bonaparte like? We tend to think of him as an evil, black-hearted villain, but I suppose the truth is far more nuanced. I expect he is a fascinating though dangerous man.”
She was a dark-haired, bright-eyed beauty, the duchess’s sister-in-law, and Gil wondered why she was not yet married. Was marriage not the goal of all young ladies as soon as they left the schoolroom at the age of seventeen or so? She must be several years past that age.
“I saw him a number of times, of course,” he told her. “But I did not know him or ever speak to him. I felt sorry for him actually. If he had been made to face a firing squad, I would have approved. If he had been shut up for life in a fortress, I would have thought it a just fate. As it was, he was exiled to that island and housed in what many people seem to believe is a luxury he does not deserve. But in reality it is a house in ill repair. It is damp and unhealthy, and nothing has been done to make it more habitable. It seems to me that he is being treated not with justice but with deliberate contempt.”
“And contempt for such a man is not justice?” she asked. It seemed to be a genuine question, not a snide comment. Her knife and fork were suspended above her plate while she gave him her full attention.
“No,” he said. “I believe contempt says more about the person giving it than the one receiving. It demeans what ought to be righteous punishment.”
It occurred to him that this was probably not at all the sort of thing he should be talking about with a young lady of the ton—a duke’s sister. And it occurred to him as altogether likely that he was being treated with such warm courtesy only because it was assumed that as an officer he must also be a gentleman. But he could hardly be expected to stand up and announce himself to be the bastard son of a blacksmith’s daughter and a man he had never met or even heard from until he was grown up and a sergeant in India.
After they had adjourned to the drawing room, the Marchioness of Dorchester, Harry’s mother, sat on the arm of her son’s chair and set a hand on his shoulder when he would have risen to give her his place.
“Lieutenant Colonel Bennington,” she said, beckoning him closer. “I understand from Harry that you spent a considerable amount of time with him in Paris every day after your return from St. Helena. That was extremely kind of you. And he tells me you had already made arrangements for his journey home before Avery and Alexander arrived.”
“He wished to come, ma’am,” he explained, “against the advice of his physicians.”
“It was poor advice, then?” she asked him, glancing down at her son with obvious concern and rubbing her hand reassuringly over his shoulder.
“I believed it was,” he told her. “With the best intentions in the world, they were nevertheless coddling him in the direction of the grave. He might have arrived there before I returned to France if he had not been too stubborn to die.”
“Oh.” She looked a bit shocked.
“One knows oneself to be an invalid,” Harry said, “when people talk about one as though one were not present to speak for oneself. I do not believe my case was nearly as dire as Gil describes it, Mama, but I will be forever grateful to him for taking my part and making the arrangements and coming home with me, even after Avery and Alexander arrived and he might easily have bowed out of the commitment he had made.”
“I will be forever grateful too, Lieutenant Colonel,” the marchioness said, smiling at him. “Thank you.”
He inclined his head stiffly, uncomfortable with her gratitude. His reason for coming here had been at least partly selfish.
“We all will be,” the Countess of Riverdale added. She had come to stand beside Gil, a tall, beautiful woman if one disregarded the unfortunately large purple marks down one side of her face. He had thought at first they were burns, but her features were not distorted. They must be a birthmark, then, and had doubtless caused her endless anguish through the years. Yet she seemed unselfconscious about her appearance. The marred side of her face was closer to him than the unblemished side.
“Harry, we all had to come here, you know, just to assure ourselves with our own eyes that you are indeed home safe at last and on the mend. Your grandmother and Aunt Matilda will no doubt be here tomorrow as well as your aunt Mildred and uncle Thomas. But you need not fear that any of us will stay long. You came home for peace and quiet, did you not?”
“Well—” Harry began.
“No gentleman could possibly answer that question without perjuring himself, Wren,” her husband, the earl, said, and she laughed.
“And I would not be surprised,” Harry’s mother said, “if Camille comes from Bath in the next day or two. Abby wrote to her. She has not seen Harry since the Christmas Marcel and I were married. More than three years ago.”
“I am sorry, Gil,” Harry said, chuckling.
He had not done much chuckling or laughing or even smiling in the past few months. Although he still looked pale and exhausted, perhaps this invasion by his family was really not going to be so bad for him after all. At least it assured him that he was dearly loved.
Bleakness assailed Gi
l for a moment, but he shook it off. He could not miss what he had never had. Never. Not during his growing years—his mother had probably been too borne down by the necessity of feeding and clothing them to have energy to spare for any open affection. And not during his brief marriage. What Caroline had felt for him had never been love. The more fool he for believing it was—for grasping at the notion that it was. Besides, none of this was about him.
Yes, he liked these ladies. The Dowager Duchess of Netherby engaged him in conversation for a while after he had seated himself and she had brought him a cup of tea. Later Bertrand, Viscount Watley, the young son of the Marquess of Dorchester, had some questions for him about the wars in India, and the young man’s sister, Lady Estelle Lamarr, came to sit with them and listened with apparent interest. He could not decide which was the elder of the siblings until the brother made reference in passing to his twin and the question was answered.
Only Miss Abigail Westcott kept her distance throughout the evening. As far as he knew she did not once glance at him. He probably would have known if she had, as he glanced a number of times at her. She looked ill-humored. He did not once see her smile. No, ill-humored was a spiteful description of her expression, which was . . . expressionless. Carefully so, perhaps, as though she cultivated an inner privacy. She focused her attention mainly upon her brother, though she kept her distance from him and made no attempt to speak with him. Perhaps she resented him for coming home and taking her away from the gaiety of the London Season for a week or two. Or perhaps he, Gil, was being spiteful again. It was impossible to interpret an expression that was not there or the thoughts and feelings behind it. It seemed that he wished to justify the dislike he had taken in her.
Not that he had any reason whatsoever to dislike her. He was the one who had chosen not to correct her misunderstanding of the situation outside earlier. He had enjoyed her discomfiture and the anticipation of her embarrassment when she realized her mistake. Perhaps he owed her an apology. But he did not want to apologize. For she represented all that had always most irritated him about the ladies who had crossed his path down the years. The entitlement. The assumption of superiority and power—I shall report you to him and see to it that he has a word with your supervisor. And the prudishness—You are in full view of anyone who walks even a few steps from the house. It is quite unseemly. And she had said that after she had helped herself to a good eyeful of him.