by Mary Balogh
“Were you by any chance a teacher once upon a time?” Abigail asked, and they both laughed, because indeed Anna had been a teacher at the orphanage. Together they hurried up the steps and into the house to get out of the rain. “I had better go and find Mama and the grandmamas and aunts and let them know that I will be staying here with Harry when they all leave. Perhaps then they will stop fretting over him so much.”
“I would not count on it,” Anna warned. “It is more likely they will merely add you to the to-be-fretted-over list.”
They both laughed again.
“Oh, Anna,” Abigail said as they turned to go their separate ways inside the house. She hesitated a moment. “My brother and sister call me Abby. You are my sister.”
“Thank you, Abby.”
And from this moment on, Abigail thought as she hurried away, that must be how she thought of Anna. Just as Camille had been doing apparently for the past five years. She must not just think kindly of her.
Anna was her sister.
Six
The Westcott family and Mrs. Kingsley left Hinsford a week to the day after the arrival of the Bath contingent. They seemed happy to have assured themselves that Harry was indeed home safe and no longer hovering at death’s door. They were less happy at having failed to persuade him either to return to London with them or to allow them to send a nurse and even a physician to see to his future care. Harry—as the Duke of Netherby had predicted—had listened politely to all the suggestions made by his mother, his aunts, and his grandmothers, but had remained firm in his determination to stay at Hinsford without any resident medical care. He reminded them all that there was a perfectly decent doctor in the village even if he was probably seventy or so.
It was good to see his friend so firmly asserting himself, Gil thought. He had never really done it in Paris, quite unlike the old Harry.
Now everyone was leaving.
After breakfast on the appointed morning, all was bustle in the hall, out on the terrace, and on the staircase while various persons dashed up and down in pursuit of forgotten or might-have-been-forgotten items. Carriages were lined up outside while horses stomped and snorted or stood patiently awaiting further orders. Some of the men helped the coachmen and servants from the house sort out the luggage and load it onto its rightful vehicle. The women hugged Harry and the sometimes reluctant children and one another. Children darted everywhere, usually to places they were not supposed to be.
Gil helped load the carriages, though he kept an eye on Beauty too. She was always gentle with children, and she knew these particular children well by now. But almost all of them found it necessary to dash at her to give her hugs, and she was noticeably agitated, perhaps sensing that they were all leaving. The little Cunningham boy hugged the dog and would not let go even when his mother called him to the carriage. It was obvious to Gil that he was sobbing quietly into Beauty’s neck.
“Remember what we talked about last night, Robbie?” his father said, coming closer and rubbing a light hand over the boy’s shoulder.
“You will forget,” the boy said sullenly, scrubbing the back of one hand across his eyes and nose before Gil handed him a handkerchief.
“No, I made you a promise,” Joel Cunningham told him. “Have you ever known me to break one?”
The boy frowned up at him, sniffed, and shook his head. “I really, truly can have a dog all of my own?” he asked.
“And of your own choosing too,” his father said. “We will set about finding one after we get home. You may take your time about it until you see just the one that belongs with you.”
“Promise?” the boy said.
“I promise,” Cunningham said gravely, squeezing his shoulder. “Give the handkerchief back to Lieutenant Colonel Bennington now. It is time to leave.”
Robbie hugged Beauty one more time and subjected himself to a face licking. The back of his hand dealt with the resulting moisture and he dashed away to the carriage while Cunningham smiled ruefully at Gil and shook his hand.
“Thank you for sharing your dog,” he said, “and even allowing Robbie into your room. I think perhaps we have found an answer for him at last.”
As Gil turned his attention to a large trunk of the dowager countess’s that needed hoisting aboard her conveyance, he saw the boy seated inside his father’s carriage. He was lifting his arm to set about the shoulders of his deaf brother, who must have been aware of his distress and had snuggled up against him.
What would it have been like, he wondered, to have grown up as part of a family? But before any of the old, pointless bleakness could intrude he shook it off and repositioned the trunk so that there was room beside it for Lady Matilda’s smaller portmanteau.
Another quarter of an hour passed before everyone was finally aboard one or other of the carriages and coachmen were slamming doors and climbing to their perches. Horses snorted with impatience to be moving. Gil stepped back to stand beside Harry, who had come outside a few minutes ago.
And something struck him.
Miss Abigail Westcott was standing on Harry’s other side. She was not hurrying toward any of the carriages. Neither was she dressed for travel. Her flimsy muslin dress was fluttering about her legs. She wore no bonnet. Beauty was seated beside her, looking silly with bliss because she was lightly scratching the dog’s head.
What the devil?
“You are not leaving, Miss Westcott?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she said. “I am staying.”
What in thunder . . . ? For how long?
She partially answered his unspoken question before the first carriage rolled into motion and the others followed it down the drive.
“Harry’s coming home has made it possible for me to come home too,” she said.
When there was still half the social Season to be enjoyed in London? And a stepsister and stepbrother and cousins and other relatives to enjoy it with? And nothing but a country home and a sleepy country neighborhood and an ailing brother for entertainment here?
Harry and his sister stood waving until the last of the carriages disappeared from sight.
“They are a good lot, Abby,” Harry said. “We are very fortunate to be a part of such a family.”
“The only bad egg in the lot of them,” she said, “was our father. How could he have been so very different?”
“There is one consolation,” he said. “If he had not married Mama, bigamously or otherwise, we would never have been born. And I do not believe I would have liked that one little bit. Would you?”
She laughed, an attractive little gurgle of merriment Gil had not heard from her before. “I suppose I would not have been in a position either to like or to dislike it,” she said. “I would not have been. There would have been no I. Or you. It is hard to imagine total nothingness, is it not? But ought you to be standing out here this long?”
“If you intend to fuss me, Abby,” he grumbled, “I’ll send you back to London on the next stage.” But there was no real irritation in his voice.
Again that gurgle of laughter. “Very well, then,” she said, linking an arm through her brother’s. “Let us take a walk along the terrace. Could the day possibly be more perfect?”
“It could not,” he agreed, “simply because I am living and breathing in it. It is also a lovely day.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Bennington,” she said politely, “would you care to join us?”
The perfect hostess. A woman at home with her brother. Making their guest into a stranger by the very courtesy of her invitation. Good God, why had someone not told him? Why had Harry not mentioned it? Oh, by the way, my sister is remaining here indefinitely to ruin our peace.
He fell into step beside them as they made a slow progress along the terrace. Gil remembered how Harry always used to stride everywhere, eager and full of energy, impatient to get where he was going.
> “Lieutenant Colonel,” Miss Westcott said, “you must be eager to go home yourself.”
Ah. She was wondering when he intended to leave, was she? And hinting that perhaps it ought to be soon?
It was surprising the question had not come up more than it had during the past week. Harry’s grandmother from Bath had asked him one day at luncheon if he was one of the Somersetshire Benningtons, but when he had said no, he was not, and had not immediately gone on to explain which Benningtons he was one of, she had not pursued the matter. Neither had anyone else. Perhaps there had been something in his voice that had deterred further questioning.
None of them had discovered that he was not a gentleman, even less of a one than Harry, in fact. Far less. At least Harry had been brought up as a gentleman in the aristocratic home of an earl and his apparent countess. He had been educated and groomed as his father’s successor. Gil had been brought up in what had been little more than a hovel by a mother who was the unmarried daughter of a blacksmith. He could read and write and figure only because his mother had insisted that he attend the village school, which he had hated with a passion despite the long-suffering patience of the vicar who had taught it.
“He will be staying for a while,” Harry said before Gil could respond to the question himself. “For a good long while, I hope. I do not need a nurse. I have had plenty of those and physicians and surgeons too for the past two years, and look where they have got me. Oh, they kept me alive. I give them their due and all my gratitude on that. But they also kept me only barely alive. No daylight allowed, no fresh air, almost no solid food, no exercise—and enough blood taken from me when I had the fever to give life to an army of empty bodies. There will be no more nurses. A good friend and comrade will do very nicely instead. And a sister, of course.”
Gil watched Beauty wander along down by the trees, sniffing the trunks where they met the ground.
Three wounded souls. That was what they were. Though where that thought had come from he did not know.
But was Harry’s soul as well as his body wounded by what had happened to him in battle, and in London six years ago when he was stripped of his title and fortune and everything for which he had been raised? He had never talked about it beyond the bare facts. There had been no more cheerful officer in their regiment than Major Harry Westcott.
And had Miss Westcott’s soul been wounded by those same events? It was perhaps significant that she was still unmarried several years later and apparently not even looking for a husband in the great marriage mart that was the London Season.
Was he wounded? By . . . life? By what Caroline had done to him? But was it fair to blame her or anyone else for the state of his soul? And where the devil were these thoughts coming from anyway?
Life was a challenge. One big challenge forever splintering into smaller ones, just like a felled tree trunk under the axe. And if one got wounded, one licked the wound, applied a bandage if it would not stop bleeding, and kept reducing that trunk to logs and sticks of firewood and kindling—until the next one came crashing down and one had to start all over again.
“Provided that sister does not fuss you,” Miss Westcott was saying in response to her brother’s words, that thread of humor still in her voice. “But we are running out of terrace, Harry, and will need to turn back.”
“You cannot know how good this air feels to me,” he said, drawing in a deep, audible breath of it before turning, “and the sunlight and the smell of grass—and horse. And to have my legs under me. I am coming out again later. Perhaps we will have a picnic on the grass. How will that be for a grand adventure?”
“I am not sure I will be able to stand the excitement,” Gil told him.
“I shall arrange it with Mrs. Sullivan,” Miss Westcott said. “And how I like the idea of doing that—of being mistress of my own home.”
Damn it, Gil thought, he did not like the sound of it at all. He had looked forward to being part of a bachelor establishment for a while. He had looked forward to Harry’s family leaving. Most of all he had looked forward to her leaving. But why so? She had done nothing to antagonize him since that first day—which had been mostly his fault. Why, then, had he wanted her gone more than any of them?
Because he was attracted to her?
He wanted no entanglements with women. With women of her class, anyway. Her illegitimacy took nothing away from the fact that she was a lady, a member of a powerful aristocratic family, which guarded its own. She was also Harry’s sister.
He turned his head impatiently and whistled for Beauty. She came loping across the lawn toward them, tongue lolling, ears flopping, rear end jiggling, tail waving.
A dog’s love at least was eternal and unconditional.
And uncomplicated.
* * *
• • •
Abigail had been dismayed to discover that Lieutenant Colonel Bennington intended to stay indefinitely at Hinsford. She felt cheated of the privacy and sense of home and peace she had so craved. She would surely not have stayed herself if Harry had thought of telling her.
Anyone but him, she had thought.
But why?
He was not the brute she had taken him for on that first day. Besides, he had apologized for his behavior on that occasion, and she had accepted the apology. Was she still bearing a grudge? It would be unreasonable and wrong if she were. He had done nothing to offend her since then, or anyone else in the family. Quite the contrary, in fact. He had kept away from them for long spells each day and never joined any group or conversation when he was present unless he was drawn in by someone else. And he was undeniably good with children, a fact that had taken her completely by surprise since it seemed to contradict his severe, sometimes almost morose looks and demeanor. He had apparently even allowed Robbie, that troubled little boy whom even three years of love and patience from Camille and Joel had still not quite soothed, to spend hours in his room with Beauty.
And of course he was Harry’s friend. Her brother, she guessed, needed male company more than he needed that of a mere sister. She ought to be happy the lieutenant colonel had decided to stay for a while.
She was not, though. She was not happy at all about it.
But why?
She asked herself that question as she directed one of the male servants in the placement of the chair he had carried out onto the lawn for Harry. And then she sent him back for two more so that her brother would not feel that he was being treated like an invalid while she and his friend sat on a blanket on the grass. Or perhaps she sent for extra chairs because she did not want such proximity between herself and the lieutenant colonel.
Oh, this was ridiculous. Why was she so resentful? She ought to be enjoying the chance to play hostess for a guest.
Was it because she was horribly aware of him as a man?
Horribly?
And was she?
He was not even handsome. She did not believe he ever had been, even before he acquired that scar on his face. His hair and eyes were too dark, his features too harsh and angular, his complexion too sun darkened, his habitual expression too stern. And he was too big. Every time she glanced at him she remembered what he looked like without his shirt, his breeches riding low on his hips, the huge axe held diagonally across his body—which had been glistening with sweat. It was uncivilized. It was barbaric. It—
She sounded like a prude. She probably was a prude.
But that realization did not endear him to her either, though he was not the one who had called her that.
He made her feel uncomfortable. What an inadequate word—uncomfortable. But she could not think of a better one. She wanted to be able to think of him merely as Harry’s friend. And she wanted to see him every time she looked at him or thought of him as having his clothes on. She wanted to obliterate that ghastly memory of raw masculinity.
Oh come, Abigail, she chided herse
lf, it was not ghastly.
She had never encountered masculinity before. Men, yes. Handsome men, yes. Attractive men, yes. Masculinity, no. Not raw masculinity, anyway. Not naked chests and . . . Oh dash it all, she really was a prude.
She watched him now approaching slowly across the lawn with Harry. She did approve of the way he never tried to assist her brother physically, though he must often be tempted to do so just as several members of her family had been, especially the females. Nothing could be more designed to irritate Harry. Lieutenant Colonel Bennington kept his hands clasped at his back whenever he walked with Harry, though he stayed close enough to offer assistance should it become necessary. He bore himself very erect, a military man in every line of his body. She wondered if his men had feared him—or adored him. Or perhaps a bit of both.
Harry stopped and looked at the chairs and then at the single blanket spread on the grass. The picnic hamper had been set across one corner of it.
“Expecting a few elderly ladies with rheumatic knees, are you, Abby?” he asked with a nod of the head to the chairs.
She smiled ruefully. “I suppose you are offended by them. The chairs, I mean.”
He grinned at her. “At least you were tactful enough to have three brought out,” he said. “I suppose you fear that if I get down on the ground I will not be able to get up again. If you should prove correct, please do not summon any servants. I will crawl back to the house on my hands and knees and you may say I told you so to your heart’s content.”