by Mary Balogh
With that, he lowered himself to the blanket and moved to one side of it. It was good to see Harry recovering his sense of humor, Abigail thought as the lieutenant colonel gestured to the blanket beside Harry.
“Miss Westcott?” he said.
“Oh no,” she said, “I shall serve the food before I sit.”
She went and knelt beside the hamper and set about filling three plates with chicken and ham and bread rolls lavishly buttered, and with cheese and pickles and hard-boiled eggs out of their shells. There were currant cakes and small custard tarts and three brightly polished apples at the bottom too under a folded towel, she could see, but she left those for later. Propped against one corner of the hamper was a carefully wrapped large, meaty bone for Beauty, who was sitting beside the blanket, waiting with panting impatience.
The lieutenant colonel came down on one knee beside Abigail and poured the wine. He had large, strong hands, Abigail noticed—they would have to be, of course, for him to wield an axe the way he did and probably other weapons too. There was a faint scar across all four knuckles of one hand.
“How long have you been a military man?” she asked him.
He seemed to be doing the mental calculation. “Twenty years,” he said.
So long? “How old were you?” she asked.
“Not quite fifteen,” he said. “I lied about my age. I was impatient for adventure, and a recruiting sergeant came along and offered me just that. I took it, along with the king’s shilling.”
“A recruiting sergeant?” She paused to look at him in considerable astonishment, Harry’s plate held in her hand. “You joined as a private soldier?”
“I did,” he said, taking the plate from her hand and passing it to Harry after adding a linen napkin. He picked up his own plate with a word of thanks and moved across the blanket to leave room for her. He had balanced the glasses on a flat tray he had found against one inner side of the hamper.
To hide her surprise, Abigail turned aside to unwrap the bone, which had a great deal of meat still attached to it, and set it on the grass beside the dog. Beauty scrambled to her feet with a woof, sniffed it, and attacked it.
Returning her gaze to her companions, she decided it would be far too intimate to squeeze in beside the lieutenant colonel. But Harry had not left enough room on his other side. She took her plate and sat on one of the chairs.
“A touch of the rheumatics,” she said with a smile when Harry glanced up at her.
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington had been a private soldier. Not an officer from the start. His family had been too poor, then, to purchase a commission for him? Or . . . There was another explanation, especially as he had been signed up by a recruiting sergeant. Perhaps he was not a gentleman. But if he was not, how on earth had he made the jump through the ranks to become an officer? She had heard that only a deed of extraordinary valor made that possible. She did not ask, and he did not volunteer any further information. Instead he was listening to Harry, who was declaring how wonderful it was to be alone at last, just the three of them.
“It seems horribly disloyal to say so aloud,” he said, “when they all made a great effort to come here just for my sake and were so touchingly glad to see me back home. But . . . Dash it, Abby, I had forgotten just how delicious our cook’s fried chicken is.”
“She made it especially for you,” she told him. “She remembers every one of your favorite foods and just how you always liked them prepared. She has been sending a steady stream of servants to the farm and the village to gather all the ingredients she is going to need. She is quite determined to fatten you up.”
“She is likely to succeed too,” he said. “I am rediscovering my appetite.”
But as her brother expressed his pleasure, Abigail was distracted by the thought that during the past week Lieutenant Colonel Bennington had revealed almost nothing about himself though he had been in conversation a number of times with various members of her family. She knew his name and his military rank. She knew he had spent a year with the garrison on St. Helena, guarding Napoleon Bonaparte. Now she knew he had been recruited at the age of fourteen by a recruiting sergeant. And that was all. Oh, and he spoke like a gentleman and behaved like one—except when he was chopping wood, half naked beside the stables.
“I am a bit surprised actually, Abby,” Harry said, “that none of our neighbors have called even though we have both been here for more than a week. Do people forget so soon? Or do they see us differently than they used to do? Are we pariahs?”
“I assure you we are not,” Abigail said. “When Mama and I came back here to live, we were treated as we always had been. Most people even continued to address Mama as my lady. The neighbors were kind and attentive, and our friends were still our friends. Perhaps—”
“I believe I can throw some light upon the matter,” Lieutenant Colonel Bennington said. “Your neighbors judged that having all your family here has been enough excitement for you to contend with, Harry, much as they are eager to pay their respects to you and see for themselves that you are recovering your health. I daresay they will come flocking now that everyone has left.”
Abigail looked at him in some curiosity, but Harry merely chuckled. “And is this a guess on your part, Gil?” he asked. “Or have you been out meeting the locals during your absences from the house?”
“Not all of them,” his friend told him. “But you inevitably meet a number of people of all classes when you spend an hour or so of each day at a village tavern. And they meet you without any reluctance or reticence. Seeing a stranger is a rare enough event, I gather, that they will soon find ways to worm out of him his life history, his political views, and his reason for being in their neighborhood.”
“I believe you.” Harry laughed again. “Sometime when you go, Gil, perhaps I will come with you. But it is good to know that everyone has not taken a disgust of me just because I lost my title and fortune six years ago.”
“Vicars tend to grow animated and garrulous too when a stranger is discovered reading plaques on the walls inside their church on a weekday with no service scheduled,” the lieutenant colonel continued. “They tend to take his presence as a good reason to deliver a lengthy history of the church. And then, if that stranger is lucky—I was—he gets invited into the vicarage for an excellent luncheon with the man and his wife. And he is regaled as he eats with tales of all the mischief Mr. Harry and, to a lesser degree, his sisters used to get up to when they were children here. The vicar even shed a tear as he described the consternation there was in the village when word reached here that they were like to lose Mr. Harry after Waterloo. He declares he will be the first to call upon you the very day after your good family leaves.”
“The Reverend Jenkins has been here forever,” Abigail said. “His sermons are as dry as dust, but I always liked going to his church services anyway just to bask in the glow of his saintliness. I am sorry I missed last Sunday, as we all did.”
“I tell you what, though, Gil,” Harry said. “One reproachful twinkle from those eyes of his was a far more powerful deterrent to mischief than all the wrath of our mother or any of our servants.”
“Indeed it was,” Abigail agreed. “Do you remember the time, Harry, when we sneaked over the wall into the vicarage garden to steal apples from the tree there only to discover that the vicar himself was standing at the back door watching us? And he smiled at us and told us to enjoy them? Camille burst into tears and I set my apples on the ground and refused to pick them up again and you said we were planning to take them to Mrs. Beynon, who had not been feeling well? That was when his smile turned reproachful.”
“I left mine on the ground too and swore I would never tell another lie in my life,” Harry said, and they both laughed.
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington, Abigail noticed, was swirling his wine and gazing into his glass. She thought about him going down to the village, getting acq
uainted with the people she and Harry had known all their lives. He had not answered her earlier when she had suggested that he must be eager to go home. When Grandmama Kingsley asked him a few days ago if he was one of the Somerset Benningtons, he had simply said no. Did he have a home? Or a family? He had been recruited as a private soldier when he was fourteen. Twenty years ago. He was thirty-four years old now, then, ten years older than she. Whom had he left behind all those years ago? Anyone? Had he ever gone back? Would he go back?
But she did not want to wonder about him. She still found his company uncomfortable and wished fervently he had not remained here—or that she had not.
She served the sweets and he poured more wine, though Harry set a hand over the top of his glass and shook his head.
“If I get drunk,” he said, “I might start to sing.”
“Oh goodness,” Abigail said, “we must certainly not risk that.”
He took a couple of bites of his custard tart and then set his plate aside and lay back on the blanket, one knee raised, one arm flung across his eyes, though he was in the shade of a tree.
“I know how a prisoner must feel when he is released from jail,” he said. “Though I suppose it is unfair to all those people who kept me alive and did their best for me to compare either a hospital or a convalescent home to a prison.”
And within minutes he was asleep, his breathing deep and even. Lieutenant Colonel Bennington looked up at Abigail after he had watched Harry for a while.
“He is being healed,” he said softly.
It was the first time he had come outside twice in one day. And he was eating more than he had done even a week ago.
“Yes,” she said, and looked to where Beauty, her bone having been stripped down to a bare whiteness, was sniffing her way along the tree line. “I am going to take a walk. Would you care to join me?”
It had seemed only polite to ask. She did not expect that he would accept. He could use the need to keep an eye on Harry as an excuse.
“Yes,” he said, and picked up one of the apples before getting to his feet.
Well, she was stuck with his company now. She must get used to it, she supposed. He was staying here. So was she. She wondered if he was as disturbed about it as she was. But she knew he was. There had been a certain look on his face when he had realized this morning that she was not leaving with everyone else. She had assumed he must be aware of that fact as she had told everyone else, but apparently not. Just as she had not known that he was staying indefinitely.
Beauty lifted her head, looked back at them, realized they were going for a walk, and went galloping toward them. Abigail wondered how she could ever have been afraid of the dog.
He was disturbingly tall and broad shouldered. The lieutenant colonel, that was.
Seven
She was not small as women went. The top of her head reached above his chin. But she was delicate and slender. And beautiful. And what he had taken at first for a haughty coldness was actually more of a quiet, reserved sort of dignity, Gil had come to believe—with some reluctance. He did not want to find himself liking her. For if he liked her, he might start finding her attractive. She was entirely the wrong sort of female for him to be attracted to. He would by far rather stick to women of his own class. Yet here she was, staying after everyone else had left and intending to remain indefinitely. And making it altogether less comfortable for him to stay.
Miss Abigail Westcott, he had concluded during the past week, when he had watched her far more than he had wanted to and far more than was good for him, did most of her living inside herself. Like an iceberg, she showed the merest tip of her totality to the world, even her family. Perhaps especially to them. He wondered if they realized it.
It was probably not fair to compare her to an iceberg.
Why the devil had he accepted her invitation to walk with her? She had no doubt asked out of her lady’s notion of politeness and had not wanted or expected him to come.
Without saying a word or perhaps even thinking one, she nevertheless made him feel like a great ugly lump. He was almost tempted to slouch along beside her to bring himself closer to her height. Instead he squared his shoulders and raised himself to his full height. The scarred side of his face was toward her. He did not make an excuse to shuffle over to her other side.
He hated the way she made him feel self-conscious. It was not a feeling to which he was accustomed.
Beauty pranced from side to side before them, yipping and waving her tail. She assured herself that no, he had not been teasing but was indeed going for a walk, and turned about to dash off ahead of them.
“Why are you not married?” he asked abruptly.
Now why out of all the myriad questions with which he might have attempted to open a polite conversation had he chosen that particular one? Unsurprisingly she turned her head sharply to look up at him, and he could almost see her mind shaping the words how dare you!
“I suppose,” he said before she could speak them aloud, “that was an ill-mannered question. But you must surely have had offers. You are not a very young woman, but you are beautiful.”
He sorted through the gaucherie of his words while she continued to stare at him.
“Why are you not married?” she asked him. “You are not a very young man.” She did not add but you are handsome, he noticed.
He bent to pick up a stick and hurled it as far as he could across the lawn for Beauty to fetch. It was one of the dog’s favorite games. He took a bite of his apple. They had stopped walking, he noticed. “I am not married,” he told her, “because my wife died.”
Well, there. That took the wind out of her sails. She stared silently back at him for several moments.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Why should you be?” he asked. “You had no way of knowing.”
Now he was adding churlishness to a lack of basic good manners. She waited as though expecting some further explanation. He took another bite of his apple and walked on. He was not in the habit of talking about himself, least of all about his marriage. She continued walking too after glancing back, presumably to see that Harry was still asleep on the blanket.
“Contrary to what you seem to believe,” she said, “I have not had any offers even though I am twenty-four years old. I might, I believe, have had a couple during the past few years if I had given some encouragement to two gentlemen who indicated a possible interest. Perfectly worthy gentlemen.”
“But you did not encourage them,” he said.
“No.”
He refrained from asking why. It was none of his business. And he did not need to know. He was curious, though. Was not marrying the single most important life goal for women of all classes? Did they not all consider anything above twenty a dangerous age still to be single? She was twenty-four.
“Worthiness alone is not enough,” she went on to explain. “Neither is steadiness of character, nor the means with which to provide me with a home and the comforts of life to which I am accustomed. Or even good looks and amiability. I have remained single because I have found nothing and no one to tempt me to marry.”
“Yet,” he added.
“Yet,” she conceded. “I am not afraid of being single. I am afraid of making a marriage I would regret.”
Ah. He bent to pick up the stick, which Beauty had set at his feet before looking expectantly up at him, panting excitedly and dancing about with impatience to be gone again. He feinted once, twice, and then hurled the stick. The dog roared off in hot pursuit.
“And what,” he asked, “would tempt you? Love?”
They were walking close to the tree line, moving in and out of the shade provided by branches that overhung the lawn. They would make an elliptical sort of circuit about the lawn, he supposed, so as not to allow Harry out of their sight.
“I believe it may be easy enough to fall in l
ove,” she said, “especially if the man is young and handsome and charming and vibrant of manner. I am not at all sure being in love would be a good basis for marriage, however. It would not last, I suspect, if there were not far more to sustain it.”
“And of what would that far more consist?” he asked her. This was a strange conversation to be having.
It seemed for a while that she must agree with him. She did not answer. Instead she gazed off into the trees, away from him. Then she stooped for the stick before he could and threw it in a short arc for Beauty to chase with glee. She spoke at last after looking back once more to check on her brother.
“It is sometimes easier to define what one wants in the negative rather than the positive,” she said. “I suppose at one time I expected to be married for who I was. Or rather for what I was. I was Lady Abigail Westcott, daughter of an earl. I was eighteen years old, passably pretty, educated, and accomplished in all the knowledge and skills expected of a lady. I was to have a large dowry. And I was about to be turned loose upon the ton. I was to make my curtsy to Queen Charlotte and then have a grand come-out ball followed by a full Season upon what is known as the great marriage mart. I expected to attract an eligible husband, and would of course have done so. That is the way it happens in the world that was still mine at the time. Perhaps I would have been happy. Perhaps I still would be.”
“But then everything changed,” he said, “and your life was ruined.” He had thought about what had happened to their family as it had affected Harry’s life. Now he considered it from her point of view. She had been a girl on the brink of womanhood with a bright, secure future assured her.
Which only went to prove that the future was never to be taken for granted.
“On the contrary.” She was frowning, he saw. “It was almost as though I had dreamed through the first eighteen years of my life and would have continued to do so until my death if I had not been jolted awake.”