by Mary Balogh
“I suppose,” she continued when he merely frowned at her, “that all the letters in which you told us what a jolly lark it all was, being with the armies, were so many lies.”
“Oh, I say, Abby,” he said, “I had to keep Mama’s spirits up somehow. I knew how much she worried. And I was not exactly lying. It was a lark much of the time. Was it not, Gil?”
“There were good times,” he said, looking at Abigail. “There was camaraderie. And we saw the best of humanity as well as the worst. There are good people with the armies, women as well as men, despite the fact that Wellington described his soldiers after Waterloo as the scum of the earth. I like to think there was at least some fondness in the description. As well as pride.”
He turned his gaze upon Harry then, and Abigail saw that her brother had fallen asleep, his head against the side cushion next to the window. She frowned across at Lieutenant Colonel Bennington.
“These are healing sleeps,” he said quietly, as he had said during the picnic a week or two ago. “You must not worry. He is vastly better than he was when I found him on my return from St. Helena. His will to live and thrive has strengthened. And he has your cook to feed him.”
She swallowed against a lump in her throat and nodded.
They did not talk again before they arrived at their destination.
Eight
They left the carriage and horses at an inn, where they also reserved a private parlor for the day. After partaking of coffee and glazed buns Harry went with Gil to look over some horses while Miss Westcott walked to a shop that sold needleworking supplies. She seemed to remember from a previous occasion that it was not far away and refused to allow the men to go out of their way to escort her there. She also scorned her brother’s offer to hire a maid from the inn to accompany her.
“I am twenty-four years old,” she reminded him.
Gil had never been much of a horseman, though as an officer he had been forced to ride more frequently than he had done as a boy or when he was in the noncommissioned ranks. He took his time about his choice of a horse now, though he was also aware of the need not to exhaust Harry. That was a needless worry, however, as he soon realized. His friend was every bit as exhilarated by the task at hand as he was.
There were several mounts that would do perfectly well, but Gil wanted to choose just the right one. It was true that his dog had chosen him on the battlefield at Waterloo rather than the other way around, but nevertheless Beauty had taught him the importance of the special bond that could exist between man and beast. Just any dog would no longer do for him. Only Beauty herself. In the same way he wanted the one horse that belonged to him, or to which he belonged.
It did occur to him that it was a good thing Harry and the other men hovering about could not read his thoughts. They would think him daft at the very least. Or else totally unknowledgeable about all he ought to look for when buying a horse—and they would not have been far wrong on that.
He picked a white mare with light brown markings—even his mental description of it demonstrated his ignorance. It was neither the biggest nor the sleekest nor the loveliest of the mounts paraded for his inspection, but when he rode it around the paddock into which it had been led, it snorted and whinnied softly to him and responded just as it ought to his somewhat inexpert handling. After he had put it through its paces, he smoothed a hand over its neck and it whinnied again.
“Yes, girl,” he said. “I understand. You want to belong. It is what we all want.”
“You are quite sure, Gil?” Harry asked after he had dismounted and announced his choice. He sounded a bit dubious. “I thought perhaps the black stallion . . .”
“An excellent pick,” Gil said. “Just not mine. Why not buy it for yourself?”
“Ha,” Harry said, but the single syllable sounded a bit wistful. “It feels like forever since I was last on a horse’s back. But he is beautiful and almost certainly a prime goer.”
“He would give you an increased incentive to get fit enough to ride,” Gil said. He kept his eyes upon the white and brown mare, allowing Harry to think for himself, to make his own decision—about his recovery, about riding again. About the stallion.
They both purchased their horses, which were to be delivered to Hinsford within the week. By the time they arrived back at the inn, Miss Westcott was sitting in the private parlor, drinking a glass of lemonade.
“I have not ordered our luncheon,” she told them, “even though it is rather late. I was not sure when you would be back. Were you successful, Lieutenant Colonel Bennington?”
“I was indeed,” he told her. “So was Harry. The horses will be taken to Hinsford.”
“Harry too?” She looked as if she was caught between pleased surprise and concern.
“I thought to see the parlor piled to the ceiling with all your purchases, Abby,” he said, sinking into an armchair, resting his head against the back of it, and closing his eyes.
“Well, that was it, you see,” she said, laughing. “There were too many to carry, and a few of them are quite bulky. I thought perhaps the carriage could stop outside the shop when we leave here and I can just run in and get them.”
“I shall go and fetch them for you now if you will give me the direction,” Gil offered.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, flushing. “That is very good of you. But luncheon—”
“I for one could not eat a thing just yet,” Harry said. “Give me a short time to rest while Gil goes for your things.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “I am afraid you would not have enough arms or hands, Lieutenant Colonel. You would need to be an octopus. In the coming weeks I expect to have some time on my hands for plying my needle, and I like some variety. I am afraid I got carried away somewhat and purchased enough to keep me occupied for a year. I was quite embarrassed when I saw the pile I had had the shopkeeper set aside for me. I shall come with you.” She got to her feet and donned her bonnet and gloves.
Gil offered his arm when they stepped out of the inn. It was not something he would feel obliged to do in the country, but it seemed the gentlemanly thing to do on the streets of a market town. She hesitated a moment but then slipped her hand through his arm and he got a whiff of her scent. It was not a powerful perfume. Perhaps it was no more than the soap with which she had washed her face or her hair. It was delicate. And feminine—as was she.
“You did not try to discourage Harry from purchasing a horse of his own?” she asked him.
“It was not my place to do any such thing,” he said. “Having a horse he wishes desperately to ride will spur him on—ah! Pun not intended. It will perhaps give him an extra incentive to regain his strength. Seeing me go out riding will make him even more determined.”
“I constantly tell myself that I must not coddle him,” she said, sounding a bit rueful. “Unfortunately my instinct urges me to do just that. But you are right, and I will curb the instinct. It is not easy, Lieutenant Colonel, to have a man one loves very dearly away at war, to have no news of him for weeks, sometimes months on end, and to await that news with trepidation, not knowing what it may be.”
A man one loves very dearly. Caroline had not even awaited news of him after Waterloo. She had left for her house party, he had discovered afterward, at almost the exact time the battle was being fought.
It was as if Miss Westcott had read his thoughts again. “Who awaited news of you?” she asked. “Was your wife still alive when you were fighting? And who else?”
“No one,” he said, speaking more harshly than he intended as he drew her to one side of the pavement to allow a woman with a laden basket over her arm to pass in the opposite direction. “My mother died when I was still in India. I suppose there are uncles and aunts and cousins galore not twenty miles from where I grew up. Perhaps even grandparents. I would not know. I never met them. They turned my mother off when it became obvious that she was ex
pecting me. As for my father, I have never met him. I did not even know who he was until in a burst of paternal concern for my well-being he purchased my ensign’s commission after he had learned of my mother’s death and discovered my whereabouts. He also purchased my lieutenancy, after which I wrote to inform him that if he secured a captaincy for me it would be refused. I have not heard from him since. I doubt he sought news of me after the various battles and skirmishes of the wars.”
Before he could fathom what the devil had prompted that outburst, she had stopped walking and so had he. Well, at least now she would know with whom she walked—and with whom she shared a house at Hinsford.
“I am sorry,” she said, and she sounded as though she really was. Her head was tipped a little to one side, and her eyes were large and unblinking. “I can tell from your voice that you believe me to have been unpardonably inquisitive. You are right. I have been. Forgive me, if you please. This is the shop.”
She signaled to the building beside them and turned to enter it. He followed her inside—and felt immediately like the proverbial bull in a china shop. There were several ladies fingering bolts of cloth or examining cards of lace or rummaging through bins of ribbons and buttons and other objects. The shopkeeper behind the counter was showing a length of velvet fabric to a buxom older lady and a thin young one. All of them abruptly stopped what they were doing—or so it seemed to Gil—to look at the new arrivals and then to gawk some more at him while he drew himself up to his full height, clasped his hands at his back, and tried to look at ease.
“Ah, Miss Westcott,” the shopkeeper said. “You have come for your purchases, have you?”
“Yes, please,” she said. “Lieutenant Colonel Bennington has kindly offered to help me carry them to the inn.”
Everyone gawked a bit more and then returned to their former activities. The large lady at the counter shook her head in rejection of the velvet while her young companion looked relieved, and the shopkeeper abandoned them in order to titter and twitter her way to the back of the shop, where there was a mound of packages neatly wrapped and tied up with string.
Miss Westcott had not exaggerated. If all these were supplies for her needlework projects, she must be a prodigious needlewoman. Caroline had despised embroidery—as well as watercolor painting and playing the pianoforte and letter writing and flower arranging and all the feminine accomplishments she complained her various governesses and finishing school teachers had tried to foist upon her, ruining her girlhood in the process. She did not intend to have her adulthood spoiled too, she had declared to him the very first time they met soon after she arrived in the Peninsula with her mother to spend some time with the general, her father. She intended to be free. She had plied a fan before her face as she said it and favored him with one of her brightest, most alluring smiles.
He ought to have known at that very moment that she was a woman to be avoided at all costs. That she was trouble, in other words. Instead he had been utterly dazzled, poor idiot that he had been, because the whole of her attention and the full force of that smile had been focused upon him. Gil Bennington, bastard son of a washerwoman.
“Right,” he said now, looking at the bundles. “Which is the lightest of them?”
“Oh, that is easy,” Miss Westcott said, pointing to a bulky, largish package. “That wool weighs almost nothing at all. It just takes up a lot of space.”
“Perhaps you can carry that, then,” he said. “I will manage the rest.”
“Oh, I can take something else too,” she said.
“I am sure you can,” he said, turning his eyes upon her. “But you will not.”
Their eyes tangled for a moment.
The shopkeeper tittered. “I can see it would be unwise to argue with an officer when he uses that tone of voice, dear Miss Westcott,” she said.
What tone of voice?
For a moment he thought Miss Westcott was going to argue nonetheless, but she merely bent to pick up the wool. “Thank you,” she said.
There was a large flat parcel, which apparently contained an embroidery frame, the sort that stood on the floor when unfolded. There was a smaller embroidery hoop, wrapped and stacked against the other. A long, heavier package, Gil was told, was full of sewing needles, crochet hooks, knitting needles, and scissors of various sizes and purposes. There was a heavyish bundle of linen cloth to be embroidered and another, softer package of embroidery silks and crochet thread. There was a second bundle of wool, wrapped separately from the larger one, which the shopkeeper had not wanted to make too unwieldy.
“Are you quite sure I cannot carry that too?” Miss Westcott asked as they stepped out of the shop.
“If I were to try releasing one thing,” he told her, “I would probably drop the lot.”
“I could not decide which embroidery frame I preferred,” she explained as they walked. “So I purchased both.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had noticed.”
She laughed suddenly and slowed her pace. “I doubt they have ever seen a man inside that shop before,” she said.
“I believe it,” he told her. “I can see why men do not take up knitting and such. They would never be able to pluck up the courage to go and get what they needed.”
She laughed once more, and it occurred to him yet again that his first impression of her had been quite wrong. She was actually good-natured and not at all the pouty, wilting sort of female he had taken her for. He wished she were. Life would be easier.
“Inquisitive is sometimes a negative word,” he said, referring back to what she had said before they entered the shop. “When coupled with unpardonably it very definitely is. Having told me how you waited in trepidation during the wars for news of Harry, it was perfectly natural and polite that you should then ask me who awaited word of me.” She might as well know the whole of it. “I am the illegitimate son of a blacksmith’s daughter, Miss Westcott. She kept her own body and soul together and mine after she had been banished from her home by taking in washing in a small village about twenty miles from her own. I acquired what education I have in the village school and at the insistence of my mother. When my chance came to escape I took it without hesitation. By the time I was fourteen my mother had acquired a friend who did not appreciate me, just as I did not appreciate him. I took the king’s shilling from a recruiting sergeant and left with him and a few other ragged recruits, and never looked back. Your family, I daresay, would have recoiled in horror if they had known all this while they were at Hinsford.”
There was a longish pause. “I do not believe so,” she said at last. “For one thing, you were a guest of Harry’s. So were they. You were kind to him in Paris and in accompanying him home. You are his friend. For another thing, Harry too is illegitimate, thanks to a former head of the Westcott family—the son of my grandmother, the brother of my aunts as well as our father. Camille and I are illegitimate. And so, incidentally, is Joel Cunningham, Camille’s husband, and their adopted children. I believe you misjudge my family. They are of high rank. Most of them are titled. And it may seem that they are high in the instep. In many ways they are. But their vision, never entirely narrow, has been broadened by the events of the past six years. And they love fiercely and well.”
He was not sure she was right on all of that. There was a world of difference between his own birth and hers. She had a lady and a gentleman for parents. She had been brought up a lady, unaware of her illegitimacy. He had worn cast-off clothes and gone barefoot when he was not wearing ragged, ill-fitting shoes. She had enjoyed great privilege and the best education during her formative years, while he had been thin with semihunger and had learned his lessons from a vicar who was more well meaning than scholarly. She had enjoyed the respect of all who knew her. He had been despised by almost everyone and called names, the mildest of which was bastard. When Harry had joined the military, it had been as an officer, his commission having been purchase
d by his guardian. Gil had joined as cannon fodder.
But they were back at the inn, and he strode directly into the yard to deposit her packages in the carriage rather than carry them inside to the private parlor.
“I am not sure,” he said, taking her bundle from her and loading it in with the rest, “whether the landlord will be prepared to serve us luncheon or if it must be tea. But whichever it is, I am ready for it.”
“So am I,” she said. “I am sorry for delaying you, Lieutenant Colonel.”
“If you will recall,” he said, “it was I who suggested going to fetch your packages.”
“Then you should apologize for delaying me,” she said, and smiled at him just a bit cheekily.
She had better not do too much of that, he thought as he indicated the side door into the inn and followed her toward it. It would not hurt to start finding her company tolerable, since they were stuck living in the same house for a while, but he certainly had no wish to start finding her attractive.
Only disaster lay along that road.
* * *
• • •
Life fell into a not unpleasant pattern during the next couple of weeks. Abigail went down to the kitchen each day to meet with the cook and plan the following day’s meals. She joined Mrs. Sullivan in the latter’s sitting room twice a week to discuss household matters. The table linens were growing thin with age and needed replacing. The upstairs chambermaid, married to one of the gardeners, had given her notice for a month hence since she was expecting her first child one month after that, and she would need to be replaced. The window curtains in the library were heavy and dark and made the room gloomy, a fact that had not escaped Harry’s notice. Mrs. Sullivan was sure there was a lighter set in the attic, replaced during one of the brief extended periods the late earl had spent at Hinsford. He had disliked an excess of sunlight indoors. The two women went up to the attic to have a look.