by Mary Balogh
Harry had dispensed with his morning sleep and was insisting that he should be woken during the afternoons after half an hour if he happened to nod off. More and more he did not sleep at all during the daytime, a fact that was helped along by the frequent arrival of visitors. He took a walk each day. Even on rainy days he went as far as the stables, especially after his horse was delivered. He even spent some time grooming it himself and promising it that he would ride soon.
It was going to be very soon, he told Abigail and Lieutenant Colonel Bennington at dinner one evening. He was sick of being a semi-invalid. He admitted he was irked to see his friend riding out without him—just as the lieutenant colonel had predicted.
Abigail entertained friends of her own at home and sometimes called upon them. She was soon knitting, embroidering, and crocheting to her heart’s content. She was enjoying her newfound freedom to do whatever she wished without feeling obliged to do what would please her family. She felt contentedly at home at Hinsford. Even the presence here of Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was less annoying than she had expected it would be.
His story, briefly told, devoid of almost all detail, had nevertheless shocked her deeply. It was hard even to imagine the sort of poverty in which he had grown up and the humiliation he must have suffered as the bastard son of the village washerwoman. Yet his father was clearly a wealthy man.
She wondered if her family would have been a bit disapproving had they known more about him when they were here. There were surely limits to the open-mindedness they had learned in the past six years.
But how could Abigail resent his being here at Hinsford? He had no one. His mother, the only relative he had ever known, was dead. His wife was dead. It was no wonder he was such a self-contained, almost morose man. Abigail had suffered too, but in comparison with his, her own sufferings seemed trivial. From the first moment since the truth about her had come out she had been supported by a family’s uncompromising love. She had a home to call her own. She had friends. And now she had a fortune far larger than her dowry would have been if she had married before her father died. It was a comfortable independence. More than comfortable, in fact.
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington spent time with Harry. He spent time alone too, out walking with his dog, riding his horse, grooming it in the stables. He spent time in the village, at the tavern, she suspected, though there was never the smell of liquor about him when he returned or any sign of inebriation. She guessed that he liked the company of other villagers and enjoyed listening to their stories. Perhaps he shared some of his own, though she somehow doubted it. Perhaps he just felt more comfortable with them than he did with her or even Harry.
He had not chopped wood since that first day. He did, however, help repair a leak in the roof above the tackle room. Abigail heard hammering coming from that direction when she was returning from the village one afternoon and was shocked to see him up on the roof. He had been bare to the waist again, hammering while one of the grooms was perched on the ladder propped against the gutter, presumably handing him the nails, and another stood on the ground below, his head tipped back to gaze upward. Abigail was thankful she was far enough away not to be noticed.
She noticed, though. How could she not? He looked as though he enjoyed physical exertion. There was an easy sort of grace about his body when it was hard at work.
Late on another morning she looked into the library to see if Harry wanted more coffee. She forgot her reason for being there, however, when she saw the lieutenant colonel up on a ladder by one of the tall windows.
“Whatever are you doing?” she asked, startled.
He looked down at her. “Taking down these curtains,” he said. “They weigh a ton. Stand well back.”
“But there are servants,” she said.
“I had noticed,” he told her. “There is also me.”
“This was your idea, Abby?” Harry asked. He was standing at the foot of the ladder, supposedly to make sure it did not slip. “I must say it was an inspired one. These curtains are so heavy they will never pull back far enough to let in sufficient light. Besides which they are such a dark wine color they look black. When they are pulled across, it might as well be midnight even if it is actually noon on a sunny day.”
“It was my idea,” she admitted. “But I did not intend to give extra work to Lieutenant Colonel Bennington.”
He was not bare chested this time. But he had removed both his coat and his waistcoat and had rolled up his shirtsleeves to the elbows. His grandfather had been a blacksmith, Abigail thought. He probably would have been one too if he had been born within wedlock. She could just picture him laboring at an anvil.
“This is not work if you listen to Gil,” Harry said, chuckling. “It is just a little light morning exercise.”
The curtains dropped to the floor a minute later, but the lieutenant colonel shooed Abigail away when she would have stepped forward to help fold them.
“They are far too bulky and heavy,” he said as he came down the ladder, “not to mention dusty. I’ll get the ones down from the other window and then fold them all and haul them up to the attic before putting the other set up.”
Abigail would have gone away, but she wanted to watch. She went and fetched her crocheting—she was making a lacy shawl for her niece Winifred’s fourteenth birthday, a garment she hoped would make the girl feel more grown up. And she watched the lieutenant colonel bring down the other set of curtains, fold them, and haul them all together out of the room. Shortly after, he climbed the ladder again and hung the beige brocaded curtains, which transformed the library into an attractive, light-filled room.
“Oh, thank you,” she said when he was finished. “I am so sorry to have caused you so much trouble. But this room is far more pleasant now; I am grateful for your efforts.”
His white shirt was streaked with dirt. So were his breeches. His hands looked grubby. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, as it often did. He was not a handsome man, she thought. Not in the way Alexander was, for example, or Marcel, even though her stepfather was in his forties. But Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was something just as appealing. Perhaps more so. He was gorgeous.
It was not something she conceded with any great delight. She was not looking for any sort of flirtation with him or anyone else. She was not interested in weaving any romantic or lascivious daydreams about him. She was prepared to accept him here; that was all. He was good for Harry, and really he did not interfere with her life in any way. He was quiet and courteous and absent much of the time. And he was always willing to make himself useful—to volunteer his services, in fact, since it would never occur to her to ask for his help.
She had learned on the way to the wool shop how alone he was in the world. Did that also mean he had no home of his own to go to? He had not told her where he had lived with his wife, if anywhere. Perhaps she had followed the drum with him. It was altogether possible—no, probable—that he had nowhere. It was also likely he had nothing apart from his officer’s pay. Was that half pay now that he was not on active duty?
She tried not to think about him at all. Her pity was the very last thing he would want. And he seemed like the sort of man who could look after himself. But she knew what loneliness felt like even though she had never been physically alone. She knew what it felt like to be alone deep within herself. It could be frightening. Or it could lead one to make a friend of the aloneness and to be stronger and even happier as a result.
She sensed loneliness in Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. She did not know if it caused him pain. She really did not know him at all, in fact. He had allowed her a few brief, tantalizing glimpses into his life history, but otherwise he still presented the appearance of a shield, unknown and unknowable. She wondered how well Harry knew him but would not ask. It would seem somehow dishonorable to worm out of her brother what the lieutenant colonel chose not to tell her himself.
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br /> Later that week, she had a couple of letters in the morning’s post, one from Marcel’s great-aunt, and the other, a far fatter one, from Cousin Elizabeth, Lady Hodges. It was a beautiful day, far more like summer than late spring, and she had already had her meeting with the cook. She would take the letters with her out to the lake, she decided, and sit there basking in the sunshine for a while. The afternoon would be busy enough. The vicar’s wife and a few other ladies were coming to tea. They wished to discuss with Abigail a church bazaar they were planning for later in the summer. Abigail suspected they were hoping to use the grounds of Hinsford for the event, as had happened a few times in the past when her mother was living here. She would be quite happy to agree if Harry had no objection.
She was sitting on her favorite flat slab of rock, conveniently positioned beneath a sheltering weeping willow, when she heard the telltale panting of an approaching dog. She was no longer even remotely afraid of Beauty and turned to greet her, but the presence of Beauty meant of course that Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was not far behind. Abigail pushed aside her feeling of annoyance, set her letters down on the rock, and looked up to smile politely at him.
He looked grim faced. More grim faced than usual, that was.
“I beg your pardon,” he said abruptly. “If I had seen you before Beauty did, I would have stopped her from disturbing you. I see you have come here to read your letters.”
He had had one too this morning.
“Did you see yours?” she asked him.
He stared back at her, his expression even grimmer, if that was possible.
“I saw it,” he said.
Nine
He had seen it, seen that it was from his lawyer, grabbed it, and taken the stairs two at a time to read it in his room.
And then, having read the letter, he had come out walking, though at breakfast he had arranged to join Harry in a short while for a game of billiards. He would have gone riding if he could have been sure there would be no grooms in the stables. He did not want to have to encounter people. Besides, when he had left his room Beauty had come with him without waiting to be told she might. She had been whining almost soundlessly. He could not both ride and take Beauty. She was not fond of horses. She was especially not fond of his horse. There was a bit of jealousy at work, he suspected.
He had walked for what must have been an hour or more, striding along country lanes as though he were late for an appointment, trudging around the edges of cultivated fields and across open meadows, deliberately skirting about the edges of the village lest he be seen and hailed. Yet all that time he had been seeing nothing. He had forgotten to bring Beauty’s leash, but today it did not matter. Today she did not dash off to make her own explorations or to try herding sheep that chose not to be herded. She stayed by his side, panting, occasionally glancing up at him, making that soft whining sound in her throat.
He had no consolation to offer her in exchange.
And then, back inside the park, while he strode past the lake, she left his side for the first time in order to go trotting off to some unknown destination. Unknown, that was, until, looking ahead to see if he could spot her, he saw Miss Westcott instead. He could see that she was seated on a flat rock under a weeping willow, where she had surely come for some privacy to read her own letters in peace. She no longer recoiled in terror at the sight of his dog. Indeed, she had already set aside the letter that was in her hand in order to pat Beauty’s head and scratch behind her ear.
Beauty stood there accepting the petting, but without her usual silly look of bliss. Rather, she looked back at him with lolling tongue and pleading eyes. Look whom I have found for you. He had not wanted her to find anyone. He had wanted to be alone, and she had seemed to sense that ever since they left his room. Until now. It felt like betrayal. But it would have been impolite merely to whistle for her and walk on. It would have been equally discourteous to walk on without whistling. Miss Westcott had seen him, and she knew he had seen her.
Damnation!
He had not even begun to deal with the turmoil roiling about in his head. He had not even tried to quell the dizzying spin of emotions that were tumbling about in his mind and the rest of his body. He had not even known where he had gone or why he was making his way back to the house now. Habit, maybe? Because there was nowhere else to go? Because his room had a door that could be shut and locked, and perhaps mind and emotions could be marshaled into some sort of order in its small, private confines?
He approached Miss Westcott with reluctant feet and apologized for disturbing her. For he had disturbed her. Why else would she have brought her letters to such a secluded place if not to enjoy them uninterrupted? He had seen her when she picked them up from the tray in the hall. She had looked from one to the other of them, equally pleased to see both.
Then she asked her question—Did you see yours?
His letter, she meant.
“I saw it,” he told her—and ought to have turned and walked away. It was probably what she expected him to do and what she wanted him to do. It was what he wanted to do, God help him. But Beauty, rigid in every limb, stood by the stone on which Miss Westcott sat and gave her opinion in that soft, distressed whine again. She was not ready to move on.
Look whom I have found for you.
And so, instead of murmuring some excuse or no excuse at all, calling his dog to heel, and moving on, he spoke again in a harsh voice he barely recognized as his own.
“All lawyers ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered,” he told Miss Westcott. A wonderful pleasantry to blurt out to a delicately nurtured female.
“Oh,” she said, drawing her knees up before her on the stone and wrapping her arms about them. She was wearing one of her flimsy muslin dresses. She was not wearing a bonnet. She looked young and pretty and innocent, and he had avoided her as much as he decently could since he had inexplicably told her some facts about himself. He had assumed that was what she must want. He should leave her now to enjoy her letters.
“At the very least,” he added. He turned to gaze out over the lake. There was not a ripple on its surface. He had not noticed that there was no wind today. He had not noticed how warm it was either, how blue the sky. How perfect the day if one was only in the right mood for it.
He heard her draw breath as though to say something. A few moments later he heard the indrawn breath again. And this time she did speak.
“Your letter was from a lawyer?” she asked.
“He came highly recommended,” he told her, “with fees to match his reputation. He is also as slow as a lame tortoise. And he is useless.”
“Oh,” she said again. Perhaps she could not think of anything else to say. How could she? She did not know what the devil he was talking about.
He turned back to face her. The fronds of the willow did not entirely shade her. She sat in dancing, dappled sunlight. Dancing? There must be some small breeze, then. Beauty was still standing beside the rock, still tensely watching him. Finding herself observed, she whined again.
“He has failed in everything I set him to do,” he said. “Even the most modest of those things. All he can report to me is that I am about to be charged with assault.”
She did not even say oh this time. She gazed back at him, her teeth biting into her bottom lip.
“Assault?” she said at last.
He sighed and went to lean his back against a stout tree trunk, slightly behind her line of vision unless she turned her head. She did not turn it.
“I made a nuisance of myself after Waterloo,” he told her. “I came home to find Caroline gone. My wife, that is. I did not know where to look for her. I tried her mother’s house in Essex. I thought perhaps she had gone there. Her mother would not even receive me—Lady Pascoe, that is. She sent word down to me that Caroline was not there and that I was not welcome. It was only later, after I had talked to a few fellow drinkers
at the inn where I had put up for the night, that I discovered a slightly different truth. Caroline was indeed not at her mother’s house, but Katy was. I went storming—”
“Katy?” Miss Westcott turned her head to look at him. Beauty was seated beside the rock now, her back to the lake, her gaze steady upon him too.
“My daughter,” he told her.
“Oh.” The word made almost no sound. “You have a daughter?”
God, he was making a mess of this. He ought to have held his tongue. Why had he not?
“Caroline had taken her to her mother,” he explained. “I went back to the house as soon as I could the following morning in a white fury. I was prepared to tear the house brick from brick. I demanded my child. I ordered that she be got ready to go home with me within the hour. I was her father, after all. She was my baby. I tried to force my way beyond the hallway, into which I had already stepped uninvited.”
“But why,” Miss Westcott asked, “was Lady Pascoe not delighted to see you? Why—”
“I thoroughly frightened all the servants,” he said without answering her first question or allowing her to finish the second. “All the men came into the hall, presumably with the idea of chucking me out of there, but they kept their distance when they saw and heard me. I was ready to take them all on bare-handed, and I believe they concluded the odds were in my favor—as they were. But then Lady Pascoe came herself—she has courage, I will give her that—and told me that I would gain access to her granddaughter over her dead body. She stood at the bottom of the staircase as though daring me to do it. I could hear—” He paused for a long moment. “I could hear an infant crying upstairs. I left.”
“But where was your wife?” Miss Westcott asked.