by Mary Balogh
“Gone to a series of house parties,” he said. “Soon to be dead. I was soon gone too. From there, from home, from England. I believe the general, Caroline’s father, must have had something to do with my posting to St. Helena. Nobody else from my regiment was sent there. I wrote a letter from the island demanding that my daughter be returned to me the moment I came home. I wrote another after word reached me of Caroline’s death, threatening dire consequences if they refused to give my daughter back to me when I returned. There was no reply to either letter. I wrote a third on the boat back and would have mailed it as soon as I set foot upon French soil. But— Well, someone in whom I confided during the voyage—he was a chaplain, though why I started talking to him I have no idea, just as I have no idea why I am telling you all this now. The chaplain advised me strongly not to send the letter but to hire a lawyer instead. He urged me to do the thing correctly and rationally and according to law. The law, after all, was—is—on my side. So I did. An agent of mine in London engaged a lawyer on my behalf. He is supposedly the best there is. My troubles were supposedly over. I knew they were not, of course. When he advised me to leave everything to him and to say nothing to anybody until he had the matter settled for me, I knew there was only trouble ahead.”
“But surely,” she said, “your mother- and father-in-law must realize that you were distraught when you came home after the Battle of Waterloo and discovered your wife and daughter missing. Surely they understand that you could have physically assaulted someone during that second visit—one of the servants or even Lady Pascoe herself—but chose not to. Surely they know that you could have forced your way upstairs and snatched your child away but did not do that because she was crying and you did not wish to frighten her further. What exactly is your lawyer trying to accomplish?”
“At the very least visitation rights,” he said. “I need to see her. I must see her. At best full custody. She is my daughter, my child. I am her father. Indeed, mere visitation rights would be in no way adequate. It is they who need to negotiate visitation rights with me. And I would not be unreasonable. They are her grandparents, after all. I suppose they love her. I must believe that they do or go mad.”
But he was not entirely ignorant on that score. Six months after he arrived on St. Helena he had received an unexpected letter that Katy’s nurse, Mrs. Evans, had written him the day after he tried to force his way into the general’s house to take back his child. She was the nurse he had hired after the baby’s birth. Her letter had been sent to Rose Cottage and from there to his agent in London and from there to St. Helena. In the letter Mrs. Evans assured him that Katy was safe and well and that Lady Pascoe had an affection for her though she spent very little time in the nursery. Mrs. Evans knew very well that what her ladyship believed about the lieutenant colonel was untrue, but he must not despair. She, Katy’s nurse, would lavish all the love of her heart upon his daughter until he could take her home to love himself. She hoped it would not be long. She had asked him please not to reply to her letter. He had not done so.
Caroline had not spent much time with their baby either. Apparently upper-class mothers did not. They had other, more important things to do with their time. And what were servants for? Yet—the Westcott family had spent a good deal of time with their children when they were here a few weeks ago.
Miss Westcott had turned her face away again. Her forehead was resting on her knees. Sunlight and shade danced over the delicate arch of her neck.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said, pushing away from the tree. “I have not told these things to anyone before now except my lawyer—and that chaplain. Even Harry knows no more than that I was married and have a child who is staying with her grandparents until I feel ready to take her home. I suppose he believes I am still too battle weary to deal with the challenge of being a father on my own. You caught me at a raw moment, Miss Westcott. Or rather you were forced into encountering me at a raw moment. I had no business burdening you with my nightmare. I will not bother you again. In fact, I will not bother you at all for much longer. It is time I went home. Procrastination can be excused for only so long.”
She lifted her head to look at him once more, a frown between her brows. Beauty was whining again.
“You have a home to go to, then?” Miss Westcott asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
She waited, perhaps for more detail, but he gave none. Rose Cottage was his private domain, his only real possession apart from Katy—and he never thought of her as a possession. Rose Cottage was his anchor, his own little piece of this earth. He was afraid to go there. Afraid of finding a dead dream. He did not know what would be left to him if his dreams had died.
“Are you indeed being charged with assault?” she asked him. “Or are you merely being threatened?”
“Threatened,” he said. “Just as we have threatened them with a charge of unlawful confinement of a minor child and the unlawful refusal to release her into her father’s care.”
Yes, it had become that ugly. And that ridiculous—a mouse squaring off against a lion. With him playing the part of mouse.
“But would you not be able to fight the charge against you?” she asked him. “Your behavior immediately after discovering that your wife had disappeared and your child was being withheld from you was probably unwise, but it was understandable. I understand it. You were distraught but not actually violent.”
“I have spent the last twenty years killing more men than you can possibly imagine, Miss Westcott,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“That was in battle,” she said. “Surely General Pascoe—is that the name of your father-in-law? Surely he more than anyone else understands the difference between a man’s behavior in war and his behavior in his personal relationships.”
“You forget, Miss Westcott,” he said, “that I am a guttersnipe. And my looks are not exactly reassuring. I can only imagine what any judge looking at me and hearing about those visits I made and reading the letters I wrote would be prepared to believe.”
“You were upset,” she said, “because your child was being denied you. You did not actually do anything violent. Did you? Did you hit anyone? Touch anyone?”
“Not on that occasion,” he said. “But I did slap Caroline and caused her to flee in terror when she believed I would be coming back home after Waterloo.”
“Oh,” she said, and turned her face sharply away again.
“Or so she told her mother,” he added. “Whom would you believe in a court of law, Miss Westcott?”
He heard her sigh. She hid her face against her knees again.
“I really did not intend to spoil your quiet seclusion here,” he said, taking a step away from the tree. “I trust your letters were happier ones than mine?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice muffled against the fabric of her dress.
“Beauty,” he called. But he did not have to order his dog to heel. She was already scrambling to her feet and coming toward him. She pushed her cold nose into his hand. Again there was that almost soundless whine. He let her lick his hand and turned to walk away.
“Lieutenant Colonel Bennington,” Miss Westcott said.
He looked back at her. She had raised her head again.
“Stay at Hinsford,” she said. “I daresay your lawyer is still negotiating with the general’s lawyer. The threats from both sides were an opening gambit, I suppose?”
“It is what my lawyer assures me is happening,” he said, “so that they can proceed to negotiate from a position of mutual strength. In my opinion he is an ass. Ah, the devil! Forgive me. For both words. I am more accustomed to conversing with men than with ladies.”
She waved away his apology. “Give him time, then,” she said, “unless he has informed you that there is nothing more he can do for you. But it does not sound as if he has said that. Stay here. Let the lawyers do their work and t
rust that yours really is the best.”
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington must not despair, Grimes had assured him in this morning’s letter, despite the assault charge that had been threatened. The lawyer had had his military record investigated and had found it impressive and impeccable. He advised patience. Such cases took time to resolve.
The eternal lawyerly answer.
And Miss Westcott’s answer too. It was no answer at all.
But that was unfair. She had urged him to stay when she might just as easily have urged him to leave, knowing that trouble and scandal might be brewing and that her fragile reputation and Harry’s might suffer as a result. She might have used this revelation of his as an excuse to be rid of a man she had learned recently was not a gentleman. Very far from it, in fact.
“I will leave you in peace,” he said, having thoroughly disturbed her. “And I will think about staying longer.”
But what he did think about on the way back to the house was the fact that he had unburdened himself to her. He had told her about Caroline’s leaving him. He had told her about Katy, about his frantic, totally rash behavior when he had been refused admission to his mother-in-law’s house even though his daughter was there. He had told her— Ah, he had told her about that worst of all moments in his life when he had heard his baby crying upstairs and had been unable to go to her without knocking Lady Pascoe out of his way. He had told Miss Westcott of his present predicament. Drop the claim, General and Lady Pascoe were warning him through that threatened criminal charge, or end up with a long jail term or a court-martial and a lengthy prison term, perhaps even a firing squad, for assaulting his wife and threatening his mother-in-law. The wife of a general, no less. That second charge was the more serious. A man, bizarrely, had the right to beat his own wife.
He had told Miss Westcott almost everything. A woman he scarcely knew and with whom he had never been comfortable. Yet, rather than shrink from him, she had urged him to stay. As though somehow she understood. No one could understand what it felt like . . . He had spent almost two years hearing a baby cry in his nightmares while he found it impossible to reach her.
His throat felt sore as well as his chest and he realized in some alarm—and no small embarrassment—that he was on the verge of tears. Beauty, trotting along at his side, was pushing her nose into his hand again.
Dogs, he had learned a number of times since Waterloo—this dog anyway—had an uncanny gift of empathy. It was as though they possessed more senses than people had. So much for the superiority of the human species.
Beauty was a gift given to him in the form of an ugly, scruffy, hungry puppy when the battle rage had scarcely seeped out of his blood and in England Caroline was fleeing after leaving their daughter and a false explanatory story about him with her mother.
He stepped out onto the lawn below the house and saw that Harry was on the terrace, walking from the direction of the stables.
“I have the best-groomed horse in England,” he called out cheerfully.
“It is probably time you thought about riding him, then,” Gil called back.
“I have been thinking of little else for the last two days,” Harry said. “Were you afraid I would beat you at billiards, by the way?”
“Mortally,” Gil told him.
* * *
• • •
It was a long time before Abigail left her refuge beneath the weeping willow. She rested her chin on her updrawn knees and gazed across the lake without really seeing anything. Her letters lay beside her, forgotten.
She never would have guessed after her first encounter with Lieutenant Colonel Bennington that he was a man of such complexities. A man so filled with pain. Her heart ached because he had entrusted her with the dark secrets he had kept from almost everyone else, even Harry. Why her? Just because she was here when he had needed to unburden himself? If he had not seen her, or rather if his dog had not led him to her, would he have gone home and told it all to Harry instead?
For some reason she could not explain to herself she doubted it.
Which meant—
What did it mean? Was there some sort of connection between them? But how could there be?
He had a daughter.
He was a father, denied access to his child. She had no children of her own, but even she could not imagine anything worse than being kept from one’s own baby.
Her new knowledge added poignancy to the memories of him with the children of her own family. He had taken baby Sam from Camille one afternoon when she had needed two hands to retie the bow at the back of Alice’s sash before the child tripped over it. Sam, half asleep after a recent feed, had gurgled up at him, and he had looked back at the baby with an expression that was not really a smile but . . . Well, it had seemed to Abigail that perhaps he was smiling inside.
Had his heart also been aching with the memory of holding his own baby and breaking at the knowledge that he might never do so again? It was a thought too hard to bear.
His daughter was in the care of her grandparents. And now there was an ugly legal custody battle looming. But surely a father had the right to custody of his child. There should be nothing to be settled. But he had behaved in a threatening manner when he was at the home of his parents-in-law. He had written threatening letters. Worst of all, perhaps, his wife had told her mother he had physically abused her. And he was a battle-hardened soldier of brutal looks and lowly origins. Very lowly. No, it was not going to be easy for him to win.
Katy.
He had called the child Katy.
She was a person. They were not fighting over an inanimate object. The lieutenant colonel had demonstrated his full awareness of that when he had left his mother-in-law’s house without the child because he could hear her crying upstairs, perhaps with fright.
Perhaps his case was not utterly hopeless. His wife was dead, after all, and there was presumably no hard evidence beyond what she had told her mother that she had ever been slapped or otherwise violently used by her husband. Besides, he had had every right according to law to discipline his wife. The law sometimes needed a jolly good shaking in Abigail’s opinion, but of course it had been written by men. What did she expect? That its decrees would be fair to women? But her thoughts were digressing. He had behaved badly to his mother-in-law and her servants when he went to fetch his daughter, but he had not actually struck or apparently even touched anyone. Yes, there seemed to be hope.
But none of any of that really mattered, she knew.
Power was what counted in this world. And money and influence, both of which were mere aspects of power. And the power in this situation was all on the side of the general and his wife. Powerlessness was Lieutenant Colonel Bennington’s lot. And he clearly knew it. He had poured everything out to her this morning from a position of despair. He would not otherwise have confided in her of all people.
Where was his home? And what was his home? A hovel or a respectable house? It must surely be the latter if his wife and baby had lived there. But was it likely to be more than marginally respectable? How would he pay his lawyer? He had said the man was the best, and the best was expensive, especially when he worked—how had the lieutenant colonel phrased it?—at the speed of a lame tortoise. Would he have anything left with which to raise a child? An officer’s pay was not very large, was it? And was he now living on half pay?
Oh, the odds were all against him even though he was Katy’s father.
It was no wonder he was in despair.
And she was entirely helpless to offer any aid or solace. There was nothing she could do.
Except one thing, she thought as she got to her feet at last. As she shook out the skirt of her dress, picked up her letters, and began the walk back to the house, she knew what she could and had to do was make him more welcome here than she had done thus far. Not that she would be able to overdo the good cheer lest he feel
uncomfortable rather than welcome. She must not make him feel that she pitied him—though she did. What she must do was make it easy for him to remain here as Harry’s friend. She must see to the smooth running of the house in the meanwhile and remain in the background.
She must carry on as usual, in other words.
Oh, how helpless women were. All they could do was nurture those people within the small confines of their world. But who knew? Perhaps nurturing was ultimately as important as anything else. Look where the wars waged by men had got the world. Into ever more wars and conflicts—that was where.
The two lawyers, having flexed their muscles by making nasty threats against each other’s respective clients, would now get down to some serious negotiating, the lieutenant colonel had said—from a position of strength. How utterly foolish. Where was the strength in threats that might have to be put into effect? Why not simply talk? There was a child involved, the whole of a child’s future and happiness to be decided upon. Why were threats necessary?
All this was none of her business, she reminded herself as she made her way across the lawn toward the house.
Except that he had made it her business by talking to her. She wished he had not. She even felt a bit resentful . . . But no. That was not really true. She actually felt touched. Honored.
If only there were something she could do.
Ten
After the sunshine and heat of the morning it rained during the afternoon, typical of English weather. Gil had his game of billiards with Harry after all. Miss Westcott came to watch, bringing her knitting with her. She was making a coat, bonnet, booties, and blanket for her cousin Elizabeth’s new baby, she explained when Harry asked.
It felt deceptively soothing to move about the table hitting balls, standing aside when it was Harry’s turn, hearing the faint click of the knitting needles, the louder one of the cue hitting a ball, and the steady drumming of rain against the windows. There was almost no conversation as they all concentrated upon the task at hand.