by Mary Balogh
Perhaps, Gil thought, he had overreacted to his letter. He had seen it as an announcement of utter failure and looming disaster. Perhaps indeed what he needed more than anything else was patience. After all, his legal case to take Katy back into his own care was a strong one. He was her father, and he had provided her with a home and financial support and had never deserted her.
He wished fervently that he had calmed down sufficiently during his walk this morning simply to nod pleasantly when he saw Miss Westcott at the lake and call his dog to heel.
Having poured out all or most of the sordid details to her, however, he now felt it necessary to recount them to Harry too—his host here at Hinsford and supposedly his closest friend. Unfortunately, he had always found sharing himself one of the most difficult things to do. After a friendless, solitary childhood, he had effectively shut the door between himself and everyone outside himself when he had lied about his age and gone off with a recruiting sergeant. He had locked and barred that door after he became a commissioned officer. Had he been afraid of being found? Or perhaps of being found out?
The best he could do now, he supposed, as before, was leave everything to his lawyer and do nothing to try to help his own case. But inaction was torture to him. To prove it, it seemed, he hit the ball much too hard, with disastrous results, and Harry laughed as he took his place at the table.
“We are not playing cricket, Gil,” he said, and went on to take the game.
Gil won by three games to two. By then Harry was yawning and Miss Westcott, hearing him, put her knitting away in a brightly embroidered bag she had made since their visit to town. She got to her feet with the announcement that she would have tea fetched to the drawing room.
“I had better tell you, Harry,” Gil said before she left, “what I told your sister this morning when Beauty discovered her refuge out at the lake. It is only fair you know too since there may be further developments while I am here. Indeed, you may decide that you wish me to leave, for it is remotely possible that I will be arrested and hauled away in chains.”
“That is surely nonsense,” Miss Westcott said. “But I do think it wise that you confide in Harry too, Lieutenant Colonel. I shall leave you.”
“Well, this sounds intriguing,” Harry said cheerfully as he put away his cue. “And I no longer feel like crawling off to bed.”
And so Gil told him before they went together to the drawing room, where Miss Westcott was already pouring the tea. She gestured them toward the table upon which tea plates and napkins had been set out beside larger plates of scones and sliced seedcake. There were pots of strawberry preserves and clotted cream for the scones.
“I say,” Harry said, taking a piece of cake, “I remember Lady Pascoe. A worse dragon you cannot imagine, Abby. Worse by far than General Pascoe, whose bark was always worse than his bite, I thought—though it was a pretty ferocious bark at that. It was clear to see who ruled that household. She ought to have been the general, by thunder. She would have had us all shaking in our boots in good earnest. She would have put the French to rout a few years before Wellington did it.”
“Is she a kind grandmother, do you think?” Miss Westcott asked, and Gil, who had been about to help himself to a scone with cream changed his mind and merely accepted a cup of tea from her hand.
“She doted upon Caroline,” he said. “She will surely see Katy as Caroline’s child and will not punish her for also being mine.” He did not mention the fact that she spent very little time with Katy—if what Mrs. Evans had written almost two years ago still held true.
“Lawyers can be the very devil,” Harry said. “Mine used to bore me silly after my father died. He could prose on forever. And it was he who uncovered the truth about my father’s two overlapping marriages. I daresay it needed uncovering, though. Poor Anna, living all those years in an orphanage, not even knowing her proper name. She went by the name of Anna Snow, when in reality she was Lady Anastasia Westcott. We were thunderstruck when we found out, were we not, Abby?”
“We were,” she admitted. “And we behaved badly for a while, Harry, something I will always regret, for none of it was Anna’s fault. But we have strayed from the topic of Lieutenant Colonel Bennington and his daughter. Is there any help we can offer beyond moral support? I keep thinking there must be something.”
“I am really not asking for help,” Gil said hastily. “This is my problem to deal with. I am only sorry you have to know anything at all about it. But Beauty discovered you under that willow tree this morning, Miss Westcott, just when I was feeling at my most frustrated after reading the letter from my lawyer. I must, of course, leave the matter in his hands, as I have been doing since my return from St. Helena, and trust that he knows what he is doing. It is not easy for a soldier to trust someone else to do what he yearns to do himself, preferably with his sword or his fists.”
She was frowning, her own plate of food and cup of tea apparently forgotten on the table beside her. “You told me your lawyer claims to be negotiating from a position of strength,” she said, “while the general’s lawyer must be assuring his clients that he is doing exactly the same thing. There must be some way of tipping the scale in your favor, Lieutenant Colonel. There must be a way of making your case to take your daughter into your own care more convincing.”
“Without the fists and the sword?” he asked.
“Forget fists and swords,” she said. “They are not the answer to everything or even to very much. There has to be something else that does not involve violence.”
Why was she so concerned? And why had Harry not ordered him to leave as soon as his story had been told? Perhaps he ought to take matters into his own hands, after all, and pack his bags.
“What you need, Gil,” Harry said, frowning in thought, “is a wife. A mother for your daughter.”
“Unfortunately,” Gil said, “Caroline is dead.”
“Well, of course she is,” Harry said with a dismissive wave of one hand. “If she were not, we would not be having this discussion, would we? You would not even be here. You would be at home with her and your daughter. You need a new wife.”
And somehow as he said it Gil found himself locking eyes with Miss Westcott. Her cheeks turned scarlet under his scrutiny as she looked sharply away and reached for her plate. What the devil? She did not think Harry was suggesting her for the role, did she? And she did not think he—
“Someone like Abby,” Harry said, his voice cheerful again, totally unaware of the acute discomfort he had just caused his two companions. And he was not finished. “She would be ideal, in fact. She—”
“Harry!” she cried, her voice an agony of sound. “You are embarrassing Lieutenant Colonel Bennington horribly.”
“Am I?” he said, and looked from one to the other of them. “But you look the more embarrassed of the two, Ab. My apologies to you both. That is what comes of thinking aloud. But you must confess a new marriage would be the ideal solution, though not necessarily with Abby. A judge would hardly withhold custody from both a father and a mother, would he? You need to meet someone, Gil. Soon. Is there anyone among our neighbors who has taken your fancy?”
Gil got to his feet though he had not touched his tea. “Absolutely no one, Harry,” he said firmly. “And even if I had, how flattering would it be to the woman concerned if I asked her to marry me so that I could recover my daughter from the clutches of her evil grandparents? I am taking myself off to my room. I daresay Beauty is ready for another walk, rain or no rain.”
He took the stairs two at a time again.
Beauty, who had been dozing on her pillow beside his bed, was indeed ready for a new adventure. She always was. She scrambled to her feet in her usual ungainly manner, shook herself, and trotted beside him down the stairs and out into the rain.
You need a new wife. Someone like Abby.
Good God!
Oh, devil take Harry a
nd his unbridled tongue.
* * *
• • •
“Did I embarrass you, Ab?” Harry asked after the door closed behind his friend.
“Of course you did,” Abigail said.
“I was thinking out loud,” he told her.
“Sometimes,” she said, “that is not a good habit to cultivate. Especially in the hearing of people likely to be horridly embarrassed.” She sipped her tea, pulled a face when she discovered it to be cold, and set her cup back on its saucer.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “Actually, Abby, it still does. Having a new wife would almost be bound to help Gil’s cause.”
“But me?” she said. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Possibly,” he conceded. “I have spent a lot of time out of it during the past few years. Perhaps permanent damage has been done. But why not you?”
She stared at him, speechless.
“You are lonely,” he continued. “I may not have spent a great deal of time with you in the past six years, Abby, but I still know you well enough to understand that. You were always far more quiet and reserved than Camille ever was when you were growing up, but at least you always knew your way forward. You would have made your come-out and you would have had dozens of suitors to choose among, and you would have chosen the one that best pleased you. By now you would be married and raising your children and living the life you had always expected and wanted.”
“How do you know what I wanted?” she asked, frowning.
“You wanted what every girl wants,” he said. “You are not going to deny it, are you? There is nothing wrong with wanting marriage and a family, Abby.”
“I was blind,” she said. “I was blinded by what was expected of me. So was Camille. She would have married Lord Uxbury. I probably would have ended up marrying someone similarly horrid.”
“No, you would not,” he said. “Cam was an idiot in those days. All that mattered to her was doing what society and her lady’s upbringing expected of her in the hope that at last she would win our father’s love. It never would have happened even if he had lived to be a hundred and even if she had wed one of the royal dukes. He cared for no one but himself. She is far better off now than she was then. She is happy, for God’s sake. But you were always different. You would have chosen far more wisely than she did when she picked Uxbury. And you would have been contented forever after even if not wildly happy.”
Abigail was surprised at how well Harry seemed to understand his sisters as they had been. She had not realized it at the time. He had been a careless young man, seemingly concerned only with sowing his own wild oats.
“Well, I am glad it did not happen,” she said. “Glad for Camille and glad for myself. Glad for Mama too. I am not so sure about you. It must have been dreadful losing your title and your fortune as you did.”
He shrugged. “I have managed. I have even managed to survive.” He grinned.
“Harry,” she said, frowning again, “I am not lonely. Or if I am, it is not a gnawing ache. Certainly not a raging pain. And I would rather be lonely than married to the wrong man. Or grabbing the first one that seems attainable. I might have done that twice over during the past couple of years at Redcliffe. I did not do it. I am not afraid to be single. There is some freedom in the single state.”
“Not a great deal for a woman,” he said bluntly. “What if I get married one of these days, eh? What will you do then? For my wife would be mistress of Hinsford, and I know you well enough to understand that you would feel more than a bit awkward about remaining here then even if both I and my wife urged you to stay. Where would you go?”
“I will decide that when the time comes,” she told him. “Are you planning to marry?”
“Not in the foreseeable future,” he said. “But I probably will one of these days. Could you not be happy with Gil, Abby? He is an excellent fellow. And I think he may be just the one for you.”
“Oh,” she said crossly. “When did you decide to become a matchmaker, Harry? I scarcely know Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. He scarcely knows me. And if you think we should suddenly decide to marry each other just so that he will have a better chance of recovering his daughter, then you must have windmills in your head.”
“Not just because,” he said. “Though it would surely give him a better chance. I had no idea until an hour or so ago, you know, that General Pascoe and his wife would not give the child up to him. I thought he just needed a bit of time first before he took on the responsibility. It is a monstrous thing.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But I am not going to marry him just because it is. And he is not going to marry me either just to give himself an advantage in a legal wrangle. As much as anything else, Harry, there are his birth and upbringing to consider. Can you just imagine how everyone would react if I announced my intention of marrying him? Even given the blot on my birth?”
“You mean Mama and the grandmothers and all the rest?” he said. “We have not discovered their breaking point yet, have we? They would not let us go even though we are bastards. They accepted Joel when Cam took it into her head to marry him. They have accepted her adopted children. They did not go into a collective swoon—at least, I did not hear that they did—when Cousin Elizabeth decided to marry a man almost ten years her junior. Maybe they do not have a breaking point. But even if they do, do you care, Abby?”
Did she? Would she? If she made a marriage so outrageously inappropriate that her family turned their backs on her? It would—
“It is a nonsense question,” she said crossly. “I am not going to marry Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. He is not going to offer for me. But you have put us in a ghastly predicament, I would have you know. I am going to find it difficult to look him in the eye the next time I see him, and I daresay he will find it just as hard to look me in mine. You are a horrid man, Harry, just as you were a horrid boy.”
He grinned at her and then yawned hugely.
“I am sorry to have upset you,” he said. “I really am, Abby. But I still think—”
“Oh stop,” she said irritably, getting to her feet and grabbing her knitting bag from beside her chair. “Go and have a sleep. Perhaps you will wake up with some sense restored to your brain.”
All she got for a reply as she left the room was a chuckle followed by another yawn.
She hurried up to her room rather than go to one of the other day rooms and risk being walked in upon. The thing was that Harry’s outrageous suggestion had made some sense. Having a wife probably would increase the lieutenant colonel’s chances of getting his daughter back. But why oh why oh why had he decided to suggest her as a possible candidate? It was ghastly beyond belief. She was lonely, though she rarely admitted it to herself in such stark terms. But the idea of trying to alleviate it by marrying him rather than any other man she knew—either of the two who had hinted an interest in her during the last couple of years, for example—was . . . Well, it was preposterous. She felt quite uncomfortably breathless, and her knees felt weak.
She had a sudden and vivid memory of walking beside him to the needlework shop, her hand through his arm, every cell of her body aware of his tallness and overall largeness, of the hardness of the muscles in his arm, of the shaving soap or eau de cologne that he wore. Something distinctly masculine, whatever it was. The very idea of being married to him, of touches far more intimate than a hand through his arm, kisses, for example . . . Oh, it was a lowering admission to make even in the privacy of her own mind when she was twenty-four years old, but Abigail had never been kissed. She had never particularly wanted to be, not by any specific man anyway. What would it be like to be kissed by Lieutenant Colonel Bennington?
Oh, blast Harry and his bright ideas.
She closed the door of her room firmly behind her, set her workbag neatly in its place, and went into her dressing room to splash her face
with cool water. Why could the mind not simply be shut down when one was mortified by the thoughts and images that were racing through it without a request for permission? How she hated Harry. Sometimes he just blurted out whatever came into his head, without any consideration of the impact his words might be having upon his listeners.
However was she going to face Lieutenant Colonel Bennington again?
Well, there was only one answer to that question, she thought as she dried her face and hands with a towel. She must face him as soon as possible so that she would not give in to the temptation to hide forever.
She grabbed a shawl and drew it about her shoulders, leaving a fold to be drawn over her head, before going back downstairs and stepping outdoors. She stood on the top step and looked around. The rain seemed to have stopped, at least temporarily, though the clouds still hung ominously low. She was fortunate—though she did not feel fortunate. He was coming diagonally across the lawn toward the house, the shoulders of his coat and the brim of his hat looking damp, his boots liberally strewn with wet grass. A bedraggled-looking Beauty loped along at his side though she increased her pace when she spotted Abigail. He looked up, saw her, stopped a moment, his face looking a bit like granite, and then kept coming. It was too late now for either one of them to turn away.
“Beauty, sit,” he called as soon as his dog reached the terrace, thus saving Abigail from being effusively greeted by a wet dog. He himself stopped a few feet farther back.
“I would disabuse you of any notion that I put Harry up to that,” he said stiffly. “And I apologize for any embarrassment you may have suffered. The embarrassment I know you suffered, in fact. And for the insult. You must have been outraged and justifiably so.”
“It must be wet among the trees,” she said. “And there is no real shelter in that direction. The rain is going to come down again at any moment, I believe. There is a summerhouse the other way.” She pointed to the east. “Have you seen it? It is lovely in midsummer, for it is shaded by trees on three sides and affords a lovely view over the village and the countryside beyond on the fourth side. It is also dry inside on a rainy day. There is a good path leading to it.”