by Balogh, Mary
“I think I would probably collapse before the economy did,” he said. “Besides, I believe I would feel very alone indeed if I had to rattle about Hinsford without even my valet for company.”
“I have my dog,” she told him.
That little ball of yappy white fluff he sometimes saw behind the fence of her front garden when he came down the drive, he supposed. From any distance it was difficult to tell the front end of the creature from the back or one side from the other. Only the high-pitched yips and barks with which it objected to his approach identified it as canine in nature.
“Can you get a word in edgewise, though?” he asked. “My valet does pause for breath occasionally. I am not sure your dog does.”
“She does like to bark at strangers,” she admitted. “She is guarding her territory, which for her encompasses my house and my garden and the road beyond the fence. She barks at me too when I have been gone for a while and she is excited to see me back. Otherwise she is a very good listener. She never answers back or scolds or lectures. She listens attentively and simply falls asleep if I become tedious.”
“And do you often become tedious, Mrs. Tavernor?” he asked.
“Do not we all?” she asked him in return. “When we become too engrossed in ourselves? When complaint and self-pity creep into our discourse?”
“And what is it you have to pity yourself over?” he asked her. “The loss of your husband?” He could have bitten his tongue as soon as the words were out of his mouth, for they had been talking with a surprisingly light sort of banter. Her husband had been dead only a bit longer than a year. A little self-pity, even a lot of it, would be perfectly natural.
“I did not mean that,” she said. “I was speaking in hypotheticals, Major. Isaiah died in a manner befitting his life and his faith, and a young boy lives who would otherwise be dead. It would be wrong to mourn his death by pitying myself.”
They were passing Mrs. Bartlett’s house and then rounding the bend past the grove of trees. Mrs. Tavernor’s cottage was tucked away just beyond them within its neat garden.
They stopped outside her garden gate, and she withdrew her hand from his arm and turned to him.
“Thank you, Major Westcott,” she said. “It was kind of you to walk me all the way home. I did not once look nervously about me for bears and wolves.”
“You might have been very nervous indeed if one or both had put in an appearance,” he said. “I would probably run in the opposite direction as fast as my legs would carry me.”
She did not laugh. But in the dim light shed by his lantern he could see the way her eyes crinkled at the outer corners and somehow smiled. She was wearing a cap. He could see the frilly border of it forming a frame about the inside brim of her bonnet. She had a face that of course he recognized, he saw in some relief. A face that was neither pretty nor ugly. Nor even plain for that matter. It was a pleasant face. In the uncertain light he could not decide what color her eyes were—or the little he could see of her hair.
“Good night, Major Westcott,” she said, and turned to open the gate.
“But,” he said, “I must now prove to you, ma’am, that I am not a coward after all. I will accompany you to your door and offer my protection if any burglar or monster should leap out to frighten you.”
“Oh,” she said. “I believe Snowball would make short work of anyone who was not me trying to get into the house. But thank you. Maybe you will hold your lantern aloft until I light the candle inside the door.”
Snowball? Well, it was an appropriate name for the dog, anyway.
Harry followed her along the path to the front door and, sure enough, the dog set up a frenzied yapping from within and came bouncing outside as soon as Mrs. Tavernor had turned her key in the lock and opened the door. It did not know whether to greet its mistress first or attack Harry, and ended up dashing hither and yon, getting beneath both their feet.
“Yes, yes, I hear you,” Harry told the dog. “You are very brave to think yourself capable of saving your mistress from any villainous designs I may have upon her.”
“No one has told her she is not a mighty warrior, you see,” Mrs. Tavernor said.
“And no one ever should,” he said. “No one should ever diminish her spirit with even the slightest dose of reality, even though, to my shame, I just tried it.”
“And does that apply to all females, Major Westcott?” Mrs. Tavernor asked as she busied herself lighting the tall candle that stood on a table just inside the door, a tinderbox beside it.
“That is far too deep a question to be asking me at this time of night,” he said, grinning at her back. “But yes, it does. And to all males too. We ought not to try imposing limits upon one another even when we mean well.”
She turned back to him. There was light in the cottage now. It looked cozy and safe in there.
“Good night, then, Mrs. Tavernor,” he said.
“Good night. And thank you once more,” she said. But as he turned away she spoke again, her voice hurried and a bit breathless. “Major Westcott?”
He turned to look back at her, his eyebrows raised.
“Are you ever lonely?” she asked him.
He stared at her, transfixed. For a moment he did not know how to answer. She was standing very still, one arm reaching slightly forward, palm out, as though she had wanted to stop him and had got frozen in the gesture. Her face registered dismay.
Was she lonely, then? But why else would she have asked the question?
“I suppose everyone feels loneliness from time to time,” he said. “It even happens sometimes when one is in company with other people. Have you noticed? It is the price one must pay, perhaps, for keeping oneself intact. Whatever that means.”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” she said. “Some people thrive upon company, upon drawing everyone’s attention and holding it, often by the power of their will or by doing more talking than anyone else. It is as though they derive their sense of self from crowds. Then there are the people who need to keep a greater distance from others, even if they are not quite hermits. They draw their sense of self from … themselves. They …” She paused and bit her lip for a moment. “But they are sometimes lonely as a result. The price they pay, as you put it.”
Had she been describing the relationship between her husband and herself, however unconsciously? Whenever the Reverend Tavernor had been in a room, all attention had somehow been riveted upon him without any apparent effort on his part. He had had that effect upon people even though he had not habitually tried to dominate a gathering. If anyone else started a conversation, all eyes would turn his way to see what he would say in return. It would not be surprising if his wife was lonely now. She must miss him dreadfully. She was very young to be a widow. She was probably no older than he, Harry thought, perhaps even younger.
“You are still very young,” he said, his voice sounding a bit stilted and awkward. What could he say to comfort her, after all? He was embarrassed. “You will surely marry again and your loneliness will go away.”
She returned her arm to her side at last while her dog settled at her feet. “Ah,” she said. “But I would have to give up my freedom for the dubious pleasure of gaining a husband and losing a bit of the loneliness I sometimes feel. Would it be worth it?”
Dubious pleasure?
He did not believe she expected an answer. But what did her words suggest about her marriage to the Reverend Tavernor? That it had been so perfect that it could never be replicated? Or that it had been quite the opposite and was never to be repeated? It was really none of his business, Harry decided. But she had aroused his curiosity.
“Is a woman quite unfree when she marries, then?” he asked. “I have two sisters who would take issue with that notion. And a mother.”
“They are fortunate,” she said, suggesting an answer to his unspoken questions. “But you have not married.”
“No, ma’am,” he agreed in a tone that he hoped would discourage her from cont
inuing. “I have not.”
“I will never marry again,” she said, folding her arms beneath her bosom and hunching her shoulders as though against the chill of the night. “I value my freedom and independence too well. But they do come at a cost, Major Westcott. I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely … I …” Her words were spilling out quickly and breathlessly and a bit incoherently. “Oh, goodness, I do not know what I am trying to say. Nothing of any sense or significance, I daresay. Ignore me, please. It is late.”
What the devil?
What the devil?
Harry stood where he was on the path just below her doorstep as she gazed at him for a moment, stepped backward into the house, raised a hand in farewell at the same moment as she gave him the ghost of a smile, said good night again though not much sound escaped her lips, and closed the door.
What the devil? Harry thought again.
She had not been flirting with him. One could not imagine Mrs. Tavernor flirting with any man. And she was not in search of another husband. She had said so, and in no uncertain terms.
But she wanted something.
Had she been making him a proposition? Was it even remotely possible? Mrs. Tavernor? The bland, pious, almost silent widow of the zealously puritanical Reverend Isaiah Tavernor?
She wanted a lover?
Specifically him?
I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely …
By God, she had made him a proposition. Or started to, anyway. Until her impulsive words—for they surely had been impulsive—had shocked her and she had tried her best to unsay what had already been spoken and could never be recalled.
Good God!
Yes, he was sometimes lonely. Of course he was. He had admitted it to himself just lately. But was it not true of everyone? As he had said to her? He just never knew quite what to do about his own loneliness when it hit him—which was not by any means all the time or even very often.
Harry wondered suddenly if she was peering out through the curtains drawn over her front window and feeling a bit uneasy about seeing him still standing here like a statue on her garden path. He turned to leave, stopping only briefly after passing through the gate to shut it behind him.
He was not ready for marriage yet. But … an affair? With a willing partner? A social equal? Someone who clearly understood—and would make him clearly understand—that it was not a courtship and never would be? Someone close to home? At the end of his own drive, in fact?
Mrs. Tavernor?
The Reverend Isaiah Tavernor’s widow?
Harry strode along the drive with incautious haste, given that it was pitch-dark and his lantern was not as effective as it might have been.
The very idea ought to be laughable. Or horrifying. Bizarre. Beyond the realm of reality. He was pretty sure, however, that she had been serious, though she had not come out and said specifically that that was what she wanted. She had stopped herself in time. There was nothing else she could have meant, though, was there?
One thing was beyond question. After a number of years during which he had been almost completely unaware of her existence, Mrs. Tavernor had suddenly become a very real person to him in the past hour—not even that long— and quite distinct from her late husband. She had come alive as a woman who valued freedom and independence, even though the price she had to pay was some loneliness and—presumably—an occasional craving for sex.
Devil take it, it really was bizarre. Mrs. Tavernor and sex just did not go together in his head.
But she wanted a lover.
Him.
Are you ever lonely?
Four
Lydia kept herself determinedly busy throughout the following week, bustling about as though she had a mansion to run instead of a cottage. She cleaned and cooked and baked and cleaned again. She weeded the flower beds behind the house and chopped wood and took Snowball for walks in the early morning, along country lanes no one frequented at that time of day. Even so, every time she left the house, always by the back way, or came to a new turn, she peered in every direction first like a child playing hide-and-seek, to make sure there was no one in sight.
Specifically Major Harry Westcott.
The only person she ever did see was Jeremy Piper, the boy her husband had saved, who liked to slink around at all hours, often carrying what looked like a slingshot. Fortunately, he always seemed intent upon avoiding Lydia. Perhaps she reminded him of an episode in his life he would rather forget.
Lydia could not believe what she had said. She had actually enjoyed the walk home from the Cornings’ house with Major Westcott, though she had been a bit alarmed at first at the prospect of having to make conversation with him. It had proved surprisingly easy, however. They had even joked with each other, something she had not done with anyone besides her women friends for years. It had felt lovely. So had the firmness of his arm beneath her hand and the solidity of his chest and shoulders close to her, accentuated by the capes of his greatcoat. She had not wanted it to end—and it had not ended when they reached her gate. For he had insisted upon seeing her safely inside her house.
That had proved to be her undoing. If only when he had turned to leave she had kept her mouth shut. But no. After they had already said good night, it had occurred to her that this was her big opportunity, probably her only one. Ever. All she needed was the courage to seize the moment …
So she had opened her mouth and spoken. She, Lydia Tavernor, who never spoke without first weighing her words and being quite sure she had something of value to say. Are you ever lonely? she had asked—and had not had the sense to stop there, though even that would have been bad enough.
Her stomach had been a churning cauldron ever since. She had been unable to sleep properly, and when she did doze, she had bizarre dreams that were so much like reality that she jerked awake in a panic only to find that reality was worse. Her only faint hope—very faint—was that she had not said enough to make her meaning clear to him.
I value my freedom and independence too well. But they do come at a cost … I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely …
There was no way on this earth he could possibly have misunderstood.
What a colossal humiliation!
Two days after it happened, she had the opportunity to go into Eastleigh, a market town eight miles away, with the vicar and his wife, who often offered to take her when they were going themselves. Lydia suspected that the Reverend Bailey did not enjoy shopping and was quite happy for the chance to sit in the coffee room of a comfortable inn while his wife had the company of another female who enjoyed looking around the shops as much as she did. Lydia spent far more than she ought, with Mrs. Bailey’s full encouragement. She purchased a new ready-made dress, plain of design but of such a pretty pink fabric that she could not resist it. Isaiah had always liked her to wear sober colors, and since his death, of course, she had worn almost exclusively black and gray.
She spent most of the rest of her disposable money at her favorite place, which was fortunately Mrs. Bailey’s too—a needlework shop, where she bought a supply of bright yellow wool and a smaller amount of pink wool, several shades darker than her dress. It would make a very pretty shawl. It was an age since she had last knitted. She was going to start again. The vicar’s wife meanwhile left the shop with a fat bundle of embroidery silks.
Back at home, Lydia knitted whenever she could not invent something else to do—she could not concentrate upon reading. But knitting, alas, occupied only the hands, not the mind too. She tried knitting and reading at the same time, but the rather intricate pattern she was working made it impossible.
Perhaps by the next time she saw Major Westcott he would have forgotten. Perhaps he had not paid much attention even at the time. Yet he had stood on her garden path, frowning at her d
oor—not that she had been able to see his expression in the darkness around one lifted corner of her curtain, it was true, but she would have bet the sixpence she had already lost at cards that he was frowning. He had stood there for what had seemed like an eternity.
Denise Franks, one of the friends she had made during the past year, distracted her one afternoon by calling and staying to share a pot of tea. They exchanged news and recipes, and Denise admired her knitting, which was already a few inches long, and chuckled over the bright yellow color. She had come to invite Lydia to a surprise birthday party she and her sister had decided to give for her father’s seventieth birthday. She was very grateful when Lydia offered to make a birthday cake, since she and her sister were swamped with all the other preparations.
“It was an impulsive decision,” she explained. “It was only when Papa told us a couple of days ago that we must on no account make a fuss over his birthday that we realized that yes, really we ought and must. He clearly expects it.”
“He will scold you and be delighted,” Lydia said, laughing.
She baked the cake the next day and decorated it with marzipan and icing the day after. By the time she was finished with the decorating, Snowball was restless. She had had only a brief outing before breakfast and was hovering at the door, whining. The front door.
Lydia hesitated. She had been avoiding the front entrance all week like the coward she was. Her front garden was directly across the street from the entrance to Hinsford Manor. In the past she had often been outside when Major Westcott came down the drive. She had never felt any awkwardness about smiling at him, raising a hand in greeting, even exchanging a few meaningless pleasantries about the weather with him. The sight of him had always brightened her day, in fact, though she doubted he had ever really noticed her.
It would no longer brighten her day to see him for the very reason that now he would almost certainly notice her.
Why oh why oh why had she done it? And why was it impossible to recall words once they were out of one’s mouth? If she could just hide away in a hole somewhere and stay there until he grew old and died or until she did, whichever came first, then … Well, then nothing. Sometimes one’s mind churned out the silliest of absurdities.