by Balogh, Mary
She must thank him with all sincerity when he was finished, offer him refreshments, and then firmly send him on his way.
And then knit him a scarf.
Were ginger biscuits and coffee enough to offer a man who had been hard at work for well over an hour? Perhaps he would need something more substantial. Toast, perhaps? With eggs? She had never had to wonder about such things with Isaiah. Mrs. Elsinore had cooked for them, and Isaiah had always given her orders for the day before he went about his own work. Lydia had hated that arrangement, the way she had been cut out of what ought to have been one of her principal duties. But Isaiah had explained when she had broached the subject with him one day that she ought to be above such menial tasks as planning and preparing meals. She was far better employed doing the Lord’s work as his helpmeet in the parish.
How she had come to hate that word—helpmeet. It was dehumanizing. No, maybe not that. Depersonalizing, then. That was more accurate. If one was a helpmeet, one was useful, perhaps. Busy and helpful, perhaps. Indispensable, maybe. Loyal and obedient, certainly. But one was nothing in oneself. One had no identity separate from the man for whom one was a help and a mate.
It felt undeniably good to be in charge of her own kitchen, wondering what she ought to put before Major Westcott when he had finished chopping her wood. She could feel domesticated to her heart’s content, but she could also please herself, not be forever at the beck and call of some man who happened to be in charge of her life. She did not have to offer the major anything. She did not suppose he expected to be fed, and there was a pump outside from which he could drink water. She could enjoy doing it anyway because she did not have to.
When she left her kitchen, Lydia did not go into the living room to rescue her stretched stitch before knitting on. The blue sky and sunshine beckoned her, and if she remained inside it would be only because he was out there and she was too self-conscious to join him. This was her home, she reminded herself, and that was her wood he was chopping. At the rate he was going there would be enough to last a fortnight even if the weather turned cold again. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders, opened the back door, and stepped resolutely outside into air that was even warmer than she had expected. It felt like early summer.
Snowball came dashing toward her on legs that were virtually invisible beneath all her white fur, and yapped excitedly about her ankles until Lydia stooped down and picked her up and cradled her in her arms, drawing back her head with a laugh to avoid the little pink tongue that would have lapped at her face. Major Westcott looked up from the chopping block.
“Harry,” Lydia said. “Enough. Please. I will have to knit you a scarf ten feet long to make up for all this. And perhaps a hat too. Come inside. I have coffee on and biscuits fresh out of the oven. May I make you some toast and eggs too? You must be hungry.”
He propped the axe against the block and turned toward her. “Yellow with red stripes?” he asked—and grinned. And oh dear, he was the one who ought to be breathless, not she. But he was lean and long legged and broad shouldered, with muscles in all the right places. And if he did not close his shirt, though it was only very partially open, she might never get her breath back.
“With orange dots?” she suggested. “Would you like toast and eggs?”
“Perhaps toast and cheese if you have some,” he said. “And freshly baked biscuits, you said? If you feed me so lavishly, Lydia, I will release you from the obligation to knit the hat. It would probably look like a tea cozy on my head anyway and I would be a laughingstock.”
She laughed as though to prove his point and went back inside to slice the bread and start toasting it on the end of the long toasting fork held to the fire. When had she last felt this lighthearted? she asked herself as one side browned and she turned it on the fork. Life had always been a serious business with Isaiah. Frivolity was sin, or at least opened the door to sin. But she would not think about the years of her marriage. Not in any negative way, at least. He had been a good and earnest man.
She had four thick slices of toast piled on a plate by the time Harry came inside. They were keeping warm by the hearth while the butter with which she had lavished them soaked in and she was slicing the cheese. The biscuits were heaped on a plate on the table. The coffee was ready to pour into the large, cheerful mugs she had bought on a whim the last time she had been shopping in Eastleigh with Mrs. Bailey—the same day she had bought her pink dress and the bright yellow wool.
He had washed his hands under the pump outside and was rolling down his shirtsleeves when he stepped into the kitchen. He had already closed his shirt and donned his cravat and his waistcoat.
“Are you willing to tolerate me without my coat, Lydia?” he asked. “I want to go back out after I have eaten to tidy up a bit before I leave.”
“I did not expect you to chop the whole pile,” she told him. “The least I can do is tidy up myself.” Though she had not noticed much of a mess when she was out there.
“I will do it,” he said. “You will be busy knitting.”
“I have made the toast,” she said. “I can make more if necessary. The cheese and the biscuits are on the table. So all I owe you is a scarf? No hat? How sad! Hats are my specialty. And no one has ever mistaken them for tea cozies.”
“Toast and cheese at the expense of cold ears,” he said. “It sounds a fair enough exchange to me. Especially if those biscuits are ginger ones. They smell as if they are. Are they?”
“They are,” she told him as he sat down while she poured their coffee. He stirred milk and a little sugar into his.
“This is a man-sized mug,” he said, lifting it from the table to examine the design. “I approve.”
He ate in silence for a minute or two while Lydia held her own mug between her hands, something she would never have done either as a girl or as a married lady. She even had her elbows on the table. It was quite ungenteel, but the mugs and the sunlight streaming through the window—and his lack of a coat—somehow invited informality. She gazed at him for a while, consciously enjoying the sight of him.
There was definitely darkness in him. But he had not allowed it to prevail in his life. He was habitually good-humored, as he was now. She could not remember seeing him in a somber mood or hearing him say anything that suggested irritability or anger. He was not a complainer. Even his criticism of the pianoforte at Tom and Hannah Corning’s had been made in the form of a joke. She believed he was also a solitary man, though. Despite the friends and friendly acquaintances he had in the neighborhood, there was something suggestive of loneliness about him. He had even admitted it to her that night, though he had spoken of it as part of the general human condition.
She knew there were many facets to his character. The sadder ones he kept to himself while the world saw only the cheerful good nature. She wanted to know all of them, Lydia realized—a disturbing admission when she knew she must discourage any further acquaintance at all.
“Do you resent the man who became Earl of Riverdale in your place?” she asked him. His hand, carrying the last bite of toast to his mouth, paused halfway. He frowned in thought for a moment before returning the toast to his plate.
“It would be difficult to resent Alexander even if I felt so inclined,” he said. “He really did not want the title or the responsibilities that went with it, you know, and his position was made very much more awkward by the fact that my father’s fortune did not accompany the title and properties, since they were entailed and it was not. The fortune went to my father’s only legitimate child—my half sister, Anna, now the Duchess of Netherby. Alex is hardworking and conscientious and has repaired the effects of years of neglect at Brambledean Court, the ancestral home of the earldom. He has done it with the help of Wren, his wife, who brought a fortune of her own to their marriage. He did not marry her just for her money, I must add. They are extremely fond of each other.”
But it still must have been unbearably painful for Harry, Lydia thought, to see his cousin do wh
at ought to have been his task.
“I put all the blame where it belongs,” he continued. “I suppose you know the story. How my father could have done what he did to his first wife when she was dying of consumption and he married my mother for her dowry I do not know. It was a wickedness compounded by the fact that he hid Anna away in an orphanage even though she had maternal grandparents who adored her and would have been only too happy to raise her. And how he could have done what he did to my mother and ultimately to my sisters and me is beyond understanding—or forgiveness. Generally speaking, one is expected to give loyalty and affection to one’s parents, but in the case of my father it has been impossible to do.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “It was an impertinent question.” And what a dreadful burden to bear—the inability to love or respect one’s father.
“Not so,” he said. “Friends ought to be willing to share some personal details with each other.”
He paused and hesitated a few moments, one hand turning his cup on the table. He looked up at her then, and there was something troubled and hard in his eyes, something Lydia had never seen there before. His voice, when he spoke again, was abrupt.
“But friends should also be honest with each other,” he said. “Of course I resented Alex. I hated him. Suddenly he had my title and my properties and my responsibilities. He even had my name, for the love of God. And I hated Anna, who was totally innocent and had grown up in an orphanage not even knowing her true identity. But suddenly she had my birthright and my fortune. She was being welcomed with open arms into the bosom of my family— of which, by the way, I had so recently been the head—while my mother and my sisters were outcast and lost all the identity they had ever known. And there was nothing I could do about it even though I was the man of our own family. When Anna tried to insist that she share the fortune with us, her half siblings, I hated her even more. It seemed like such presumptuous condescension. I was consumed with hatred, Lydia. Perhaps I was fortunate to be able to turn it in a very physical form against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose ultimate ambition was to invade and take over my country.”
Lydia no longer leaned slightly toward him, her elbows on the table. She sat back in her chair and stared intently across at him. He looked different. His usual expression of open good humor had vanished. Until it returned all in a rush.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “That was all probably far more than you wanted to know.”
“But I did ask,” she said.
“You did.” He smiled and then laughed and put the last bite of toast into his mouth with a hand that shook slightly.
“Do you still feel that way?” she asked. She had not seen him as a man who hated or bore grudges. Yet how could he not have done both?
“About Alex and Anna?” He frowned in thought again, his eyes on his mug as he turned it slowly between his hands. “No. And even at first, when everything was too raw for common sense to prevail, I knew that I was being unfair to hate them or even to resent them. Neither had done anything whatsoever to hurt either me or my family. That was all on my father. And Alex genuinely did not want what had been mine. He would have repudiated it if he could. Anna would too, I believe. At the time she was teaching at the orphanage in Bath where she had grown up, and she was contented there and attached to her pupils. It must have been more than bewildering for her suddenly to discover that she had a family—an aristocratic family, no less. And to learn that she was fabulously wealthy. She was pathetically delighted to find that she had a brother and sisters— us. Camille, Abby, and me. We shunned her, turned our backs on her, flatly and contemptuously refused her offer to share her fortune with us. We behaved despicably and shamefully.”
“But very understandably,” Lydia said.
“You are too kind,” he said. “No, I do not still hate them. Or resent them. I can only hope they do not hate me. Or— worse—pity me. It certainly did not help that I was carried home here four years ago, more dead than alive after more than one encounter with an enemy bullet and an enemy blade at Waterloo. Or that Alexander and Avery—the Duke of Netherby, Anna’s husband—helped do the carrying. Hinsford Manor does not even belong to me, you know—or perhaps you did not know. It is Anna’s, though she has tried several times to gift it to me. According to her, I have a moral right to it. And she has insisted upon willing it to me and my descendants. In the meantime we have agreed that I will live here on its income—and pay its expenses. They are good people, Alex and Anna. Better than I deserve.”
Lydia had not heard any of this from anyone in the village, though a number of people understandably talked about him, wondered about him, and speculated. Most people here could remember him as a boy, son of the Earl of Riverdale, being brought up to take his father’s place one day. People remembered his mother, the countess, with respect and affection. They remembered him and his sisters in the same way. And it had always seemed to Lydia that they held Major Westcott in the same high esteem now as they had always done in the past even though he had lost everything, even his legitimacy. But no one, she suspected, knew many inside details of his life now, even though they frequently met him at various social events.
She felt touched, privileged, at what he had told her. He must trust that she would not go about the village blabbing to their neighbors. For despite his friendliness with everyone, he kept himself very private and well hidden behind that mask of cheerful amiability. Though it was not really a mask. There was nothing false about it.
She knew all about masks from her own experience. Nobody here—or anywhere—really knew her. Even her new women friends. Even her father and her brothers. She knew what it was like to project an outer image—quiet, self-effacing modesty in her case—and keep almost everything that was her to herself.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I must be sounding very self-pitying. And very self-absorbed. It is your turn. One thing has been puzzling me since last evening. You told me how protective your father and your brothers were as you grew up. You told me how your late husband came to your house at the invitation of your older brother, and how he courted you and then married you. You mentioned that a few other potential suitors had come there before him. But why is it, since you are the daughter of a gentleman of property and fortune who is therefore, presumably, a member of the ton—why is it you were never taken to London for a come-out Season, Lydia? Or were you?”
“No,” she said. “My father and brothers love nothing more than to reminisce about the bold exploits of their youth and the wild oats they sowed, though I suppose I only ever heard strictly expurgated versions of those stories. However, it was those very memories that worked to my disadvantage. They were united in their determination not to expose me to all the wickedness that existed in the world beyond our doors—and they knew all about that wickedness. It was all really quite funny and quite horrible for me. I must be kept away from London and the dangers of a Season there at all costs. One would have thought from listening to them that the balls and parties and masquerades and such for which the spring Season is known were absolute cesspools of vice. They were positively frightened for their dearest Lydie.”
Harry laughed, but he tipped his head to one side and regarded her with what looked like sympathy too.
“They were terrified I would fall prey to rakes and scoundrels and fortune hunters,” she said. “They were not even consoled when my aunt, my father’s sister, offered to bring me out under her sponsorship and supervision. My father quarreled with her years ago when she made what he considered a rash marriage with an unworthy man. I daresay he was afraid she would encourage me to do the like, though on the only occasion when I met my uncle, I liked him considerably and it seemed to me that he and my aunt were happy together. In any case, I had no come-out Season.”
He was leaning back in his chair, one hand playing idly with his cup. “Were you very disappointed?” he asked.
She hesitated. It seemed disloyal to complain, especially when she
had never doubted her father’s love for her or that of her brothers. But—he had been honest with her.
“Bitterly,” she admitted, smiling ruefully. “I begged and wheedled. I wept and sulked. I may even have had a tantrum or two. I know I almost made myself ill. I hated them all heartily for a long while and told them so on more than one occasion. None of it did any good. There is no shifting my father when he has once made up his mind on a subject, and my brothers are not really any different. Sometimes, Harry, it is downright painful to be loved.” She laughed softly, though the memories were not amusing ones.
“I know,” he said. “But I am sorry you were deprived of the pleasures of a London Season. It happened to my younger sister too, though for a different reason. Our illegitimacy was discovered just as she was preparing to make her debut. I believe I might have coped with my own situation much better if my mother and my sisters had been saved from suffering. I wish you had not been made so unhappy, and all in the name of love. You must have been full of youthful hopes and dreams.”
Oh, she liked him, Lydia thought suddenly. She had found him attractive for a long while, but she had not really known she would like him too. She did, though. He was a vulnerable man, a fact that made him seem more approachable. He was also a kind man. He seemed to care about other people’s sufferings more than he did about his own. And if there had indeed been some self-pity in his reactions to his own sudden loss all those years ago, it was something he had quickly recognized and fought against. Now her long-ago disappointment over her lost Season saddened him even though it seemed trivial when compared with what had happened to him. You must have been full of youthful hopes and dreams. Ah, and so must he have been.
“It must be lovely to have sisters,” she said, surprised by the wistfulness in her own voice. “Tell me about yours. But please do have some biscuits. I made them specially for you.”