by Balogh, Mary
But her stomach lurched uncomfortably, and she thought of what had happened, first out at the woodpile just after Harry left, and then when she was at Denise’s. They had been chatting upon various subjects when Denise had introduced a new one that had alarmed Lydia—if alarmed was not too strong a word.
“Did I see correctly last evening?” she had asked. “Did Major Westcott walk you home, Lydia?”
“We were going in the same direction for a short way,” Lydia had said, hoping her face was not flushing. “It would have been silly to walk silently one behind the other.”
“Oh, dash it,” Denise had said. “What a very sensible and dull explanation. All night and all morning I have been busy conjuring a budding romance.”
“Between me and Major Westcott?” Lydia had said, laughing. “How very absurd.”
“But why?” her friend had asked. “You have been a widow for well over a year, Lydia. I daresay your grief is still quite acute, and I know you always say you could not possibly marry again. But you are not even thirty yet. One day you are going to look about you and change your mind. If your eyes should then happen to alight upon Major Westcott—”
“Denise,” Lydia had said, cutting her off with a raised hand. She had still been laughing. “Really? Major Westcott?”
“Whyever not?” Denise had protested. “He is certainly attractive. And unattached. So are you—attractive and unattached, that is. And he walked you home from Hannah Corning’s a week or so ago too.”
“Because we were going the same way then too,” Lydia had explained. “And he did it as a favor to Tom Corning, to save him from having to make a special journey out to escort me himself. Though it was all quite unnecessary. I am perfectly capable of taking myself the length of the village street, even in the dead of night. Men can be very foolish.”
Lydia had taken her leave soon after that. But though Denise had raised the topic only to tease her and they had both laughed over it, Lydia had been alarmed. No, it was not too exaggerated a word. For if Denise had noticed, then other people would have noticed also. On two separate occasions Major Westcott had walked her home late in the evening. Those two incidents were nothing in themselves. But there was no room for any more.
And what if Jeremy had hoisted himself up and peered over that fence a few minutes sooner than he had?
It would be madness—absolute insanity—to continue what they had started. Even a friendship was forbidden a single man and a single woman—at least, any sort of friendship that could not be conducted in plain view and in a public place. And even then …
She must make this evening’s visit as brief as possible, she had decided after leaving Denise’s. She must make it clear to Major Westcott that there could be no more such private meetings. Surely he would recognize the wisdom of that decision. But even if he did not, she knew he would not argue. He was, she believed, an honorable man. Besides, the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.
She returned her attention to her brother’s letter. How had she got distracted anyway?
We have been talking, it continued. Papa and James and I. And Lydia knew, even before she read further, that William was finally getting to the real point of his letter.
We understand perfectly well why you insisted after Isaiah’s funeral and burial upon returning to your village. Papa and James regret the way they pressed you so adamantly on that occasion to return home with them. They did it out of love and concern for you, of course, as I am sure you must have been aware, Lydie. But they were wrong, and they are willing to admit it. It was right that you do your grieving where you had lived so happily and served so diligently with your husband. Leaving immediately after his death would have made you feel as though you were abandoning him. You must have felt that he was somehow still there in spirit. And you had neighbors and friends who loved you and grieved with you and no doubt needed your physical presence there with them. You did the right and the honorable thing in staying and the only thing that could have brought some healing to your broken heart. We know you loved Isaiah with unwavering devotion. I can still recall how exuberantly happy you were on your wedding day—the happiest I had ever seen you.
Lydia licked her lips, which had suddenly turned dry. Oh, she could recall it too, that deliriously happy day. That first day of what was to have been the sort of glorious happily-ever-after only the very young and the very naïve expect.
We have honored your decision and kept quiet on the subject for longer than a year. But, Lydie, you are a woman alone—a young woman. And unless something has changed, you do not even have a servant living with you. It is improper. You must realize that. It is unsafe. Now that your year of mourning is over and you have, presumably, left off your blacks, you are a prey to any and all impertinences from those men who can see that you are without male protection. Some will even choose to believe that your very decision to live alone is a deliberate invitation to their advances. We know that nothing could be further from the truth. But nothing could be more disastrous—for your reputation and for your safety.
Lydia’s hands tingled with fury suddenly as they held the paper. Did William realize how insulting his words were? Yet she did not have full right to her anger, did she? Not after what she had started a little over a week ago. Not after she had invited Harry into her home last evening and allowed him to kiss her this morning. She read on.
I will come and fetch you as soon as we can be sure Papa’s health is not going to suffer a relapse. We will see to the selling of your cottage and the removal of all your larger possessions. You must not worry your head over any of that. You must simply come and be at home again, where we can look after you. I daresay we will find someone else suitable for you to marry eventually too, though there is absolutely no hurry for that. Esther has written a note to enclose with this. She has some news that she hopes will entice you home if nothing else will.
Lydia folded the letter and shut her eyes. She might have known they would not take no for an answer. Not forever. Snowball was standing at her feet, her little stub of a tail waving, her eyes gazing mournfully upward, as if she sensed some emotional turmoil in her mistress. Lydia set the letter aside and lifted the dog onto her lap.
“They are not going to leave me alone after all, then,” she said. “I know them, Snowball. Was a woman ever so besieged by men who love her? They are enough to give love a bad name.”
Snowball turned twice on her lap before curling up and settling to sleep.
“So much for female sympathy and solidarity,” Lydia said. “You know, Snowball, perhaps it would be easier just to give in and go home. To have Papa and my brothers for company—and my sister-in-law. There would be other people to run the house and clean and cook. And chop the wood. There would be familiar neighbors, familiar surroundings. There would always be someone or something to hold the loneliness at bay.”
Perhaps it was as well she spoke aloud, for she heard her own words almost as though they were coming out of someone else’s mouth. She heard the abjectness of them, the sound of defeat. She heard herself being Lydia as she always had been—until a little over fifteen months ago. And anger returned in full force, but directed at herself this time. Why should being a woman render one not only helpless but also spiritless?
Why had she not raged against Isaiah when it had become stunningly apparent to her on her wedding day that life with him was not going to be any different from the way it had been at home? Worse, in fact. Far worse, because he was her husband and she had just vowed obedience to him. Why had she never admitted even to herself in the six years following her wedding day that it was not a good marriage, that she had been cheated, that she was not happy—and was denying it every moment of every day? Oh, it was true that his had at least never been a physical tyranny. She had never been afraid of violence from him. He had never struck her or even spoken harshly or disrespectfully to her. But …
But it had been tyranny nevertheless. She had never let him know that
she disagreed—vehemently disagreed— with his vision of their marriage. The power of his personality, his dazzling good looks, his all-consuming faith, his charismatic zeal as a servant of the Lord, had completely overwhelmed her and convinced her of her own worthlessness in contrast. When he had called her his helpmeet, she had meekly accepted that that was what she was. At first the word had suggested a shared closeness, a shared workload and mission. A togetherness. It was only as time went on that that one word—helpmeet—had begun to grate on her nerves, since really it labeled her subordinate position, her total lack of identity apart from Isaiah.
Yet she had never protested. Never raged. Never demanded to be seen as a person. She had never forced him to look at her, right into her eyes, to see her as … herself. As Lydia. She had even begun to doubt that there was any person to be seen. She had been Isaiah’s helpmeet. It was how the parish had seen her—if and when they saw her at all. It was how they still saw her—though by her own choice now. For her invisibility since his death had somehow protected her identity, her personhood, her independence. Or perhaps just her fear.
She suddenly remembered her sister-in-law’s note and picked it up and broke the seal. As she had half expected from the hint William had given, Esther was expecting a child at last, after two years of marriage. She was clearly excited about it. So was James, apparently.
Lydia had never been with child. And now she never would be, for her decision never to marry again, never again to surrender her freedom to a man, was a firm one and would not be shifted, as her friends believed and as her father and brothers believed it would be after she had recovered fully. But it was not a decision without disadvantages. She was a woman with a woman’s needs. The need for a man, yes, or, rather, for a lover. But also the need—the yearning—for a child. She could not have it both ways, however. She must choose, and the choice had been made.
Esther knew that Lydia’s father and brothers wanted her to come home. She wanted it too, she assured Lydia. They had met only once, when they had been too busy with the wedding to get to know each other as sisters ought. But like Lydia, Esther had no actual sisters and longed to have one with her now as she awaited the birth of her child and afterward, when she would need the close companionship of a woman. Oh, Lydia, please, please come home, she had pleaded just before ending the note. My very dearest regards, Your sister, Esther.
And Lydia had a sharp memory of her eight-year-old self begging and begging that the baby her mama had told her was coming to the house soon would be a girl so she would have a sister at last. Her mother had told her she could not guarantee it, as she did not get to choose the baby who would come. Lydia had hoped and prayed after that without openly begging. But then Anthony had arrived, and she had been bitterly disappointed. Very shortly afterward her mother had died, and she had had neither sister nor mother.
Now she had a sister.
And soon she would have a niece or nephew.
A baby in the family.
But not her own.
She would never go back home to stay, though there was a surprising and treacherous sort of temptation to do just that. To give up the fight and go back where she was loved, where she would have company. Where she would not have to see Harry almost everywhere she went. Where she could hide from the pain. And how silly that there would be pain and the sharpness of unhappiness after tonight. How very silly. She scarcely knew him. She could hardly claim to be in love with him. She was not. And she did not want to be.
No, she would not run away just because her childhood home and the people and the situation that awaited her there were familiar and safe. She would lose herself again if she went home.
She was too precious to lose.
She was.
If pain was the ultimate cost of freedom and independence and being a person, then so be it.
She was staying.
Eight
For someone who had made the very firm decision to put an end to a relationship that had actually scarcely even begun, Lydia took an inordinate amount of time deciding what to wear. She did not want to look overdressed—she rejected her new pink dress. But she did not want to look drab or dowdy either—definitely nothing black or gray or even lavender. The evenings were still too chilly for muslins or short sleeves, but long sleeves and high, round necks could look very matronly. And downright plain.
She was behaving, she thought as she finally donned a pale blue wool dress with long sleeves and a high, round neck, as though she had twenty wardrobes stuffed full of dresses in a wide variety of colors and styles. She did not. Isaiah had not encouraged either extravagance or vanity. No, correction. He had actively discouraged both.
Then there was her hair. At first there seemed to be no real choices with that, at least. There was only one way to wear it that would fit neatly beneath a cap—in a simple coil pinned flat to the back of her head. But which cap should she choose? She had several, all white, all very similar. They were not worth dithering over, in fact.
But then a question asked itself in her head and threw her into total confusion. Did she have to wear a cap? She had started wearing one a few days after her wedding because Isaiah had thought the modesty of it befitted her status as a married lady and his helpmeet, and she had worn one ever since. She thought she might feel a bit naked without one now. Yet she was only twenty-eight years old. She was not a girl, it was true, and she was a widow. But she was not in her dotage.
Could she remember any other way to style her hair, though? Even if she could, could she do it without the help of a maid?
Did she dare try?
But why would she even want to? She was about to put a firm end to whatever it was that was developing between her and Harry Westcott. Since he was coming anyway, though … She had said he could come when he asked her this morning. It was only fair, then, to spend an hour with him, sitting and talking. Perhaps even joking and laughing a little. It was not sinful to do either. She had never believed it was, but it had been easier to behave for six years as though she did instead of trying to explain her opposing point of view.
She was not going to wear a cap.
It took her an hour to dress her hair in a style that looked, when it was finished, as though it had taken her five minutes, if that. She had to be content with hair brushed smooth over her head and above her ears and up off her neck and twisted into a knot high on the back of her head. By accident a few tendrils refused to stay with the rest and hung in waves over her temples and along her neck. She left them where they were. They did not look entirely bad. In fact, they looked almost deliberate, and thank goodness for that bit of a curl in her hair. The rest of it—the smooth, scraped back, utterly uninteresting bulk of it—at least shone in the candlelight.
She did indeed feel funny without her cap. But even as she might have dashed after all to find one there was a knock upon the front door and Snowball darted out of Lydia’s bedchamber, yipping and barking.
He seemed almost sinister standing on her doorstep in the dusk of evening. He looked taller than usual in a long black evening cloak. But when he swept off his hat, he was instantly transformed by his fair hair and his smile. He stooped down to scratch Snowball under the chin, and her dog licked his hand and turned to trot back into the house, all ferocity forgotten. He looked up and smiled again at Lydia as he stepped inside and she closed the door. For a moment she stayed facing it, her hand still on the doorknob while she drew a breath and released it.
She was aware of him hanging his hat and cloak on an empty hook behind the door. His physical presence always had a more powerful impact upon her than merely thinking about him did—or dreaming about him. She should know that by now. She ought to have opened the door, smiled at him, apologized for bringing him all the way from the house at this hour, and explained that she could neither invite him inside nor see him privately ever again. It would be all over by now if she had done that. But of course she had not.
Let there be this present moment, th
en, she thought as she turned from the door. Let there be this hour.
He was turning at the same moment from hanging up his cloak, and they ended up gazing at each other, no more than a foot apart. Neither of them had spoken a word yet. He was no longer smiling, and his face looked less youthful than usual, less purely good-humored, more handsome. He had a far more powerful presence than he had ever had in the dreams she had dreamed of him.
He raised his hands and cupped them gently about her face before running his thumbs lightly along her lips, from the center to the outer corners. Lydia inhaled very slowly and licked her lips as she gazed into his eyes. Her stomach was unsteady. So were her knees.
He closed the gap between them and set his mouth to hers. Just as he had this morning. But there was a difference. His lips were slightly parted this time. So were hers. She spread her hands over his chest and felt the kiss as a raw ache in her mouth, down into her throat and her breasts and through her womb to settle between her thighs and even reach down to her toes, which curled into the soles of her slippers as though to anchor her to the floor.
And then his mouth was no longer touching hers, and his eyes were gazing back at her again, heavy lidded.
“Kiss me,” he murmured.
At first the words puzzled her. Was not that what they had just been doing—kissing? But then she remembered what he had said this morning about her kissing him. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, and his eyes followed the gesture.