Someone to Cherish

by Balogh, Mary

  “The doctor and I will take my carriage, then,” the Reverend Bailey said. “It is still raining, is it? Foolish question. You are soaked.”

  “It’s coming down like cats and dogs out there, Reverend,” John Wickend said.

  “My dear—” Bailey began, turning to his wife.

  “You must not worry about me, Stanley,” she said, interrupting him. “Someone will give me a ride home. You go.”

  “It will be my pleasure to convey Mrs. Bailey home,” Harry said as Sir Maynard approached to find out why one of his laborers had arrived in the rooms looking like a drowned rat, as he put it.

  “Gran is on the way out, sir,” the young man explained. “Ma sent me for the doctor and the reverend.”

  “Off you go,” Mrs. Bailey said briskly. “Both of you.”

  They left within the minute, with very little fuss. It was doubtful many people had even noticed the little drama being enacted over by the doors, since the volume of general conversation was nearly deafening and the musicians were tuning their instruments again before the next set formed.

  “It is very kind of you to be willing to take me home in your carriage, Major Westcott,” Mrs. Bailey said. “I would happily walk on any other night, but I must confess I would not fancy it tonight, what with the rain and the wind.”

  “I would not hear of your walking anyway, ma’am,” Harry said, “even if it were a balmy summer evening. My carriage is at your disposal whenever you are ready to leave.”

  “And whenever Lydia is ready,” Mrs. Bailey said. “She came with us. You will not mind taking her too, I am sure. You will not even have to go out of your way. She lives at the end of your drive.”

  Ah.

  “Absolutely not, ma’am,” he assured her.

  But he did mind.

  And so, surely, would Lydia.

  The final set of the evening finished well before midnight. People who lived and worked in the country did not, generally speaking, dance until dawn. Many of those who attended the assembly would not be able to sleep until noon tomorrow.

  Even so, people were reluctant to leave. The women had to sort out the leftover food and claim their own plates and dishes, talking animatedly with one another as they did so, just as though there had been no other opportunity all evening for conversation. But the men were not hurrying them along or showing any particular signs of impatience to be gone. Most of them were downing one more pint of ale or glass of wine as they finished off their own conversations.

  There would be no point in rushing outside anyway. Coachmen had to be rounded up from the taproom below and then had to collect their horses and hitch them to their carriages before they could drive up to the doors of the inn. Cloaks and hats and gloves and umbrellas had to be identified and claimed. Last-minute greetings and hugs and handshakes had to be exchanged.

  It all took a good half hour.

  Lydia was feeling both sad and relieved that it was all over and that soon she would be saying good night to the Baileys and closing her cottage door behind her, back in her own quiet, safe haven. She had enjoyed herself enormously and was immensely proud of herself. She had felt for most of the evening almost as though she were at a masquerade ball, safely hidden behind a disguise and able to behave out of character, secure in the knowledge that no one would ever know that she had been herself. Almost as though … What she had been doing in reality, of course, was just the opposite. She had thrown off her mask in order to be herself. As she had never had a chance to do when she was a girl. As she had never been allowed to do while she was married. As she had never dared to do since.

  Tonight she had dared.

  And it had felt wonderful. And horribly frightening, for several times, quite without warning, she had felt herself close to panic, as though were she to look down she would discover that she had forgotten to put her dress on before leaving the house.

  Yet even as she had been enjoying herself she had longed for the evening to be over so she would not see Harry wherever she looked—dancing, smiling, talking, laughing, as she was doing herself. Unaware of her very existence, as he had been for most of the four years of his acquaintance with her.

  Now, soon, she would be going home. Like Cinderella at midnight. But with no glass slipper to leave behind her. With no prince to retrieve it and search for her even if she did.

  She was also exhausted, not just with physical tiredness from all the dancing and conversing, but with the emotional exertion of having behaved so differently from usual—and of pretending indifference to Harry.

  She had no plate to take with her. She had offered her leftover iced cakes to Mrs. Piper to take home for her children, and since Mrs. Piper’s own plate had little room left on it, Lydia had told her to take the plate too. She would not miss it for a few days. She looked around, waved to Mrs. Bailey, and made her way toward her.

  “Major Westcott has gone for the carriage,” Mrs. Bailey said. “I daresay he may be waiting for us by now. I believe the heavens have opened out there, Lydia. We are having a wet spring.”

  “Major Westcott?” Lydia looked at her in incomprehension.

  “It was kind of him to offer us a ride home, was it not?” Mrs. Bailey said. “Oh. Have you not heard, Lydia? The vicar and Dr. Powis were called away. Poor John Wickend came here, very agitated. He was convinced his grandmama is on her last—again. She does seem to have at least nine lives, just like a cat, though I mean no disrespect by the comparison. The men went anyway, of course. The vicar took the carriage. Major Westcott assured him that he would take us home. We would be drowned if we had to walk.”

  Had he known when he offered, Lydia wondered, that he would be taking her home as well as Mrs. Bailey? What a ghastly way for the evening to end. And this would make three times in a row after they had been at the same evening event. Twice he had walked her home. Now he was to take her in his carriage. She just hoped Denise would not find out and start teasing and speculating again. Lydia hoped no one else would find out either. But there was nothing to be done about it now, was there? It really was raining heavily out there, and it would be foolish to try to insist upon walking home. Besides, he was to take Mrs. Bailey home too. Thank heaven for that at least.

  There was an unruly jumble of carriages outside, all of them pulled as close as possible to the inn doors instead of ranging themselves in an orderly line as they normally would. People were making a dash for them, laughing, shrieking, calling out to one another, generally getting soaked and mud spattered.

  Harry’s carriage must have been one of the first to arrive. It was standing almost directly across from the doors, and he was hurrying down the steps to hand them in as they came out. They were all seated inside within moments, and his coachman was about to put up the steps and shut the door when Mrs. Bailey threw up her hands.

  “Oh, wait!” she cried. “The vicar’s muffler. I would be willing to wager upon it that he left it behind when he went off with Dr. Powis. He is always doing it. I shall go back and fetch it now and save him from having to come back here tomorrow. No, no, Major. I will get it. I know what it looks like. You wait here in the dry.”

  And she was gone, down the carriage steps with the assistance of the coachman’s hand, and across the pavement and back inside the inn before Harry could do anything to stop her or even insist upon accompanying her.

  Lydia felt suddenly very alone in the carriage with him.

  “I am so sorry about this, Harry,” she said. They were sitting on opposite seats, their knees almost touching. “I could have walked.”

  “In the rain,” he said. It was not a question, but his tone told her what he thought of that idea.

  “I suppose,” she said, “it would have been a bit foolish.”

  “More than a bit,” he said. “If I allowed it, the Reverend and Mrs. Bailey would look reproachfully at me for the next year at the very least every time I stepped inside the church. And the whole of Fairfield and its surrounds would wonder what on earth I had
done or said to you that you preferred to get soaked to the skin rather than ride home in my carriage. Everyone would talk of nothing else for a month.”

  “If you allowed it,” she said.

  “Poor wording,” he admitted.

  And for some reason they both laughed.

  “Am I permitted,” he asked her, “to tell you how lovely you look tonight and how well you dance?”

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “Which is just as well since you have told me anyway.”

  He laughed softly again.

  “I suppose Mrs. Bailey has searched every room in the inn for a muffler that is snugly about the vicar’s neck at this very moment,” he said.

  “Probably,” she agreed. “She is very precious. They both are. They are warm and human.”

  Mrs. Bailey came back after several minutes without the muffler. She hurried into the carriage with the assistance of the coachman and a hand Harry offered from inside.

  “It was not in the cloakroom,” she explained as she settled beside Lydia. “I looked in the assembly rooms too and even the taproom, though it was unlikely to be in there. It is as well to be thorough, however. One never knows. You must take me home first, Major Westcott. It would make no sense to go to Lydia’s and then have to turn back to the vicarage with me, would it? And she is no girl to need a chaperon over such a short distance.”

  “The vicarage first, then,” Harry told his coachman.

  Lydia was relieved to find that Mrs. Bailey seemed to fill the carriage with her cheerful presence and her chatter about all the pleasures of the assembly even though it was sad to think that while they had danced and enjoyed themselves poor Mrs. Wickend senior not so far away was perhaps really dying this time after suffering increasingly failing health over the past few months. But such was life, and she had lived to a good old age.

  “None of us can live forever,” she concluded as the carriage drew to a halt outside the vicarage. “Which is a very good thing, as the vicar always points out, as our poor world would get so full of people we would all have to stand upright on it with our arms pressed to our sides.”

  Harry drew a large umbrella from a holder beside his seat and escorted Mrs. Bailey up the garden path to her door.

  And then he was back inside the carriage while the rain beat down on the roof and against the windows and the wind rocked it on its springs. The interior suddenly seemed more crowded than it had when Mrs. Bailey was still inside with them and very quiet despite the almost deafening noises of weather and horses and carriage wheels.

  “I have finished knitting your scarf,” Lydia said as the carriage moved away from the vicarage. “I knitted it while I was away.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You did not need to do that, Lydia.”

  “And you did not need to chop my wood,” she said. “I have been wondering how I would get it to you. I will give it to you tonight.”

  “Thank you.” He was gazing across at her, though there was very little light by which to see.

  She could not think of anything else to say, and he remained silent. But she felt sadness welling for a reason she could not quite understand. It was over between them because it could not possibly work. She had her life to live, the life of freedom she had never expected, the life with which she had been gifted anyway. It was a way of life that brought her great contentment. And it was a life into which she had moved fully tonight, out of the shadows cast by her marriage. She was no longer anyone’s helpmeet. She was herself. Lydia Tavernor.

  But for a brief moment there had been Harry.

  And he had left behind in her a trace of sadness.

  He took up the umbrella again as the carriage drew to a halt outside her gate. He raised it as soon as he was outside and held it aloft as he helped her descend the steps— carefully, for they were slippery with rain. He tipped it slightly against the wind as he opened the gate, and then drew her to his side with an arm about her waist as he hurried up the path with her. He kept her dry while she fumbled with her key in the lock and opened the door before bending over Snowball, who had come dashing and yapping to greet her and reproach him for keeping her out so long.

  She lit the candle and turned toward him, pushing back the hood of her cloak as she did so.

  “Step inside out of the rain,” she said. “I will fetch your scarf.”

  He did as she suggested and lowered the umbrella, shook some of the wetness from it, and stood it against the doorframe. He half closed the door, presumably so that the wind would not blow out the candle.

  Lydia got his scarf from her bedchamber, folded into a neat oblong. “I should find something to wrap it in,” she said. She was feeling a bit suffocated by the sight of him inside her house again, though he was only just inside.

  “There is no need,” he said, reaching out and taking it from her. Their hands brushed. “Thank you, Lydia. It is a lovely bright color. It will mean a great deal to me. I will think of you whenever I wear it.”

  “As I think of you whenever I sit before a fire,” she said. “I still have a pile of your wood left.”

  He smiled at her, and she smiled at him. And the sadness was a dull ache about her heart.

  “Good night, Harry,” she said. “And thank you for the ride.”

  “Good night, Lydia.” He raised one hand to hook behind her ear a lock of her hair that had come loose when she lowered her hood. He kissed her forehead.

  But the wind blew the door open again as he did so, and he turned, tucked the scarf beneath one arm, raised his umbrella, ducked beneath it, and hurried back to his carriage.

  Lydia shut the door, leaned back against it, closed her eyes, and touched the fingers of one hand to her forehead.

  Thirteen

  The first sign of trouble came the following morning when Mrs. Piper arrived on Lydia’s doorstep. She had brought Lydia’s plate.

  “How good of you to return it so promptly,” Lydia said with a warm smile after she had opened the door. “I did not expect it so soon. And I daresay the road is very muddy after all that rain. Was it not torrential? But do come inside. The kettle is close to boiling. I’ll make a pot of tea.”

  She was actually not sorry for the distraction. She had been feeling melancholy all morning despite all her efforts to concentrate upon the happy memories she had of the assembly.

  Mrs. Piper was not responding either to her smile or to her invitation to step inside out of the damp, chilly air that had succeeded the overnight rain, however. She held Lydia’s plate against her bosom. Her lips were drawn into a thin, hard line. Her eyes were expressionless.

  “I put your cakes on the plate with my own last night and called after you to take your plate,” she said, thrusting it suddenly at Lydia, who took it from her. “You did not hear me because you were too eager to go off with Major Westcott. Jeremy was waiting outside to walk me home and offered to run over to your house with the plate right then even though it was pelting with rain. I have a good boy there, always eager to do things for his mother and his neighbors. He ran all the way, but when he got here he was too shocked to bring you the plate. You were standing in your doorway kissing the major while his coachman had his back turned, pretending not to notice.”

  “Oh.” Lydia was too startled for the moment to say anything else. “Major Westcott was kind enough to give Mrs. Bailey and me a ride home in his carriage after the Reverend Bailey was called away with Dr. Powis to old Mrs. Wickend’s sickbed. He insisted upon escorting each of us all the way to our door because the rain was heavy and he had an umbrella in the carriage. I am so sorry to have embarrassed Jeremy after he had come all this way in the rain. But he did misunderstand what he saw, poor boy.”

  Good heavens. Oh, gracious heavens.

  Mrs. Piper’s expression had not changed. “The reverend gave his life for my son,” she said, her voice trembling with some emotion that might well be rage. “The Reverend Tavernor, that is. A heavenly martyr he was. I will never forget him as long as there is life in
my body. He was one of God’s holy angels come down to earth. The last thing I expected— the last thing anyone expected—was that his wife would turn out to be a woman of loose morals.”

  “Mrs. Piper!” Lydia stared at her, aghast, and now she was the one clutching the plate to her bosom. “Jeremy misinterpreted what he saw. But even if he had not, even if I really had been kissing Major Westcott, would that be such offensive behavior that it must reflect badly upon my morals? I am a widow, not a wife. I was unwaveringly loyal to my husband while he lived. That must have been evident to everyone here. I am sorry Jeremy saw what he did and was embarrassed and drew the wrong conclusion. But I must admit to resenting the hasty judgment you have passed upon me based solely upon what he reported to you. If you care to listen to my explanation, I will give it, though I do not recognize any obligation to do so.”

  Mrs. Piper clearly did not care to listen to anything. She took a step back, though she did not immediately turn away. “Oh, it is not just that one thing,” she said. “You had him chopping wood here for you all one morning, and then you had him inside your house for more than an hour afterward—with the door shut. And you had him back again that same night for more of what he got in the morning. I suppose it all got started when you talked him into walking you home from Tom Corning’s one night—yes, I heard all about it—and from Mr. Solway’s the week after. And last night! That dress you were wearing, if you don’t mind me saying so, was shameful for a woman who had the privilege of being the reverend’s wife before he became a holy martyr and gave his life for my boy. You danced and you smiled and laughed and made an exhibition of yourself, though everyone knows the reverend believed dancing to be sinful and putting oneself forward in company to be immodest in a woman. If he could have seen you last night he would have turned over in his grave. He was the most upright and pious and godly man that ever walked this earth. And I never did think you were worthy of him. I always thought you were a sly one. I am sure a lot of people thought so too, though we have kept our mouths shut until now out of respect for him because he doted on you. My helpmeet, he always called you. Some helpmeet!”