Someone to Cherish

by Balogh, Mary

  “I do not,” Lydia said. “Though it was exceedingly kind of him to offer.”

  “Then you must not be pressed further,” the marchioness said. “You do indeed have a pretty back garden. Even the woodpile is picturesque—and very neat. It smells good too. You must spend a lot of time out there and at the front.”

  “Will you have a seat, ma’am?” Lydia asked, gesturing to one of the chairs. “May I make some tea?”

  “Neither, thank you,” the marchioness said. “You told us you were on your way out. My apologies for having delayed you. We have a few more calls of our own to make before returning to Hinsford. We will be issuing a few verbal invitations to my son’s birthday party, though there will be more formal written ones to follow. Or rather I will be issuing invitations. I daresay Harry wishes us all in Jericho. You must come to the party yourself, Mrs. Tavernor. It is to be in the form of a ball.”

  “Oh,” Lydia said, glancing rather aghast at Harry. He had turned to look out the window again. “I think it would be altogether best if I did not go, ma’am.”

  “On the contrary,” the marchioness said. “Why would you be excluded? Your late husband was a brother of the Earl of Tilden, was he not? And we have already established that you are the daughter of Mr. Jason Winterbourne and the late Mrs. Julia Winterbourne, a friend from my younger years.”

  “I—”

  “You need not give an answer now,” the marchioness said as she moved toward the front door. “You will receive your written invitation within the next day or two and can decide then how you wish to reply. In the meantime, we will walk with you, if we may, until our ways diverge. You are going to the village shop?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said. Harry had his hands clasped behind him. He was tapping them rhythmically against his back. “But—”

  He turned. “Lydia,” he said. “Word will spread around the village and the surrounding countryside faster than wildfire that you were seen today walking along the main street with me. And with my mother, the Marchioness of Dorchester—who was, by the way, held in the deepest affection and esteem when she lived here as the Countess of Riverdale. Everyone will understand that there is nothing clandestine about your acquaintance with me, and that it has my mother’s approval. Allow us, please, to offer you this much countenance.”

  She raised her chin.

  “Sometimes,” he added, “when a person is fired upon, the best possible way to respond is to line up with one’s comrades and fire right back.”

  She pursed her lips.

  “Put your bonnet on,” he said.

  “If you please, Mrs. Tavernor.” The marchioness smiled, revealing herself to be a very pretty woman despite the fact that she was no longer in her youth. “I must be allowed to do all in my power to repair my son’s reputation, you see.”

  Lydia sighed and moved toward the hooks behind the door.

  And so it was that a few inhabitants of the village of Fairfield were treated to the unexpected spectacle of the newly notorious Mrs. Tavernor walking along the main village street with the Marchioness of Dorchester’s arm drawn through hers, while Major Westcott, distinguished and elegant as always, walked on his mother’s other side, nodding pleasantly to everyone they passed.

  Sixteen

  Thank you,” Harry said to his mother as they walked back home an hour or so later. “It would not, as you pointed out to me last night, have been appropriate for me to go there alone this morning.”

  “Tell me, Harry,” his mother said. “Were you disappointed?”

  “That she refused me?” he said after thinking about it for a moment. “No. As she herself pointed out, we would have been marrying for the wrong reason—because of some vicious gossip.”

  “Gossip can irreparably destroy reputations and lives, however,” she said.

  “She was on her way out as we got there, Mama,” he said. “She was not cowering beneath her bedcovers or behind drawn curtains, or both, as I feared she might. She has backbone.”

  “When the two of you put an end to your … acquaintance a few weeks ago,” his mother asked, “did you do so happily, Harry?”

  “It was a relationship that was headed nowhere except possible disaster,” he said. “She had made it clear from the start that there could be no courtship. She had a restrictive girlhood and what I understand was an unhappy marriage, though I know no details, and is enjoying her freedom. She is quite determined that she will never marry again. It did not take long to discover that it was impossible for us to have any other sort of relationship, even friendship. Not here, anyway. Present events have proved just how right we were.”

  “But were you happy that all ties were broken?” She was persisting with this line of questioning, it seemed.

  “No, I was not,” he admitted. “Perhaps you were right at Christmastime, Mama. Perhaps I have been a bit lonely. I have a few close friends here and a host of friendly acquaintances. Perhaps they are no longer quite enough. But I am contented here. This is where I belong and where I want to be. Forgive me, please. I am feeling a bit confused at the moment. I wish this had not happened at this precise time. It was very good of everyone to make the effort to come here. Even the grandmothers. Even Camille and Joel. I really was not—”

  “Do you love her, Harry?” she asked softly, interrupting him.

  “Lydia?” he said. “Good God, no. Pardon my language.”

  “That is what I thought,” she said just as softly, though strangely he was not sure quite what she meant.

  He had no chance to ask her. And she had no chance to explain. Three people were approaching down the drive, arm in arm—Winifred Cunningham, Camille and Joel’s eldest; Ivan Wayne, Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas’s youngest; and Gordon Monteith, Great-aunt Edith’s great-nephew. Winifred was in the middle and laughing at something.

  “I noticed at Christmas,” Harry said, “how Winifred has suddenly grown up. She is no longer a girl, is she? She makes me feel like an elderly uncle. She has grown really rather pretty.”

  Winifred had been at the orphanage in Bath where both Anna and Joel Cunningham had grown up and where Camille had taught for a while after the Great Disaster. She had been very needy then. She had apparently tried to stand out by being almost ostentatiously well behaved and eager to draw attention to all the other children who were not. She had been more than a bit obnoxious, in fact—or so Harry had been told. Camille had seen something of herself in the girl, however, and when she and Joel married they had surprised everyone by adopting her.

  “She is seventeen, Harry,” his mother said. “And a real gem. She is not pretty. She never will be. But she has an inner beauty that transcends looks. Some man who is worthy of her is going to notice one of these days, though not just yet, I hope. She is only seventeen.”

  It was Winifred who had devised a sort of hand language to use with her deaf brother, who was not particularly good at reading lips.

  “Well, Harry?” Ivan called, raising his voice when the two groups were within earshot of each other. “Will she have you?”

  Harry winced inwardly. He had hoped yesterday to keep the situation with Lydia quiet, mainly in the hope that by today or tomorrow at the latest it would have died down, as gossip usually did. His mother had soon disabused him of that notion. Gossip that involved a respectable woman—“and a vicar’s widow, Harry!”—could not be expected to die down quickly, she had warned, especially when the woman’s name was being linked with Major Harry Westcott’s. The arrival of the whole of the Westcott family on the scene just when the scandal was breaking, far from dousing the flames, would probably fan them. Everyone would be agog to find out what the Westcotts would do to squash Mrs. Tavernor beneath their collective heel. It was only fair to warn the family.

  His mother, Harry had noticed, used the word scandal rather than just gossip. And Harry had realized, perhaps for the first time, just how bad this whole ridiculous situation might become. After he had talked with his mother in the privacy of the li
brary last night, he had gone back to the drawing room, late as it had been by then, and told the whole story, barring only those details that were absolutely no one’s business.

  The family had, of course, stayed up very late in the hope of finding out why he had needed to take his mother away for some private consultation. He would be surprised if during his absence this morning the family had not been discussing how they were going to deal with the crisis.

  Gossip. Scandal. Crisis?

  Had the world gone mad? He had kissed Lydia’s forehead on that fateful night. If it had lasted ten seconds he would be very surprised.

  “She will not,” he said curtly in answer to Ivan’s question.

  “I am so glad, Uncle Harry,” Winifred said.

  “What you don’t have in your whole body, my girl,” Ivan told her, “is a romantic bone.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “What woman would find it romantic to be forced into marriage by a little spiteful gossip? And stupid gossip too. You agree with me, Grandmama, do you not?”

  It occurred to Harry suddenly that not so long ago his mother had almost been forced into marrying Marcel for just such a reason. She had run off with him one day for a romantic fling without a word to anyone but had been tracked down by separate search parties sent out by the Westcotts and Marcel’s family. She had resisted all pressure and married him later for her own reasons. Not that Harry had witnessed any of those sensational events except the actual wedding one Christmas Eve. He had been overseas with his regiment.

  “I agree, Winifred,” his mother said. “Men know nothing of romance, alas.” She was laughing.

  “But did you go down on one knee, Harry?” Gordon asked, grinning at him. “It is no wonder she said no if you did not.”

  Winifred tossed her glance at the branches over their heads. “If any man went down on one knee to me,” she said, “I would laugh at him.”

  “You see?” Ivan said. “Not a romantic bone.”

  They all turned to walk back to the house together. Winifred took Harry’s arm. “The great-aunts and great-grandmothers all have their heads together,” she told him. “But Mama says there is nothing they can decide upon until they know if Mrs. Tavernor will have you or not. That is not stopping them, however, from discussing what is to be done if she will not.”

  “Personally, Winnie,” he said, “I keep hoping I will wake up any moment now. I have never got tangled up in a more ridiculous dream in my life.”

  He kept thinking of Lydia walking into the village shop alone, with straight back and raised chin, after flatly refusing to allow them to accompany her inside. They had stood on the pavement outside for a few moments until it became apparent that she was not going to be tossed out.

  Do you love her? his mother had asked a short while ago.

  And God help him, he was beginning to ask himself the same question.

  Lydia went to church the following day, as she always did on Sunday mornings. It was not easy this week, however. She had been served at the village shop yesterday, but with lowered eyes on the part of the shopkeeper and none of the usual bright chatter. On her way home someone had hastily crossed the street from her side to the other as though it had become suddenly imperative to be there rather than here. When she had passed her next-door neighbor’s house, Mrs. Bartlett had been in the garden tending her flowers. But just as Lydia had been drawing breath to comment upon how lovely they were looking, Mrs. Bartlett had half turned her head, jerked it back again, and hurried into her house as though she had suddenly remembered something urgent she needed to do inside.

  She sat in her usual pew toward the back of the church. There was a pool of emptiness all about her, but that was not unusual. Most people preferred to sit farther forward.

  And then there was a buzz of sound and activity coming from the direction of the doorway behind her, and her neighbors came scurrying inside all at once, it seemed, and took their seats so they could enjoy the show of what could only be the Westcott family arriving for church. And still the pew beside her and the ones directly in front and behind remained empty.

  Lydia did not know any of the Westcotts, except Harry and his mother, but she distracted herself by trying to guess who some of them were. One of the three elderly ladies who came in together must be the Dowager Countess of Riverdale. Lydia guessed it was the one with the most plumes in her bonnet. One of the men must be the Earl of Riverdale, the one who had taken on the title when Harry was stripped of it. She guessed it was either the tall, dark-haired, very handsome man or the slight blond man of medium height who, despite his size disadvantage, fairly oozed aristocratic hauteur. One of them, the one who was not the earl, was perhaps the Duke of Netherby. One very distinguished-looking man of middle years was easy to identify. He had the Marchioness of Dorchester, Harry’s mother, on his arm—she turned her head and nodded graciously to Lydia as she passed on her way to the front pews. He must be her husband, the marquess.

  The front pews filled fast. One family group alone took up more than one pew, and Lydia guessed that the woman must be Camille Cunningham, Harry’s elder sister. She and her husband were carrying seemingly identical babies, and they were trailed by a number of other children, varying in age, Lydia guessed, from three or four to sixteen or seventeen. It was pretty much impossible to identify any of the others.

  Harry came with the last group, and Lydia clutched her prayer book and did not know whether to keep her eyes on it as he passed or to look across at him and nod pleasantly if he looked at her. She wished with all her heart that she could revert to the time when she had been virtually invisible. Oh no, she did not. She was not going to cower here. She turned her head to look very deliberately at him—and something inside her somersaulted, or felt very much as though it did. He had been inside her home, her very private space. He had been inside her. They had talked—really talked. He had admitted to her that he had had to struggle with a wave of hatred for his cousin and half sister though he had known he was being unjust. She had told him things about herself that she had not told anyone else, even Denise or Hannah.

  He looked back at her. But instead of going on by, he came along her pew toward her. The man and woman who were with him came too, with a baby and a young child. A third child, a little girl, looked ahead before following them, just as the marchioness glanced over her shoulder and then smiled and beckoned. The child ran ahead to squeeze in between her and the man Lydia assumed was the marquess.

  But really she scarcely noticed. She looked inquiringly at Harry and was aware that half the congregation must be looking too even though she sat close to the back.

  “Good morning,” he murmured. “I have my sister and brother-in-law with me. Abigail and Gil Bennington. Mrs. Tavernor,” he told them. “May we sit here?”

  Abigail was fair-haired and pretty. Her husband had very dark hair and a harsh, dark-complexioned, noticeably scarred face. He was carrying the baby.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Tavernor,” Mrs. Bennington said softly, and squeezed past her brother to sit beside Lydia. Her husband sat on his wife’s other side and Harry beyond him. Harry lifted the little boy onto his lap.

  Had they all drawn straws to decide who would sit with her? And had Harry’s sister and brother-in-law drawn the short one? Lydia clutched her prayer book more tightly, murmured that she was delighted too, and was very thankful to see that the Reverend Bailey was coming from the vestry and the service was about to begin.

  She knew what they were up to—the marchioness inventing a friendship with Lydia’s mother yesterday; her insistence that she and Harry walk along the village street with Lydia; Harry and some other designated member of the family sitting beside her at church this morning; the invitation, soon to be made official, to Harry’s birthday party next Friday. They were trying to make it seem that Harry had a casual friendship with her and that they found nothing scandalous in it and were quite happy to pursue an acquaintance with her. They were doing it, of course, for H
arry’s sake, to protect him from any implication that there had been something improper in his behavior.

  Lydia appreciated what they were doing anyway—and resented it. For they must, she realized, very deeply resent her.

  She would not afterward have been able to recall anything of the service. She recited the prayers and sang the hymns without conscious thought, kneeled and stood and sat in all the appropriate places, responding entirely by rote. When Mrs. Bennington turned her head at one point to smile at her, she pretended not to notice. She was very aware of Harry three places away from her, bouncing the little boy on his knee once in a while, taking the child’s hands in his at one point to clap them silently together and leaning his head forward to whisper something in his ear. The child tipped back his head and smiled up at his uncle and Harry kissed his cheek.

  How could she possibly see all that without either turning her head or leaning forward? She did not know, but she did see.

  He had asked her to marry him. In an abrupt, unprepared speech that had affected her far more deeply than a more polished proposal would have done. She bit hard on her upper lip at the memory and blinked her eyes fast.

  At last the service came to an end and Lydia rose in the hope of slipping out before anyone else and hurrying home so she could shut the door behind her and be herself again. But Mrs. Bennington had turned toward her, and it was impossible to pretend again not to notice.

  “I am indeed pleased to meet you, Mrs. Tavernor,” she said. “Gil and I were married in this church four years ago. The Reverend Jenkins was the vicar then, and Mrs. Jenkins was still alive. She and my brother were the only witnesses. But I do believe it was the loveliest wedding ever. Not that I am biased or anything.” She laughed. “You and your husband came here very soon after that—after Mrs. Jenkins died suddenly and the poor vicar decided to retire. I regret that I never met the Reverend Tavernor. And I do sympathize very deeply with your loss. It must have devastated you.”