by Balogh, Mary
However, one did not need to act upon one’s feelings. One’s actions ought rather to be based upon sober reason and common sense. With a little willpower, one could establish control over one’s feelings and do what one knew one ought to do and what one really wished to do.
It all sounded so … reasonable.
So why was she here?
The trees were becoming less dense. There was more sky visible and more sunshine. There was more grass. There were flower beds. And the house.
It was not a vast mansion. But it was grand and attractive and well situated near the top of a very slight slope of land, with a wide lawn before it and trees surrounding it, but at a sufficient distance not to crowd or darken it, only to give an impression of rural seclusion.
It looked like a happy place in which to live, Lydia thought without stopping to ask herself what exactly she meant by that. Perhaps because it was his home. Or because a number of the people staying here were outdoors and there were shouts and shrieks and laughter coming from one group out on the lawn playing cricket, and chanting from a circle of very little children and their two adult supervisors at the top of the lawn. A group of riders was gathered over in front of the stables on the far side of the house. It looked as though they were about to go riding together. Three elderly ladies sat on the terrace, watching all the activity.
She should have expected this, Lydia thought with an inward grimace. It was, after all, the sort of day that was made for outdoor activities. But surely Harry’s intention was not to take her right into the midst of the throng and perhaps even introduce her to those ladies. He had asked her to walk in the park with him.
Even as she thought she might have been trapped into something quite different, however, Harry stopped and turned toward her.
“I do not suppose you are a star bowler or batter, by any chance, Lydia?” he asked.
“I am not,” she said. Though her brothers had learned when she was still quite young not to lob easy balls at her just because she was a girl. She had punished a number of those balls with her cricket bat before they had taken her more seriously.
“It is just as well,” he said. “The two team captains, whoever they are, would probably come to blows over you. Shall we stroll around behind the house? The kitchen gardens are back there and, beyond them, more trees and what as children we used to call the jungle walk. It was not designed or constructed by any landscape artist, alas, but the path is kept clear and it is quite pretty and not much frequented.”
“I would like that,” Lydia said.
“Watch out for snakes,” Mrs. Bennington said, and all three of the siblings laughed. “Harry used to yell that as he was jumping out at us from behind a tree with a length of creeper dangling from one hand. After the first time or two we would just roll our eyes and walk on.”
“You used to poke out your tongue and cross your eyes too, Abby,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “I was more genteel. I merely stuck my nose in the air and made derogatory remarks about boys.”
All three laughed again and Lydia smiled too. She had forgotten the days of tormenting brothers. After the disappointment over her come-out Season that never was and the terrible mistake of her marriage, she had allowed memories of her childhood and girlhood to turn sour.
Snowball began to bark suddenly and ferociously and pull on the lead as a great monster of a … creature came galloping toward them in pursuit of three shrieking little girls. Lydia stooped down and snatched up her dog. But who was going to snatch up her? And the others? She experienced a few moments of blind panic and horror before realizing that the creature was a large dog and that the little girls were not fleeing from him but rather being accompanied by him. They were shrieking with excitement at seeing Lydia’s group. They all, the dog included, came to an abrupt halt when they were a few feet away.
“Mama,” one of the little girls yelled, addressing Mrs. Bennington as though she were still half a mile away, “Rebecca has pulled out her tooth and Emma has cut one. Both on the same day. Can you believe it?”
“I was supposed to tell,” one of the others complained loudly. “Because Emma is my sister.”
“Papa has my tooth,” the third child cried. “He said he is going to have it set in gold and wear it on a chain about his neck for the rest of his life, but I think he was funning me. It would be … disgusting to wear my tooth, would it not, Uncle Harry?”
Snowball was yipping and wriggling, eager to get at the monster. The monster, meanwhile, was sitting on his giant haunches, looking ungainly and slightly lopsided. He— she? it?—was panting loudly and woofing a friendly greeting to its would-be assailant.
“Let me see that gap, Rebecca,” Harry said, and took the child’s chin in his hand as she opened her mouth wide and pointed. “Hmm. No sign of a new tooth yet.”
“Has Emma’s tooth come through at last?” Mrs. Cunningham asked. “I have never known a more stubborn tooth. Or a crosser baby. Susan’s pushed through last week.”
“I believe,” Mrs. Bennington said, “you girls left your manners back at the house. Make your curtsies to Mrs. Tavernor, if you please. This, Mrs. Tavernor, is my daughter, Katy.” She indicated the child who had told the initial story. “This is Alice Cunningham, Emma’s sister. And Susan’s. They are twins. And the girl with the newly lost tooth is Rebecca Archer.”
“Lady Rebecca Archer,” Alice Cunningham said—and giggled. “Her papa is a duke. The Duke of Netherby.”
“The dog is Beauty,” Mrs. Cunningham added. “She was facetiously named by Abby’s husband when she was a puppy, but she grew to fit the name.”
There was a chorus of “How do you do, Mrs. Tavernor?” from the cousins, who looked to be all about the same age. They bobbed curtsies.
“I am very pleased to meet you all,” Lydia said.
“Your dog looks like a ball of fluffy wool,” Rebecca Archer said. “He is sweet. May I pet him? Will he bite?”
“She does not bite,” Lydia said. “And she loves to be made a fuss of.”
All three girls crowded around to pet her dog. They laughed with glee when Lydia told them her name.
“She looks like a snowball,” Katy Bennington said. “How funny.”
“She licked my hand,” Alice Cunningham said, snatching it away with a squeal. “Come and see Emma’s tooth, Mama. You can come too, Aunt Abby. And Uncle Harry. Would you like to see it, Mrs. Tavernor?”
“Mrs. Tavernor and I are going for a walk,” Harry said. “I will come and admire the tooth later. Rebecca’s too if she insists and if her papa has not already gilded it. Mrs. Tavernor?” He stepped forward to take Snowball from her. “Hush, dog. We know you are a mighty warrior, but you may frighten poor Beauty if you are set down.” He offered Lydia his free arm.
“I scarcely recognize my home,” he said as they walked away. “It has suffered an invasion. A surprise one, I might add. I did not have an inkling. Foolish of me.”
“Do you mind?” she asked him.
He sighed and then chuckled. “I am extremely fond of them all,” he said. “And I appreciate the fact that they made such a herculean effort to plan this surprise and come all the way here just to help me celebrate my birthday. Camille made their journey sound hilarious when she described it to you just now, but in reality it must have been … well. Nightmarish? Everyone has come. The whole family. Without exception. Even one grandmother who is almost eighty and the other who is not far behind. I am very grateful to them all.”
“But?” she said. They had turned off the drive just when it had seemed inevitable that they would come close to more people. He was leading her along the east side of the house.
“There is no real but,” he said. “This may all seem ridiculously extravagant for a mere thirtieth birthday. Everyone has one of those, after all, provided he or she lives long enough. It is more than that with my family, though. They all want desperately to make things up to me. They look upon me as being at the very heart of what happened ten years ago. I
was the one who suffered most obviously. I lost everything—the title, the properties, the fortune, my legitimacy, any residual respect I had left for my father. I lost my position as head of the family. I lost my ability to protect and care for my mother and sisters. And then I went off to war and got myself horribly wounded a number of times. I was actually sent home to England to recover at one time and arrived with a high fever and pretty much off my head. I got myself very nearly killed at Waterloo and was eventually carried back here, ill, weak, and destitute except for what I could still expect from an officer’s half-pay.”
He paused to smile at Lydia.
“This family did not just feel sorry for me,” he continued. “They did not even just feel that they must take me into their collective embrace and care for me. They felt guilty. As though everything that had happened was somehow their fault. My father was my grandmother’s son and my aunts’ brother. They blamed themselves for the way he turned out, though it seems extremely unlikely there was anything they could have done to stop him from being the rotten apple he was. Alexander blamed himself for inheriting what ought to have been mine, even though he made it obvious from the start that he did not want any of it. Anna blamed herself for being our father’s only legitimate child—as though she could help that—and for inheriting everything that was not entailed. Even Hinsford.”
“You told me before that it does not belong to you,” Lydia said.
“She has tried a number of times to give it to me as well as what she insists is my quarter of the fortune,” he said. “But I have steadfastly refused. Now that I think about it, though, perhaps my pride has made me unkind. It is unkind to rebuff a sincerely offered gift. My family’s sensibilities have been soothed by the happy marriages of my mother and my sisters. But there is still me.”
“And you are about to turn thirty,” she said.
“Precisely.” He stopped for a moment to set Snowball down to walk beside them.
“And you are still living here in the country,” she said. “Unmarried and without children.”
“And therefore in their estimation not living happily ever after,” he said. “And they still cannot forgive themselves for offenses they did not commit. I cannot resent them, Lydia. They love me too dearly. And I love them.”
“But,” she said, and laughed.
“But,” he agreed, and sighed—and then laughed too.
“Do you find all the children bothersome?” she asked.
“No.” He looked at her in some surprise. “Why should I? I find them a delight most of the time, and when I do not, they are their parents’ responsibility, not mine. I get the best of both worlds.”
“Seeing those three little girls, cousins who look to be close to one another in age, reminded me of how much I longed for a sister when I was a girl,” she said. “Though I would happily have settled for a cousin or two.”
They had come to the back of the house by now and paused for a few moments to look at the long expanse of the kitchen garden. Spring flowers, presumably ones to be cut for the house, took up half of one side and were blooming in some profusion. Vegetables, many of them already pushing through the soil, stood in neat rows to fill the rest. Snowball, taking up the whole length of her lead, was sniffing along the roots of one row of crocuses.
Lydia felt herself begin to relax. Until Harry spoke again, that was.
“Lydia,” he asked, “why did you not have children of your own?”
She froze. He knew the reason. Did he not? She had wondered, but … Oh, surely he had realized the truth.
“Sometimes one does not,” she said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said almost simultaneously. “I … had no right to ask.”
They resumed walking and made their way beside the gardens toward the trees beyond them. Lydia was finding it a bit hard to breathe evenly.
“We decided not even to be friends,” he said, apparently moving on to another subject.
“We did,” she agreed. So why were they here?
“Which was utterly absurd of us,” he continued. “I missed you while you were gone. Though I did not even realize you were gone. When I got no answer to my knock twice on that one day, I assumed you wished to avoid me and I respected your wish. I stayed away from the village. I did not even attend the Easter services at church. But I missed you, Lydia.”
Perversely—utterly perversely—she was hurt by the fact that he had not even known she was gone.
“It is hardly surprising you did not know I was away,” she said. “Just a few weeks before that you scarcely knew I existed.”
Oh, petty words, Lydia.
“Because you deliberately hid,” he told her. “Even though you went out and about, you made yourself virtually invisible. It was a remarkable performance.”
“And obviously a necessary one,” she said tartly. “As was my going away for a couple of weeks after … well, after we had agreed not to see each other again. You came anyway. Twice. My deliberate hiding, as you called it, and my going away to stay with my father for a few weeks stopped anything like this from happening.”
“This being my calling on you again after you had been so unfairly singled out for gossip, I suppose,” he said, “and offering you marriage to shield you from it, and sitting beside you with my sister and her husband at church yesterday to show that we are friendly acquaintances even if nothing more, and persuading you to come walking in the park with me today. All and everything that has happened to you during the past few days is my fault, I suppose. Yet as I remember it, Lydia, it was you who suggested that we become lovers.”
“Oh,” she cried, stung. “I did not suggest any such thing. All I did was ask you if you were ever lonely.”
“You said a lot more than that, my girl,” he told her, “even if you could not force yourself to the end of any sentence you started.”
That was it. She was horribly mortified. And how dare he remind her? He was not a gentleman. She was sorry she had ever thought he was.
“I am not your girl or anyone else’s, Major Westcott,” she said. “I am not a girl. I am twenty-eight years old.”
“And I am not a major,” he said. “I am Mr. Westcott if you must be ridiculous enough to address me formally after what there has been between us.”
There. See? Not a gentleman.
“I am not your girl, Mr. Westcott,” she said. “And I would be obliged if you would turn around and take me back home. Better yet, I will take myself home. I do not expect I will get lost between here and my cottage.”
He clamped her hand to his side as she tried to jerk it free of his arm. And he had the gall to … laugh.
“Our first quarrel,” he said. “Wherever did that come from? I wonder. But do you think perhaps it means we are friends after all, Lydia?”
The man had windmills in his head. “Friends?” she said. “Friends? Harry, you are … You are … absurd.”
“Yes, aren’t I?” he said, grinning. “And I am Harry now, am I?”
“But I suppose I am still a girl,” she said, refusing to be appeased. “May I please have my hand back?”
“Lydia,” he said, keeping her hand, “you are very much a woman.” And he spoke the words in a velvet voice, the provoking man. She felt it stroking down along her body, inside and out, until it reached her knees and turned them weak. How dared he? She glared indignantly at him.
“Very much,” he said in the same voice. “Forgive me. You did not explicitly suggest that we be lovers.”
“But you know very well that I did so implicitly,” she said. “And it was not explicit only because I lost my courage. It does not matter. It happened anyway. But if you are a gentleman you will forget.”
“The funny thing about memory, though,” he said, “is that it cannot always or perhaps ever be commanded at will, can it? Perhaps you are right, though. Perhaps I am not a gentleman. If you wish to go home immediately, I will escort you. But please, will you consider strolling through the jungle w
alk with me instead? Let us change our minds and be friends after all, shall we? We do not also have to be lovers. Somehow that did not work out when we tried it, did it?”
She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. Snowball was tugging on her lead, eager to move on, and Harry was standing here, invading her space and her consciousness, and she desperately wanted them to be friends again, as they had started to be before she recognized the hopeless danger of their seeing each other privately and tried to turn him away. Only to make love with him instead—and then turn him away.
Her mind was one churning jumble of confusion and contradiction—just as her actions had been a few weeks ago.
She released the breath. “Only if you can promise there will be no snakes,” she said, opening her eyes.
“If I see one,” he said, “I will pick it up and hold it a safe distance from you before warning you.”
She laughed. Oh, how could she possibly not do so when his eyes smiled at her as they did now?
They walked onward, not talking. But it was a strangely companionable silence. The air was really quite warm. The sun was beaming down from a clear sky. There was a bit of a breeze. Perhaps it would blow away that stupid gossip. And it really was stupid. She did not understand now why she had not simply laughed at Mrs. Piper at the time and ignored all the rest of it during the past few days.
Perhaps, indeed, it was already blowing over. Mrs. Bartlett had appeared at her back door quite early this morning with two muffins fresh from her oven. They could have walked home together from church yesterday, she had told Lydia, but Mrs. Tavernor had already disappeared by the time she herself got outside. It was being said that Mrs. Tavernor’s mother had once been a dear friend of Lady Riverdale, who was now Lady Dorchester, of course, though Mrs. Bartlett still thought of her as Lady Riverdale because that was what she had been when she lived here for so many years. But … was it true?
The warm muffins had been an olive branch, Lydia had understood. Owed entirely to the bogus story Lady Dorchester was spreading rather than to any faith in Lydia’s good character. Even so … Well, an olive branch was an olive branch.