by Mary Balogh
Her tone was serious. Yet—there surely was a glimmering of humor in her words. That was a surprise, though why it should be he did not know. But yes, he did. Humor had seemed to be totally lacking in her husband. It was perhaps one reason Harry had never quite warmed to him.
“It was, however,” she added, “a pleasant evening. It was kind of the Cornings to invite me.”
“Let us walk down the center of the road,” he suggested. “It is smoother there. The outsides are rather badly rutted after all that rain we had a few days ago. Feel free to hold my arm more tightly, Mrs. Tavernor. I would hate for you to step awkwardly and turn an ankle. Tom would blame me, as well he might, and remind me of it for the next decade at the very least. Sometimes lanterns seem to cast more shadow than light, do they not?” He hoisted the one he held a little higher. It had been necessary to bring it from home, as he had a winding, tree-shadowed drive to negotiate after turning off the village street.
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate your offer to accompany me, Major Westcott, though it was unnecessary. There are enough houses along here that I always feel perfectly safe walking home alone, even at night.”
Harry was no longer a major. He had sold his commission a few years ago. However, most of his acquaintances, those who were not on a first-name basis with him, that was, still addressed him by that title. Perhaps doing so saved them the embarrassment of having to call him Mister Westcott when they had once addressed him as my lord.
Mrs. Tavernor had a low, rather pleasant voice. Harry deliberately took notice of it, though he could surely forgive himself for not having known what it sounded like. He did not believe he had heard her speak so many words all together before tonight. “Your cottage is a little beyond the end of the street, though,” he said, nodding ahead. It was almost exactly opposite the gateway to the manor drive, separated from the string of houses along the main street and hidden from them by a thick copse of trees and a slight bend in the road. “You are not nervous about living there alone?”
“I am not,” she assured him. “Who would come and bother me there? Bears? Wolves? Ghosts?”
“You have no servants?” he asked, though he was almost sure she did not.
“The housekeeper we had became quite insubordinate after my husband died,” she told him. “She resented taking orders from me when she had always taken them exclusively from him. I decided I could do very well without her and left her at the vicarage for the new vicar and his wife to inherit. It was a bit spiteful of me, perhaps, but I understand Mrs. Bailey quickly established command over her own domain. Mrs. Elsinore is still there. I do not miss her services, however. I have found myself quite capable of looking after my cottage and my needs with only a little help from one of the blacksmith’s sons. Reginald—Reggie. Do you know him?”
“The lad with the turned-up nose and all the freckles?” he asked. “The first lad one would suspect if there had been some mischief afoot?”
“The very one,” she said. “For some peculiar reason he likes to regale me with tales of some of his more daring exploits. He has something of a storyteller’s gift. He does some outdoor jobs for me. Otherwise, I manage very well alone. I am actually proud of my independence.”
“I sometimes find myself claiming that I live alone,” he told her. “And then I look about me and notice that I am waited upon by a butler, a valet, and a small army of other servants, both indoors and out. You put me to shame.”
“Well,” she said. “I cannot quite picture you bustling from room to room at Hinsford Manor, a duster in one hand, a mop in the other.”
“Can you not?” He looked at her, but again all he saw was the brim of her bonnet. “Or cooking my lone lamb chop and single potato in the Hinsford kitchen?”
“When I do try to picture it,” she said after a pause, “my mind presents me with a great big empty blank.”
She definitely had a sense of humor. It was a pleasant discovery. Had he expected, then, that she would be no more than a leftover shade of the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor in every way? That she had no identity apart from his?
“I cannot blame you,” he said. “How does one heat up an oven anyway?”
She recognized the question as rhetorical and did not attempt an answer. “You must console yourself for your helplessness with the knowledge that you are the biggest employer in the neighborhood,” she said. “And not just on your farms. The whole economy here would collapse without a trace if you decided to assert your independence and do everything for yourself.”
“I think I would probably collapse before the economy did,” he said. “Besides, I believe I would feel very alone indeed if I had to rattle about Hinsford without even my valet for company.”
“I have my dog,” she told him.
That little ball of yappy white fluff he sometimes saw behind the fence of her front garden when he came down the drive, he supposed. From any distance it was difficult to tell the front end of the creature from the back or one side from the other. Only the high-pitched yips and barks with which it objected to his approach identified it as canine in nature.
“Can you get a word in edgewise, though?” he asked. “My valet does pause for breath occasionally. I am not sure your dog does.”
“She does like to bark at strangers,” she admitted. “She is guarding her territory, which for her encompasses my house and my garden and the road beyond the fence. She barks at me too when I have been gone for a while and she is excited to see me back. Otherwise she is a very good listener. She never answers back or scolds or lectures. She listens attentively and simply falls asleep if I become tedious.”
“And do you often become tedious, Mrs. Tavernor?” he asked.
“Do not we all?” she asked him in return. “When we become too engrossed in ourselves? When complaint and self-pity creep into our discourse?”
“And what is it you have to pity yourself over?” he asked her. “The loss of your husband?” He could have bitten his tongue as soon as the words were out of his mouth, for they had been talking with a surprisingly light sort of banter. Her husband had been dead only a bit longer than a year. A little self-pity, even a lot of it, would be perfectly natural.
“I did not mean that,” she said. “I was speaking in hypotheticals, Major. Isaiah died in a manner befitting his life and his faith, and a young boy lives who would otherwise be dead. It would be wrong to mourn his death by pitying myself.”
They were passing Mrs. Bartlett’s house and then rounding the bend past the grove of trees. Mrs. Tavernor’s cottage was tucked away just beyond them within its neat garden.
They stopped outside her garden gate, and she withdrew her hand from his arm and turned to him.
“Thank you, Major Westcott,” she said. “It was kind of you to walk me all the way home. I did not once look nervously about me for bears and wolves.”
“You might have been very nervous indeed if one or both had put in an appearance,” he said. “I would probably run in the opposite direction as fast as my legs would carry me.”
She did not laugh. But in the dim light shed by his lantern he could see the way her eyes crinkled at the outer corners and somehow smiled. She was wearing a cap. He could see the frilly border of it forming a frame about the inside brim of her bonnet. She had a face that of course he recognized, he saw in some relief. A face that was neither pretty nor ugly. Nor even plain for that matter. It was a pleasant face. In the uncertain light he could not decide what color her eyes were—or the little he could see of her hair.
“Good night, Major Westcott,” she said, and turned to open the gate.
“But,” he said, “I must now prove to you, ma’am, that I am not a coward after all. I will accompany you to your door and offer my protection if any burglar or monster should leap out to frighten you.”
“Oh,” she said. “I believe Snowball would make short work of any
one who was not me trying to get into the house. But thank you. Maybe you will hold your lantern aloft until I light the candle inside the door.”
Snowball? Well, it was an appropriate name for the dog, anyway.
Harry followed her along the path to the front door and, sure enough, the dog set up a frenzied yapping from within and came bouncing outside as soon as Mrs. Tavernor had turned her key in the lock and opened the door. It did not know whether to greet its mistress first or attack Harry, and ended up dashing hither and yon, getting beneath both their feet.
“Yes, yes, I hear you,” Harry told the dog. “You are very brave to think yourself capable of saving your mistress from any villainous designs I may have upon her.”
“No one has told her she is not a mighty warrior, you see,” Mrs. Tavernor said.
“And no one ever should,” he said. “No one should ever diminish her spirit with even the slightest dose of reality, even though, to my shame, I just tried it.”
“And does that apply to all females, Major Westcott?” Mrs. Tavernor asked as she busied herself lighting the tall candle that stood on a table just inside the door, a tinderbox beside it.
“That is far too deep a question to be asking me at this time of night,” he said, grinning at her back. “But yes, it does. And to all males too. We ought not to try imposing limits upon one another even when we mean well.”
She turned back to him. There was light in the cottage now. It looked cozy and safe in there.
“Good night, then, Mrs. Tavernor,” he said.
“Good night. And thank you once more,” she said. But as he turned away she spoke again, her voice hurried and a bit breathless. “Major Westcott?”
He turned to look back at her, his eyebrows raised.
“Are you ever lonely?” she asked him.
He stared at her, transfixed. For a moment he did not know how to answer. She was standing very still, one arm reaching slightly forward, palm out, as though she had wanted to stop him and had got frozen in the gesture. Her face registered dismay.
Was she lonely, then? But why else would she have asked the question?
“I suppose everyone feels loneliness from time to time,” he said. “It even happens sometimes when one is in company with other people. Have you noticed? It is the price one must pay, perhaps, for keeping oneself intact. Whatever that means.”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” she said. “Some people thrive upon company, upon drawing everyone’s attention and holding it, often by the power of their will or by doing more talking than anyone else. It is as though they derive their sense of self from crowds. Then there are the people who need to keep a greater distance from others, even if they are not quite hermits. They draw their sense of self from . . . themselves. They . . .” She paused and bit her lip for a moment. “But they are sometimes lonely as a result. The price they pay, as you put it.”
Had she been describing the relationship between her husband and herself, however unconsciously? Whenever the Reverend Tavernor had been in a room, all attention had somehow been riveted upon him without any apparent effort on his part. He had had that effect upon people even though he had not habitually tried to dominate a gathering. If anyone else started a conversation, all eyes would turn his way to see what he would say in return. It would not be surprising if his wife was lonely now. She must miss him dreadfully. She was very young to be a widow. She was probably no older than he, Harry thought, perhaps even younger.
“You are still very young,” he said, his voice sounding a bit stilted and awkward. What could he say to comfort her, after all? He was embarrassed. “You will surely marry again and your loneliness will go away.”
She returned her arm to her side at last while her dog settled at her feet. “Ah,” she said. “But I would have to give up my freedom for the dubious pleasure of gaining a husband and losing a bit of the loneliness I sometimes feel. Would it be worth it?”
Dubious pleasure?
He did not believe she expected an answer. But what did her words suggest about her marriage to the Reverend Tavernor? That it had been so perfect that it could never be replicated? Or that it had been quite the opposite and was never to be repeated? It was really none of his business, Harry decided. But she had aroused his curiosity.
“Is a woman quite unfree when she marries, then?” he asked. “I have two sisters who would take issue with that notion. And a mother.”
“They are fortunate,” she said, suggesting an answer to his unspoken questions. “But you have not married.”
“No, ma’am,” he agreed in a tone that he hoped would discourage her from continuing. “I have not.”
“I will never marry again,” she said, folding her arms beneath her bosom and hunching her shoulders as though against the chill of the night. “I value my freedom and independence too well. But they do come at a cost, Major Westcott. I sometimes wish . . . With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely . . . I . . .” Her words were spilling out quickly and breathlessly and a bit incoherently. “Oh, goodness, I do not know what I am trying to say. Nothing of any sense or significance, I daresay. Ignore me, please. It is late.”
What the devil?
What the devil?
Harry stood where he was on the path just below her doorstep as she gazed at him for a moment, stepped backward into the house, raised a hand in farewell at the same moment as she gave him the ghost of a smile, said good night again though not much sound escaped her lips, and closed the door.
What the devil? Harry thought again.
She had not been flirting with him. One could not imagine Mrs. Tavernor flirting with any man. And she was not in search of another husband. She had said so, and in no uncertain terms.
But she wanted something.
Had she been making him a proposition? Was it even remotely possible? Mrs. Tavernor? The bland, pious, almost silent widow of the zealously puritanical Reverend Isaiah Tavernor?
She wanted a lover?
Specifically him?
I sometimes wish . . . With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely . . .
By God, she had made him a proposition. Or started to, anyway. Until her impulsive words—for they surely had been impulsive—had shocked her and she had tried her best to unsay what had already been spoken and could never be recalled.
Good God!
Yes, he was sometimes lonely. Of course he was. He had admitted it to himself just lately. But was it not true of everyone? As he had said to her? He just never knew quite what to do about his own loneliness when it hit him—which was not by any means all the time or even very often.
Harry wondered suddenly if she was peering out through the curtains drawn over her front window and feeling a bit uneasy about seeing him still standing here like a statue on her garden path. He turned to leave, stopping only briefly after passing through the gate to shut it behind him.
He was not ready for marriage yet. But . . . an affair? With a willing partner? A social equal? Someone who clearly understood—and would make him clearly understand—that it was not a courtship and never would be? Someone close to home? At the end of his own drive, in fact?
Mrs. Tavernor?
The Reverend Isaiah Tavernor’s widow?
Harry strode along the drive with incautious haste, given that it was pitch-dark and his lantern was not as effective as it might have been.
The very idea ought to be laughable. Or horrifying. Bizarre. Beyond the realm of reality. He was pretty sure, however, that she had been serious, though she had not come out and said specifically that that was what she wanted. She had stopped herself in time. There was nothing else she could have meant, though, was there?
One thing was beyond question. After a number of years during which he had been almost completely unaware of h
er existence, Mrs. Tavernor had suddenly become a very real person to him in the past hour—not even that long—and quite distinct from her late husband. She had come alive as a woman who valued freedom and independence, even though the price she had to pay was some loneliness and—presumably—an occasional craving for sex.
Devil take it, it really was bizarre. Mrs. Tavernor and sex just did not go together in his head.
But she wanted a lover.
Him.
Are you ever lonely?
Four
Lydia kept herself determinedly busy throughout the following week, bustling about as though she had a mansion to run instead of a cottage. She cleaned and cooked and baked and cleaned again. She weeded the flower beds behind the house and chopped wood and took Snowball for walks in the early morning, along country lanes no one frequented at that time of day. Even so, every time she left the house, always by the back way, or came to a new turn, she peered in every direction first like a child playing hide-and-seek, to make sure there was no one in sight.
Specifically Major Harry Westcott.
The only person she ever did see was Jeremy Piper, the boy her husband had saved, who liked to slink around at all hours, often carrying what looked like a slingshot. Fortunately, he always seemed intent upon avoiding Lydia. Perhaps she reminded him of an episode in his life he would rather forget.
Lydia could not believe what she had said. She had actually enjoyed the walk home from the Cornings’ house with Major Westcott, though she had been a bit alarmed at first at the prospect of having to make conversation with him. It had proved surprisingly easy, however. They had even joked with each other, something she had not done with anyone besides her women friends for years. It had felt lovely. So had the firmness of his arm beneath her hand and the solidity of his chest and shoulders close to her, accentuated by the capes of his greatcoat. She had not wanted it to end—and it had not ended when they reached her gate. For he had insisted upon seeing her safely inside her house.
