by Mary Balogh
Had they forgotten that he had a birthday coming up? His thirtieth? Had they given up on him? Did they not care?
He was laughing out loud suddenly. Poor little spoiled boy!
He picked up a couple of loose stones from the flat rock upon which he sat to pitch one at a time at the lake. But the angle was wrong for them to skip. He was too far above the water. They all sank without a trace.
Now that he was not being pressed to go to London, he was very tempted to go after all. To get away from here for a few weeks. To kick up his heels a bit. To air out his head, whatever the devil he meant by that. But it would be madness. Easter was over and done with and the Season would be just swinging into full life. And his sudden appearance might cause someone with the last name of Westcott to recall that he had a landmark birthday soon.
He did not belong to that world any longer, and in all truth he did not want to belong. The Harry Westcott he had been at the age of twenty was not the Harry Westcott who was sitting here now, attempting the impossible by pitching stones from well above the level of the water and expecting them to skip.
He got up and went down closer to the lake to find more stones. He managed to skip the second one four times, gave himself a congratulatory pat on the shoulder, and turned to make his way back to the house.
He could not go to London.
Lydia was here. And Lydia might be with child. By him. Unless good fortune was on their side. Or unless all his instincts had been wrong on that night and she was after all the experienced widow he had thought her to be, and knew how to avoid pregnancy. Had her childlessness been a deliberate choice, by the way? Or was she barren? Or had she indeed been a virgin when he took her to bed? He could not shake off the horrible suspicion that she had been. There had been that tightness as he pressed into her, that slight flinch.
Dash it all, he could not go to London. He must find out if their . . . encounter had had consequences. At the very least it was surely the decent thing to go and check on her, to make sure she was all right. Her life of quiet independence was precious to her. He had put that at risk. He owed her an apology if nothing else.
It was two weeks to the day since he had called last at her cottage. Two weeks since he had gone down his own drive. He had gone out by other routes whenever he had left home during those weeks. It was time to put things to rights.
He walked down the drive the next morning under skies that threatened rain later and could see even before he reached the bottom of it that she was in her garden, kneeling down by the flower bed beneath her front window. The grass was looking a bit long, Harry noticed.
Snowball came bouncing and yipping up to the fence to greet him. Lydia looked sharply his way.
He crossed the road to the fence.
“Lydia,” he said.
She turned her face away and set down her gardening tools unhurriedly and removed her gloves. She got to her feet and rubbed her hands together before turning and looking at him again. She had not said a word.
Ah, good God. Lydia.
* * *
* * *
Lydia had stayed away for a little less than two weeks. She had had a wonderful time. Her father and brothers had admonished her, of course, when she had appeared at their door without warning in the modest private chaise the Reverend Bailey had helped her hire. They had all also hugged her tightly enough to crush bones, she had feared, and certainly to endanger her ability to breathe. Esther had hugged her and clung to her and wept over her while declaring that she had never been happier in her life.
Papa had appointed a maid to her exclusive service almost before she had set foot inside the house. And from that moment on she had not unpacked a box or lifted a water jug or a brush or any piece of clothing. She had been waited upon literally hand and foot.
She had been wined and dined and taken to call upon neighbors and had neighbors invited to come and visit her. She had been fussed and coddled and entertained and talked with from morning until night. She had been gently scolded for getting up too early in the morning and for going to bed too late at night. She had been taken to church on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday mornings and proudly displayed in the place of honor next to her father in the padded front pew that was his. She had been introduced to the vicar, “who is a single man, Lydie,” she had been told afterward. She had been introduced to Mr. Johnson, a new neighbor who was reputed to have inherited a modest fortune a year or two ago—“and is a single man, Lydie.” He had been promptly invited with a small party of other neighbors to dine a few evenings later and had been conspicuously seated beside her at the dining table.
Snowball had been treated with amusement and affection and gross indulgence. She was going to look even more like a ball if they stayed much longer, Lydia had thought a few times.
They had all assumed, of course, that she had come to stay. Or at least that she was persuadable. And perhaps for the first few days she had been. It had been so lovely to relax, to lower all her defenses. It had been a huge relief to discover after she had been there a mere two days that her night with Harry had not had consequences. During the first week she had been able to forget about that night. Or, if that was impossible, as of course it was, at least to look back on it as though it were something that had happened a long time ago to someone else.
She had not stayed, however. It had not taken long for her to feel a bit stifled by all the attention and overwhelmed by the never-ending company and talk and laughter. She had never been alone, except at night. Even when she had tried a few times to withdraw to her room for a bit of solitude, someone had been sure to tap on her door and poke a head around it to ask if there was anything wrong, if perhaps she had a headache and needed a draft of something to ease the pain. If she had tried to take a solitary walk in the park to enjoy the peace of nature, her father or one of her brothers or even Esther, who was not supposed to exert herself, had soon fallen into step beside her—“to keep you company, Lydie.” And if it was one of the men—or more than one, as it often was—he had been sure to remind her that she must never wander out of sight of the house if she was alone. “A woman can never be too careful, Lydie.” Familiar words she remembered from her youth.
James clearly adored Esther, as she did him. But he fussed over her constantly and hovered. He stopped her from doing a thousand things—the number was probably exaggerated, Lydia admitted to herself—she wanted to do. Those things were either unwise or unsafe, or they would tire her or threaten her delicate health or bore her or give the wrong impression to other people. Or—and this one Lydia had found most irksome—she must not worry her pretty little head over them. If Esther expressed an opinion on any subject, though she did not often do so, James would be sure to admonish her, gently and affectionately, for speaking on a topic she could not possibly comprehend or for taxing her brain more than was good for her or for worrying over something the men would take care of.
“Esther,” Lydia had said one day when they were alone, “do you not want to scream sometimes when Papa or James fuss over you and want to do everything for you but breathe? Even think?” She had laughed to soften the harshness of her words.
But Esther had looked at her as though she had sprouted an extra head. “Oh, but Lydia,” she had said, “they are wonderful. That I love James to distraction goes without saying, of course. But that when I married him I should also have gained such a father and such brothers makes me wonder sometimes what I ever did to deserve such rich blessings. They care for me and protect me. I . . . Well, I really ought not to say anything about my own papa and my brother. But I will say this much. They were never anything like yours, Lydia. How fortunate you have been. And to have married the Reverend Tavernor, who was wonderful, though I only met him that once, when he brought you here for my wedding.”
Lydia had grown very fond of Esther during those two weeks. She was unfailingly sweet and affectionate. But Lydia doubted
they could ever be close friends. They were too different in temperament and perspective.
So she had known by the end of the first week that she could not stay indefinitely. During the second week she had still enjoyed being there. And she had consciously loved her family and appreciated who they were as persons. But she had begun to long for her little cottage and her kitchen and her flower beds. She had begun to miss her neighbors and friends. And she had begun to long to see Harry again, to try to apologize to him if she could, to see if she had hurt him in any way, though it was far more likely he had shrugged off that incident as relatively unimportant. Men were like that, were they not? Their emotions did not get all tangled up with their pleasures.
Ah, but she was surely being unfair. She did not believe he had just been grabbing an opportunity for casual gratification that night.
Papa had not liked her decision to return home, and he had been very vocal about telling her so. James did not like it either. Nor did William. Anthony, who had come home from university for Easter, had already returned to Oxford for his final term and so had no chance to voice an opinion. Esther wept.
But home Lydia had come, with far more pomp and bluster than when she arrived. For Papa, of course, had insisted upon sending her in his own carriage with a coachman and a footman up on the box and a maid inside with her, as well as two outriders to deter any would-be highwaymen. He would have accompanied her himself, as would either James or William, but she had put her foot down and insisted that she would not so inconvenience any of them. Esther had looked frightened over her insubordination, but she had won the day after making a nasty threat.
“If you try to insist,” she had warned the three men, “then I shall simply walk away in the middle of the night, taking only Snowball with me for protection.”
“Ah, Lydie,” her father had said reproachfully, and for a moment she had thought she detected tears in his eyes.
There had certainly been tears in hers when she left, hugged boneless and breathless again before she climbed into the carriage, and then waved after until the carriage turned a corner and they were lost to view. Then she had wept some more. For of course she knew—she had always known—why her father was so protective of her, his only daughter. He had adored her mother, set her up on a pedestal, felt unworthy of her, since he had been a wild man about town when he fell in love with her. He blamed himself for her death so soon after giving birth to his fourth child and the fact that Lydia had been deprived of her mother at such a young age. Oh, he had never spoken these things aloud, but Lydia knew. She had been eight years old. She had understood far more than her father and brothers probably realized. She could no longer allow him to dominate and protect her, but she loved him enough to hurt at times. Oh, love was not just a soft, feel-good emotion. Sometimes it tore painfully at the heart.
But now she was home. And happy. So was Snowball. Mrs. Bartlett had seen the bustle of her arrival yesterday and had brought over a bowl of soup and two freshly baked bread buns for her evening meal and welcomed her home but would not stay because she could see that Mrs. Tavernor was pale with fatigue and then stayed for a full hour anyway, telling her every tidbit of news and gossip from the past two weeks.
This morning Lydia was tackling the mess of her front garden. For of course grass and weeds—and even flowers, to a lesser degree—did not stop growing just because one was away from home. She was kneeling on the overlong grass beneath the front window, waging war upon weeds in the flower bed and planning to call at the smithy later to see if Reggie would come and scythe her grass soon, when Snowball started to yip and bark and bounce enough that Lydia knew someone must be coming along the street—or down the drive. She turned her head to see.
Ah, the moment had come. And she was not sure her knees would support her if she tried to stand.
Perhaps, she thought, he would merely nod and go on his way. But he crossed the road and came right up to her garden fence.
“Lydia,” he said.
And she wanted to weep. For no reason whatsoever that she would have been able to explain to herself. She set down her gardening tools, pulled off her gloves, and rubbed her hands to rid them of the grains of soil that had got underneath the gloves—all with slow deliberation so she could collect herself before standing and turning toward him and looking fully at him.
“I got home yesterday,” she said. “And the garden is a mess.”
And so was she. A mess, that was. She had forgotten just how overwhelmingly gorgeous he was.
“Got home?” he said, frowning. “Have you been away?”
He did not know? Oh.
Oh.
“I went to spend Easter with my father and brothers,” she told him. “And my sister-in-law. She is in a . . . delicate way.”
“I did not know you were gone.” He rested one hand on top of the fence and looked down. “Be quiet, Snowball. I see you.”
Snowball settled on the grass, gazing upward.
“That was why I got no answer when I called here twice on the same day,” Harry said, looking back at her. “I thought you were avoiding me. But I suppose you were.”
“It was Easter,” she said lamely.
“Lydia.” He looked at her for long moments before continuing. “Are you with child?”
Oh goodness. She felt color flood her cheeks. “No,” she said. “Oh, no, I am not.”
His hand was gripping the fence, she noticed. But he only nodded briefly and said nothing more. He had come that day, then—twice? But not since then? He had not known she was away. Yet it felt as if she had been gone forever.
“Harry,” she said. “I am sorry—”
“Please do not be,” he said, cutting her off before she could finish. “I am sorry too. But it would be better, perhaps, if we did not belabor the point. You found your family well? Your sister-in-law too?”
“Yes,” she said. “My father had a nasty chill a month or so ago, but he is quite better now.”
“I am glad,” he said.
They were talking like polite strangers, making stilted conversation. It was almost impossible, as she looked at him now, simply but elegantly dressed like a country gentleman, to believe that they had actually made love in the house behind her. That they had been naked together . . .
“The weeds did not stop growing while I was gone,” she said.
“Why should they?” he asked. “They are as eager to survive as any other living thing.”
“I suppose,” she said.
He dropped his hand from the fence and took one step back. “Are you planning to attend the assembly at the inn on Thursday evening?” he asked her.
Ah, the spring assembly that always happened soon after Easter. She had always attended while Isaiah was alive. He had disapproved of the frivolity of dancing and would never dance himself—nor, consequently, had she—but he had not considered it actually sinful. And he had judged his presence to be necessary, as it was at all village events, so that he could open it with a prayer of blessing and thanks. She had always found that prayer a little embarrassing.
“I will be going,” Harry said.
So would almost everyone else. It was a much-anticipated event. Each family took food, so the tables positively groaned with it. The music was always lively, the dancing vigorous, the conversation loud and merry. She had always behaved with quiet decorum while her heart danced to the music and her toes tapped, even if only imperceptibly inside her slippers. She had not attended last year, as she had been in mourning.
“So will I,” she said. “Probably.”
He nodded. “I will see you there, then,” he said. And he turned and walked away. But not along the street into the village, as she had expected, but back up the drive in the direction of home. He had come specifically to call upon her, then, had he? After two weeks of not even knowing that she was gone?
Snowb
all scrambled to her feet and protested his leaving, but he did not look back.
“I will probably go,” Lydia said softly.
Eleven
Probably turned into a definite commitment as the week went by, for the assembly was at the forefront of everyone’s mind and it was hard to resist a communal lifting of the spirits. Each of Lydia’s particular friends—Hannah Corning, Denise Franks, and Mrs. Bailey—asked her about her visit to her father in the days following her return and then wanted to know if she intended to go to the assembly.
Lady Hill, who together with Sir Maynard, her husband—they owned an estate that bordered Hinsford land—had met and liked Lydia’s father when he came for Isaiah’s funeral and had exchanged a few friendly letters with him since then, had been attentive to Lydia ever since she moved into her cottage and sometimes invited her to afternoon tea. Now, though, she invited Lydia to dinner on the evening before the assembly. When Lydia arrived, Lady Hill introduced her to her sister and her niece, Mrs. Ardreigh and Miss Vivian Ardreigh, who had come to stay for a couple of weeks. The only other guest was Theresa Raymore, the magistrate’s daughter and a friend of the two Misses Hill.
Sir Maynard, Lady Hill explained, had gone with Lawrence and Mr. Ardreigh and his son, Vivian’s brother, to dine with Harry Westcott, who had taken pity on them after Lawrence had complained to him that they were to be turned out of the house.
“Which was gross slander, Lydia, if not an open untruth,” Lady Hill protested, “when all I had said in a passing remark was how lovely it would be just occasionally to have a ladies-only dinner and evening, like the ones men so often enjoy at their clubs in London.”
“But you did particularly mention this evening and sighed mournfully, Aunt,” Vivian Ardreigh pointed out with a smile.
