by Mary Balogh
“After I have just made the herculean effort to get up? And when everyone is about to totter off to bed in order to look fresh and beautiful in the morning?” Ben laughed, but no one else shared his amusement.
“You are depressed, Ben,” Vincent said. “Even I have noticed.”
The others all sat again, and Ben, with a sigh, resumed his own seat. He had so nearly got away with it.
“No one likes to be a whiner,” he told them. “Whiners are dead bores.”
“Agreed.” George smiled. “But you have never been a whiner, Benedict. None of us has. The rest of us would not have put up with it. Admitting problems, asking for help or even just for a friendly ear, is not whining. It is merely drawing upon the collective sympathies of people who know almost exactly what you are going through. Your legs are paining you, are they?”
“I never resent a bit of pain,” Ben said without denying it. “At least it reminds me that I still have my legs.”
“But—?”
George had not himself fought in the wars, though he had once been a military officer. His only son had fought, though, and had died in Portugal. His wife, the boy’s mother, perhaps overcome with grief, flung herself to her death from the cliffs at the edge of the estate not long after. When he had opened his home to the six of them, as well as to others, George had been as wounded as any of them. He probably still was.
“I will walk. I do walk after a fashion. And I will dance one day.” Ben smiled ruefully. That had always been his boast, and the others often teased him about it.
No one teased now.
“But—?” It was Hugo this time.
“But I will never do either as I once did,” Ben said. “I suppose I have known it for a long time. I would be a fool not to have done so. But it has taken me six years to face up to the fact that I will never walk more than a few steps without my canes—plural—and that I will never move more than haltingly with them. I will never get my life back as it was. I will always be a cripple.”
“A harsh word, that,” Ralph said with a frown. “And a bit defeatist?”
“It is the simple truth,” Ben said firmly. “It is time to accept reality.”
The duke rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers. “And accepting reality involves giving up and calling yourself a cripple?” he said. “You would never have got up off your bed, Benedict, if you had done that from the start. Indeed, you would have agreed to allow the army sawbones to relieve you of your legs altogether.”
“Admitting the truth does not mean giving up,” Ben told him. “But it does mean assessing reality and adjusting my life accordingly. I was a career military officer and never envisaged any other life for myself. I did not want any other life. I was going to end up a general. I have lived and toiled for the day when I could have that old life back. It is not going to happen, though. It never was. It is time I admitted it openly and dealt with it.”
“You cannot be happy with a life outside the army?” Imogen asked.
“Oh, I can be,” Ben assured her. “Of course I can. And will. It is just that I have spent six years denying reality, with the result that at this late date I still have no idea what the future does hold for me. Or what I want of the future. I have wasted those years yearning for a past that is long gone and will never return. You see? I am whining, and you could all be sleeping peacefully in your beds by now.”
“I would r-rather be here,” Flavian said. “If one of us ever goes away from here unhappy because he c-couldn’t bring himself to confide in the rest of us, then we m-might as well stop coming. George lives at the back of beyond here in Cornwall, after all. Who would want to c-come just for the scenery?”
“He is right, Ben.” Vincent grinned. “I would not come for the scenery.”
“You are not going home when you leave here, Ben,” George said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Beatrice—my sister—needs company,” Ben explained with a shrug. “She had a lingering chill through the winter and is only now getting her strength back with the spring. She does not feel up to moving to London when Gramley goes up after Easter for the opening of the parliamentary session. And her boys will be away at school.”
“The Countess of Gramley is fortunate to have such an agreeable brother,” the duke said.
“We were always particularly fond of each other,” Ben told him.
But he had not answered George’s implied question. And since the answer was a large part of the depression his friends had noticed, he felt obliged to give it. Flavian was right. If they could not share themselves with one another here, their friendship and these gatherings would lose meaning.
“Whenever I go home to Kenelston,” he said, “Calvin is unwilling to let me to do anything. He does not want me to set foot in the study or talk to my estate agent or visit any of my farms. He insists upon doing everything that needs to be done himself. His manner is always cheerful and hearty. It is as if he believes my brain has been rendered as crooked as my legs. And Julia, my sister-in-law, fusses over me, even to the point of clearing a path before me whenever I emerge from my own apartments. The children are allowed the run of the house, you see, and run they do, strewing objects as they go. She has my meals served in my private apartments so that I will not have to exert myself to go down to the dining room. She—they both go a fair way, in fact, toward smothering me with kindness until I leave again.”
“Ah,” George said. “Now we get to the heart of the matter.”
“They really do fear me,” Ben said. “They fairly pulsate with anxiety every moment I am there.”
“I daresay your younger brother and his wife grew accustomed to thinking of your home as their own during the years you were here as a patient and then as a convalescent,” George said. “But you left here three years ago, Benedict.”
Why had he not at that time taken possession of his own home and somehow forced his brother to make other provisions for his own family? That was the implied question. The trouble was, Ben did not have an answer, other than procrastination. Or out-and-out cowardice. Or—something else.
He sighed. “Families are complex.”
“They are,” Vincent agreed with fervor. “I feel for you, Ben.”
“My elder brother and Calvin were always very close,” Ben explained. “It was almost as if I, tucked in the middle, did not exist. Not that there was any hostility, just … indifference. I was their brother and they were mine, and that was that. Wallace was only ever interested in a future in politics and government. He lived in London, both before and after our father’s death. When he succeeded to the baronetcy, he made it very clear that he was not in any way interested in either living at Kenelston or running the estate. Since Calvin was interested in both, and since he also married early and started a family, the two of them came to an arrangement that brought them mutual satisfaction. Calvin would live in the house and administer the estate for a consideration, and Wallace would pay the bills and draw on the proceeds but not have to bother his head about running any of it. Calvin did not expect—none of us did—that a loaded cart would topple onto Wallace near Covent Garden and kill him outright. It was too bizarre. That happened just a short while before I was wounded. I was not expected to survive either. Even after I was brought back to England and then here, I was not expected to live. You did not expect it, George, did you?”
“On the contrary,” the duke said. “I looked into your eyes the day you were brought here, Benedict, and knew you were too stubborn to die. I almost regretted it. I have never seen anyone suffer more pain than you. Your younger brother assumed, then, that the title and fortune and Kenelston itself would soon be entirely his?”
“It must have been a severe blow to him,” Ben said with a rueful smile, “when I lived. I am sure he has never forgiven me, though that makes him sound malicious, and really he is not. When I am away from home, he can carry on as he has since our father died. When I am there, he no doubt feel
s threatened—and with good reason. Everything is mine by law, after all. And if Kenelston is not to be my home, where will be?”
That was the question that had been plaguing him for three years.
“My home is full of female relatives who love me to distraction,” Vincent said. “They would breathe for me if they could. They do everything else—or so it seems. And soon—I have already heard the rumblings of it—they are going to be forcing potential brides on me because a blind man must need a wife to hold his hand through all the dark years that remain to him. My situation is a little different from yours, Ben, but there are similarities. One of these days I am going to have to put my foot down and become master of my own house. But how to do it is the problem. How do you talk firmly to people you love?”
Ben sighed and then chuckled. “You are exactly right, Vince,” he said. “Perhaps you and I are just a couple of dithering weaklings. But Calvin has a wife and four children to provide for, while I have no one besides myself. And he is my brother. I do care for him, even if we were never close. It was a sheer accident of birth that made him the third-born son and me the second.”
“You feel g-guilty for having inherited the baronetcy, Ben?” Flavian asked.
“I never expected it, you see,” Ben explained. “There was no one more robust or full of life than Wallace. Besides, I never wanted to be anything but a military officer. I certainly never expected Kenelston to be mine. But it is, and I sometimes think that if I could simply go there and immerse myself in running the estate, perhaps I would finally feel settled and would proceed to live happily ever after.”
“But your home is occupied by other people,” Hugo said. “I would go in there for you if you wanted, Ben, and clear them all out. I would scowl and look tough, and they would toddle off without so much as a squeal of protest. But that is not the point, is it?”
Ben joined in the general laughter.
“Life was simple in the army,” he said. “Brute force solved all problems.”
“Until Hugo w-went out of his head,” Flavian said, “and Vince lost his sight and every b-bone in your legs got crushed, Ben, not to mention most of the bones in the rest of your body too. And Ralph had all his friends wiped off the m-map and his pretty looks ruined when someone slashed his face, and Imogen was forced to make a d-decision no one ought ever to have to make and live with her choice f-forever after, and George lost everything that was dear to him even without leaving Penderris. And half the w-words I want to speak get stuck on the way out of my mouth as though something in my brain needs a d-dab of oil.”
“Right,” Ben said. “War is not the answer. Life only seemed simpler in those days. But I am keeping you all from your beauty rest. You will all be wishing me to Hades. I am sorry, I did not mean to unburden myself of all these petty problems.”
“You did so because we invited you to, Benedict,” Imogen reminded him, “and because this is precisely why we gather here every year. Unfortunately, we have not been able to offer you any solutions, have we? Except for Hugo’s offer to remove your brother and his family from your home by force—which fortunately was not a serious suggestion.”
“It never matters, though, Imogen, does it?” Ralph said. “No one can ever solve anyone else’s problems. But it always helps just to unburden oneself to listeners who really listen and know that glib answers are worthless.”
“You are depressed, then, Benedict,” the duke said. “Partly because you have accepted the permanent nature of the limitations of your own body but do not yet know where this acceptance will lead you, and partly because you have not yet accepted that you are no longer the middle brother of three but the elder of two, with certain decisions to make that you never expected. I do not fear that you will despair. It is not in your nature. I believe my ears are still ringing from the curse words you used to bellow out when the pain threatened to get past your endurance in the early days. You could have achieved the peace of death then, if you had only had the good sense to despair. You have only upward to go, then. You have, perhaps, rested upon a plateau overlong. Moving off it can be a frightening thing. It can also be an exciting challenge.”
“Have you been rehearsing that speech all d-day, George?” Flavian asked. “I feel we ought to stand and applaud.”
“It was quite spontaneous, I assure you,” the duke said. “But I am rather pleased with it. I had not realized I was so wise. Or so eloquent. It must be time for bed.” He laughed with the rest of them.
Ben positioned his canes and went through the slow rigmarole of getting to his feet again while everyone else stood.
Nothing had changed in the last hour, he thought as he made his slow way upstairs to his bedchamber, Flavian at his side, the others a little ahead of them. Nothing had been solved. But somehow he felt more cheerful—or perhaps merely more hopeful. Now that he had said it aloud—that his disabilities were permanent and he must carve out a wholly new life for himself—he felt more able to do something, to create a new and meaningful future, even if he had no idea yet what it would be.
But at least the immediate future was taken care of and did not involve one of those increasingly awkward and depressing visits to his own home. He would start out for County Durham in the north of England tomorrow and stay for a while with his sister. He looked forward to it. Beatrice, five years his senior, had always been his favorite sibling. While there with her, he would give some serious thought to what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
He would make some plans, some decisions. Something definite and interesting and challenging. Something to lift him out of the depression that had hung over him like a gray cloud for far too long.
There would be no more drifting.
There was really something rather exhilarating about the thought that the rest of his life was his for the making.
2
Samantha McKay was restless. She stood at the window of the sitting room at Bramble Hall, her home in County Durham, and drummed her fingertips on the windowsill. Her sister-in-law was lying on the daybed in her room upstairs, incapacitated yet again by a sick headache. Matilda never had ordinary headaches. They were always either sick headaches or migraines, sometimes both.
They had been sitting here together quite companionably just half an hour ago, Samantha stitching at her embroidery, Matilda repairing the lace edging of a tablecloth. Samantha had remarked on what a fine day it was at last, even if the sun was not actually shining. She had suggested casually that perhaps they should go out for a walk. She had almost turned craven and left it at that, but she had pressed onward. Perhaps, she had suggested, they should walk out beyond the confines of the park today. Although the grounds surrounding the house were always referred to as the park, such a word glamorized what was in effect merely a large garden. It was perfectly adequate for a sedate stroll among the flower beds or for sitting out in on a warm day, but it did not offer nearly sufficient scope for real exercise.
And real exercise was what Samantha had begun to crave more than anything else she could think of. If she did not get out beyond house and garden soon and walk, really walk, she would … Oh, she would scream or throw herself down on the floor and drum her heels and have a major tantrum. Well, she would feel like doing all those things even though she supposed she would not actually do anything more extravagant than sigh and yearn and plot. She was nearly desperate, though.
Matilda, predictably, had looked reproachful, not to mention shocked and sorrowful. It was not—or so she had proceeded to explain—that she did not feel in need of a good walk herself. A true lady must, however, learn to master her base desires when she was in deep mourning. A true lady kept herself decently confined to her home and took the air in the privacy of her own park, shielded behind its walls from the critical eyes of the prying world. It was certainly not seemly for a lady in mourning to be seen out enjoying herself. Or to be seen at all for that matter, except by her close relatives and servants inside her own home and by her neighbo
rs at church.
Captain Matthew McKay, Matilda’s brother and Samantha’s husband of seven years, had died four months before Matilda delivered herself of this speech. He had died after suffering for five years from the wounds he had sustained as an officer during the Peninsular Wars. He had needed constant tending during those years, or, rather, he had demanded constant tending, and the role of nurse had fallen to Samantha’s almost exclusive lot since he would admit no one else to the sickroom except his valet and the physician. She had hardly known what it was to sleep for a whole night or to have more than an hour here and there outside the sickroom during the day. She had almost never had the chance to go beyond the garden walls. Even a stroll in the garden had been a rare treat.
Matilda had come to Bramble Hall for the final couple of months of her brother’s life, after Samantha had written to her father-in-law, the Earl of Heathmoor, at Leyland Abbey in Kent, to inform him that the physician believed the end was near. But the burden of care upon Samantha’s shoulders had not been lightened, partly because by that time Matthew really had needed her, and partly because he could not stand the sight of Matilda and always told her quite bluntly when she appeared in his room to take herself off and keep her Friday face out of his sight.
Samantha had been very close to the point of collapse by the time Matthew died. She had been exhausted and numb and dispirited. Her life had felt suddenly empty and colorless. She had had no will to do anything, even to get up in the morning or clothe herself or brush her hair. Even to eat.
It was no wonder she had allowed Matilda to take charge of everything, though she had written to her father-in-law herself within an hour of his son’s death.
Matilda had insisted that the second son of the Earl of Heathmoor be mourned according to the strictest rules of propriety, though she had not needed to insist—Samantha had put up no fight. It had not even occurred to her that she might or that the rules of which Matilda spoke were excessive as well as oppressive. She had allowed herself to be decked out from head to toe in what must surely be the heaviest and gloomiest mourning garments ever fashioned. She had not even insisted upon being fitted for the new clothes. She had allowed herself to be cloistered within her home, the curtains always more than half drawn across the windows out of respect for the dead. She had allowed Matilda to discourage any visitors who made courtesy calls of sympathy from coming again, and to refuse every invitation that was extended to them, even to the most sober and respectable of social gatherings.
