by Mary Balogh
“I think, Sir Benedict,” she said, “you are a bit stuffy. As well as tyrannical.”
“What I am,” he told her, “is concerned for your reputation, ma’am. And that is going to have to be Benedict and Samantha tomorrow. We will be husband and wife.”
“I suppose,” she said, “you would be happier if I were shrouded in black for the rest of my life.”
“You may wear scarlet every day until you are eighty,” he said, “after you have been delivered safely to your cottage and I have gone on my way.”
“Delivered,” she said. “Like an unwanted package.”
The door opened behind him, and a maidservant carried in a large tray with their evening meal.
“Come and sit down,” Mrs. McKay said to Ben. “You are in pain.”
Well, it was all the result of being brought up short inside the door by her appearance. He was still in a lot less pain, though, than he had been an hour ago.
He moved toward the table without comment.
“You were in pain most of the afternoon, were you not?” she said after they had taken their seats and the girl had withdrawn. “I did not say anything then. It seemed like an impertinent intrusion upon your privacy. But perhaps I ought to have. Are you always in pain?”
“I make no complaint, ma’am,” he said. “You must not concern yourself.”
She clucked her tongue. “Matthew always complained,” she said, “and I sometimes wished he had exercised a little more restraint. You will never complain, I suspect, and I will probably find your heroic fortitude just as irritating.”
He laughed despite himself.
“Riding for hours in a carriage is not the most comfortable experience even for the most nimble,” she said. “I suppose it is the worst thing in the world for you.”
“Probably not the very worst,” he said.
“You make me feel selfish and insensitive,” she told him. “First my appearance and now this. We will not travel so far tomorrow or any other day after that. If we take two weeks, even three, to complete this journey, then so be it. We are in no particular hurry, are we?”
She might not be.
“I will not have you put yourself out for me,” he said. “I have grown accustomed to my condition. No one else need be burdened with it.”
She had taken his plate and was dishing out his food for him just as if she really were his wife and they were seated cozily at their own dining table.
“We will travel in a more leisurely fashion, beginning tomorrow,” she told him. “Perhaps we are on our honeymoon. Do you suppose we are?”
Her sudden smile looked impish. He could have wished, though, that she had found some other subject to joke upon. Their honeymoon, indeed! Drat and blast it all.
“You told me earlier today, Mrs. McKay,” he said, “that you were thankful I was not your husband. I replied in kind. I repeat that sentiment now. I have the feeling you would be one devil of a handful.”
“A devil of a handful.” She put down her knife and fork, set an elbow on the table, and rested her chin on her fist. “Indeed, Sir Benedict? How?”
Her voice had lowered to a throaty whisper, but her lips were curved up at the corners, and her eyes were dancing with mischief.
“Eat your dinner,” he told her. He was feeling overheated again and there was not even a fire in the hearth.
12
After that first day they traveled onward as man and wife. It was better that way, Samantha decided, for she could wear her own clothes again and forget about the ghastly oppression of her blacks. She had nothing particularly new and nothing very fashionable, but they were clothes she had chosen herself and, in a few cases, clothes she had made herself, and they suited her well enough. Wearing them again made her feel younger and more hopeful. They made her feel herself again.
She called him Ben. She had remarked—after one of their brief flare-ups—that Benedict made him sound like some sort of monk or saint and that no one had ever been more inappropriately named. Surprisingly, he had agreed with her and confided that he had always been uncomfortable with his name and far preferred the shortened form. She had told him that if he ever called her Sam she would have a temper tantrum. He had immediately called her Sammy and waggled his eyebrows at her. She had poked out her tongue and crossed her eyes in retaliation.
It actually felt good to act childishly. They had both ended up laughing.
After four days of travel, they crossed the River Wye into Wales. The land of her maternal forefathers. She had never expected that half of her heritage to mean anything to her and was surprised at the welling of emotion she felt at knowing that she was here at last.
She knew nothing about her mother’s kin, except for her dead great-aunt, who had been Miss Dilys Bevan, pronounced Dill-iss, according to her mother. She had always assumed there were no other living relatives.
But perhaps there were.
Did she want there to be? But she knew the answer was no almost before her mind had asked the question. For if any were still living, then they had neglected her mother and therefore her. And that would be worse than if they did not exist.
But suddenly, going to her cottage to live took on new meaning. For perhaps there was more awaiting her than just a dilapidated hovel of a building. Perhaps there was a whole story. A whole Pandora’s box, which she did not want to open. She must just hope it did not even exist.
She was feeling a little maudlin on the day they passed Tintern Abbey. They stopped to view the ruin, both of them having read and admired William Wordsworth’s lengthy poem about it. The building and its unspoiled, deeply rural surroundings were every bit as lovely and romantic as they were depicted in that poem. Wooded hills rose on either side of the valley and the Wye flowed between, the abbey on its western bank.
Their days had settled into a certain routine. Samantha rose early each morning to take Tramp out for a walk before breakfast, and then they traveled until the horses were tired and must be changed or at least rested. They spent what remained of the afternoons either strolling in the vicinity of the inn where they had stopped or finding some local landmark of interest to explore. They would find somewhere comfortable to take their tea. Then Ben would write conscientiously in his journal, having called for pen and ink, while Samantha took Tramp for another walk. Then they would relax in their separate rooms until it was time to meet again for their evening meal. They retired early in anticipation of the next day’s exertions.
On this particular day they resumed their journey after visiting Tintern, in order to take rooms at an inn above the valley that had been recommended to them the night before. When they arrived there, though, it was to the disturbing discovery that there was only one room still available. It was a large and comfortable chamber, the landlord assured them when he saw Ben’s hesitation, and there was a lovely view down into the valley and across it from its bay window.
“We will travel farther,” Ben said. “My disability makes it difficult for my wife to share a room with me in any comfort.”
But the closest inn, the landlord informed them, was at Chepstow, an uncomfortably long distance ahead when they had already traveled farther than usual today.
The journey was hard on Ben, Samantha knew. Though he never complained, she had learned to read his face and the tensions of his body, even his smile. What on earth had possessed him to believe that he could spend his life traveling and writing books about his journeys? But it was entirely her fault that he was doing so much traveling these days.
“We have come far enough,” she said. “We must take the room, Ben. It will be just for one night.”
“You will not be sorry, sir,” the landlord assured him. “We have the best cook between Chepstow and Ross. You can ask anyone.”
Ben looked as if he was about to argue. He was also looking rather pale and drawn. They had spent longer than they ought, perhaps, walking about the ruins.
“Very well,” he said. “We will stay here.”
The room was pretty and clean, and there was indeed a splendid view from the window, but it was not particularly spacious. There was no armchair or love seat or sofa, as Samantha had hoped there would be. She would have been happy to sleep on any of the three. The large, high bed dominated the room and occupied most of the floor space.
But good heavens, it was just for one night, she thought as they stood just inside the door, looking about them with great awkwardness. She spoke briskly. “I suppose if I lie very close to the edge on this side and you lie very close to the edge on that, there will be enough space between us to accommodate an elephant.”
“If you roll over in the night,” he said, “you had better be sure to roll the right way.”
“And which way would that be?”
She turned to smile at him just as he turned his head to smile at her. And suddenly it seemed as if her words were written in fire on the air between them.
“I would imagine,” he said, recovering himself, “elephants take exception to being awoken in the night.”
“Yes.” She crossed to the window, by far the finest feature of the room.
“Would you rather we went on to Chepstow after all?” he asked. “We still could.”
“No, we could not,” she said. “You are on the verge of collapse. It has been too busy a day. I shall go back down and make sure Tramp is properly accommodated. I shall have Mr. Quinn sent up to you.”
He did not argue.
She spent an hour with the dog, at first sitting on some clean straw beside him, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, her arms wrapped about them, and then walking with him so that he could take care of business before settling for the night.
They had managed to rub along well enough together, she and Sir Benedict—Ben. They could talk and laugh and be silent together. They could enjoy doing a little sightseeing together despite the handicap of his not being able to walk fast or far. But he was a man, and she would have to be inhuman, she supposed, for that fact not to be affecting her, especially as they had, once upon a time, shared a kiss and soared together in imagination beyond the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped in furs against the chill of the upper atmosphere.
It was sometimes hard to ignore his maleness when they shared the close confines of a carriage interior during the daytime. Whatever was it going to be like to share a bed all night?
By the time she returned to the room, making a great deal of unnecessary bustle on the landing outside the door and then taking her time turning the handle, Ben was dressed for dinner and was sitting on the side of the bed, reading. He set his book aside and got to his feet. He did it more easily than usual, she noticed, perhaps because the bed was high.
“I shall leave you the use of the room,” he said, “and see you downstairs in the dining room.”
“Very well.”
He was dressed smartly for dinner in black and white. She could have wished he did not look quite so attractive.
She donned a green silk gown and clasped about her neck the pearls her father had given her as a wedding present.
The only private dining parlor at the inn had been already spoken for by the time they arrived. There were just a few other people in the main dining room, however, and none of them were close enough to make conversation awkward. The food was excellent. At least, Samantha thought it probably was. She did not pay it much attention, truth to tell. She was too busy keeping the conversation going. It kept wanting to die, and they could not seem to hit upon a topic that required more than a question from one of them and a monosyllabic answer from the other.
Oh, what a difference having to share a bedchamber made. They had not had this problem on any previous evening. Not to this degree, anyway.
“If there had only been a private dining parlor available,” he said eventually, “there might have been a chair upon which I could have spent the night.”
“If you were going to do that,” she said, “we might as well have continued on our way to Chepstow. I would have slept on the chair.”
“Rubbish,” he said. “I would never have allowed it.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “I would not have allowed you to dictate to me what I could or could not do.”
“Are we back to bickering?” he asked. “But, really, Samantha, no gentleman would allow a lady to sleep on a chair in a private dining room while he enjoyed the luxury of a bed in a room with a view.”
“Ah,” she said, “the view. I had forgotten that. Undoubtedly, then, on this occasion I would have allowed you to have your way. An academic point, however. We do not have a private dining room and so neither of us is able to make the noble gesture of spending the night on a chair there.”
“We both, in fact,” he said, “get to enjoy the view.”
She smiled and he chuckled, and Samantha gazed at him, arrested for a moment. She had been very fond of her father, but she could not remember ever joking with him or talking nonsense with him—or bickering with him. And though she must surely have laughed with Matthew during their courtship and the first few months of their marriage, she could not recall ever being deliberately silly with him purely for their mutual enjoyment.
It occurred to her that she liked Ben Harper, even if he did make her bristle with indignation on occasion—and turn hot with longing at other times. It occurred to her that she would miss him when he had gone.
“He had a mistress,” she said abruptly, and then she gazed at him in some surprise. What on earth had prompted her to say that? She set down her knife and fork, rested her forearms on the table, and leaned toward him. “They already had one child when he met and married me. Another was conceived during the first months of our marriage. I took that to mean that he did not care much for me at all and that I was not much good in the marriage bed.”
She gazed at him, appalled. And she looked around furtively to make sure they were not within earshot of any other diners.
He looked from his knife to his fork and back again before setting them down across his plate and copying her posture. Their faces were not very far apart.
“I suppose,” he said, “you have spent longer than six years imagining that you are sexually inadequate.”
She half expected to see flames flaring up from her cheeks.
“No,” she said. “Why should I allow my spirit to be crushed by someone I did not respect? I lost respect for my husband four months into our marriage. That is a terrible admission to make, is it not, to a virtual stranger?”
“I am hardly a stranger,” he said. “And I am about to become even less of one. We are to spend the night teetering off the opposite edges of the same bed, are we not?”
“Have you ever had a mistress?” she asked him.
“Of long standing?” he said. “No. And never any children. And even if I had a mistress, I would dismiss her before marrying someone else. And no one would replace her. Ever.”
“Was the colonel’s niece very beautiful?” she asked.
He considered. “She was pretty. She was small and dainty, all smiles and dimples and blond curls and ringlets and big blue eyes.”
“Such a woman would surely have been unwilling to follow the drum with you.”
“But she was already doing so with her uncle,” he told her. “She looked like a porcelain doll. In reality she was as tough as nails.”
“Did you mourn her loss?”
“I cannot say I spared her more than a passing thought for at least two years,” he said. “By then I was very thankful we had not married.”
“I daresay she has grown plump,” she said. “Small, pretty blonds often do.”
His eyes laughed at her, and he reached across the table and took one of her hands in both of his.
“I believe, Sammy,” he said, “you are jealous.”
“Jealous?” She tried to withdraw her hand, but he tightened his hold on it. “How perfectly ridiculous. And how dare you call me that name when I have specifically asked you not to?”
“I think you want me,” he said.
“Nonsense.”
His eyes were laughing, but her stomach was clenched into knots. It was not true. Oh, of course it was true. He did not believe what he was saying, though. He was just teasing her. He was deliberately trying to make her cross—and was succeeding.
“I believe,” he said, “you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.”
“Oh!” She gaped inelegantly and jerked her hand from between his as she got abruptly to her feet. “How dare you. Oh, Ben, how dare you?”
Somehow she remembered to keep her voice down.
“You may have lost respect for your late husband,” he said, “and you may have refused to allow his infidelity to break your spirit, but he hurt you more than you realize, Samantha. He was a fool. And one day you will be given proof of your desirability. But not tonight. You are quite safe from me, I promise, despite the situation in which we find ourselves. I will not take advantage of you.”
She was almost disappointed.
“Go on up to our room now,” he said, “since you appear to have finished eating. I will stay down here for a while.”
She went without a word of protest, even though it could be said that he had issued a command.
He was a fool.
You will be given proof of your desirability.
I believe you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.
I think you want me.
And they were to spend the night together.
Not only ought he to have written to Hugo, Ben thought as he drank his port, but he ought also to have written to Calvin at Kenelston. And probably to Beatrice. No doubt she would soon learn that Samantha had disappeared from Bramble Hall and that he had left Robland very early on the same day. He wondered if she would make the connection. But if she did, he did not believe she would share her suspicions with anyone.
