The Escape

by Mary Balogh

  Oh, dear, how could one’s spirit be so elated and yet so depressed all at the same time? She had better take her mind off things by walking Tramp.

  Two hours later, when Samantha was back in her room and sitting by the window, alternately looking at the sea and trying to read, there was a knock on her door. She opened it, smiling in anticipation of seeing Ben on the other side. But a thin, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl stood there instead.

  She had been sent by Mr. Rhys’s clerk, she explained, to be Mrs. McKay’s maid and look after her clothes and fetch her washing water and do her hair and anything else that was asked of her, if Mrs. McKay pleased, but she was a good girl and Mr. Rhys himself could testify to that fact since her own mother’s sister had been working for his wife’s cousin for five years now and never any trouble, and would Mrs. McKay give her a chance, please, and she would never be sorry for she would do anything Mrs. McKay pleased and besides, the clerk had told her she must stay for the night even if not forever as the silly English girl who had been Mrs. McKay’s maid had gone away on the stage this morning and abandoned her because she did not like Wales, though what was wrong with Wales, who knew, for it was surely a hundred times better than that England, where there was scarcely a mountain or molehill to make the land interesting and people could not sing to save their lives, but anyway, it would not be respectable for Mrs. McKay to be alone in a hotel without a maid even though her dead husband’s friend, who was both a major and a sir, was here to protect her, though in another room of course, and … and would Mrs. McKay consider her for the job, please?

  Samantha was not sure the girl had stopped once to draw breath. Her eyes were wide with mingled eagerness and anxiety.

  “You have the advantage of me,” she said. “You know my name.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. “Gladys, Mrs. McKay. Gladys Jones.”

  “And how old are you, Gladys?” Samantha asked.

  “I am fourteen, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said. “I am the oldest of us. There are seven younger than me and none of us working yet. I would be much obliged to you if you would take me on so that I can give some money to Da to help him feed us all. I am a good worker. My mam says so, and she says she will miss me if I go into service, but Ceris will do almost as well in my place. She is a good girl too and she has just turned thirteen and she is nearly as tall as me. But perhaps you would not need me to live in just yet, and I could go back and forth really easy because I live in Fisherman’s Bridge, no more than a bit of a walk from the empty cottage where you are going to move to. Mam is expecting another of us in a few weeks, and I would rather be there with her for the nights anyway until the new babe is in the cradle. After that I would be more than happy to live in. Though I will live in right away if you would rather and just have my half day to visit Mam and help Ceris out as much as I can.”

  Samantha stood back to let the girl into the room.

  “I will be happy to give you a try, Gladys,” she said, “while you give me a try. And I believe I will be able to do without your services at night at least for a while.”

  She thought of the maid she had had at Bramble Hall and how the girl had often kept her up late with her chattering. Gladys might well keep her up all night if she lived in.

  “Oh, thank you, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said, and she began immediately to attack Samantha’s bags, which she proceeded to unpack even though she was going to have to pack everything again the morning after tomorrow.

  Word was delivered to the hotel the following morning that a Mrs. Price, widowed mother of the blacksmith at Fisherman’s Bridge, had gone over to the cottage to supervise the cleaners who had been sent in, to open the windows to air the place out, and to remove the covers from the furniture and do a bit of shopping and get fires lit in all the grates after the windows were closed again so that everything would be nice and warm and cozy for Mrs. McKay when she arrived the following day. Mrs. Price had expressed a willingness to be interviewed for a permanent position if Mrs. McKay so desired. She was an excellent cook and had held previous positions as a cook and housekeeper. She had the references to prove it.

  And so the next phase of her life was about to begin, Samantha thought as she spent the afternoon with Ben and Tramp, sitting and taking short walks along the top of the cliffs above the sweep of Tenby Bay.

  A phase that would not include Ben.

  “Ben,” she said in a rush after they had sat silently admiring the view for a while, “will you stay for a few days? After tomorrow, I mean?”

  He gazed out to sea, his eyes narrowed against the brightness of the light sparkling off its surface.

  “Oh, how selfish of me,” she said. “Please ignore the question. You must be very eager to be on your way.”

  “If there is an inn at Fisherman’s Bridge,” he said, “I will stay for a few days. Until I am satisfied that you are properly settled.”

  “Did I force that upon you?” she asked him. “I am not your responsibility.”

  When he turned his head to look at her, he was frowning slightly.

  “Oh, but you are,” he said. “I promised my friend, your husband, on his deathbed that I would escort you here and see you safely settled. Remember? I always keep my promises.”

  And then, just when she felt that she would surely dissolve into tears, he grinned at her.

  That grin was going to haunt her after he had gone. It always somehow had the power to turn her weak at the knees.

  “I am going to take Tramp for a quick walk,” she said, getting hastily to her feet.

  The cliffs got lower as they traveled west along the coast the next morning, though they rose high above the sea again in the not-too-far distance. They had been told that the village of Fisherman’s Bridge and therefore the cottage on this side of it were in the dip where the cliffs were at their lowest.

  Samantha fully expected that the cottage would be no more than the hovel her mother had called it. But she would not be disappointed, she told herself. At least it was habitable. It would do for a while even if not forever. And this was such a beautiful part of the world she would surely not regret moving here.

  And then, quite suddenly, just as they were approaching a line of rolling sand dunes, partly covered with grass, there it was. Or what must be it since there was no other dwelling in sight and the village must be beyond the dunes.

  Except that it was not a cottage. Or not what she thought of as a cottage, anyway.

  “Oh, goodness,” she said.

  Ben leaned sideways, his shoulder pressed against hers, so that he could see it with her out of the window on her side of the carriage.

  It was a sturdy, square house of gray stone with a gray slate roof. It looked as if it must have at least four bedchambers upstairs and as many rooms downstairs. There was a porch at the front and a dormer window in the roof above it. A square garden surrounded it, bordered by a whitewashed wooden fence. There was a sizable barn in one corner. What had obviously been flower beds at one time were bare apart from a few weeds, but the grass had been newly scythed. Its green expanse was unmarred by either daisy or buttercup.

  “That is a cottage?”

  “Well,” Ben said, “it is not a mansion, but it is not a hermit’s shed either, is it?”

  “It is a house,” she said. “How on earth could my mother have called it a hovel? Do you suppose there is some mistake?”

  “No,” he said. “The carriage is turning toward it. Your new maid would say something if this was the wrong place, even though I notice that the sight of Quinn awed her into silence when she met him in the stable yard this morning and I have not heard her voice from up on the box, have you?”

  “My great-aunt could really not have been impoverished,” she said. “I always assumed she was.”

  A large woman in a dark brown dress with a voluminous white apron and matching mob cap had appeared on the steps outside the porch, a welcoming smile on her face. Mrs. Price, Samantha assumed. She dipped into a curtsy as the coa
chman lowered the steps and handed Samantha down at the garden gate. Mr. Quinn opened it. Gladys was clambering down from the box, unassisted.

  “Welcome, Mrs. McKay,” Mrs. Price said. “Everything is ready for you, even at such short notice. I kept everyone’s nose to the grindstone yesterday until everything shone and not one speck of dust or dirt remained. And I came over early this morning to get some baking done so that you would have something nice to eat as well as having the smell of cooking in the house. There is nothing so homely as that smell, is there? And is that you, Gladys Jones? Your mam said you had gone off to see if you could be Mrs. McKay’s maid. Come inside, ma’am. The gentleman has hurt himself, has he?”

  The interior lived up to the outside, Samantha discovered over the next half hour. There were four sizable square rooms downstairs—a parlor, a dining room, a kitchen, and a book room. There were four large bedchambers upstairs and one small one at the head of the stairs, and there was the attic room with its dormer window in the roof. A hallway bisected the house downstairs and contained the staircase, which ran straight up to the landing above.

  The architect, whoever he had been, had lacked imagination, perhaps, but Samantha loved the dimensions of the rooms. The furniture, though old and heavy and predominantly dark in color, just as Mr. Rhys had described it, nevertheless looked comfortable. Yesterday, no doubt, there had been a smell of age and even mustiness here, but the opened windows and the fires and the baking had taken care of that.

  Finally, Mrs. Price bustled off to the kitchen to fetch some of her newly baked cakes and a pot of tea. Gladys was thumping about in the main bedchamber above the parlor, where Samantha sat with Ben.

  “I cannot quite believe it,” she said, spreading her hands on the soft old leather of the chair arms.

  “That the cottage really exists?” he said. “Or that it is habitable? Or that it is really quite large? Or that it actually belongs to you? Or that you are here at last? Or that you have a beach all to yourself and a view to entice you to your front windows for a lifetime? Or that your life has changed so drastically in such a short time?”

  “Oh, stop,” she said, laughing. She rested her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes briefly. “All of those things. Oh, Ben, it is as if I have been snatched away from my life and deposited here in heaven. It really feels like heaven.”

  “I daresay,” he said, “the Earl of Heathmoor did you a favor when he took Bramble Hall away from you and summoned you to Leyland Abbey. You may never have given this cottage a serious thought if you had not been desperate for escape, or, if you had, perhaps you would never have thought of coming here.”

  “This was fate, then?” She opened her eyes to look at him. “Something that was meant to be?”

  But Mrs. Price came bustling back into the room, bearing a large tray, before he could answer her.

  “I did not know if you liked currant cake or seed cake or bara brith best, Mrs. McKay,” she said. “So I made all three and you can have your pick. I daresay the major likes all three. Men usually do. I am sure you must both be ready for a nice cup of tea. You would not prefer coffee, I hope? Nasty, bitter stuff, if you were to ask me. I never have it in my own house. My man did not like it either and nor does my son. But I can get some to bring tomorrow, if you like it. If you want me to come again, that is. I wouldn’t mind coming in each day to get your breakfast and staying until I have cooked your evening meal, though I would rather not live in. My son would starve since he has not found a wife for himself yet, and I can never seem to sleep sound in any other bed but my own.”

  “Shall we give your suggestion a try?” Samantha said. “And I am happy to drink tea. Bara … brith, did you say?”

  “This dark full-fruit loaf,” Mrs. Price said, indicating the slices of it on the cake plate she had brought in before pouring them each a cup of tea. “There is no cake to compare with it for richness of flavor. That dog is gnawing on a soup bone and drinking his water in the kitchen. I do like a dog in the house, and a cat too, though I have never seen a dog quite like this one.”

  “And never will again, Mrs. Price, it is to be fervently hoped,” Ben said.

  Mrs. Price laughed. “Can I get you anything else before I go back to the kitchen?” she asked.

  “You have always lived here, have you, Mrs. Price?” Samantha asked. “The village is not far away?”

  “Just over those sand dunes,” Mrs. Price said, pointing west. “And behind here is Mr. Bevan’s land and the big house, though you can’t see it from here.”

  Mr. Bevan’s land.

  The big house.

  “He is your grandfather, I expect, Mrs. McKay, isn’t he?” Mrs. Price said. “I wasn’t sure who was coming here, though I was told it was the owner. But you look as if you must be his granddaughter. He married a Gypsy lady, you know. But of course you know. You have the look of one yourself, though it sits well on you, I must say. I’ll get back to the kitchen. I have some soup cooking and some bread rising.”

  “Is there an inn in the village, Mrs. Price?” Ben asked as she turned to leave.

  “Oh, yes, indeed, sir,” she told him. “It is a nice, tidy place too. Nothing fancy, but it serves up a good dinner, it do, and is always clean. The stables too. My brother owns it.”

  “Thank you,” Ben said. “I shall probably stay there for a few nights until I am sure Mrs. McKay is properly settled here. I promised her late husband, my friend, that I would, you know.”

  Samantha took a bite of the bara brith when she was alone with Ben. It really was delicious, but she did not have much of an appetite. She set her plate aside and looked at him. He was gazing steadily back at her.

  “He has land,” she said, “and a big house. He is still alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet he sent my mother here to live with his sister,” she said. “He let her go to London at the age of seventeen and did not go after her. He did not go to her wedding or to my christening or to her funeral. It could not have been poverty that caused any of those things, could it?”

  “Has imagining that he was poor comforted you over the years?” he asked.

  “I have not needed comforting,” she told him. “I have not thought of him or wondered about him.”

  But she knew as she stared at him and as he sat looking silently back that she must have done even if it had not been conscious. And she knew that the conviction that her grandfather had been poor was the only thing that had satisfied the hurt of being cut off from her mother’s family at the same time as she was being shunned by her father’s.

  “I suppose,” she said, “it was because she was the daughter of the Gypsy who abandoned him. My mother, I mean. And because I was her daughter. If he knew of me at all, that is.”

  “Are you going to be sorry you came?” Ben asked.

  She looked beyond him to the window, which faced south. Through it she could see the land beyond the garden fence dipping away to the west and then rising again over the dunes. Through the dip she could see the sea and a strip of golden sand—just a stone’s throw from her own house. The house itself was warm and cozy. A clock on the mantel ticked steadily. It would be lulling when she sat here alone. If she sat by the open window, she would be able to smell the salt of the sea. She would be able to hear it too.

  And it was all hers.

  It was her heritage.

  “No.” She opened her mouth to say more and shut it again.

  “But—?”

  “I am a bit afraid, perhaps,” she admitted. “Afraid of Pandora’s box.”

  He got slowly to his feet, abandoned one of his canes, and reached out his free hand. She set her own in it, and he led her to the window.

  “Look at the sea, Samantha,” he said. “I learned the trick when I was at Penderris. It was there long before we were thought of. It will be there long after we are forgotten, ebbing and flowing according to the law of the tides.”

  “Our little affairs are insignificant?”r />
  “Far from it,” he said. “Pain is not insignificant. Neither is bewilderment or fear. Or conditions like poverty or homelessness. But somewhere—somewhere—there is peace. It is not even far off. It is somewhere deep inside us, in fact, ever present, just waiting for us to look inward to find it.”

  She turned her head to look at his lean profile.

  “It is how you learned to master your pain,” she said with sudden intuition.

  “It was, at last, the only way of doing it,” he admitted. “But I sometimes forget. We all do. It is human nature to try to manage all our living for ourselves without drawing upon … But I am sorry. I did not intend to be so obscure. Just don’t be afraid, though. Whatever you discover here, the knowing cannot bring you any real harm even if it feels painful, for these things are whether you know them or not. And perhaps the knowing will bring you some understanding and even perhaps some peace.”

  He continued to look out through the window, and she continued to look at him.

  His pain, she thought, was fathoms deep. He had learned to master it. But he was still adrift in life. Unlike her, he had not found his home. But, also unlike her, he had learned not to fear.

  “You will stay for a while?” she asked him. Oh, she hoped she was not being selfish. But just for a few days …

  “I will stay,” he said, lowering his eyes to hers. “For a while.”

  15

  The village of Fisherman’s Bridge consisted of just one street worth speaking of. It followed the coastline for perhaps a mile. There were no high cliffs here, only a sea wall with golden sands stretching beyond it to the water’s edge.

  The inn was halfway along the street on the seaward side, the stables beside it rather than behind, where they would have obstructed the view from the dining room and taproom windows. There was a room available, and the landlord was delighted to let it to Major Sir Benedict Harper. It was quickly clear to Ben that the man knew exactly who he was. News traveled fast in small places. He knew too that Ben had come with Mrs. McKay, who was taking up residence in old Miss Bevan’s cottage beyond the sand dunes. He asked if it was true that she was the granddaughter of Mr. Bevan, and Ben confirmed that she was. There was no point in denying it. It was no secret, after all.