The Escape

by Mary Balogh

  But who the devil was Bevan? It appeared that he was some sort of landowner.

  His room was comfortable and afforded a view over the beach and sea. His dinner, prepared by the landlord’s wife, was tasty and plentiful, as Mrs. Price had predicted. He was the only occupant of the dining room, though if the sounds of boisterous voices and laughter were anything to judge by, the taproom next door was crowded. The landlord must be serving in there. It was his wife herself who brought Ben’s food and lingered to talk.

  “It is lovely to know there is someone in Miss Bevan’s cottage again,” she said. “I have hated to see it sitting empty when it is such a pretty place.”

  Ben could not resist doing some probing. “Mr. Bevan lives close to here, does he, Mrs. Davies?”

  “Up at the big house, yes,” she told him, waving a hand inland. “If you go along the street to the bridge, you will be able to see it up on the hill in among the trees. A lovely situation, it is. His father before him chose the perfect spot for it when he decided to build.”

  “There was no house on the land before that, then?” Ben asked.

  “Only a farmhouse,” she said. “But it wasn’t big or grand enough for Mr. Bevan. Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? He had that fortune he made from his coal mines, but it was here he chose to live and set up as a gentleman. He wanted a big house, and a lovely one he built. Our Marged works there as a chambermaid, and she gets a decent wage.”

  “This roast beef is almost tender enough to cut with a fork,” Ben remarked. “And the roast potatoes are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside—just as I like them.”

  “I do like to see a man tuck in to a hearty meal,” she said, clearly pleased.

  “The present Mr. Bevan still has the mines, does he?” Ben asked.

  “Those and the ironworks up the valley by Swansea there,” she told him. “That is where our oldest boy has gone to work. He earns good money. A number of lads from around here go there for work, and to the mines too. He is a good employer, Mr. Bevan is. Good to his workers. But he is getting on in years, and he has no sons to carry on after him, more’s the pity. Mrs. Bevan—the second one, that is—never was blessed with children before she died, poor lady.”

  Ben was feeling guilty. All this was none of his business—except that he probably would have been having this exact conversation even if he were a stranger here. He would have been asking questions and finding out information of interest for his book. Indeed, he probably would have been delving deeper.

  He wondered what Samantha was going to make of these facts when she knew them. What had she said to him earlier?

  I am a bit afraid, perhaps. Afraid of Pandora’s box.

  Some box!

  “Perhaps he will take comfort from his granddaughter,” Mrs. Davies added. “A widow, is she, sir?”

  “Her husband was my friend,” Ben explained. “I promised him before he died that I would see her safely settled here.”

  Someone called from the kitchen, and Mrs. Davies hurried away with an apology for leaving him.

  Was Bevan going to be pleased to find his granddaughter living on his doorstep? And did he know yet that she was here?

  One thing was sure, though, Ben thought as he cleaned off his plate. He was going to remain here until some of his questions had been answered. Samantha might yet need him.

  It felt like an enormous relief, that realization.

  Ben rode a horse from the inn stables to the cottage the next morning, Quinn behind him in order to help him dismount and then mount again for the return ride.

  The sun was sparkling off the sea by the time they had ridden over the dunes, and there was warmth in the air. The front upstairs windows of the cottage were open, and the curtains were flapping in the breeze. The front door stood open too, and Samantha—yes, it was she—was bent over one of the bare beds under the parlor window, pulling out weeds. She was wearing gloves and an apron and an old, floppy-brimmed straw bonnet he had not seen before. She had left off her blacks again. Her dress was a pale lemon muslin and looked as if it had probably seen better days.

  Ben drew his horse to a halt in order to enjoy a longer look at her. She looked relaxed and wholesome, as if she had always belonged here. The realization caused him a pang of something. Exclusion? Loneliness? For she would probably belong here long after he had gone.

  Something alerted her even though the horse’s hooves were making no great noise on the sandy grass. She straightened up and turned their way, a small trowel in her hand. She smiled. The dog, who had been stretched out in the sun at the foot of the porch steps, was on his feet too, wagging his tail and woofing.

  “I always fancied myself as a gardener,” she said as Ben rode up to the garden fence. “I used to dabble as a girl, but I never had a chance at Bramble Hall—Matthew always needed me in the sickroom. Now I do have a chance. Mr. Rhys said that my great-aunt kept a pretty flower garden here, did he not? Well, I am going to restore it, even if I have to start with some destruction. I hate killing weeds. They are plants, after all. They are living things. And who decides what are flowers and what are weeds, anyway? I love daisies and buttercups and dandelions, but everyone banishes them from their lawns as if they carry the plague.”

  “Perhaps because they would destroy those lawns if left to grow and spread unchecked,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

  She had been in the house alone since neither her maid nor Mrs. Price was to live in, at least for a while. He wondered if that fact had bothered her. He had worried about her a bit during the night.

  “I slept with the window open,” she told him. “I could hear the sea and smell it, but only for a very short while, I must admit. I fell deeply asleep and did not rouse until I could smell bacon cooking. Mrs. Price put me to shame and came early. Is the inn a decent place?”

  “Very comfortable,” he said. “You have a barn at the back big enough to stable the horses while I am here. I’ll go back there now with Quinn, if I may, and then come visiting.”

  The apron and the gloves and trowel had disappeared by the time he walked back to the house from the barn, but she was still outside and still wore the floppy-brimmed bonnet, which was surely as old as the hills and made her look absurdly pretty. The dog was beside her, wagging his tail in clear expectation of being entertained. He really did assume that the world revolved around his large, ungainly self.

  “You could never walk on the beach at Penderris Hall, I remember your saying,” she said, “because it was at the foot of a high cliff. Was there a way down?”

  “There were a few steep paths,” he said. “The others went down all the time, even Vincent, despite his blindness.”

  “There is nothing to stop you from walking on the beach here,” she said. “It is not far away and the slope down to it is not steep. The sand looks flat and smooth. Shall we go?”

  “Now?”

  It was human nature, he had realized long ago, always to want the one thing one could not have, even if one had been gifted with a superabundance of other blessings. He had always longed and longed to be able to go down onto the beach at Penderris. Hugo had once offered to carry him down, but he had declined so firmly that the offer had never been renewed. Not that Hugo could not have done it. He was as strong as any ox. But Ben would have been humiliated. He had consoled himself with the thought that there was nothing down there except sand to get in his hair and his mouth.

  “I was hoping you would come early,” she said, falling into step beside him, her hands clasped at her back, while Tramp went loping ahead of them. “I have been longing to go down there myself, but I wanted you with me the first time. I want to be able to remember that.”

  That? The fact that he had been with her this first time?

  “I have a confession to make,” she said. “I have never, ever been on a beach. Is that not strange when my mother grew up here?”

  He turned his head to look at her. Her exertions in the garden and the sea breeze ha
d whipped a healthy color into her cheeks. Her eyes were bright.

  “May I suggest,” he said, “that you remove your shoes and stockings before going out onto the sand? Otherwise you will have your shoes full of grit before you have walked any distance, and you will spend the rest of the day shaking sand out of everything and fighting blisters.”

  She laughed. “And you too?”

  “I am wearing boots,” he said. Besides, he was not about to expose any part of his legs in her presence.

  “It sounds like a very improper suggestion, sir,” she said, “but a very sensible one nonetheless.”

  She looked about and chose a flat-topped rock at the bottom of the slope on which to seat herself. She removed her shoes and stockings while he watched. Too late it occurred to him that it would have been far more gentlemanly to turn his back. She had slim legs, trim ankles, narrow, pretty feet—which he had seen before at the inn above the Wye Valley. She rolled her stockings neatly and placed them inside her shoes, and then she stood and set her shoes on the rock.

  “Oh,” she said, wriggling her toes in the mixture of grass and sand on which they stood, “that feels lovely. But it does feel sinful to be unshod outdoors.”

  They walked through the gap onto a wide, flat beach. Sand stretched to right and left until it met outcroppings of rock that enclosed the area into a private beach. Rocks rose behind them on either side of the gap to provide further privacy. The tide was low, though the breakers along the edge of the water indicated that it was coming in. The breeze was fresher here, though at the same time the sun was warmer. Seagulls cried overhead.

  Ben’s canes sank into the sand, but he found walking here somewhat easier than on hard ground. Samantha ran ahead of him a little way and then stopped and turned, her arms stretched out to the sides.

  “Freedom!” she cried, just like an exuberant child. “Oh, tell me this is no illusion, Ben.”

  The dog pranced about her, barking.

  “This is freedom,” Ben said obediently, grinning at her, and she tipped back her head to look at the sky and twirled about in three complete circles while he laughed. Her dress billowed to the sides, and her bonnet brim flopped about her face.

  Was this the austere, black-clad lady he had first met in County Durham?

  “There are such moments, are there not?” she said. “Oh, I had forgotten. It has been so long. But there are moments of pure, unalloyed happiness, and this is one of them. I am so glad I waited for you to come, for such moments need to be shared. Tell me you feel it too—the freedom, the happiness.” She stopped spinning to direct a look at him, and he read sudden uncertainty there.

  But he did feel it too. As if for this moment the world had stopped and they had stepped off and nothing would ever matter again except this stopping place.

  “I am glad you waited for me,” he said.

  Her arms fell to her sides and she gazed at him, her face alight.

  “Which way shall we go?” he asked. “East? West? South?”

  “Oh.” She spun about to consider each direction. “South. To the water’s edge. Will you be comfortable walking that far?”

  The dog had already made off in that direction.

  “I am on a beach at last,” he said. “Let me at least dip the tip of a cane in the water.”

  The tide was farther out than it had looked. But walking on the sand really was relatively easy, and he would ignore any discomfort anyway for the pleasure of doing what he was doing. This was food for the future. It was her first walk on a beach. It was his first in years. And they were doing it together.

  The dog was running along the edge of the water, kicking up a spray as he went.

  “Dare I?” Samantha said. It was not really a question. “I suppose the water is dreadfully cold.”

  She was gathering up the sides of her dress even as she spoke, and she stepped into the shallow water, which barely wet the sand, and then over the nearest ripple of the incoming tide until she was ankle deep.

  “Oh, it is cold,” she said on a deep inward gasp. “And my feet are sinking into the sand. Oh, this is lovely, Ben.” She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes sparkling. “Come in too.”

  He really ought not. If her feet were sinking into the sand, what would his canes do? And his boots would be white with brine after they dried, and Quinn would look reproachful and long-suffering. What if he lost his balance and fell in? How the devil would he get up again?

  She had stopped moving.

  “It feels cold only for the first few moments,” she said. “It probably would not feel cold at all through your boots.”

  “That was all I needed to hear,” he said and stepped into the water while she shrieked with laughter.

  He could feel the coldness even through his boots and stockings. And his canes were indeed sinking rather alarmingly into the wet sand. But though he was only a few feet from dry land, it felt as if he had stepped into a different element. The sun beat down hot upon them. The sea sparkled about them.

  He felt a sudden longing for George or Hugo or one of the others to see him now. He laughed.

  She stepped closer to him, gathering her skirts into one hand as she came, and she took one of his canes in the hand that held the fabric and stepped closer still.

  “Put your arm about my shoulders,” she told him.

  “My weight would be too much for you,” he protested.

  “Do it, anyway,” she said. “I promise not to collapse.”

  He felt embarrassed, even a little humiliated, but he had no choice short of snatching back his cane and perhaps offending her—or throwing himself off balance. He made it a practice almost never to lean upon anyone. He set an arm about her slim shoulders, and she fit herself against his side and wrapped her free arm about his waist.

  Oh, Lord.

  “We are not a cripple and a poor, long-suffering nurse,” she said, laughing up at him, her flushed, bright-eyed face alarmingly close, “but a man and a woman who have found a perfectly reasonable excuse for being close to each other.”

  He thought he was probably flushing too.

  “Do we need an excuse?”

  “It would seem so,” she said, beginning to walk along the edge of the water with him. “We have been very careful to leave a decent sliver of air between us since that night we shared a room. You are lean, Ben, but you are certainly not frail, are you? Quite the contrary, in fact.”

  He was not going to respond with any description of her body.

  “Am I leaning too heavily on you?” he asked. He was trying to put most of his weight on his cane, but that made it sink deeper.

  He could feel the generous curves of her body all down his side. One firm, heavy breast was pressed against his coat. She was tall, though not quite as tall as he. He was aware of the faint scent of gardenia over the saltiness of the sea air. Her body felt warm through the flimsy barrier of her dress and stays.

  And so was his body, by Jove. Warm, that was. Warmer than warm.

  “You are avoiding the issue,” she said.

  “Which is?”

  “The fact that we have needed an excuse to touch,” she said.

  “I promised,” he reminded her, “that you would be safe from me.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, turning her head to look out to sea, “safety seems a dull, unadventurous thing.”

  And by God, she was right about that.

  “After you have left here,” she asked him, “will you regret that you were the perfect gentleman the whole time we were together? Well, almost the whole time.”

  “How could I regret behaving like a gentleman?” he asked her. “That is what I am.”

  Would she regret it?

  They had stopped walking. He was feeling ruffled, even a bit annoyed. Being a gentleman was important to him. And yet … He would have let go of her, put some distance between them, but she still held his cane.

  “It is just that freedom is a precious gift,” she said. “One ought t
o be able to use it to do whatever one most wants to do, provided one is hurting no one else in the process. We are almost never allowed to act freely, though, are we? There is always someone or some rule or convention that says, no, it is not at all the thing. And so we toe the line of propriety and deny the freedom that has been offered us and lose our chance for some happiness.”

  What she was suggesting, he thought, was that they become lovers before he left. And it all made perfect sense when they were out here on the beach together like this. Why should they not do something … free? Something they both wanted to do. Except that this was not the world—this beach. And they could not live out here forever.

  He would regret it. For he would surely be an inadequate lover and would disappoint both her and himself. He would regret waking the sleeping devil of his sexuality—except that it had already awakened, had it not? He would regret the end of the affair. He would regret having to leave her, for he could not stay and she would not want him to. And she would regret it if they had an affair, even if she was not disappointed in his performance. For no one had ever been constant in her life. Even her mother had died young. She needed more than a temporary lover.

  There would be pain.

  There was always pain.

  She was gazing into his eyes, and he was the one now gazing out to sea.

  “You are tired from all the walking,” she said. “I have had my eye on that large rock over there since we started along the water’s edge. Let us go and sit on it for a while.”

  He did not argue. He really did need to take the weight off his legs. A lower ledge of the rock she had indicated was flat enough to sit on, and it was just wide enough and at just the right height for the two of them. The dog dashed off to chase some gulls that had landed at the water’s edge farther along the sands.