by Mary Balogh
He was a man used to command, Samantha realized, and used to doing it without bombast. Here he was in her sitting room, directing the conversation, taking from it the heat of emotion that had been here just a few minutes ago. And he was feeding cake to Tramp, who was quite willing to make it seem to Mrs. Price that they had all eaten her tea with hearty appetites.
Ben told him where and when he had been wounded and how, though he did not go into great detail. He told him about the years of his healing and convalescence at Penderris Hall, and about leaving there three years ago.
“You are never going to be able to walk without your canes, then?” her grandfather asked.
“No,” Ben said.
“And what do you do to keep busy? Do you have a home of your own?”
Ben told him about Kenelston, and, when asked, about his brother and wife and children and his own reluctance to remove them from his home and the charge his brother had of the running of his estate.
“You are in a bit of an awkward position, then,” her grandfather said.
“Yes,” Ben agreed. “But I will work something out, sir. I was not made for idleness.”
“You were a military officer by choice, then?” her grandfather asked. “Not just because your father had that career picked out for you as soon as you were born? I understand many noble families do that—one son to inherit, another to go into the church, another into the military.”
“It was my own choice,” Ben said. “I never wanted anything else.”
“You like an active life, then. You like being in charge of men. And of events.”
“I will never be an officer again,” Ben said tersely.
Looking at him, Samantha realized fully just how that fact hurt him. Perhaps it even explained why he had not taken a firmer stand with his younger brother over his home. Running Kenelston would not be a big enough challenge for him. Perhaps nothing would ever again.
“No,” her grandfather agreed, “I can see that, lad.”
He talked a bit about the coal mines—he owned two of them in the Rhondda Valley—and about the ironworks in the Swansea Valley, where he had just spent a week. Ben asked a number of questions, which he answered with enthusiasm. And then he rose to take his leave.
“How long do you plan to stay, Major?” he asked.
Ben looked at Samantha. “Another two or three days,” he said.
“Then maybe you will come with my granddaughter to dine with me at Cartref tomorrow,” her grandfather said. He turned to look at her, a smile on his face but some uncertainty in his eyes. “Will you come, Samantha? I have a cook as good as Mrs. Price. And I would like to hear your story and to tell you mine. After that you can live here in peace from me if you choose. Though I will hope you do not so choose. You are all I have, girl.”
She looked at him in some indignation until she remembered what he had said earlier. He had written to her before her marriage and she had sent messages. What had her father done? And after her marriage he had stopped writing for fear that she would be embarrassed by his humble origins and by the way his fortune had been made. She at least owed him one evening in which to plead his case.
But he had still abandoned his own infant daughter. There could be no excuse for that.
“Yes,” she said, “I will come.”
“And I would be delighted, sir,” Ben said.
The older man came toward Samantha, his hand extended again. But when she set her own in it, he smiled at her, that look of uncertainty still in his eyes.
“Allow me?” he said and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “She was very, very beautiful, you know. I had her for four years and have loved her forever.”
She did not follow him from the room.
He had been talking about her grandmother. Yet he had been married to someone else after her.
She and Ben sat in silence until they heard the carriage drive away. Tramp was at the window, his tail waving as if in farewell.
“He has loved her forever,” she said bitterly. “Yet he abandoned the only child he had with her.”
“Listen to his story tomorrow,” Ben said. “And then make a judgment if you must.”
“Oh, Ben,” she said, turning her eyes on him, “I wish I could wave a magic wand and make your legs all better so that you could resume your military career and be happy and fulfilled.”
He smiled. “We are all dealt a hand of cards,” he said. “Some of the originals get discarded along the way and new ones get picked up, sometimes not the ones we hoped for. That does not matter. It is how we play them that matters.”
“Even if it is a losing hand?” she asked him.
“Perhaps it never needs to be,” he said. “For life is not really a card game, is it?”
20
They went swimming after all. And they dined together after Mrs. Price and Samantha’s maid had left for the day. They spent a few hours in bed before Ben returned to the village inn. They made love twice, slowly the first time, with fierce passion the second.
But there had been something a little … desperate about both encounters, Ben thought as he lay alone in bed at the inn later. Nothing had been quite the same. Real life, in the form of Bevan, had intruded. A small part of his story had been told, and more would be told tomorrow—Samantha had consented to listen. Her life, he suspected, was going to be very different from anything she had dreamed of when circumstances had led her to remember the run-down little cottage in Wales she had inherited.
She had a grandfather, a rich and influential man who, it appeared, cared for her. Whether she could care for him depended a great deal upon the story he would tell tomorrow, but she craved the closeness of some family tie, whether she fully realized it or not. Ben suspected that she would come to care for Bevan. And she needed time and space—and respectability—in which to do that. And in which to recover fully from a seven-year marriage.
It was time to leave. Almost. He had promised two more days after today.
Though they had not spoken of it, they had both been conscious tonight of the fact that their affair, their early summer idyll, was almost at an end. Ben laced his fingers behind his head and gazed upward at the ceiling. Part of him was longing to be gone, to be done with the whole business. He wished he could just click his fingers and find himself on the road back to England. He hated goodbyes at the best of times. He dreaded this particular one.
Tomorrow was Sunday. The first day of a new week. Very nearly the end of his week. He had no idea where he would be next Saturday night, except that it would be somewhere far from here. And he had no idea what he would do. No, that was not strictly true. He was going to go to London, though not in order to participate in the social whirl of the Season or to allow Beatrice to matchmake for him. He was going to explore various ways of employing his time, perhaps in business, perhaps in diplomacy, perhaps in law. He would talk to Hugo, to Gramley, to various contacts he had in the Foreign Office. It did not matter that he did not need to work. He wanted to work. And he would work. His elder brother had done so, after all.
But an obstacle stood between him and the rest of his life. There was the end of an affair to live through and goodbyes to be said. It was Sunday tomorrow. He had promised to go to church with Samantha. They were to dine at Cartref later in the day. And then, after tomorrow …
Goodbye.
Surely the saddest, most painful word in the English language.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Ben walked with painstaking slowness and with the aid of two canes but with evident courage and determination, Samantha thought. Or perhaps it was his lean good looks, enhanced now by suntan, and the indefinable air of command that always somehow clung about him. Or perhaps it was simply that everyone loved a hint of romance, even a touch of scandal.
However it was, they were both greeted with smiles and friendly nods when they appeared at church together on Sunday morning. Samantha had been half expecting cold stares or frowns and turned shou
lders, for obviously there had been talk. Her grandfather had heard it.
And though Ben looked almost austere much of the time, he was quite capable of charm. He used it that morning on the people of Fisherman’s Bridge and its environs. And Samantha smiled about her too, as she had not been allowed to do after Matthew’s death, and shook the hands of those who extended their own to her. She was sure she would not remember the names of all who introduced themselves and said so.
“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. McKay,” the doctor told her. “We have only two new names to remember, yours and Major Harper’s, while you have a few dozen.”
Other people within earshot smiled their agreement.
Samantha would have felt warm about the heart as they left church if her grandfather had not been there too. He had shaken hands heartily with Ben and kissed her on the cheek—while half the village looked on with interest—but he had not pressed his company on them. He had sat in the front pew, which was padded, though he did not act the part of grand gentleman after the service was over. He shook hands and exchanged a few words with everyone in his path. He dug into his pockets to bring out sweets for the very little children, coins for the older ones.
Other people’s children, Samantha thought with unexpected bitterness. How she would have loved to have a grandpapa to beam at her thus when she was a child and give her sweets and coins. How her mother would surely have loved to have a papa to do those things.
It was a cloudy day, but it was neither cold nor windy.
“Do you want to swim this afternoon?” she asked Ben when they were walking slowly back to the inn.
She was feeling a bit depressed. She wished the sun was shining.
“What is it?” he asked without answering her question.
“It would be more appropriate to ask what it is not,” she said with a sigh—and then laughed. “The vicar was right about the singing, was he not?”
“Well,” he said, “I was disappointed not to see the roof lift off the building. I was watching for it.”
She laughed again.
“But, yes,” he said. “That church really does not need the choir, does it? The whole congregation is a choir.”
“With harmony.”
“In four parts,” he added. “Yes, let’s swim. There will be time.”
She swallowed and heard a gurgle in her throat. There will be time.
Time before they went to Cartref for dinner.
Time before the week of their affair was over.
They went swimming. They raced and floated and talked, and they played silly games, the main object of which seemed to be to swim underwater and come up unexpectedly to submerge each other. It was not a very effective game since there was never any real possibility of surprise, but it kept them helpless with laughter for a time.
Laughter was better than tears.
A week had seemed a long time when they began their affair. But this was the sixth day. The knowledge weighed upon Samantha as if it were a physical thing. And she could not keep at bay the thought that they would be going to Cartref later. She wished she had not been weak enough to agree. And yet … Her grandfather had written, and Papa had written back to him. She ought to listen to his story, Ben had said.
When they left the water, they went to their usual rock, where they were met by a tail-wagging, bottom-wiggling Tramp, who had been guarding their belongings against seagulls. But instead of spreading her towel on the sand as she usually did, Samantha wrapped it about her shoulders.
“I gave Mrs. Price and Gladys the day off,” she said. “It is Sunday. Besides, I will be out for dinner today.”
He looked back at her. He was leaning against the ledge to take the weight off his legs and rubbing his towel over his chest and up under one arm.
Oh, dear, she was going to miss this—the daily swims, the sight of him, the smell of him, the touch of him. She was going to miss him.
“Come back to the house?” she said.
They always went to the house after their swim and after lying for a while in the sun. But she knew from the look in his eyes that he understood what she meant.
“Yes,” he said.
And, shockingly, they did not stop to dress but walked back as they were, her towel about her shoulders, his draped about his neck. She insisted on carrying his boots.
She had forgotten why he must leave.
But of course he must. He could not stay here in the cottage with her, even if they married. He would have nothing to do here. He would be restless and unhappy in no time at all. And she could not go with him. It was much too soon for her to go with or marry anyone. And though he was not homeless, he had chosen to leave his brother and family in residence in his house but had established no other home for himself. He was probably the most restless, unsettled man she had ever known. It had not always been so, of course, but it was now, and she wondered unhappily if he would ever find himself and his place in life.
Yes, he must leave. Sometimes love was not enough—if it was love between them. It was probably not. She was lamentably naïve about affairs. Perhaps this was not love but mere physical attraction. That was undoubtedly all it was to him. Men did not fall in love as women did, did they?
They went upstairs as soon as they reached the cottage while Tramp padded off to the kitchen in search of his food bowl. Samantha led the way into her bedchamber. She drew the curtains across the window, though they were not heavy and did not block out much light. She peeled off her wet shift, toweled herself off, and rubbed at her hair, even though it was still in its tight knot at her neck.
Ben was sitting with his back to her on the side of the bed. He was pulling off his wet pantaloons, though he had drawn the bedcovers up over himself to mask her view.
“Don’t,” she said, kneeling up on the bed and moving across it toward him.
“Don’t?” He looked over his shoulder at her.
“Don’t hide yourself,” she said.
He held her eyes for a few moments, his own suddenly bleak, and then pushed back the covers, finished removing his clothes, and lay back on the bed, lifting his legs onto it one at a time. He looked at her again, his eyes hard now.
His legs were thinner than they must once have been. The left one was slightly twisted, the right more noticeably so. They were horribly scarred.
“Now tell me,” he said, “that you want me to make love to you.”
His voice matched his eyes.
She moved a little closer and set her hand on his upper right thigh. She stroked it lightly downward, feeling the deep gouges of his old wounds and the hard, raised ridges of the scars where the surgeons had tried to mend them.
And the foolish, brave man had insisted upon walking again.
She returned her hands to her own thighs as she kneeled naked beside him, and raised her eyes to his.
“Ben,” she said, “my dearest, I am so very sorry. I am sorry for the pain you suffered and still suffer. I am sorry that you cannot do what you most want to do in life. I am sorry you feel diminished as a man and inadequate as a lover, that you feel ugly and undesirable. What happened to you was ugly, but you are not. I think you are the toughest, most courageous man I have ever met. I know you are the loveliest. You must believe me. Oh, you must, Ben. And yes, I want you to make love to me.”
He gazed at her, his look still hard, though she had the curious feeling that he was fighting the welling of tears to his eyes.
“You are not repulsed?” His voice was still hard too, though there was a suggestion of a tremor in it.
“Idiot,” she said and smiled. “Do I look repulsed? You are Ben. My lover. For this week anyway. And I have had enormous pleasure with you. Give me more.”
She was remembering that she had called him my dearest, and she did not want him to believe she had fallen in love with him. And so she spoke of the pleasure she had had of him—which was no lie. He must be the most wonderful lover in the world.
He reached for her and she
moved to straddle him. His hands moved over her upper thighs, over her hips, in to her waist, up to her breasts, which he cupped lightly.
“You are perfection itself,” he said.
“I am not slender.”
“Thank God for that,” he said without contradicting her. “Do women really believe that men want them looking like sticks?”
“And I am no English rose,” she said. “I am downright swarthy.”
“My Gypsy Sammy.” He grinned at her. “My perfect Gypsy Sammy.”
She laughed, set her hands on either side of his head, and leaned over him to kiss him.
His legs were not quite helpless, as she had discovered on previous occasions. Before she knew it, she was on her back and he was on top of her, his legs between hers, and his lips were on hers, his tongue deep in her mouth, and his hands were fierce on her and then beneath her buttocks and holding her firm while he thrust deep into her.
She lifted her legs from the bed and wrapped them about his lean hips, and they loved each other long and hard until they were both panting and slick with sweat and they broke together into glory and collapsed into the world beyond.
They lay side by side afterward, sated and drowsy and dozing, their hands touching. Last night had felt a bit like goodbye, she thought. The melancholy of it had remained with her this morning. And now?
No, she did not want to think.
“I believe you will make a wonderful new life here,” he said at last. “You have neighbors who seem very ready to accept you and welcome you into their midst. You will make friends here. And you have family here. You have a grandfather who wishes to be a part of your life. Listen to him this evening, Samantha, and think well before you reject him for all the apparent wrongs of the past.”
“I have agreed to listen,” she reminded him.
“I think you did the right thing,” he said, “coming here. And I think it will be time for me to leave tomorrow, before speculation and a bit of gossip can blossom into scandal as they surely would if I stayed longer.”
