The Escape

by Mary Balogh

  “I have delayed your travels for long enough,” she said.

  He did not answer her, and they lay side by side, no longer either drowsy or dozing. Samantha fought tears. She fought the urge to beg him to stay just one more day or perhaps two. For he was right. It was time for him to leave. It was time for him to go in search of his life and for her to settle to her new one.

  It was time to let him go.

  After a while he turned and sat up, moving his legs over the side of the bed.

  “I had better return to the inn,” he said. “I will bring the carriage later to take you to Cartref?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  She felt about as bleak as it was possible to feel.

  Mr. Bevan had the good manners and easy address of a true gentleman, Ben thought, even if he was not one by birth. And he dressed with fashionable elegance yet without any ostentation or grand display of wealth. The wealth was clearly there, however.

  He took them on a tour of the house. Everything was of the finest but with not the merest suggestion of vulgarity. The room in which they lingered longest was the long gallery at the back of the house. It was filled with paintings and a few sculptures by the great masters, a few of them acquired by his father, he told them, but the majority by him. And he always purchased what he most liked, he explained to them, rather than what was most valuable. Though Ben guessed there was a fortune in that room alone. There were paintings in every other room too, some of them by acclaimed masters, some by unknown artists Mr. Bevan had admired and wanted to encourage.

  And wherever he took them, there were views from the windows, over the rolling Welsh countryside, over the beach and the sea.

  He plied them with sherry and conversation in the drawing room and then with good wine and food and conversation in the dining room. He told them about his travels and his reading. And he asked them about their own lives with skilled questions that would draw more than monosyllabic answers from them and yet would not seem intrusive. When Ben asked him about his businesses, he answered thoroughly but without monopolizing all their time and perhaps boring Samantha.

  He appeared totally at his ease and in perfect good humor with his guests.

  Samantha, Ben guessed, was troubled even as she admired the house and ate and drank and listened to her grandfather’s conversation and Ben’s and made her own contributions. She was looking extremely beautiful in a turquoise blue high-waisted dress he had not seen before. Her hair was elaborately styled considering the fact that she had not had the services of her maid today. It shone in the candlelight.

  While they drank tea in the drawing room after dinner, Mr. Bevan told them about the male voice choir made up of eighty or so of his miners.

  “There is no finer choir in all of Wales,” he told them, “and that is saying something. I am not entirely impartial, of course, but they did win at the eisteddfod in Newport both last year and the year before. I always say that coal dust must do marvels for the vocal cords.”

  “Iced—?” Ben asked

  “Eye-steth-fod,” Mr. Bevan said, pronouncing the word clearly. “A Welsh arts festival.”

  He turned his eyes on Samantha, who was swirling the dregs of her tea in her cup, and watched her in silence for a few moments.

  “Your grandmother was dancing when I first set eyes on her,” he said. “The Gypsies had camped down by the sea, as they sometimes did, and I went to have a look with some of the other lads from around here. I was twenty-one at the time. Her feet were bare, and her bright, full skirts were swirling about her ankles and her dark hair was tumbled about her face and shoulders, and I had not seen anything as lovely or as full of life and grace in all my days. I didn’t know anything at that time about not putting birds or butterflies or wild things in cages. I wooed her and I married her, all within six weeks, against everyone’s advice, her own people’s included. We were going to live happily ever after. She was sixteen.”

  Samantha’s cup, held between both her hands, was still. Her eyes had lifted briefly to her grandfather’s and then returned to her cup.

  “We were happy for a year or so,” Bevan said, “though we had to keep traveling about. She did not like to be in one place for very long. And then your mother was born, and only a few months after that my father died—my mother was already deceased. I had to take over the running of the businesses. I had been working in them, though not as much as I had before I met Esme. The baby needed a stable home. Esme did not like it, but she understood and she tried to settle. She tried hard. We went on for a few years, but then the Gypsies came back—her own group. She spent some time with them while they were here, and she went to say goodbye to them on the last night. She never came home. I thought she had stayed the night, but when I went looking the next morning, they were gone and she with them. I didn’t go after them. What was the point? She had been withering away at Cartref here. She died four years after that, but I did not know it for another six.”

  Samantha leaned forward and set her cup down carefully on its saucer before sitting back in her chair. Ben wished he were sitting beside her.

  “I took to drink,” Bevan said. “I made sure your mother had a good nurse and everything she needed, and I made sure that I had a good manager who would look after running the mines, and I dedicated my life to forgetting and dulling the pain—at the bottom of a glass of liquor. A year or so after Esme left, I was in the library one night drinking and feeling sorry for myself as usual. Except it was worse than usual. It was the anniversary of our wedding. After a while I hurled my glass against the wall beside a bookcase, and the glass shattered. And someone started to cry. Gwynneth had come downstairs without her nurse’s seeing her. And she had curled up under a table just below where the glass hit.”

  Samantha spread both hands over her knees and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers.

  “The next morning,” Mr. Bevan said, “I took her to Dilys at the cottage where you now live, Samantha. We had never seen eye to eye. She had thought me wild and irresponsible as a boy. She had thought my marriage insanity. She was furious when she discovered that our father had left almost everything to me when she was the one with the business head. But I took your mother to her and asked her to take the child until I got myself properly sober. She told me I never would, that I would always be a worthless drunkard. She said she would take Gwynneth but only on condition that she had the sole raising of her, that I would give her up and never see her again except by chance.”

  Samantha was looking at him now. Ben was looking at her.

  “I drank for six more months,” Bevan said, “and then I stopped. I did not drink at all for years. Now I do occasionally, but only in a social way, never when I am alone. I applied myself to my work. I challenged myself by interesting myself in industries other than just coal. Hence the ironworks. And in the meanwhile, every penny of the money I ever sent to help Dilys with the upbringing of your mother and every gift I sent for birthdays or Christmas was returned. Every time I glimpsed Gwynneth, she was whisked away by my sister when she was younger—she turned away of her own accord when she was older. I wanted her back. I wanted to get her a proper governess. I wanted to get her ready for the life she could have lived as my daughter. I wanted to … Well, I wanted to be her father, but I had forfeited my chance with her. When I heard she was not allowed to go on picnics with the local lads and lasses, though, and was not allowed to go to the village assemblies even though she was seventeen and ready for a bit of life of her own, I went and had it out with Dilys, and we both ended up shouting like fools and behaving like two snarling dogs fighting over the same bone. And Gwynneth was in the house and heard it all. The day after, she was gone. Just like Esme all over again.”

  “And as before, you did not go after her,” Samantha said.

  “I did,” he said. “She would not have anything to do with me. She would not let me pay for her lodgings. She would not let me give her some spending money. She would
not let me help her find decent employment. And she would not come home with me. She got a job acting. I was … proud of her spirit of independence at the same time as I was terrified for her. And then she met your father, who was close to me in age and was everything I was not. I think maybe she was happy with him. Was she?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It was the old story after her marriage,” he said. “She returned my letters and my wedding gift and my christening gift to you and all the other gifts I sent. Though after she … died, the letters and gifts I sent you stopped coming back, and sometimes your father would write to tell me about you and to include little messages of thanks from you for the gifts. I often thought of suggesting that I come to see you, but I could never quite get up the courage. You were the daughter of a gentleman, and his letters were always polite, but not exactly warm. I thought maybe the two of you would say no. And then all hope was gone. You married the son of an earl, and it seemed to me the last thing you would want was a visit from your maternal grandfather. I even stopped sending gifts after the wedding one.”

  Samantha was pleating her dress again.

  “I daresay your father felt sorry for me,” Bevan said. “But I suppose he felt even more loyalty to his wife, your mother, and agreed with her that it was best you not know me. You did not read any of those letters or see any of those gifts, did you?”

  “No.” Her voice was a mere whisper of sound.

  “It was not wicked of either your father or your mother,” he said. “I had done nothing to earn her love, and I did not deserve yours. I ruined my own life and your mother’s over grief for what I could not have. And all the time I had a treasure in my grasp that I did not recognize until it was too late.”

  “You married again,” she said.

  “A year after your mother went to London.” He sighed. “I wanted a son. I wanted someone to hand everything on to. Perhaps I wanted some redemption too. I wanted to try again, to see if I could do better than I had done the first time. Isabelle was a good woman. She was better than I deserved, and we were contented together despite the age difference. But we never did have children. We were denied that blessing. She died two years ago.”

  Samantha said nothing. But she turned her head to look at Ben, her eyes wide and blank.

  “I am sorry,” Bevan said. “The most useless three words in the English language when they are used together. I wish I could go back. I have wished it year after year since the night I smashed that glass above your mother’s head. But that is something that is not granted to any of us. None of us can go back. I thought at least you must know about me, though. I thought your mother would have told you.”

  “No,” she said. “But she ought to have done. Ben said to me yesterday that we all have a story to tell. My mother had a story, but she never told it. Perhaps she meant to. Perhaps she thought I was too young. I was only twelve when she died. My father did not tell it either, but I suppose he felt it was not his story to tell. Except that I ought to have known.”

  “You know now,” he said, and he got to his feet to pull on the bell rope, “and it is not a pretty story. I cannot think of anything to add that might make you think it worth your while to accept me as your grandfather, Samantha. I wish I could, but I can’t. I obviously did terrible damage to another human being, my own daughter, and I have no excuse for that. And no right to lay any claim to the affection of her daughter.”

  “I have no one,” Samantha said.

  “Your brother?”

  “Half brother,” she said. “No.”

  “Your uncles and aunts and cousins on your father’s side? Your father- and mother-in-law and your sister- and brothers-in-law?”

  “No.”

  He turned his eyes on Ben and gazed steadily at him.

  “And when are you leaving, Major Harper?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Ben said.

  They looked at each other for a few moments longer, taking each other’s measure, until a servant answered the summons of the bell.

  “You can remove the tray,” Bevan told him, “and have Major Harper’s carriage brought around to the door.”

  He waited until the servant had withdrawn and then looked at Samantha’s bowed head.

  “You can have me,” he told her. “If you want me.”

  She looked up at him. “I want to live in peace at my cottage,” she told him. “I want to be alone. But perhaps one day I will tell you my story. Perhaps I will tell you everything that led up to my coming here. But not yet.”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment of her words.

  “It is time for you to go home, Samantha,” he said. “The major will see you safely there.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. It has been a pleasant evening.”

  “It has, indeed.”

  He shook Ben by the hand, kissed Samantha’s cheek, and was again the smiling, genial host.

  21

  They traveled back to the cottage in silence. And when the carriage stopped and the coachman opened the door and set down the steps before withdrawing, neither of them spoke for a while. He took her gloved hand in his.

  “Samantha,” he said at last, “would you like me to stay for a few more days? Until you have had time to digest what you have heard and made some decision?”

  Ah, she was so tempted to say yes. To cling to him. To use him as an emotional prop. And to postpone the inevitable goodbye just a little longer.

  “No,” she said. “I need to be alone for a while. Everything I have known about my life has been turned upside down. I need to do some thinking.”

  Alone. She was going to be alone. Without him. Forever.

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers.

  “Shall we say goodbye now?” he asked her. “Or shall I call here before I leave in the morning?”

  She almost panicked then. She almost threw herself against him. She almost begged him not to go, never to go.

  And yet she had spoken truth. She needed to be alone.

  Would she be able to deal with goodbye better in the morning? No, she decided. There was never a good time for goodbye. And it would be unfair to him. He would want to be on his way.

  “Now,” she said. And she turned on her seat and took both his hands in hers and raised them to her cheeks. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “I do thank you, Ben, for all you have done for me. And I thank you for the past week. It has been a great pleasure. Has it not?” She turned her face up to his and tried to smile.

  “It has,” he agreed. “Samantha—”

  “If your travels ever bring you back to Wales,” she said hastily, “perhaps … No, that would not be a good idea, would it? I will remember with pleasure. I hope you will too.”

  “I will,” he said, and he leaned toward her and set his lips to hers in a long, lingering kiss while they clung to each other’s hands.

  “Goodbye, Samantha,” he said. “I will wait here until you are safely indoors with a lamp lit.”

  He rapped on the front panel and the coachman appeared in the doorway to hand her down.

  “Goodbye.” She drew her hands from his. “Goodbye, Ben.”

  And then she was stepping down and dashing up the garden path and fumbling with the key in the lock and almost being bowled over by an exuberant Tramp. She lit a lamp in the sitting room with a trembling hand and darted to the window, desperate for one last sight of him. But the carriage door had been closed, and the coachman was up on the box, and the carriage was moving away. She could not see through the darkness into the interior.

  “Oh, Tramp.” She collapsed onto the nearest chair, set her arms about him, and wept against his neck. Tramp whined and tried to lick her face.

  Ben was down early to breakfast the following morning. Everything was packed, and he was eager to be on his way as soon as possible. He did not care what direction he took, though he had told his coachman last night that they would return the way they had come. All he really
wanted was to put as much distance between him and Fisherman’s Bridge as he possibly could.

  He was down early, but someone was earlier. Mr. Bevan rose from his place at a table by the window when Ben appeared, an open watchcase in his hand.

  “Is this the time,” he asked, “that the idle rich normally break their fast?”

  It was shortly after seven o’clock.

  “I believe it is more the time they are going to bed,” Ben said, making his way toward the table and propping his canes against a chair before shaking the man by the hand.

  “I have no right in the world to ask this,” Bevan said when they were both seated, “and you have every right in the world to refuse an answer, but here goes anyway. What are your feelings for my granddaughter, Major?”

  Ben paused in the act of spreading his napkin across his lap. Here was a man who did not believe in wasting precious time on small talk, it seemed.

  “Mrs. McKay,” Ben said, choosing his words with care, “lost her husband less than six months ago, sir. She needs time to recover from that loss. She needs time to adjust her life to her new home and circumstances. As she told you last evening, she needs to be alone. Not necessarily without all company, but without emotional entanglements. It would be presumptuous for me to have feelings for her stronger than respect. Besides, at present I have nothing of value to offer her except a baronet’s title and fortune.”

  “At present,” Bevan said. “And in the future?”

  “I was wounded six years ago,” Ben told him. “I have been well enough for the past three years to get my life in order and set on a new course, since the old one will serve no longer. But I have procrastinated. Until now. I am going to go to London. I am going to find something challenging to do.”

  “Other than carousing all night?” Bevan smiled.

  “That sort of life has never appealed to me,” Ben told him. “I must be doing something useful and meaningful.”