The Escape (Survivor's Club) (12 page)

Surely the way she had been living here with Matilda was not
normal
.

Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps her restlessness did denote a waywardness, a lack of respect for the man who had been her husband for seven years and for his grieving family.
Were
they grieving, though? Beneath the outer trappings of mourning, that was. None of them had come to Bramble Hall even once during the five years Matthew had been here, except Matilda at the end. None of them had come for the funeral. It was a long way, of course, from Kent to County Durham and would have caused an uncomfortable delay in the proceedings. Nevertheless, she had personally sent word to the earl and countess by special messenger, and they could have got word back to her just as quickly to delay the service. They had not done so.

Matthew had been the black sheep.

Oh, no, she decided, tugging firmly on the bell pull again, she was
not
going to feel guilty. And she was not going to try to persuade Matilda to change her mind. Good riddance to her. She was not going to send word to Robland Park to cancel tomorrow’s ride either.

She was
not
going to feel guilty.

But of course she did.

“Bring the tea tray in, please, Rose,” she said when the maid answered her summons.

She was not hungry either, though. Or thirsty.

“I
t is going to rain,” Beatrice observed at breakfast the next morning. She had looked up briefly from the letter she was reading.

Ben glanced toward the window and agreed that rain was a distinct possibility. It had been a pretty miserable spring so far, at least in this part of the country. It looked as if they were not going to be able to ride with Mrs. McKay after all. Perhaps it was just as well. He did not doubt the battle-ax would disapprove since she did not believe even a sedate visit to a neighbor was seemly. Though he did think it was high time Mrs. McKay thumbed her nose at the heavy restrictions that were being imposed upon her.

Perhaps the rain would hold off.

“How can boys spend such a vast deal of money when they are supposedly at school becoming the scholars of the future?” Beatrice asked, her eyes back on her letter. “And why do they apply for extra funds to their mothers rather than their fathers, who would demand an accounting of what had already been spent?”

“Precisely for that reason,” he said. “I daresay the price of sweetmeats has risen since I was at school.”

“Hmm,” she said. “But having rotten teeth pulled is just as painful.”

It started to rain in the late morning, a light drizzle at first, which might or might not turn into something more serious. By the time he had finished his luncheon,
however, Ben was forced to admit that the rain had taken the first option. It was going to be too wet to ride.

He was disappointed. He went upstairs to do his daily exercises. He would not neglect those, even though he had accepted the reality that he would never recover more than very minimal use of his legs. He would not risk losing what little he had accomplished, however. At least he could get about on his own legs. Besides, there were other parts of his body that needed to be kept in good working condition.

The vigorous activity did not rid him of his restlessness. He was in a crisis period of his life, he realized.

He found his sister at the escritoire in the drawing room, writing to both of her sons and her husband.

“I feel bad about not sending word over to Bramble Hall,” he told her.

“But Mrs. McKay will hardly expect us in this weather,” she said without looking up.

“No,” he agreed. “But I thought I would go over there anyway and make our excuses in person. Would you care to come with me?”

She brushed the feather of her quill pen over her chin and looked toward the window. “You must know how you tempt me, Ben,” she said. “Letter writing was never one of my favorite activities. I daresay that proves I am not a proper lady. I must finish these now that I have started them, however, or I will put off doing so indefinitely. You do not need my company, do you? The McKay ladies will be each other’s chaperon.”

“You make me sound like a big bad wolf,” he said.

“I daresay you appear that way to at least one of the ladies,” she said. “Oh, dear, I do not usually take virtual strangers in such dislike. Convey my respects to them, if you please, Ben.”

“I shall.” He bent over her to kiss her cheek. “Give
my love to my nephews and tell them not to get up to any more mischief than I did in my day.”

She snorted rather inelegantly. “I shall tell them
from their Uncle Benedict
,” she said, “to be good. And frugal.”

He laughed and made his slow way out of the room.

S
amantha had lain awake half the night. She rose early in order to have breakfast with Matilda and try to send her on her way with some civility. But her sister-in-law neither came down to eat nor had a tray sent up to her room. And when she did come downstairs, she was dressed for travel and the carriage was awaiting her outside the front doors, already laden with her baggage.

“It is going to rain,” Samantha said. “I wish you would reconsider, Matilda, and postpone your departure at least for a few days.”

Matilda was looking pale and unwell.

“I would not remain here another hour even if snow threatened,” she said, smoothing her already-smooth leather gloves over the backs of her hands. “Father will be displeased with you, Samantha, and Mother will be disappointed. But neither of them will be surprised, I am sad to say. Father warned Matthew how it would be if he insisted upon condescending so low as to marry a Gypsy.”

Fortunately, perhaps, she swept out through the doors and down the steps before Samantha could frame an answer. A footman handed her into the carriage. She did not look back or turn her head once she was seated. It was fortunate because Samantha’s temper had snapped, or would have done if she had been left with any audience. As it was, she stood in the doorway and watched
the carriage set off on its long journey, positively quivering with suppressed fury.

“I am
one quarter
Gypsy,” she muttered to the empty air. “Better than one hundred percent McKay.”

Her grandfather, a Welshman about whom she knew nothing except his nationality, had married a Gypsy, who had given birth to Samantha’s mother before returning to her own people, never to be heard of again. And that sad and obscure little incident of history had had its effect upon the granddaughter of that ill-fated union. So had the fact that their daughter, Samantha’s mother, had run away at the age of seventeen from Wales and the aunt who had raised her and had ended up in London, where she had been eking out a living as an actress when Samantha’s father discovered her and married her.

“I am one quarter Gypsy and one quarter Welsh and half obscure English gentility. I am the spawn of a Welsh actress, who, like all members of her profession and nationality, was only one short rung up the ladder of wickedness from the devil himself. Or so my father-in-law once described her.”

Heavy clouds loomed overhead. It would be a miracle if it did not rain by noon. Irony of ironies, she would probably not be going riding this afternoon after all. It was a horribly depressing thought that she might after all be compelled to spend the rest of the day respectably alone and indoors.

But the first thing she did when she went back inside was to stride into the sitting room and fling the heavy curtains back as far as they would go. She was going to change them. She was going to choose something lighter in both texture and color. She looked about the room with a frown.
Everything
needed changing. In five years she had not really noticed how gloomy a house this was.

Matilda was at this very moment carrying stories of
her wickedness to Leyland.
Wickedness!
For five years she had devoted every moment of her days to the care of the Earl of Heathmoor’s son. She had endured five years of disturbed nights without complaint. She had given every particle of her energy and patience. By the time Matthew died, it had seemed there was nothing of herself left. That, she supposed, was why she had felt so empty. And yet, in the eyes of the earl and his precious daughter, she was wicked and of no account because of her birth—and because after four months of real mourning she was ready to reach out to her neighbors for comfort and friendship and to partake of some quiet outdoor exercise.

She was angry. She was so furious, in fact, that she eyed those hideous ornaments on the mantel again and would surely have hurled them if doing so would have made her feel one iota better. They were not worth her ire—the McKays, that was. But no matter how firmly she told herself that, she felt hurt anyway.

Thank goodness she was so far away from them and they were sure to be as happy about that as she was.

And of course it rained.

At first it merely drizzled, leaving the cruel hope that it would not come to anything but would stop before afternoon. It rained more heavily instead and showed every sign of having settled in for the day.

Matilda would call it a just punishment.

After toying with her food at luncheon, Samantha went back into the sitting room and tried embroidering. But when her silk knotted and her fingers pulled at the knot without their customary patience and it snarled to such a degree that she was forced to cut the thread and undo the work she had already done, she set the cloth aside. She tried reading but realized after she had moved her eyes determinedly over two whole pages that she could not recall a single word. She even indulged in a
little weep while Tramp set his chin on her lap and gazed mournfully at her. But whoever had said that a good cry made one feel better obviously had never tried it himself. She ended up with a blocked nose, swollen eyes, a soggy handkerchief, and a more wretched misery than ever.

Self-pity was a dreadful affliction, she thought, irritated with herself as she kissed the top of the dog’s head. She would not put up with it one moment longer. She dried her eyes, blew her nose loudly, and glared at her embroidery before picking it up and tackling it once more with firmness of purpose.

Fifteen minutes later her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the knocker banging against the front door. She looked up in surprise, her needle suspended above the cloth. Matilda? No, of course not. Lady Gramley and Sir Benedict Harper? Hardly. They would not ride in this weather, and it was unnecessary for them to come to make their excuses. Samantha could not have failed to notice that it was raining. The vicar? He had not been back since Matilda had kept him talking on the step one afternoon until the cutting wind persuaded him to leave.

“Sir Benedict Harper, ma’am,” the butler announced as he opened the door. He sounded a little dubious, but the gentleman came past him before she could decide whether it was proper to admit him or not, or—more to the point—whether she cared that it was not.

“Sir Benedict,” she said, setting aside her work and rising to her feet. “You surely did not ride over?”

She was pathetically glad to see him.

“I came by carriage,” he said, acknowledging a tail-wagging Tramp with a quelling glance. “Good afternoon, Mrs. McKay. Your sister-in-law is still indisposed, is she? I am sorry. I would not have—”

“She has gone,” she told him. “She left this morning.
She would not remain here any longer to be contaminated by my wicked self.”

Oh, dear, she ought not to have phrased it quite that way. She ought to have invented an illness in the family that had taken Matilda away. It would not have been difficult. The countess was always ailing. It was too late now, though.

He stood still, gazing at her as the butler shut the door behind him. He glanced at the window, she noticed. It was fully visible for the first time in months.

“Gone?” he said. “Not to return, do you mean? This did not have anything to do with the fact that you were to ride with me, did it? Beatrice
did
agree to come with us, you know.”

It was too late for evasion.

“Nothing short of complete isolation behind the black veil of our mourning for the next eight months would have suited Matilda’s sense of propriety, Sir Benedict,” she told him. “I am not sure by what exact rule book she and my father-in-law live, but I have never heard of anyone else’s living by it, for which mercy I am truly thankful. The Earl of Heathmoor is a law unto himself and always has been. Perhaps the book is his own. Indeed, I believe it must be.”

Her voice sounded brittle, she realized, even on the brink of hysteria. She was terrified he was going to go away again, which would, of course, be the best thing he could do—for both of them. He would not appreciate having to listen to her pour out all her self-pitying woes. And she needed time to compose herself before conversing with anyone.

“I came to explain why we could not go out riding,” he said, “though I daresay the reason is self-evident. I came to see if Lady Matilda had recovered from her cold and to offer her my sister’s good wishes for her restored health. I will take my leave, ma’am, since you
have no companion or chaperon and we cannot withdraw to the garden as we did at Robland a couple of days ago.”