The Escape (Survivor's Club) (41 page)

“Besides,” she said, turning her head so that he could see that her eyes were twinkling, “I had a very civil letter from Matilda today.”

“You did?” His eyebrows rose in some surprise.

“Indeed,” she said. “She congratulated me upon having snared a very eligible husband for the second time despite my origins.”

“Your shady Gypsy past?”

“That,” she said, “and the fact that my grandfather is
in coal
. It does sound very murky and dusty, does it not? She hopes—no, she
fervently
hopes and prays—that I have learned my lesson and will not lead you a merry dance as I did her poor dear Matthew.”

“No!”

“All very civil,” she said. “Though she did sink just a little into spite at the end, Ben. She took leave to give it as her opinion that it would be no less than you deserve if I
do
lead you a dance, since you appear to be the type of man who believes it quite unexceptionable to ride out with a widow when she is in deepest mourning.”

“We deserve each other, then?” he asked her.

“It would appear so,” she said with a sigh. “Oh, she is
not
, by the way, coming to our wedding. Neither are the Earl and Countess of Heathmoor. I was rather surprised by that announcement, since my letter to them was merely to explain that I will be remarrying and was in no way an invitation.”

The next day Samantha was surprised by another letter. The Reverend John Saul, her half brother, was pleased to hear that she had settled well in Wales and was happy there with her mother’s people. He felt it incumbent upon himself to honor his late father by attending the wedding of the daughter of whom his parent had been so obviously fond. His dear wife would not be accompanying him.

Samantha, alone in her book room when she read the letter, unabashedly wept over it, its stiff pomposity notwithstanding.

“I
will
have an outside guest of my own,” she said, thrusting the letter into Ben’s hand when he drove over from Cartref with her grandfather during the afternoon.

And she turned and wept all over again in her grandfather’s arms while he patted her back and read the letter over Ben’s shoulder.

The preparations for the wedding were all made. All that remained was to await the arrival of those who would be traveling from England during one of the potentially most inclement months of the year. They would all acquire cricked necks, Ben remarked on one occasion, if they gazed skyward much more than they did. It was a cold month, and the wind, which blew almost constantly, was what Mrs. Price called a lazy wind.

“It can’t be bothered to swerve around you,” she explained. “It just blows straight through.”

But the sky remained blue much of the time, and when there were clouds, they were high and unthreatening. There was no snow. There rarely was in this part of Wales, but the key word was
rarely
. They would all have relaxed a bit more, perhaps, if it had been
never
. Snow was not the only threat, of course. Rain could be just as bad or worse. It did not take a great deal of it to turn the roads to mud and sometimes to quagmires. And rain
was
common in this part of the world, especially at this time of year.

But the weather held.

And the guests began to arrive.

A
ll the guests from England stayed at Cartref at Mr. Bevan’s insistence, though Ben removed to the inn a little earlier than planned to make room for them all. Calvin, who was to be his best man, came there the evening before the wedding to stay with him.

All the Survivors came with him just for the evening, to the great pleasure of the landlord and the equal consternation of his wife, who had discovered not only that the lady and all the gentlemen were titled, which was bad enough, but that one of them was actually a
duke
.

“And there is only
that
much,” she whispered to her husband even though they were in the kitchen and two closed doors stood between them and the gathered company, “between a duke and a king.” She held her forefinger a quarter of an inch from her thumb.

George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, meanwhile was asking Ben about his wheeled chair. “It seems a sensible notion,” he said, “but you have always been quite adamantly set against using one.”

“I have nothing more to prove,” Ben told him. “I can and do walk. I have danced. Now I can be sensible and move around as fast as any other man.”

“One is t-tempted to challenge you to a race along the village street, Ben,” Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, said. “But one would not wish to make a s-spectacle of oneself.”

“Or lose ignominiously to a man in a wheeled chair, Flave,” Ralph, Earl of Berwick, added.

“You will be able to race against Vince in March, Ben,” Hugo, Lord Trentham, said. “He is having a race track built about the outer boundary of his park. Had you heard? That will be a sight to behold.”

“A blind man and a c-cripple,” Flavian said. “Heaven defend us.”

“Call me that again, Flave,” Ben said cheerfully, “and you may find yourself being beaten about the head with a cane.”

“It might cure his stammer,” George said.

“Ben.” Imogen, Lady Barclay, was looking intently at him. “You have
danced
?”

“Waltzed, actually.” He grinned at her. “There is an
alcove at one end of the ballroom at Cartref. I waltzed all about it with Samantha during a ball just before Christmas.”

“Was that wise, Ben?” Calvin asked him. “I have always thought you may do more harm than good to your legs by insisting upon walking on them. But
dancing
? I worry about you, you know. All the time.”

But the Survivors were all beaming at him.

“Bravo,” the duke said quietly.

“I s-suppose,” Flavian said, “this alcove is the size of an egg cup, Ben?”

“Probably a thimble, Flave,” Ralph said, grinning and winking at Ben.

“It does not matter if it is the size of a pin, you fatheads,” Hugo said, holding out one huge hand and giving Ben’s a hearty shake. “Good for you, lad. My Gwendoline dances too, and you have all seen how she limps when she walks.”

Imogen bent to kiss Ben’s cheek. “It was your dream to dance one day,” she said. “Everyone ought to have a dearest dream come true.”

Ben caught her hand in his. “And what is yours, Imogen?” he asked her.

He immediately regretted the question, for everyone fell silent to listen to her reply, and she gazed back at him, her eyes large and luminous. Something flickered in them and then died.

“Oh,” she said in her soft, cool voice, “to meet someone tall, dark, and handsome and be swept off my feet, of course.”

He squeezed her hand and held it to his lips for a moment. He wanted to apologize, but that would be to admit that he knew she had not answered his question.

“I am sorry, Imogen,” Hugo said, “but I am already taken.”

“She said
handsome
, Hugo,” Ralph said.

They all laughed and the moment passed.

“There must have been something in the air in Cornwall last spring,” George said as the landlord came into the room with a loaded tray.
“Three
of our number married within the year. And my nephew too.”

“The heir?” Ben asked.

“Julian, yes,” George said. “And all love matches, it seems to me. One has only to look at you and Mrs. McKay, Ben, to smell May blossoms. You have done well. You will have a wife for whom you obviously care deeply and a way of life that seems to have been custom made for you, all in one neat package.”

“And all in the d-darkest bowels of the wild country,” Flavian said. “I expected savages to j-jump out at me from behind every r-rock as I traveled here, Ben, intent upon slitting my throat.”

“It is more likely,” Ben said, “that they would want to kidnap you so that they could sing to you, Flave. You should hear the miners’ choir where I work. It would be enough to make you weep sentimental tears.”

“S-spare me,” Flavian said faintly.

Hugo had a tankard of ale in his hand. “We must not keep Ben from his beauty sleep tonight of all nights,” he said, “and we will not try to get him foxed. But we will drink a toast to you, Benedict. That all your life your heart will dance as your person did in that alcove before Christmas.”

“Oh, the devil!” Flavian said, getting to his feet and holding aloft his glass of port. “Marriage is t-turning Hugo embarrassingly poetic. But he has the r-rights of it, Benedict, my boy. M-may you be happy. It is all we have ever w-wanted for one another.”

“To you, Benedict,” Imogen said, lifting her glass of wine. “And to Samantha.”

“To your happiness, Ben,” Ralph said, “and Mrs. McKay’s.”

“To you, brother,” Calvin said. “I always admired you greatly. You knew what you wanted and you went after it and did superbly well. It almost killed me when you were so badly hurt so soon after Wallace was killed. But then I learned to admire you more than I ever had. And I still do even if you
do
cause me worry when you won’t come home and let me look after you and when you insist upon walking and even
dancing
, for the love of God. To you, brother—all the happiness in the world and to Samantha too.”

Ben, smiling at him, felt rather as if he were seeing his brother for the first time.

“And may you always ride your wheels as fast as we can run, Benedict,” the duke said.

They all drank, and Ben laughed.

“If you do not want to see me turn into a watering pot,” he said, “and if you do not want to find the doors of Cartref locked against you, you had better leave. I will see you all in the morning.”

“One word of advice, Ben,” Hugo said as they were taking their leave. “Get your valet to tie your neckcloth looser than usual tomorrow. There is something about being at the front of the church when you are a bridegroom waiting for your bride to arrive that makes the neck expand.”

“And he is not lying, Ben,” Calvin told him.

S
amantha’s half brother arrived the day before her wedding. She had already moved into the big house and greeted him there on his arrival. They shook hands and conversed politely. She asked about her sister-in-law and nephews and nieces. He asked her about her home and her connections in the village. He shook hands with Ben and conversed politely with him.

But it was all done in company with others. Samantha
was touched that he had come so far and at the worst time of the year for her sake. But he seemed more like a stranger she had once known than someone who was close to her. She hoped he would not regret coming. But she supposed he would not. He had come out of a sense of duty to their father, not out of any fondness for her.

Ah, life was difficult sometimes.

It was not until the following morning that she finally saw him alone.

She was dressed for her wedding. She had chosen a simply styled dress of warm white velvet with a gold chain and locket about her neck and gold earrings. A small gold-colored bonnet hugged her head. Her heavy cloak, which was flung over the back of a chair in her dressing room, was also of white velvet with gold frogged fasteners at the front and fur lining.

She had considered various bright colors but had rejected them all in favor of white. She wanted simplicity. She wanted just herself on display to her bridegroom, not the brightness of her clothes.

“Ooh,” Gladys said when she had fitted the bonnet carefully over Samantha’s curls and tied the ribbons in a bow to one side of her chin, “you were right and I was wrong, Mrs. McKay. White is your color.
Every
color is your color. But you look perfect today. The major is going to eat you up, he is, when he sees you. Not that he’d better do it, mind, not when—”

But her monologue was interrupted by a knock on the dressing room door and she went to see who was there.

“Thank you, Gladys,” Samantha said. “That will be all.”

She smiled at John. She had thought everyone had left for the church by now.

“You look very fine,” he said, his eyes moving over her. He was frowning. “I have always thought of you, you know, as your mother’s daughter. I would never
think of you as my father’s too. But you were—you are. You look like your mother, of course—well, a bit like her, anyway. I was always thankful about that, for I am like my father. I can see it when I look in a glass. But you do too. Not in obvious ways. Just sometimes in a turn of the head or a fleeting expression—not anything I can put my finger on exactly. But you are his daughter. Not that I ever doubted it. I just ignored it.”

“John.” She stepped forward and extended her right hand. “You have come all this way and I am touched. I know it was hard for you when our father married my mother.”

“You are my sister,” he said. “I had to come and tell you that, Samantha. Not that you did not know it, but … Well, everyone needs family, and I know you have always been denied half of yours and didn’t know about the other half until recently. I am glad you have discovered that half. Bevan seems a decent sort as well as being as rich as Croesus.”

“John,” she said hesitantly, hoping she was not about to introduce a discordant note into their meeting, “why did you keep his letters from me and all of Mr. Rhys’s except the one you sent soon after Papa’s death? Why did I not know about the money my aunt left me or all the gifts my grandfather sent?”

He frowned. “I knew nothing of any gifts or money,” he told her. “I do know that when our father was dying he had me find two bundles of letters and burn them while he watched. He told me your mother had not wanted you to have anything to do with her Welsh relatives, that they had treated her badly and must not be allowed to bother you. He wanted to honor her wishes, especially as you had made such an advantageous marriage. All I ever had was letters asking what you wanted to do about the cottage. Father had said it was just a run-down building, not worth anything. I sent the one
letter on to you after answering it myself—I thought perhaps you ought to see it so that you could send an answer of your own if you wanted. You did not write back, and your husband was in a bad way, and I didn’t bother you with the other few letters that came. But they did not mention any money, Samantha—only the cottage. I had no idea it was the house it is.”