The Escape (Survivor's Club) (6 page)

Had he fallen from his horse since she last saw him? Samantha wondered hopefully and unkindly. But no. Those canes must have been specially made. She had seen nothing like them before.

Even when he was slightly hunched over them, she could see that he was tall and thin. No, not thin.
Lean
. There was a difference. And his well-fitting, fashionable coat and pantaloons, over which he wore highly polished Hessian boots, emphasized his pleasingly proportioned physique. He was an attractive man, she admitted without feeling in any way attracted. She felt as irritated with him as she had been two days ago. More so, perhaps, because now she could see that he had had an excuse for not jumping from his horse to rush gallantly to her rescue on that day, and she did not want him to have any excuse at all.

“Sir.” She inclined her head with as much frosty hauteur as she could muster. She was aware of Matilda slightly curtsying and murmuring his name.

“Ma’am,” he said, inclining his head. “Lady Matilda.”

Benedict
. It was far too pleasant a name for him. It sounded like a blessing—a benediction. She wondered
if there was any profane word in existence that he had
not
used in that meadow. She doubted it.

“My brother has been kind enough to give me his company at Robland Park for a few weeks before I join my husband in London for the second half of the Season,” Lady Gramley explained. “Perhaps we may call upon you one afternoon, Mrs. McKay? I have not spoken to you since soon after your husband was laid to rest, and I would not have you feel that your neighbors are neglecting you in your grief.”

Samantha felt uncomfortable, for no longer than three weeks ago the Earl and Countess of Gramley had invited her and Matilda to dinner and Matilda had persuaded her that it would be unseemly to accept, that Lady Gramley ought not even to have suggested such a thing. Samantha had been surprised, but she had still been in the grip of lethargy and had allowed her sister-in-law to send a refusal, politely worded, she hoped. Even so, she thought it good of Lady Gramley not to have taken offense.

“That would be delightful,” she said, though she could have wished that the lady’s brother was not included. But perhaps she could suffocate him with courtesy if he came and show him what true gentility was. It would be a fitting revenge. It was more likely, though, that he would make an excuse
not
to come. “We will look forward to it, will we not, Matilda?”

“We are still in deep mourning, ma’am,” Matilda reminded Lady Gramley, as if their heavy blacks were not hint enough. “However, there can be no objection to receiving an occasional afternoon call from a genteel neighbor.”

Oh, good heavens. It was no wonder Matthew had been the black sheep of his family and had detested the lot of them, his sister included. Matilda was calling a
countess
a genteel neighbor as though she were conferring some great favor upon her.

Sir Benedict Harper had not removed his eyes from Samantha’s face. She wondered how much he could see of it. And she wondered if he felt embarrassed at seeing her again. Did he recall calling her
woman
? She recalled it, and she bristled at the memory.

Samantha inclined her head again and moved on. The whole encounter had taken less than a minute, but it had left her with ruffled feathers.
Would
he accompany Lady Gramley when she called? Would he dare?

She inclined her head civilly to a few other members of the congregation and offered her hand to the vicar and a comment on his sermon. Matilda praised him at greater length and with stiff condescension. And then they were in the gig and on their way home.

“Lady Gramley appears genteel enough,” Matilda observed.

“I have always found her both kind and gracious,” Samantha said, “though I have not had many dealings with her over the years. Or with any of my other neighbors, for that matter. Matthew needed almost all my time and attention.”

“Sir Benedict Harper is crippled,” Matilda said.

“But not bedridden.” He could even ride, Samantha thought. “Perhaps he will not accompany his sister if she calls on us.”

“It would be tactful of him not to,” Matilda agreed, “since he is a stranger to us. It is a pity we could not have avoided the introduction.”

For once Samantha was in accord with her sister-in-law. It did not happen often.

Matilda was as different from her brother as it was possible to be. A self-avowed spinster at the age of thirty-two, who had long ago professed her intention of devoting herself to her mother in her declining years,
she seemed to lack any softness or femininity. Her father was next only to God in her esteem. Matthew had been three years older, handsome, dashing, charming—and quite irresistibly gorgeous in his scarlet regimentals. Samantha had met him at an assembly when his regiment was stationed a mere three miles from her home. She had been seventeen years old, young, naïve, and impressionable. She had tumbled headlong into love with Lieutenant McKay, as he had been then, as had every other girl for miles around. It would have been strange, perhaps, if she had not. When he married her, she had thought herself the happiest, most fortunate girl in the world, an impression that had remained with her for four months until she discovered that he was shallow and vain—and unfaithful.

Yes, he had been very different from his sister. Of the two, she would take Matthew any day of the year. Not that she any longer had a choice in the matter. The thought brought a stabbing of grief.

The severe wounds he suffered in battle had destroyed Matthew in more ways than one. He had been a difficult patient, though she had always tried to make allowances for his pain and his disabilities and the deteriorating condition of his lungs. He had been demanding and selfish. She had devoted herself to his care without complaint even though she had fallen out of love with him before he went away to the Peninsula.

His death had caused her real grief. It had been hard to watch the destruction of a man who had been so handsome and vital and vain—and to watch him die at the age of thirty-five.

Poor Matthew.

Matilda reached over and patted her hand. “Your grief does you credit, Samantha,” she said. “I shall tell Father so when I write to him tomorrow.”

Samantha reached beneath her veil and dashed away
a tear with one black-gloved hand. She felt guilty. For there was relief mingled with the sadness she felt at Matthew’s having to die. She could no longer deny that fact. She was free at last—or would be when this heavy ritual of mourning was at an end.

Was it wicked to think that way?

“I
wonder,” Ben said, “if Mrs. McKay has told her sister-in-law what happened a few afternoons ago.”

“I really do not know the lady,” Beatrice replied, “but I must confess that she strikes me as being a bit of a battle-ax.”

They were traveling toward Bramble Hall in an open carriage, with the blessing of Beatrice’s physician, who at last had pronounced her fully restored to health. It was a sunny day and quite warm for springtime. Two days had passed since their encounter with the McKay ladies at church.

“I did not behave as I ought to have when I first encountered Mrs. McKay,” Ben said. “I really do need to make amends, Bea. Yet if I blurt out an apology over tea, I may embarrass her before her sister-in-law. I cannot help agreeing with you about the lady, even though we spoke with the two of them for what was probably no longer than a minute on Sunday, and it was impossible even to see their faces. Have you ever seen facial veils quite as black and heavy as theirs? I wonder they can see out. One half expects them to walk into walls.”

“Perhaps their grief is great,” she said. “Poor Captain McKay is said to have been exceedingly handsome and dashing once upon a time. War is a cruel thing, Ben, not that I need to tell you of all people that. It would have been kinder, perhaps, if he had been killed outright.
Kinder for him, kinder for his wife, kinder for his sister.”

Dash it, would he ever escape from those wars? Ben thought irritably. What damnable fate was it that had set him to jumping that particular hedge at that particular moment on that particular day when he had jumped nothing on horseback in longer than six years? And what had led Mrs. McKay to walk just there when apparently she had scarcely set foot outside her own home since she moved there with her invalid husband five or six years ago?

Fate? He very much doubted it. And if it was, then fate was a damnably weird thing.

This visit he was about to pay was the last thing on earth he wished to be doing. One did not like to be caught out in ungentlemanly conduct, and one did not like having to beg pardon of the offended party, especially when she was as cold and haughty as Captain McKay’s widow appeared to be.

“If I see even the glimmering of an opportunity,” Beatrice promised as the carriage drew to a halt outside the front doors of Bramble Hall, “I will draw Lady Matilda away or at least out of earshot, Ben, so that you may make your peace with Mrs. McKay.”

There was an instant response to the rap of the knocker against the door in the form of a deep, excited barking from within. The unruly hound, no doubt.

Bramble Hall was a solid stone house, a manor more than a mansion, but of pleasing proportions and set in gardens that were well tended even if not extensive. The interior too was handsome, Ben soon discovered, though the hall was paneled in dark wood and the sitting room into which they were shown was scarcely any lighter, since the dark wine velvet curtains were more than half drawn over the windows. The furniture
was old and heavy and predominantly a dark brown. Dark-toned landscape paintings hung on the papered walls.

The ladies rose to their feet as the butler announced their visitors. They both, of course, wore black dresses that covered them from neck to wrists to ankles. Lady Matilda was also wearing a black lacy cap over her fair hair, tied in a neat black bow beneath her chin. Ben wondered uncharitably that she had not dyed her hair black.

Mrs. McKay’s head was uncovered. Her very dark, glossy hair was styled in a tight coronet of braids about the crown of her head, the rest combed smooth, without a suggestion of a curl or ringlet to soften the severity. Her eyes were very dark too and large and long-lashed, her nose straight, her mouth generous and full-lipped, her skin dark-toned. She almost undoubtedly had some foreign blood in her veins, though he could not place her origin. Spain? Italy? Greece?

Her dress was of some heavy, rather stiff fabric and was ill-fitting and unbecoming. Nevertheless, it could not hide the fact, as her cloak had done on both previous occasions he had seen her, that she was generously curved and voluptuous of figure. She had the height to carry it too.

He had expected her to be ugly. She had
looked
ugly through her veil. She was, to the contrary, utterly, stunningly beautiful. And younger than he had estimated.

His impression of both ladies was gathered in a moment. Fortunately, he was prevented from staring overlong by the infernal hound, which looked every bit as ugly now as he had in the meadow a few days ago. He was prancing about them in the sort of orgy of undiscipline one might expect of an untrained puppy but not of a grown dog that lived inside the house. He
seemed undecided whether to be ecstatic that they had come to visit or offended that they had dared trespass upon his domain. However, he seemed altogether willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they showed the slightest tendency to play with him.

Beatrice laughed and patted his head. “What a lovely welcome,” she said.

“Hush, dog,” Lady Matilda commanded—to no effect. “Samantha, do have him removed.”

“Sit, Tramp,” Mrs. McKay said, “or you are going to have to be banished to outer darkness.”

The dog did not sit, but he did stop his prancing to look up at his mistress, panting, tongue lolling, and then he padded off to plop himself down in the shaft of daylight that beamed through the narrow gap in the curtains, his ears cocked lest he miss someone offering further entertainment.

Wretched hound. Without him, Ben might well have cleared that hedge and ridden back to Robland without even realizing that he had frightened the devil out of a lady and narrowly missed killing her. He would not even have known that an apology was in order. And he would have glanced at those two black-shrouded females in church with absolutely no wish whatsoever of making their acquaintance.

“Lady Gramley,” Mrs. McKay said, stepping forward to offer a hand to her guest, “I do beg your pardon for Tramp’s bad manners. How kind of you to call upon us. You were not very well the last time you did so, I recall. I was touched that you came at all. I do hope you have recovered your health. We have been very dull with only each other for company, have we not, Matilda?”

She turned to Ben after Bea had assured her that she had made a full recovery from her stubborn chill. Mrs. McKay’s expression changed imperceptibly from warmly
welcoming to coolly gracious as she shook his hand too.

“Sir Benedict,” she said, “it was good of you to accompany your sister. Do have a seat.”