Someone to Cherish by Mary Balogh

Seven

By the time Harry returned from the farm late in the afternoon, having settled the dispute over the barn by suggesting that repairs be made to the loft to allow for more storage space and agreeing to an addition larger than originally suggested being added to the back of the building to make more room for the livestock, he felt both sticky and grimy and sent word to his valet to prepare a bath for him. While he waited for the water to be heated and carried up to his dressing room, he went into the library to look through the day’s mail.

There were two personal letters, one from his cousin Jessica, whom he had not seen since her marriage two years ago to Gabriel, Earl of Lyndale. He had been present for their wedding when, quite coincidentally, he had been making one of his rare visits to London to be measured for a new coat and boots after his valet had warned him that the old ones would simply fall off from sheer old age one of these days. The other letter was from Aunt Matilda, Viscountess Dirkson, his father’s eldest sister. He sat down behind his desk to read.

Jessica’s letter was full of enthusiastic descriptions of her life in the north of England. She was a few years younger than Harry. She and Abigail had always been very close friends. As essentially an only child—Avery, Duke of Netherby, her half brother, was years older—Jessica had always adored all three of her cousins, and they had been dearly fond of her. One paragraph of her letter was devoted to details about Evan, her one-year-old son. They were going to London soon for the parliamentary session and the Season, she reported. Was Harry going to be there too? Jessica hoped so. She had missed seeing him at Christmas.

He had missed her too, Harry thought as he folded the letter and set it aside. And the rest of the Westcott family also, much as he had been relieved not to have to go to Brambledean for Christmas. But no, he was not going to London. Not this year. He knew what would almost surely be awaiting him there if he did—thirtieth birthday celebrations, for example. No, thank you, Jessica, he thought.

Aunt Matilda and Viscount Dirkson, her husband of four years, had just been on a visit to Gloucestershire to see three of their grandchildren, whom they had missed dreadfully over Christmas, though it was perfectly understandable that Abigail and Gil had wanted to spend the holiday in Bath. Gil Bennington was Viscount Dirkson’s natural son. The two had been estranged through most of Gil’s life until a few years ago but had edged warily about each other for a while after Abby and Gil’s wedding and during the court case over the custody of Katy. Father and son seemed now to be cautiously fond of each other, due in large part to the influence of Abby on the one side and Aunt Matilda on the other, Harry suspected.

Everyone was well and thriving, his aunt reported, though of course Harry would know that since he had seen them all for himself very recently. Both fond grandparents— and totally unbiased, of course, Harry—were agreed that Ben was the most gorgeous baby ever, while Seth was the most gorgeous infant and Katy the loveliest little girl. Harry chuckled. Aunt Matilda had married late in life and was very obviously extremely happy. Even exuberant. Who could ever have predicted it?

Marital happiness really was possible, he thought. His mother had been quite right about that. The Westcotts seemed particularly good at it. Why, then, was he contemplating an affair that was not going to lead to marriage and would be risky besides, to say the least, given the size of the village and the fact that everyone in it and for miles around knew everyone else’s business almost before the everyone else in question knew it themselves? Why was he going to see Lydia Tavernor tonight with a view, he supposed, to having an affair with her sometime in the foreseeable future, when he could simply go to London and find a wife? Surely if he set his mind to it he could find someone to suit him.

The inevitable question came in the next to final paragraph of his aunt’s letter. Was Harry planning to spend at least a part of the Season in town this spring? Harry spread one hand over his eyes and laughed. For it was obvious now that this was a concerted family campaign. First his mother at Christmas, and Cam and Abby to a lesser degree. Then his mother again after his return home. And now his cousin and his aunt. It would be his grandmother next, he could confidently predict, and then his other aunts. Maybe Alexander or Wren. And Elizabeth, Alex’s sister. Had he missed anyone? Ah. And possibly Anna, his own half sister.

Harry folded Aunt Matilda’s letter and set it on top of Jessica’s. He was not going to London, no matter how often they asked. Sometimes being a Westcott was a massive pain. But he smiled even as he thought it. He would never forget how they had all rallied around, and continued to do so, after the Great Disaster, when they might just as easily have dropped his mother and Cam, Abby, and him as unworthy of their acquaintance.

And if he sat here any longer, he thought, getting resolutely to his feet, his bathwater would be cold or at least tepid, and he hated cool bathwater.

As he was climbing the stairs to his dressing room, he remembered that he had admitted this morning—to Lydia Tavernor of all people—what he had not confessed to another living soul in ten years. He had scarcely admitted it even to himself. He had resented and even hated Alexander when Alex became the Earl of Riverdale after he himself had been stripped of the title. He had resented and even hated Anna, who had stepped into the family as a full member, Harry’s father’s daughter and only legitimate child, at the very moment when Harry himself and his sisters had been bastardized. He had even hated Avery, his guardian at the time, for stopping him from enlisting as a private soldier and insisting upon purchasing a commission for him instead. He had seethed with hatred and impotent fury for a long time after he went to the Peninsula with his regiment even while he wrote cheerful letters home, claiming it was all a great lark and he was having the devil of a good time. He had poured out the whole shameful litany of his resentments to a woman he scarcely knew. One with whom he was contemplating having an affair.

What the devil must she think of him?

“You had better not come too close to me, Mark,” he told his valet when he stepped into the dressing room. “I smell of barnyard and stale human sweat. I stink, in other words. You would be well advised to stand well back and hold your nose while I strip.”

Mark Mitchell grinned and stepped forward to help him off with his coat. “One of these days when you tell me that,” he said, “I will take you at your word. And then see how easily you can sack me for merely doing what I was told.”

“Insubordination,” Harry muttered.

Lydia also had a letter. After going outside to admire her woodpile and being a bit jolted by the sight of Jeremy Piper peeping over her back fence, she went to call upon Denise Franks to pick up her cake plate, and stayed to share a pot of tea. She called at the village shop on her way home to purchase a few items and was handed her letter. It was from William, her middle brother, she could see. She always loved having letters from home.

Back at her cottage, she waited a little impatiently in the doorway while Snowball dashed over to the trees, did what she needed to do there, and came meandering back, stopping to sniff the ground in a few places and then eyeing a bird that was pecking at a worm down by the fence before deciding that it was not worth laying chase to. She trotted back inside, drank noisily from her water bowl, and plopped herself down before the fireplace.

Oh lovely, Lydia thought as she broke the seal of her brother’s letter, for there was another enclosed within it. Her name was written on it in the small, neat handwriting she recognized as Esther, her sister-in-law’s. She read William’s letter first.

Their father had taken a chill a couple of weeks ago after being out in a heavy rain while he was far from home. After a few days spent unwillingly in bed, however, he was recovering fast, though his temper had some catching up to do.

Lydia smiled. Her father had always despised any weakness in himself. He fretted whenever he was forced to be inactive. How on earth had James and William managed to keep him in bed for a few days? Had they tied him down?

Anthony, the youngest of the family, was almost finished with his studies at Oxford. He had abandoned his plans for an academic career, William reported, in favor of one with the diplomatic service. He had decided that he wanted to travel the world, preferably the hot, sunny parts of it. He was sick of the dismal weather that seemed always to settle over Britain to stay, summer and winter. He was convinced that it must be the most dismal country in the world.

I will give him a few years at the longest, William had written, before he discovers himself only too happy to return to this dismal country. Can you seriously imagine anyone, Lydie, choosing to live anywhere else?

No, Lydia thought, amused, she could not. But she had never tried living anywhere else. Or been anywhere else, for that matter. Neither had William. And perhaps all people considered their own country the best on earth in which to live. But she felt a surge of envy for her youngest brother nevertheless. At least he was free to dream large dreams and even to make plans for making them come true—because he was a man. So could she, of course—dream large dreams, that was. She could dream of living alone and having the means with which to sustain herself, for example. She had dreamed it, and now she was doing it. And she could dream of having a lover. She had dreamed it, and now …

But her stomach lurched uncomfortably, and she thought of what had happened, first out at the woodpile just after Harry left, and then when she was at Denise’s. They had been chatting upon various subjects when Denise had introduced a new one that had alarmed Lydia—if alarmed was not too strong a word.

“Did I see correctly last evening?” she had asked. “Did Major Westcott walk you home, Lydia?”

“We were going in the same direction for a short way,” Lydia had said, hoping her face was not flushing. “It would have been silly to walk silently one behind the other.”

“Oh, dash it,” Denise had said. “What a very sensible and dull explanation. All night and all morning I have been busy conjuring a budding romance.”

“Between me and Major Westcott?” Lydia had said, laughing. “How very absurd.”

“But why?” her friend had asked. “You have been a widow for well over a year, Lydia. I daresay your grief is still quite acute, and I know you always say you could not possibly marry again. But you are not even thirty yet. One day you are going to look about you and change your mind. If your eyes should then happen to alight upon Major Westcott—”

“Denise,” Lydia had said, cutting her off with a raised hand. She had still been laughing. “Really? Major Westcott?”

“Whyever not?” Denise had protested. “He is certainly attractive. And unattached. So are you—attractive and unattached, that is. And he walked you home from Hannah Corning’s a week or so ago too.”

“Because we were going the same way then too,” Lydia had explained. “And he did it as a favor to Tom Corning, to save him from having to make a special journey out to escort me himself. Though it was all quite unnecessary. I am perfectly capable of taking myself the length of the village street, even in the dead of night. Men can be very foolish.”

Lydia had taken her leave soon after that. But though Denise had raised the topic only to tease her and they had both laughed over it, Lydia had been alarmed. No, it was not too exaggerated a word. For if Denise had noticed, then other people would have noticed also. On two separate occasions Major Westcott had walked her home late in the evening. Those two incidents were nothing in themselves. But there was no room for any more.

And what if Jeremy had hoisted himself up and peered over that fence a few minutes sooner than he had?

It would be madness—absolute insanity—to continue what they had started. Even a friendship was forbidden a single man and a single woman—at least, any sort of friendship that could not be conducted in plain view and in a public place. And even then …

She must make this evening’s visit as brief as possible, she had decided after leaving Denise’s. She must make it clear to Major Westcott that there could be no more such private meetings. Surely he would recognize the wisdom of that decision. But even if he did not, she knew he would not argue. He was, she believed, an honorable man. Besides, the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.

She returned her attention to her brother’s letter. How had she got distracted anyway?

We have been talking, it continued. Papa and James and I. And Lydia knew, even before she read further, that William was finally getting to the real point of his letter.

We understand perfectly well why you insisted after Isaiah’s funeral and burial upon returning to your village. Papa and James regret the way they pressed you so adamantly on that occasion to return home with them. They did it out of love and concern for you, of course, as I am sure you must have been aware, Lydie. But they were wrong, and they are willing to admit it. It was right that you do your grieving where you had lived so happily and served so diligently with your husband. Leaving immediately after his death would have made you feel as though you were abandoning him. You must have felt that he was somehow still there in spirit. And you had neighbors and friends who loved you and grieved with you and no doubt needed your physical presence there with them. You did the right and the honorable thing in staying and the only thing that could have brought some healing to your broken heart. We know you loved Isaiah with unwavering devotion. I can still recall how exuberantly happy you were on your wedding day—the happiest I had ever seen you.

Lydia licked her lips, which had suddenly turned dry. Oh, she could recall it too, that deliriously happy day. That first day of what was to have been the sort of glorious happily-ever-after only the very young and the very naïve expect.

We have honored your decision and kept quiet on the subject for longer than a year. But, Lydie, you are a woman alone—a young woman. And unless something has changed, you do not even have a servant living with you. It is improper. You must realize that. It is unsafe. Now that your year of mourning is over and you have, presumably, left off your blacks, you are a prey to any and all impertinences from those men who can see that you are without male protection.Some will even choose to believe that your very decision to live alone is a deliberate invitation to their advances. We know that nothing could be further from the truth. But nothing could be more disastrous—for your reputation and for your safety.

Lydia’s hands tingled with fury suddenly as they held the paper. Did William realize how insulting his words were? Yet she did not have full right to her anger, did she? Not after what she had started a little over a week ago. Not after she had invited Harry into her home last evening and allowed him to kiss her this morning. She read on.

I will come and fetch you as soon as we can be sure Papa’s health is not going to suffer a relapse. We will see to the selling of your cottage and the removal of all your larger possessions. You must not worry your head over any of that. You must simply come and be at home again, where we can look after you. I daresay we will find someone else suitable for you to marry eventually too, though there is absolutely no hurry for that. Esther has written a note to enclose with this. She has some news that she hopes will entice you home if nothing else will.

Lydia folded the letter and shut her eyes. She might have known they would not take no for an answer. Not forever. Snowball was standing at her feet, her little stub of a tail waving, her eyes gazing mournfully upward, as if she sensed some emotional turmoil in her mistress. Lydia set the letter aside and lifted the dog onto her lap.

“They are not going to leave me alone after all, then,” she said. “I know them, Snowball. Was a woman ever so besieged by men who love her? They are enough to give love a bad name.”

Snowball turned twice on her lap before curling up and settling to sleep.

“So much for female sympathy and solidarity,” Lydia said. “You know, Snowball, perhaps it would be easier just to give in and go home. To have Papa and my brothers for company—and my sister-in-law. There would be other people to run the house and clean and cook. And chop the wood. There would be familiar neighbors, familiar surroundings. There would always be someone or something to hold the loneliness at bay.”

Perhaps it was as well she spoke aloud, for she heard her own words almost as though they were coming out of someone else’s mouth. She heard the abjectness of them, the sound of defeat. She heard herself being Lydia as she always had been—until a little over fifteen months ago. And anger returned in full force, but directed at herself this time. Why should being a woman render one not only helpless but also spiritless?

Why had she not raged against Isaiah when it had become stunningly apparent to her on her wedding day that life with him was not going to be any different from the way it had been at home? Worse, in fact. Far worse, because he was her husband and she had just vowed obedience to him. Why had she never admitted even to herself in the six years following her wedding day that it was not a good marriage, that she had been cheated, that she was not happy—and was denying it every moment of every day? Oh, it was true that his had at least never been a physical tyranny. She had never been afraid of violence from him. He had never struck her or even spoken harshly or disrespectfully to her. But …

But it had been tyranny nevertheless. She had never let him know that she disagreed—vehemently disagreed— with his vision of their marriage. The power of his personality, his dazzling good looks, his all-consuming faith, his charismatic zeal as a servant of the Lord, had completely overwhelmed her and convinced her of her own worthlessness in contrast. When he had called her his helpmeet, she had meekly accepted that that was what she was. At first the word had suggested a shared closeness, a shared workload and mission. A togetherness. It was only as time went on that that one word—helpmeet—had begun to grate on her nerves, since really it labeled her subordinate position, her total lack of identity apart from Isaiah.

Yet she had never protested. Never raged. Never demanded to be seen as a person. She had never forced him to look at her, right into her eyes, to see her as … herself. As Lydia. She had even begun to doubt that there was any person to be seen. She had been Isaiah’s helpmeet. It was how the parish had seen her—if and when they saw her at all. It was how they still saw her—though by her own choice now. For her invisibility since his death had somehow protected her identity, her personhood, her independence. Or perhaps just her fear.

She suddenly remembered her sister-in-law’s note and picked it up and broke the seal. As she had half expected from the hint William had given, Esther was expecting a child at last, after two years of marriage. She was clearly excited about it. So was James, apparently.

Lydia had never been with child. And now she never would be, for her decision never to marry again, never again to surrender her freedom to a man, was a firm one and would not be shifted, as her friends believed and as her father and brothers believed it would be after she had recovered fully. But it was not a decision without disadvantages. She was a woman with a woman’s needs. The need for a man, yes, or, rather, for a lover. But also the need—the yearning—for a child. She could not have it both ways, however. She must choose, and the choice had been made.

Esther knew that Lydia’s father and brothers wanted her to come home. She wanted it too, she assured Lydia. They had met only once, when they had been too busy with the wedding to get to know each other as sisters ought. But like Lydia, Esther had no actual sisters and longed to have one with her now as she awaited the birth of her child and afterward, when she would need the close companionship of a woman. Oh, Lydia, please, please come home, she had pleaded just before ending the note. My very dearest regards, Your sister, Esther.

And Lydia had a sharp memory of her eight-year-old self begging and begging that the baby her mama had told her was coming to the house soon would be a girl so she would have a sister at last. Her mother had told her she could not guarantee it, as she did not get to choose the baby who would come. Lydia had hoped and prayed after that without openly begging. But then Anthony had arrived, and she had been bitterly disappointed. Very shortly afterward her mother had died, and she had had neither sister nor mother.

Now she had a sister.

And soon she would have a niece or nephew.

A baby in the family.

But not her own.

She would never go back home to stay, though there was a surprising and treacherous sort of temptation to do just that. To give up the fight and go back where she was loved, where she would have company. Where she would not have to see Harry almost everywhere she went. Where she could hide from the pain. And how silly that there would be pain and the sharpness of unhappiness after tonight. How very silly. She scarcely knew him. She could hardly claim to be in love with him. She was not. And she did not want to be.

No, she would not run away just because her childhood home and the people and the situation that awaited her there were familiar and safe. She would lose herself again if she went home.

She was too precious to lose.

She was.

If pain was the ultimate cost of freedom and independence and being a person, then so be it.

She was staying.