The Escape by Mary Balogh

12

After that first day they traveled onward as man and wife. It was better that way, Samantha decided, for she could wear her own clothes again and forget about the ghastly oppression of her blacks. She had nothing particularly new and nothing very fashionable, but they were clothes she had chosen herself and, in a few cases, clothes she had made herself, and they suited her well enough. Wearing them again made her feel younger and more hopeful. They made her feel herself again.

She called him Ben. She had remarked—after one of their brief flare-ups—that Benedict made him sound like some sort of monk or saint and that no one had ever been more inappropriately named. Surprisingly, he had agreed with her and confided that he had always been uncomfortable with his name and far preferred the shortened form. She had told him that if he ever called her Sam she would have a temper tantrum. He had immediately called her Sammy and waggled his eyebrows at her. She had poked out her tongue and crossed her eyes in retaliation.

It actually felt good to act childishly. They had both ended up laughing.

After four days of travel, they crossed the River Wye into Wales. The land of her maternal forefathers. She had never expected that half of her heritage to mean anything to her and was surprised at the welling of emotion she felt at knowing that she was here at last.

She knew nothing about her mother’s kin, except for her dead great-aunt, who had been Miss Dilys Bevan, pronounced Dill-iss, according to her mother. She had always assumed there were no other living relatives.

But perhaps there were.

Did she want there to be? But she knew the answer was no almost before her mind had asked the question. For if any were still living, then they had neglected her mother and therefore her. And that would be worse than if they did not exist.

But suddenly, going to her cottage to live took on new meaning. For perhaps there was more awaiting her than just a dilapidated hovel of a building. Perhaps there was a whole story. A whole Pandora’s box, which she did not want to open. She must just hope it did not even exist.

She was feeling a little maudlin on the day they passed Tintern Abbey. They stopped to view the ruin, both of them having read and admired William Wordsworth’s lengthy poem about it. The building and its unspoiled, deeply rural surroundings were every bit as lovely and romantic as they were depicted in that poem. Wooded hills rose on either side of the valley and the Wye flowed between, the abbey on its western bank.

Their days had settled into a certain routine. Samantha rose early each morning to take Tramp out for a walk before breakfast, and then they traveled until the horses were tired and must be changed or at least rested. They spent what remained of the afternoons either strolling in the vicinity of the inn where they had stopped or finding some local landmark of interest to explore. They would find somewhere comfortable to take their tea. Then Ben would write conscientiously in his journal, having called for pen and ink, while Samantha took Tramp for another walk. Then they would relax in their separate rooms until it was time to meet again for their evening meal. They retired early in anticipation of the next day’s exertions.

On this particular day they resumed their journey after visiting Tintern, in order to take rooms at an inn above the valley that had been recommended to them the night before. When they arrived there, though, it was to the disturbing discovery that there was only one room still available. It was a large and comfortable chamber, the landlord assured them when he saw Ben’s hesitation, and there was a lovely view down into the valley and across it from its bay window.

“We will travel farther,” Ben said. “My disability makes it difficult for my wife to share a room with me in any comfort.”

But the closest inn, the landlord informed them, was at Chepstow, an uncomfortably long distance ahead when they had already traveled farther than usual today.

The journey was hard on Ben, Samantha knew. Though he never complained, she had learned to read his face and the tensions of his body, even his smile. What on earth had possessed him to believe that he could spend his life traveling and writing books about his journeys? But it was entirely her fault that he was doing so much traveling these days.

“We have come far enough,” she said. “We must take the room, Ben. It will be just for one night.”

“You will not be sorry, sir,” the landlord assured him. “We have the best cook between Chepstow and Ross. You can ask anyone.”

Ben looked as if he was about to argue. He was also looking rather pale and drawn. They had spent longer than they ought, perhaps, walking about the ruins.

“Very well,” he said. “We will stay here.”

The room was pretty and clean, and there was indeed a splendid view from the window, but it was not particularly spacious. There was no armchair or love seat or sofa, as Samantha had hoped there would be. She would have been happy to sleep on any of the three. The large, high bed dominated the room and occupied most of the floor space.

But good heavens, it was just for one night, she thought as they stood just inside the door, looking about them with great awkwardness. She spoke briskly. “I suppose if I lie very close to the edge on this side and you lie very close to the edge on that, there will be enough space between us to accommodate an elephant.”

“If you roll over in the night,” he said, “you had better be sure to roll the right way.”

“And which way would that be?”

She turned to smile at him just as he turned his head to smile at her. And suddenly it seemed as if her words were written in fire on the air between them.

“I would imagine,” he said, recovering himself, “elephants take exception to being awoken in the night.”

“Yes.” She crossed to the window, by far the finest feature of the room.

“Would you rather we went on to Chepstow after all?” he asked. “We still could.”

“No, we could not,” she said. “You are on the verge of collapse. It has been too busy a day. I shall go back down and make sure Tramp is properly accommodated. I shall have Mr. Quinn sent up to you.”

He did not argue.

She spent an hour with the dog, at first sitting on some clean straw beside him, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, her arms wrapped about them, and then walking with him so that he could take care of business before settling for the night.

They had managed to rub along well enough together, she and Sir Benedict—Ben. They could talk and laugh and be silent together. They could enjoy doing a little sightseeing together despite the handicap of his not being able to walk fast or far. But he was a man, and she would have to be inhuman, she supposed, for that fact not to be affecting her, especially as they had, once upon a time, shared a kiss and soared together in imagination beyond the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped in furs against the chill of the upper atmosphere.

It was sometimes hard to ignore his maleness when they shared the close confines of a carriage interior during the daytime. Whatever was it going to be like to share a bed all night?

By the time she returned to the room, making a great deal of unnecessary bustle on the landing outside the door and then taking her time turning the handle, Ben was dressed for dinner and was sitting on the side of the bed, reading. He set his book aside and got to his feet. He did it more easily than usual, she noticed, perhaps because the bed was high.

“I shall leave you the use of the room,” he said, “and see you downstairs in the dining room.”

“Very well.”

He was dressed smartly for dinner in black and white. She could have wished he did not look quite so attractive.

She donned a green silk gown and clasped about her neck the pearls her father had given her as a wedding present.

The only private dining parlor at the inn had been already spoken for by the time they arrived. There were just a few other people in the main dining room, however, and none of them were close enough to make conversation awkward. The food was excellent. At least, Samantha thought it probably was. She did not pay it much attention, truth to tell. She was too busy keeping the conversation going. It kept wanting to die, and they could not seem to hit upon a topic that required more than a question from one of them and a monosyllabic answer from the other.

Oh, what a difference having to share a bedchamber made. They had not had this problem on any previous evening. Not to this degree, anyway.

“If there had only been a private dining parlor available,” he said eventually, “there might have been a chair upon which I could have spent the night.”

“If you were going to do that,” she said, “we might as well have continued on our way to Chepstow. I would have slept on the chair.”

“Rubbish,” he said. “I would never have allowed it.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “I would not have allowed you to dictate to me what I could or could not do.”

“Are we back to bickering?” he asked. “But, really, Samantha, no gentleman would allow a lady to sleep on a chair in a private dining room while he enjoyed the luxury of a bed in a room with a view.”

“Ah,” she said, “the view. I had forgotten that. Undoubtedly, then, on this occasion I would have allowed you to have your way. An academic point, however. We do not have a private dining room and so neither of us is able to make the noble gesture of spending the night on a chair there.”

“We both, in fact,” he said, “get to enjoy the view.”

She smiled and he chuckled, and Samantha gazed at him, arrested for a moment. She had been very fond of her father, but she could not remember ever joking with him or talking nonsense with him—or bickering with him. And though she must surely have laughed with Matthew during their courtship and the first few months of their marriage, she could not recall ever being deliberately silly with him purely for their mutual enjoyment.

It occurred to her that she liked Ben Harper, even if he did make her bristle with indignation on occasion—and turn hot with longing at other times. It occurred to her that she would miss him when he had gone.

“He had a mistress,” she said abruptly, and then she gazed at him in some surprise. What on earth had prompted her to say that? She set down her knife and fork, rested her forearms on the table, and leaned toward him. “They already had one child when he met and married me. Another was conceived during the first months of our marriage. I took that to mean that he did not care much for me at all and that I was not much good in the marriage bed.”

She gazed at him, appalled. And she looked around furtively to make sure they were not within earshot of any other diners.

He looked from his knife to his fork and back again before setting them down across his plate and copying her posture. Their faces were not very far apart.

“I suppose,” he said, “you have spent longer than six years imagining that you are sexually inadequate.”

She half expected to see flames flaring up from her cheeks.

“No,” she said. “Why should I allow my spirit to be crushed by someone I did not respect? I lost respect for my husband four months into our marriage. That is a terrible admission to make, is it not, to a virtual stranger?”

“I am hardly a stranger,” he said. “And I am about to become even less of one. We are to spend the night teetering off the opposite edges of the same bed, are we not?”

“Have you ever had a mistress?” she asked him.

“Of long standing?” he said. “No. And never any children. And even if I had a mistress, I would dismiss her before marrying someone else. And no one would replace her. Ever.”

“Was the colonel’s niece very beautiful?” she asked.

He considered. “She was pretty. She was small and dainty, all smiles and dimples and blond curls and ringlets and big blue eyes.”

“Such a woman would surely have been unwilling to follow the drum with you.”

“But she was already doing so with her uncle,” he told her. “She looked like a porcelain doll. In reality she was as tough as nails.”

“Did you mourn her loss?”

“I cannot say I spared her more than a passing thought for at least two years,” he said. “By then I was very thankful we had not married.”

“I daresay she has grown plump,” she said. “Small, pretty blonds often do.”

His eyes laughed at her, and he reached across the table and took one of her hands in both of his.

“I believe, Sammy,” he said, “you are jealous.”

“Jealous?” She tried to withdraw her hand, but he tightened his hold on it. “How perfectly ridiculous. And how dare you call me that name when I have specifically asked you not to?”

“I think you want me,” he said.

“Nonsense.”

His eyes were laughing, but her stomach was clenched into knots. It was not true. Oh, of course it was true. He did not believe what he was saying, though. He was just teasing her. He was deliberately trying to make her cross—and was succeeding.

“I believe,” he said, “you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.”

“Oh!” She gaped inelegantly and jerked her hand from between his as she got abruptly to her feet. “How dare you. Oh, Ben, how dare you?”

Somehow she remembered to keep her voice down.

“You may have lost respect for your late husband,” he said, “and you may have refused to allow his infidelity to break your spirit, but he hurt you more than you realize, Samantha. He was a fool. And one day you will be given proof of your desirability. But not tonight. You are quite safe from me, I promise, despite the situation in which we find ourselves. I will not take advantage of you.”

She was almost disappointed.

“Go on up to our room now,” he said, “since you appear to have finished eating. I will stay down here for a while.”

She went without a word of protest, even though it could be said that he had issued a command.

He was a fool.

You will be given proof of your desirability.

I believe you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.

I think you want me.

And they were to spend the night together.

Not only ought he to have written to Hugo, Ben thought as he drank his port, but he ought also to have written to Calvin at Kenelston. And probably to Beatrice. No doubt she would soon learn that Samantha had disappeared from Bramble Hall and that he had left Robland very early on the same day. He wondered if she would make the connection. But if she did, he did not believe she would share her suspicions with anyone.

Would anyone else make the connection? He doubted it, since he had taken care not to be seen with Samantha. No one would know that he had had more than a passing acquaintance with her, and it was known that he was about to leave Robland anyway.

He could still write the letters, of course. He could call for paper and pen and ink and write them now before he went upstairs. But he was reluctant to do so. There was something rather seductive about the idea of simply disappearing without a trace for as long as he chose. He could go where he wanted and do what he wanted without having to account to anyone. That was always the case, of course, but … Well, he wanted to be quite free to allow this adventure to develop as it would. He did not want friends and relatives murmuring in the background with either encouragement or disapproval.

Samantha was still up when he returned to their room, though he had lingered in the dining room long enough to give her the chance to be under the bedcovers and at least pretending to be asleep if she so chose. He had been hoping she would take that option.

She was sitting on the bed in her nightgown, her legs tucked to one side, only her bare feet visible beneath its hem, her arms raised to remove the pins from her hair. It was not a deliberately seductive pose. Nevertheless it did something uncomfortable to his breathing.

“I thought you would be asleep,” he told her.

“Or feigning sleep, I suppose,” she said, “curled up in a ball, breathing deeply and evenly, so that you could crawl by me and ease yourself in on the other side and do likewise?”

He shut and locked the door.

“I did consider it,” she confessed, “but you would have known I was not really asleep, and then I would have known that you were not and we would have lain awake all night, each of us hoping that we were doing a better job of faking it than the other.”

He laughed.

“Let me help you do that,” he said, moving closer and propping his canes against the foot of the bed before sitting beside her. “I might say you are making a bird’s nest of your hair, but I believe that would be insulting to the bird in question.”

“Well,” she said, lowering her arms, “you make me nervous, Ben, and I cannot for the life of me disentangle the last few pins. I believe they are lost in there forever.”

He found and removed them, and her hair fell about her shoulders and down her back, heavy, shining, almost black Gypsy hair.

“I intended,” she said, “to have it neatly braided before you came up. Could you not have stayed to drink the inn dry of brandy or port or whatever it is you drink after dinner?”

“Port,” he said. “Brush?” He held out one hand, and she took a brush off the small chest beside the bed and handed it to him. He made a swirling motion with one finger. “Turn.”

Her hair reached to her waist and almost touched the bed behind her. It smelled faintly of gardenia. Her nightgown was of white cotton and covered her as decently as her dresses did during the day. Except that it was a nightgown and she was obviously wearing no stays beneath it—or anything else, at a guess. And her feet were bare. And she was sitting on a bed.

He drew the brush through her hair. It slid downward from the roots to the tips.

“Two hundred strokes,” she said.

He felt an immediate tightening at his groin. Two hundred?

“Every night,” she added.

“Do you count them?”

“Yes. It was one way my mother taught me numbers.”

She had been quite unaware of the double meaning of her words.

He counted silently.

“I was eighteen,” she said when he was at thirty-nine strokes. “Barely. I had just had my birthday. I had been married a little less than four months.”

He did not prompt her. If she needed to tell the story she had begun downstairs, then he would listen. He had all night, after all, and he knew from his experiences at Penderris that it was important that people be allowed to tell their stories.

Forty-five. Forty-six.

“I was so deeply in love,” she said, “that I did not think the world was large enough to contain it all. Youth is a dangerous time of life.”

Yes, it could be.

Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three.

“I thought his love for me was just as all-consuming,” she said. “I thought we were living happily ever after. How foolish young people can be. Shall I tell you why he married me?”

“If you wish.” Fifty-nine. Sixty.

“He had always been the family rebel,” she said. “He hated them all, particularly his father. But his father could never leave him alone. He had been at him to marry someone suitable—suitable in the eyes of the earl, that was. He had even named a few possible candidates. Matthew was eleven years older than I, you know. He met me at an assembly, found me pretty and eager—and, oh, how right he was about the latter! I was pathetically eager. I wore my heart not just on my sleeve, but on my nose and my forehead and my cheeks and my bosom and … Well. Suffice it to say that I made no secret of my adoration. I was pathetic.”

“You were very young,” he said. Good Lord, she was only twenty-four now. “You were being courted by a handsome military officer.”

“Where was I?” she asked. He did not know where he was. He had lost count. Sixty-nine? Seventy? “He fancied himself in love with me, of course, or I daresay he would not have done what he did. But it also occurred to him that it would be a splendid joke on his father if he married me. I was the daughter of a gentleman of no particular distinction. That would have been bad enough in his father’s eyes. He knew too, though, that I was the daughter of an actress and the granddaughter of some unknown Welshman and a Gypsy. And so he married me. He kept a decent silence about that part of his motive until I discovered the existence of his mistress, and then he told me about it—out of spite, I suppose, though he laughed as he told the tale and invited me to share the joke with him. It was funny, for it achieved everything he had hoped for. The Earl of Heathmoor was irate. When I refused to allow Matthew to touch me after I made my discovery and then he refused to take me to the Peninsula with his regiment and sent me to Leyland Abbey instead, again out of spite, I was made to feel that I was lower on the scale of significance than the lowliest servant. But because I was a daughter-in-law of the house, I must be subjected to a strict regimen of reeducation. I was not quite nineteen when I went there.”

He lowered the brush to the bed.

“I am not pleading for your pity,” she said. “Heaven forbid. My life is as it is. There are worse lives. I have never been hungry or literally homeless. No one has ever used physical violence on me worse than the occasional rap over the knuckles or smack on the bottom when I was a child. And now I have been offered the gift of freedom and a hovel of a cottage and a small competence with which to enjoy it. Do you understand what a wonderful thing that is for a woman, Ben? I can be a new person.”

She turned to face him on the bed and tucked her feet right out of sight.

“Then why the mournful look?” he asked.

“Do I look mournful?”

“I suppose,” he said, “it is because you have been forced to bring the old person with you.”

She grimaced. “Why is that? It is such a nuisance.”

“But how could you ever feel joy,” he asked her, “if you had not also known dreariness and suffering?”

“Is there ever joy?” Her dark eyes searched his face as though the answer was written there.

He opened his mouth to assure her that of course there was. But was there? When had he last felt it? When he arrived at Penderris Hall a few months ago for his annual stay there with his friends? That had been a happy moment, but had it been joy? He wished he had not used the word with her. It was a disturbing word.

And was that what his problem was? That wherever he went, he had to take himself with him? Was it in denial of that fact that he had decided to travel? The eternal quest to escape from himself, from the body that slowed him down, made him grotesque and ungainly, and stopped him from living the life he wanted to live?

“We have to believe there is joy,” he said. “In the meantime, we have to believe that our lives are worth living.”

She lifted one hand and set it against his cheek, her fingers pushing into his hair. Her hand was smooth and cool.

“It is ungrateful of me,” she said, “to have been given freedom and a new life and yet to feel a little depressed. You will find a meaning for your life.”

“I am going to be a world-famous travel writer.” He smiled.

“You will find what you are searching for, Ben,” she said. “You are a kind man.”

“And the good and kind are rewarded with fulfillment and happiness?”

He was surprised to see tears brighten her eyes, though they did not spill over onto her cheeks.

“They should be,” she said. “Life should work that way, though we know it does not always do so.”

He released his hold on the brush, caught her by the waist, drew her against him, and kissed her. She wrapped her arms about him and kissed him back.

Their lips clung. Their breath mingled. She was warm, soft, fragrant, very feminine. He was aware, even with his eyes closed, of her nightgown and bare feet, of her hair loose down her back, of the bed beneath them. There was an increase of heat, a tightening in his groin again.

She slid her feet free of her nightgown and he somehow got his legs right up on the bed, and his hands were on her breasts, heavy and firm beneath the cotton of her nightgown, and her hands were under his coat, inside his waistcoat, warm against the back of his shirt.

She had lain down across the bed, and he had followed her, his hand beneath the hem of her nightgown, smoothing its way up the heat of her inner thigh. His tongue simulated in her mouth what he would like to be doing with her body. His weight was pressing against her breasts.

He had made her a promise downstairs just an hour or two ago.

But not tonight. You are quite safe from me, I promise, despite the situation in which we find ourselves. I will not take advantage of you.

He tried to ignore the voice in his head—his own voice. It could not be done, however.

He lifted his head and gazed down into her passion-heavy eyes.

“We cannot do this,” he said.

She said nothing.

“We would regret it,” he told her. “It would have been provoked entirely by this room. We would regret it.”

Idiot, he thought. Fool.

“Would we?” She sighed, but he could see that she was returning to her senses.

“You know we would.” He sat up, lowering the hem of her nightgown as he did so, and pushed himself to his feet without using his canes. High mattresses were always a blessing to him.

“And yet,” she said, “it is quite acceptable for a widow to have an affair, provided she is discreet about it. I learned that when I was with Matthew’s regiment. I think it would be a grand use of freedom—to have an affair.”

“With me?” He did not turn to look at her.

“With a man who wanted one with me as much as I wanted one with him,” she said. “Perhaps with you, Ben. One of these days. But not tonight. You are right about that. It would seem slightly sordid.”

He drew a few slow breaths. “Now,” he said, “if you would get beneath the covers and pretend to fall into an instant sleep to spare my modesty, I will slip out of a few of my clothes and climb in on the other side. And tomorrow and for every other night of our journey, we will continue on our way, even if the distance is a hundred miles, until we find an inn that can properly and separately accommodate us.”

She got down from the bed, climbed beneath the covers so far to her side that it was a miracle she did not fall off, pulled the covers up over her head, and snored softly.

He smiled and made his way around to the other side.

“The only trouble is,” she said when he was slipping out of his waistcoat, “that by the time one of these days comes along, you will be long gone from my life.”

“Hush,” he said, and she started snoring again.

He blew out the candle and climbed into bed, as far to his side as was possible.

He would be laughed out of any officers’ mess tent, he thought, if he was ever unwise enough to give an account of this night’s doings—or absence of doings.

Not that he would ever again be in any mess tent.

He stared at the pale outline of the bay window.

He would never again be in any mess tent.

The army did not take cripples.