The Escape by Mary Balogh
13
Samantha’s first impression when she awoke was of warmth and comfort. She had surely just enjoyed her best night’s sleep in a long time. And then, as she woke further, other impressions intruded. Her nose was virtually pressed against a naked chest that rose and fell to the steady rhythm of its owner’s breathing. His body heat enveloped her and made her want to move her whole body closer though she was alarmingly close as it was. One of his arms was about her beneath the covers.
So much for a sleepless night as they each clung virtuously to their respective edges of the bed.
Samantha had never before slept with a man. Slept, that was, as opposed to having marital relations with. For close to four months after their marriage, Matthew had come to her bed almost nightly, but he had always returned to his own afterward. Somehow, this seemed almost as intimate as those brief sessions had been, perhaps because they were so long ago that she had forgotten just what real intimacy felt like.
They had come close to making love last night—until conscience had smitten him. She was not sure if she was glad or sorry.
He was sleeping. She could tell that from the deepness of his breathing and the warm relaxation of his body. She was tempted to fall back to sleep herself. But good sense prevailed. What she really needed to do was remove herself from the bed, or at least from this particular part of it, before he too woke up. He might believe she had done this deliberately.
She considered her strategy. His arm was heavy across her. One of her legs was trapped beneath one of his. One of her hands was splayed across his chest. The other was resting on the side of his waist—she had only just realized that. It was full daylight. Goodness only knew what time it was. It might be dawn or it might be noon. She really had slept deeply.
She wriggled her leg free. She lifted her hand from his waist and removed her nose from his chest and then her other hand. She inched backward under his arm. She did it all in no more than five or ten minutes. He inhaled deeply, exhaled audibly, and fell silent. She edged back a little farther. If she turned now, she could swing her legs over the edge of the bed and sit up and then stand and be safe even if he then awoke and saw her in her rumpled nightgown, her unbraided hair in loose tangles about her head and shoulders and along her back. He would not know …
“I suppose,” he said just as she sat up, in a perfectly normal, everyday conversational voice, “you did not sleep a wink all night.”
“I slept a little,” she admitted in a tone to match his own. She did not turn her head to look at him.
“Did I leave you enough room?” he asked. “I did not inadvertently touch you?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “There was plenty of room.”
“Samantha McKay,” he said, “you will surely burn in hell one of these eternities. You are lying through your teeth.”
She let out an enraged shriek and whisked her head around to glare at him. She grabbed her pillow and hurled it at him.
“You, sir,” she said, “are no gentleman. You might at least pretend to believe that we kept to our own edges of the bed.”
He clasped the pillow to his chest. “I woke up at some time in the night,” he said, “to find that I had rolled to the center of the bed and that you had done likewise. To be fair, I do not believe either of us was the aggressor. You grumbled some nonsense and grabbed me when I would have beaten a strategic retreat back to my edge, and, being the gentleman I am, contrary to your unjust accusation, I remained where I was and allowed you to burrow against me.”
She shrieked again and grabbed for her pillow so that she could fling it at his head once more.
“And you,” she said, “are going to fry. I did not. And if you had been the gentleman you profess to be, you would have moved, not just to the edge of the bed, but right off it onto the floor with your pillow.”
“You were lying half on it,” he said. “And being a gentleman …” He completed the sentence with a grin.
She stared down at him. He was enjoying himself, she thought, and so, strangely, was she. What had seemed horribly awkward and embarrassing just a minute or so ago had been turned into … fun. But oh, dear, he looked tousled and almost boyish. And attractive. It really would be wonderful to make love with him.
“What?” he said. “You have no answer?”
“You might have taken my pillow, then,” she said.
“But you were lying half on that too.”
“Poor thing,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “And so you were doomed to spend the rest of the night in the middle of the bed with only half a pillow for your comfort.”
“I am not complaining,” he told her. He laced his hands behind his head and looked complacent. “Pillows are not the only source of comfort.”
“Hmm.” She got to her feet. “Turn your back and pull the covers over your head. I am going to get dressed. I do not suppose anyone has fed and watered Tramp this morning or let him loose in the stable yard.”
He did as he was told with great ostentation, and Samantha dressed quickly, a smile on her face, and dragged her brush through her hair before twisting and knotting it at her neck.
“I shall see you at breakfast in half an hour or so,” she said as she let herself out of the room.
He snored softly beneath the bedcovers as she had done last night. She was laughing as she shut the door. How her life had changed in the span of a week. She scarcely recognized herself despite what had been said last night about having to take herself with her wherever she went. She could not remember a time when she had simply enjoyed someone else’s company, when she had laughed and joked with that person and talked nonsense. And hurled pillows.
And shared a bed.
And felt a knee-weakening desire.
She was going to miss him dreadfully when they had arrived at her cottage and he had resumed his travels. But she would think of that when the time came.
Tramp greeted her as if he had been shut up all alone for at least a week in his perfectly comfortable stall.
They talked about the weather and the scenery. They talked about books—she had read a good many during the five years of her husband’s illness, and he had read a fair number during the years of his convalescence and since. They talked more about their families and the homes where they had grown up, about their growing years, the friends they had had, the games they had played, the dreams they had dreamed. They talked about music, though neither claimed any proficiency on a musical instrument.
They carefully avoided any situation or topic that might ignite the attraction they undoubtedly felt for each other.
Sometimes they talked nonsense and laughed like silly children. It felt ridiculously good. Sometimes they bickered, though even those flare-ups usually ended in nonsense and laughter.
They talked with fellow travelers at inns where they stayed and at places of interest they visited. Ben began to think that perhaps he would enjoy traveling after all. He was sure he would have lingered in southeast Wales longer if he had been alone. He was fascinated by the new industries that were springing up—coal mines and associated shipping concerns and metalworks. He would have loved to make a few detours—into the Rhondda and Swansea Valleys, for example, to see the industries at work. Perhaps he would come back one day and add chapters to his book that were not concerned purely with pictorial beauty. But not yet. After he had seen Samantha settled, he would want to put as much distance as possible between himself and her.
“I have been thinking,” he said the morning they left Swansea behind and proceeded toward West Wales, “that after you have taken up residence in your cottage I will take the route up the west coast of Wales rather than return the way we have come. I will see Aberystwyth and Harlech and Mount Snowdon, and then travel along the north coast.”
Her dark eyes—those lovely, expressive eyes, which seemed to have come more fully alive since they left County Durham—looked steadily back into his own. She was wearing pale spring green today and looked young and wholesome and pretty. And desirable, though he tried to ignore that thought.
He was very glad they had not become lovers that night. It was going to be a lonely enough feeling, driving off on his own, without the added complication of having indulged in an affair with her.
Or would he regret not having reached for pleasure when it had surely been offered?
“There is sure to be some lovely scenery on that route,” she said, half averting her face to gaze out of the window. “There already has been, has there not? Being in sight of the sea so much of the time smites me here.” She tapped the outer edge of one curled fist against her stomach. “Or perhaps it is Wales itself that is affecting me. It really does feel like a different country even though most people speak English. But, oh, the accent, Ben. It is like music.”
“Penderris is by the sea,” he said. “Did I tell you that? It is at the top of a high cliff in Cornwall.”
“With yellow sands, as there are everywhere here?” she asked.
“Yes. Sands far below the towering cliffs. I can only look down on the beach when I am there. But it is a beautiful sight.”
“You do not swim, then?”
“I did once upon a time,” he told her. “Like a fish. Or an eel. Especially in forbidden waters. The deep side of the lake at Kenelston was always infinitely more inviting than the river side, where the water was no deeper than waist high even to a boy. How could one even pretend to be a self-respecting fish there? But I have digressed.”
She turned her face toward him while the dog snuffled in his sleep on the seat opposite and moved his chin to a more comfortable position. He saw in her face an awareness of the fact that their journey together was coming to an end.
“When we arrive in Tenby,” he said, “there are going to have to be a few changes.”
Mr. Rhys, the solicitor who was looking after her cottage, had his chambers there. Since she did not have the key to the house or even know exactly where it was, they were going to have to find him. And then everything would change. Either the cottage could be lived in or it could not. They must discover the answer to that question first and proceed from there. But there was no point yet in wondering what their next step would be if it turned out that it could not.
She raised her eyebrows. “You sound like an officer about to issue orders to your men. What are they, sir?”
“When we arrive there,” he said, “you are going to have to revert to being the widowed Mrs. McKay, and I am going to have to be Major Sir Benedict Harper, friend of the late Captain Matthew McKay, escorting you as a result of that deathbed promise I made him. But you must have a maid, you know, to add some semblance of propriety to our having traveled so far together.”
Her eyebrows stayed elevated while he frowned in thought. “She accompanied you as far as Tenby,” he said, “but flatly refused to go one step farther from England or even to stay there. You will have been forced to send her on her way back to England by stage the very day we call upon your solicitor. You will need an instant replacement, of course, even before you move into your cottage. And you are going to need one or two other servants, I daresay—a housekeeper, a cook, or perhaps someone who can serve in both capacities, especially if the cottage is small. Perhaps a handyman. A companion.”
“You do not need to concern yourself with those details, Major Harper,” she said, her back to the window now as she gazed steadily at him. “I shall manage. And I daresay Mr. Rhys will be willing to advise me.”
He smiled apologetically. “I will worry.”
“Why?” she asked him. “Because I am a woman?”
“Because everything here will be new and strange to you,” he said. “Because you will be alone.”
“And because I am a woman.”
He did not contradict her. But it was not just that. It was something he did, organizing people and events, managing them. Or, rather, it was something he had done when he was an officer. It was something he enjoyed, something he missed, though he might, of course, have taken over the running of his own estate three years ago or any time since then.
“This feels like goodbye,” she said softly.
“I believe you will be happy in this part of the world,” he said. “You already seem to have a certain sense of belonging.”
“I do.” Yet there seemed to be a sadness in her eyes.
This feels like goodbye.
Yes, she would settle here, provided the cottage was habitable. She would surely have some neighbors and would make friends, and after a decent time she would meet a worthy Welshman and marry and have children. She would be happy. And she would be free forever of the pernicious influence of Heathmoor and the rest of her in-laws.
And he would never know about any of it.
It would not matter, though. He would soon forget about her, as she would forget about him.
It just seemed at this moment that he never could.
