The Escape by Mary Balogh

14

They reached Tenby early one afternoon on a cool, blustery day with white clouds scudding across a blue sky. It was a pretty, hilly town built above high cliffs, with views of the sea from a number of the front streets. They took rooms at a hotel at the top of the town and proceeded downhill to the chambers of Rhys and Llywellyn, their coachman having inquired about the direction while they were securing their rooms.

Mr. Llywellyn was not in, they were told, but Mr. Rhys would be pleased to see them if they cared to wait for a few minutes until he was free.

Samantha felt as fearful as if she had just stepped into the rooms of a tooth drawer. Much—perhaps the whole of the rest of her life—depended upon what happened in the next little while. If the cottage was not a viable home, then she did not know what she would do. If it was, then Ben would very soon be leaving.

She had tried not to think of that, and so of course she had been able to think of little else. She would miss him. Well, of course she would. But that simple realization did not begin to account for the deep pit of emptiness she sensed would be awaiting her when she watched his carriage drive away without her—forever.

She doubted she would see him again.

It was a gloomy thought to add to the dreariness of the fact that she was wearing her blacks again after swearing she never would. She was not wearing the veil over her face, however.

Mr. Rhys, a short, neatly dressed, white-haired man, who looked as if he surely ought to have retired years ago, came out of his room no longer than three minutes after they had sat down, his face wreathed in smiles. He extended his right hand to Samantha.

“Mrs. McKay?” he said. “Well, this is a welcome surprise. And Major Sir Benedict Harper? How do you do, sir?”

He shook them both heartily by the hand and ushered them into his office after instructing his clerk to bring in a pot of tea. He directed them to two chairs and took his place behind a large desk in a chair slightly higher than theirs, Samantha noticed with some amusement.

“I cannot say you resemble Miss Bevan, your great-aunt, Mrs. McKay,” he said to Samantha. “I believe, however, that you do have a bit of the look of Miss Gwynneth Bevan, her niece, your mother. She was just a girl when I saw her last, but she showed promise of being a great beauty. I am delighted you have come in person. Miss Bevan’s cottage, now yours, of course, has been unoccupied for a number of years, and I have been wondering lately if you had any new instructions for me. It is a year since I last heard from the Reverend Saul, your brother, who wrote as usual on your behalf. I would have been writing again soon, but this is so much better.”

Samantha frowned. John had been conducting business with Mr. Rhys on her behalf? He had certainly not sent on any letter but that one not long after their father’s death. Had he taken her silence on that occasion as permission to run her affairs for her?

“Is the cottage habitable, Mr. Rhys?” She felt as if she had been holding her breath ever since she arrived here.

“There may be a little bit of dust,” he said. “I have cleaners going in only once a month. I sent workers in a few months ago to deal with some damp in the pantry, but it was nothing serious. The garden is not as pretty as Miss Bevan always kept it. The flowers have been neglected, but I have made sure the grass is cut a few times each year. You may find the furniture a bit old-fashioned, but it is solid enough and of the best quality and it has been protected with covers. The inside probably needs a coat of paint, and the mats may be getting close to being threadbare. But I daresay I could get a decent price for it just as it is if you wish to sell it.”

“Oh, but I wish to live there,” she told him.

He beamed and rubbed his hands together. “I am delighted to hear it,” he said. “Houses were made to be lived in, I always say, preferably by their longtime owners. There is still some of the rent money left in the account here. I have taken from it only what has been needed to keep up the house. And the rest of the money is intact.”

“The rest of the money?” Samantha looked inquiringly at him.

“Miss Bevan was not in possession of a vast fortune,” Mr. Rhys explained in his lovely precise Welsh accent. “But she was left a very tidy sum when old Mr. Bevan, her father, passed on. She did not spend much of it—she lived frugally all her life and always said she was contented as she was. And Mrs. Saul, your mother, never withdrew any of it. It has been sitting in an account here for many years now, gathering a nice bit of interest.”

There was money as well as a habitable cottage? Why had she never known about this? Who had known? Papa? John?

She did not ask how much money there was. Neither did she ask any details about the cottage. She did not suppose either was of any significant size. But she did feel foolish for not knowing and wondered if the fault was her own. She had never asked—but her mother had talked so disparagingly about the property that she had made it seem like nothing at all.

Samantha was pleased, though, to know that there was a bit of money as well as the house. She had not been left penniless when Matthew died, but neither was she any more than comfortably situated. A few pounds more would be very welcome, especially if the cottage needed new rugs and a fresh coat of paint. She exchanged a look with Ben, and he smiled.

But all this meant, of course, that he would have no further reason to stay with her. For which fact he would surely be very thankful. She was really not his responsibility, after all.

The cottage was only a few miles along the coast, Mr. Rhys explained after the clerk had brought in the tea and a plate of sweet biscuits. It was close to the village of Fisherman’s Bridge though separated from it by sand dunes, which hid the cottage from view. The beach in front of it had always been considered part of the property and was never used by anyone except the inhabitants of the cottage. He would not advise Mrs. McKay to go there today or even tomorrow. He would like to have the cottage cleaned up for her first and the grass cut and some coal and basic necessities of food brought in.

Ben told him the mythical story of his friend, the late Captain McKay, and of Samantha’s maid leaving on the stage bound for England just that morning.

“A pity, that,” Mr. Rhys said. “And you will be staying in Tenby for the next couple of nights, will you? At a hotel? That puts Mrs. McKay in a bit of an awkward position, doesn’t it, even if she does have you for company and protection, Major. A lady needs her maid as well as a gentleman to lend her countenance. Let me see what I can do about finding a new maid. It should not be too difficult even at such short notice. The opportunities for good positions do not arise every day around here, especially for girls.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rhys,” Ben said. “That would set my mind at ease. I was deeply concerned, as you may imagine, when that wretched maid insisted that she would not stand for one more day of moving away from England rather than toward it.”

He made a convincing liar, Samantha thought. And what did he mean by that would set my mind at ease?

“Wales is often seen as a wild, heathen outpost,” Mr. Rhys said with one of his broad smiles. “And sometimes we Welsh are content to keep it that way. Though the southwest here is often referred to as little England. You will not find many people hereabouts who speak and understand nothing but Welsh.”

“But it is a lovely, musical language,” Samantha protested, “and I intend to learn it.”

“Splendid.” Mr. Rhys beamed at each of them in turn and rubbed his hands together again.

They took their leave as soon as they had finished drinking their tea.

“It is habitable, Ben,” Samantha said as they were being driven slowly up a steep hill on the way back to their hotel. “I feel quite dizzy with the knowledge. Though I expect it is very tiny. I wonder what a tidy sum amounts to. Do you suppose I am vastly wealthy?”

“Probably not,” he said. “But maybe it will be enough to buy you plenty of coal for your fires during the winters. They are supposed to be milder here than in other parts of the country, but if my experience of Cornwall is anything to judge by, they can be mighty damp and cheerless. And windy.”

It was windy here today.

“I suppose that is the penalty of living close to the sea,” she said. “Oh, Ben, Mr. Rhys is so … respectable, is he not?”

“Of course,” he said. “What did you expect? A wild heathen? He is as old as the hills too.”

“He knew my great-aunt,” she said.

“You know nothing about her but her name?” he asked. “Are you curious about her, Samantha? And about the rest of your heritage?”

“My mother almost never talked about her life here,” she told him. “I think she was unhappy. Or perhaps just restless. She ran away to London when she was seventeen and never came back. Perhaps she intended to tell me more when I was older, but she died very suddenly when I was only twelve.”

She had not answered his question about whether she was curious or not, though. She was a bit afraid to be curious, actually. She was afraid of what she might discover. Her mother had been abandoned by her parents, Samantha’s grandparents. That at least she knew. She doubted she wanted to know the details.

Her great-aunt had owned her own cottage, though. That meant something at least. She had obviously not been penniless. Neither had her father, Samantha’s great-grandfather, if he had left her a tidy sum, whatever that might be. But where had her money come from before that to purchase a cottage? She had apparently never been married. She had had enough money to live upon without the sum her father left her. She had been able to leave most or all of that to her niece, Samantha’s mother, in addition to the cottage.

Samantha had always thought of her Welsh relatives as impoverished. Yet even a little bit of thought would have made her realize that her great-aunt could not have been penniless and that her money must have come from somewhere.

“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “perhaps I am just a little bit curious, after all.”

But they had arrived outside their hotel.

“Shall we rest for what remains of today and explore tomorrow?” Ben suggested. “Or would you—”

She interrupted him. “You are going to go to your room to lie down for a while,” she told him. “I can always tell when you are in pain. You smile too much.”

“I shall have to frown ferociously,” he said, suiting action to words, “in order to convince you that I am hale and hearty.”

He did not argue, though, about withdrawing to his room.

The day after tomorrow, Samantha thought as she closed the door to her own room, she was going to be moving into her own home. Her new life would begin in earnest. And Ben would start on his way up the west coast of Wales and the rest of his life.

Oh, dear, how could one’s spirit be so elated and yet so depressed all at the same time? She had better take her mind off things by walking Tramp.

Two hours later, when Samantha was back in her room and sitting by the window, alternately looking at the sea and trying to read, there was a knock on her door. She opened it, smiling in anticipation of seeing Ben on the other side. But a thin, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl stood there instead.

She had been sent by Mr. Rhys’s clerk, she explained, to be Mrs. McKay’s maid and look after her clothes and fetch her washing water and do her hair and anything else that was asked of her, if Mrs. McKay pleased, but she was a good girl and Mr. Rhys himself could testify to that fact since her own mother’s sister had been working for his wife’s cousin for five years now and never any trouble, and would Mrs. McKay give her a chance, please, and she would never be sorry for she would do anything Mrs. McKay pleased and besides, the clerk had told her she must stay for the night even if not forever as the silly English girl who had been Mrs. McKay’s maid had gone away on the stage this morning and abandoned her because she did not like Wales, though what was wrong with Wales, who knew, for it was surely a hundred times better than that England, where there was scarcely a mountain or molehill to make the land interesting and people could not sing to save their lives, but anyway, it would not be respectable for Mrs. McKay to be alone in a hotel without a maid even though her dead husband’s friend, who was both a major and a sir, was here to protect her, though in another room of course, and … and would Mrs. McKay consider her for the job, please?

Samantha was not sure the girl had stopped once to draw breath. Her eyes were wide with mingled eagerness and anxiety.

“You have the advantage of me,” she said. “You know my name.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “Gladys, Mrs. McKay. Gladys Jones.”

“And how old are you, Gladys?” Samantha asked.

“I am fourteen, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said. “I am the oldest of us. There are seven younger than me and none of us working yet. I would be much obliged to you if you would take me on so that I can give some money to Da to help him feed us all. I am a good worker. My mam says so, and she says she will miss me if I go into service, but Ceris will do almost as well in my place. She is a good girl too and she has just turned thirteen and she is nearly as tall as me. But perhaps you would not need me to live in just yet, and I could go back and forth really easy because I live in Fisherman’s Bridge, no more than a bit of a walk from the empty cottage where you are going to move to. Mam is expecting another of us in a few weeks, and I would rather be there with her for the nights anyway until the new babe is in the cradle. After that I would be more than happy to live in. Though I will live in right away if you would rather and just have my half day to visit Mam and help Ceris out as much as I can.”

Samantha stood back to let the girl into the room.

“I will be happy to give you a try, Gladys,” she said, “while you give me a try. And I believe I will be able to do without your services at night at least for a while.”

She thought of the maid she had had at Bramble Hall and how the girl had often kept her up late with her chattering. Gladys might well keep her up all night if she lived in.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said, and she began immediately to attack Samantha’s bags, which she proceeded to unpack even though she was going to have to pack everything again the morning after tomorrow.

Word was delivered to the hotel the following morning that a Mrs. Price, widowed mother of the blacksmith at Fisherman’s Bridge, had gone over to the cottage to supervise the cleaners who had been sent in, to open the windows to air the place out, and to remove the covers from the furniture and do a bit of shopping and get fires lit in all the grates after the windows were closed again so that everything would be nice and warm and cozy for Mrs. McKay when she arrived the following day. Mrs. Price had expressed a willingness to be interviewed for a permanent position if Mrs. McKay so desired. She was an excellent cook and had held previous positions as a cook and housekeeper. She had the references to prove it.

And so the next phase of her life was about to begin, Samantha thought as she spent the afternoon with Ben and Tramp, sitting and taking short walks along the top of the cliffs above the sweep of Tenby Bay.

A phase that would not include Ben.

“Ben,” she said in a rush after they had sat silently admiring the view for a while, “will you stay for a few days? After tomorrow, I mean?”

He gazed out to sea, his eyes narrowed against the brightness of the light sparkling off its surface.

“Oh, how selfish of me,” she said. “Please ignore the question. You must be very eager to be on your way.”

“If there is an inn at Fisherman’s Bridge,” he said, “I will stay for a few days. Until I am satisfied that you are properly settled.”

“Did I force that upon you?” she asked him. “I am not your responsibility.”

When he turned his head to look at her, he was frowning slightly.

“Oh, but you are,” he said. “I promised my friend, your husband, on his deathbed that I would escort you here and see you safely settled. Remember? I always keep my promises.”

And then, just when she felt that she would surely dissolve into tears, he grinned at her.

That grin was going to haunt her after he had gone. It always somehow had the power to turn her weak at the knees.

“I am going to take Tramp for a quick walk,” she said, getting hastily to her feet.

The cliffs got lower as they traveled west along the coast the next morning, though they rose high above the sea again in the not-too-far distance. They had been told that the village of Fisherman’s Bridge and therefore the cottage on this side of it were in the dip where the cliffs were at their lowest.

Samantha fully expected that the cottage would be no more than the hovel her mother had called it. But she would not be disappointed, she told herself. At least it was habitable. It would do for a while even if not forever. And this was such a beautiful part of the world she would surely not regret moving here.

And then, quite suddenly, just as they were approaching a line of rolling sand dunes, partly covered with grass, there it was. Or what must be it since there was no other dwelling in sight and the village must be beyond the dunes.

Except that it was not a cottage. Or not what she thought of as a cottage, anyway.

“Oh, goodness,” she said.

Ben leaned sideways, his shoulder pressed against hers, so that he could see it with her out of the window on her side of the carriage.

It was a sturdy, square house of gray stone with a gray slate roof. It looked as if it must have at least four bedchambers upstairs and as many rooms downstairs. There was a porch at the front and a dormer window in the roof above it. A square garden surrounded it, bordered by a whitewashed wooden fence. There was a sizable barn in one corner. What had obviously been flower beds at one time were bare apart from a few weeds, but the grass had been newly scythed. Its green expanse was unmarred by either daisy or buttercup.

“That is a cottage?”

“Well,” Ben said, “it is not a mansion, but it is not a hermit’s shed either, is it?”

“It is a house,” she said. “How on earth could my mother have called it a hovel? Do you suppose there is some mistake?”

“No,” he said. “The carriage is turning toward it. Your new maid would say something if this was the wrong place, even though I notice that the sight of Quinn awed her into silence when she met him in the stable yard this morning and I have not heard her voice from up on the box, have you?”

“My great-aunt could really not have been impoverished,” she said. “I always assumed she was.”

A large woman in a dark brown dress with a voluminous white apron and matching mob cap had appeared on the steps outside the porch, a welcoming smile on her face. Mrs. Price, Samantha assumed. She dipped into a curtsy as the coachman lowered the steps and handed Samantha down at the garden gate. Mr. Quinn opened it. Gladys was clambering down from the box, unassisted.

“Welcome, Mrs. McKay,” Mrs. Price said. “Everything is ready for you, even at such short notice. I kept everyone’s nose to the grindstone yesterday until everything shone and not one speck of dust or dirt remained. And I came over early this morning to get some baking done so that you would have something nice to eat as well as having the smell of cooking in the house. There is nothing so homely as that smell, is there? And is that you, Gladys Jones? Your mam said you had gone off to see if you could be Mrs. McKay’s maid. Come inside, ma’am. The gentleman has hurt himself, has he?”

The interior lived up to the outside, Samantha discovered over the next half hour. There were four sizable square rooms downstairs—a parlor, a dining room, a kitchen, and a book room. There were four large bedchambers upstairs and one small one at the head of the stairs, and there was the attic room with its dormer window in the roof. A hallway bisected the house downstairs and contained the staircase, which ran straight up to the landing above.

The architect, whoever he had been, had lacked imagination, perhaps, but Samantha loved the dimensions of the rooms. The furniture, though old and heavy and predominantly dark in color, just as Mr. Rhys had described it, nevertheless looked comfortable. Yesterday, no doubt, there had been a smell of age and even mustiness here, but the opened windows and the fires and the baking had taken care of that.

Finally, Mrs. Price bustled off to the kitchen to fetch some of her newly baked cakes and a pot of tea. Gladys was thumping about in the main bedchamber above the parlor, where Samantha sat with Ben.

“I cannot quite believe it,” she said, spreading her hands on the soft old leather of the chair arms.

“That the cottage really exists?” he said. “Or that it is habitable? Or that it is really quite large? Or that it actually belongs to you? Or that you are here at last? Or that you have a beach all to yourself and a view to entice you to your front windows for a lifetime? Or that your life has changed so drastically in such a short time?”

“Oh, stop,” she said, laughing. She rested her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes briefly. “All of those things. Oh, Ben, it is as if I have been snatched away from my life and deposited here in heaven. It really feels like heaven.”

“I daresay,” he said, “the Earl of Heathmoor did you a favor when he took Bramble Hall away from you and summoned you to Leyland Abbey. You may never have given this cottage a serious thought if you had not been desperate for escape, or, if you had, perhaps you would never have thought of coming here.”

“This was fate, then?” She opened her eyes to look at him. “Something that was meant to be?”

But Mrs. Price came bustling back into the room, bearing a large tray, before he could answer her.

“I did not know if you liked currant cake or seed cake or bara brith best, Mrs. McKay,” she said. “So I made all three and you can have your pick. I daresay the major likes all three. Men usually do. I am sure you must both be ready for a nice cup of tea. You would not prefer coffee, I hope? Nasty, bitter stuff, if you were to ask me. I never have it in my own house. My man did not like it either and nor does my son. But I can get some to bring tomorrow, if you like it. If you want me to come again, that is. I wouldn’t mind coming in each day to get your breakfast and staying until I have cooked your evening meal, though I would rather not live in. My son would starve since he has not found a wife for himself yet, and I can never seem to sleep sound in any other bed but my own.”

“Shall we give your suggestion a try?” Samantha said. “And I am happy to drink tea. Bara … brith, did you say?”

“This dark full-fruit loaf,” Mrs. Price said, indicating the slices of it on the cake plate she had brought in before pouring them each a cup of tea. “There is no cake to compare with it for richness of flavor. That dog is gnawing on a soup bone and drinking his water in the kitchen. I do like a dog in the house, and a cat too, though I have never seen a dog quite like this one.”

“And never will again, Mrs. Price, it is to be fervently hoped,” Ben said.

Mrs. Price laughed. “Can I get you anything else before I go back to the kitchen?” she asked.

“You have always lived here, have you, Mrs. Price?” Samantha asked. “The village is not far away?”

“Just over those sand dunes,” Mrs. Price said, pointing west. “And behind here is Mr. Bevan’s land and the big house, though you can’t see it from here.”

Mr. Bevan’s land.

The big house.

“He is your grandfather, I expect, Mrs. McKay, isn’t he?” Mrs. Price said. “I wasn’t sure who was coming here, though I was told it was the owner. But you look as if you must be his granddaughter. He married a Gypsy lady, you know. But of course you know. You have the look of one yourself, though it sits well on you, I must say. I’ll get back to the kitchen. I have some soup cooking and some bread rising.”

“Is there an inn in the village, Mrs. Price?” Ben asked as she turned to leave.

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir,” she told him. “It is a nice, tidy place too. Nothing fancy, but it serves up a good dinner, it do, and is always clean. The stables too. My brother owns it.”

“Thank you,” Ben said. “I shall probably stay there for a few nights until I am sure Mrs. McKay is properly settled here. I promised her late husband, my friend, that I would, you know.”

Samantha took a bite of the bara brith when she was alone with Ben. It really was delicious, but she did not have much of an appetite. She set her plate aside and looked at him. He was gazing steadily back at her.

“He has land,” she said, “and a big house. He is still alive.”

“Yes.”

“Yet he sent my mother here to live with his sister,” she said. “He let her go to London at the age of seventeen and did not go after her. He did not go to her wedding or to my christening or to her funeral. It could not have been poverty that caused any of those things, could it?”

“Has imagining that he was poor comforted you over the years?” he asked.

“I have not needed comforting,” she told him. “I have not thought of him or wondered about him.”

But she knew as she stared at him and as he sat looking silently back that she must have done even if it had not been conscious. And she knew that the conviction that her grandfather had been poor was the only thing that had satisfied the hurt of being cut off from her mother’s family at the same time as she was being shunned by her father’s.

“I suppose,” she said, “it was because she was the daughter of the Gypsy who abandoned him. My mother, I mean. And because I was her daughter. If he knew of me at all, that is.”

“Are you going to be sorry you came?” Ben asked.

She looked beyond him to the window, which faced south. Through it she could see the land beyond the garden fence dipping away to the west and then rising again over the dunes. Through the dip she could see the sea and a strip of golden sand—just a stone’s throw from her own house. The house itself was warm and cozy. A clock on the mantel ticked steadily. It would be lulling when she sat here alone. If she sat by the open window, she would be able to smell the salt of the sea. She would be able to hear it too.

And it was all hers.

It was her heritage.

“No.” She opened her mouth to say more and shut it again.

“But—?”

“I am a bit afraid, perhaps,” she admitted. “Afraid of Pandora’s box.”

He got slowly to his feet, abandoned one of his canes, and reached out his free hand. She set her own in it, and he led her to the window.

“Look at the sea, Samantha,” he said. “I learned the trick when I was at Penderris. It was there long before we were thought of. It will be there long after we are forgotten, ebbing and flowing according to the law of the tides.”

“Our little affairs are insignificant?”

“Far from it,” he said. “Pain is not insignificant. Neither is bewilderment or fear. Or conditions like poverty or homelessness. But somewhere—somewhere—there is peace. It is not even far off. It is somewhere deep inside us, in fact, ever present, just waiting for us to look inward to find it.”

She turned her head to look at his lean profile.

“It is how you learned to master your pain,” she said with sudden intuition.

“It was, at last, the only way of doing it,” he admitted. “But I sometimes forget. We all do. It is human nature to try to manage all our living for ourselves without drawing upon … But I am sorry. I did not intend to be so obscure. Just don’t be afraid, though. Whatever you discover here, the knowing cannot bring you any real harm even if it feels painful, for these things are whether you know them or not. And perhaps the knowing will bring you some understanding and even perhaps some peace.”

He continued to look out through the window, and she continued to look at him.

His pain, she thought, was fathoms deep. He had learned to master it. But he was still adrift in life. Unlike her, he had not found his home. But, also unlike her, he had learned not to fear.

“You will stay for a while?” she asked him. Oh, she hoped she was not being selfish. But just for a few days …

“I will stay,” he said, lowering his eyes to hers. “For a while.”