The Escape by Mary Balogh

16

After having luncheon together at the cottage, they rode into the village, Samantha on the horse Mr. Quinn had ridden earlier. He had found an old sidesaddle in the barn during the morning and had worked on it for a couple of hours, checking it for safety, making a few repairs, and cleaning and polishing it until it looked quite respectable. He would walk back to the inn, he assured Samantha. It was not far.

And so finally they rode together, she and Ben. Matilda would have forty fits of the vapors, especially if she could see Samantha in her very old blue riding habit. But Matilda already seemed like someone from another lifetime.

“It will really be a very short ride,” Ben told her, a note of apology in his voice. “It is no distance at all to the village.”

Just too far for him to walk. She understood. She rode slightly behind him and watched him. He always looked so very virile and at home in the saddle. She had almost thrown herself at him this morning, she remembered. Whatever had possessed her? But it had struck her that she would regret it if he went away and they had shared no more than longing and a few kisses.

It would not be wrong, surely, if they enjoyed a brief affair? They were both single adults. They liked each other. They were attracted to each other. It was too soon for her to think of marrying again, if she ever did. He had said he would never marry, and certainly he would not do so before he had found what he was searching for in life and had settled down—if he ever did.

So where would be the harm?

Would they swim tomorrow? Or would it rain, as it had that infamous day they had planned to ride together? Would he be able to swim? And what would happen afterward, when they were alone together in her cottage?

She did not have long for such thoughts. Fisherman’s Bridge was indeed only just over the sand dunes.

She was eager to see it and a bit anxious too. This village and these villagers would become a part of her life, perhaps forever. She would need to find acceptance here and friends and acquaintances and things to do. For a moment she wondered if anyone knew about her, but of course everyone would. Mrs. Price lived at the smithy, and Gladys lived here. Both were talkative and sociable. And Ben was staying at the inn.

“I wonder what the people here do for a living,” she said as she looked about her with interest.

“Some work here in the village,” he said. “There are fishermen, as one would expect from the name. I talked briefly at breakfast this morning with a potter who sells his wares to summer visitors both here and in Tenby. I believe most people, though, are employed at Cartref in one capacity or another.”

“Car—?”

“Car, as in carry,” he said, “and trev as in the name Trevor. The emphasis is on the first syllable. The r in both syllables is slightly rolled. It is the first Welsh word I have learned, and since it will probably also be the last, I am determined to pronounce it correctly. It means home.”

“You have gone through that explanation and learned a whole new foreign word,” she said, laughing, “just to inform me that most people work at home?”

“No,” he said. “Cartref is the name of a particular home. Let’s ride along to the end of the street. The road crosses the bridge there, the one that gives its name to the village. Though how anyone can fish off it when the river that flows beneath it is so close to the sea I do not know.”

“Perhaps no one does,” she said. “Perhaps it is so named because it leads across to where all the fishing boats are moored.”

They passed a few people on the street, and Samantha inclined her head to them and smiled. She guessed that her visit here would be the subject of several conversations for the rest of the day. She wondered what the nature of those conversations would be. Would it be remembered that her great-aunt had raised a half-Gypsy girl and that that girl had been her mother? But of course it would. Mrs. Price knew it. Would these people resent the fact that she had inherited the cottage and come to live here? Or was she being oversensitive?

She would find out soon enough, she supposed.

It was a picturesque bridge, humpbacked and built of gray stone. A shallow river bubbled beneath it on its way to the sea. She gazed ahead to the small boats bobbing on the water and thought it one of the prettiest sights she had seen. Would she ever have a chance to go out in one of those boats?

“Ah,” Ben said. “I was told I would be able to see it from here.”

“See what?”

He was not looking at the boats. His horse was turned the other way, and his gaze was fixed upon something inland. She turned to look too.

There was no need for him to answer her question. There were low hills a mile back from the sea. Halfway up one of them, nestled within a horseshoe of trees, was a great mansion, which gleamed white in the sunshine. Even from this far away she could see that it had large windows on all three floors, diminishing in size from the ground floor to the top. There must be magnificent views from every one of those windows. A bright green lawn, which was obviously well kept, swept down the slope to the plain. The rest of the garden or park was hidden from view.

“Thatis Cartref?” she asked. “It looks very grand indeed, does it not? I did not expect to find any large estates outside of England. To whom does it belong, I wonder. Do you know?”

He did not answer. His horse had become suddenly restless, and he was concentrating upon bringing it under control.

Then the truth struck her, rather like a fist colliding with her stomach.

“Oh, no,” she said.

He looked apologetically at her, as though the answer to her question was his fault.

“It is my grandfather’s?”

“He is as rich as a nabob, Samantha,” he told her. “He owns coal mines—plural, I understand—in the coal mining valleys in the east part of the country. He inherited those from his father. He also owns ironworks in the valleys close to Swansea, where industry has been springing up and thriving.”

If she had not been on horseback, she might well have swooned.

There were seagulls crying overhead, sounding almost human.

“And I have always imagined,” she said, “that he was a laborer or a wanderer, a ne’er-do-well who married a professional nomad and then, when she abandoned him, foisted his child upon a sister who had somehow gained ownership of a run-down hovel. Why did my mother never tell me?”

“I suppose she would have,” he said, “if she had lived until you were older.”

“I would never have come if I had known,” she said.

“Why not?”

She wheeled her horse about to face him. “He had no legitimate reason for abandoning my mother. He had the home and the means with which to raise her himself. He had the means with which to go after her when she went to London, and to attend her wedding, and to visit her after her marriage. He had the means to come to see me. And what, do you suppose, is the tidy sum that was left my great-aunt and then passed to my mother and so to me—with the interest it has gathered? Ben, how wealthy am I? I do not want to be wealthy. Not in this way. I do not want any of it.”

“Think a minute.” He was annoyingly calm. “That money, however much it is or is not, was left to your great-aunt by your great-grandfather. None of it came from your grandfather.”

She frowned at him for a few moments. He was right, of course. But even so … Oh, all the sparkle and joy were gone from the afternoon.

“I wish I had never known,” she said. “I almost wish I had not come.”

“Where else would you have gone?” he asked her.

“I could have married you,” she said, “and wandered footloose and carefree for the rest of my life.” But the look on his face restored some of her humor and she smiled. “I had a premonition that I would be opening Pandora’s box by coming here. Once that box had been opened in the myth, there was no stuffing all the troubles back inside it, was there? I cannot now leave here and forget what I have learned. Am I talking sense?”

Her grandfather had not wanted her mother or her. John had not wanted them either. All she had ever had were her mother and father, and they were both gone. She felt awash with a terrible sense of aloneness. Yet nothing had changed. As Ben had said, everything was as it had been ten minutes ago and last week.

Oh, but everything had changed.

“Strangely, yes,” he said. “Come to the inn for some tea.”

But as they turned their horses back into the village, they were hailed by a genial-looking, gray-haired man and a plump, smiling lady.

“Mrs. McKay?” the gentleman asked, doffing his tall hat.

Samantha inclined her head.

“Pardon me for intruding when you are out enjoying your ride,” he said, “but I thought it must be you and the gentleman who is staying at the inn—Major Harper, I believe? I am Ivor Jenkins, the vicar here, and this is my good wife. We are taking a stroll along the front to look at the boats, it being such a lovely day and my sermon for Sunday all written. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our community, Mrs. McKay, and to hope that we will see you at church on Sunday?”

Mrs. Jenkins did not say anything, but she beamed up at Samantha and nodded her head.

“I shall certainly be there,” Samantha assured them. “Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. I shall look forward to it.”

“Marvelous,” he said. “I hope you will enjoy my sermon, which I think particularly clever. I always do, though my parishioners often do not agree. I know you will enjoy the music. It has been said that when the whole congregation sings, the roof lifts an inch or two off its moorings. I don’t suppose it is true, is it, or it would blow away in a strong wind, but it is true that if you want to hear singing as it was meant to be heard, you must come to Wales.”

He joined in Samantha and Ben’s laughter.

“Ivor.” His wife set a hand on his arm.

“I will not keep you any longer,” the vicar said. “I have a tendency to do that when my good wife is not present to remind me that people have other things to do than stand talking with me. I look forward to serving you in my capacity as vicar, Mrs. McKay. And I hope you will enjoy the rest of your stay here, Major. We do not have much to offer here except scenery and views, but they are without compare, I always think.”

He restored his hat to his head, and he and his wife proceeded on their way across the bridge to look at the boats.

“There is a welcome here for you,” Ben said softly. “You can make a home here.”

“Can I?” She looked at him with troubled eyes for a moment and then smiled. “The Reverend Jenkins seems kindly, and his wife looks sweet, though it would appear she knows how to keep him in line. Yes, let’s go for tea, Ben.”

The sky was leaden gray, Samantha could see when she woke up the following morning. And when she sat up in bed, she could see that the water was a deeper shade of the same color. There were raindrops on the window. They did not obliterate the view, and she could not hear any more pelting against the panes. But it was not a promising start to the day.

She was hugely disappointed. If they could not swim today, Ben would perhaps leave instead. There was really not much reason for his staying any longer at the village inn, was there? She had a more than decent house in which to live, she had servants, she had her own competence and more at a bank in Tenby. A few people had nodded to her in the village yesterday, and the vicar and his wife had stopped to introduce themselves and welcome her. Both the landlord of the inn and his wife had chatted amiably with them over tea. No, there was no reason for him to stay any longer.

She was tempted to burrow beneath the bedcovers again and go back to sleep. But she knew it would be impossible. Besides, Tramp would be ready for a walk. And she could hear Gladys in her dressing room and Mrs. Price down in the kitchen. She could smell cooking. What a lazybones she must appear to them. They had both walked from the village this morning.

Ben planned to spend the morning at the inn, working on all the notes he had made in his journal to see if he could organize them into some semblance of chapters for the book he hoped to write. He was to come to the cottage during the afternoon. It was with some surprise, then, that Samantha heard horses’ hooves in the middle of the morning. She had been sorting through the volumes in the book room and went to the window.

It was Mr. Rhys.

He had come, he explained, to satisfy himself that Mrs. McKay had found everything in order and that she approved of the servants his clerk had picked out on her behalf. He was at her service, he told her, if there was anything more he could do for her.

She did not really want to ask. Indeed, the very idea of doing so made her feel almost physically ill. But while she might have remained blissfully ignorant of the answer for the rest of her life if she had stayed in England, there was no avoiding it indefinitely now that she was here.

“Mr. Rhys,” she said, “you mentioned the money my great-aunt left my mother and that my mother in turn left me. I did not know of it until two days ago. Is it a great deal?”

“I have a statement from the bank here with me,” he told her, reaching into the leather case he had set beside his chair. “I thought you would wish to know. I knew the principal but not the exact amount of interest that has accumulated. You can see for yourself, ma’am. You will be pleased, I think.”

He handed her a sheaf of papers.

She lowered her eyes to the top page. Please God, let it be a smallish sum, a pleasant addition to her own modest resources, but nothing too—Her eyes focused upon the total, and then she closed her eyes and licked lips turned suddenly dry.

“It is a nice tidy sum, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Tidy, Mr. Rhys.”

“I hope you are not disappointed,” he said. “Mr. Bevan left the bulk of his property and fortune to his son, which was only natural, I suppose, when he was going to be the one continuing with the business.”

“I expected only the cottage,” she told him. “I wonder why my mother never drew on any of the money.” And why had she never so much as mentioned it? Had Papa known about it? But he must have, after her death if not before. Why had he never said anything? Because his daughter had become more wealthy than his son? Because he respected her mother’s wish to have nothing to do with her past? It would have been that, she decided. He would have respected her mother’s rejection of her past even after her death—and even at the expense of their daughter.

Mr. Rhys was looking uncomfortable. “I know Miss Bevan was very fond of her niece,” he said. “She took her in and she fed and clothed and educated her. But she was always afraid—she confided in me on a few occasions since we were in the way of being friends. She was always afraid the girl would turn wild and go chasing after her mother’s people. And she did like to go barefoot out of doors and run on the beach and swim in the sea. It was what all children were like, I tried to tell Miss Bevan. My own were not much different. But she was afraid. And fear made her overstrict. And maybe a bit overcritical too. I am not sure if that was what drove your mother away. I think there may have been some sort of quarrel between your great-aunt and your grandfather, though they were scarcely on speaking terms at the best of times. And I am not even sure about the quarrel. However it was, your mother went. She was very young. Perhaps she did not know that quarrels are best made up as soon as tempers have cooled, especially with family members.”

Her mother had felt rejected, then, Samantha thought—by her own mother, who had gone back to her people, leaving her child behind; by her father, who had turned her over to his sister’s care; and by her aunt, who was overstrict and overcritical because she was half Gypsy. She had run away at the age of seventeen—and had met Papa, who had loved her quietly and gently and steadfastly for the rest of her life. Perhaps it was significant that she had married an older man, a substitute father, perhaps. For though she had undoubtedly loved Papa, it had not, Samantha thought now, been a passionate relationship.

“I do hate to speak ill of the dead,” Mr. Rhys said, “and a former client and friend at that, but Miss Bevan could be as stubborn as a mule too. When her niece ran away, she would not go after her or even write to her to beg her to come home or ask if she needed anything. And she would not go to meet your father when she heard about the marriage or to meet you when she heard of your birth. Your mother did write on both occasions, so perhaps she did try to reach out. Miss Bevan would not forgive her, though, for running away and becoming an actress after all she had done to make the girl into a respectable lady.”

“And yet,” Samantha said, “she left everything to my mother.”

“And now it is yours,” Mr. Rhys said. “I am glad you have come.”

“Thank you,” Samantha said. “I had no idea, you know.”

“I hope,” he said, “you are not regretting that you did come.”

She gazed at him for a few moments before answering.

She had come here to escape. To hide. To break free of the oppression of a too-strictly-applied respectability. To put aside the heavy trappings of her mourning in favor of gentler memories of the man who had been her husband for seven years. To find some peace. To find some freedom. To make a new beginning.

She had not expected this.

“I am not sorry,” she said.

“Splendid,” Mr. Rhys said, rubbing his hands together, though whether his enthusiasm was for her declaration or for the tray of tea and Welsh cakes Mrs. Price was carrying into the sitting room was unclear. Perhaps it was for both.

He stayed for an hour. Samantha accompanied him to the garden gate when he was leaving since the rain had stopped. Looking up as his carriage moved off, she could see that the clouds were higher and whiter and that there were a few breaks in them, through which she could catch glimpses of blue sky. Perhaps after all the afternoon would be bright and warm.

Tramp was standing at her side, breathing heavily.

“Oh, very well,” she said. “But you must give me a moment to fetch my bonnet and put on my half boots. The ground is wet.”

She was rich, she thought as she stepped inside, and her stomach lurched at the realization. But rich was not quite a strong enough word. She was downright wealthy.

With property and money her mother had wanted no part of.

One thing he was not, Ben decided as he drove a hired gig over to the cottage in the afternoon, was a writer. He could see scenery and points of special interest in his head. He could people each scene with interesting characters and their stories. He could formulate his reactions to it all. He could even get it all down on paper without too much difficulty. The problem, though, was that there was an enormous difference between what he saw and heard in his head and felt in his heart on the one hand and, on the other, what was written on the three closely spaced pages with which he ended up. Somewhere between the two all the life and color and excitement had been drained away to leave cold, hard, uninspired fact.

The only thing any reader would be inspired to do if he plodded through it all was stay home and forget about any itch to travel he might have felt.

No, he was no writer. It was perhaps a bit defeatist to give up after his very first attempt. But the point was that the whole process had bored him horribly—from the daily scribblings in his journal to the organizing of ideas into some sort of outline to the attempted writing of an opening chapter. It had felt like being back at school, compelled to write essays upon subjects that were as dry as dust. This was decidedly not what he wanted to be doing for the rest of his life.

Which left an unsettling void—again.

Quinn was beside him in the gig, though Ben had protested that he did not need to come. His valet was going to unhitch the horse and get it settled in the barn, and then he was going to walk back to the village. He had wanted to take the gig with him and return with it later to drive Ben back to the inn, but Ben had said a firm no. He did not know what time he would be returning. It might be seven or eight o’clock, or it might be midnight. He did not want to have Quinn arriving outside the garden gate with the gig at some inconvenient time.

He tried not to think about that possible midnight departure. And he tried not to think about swimming and making an ass of himself—or drowning himself. The clouds had moved off and the sun was shining. It was warm. There was no excuse not to swim—unless he offered to guard her towel and clothes while she swam alone.

Coward, she had called him yesterday—just before he kissed her.

Well, he could not allow that accusation to become reality, could he, he thought as he walked from the barn to the house. A coward was something he had never been, except recently.

“Ben.”

She was out in the garden again with the dog. She was wearing the floppy-brimmed bonnet and a high-waisted, short-sleeved dress of white muslin embroidered all over with peach rosebuds. It had a deep frill about the hem. And it was very obvious to him that she was wearing no stays beneath it. She was hurrying toward him, both hands extended. But she looked at his canes when she got close and clasped her hands beneath her chin instead. She was looking agitated.

“Ben, I am quite horribly wealthy.”

“Horribly?” He was tempted to grin, but something about her expression stopped him.

“Mr. Rhys was here this morning,” she told him. “He brought a statement from the bank. I could buy half of England.”

“But would you want to?” he asked her.

“I had no idea,” she said. “My mother did not tell me. Neither did my father after she died or later, when I married. He ought to have told me. John did not tell me.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked her. “About your grandfather, I mean. I have heard that he is away from home at present. Though he is expected home soon.”

“I hope he never comes back,” she said vehemently. “I hope he keeps his distance from me forever. My great-aunt I can forgive. She was strict with my mother, but I daresay she did not mean to be cruel. I can never forgive him.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “people need to be allowed to tell their stories.”

“When has he ever tried to tell his to me?” She looked stormy. “Trust you to take a man’s part.”

“We had better go swimming,” he said.

She looked mulish for a few moments and then visibly relaxed. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s, or I will be quarreling with you when it is not you who has offended me. Let’s forget everything except the sand and the water and the freedom and happiness of a sunny afternoon. And the fact that we are together.”

Sometimes it was good just to forget all that perhaps one ought to remember and simply live for the moment.

Sometimes the moment was all that really mattered.