The Escape by Mary Balogh

2

Samantha McKay was restless. She stood at the window of the sitting room at Bramble Hall, her home in County Durham, and drummed her fingertips on the windowsill. Her sister-in-law was lying on the daybed in her room upstairs, incapacitated yet again by a sick headache. Matilda never had ordinary headaches. They were always either sick headaches or migraines, sometimes both.

They had been sitting here together quite companionably just half an hour ago, Samantha stitching at her embroidery, Matilda repairing the lace edging of a tablecloth. Samantha had remarked on what a fine day it was at last, even if the sun was not actually shining. She had suggested casually that perhaps they should go out for a walk. She had almost turned craven and left it at that, but she had pressed onward. Perhaps, she had suggested, they should walk out beyond the confines of the park today. Although the grounds surrounding the house were always referred to as the park, such a word glamorized what was in effect merely a large garden. It was perfectly adequate for a sedate stroll among the flower beds or for sitting out in on a warm day, but it did not offer nearly sufficient scope for real exercise.

And real exercise was what Samantha had begun to crave more than anything else she could think of. If she did not get out beyond house and garden soon and walk, really walk, she would … Oh, she would scream or throw herself down on the floor and drum her heels and have a major tantrum. Well, she would feel like doing all those things even though she supposed she would not actually do anything more extravagant than sigh and yearn and plot. She was nearly desperate, though.

Matilda, predictably, had looked reproachful, not to mention shocked and sorrowful. It was not—or so she had proceeded to explain—that she did not feel in need of a good walk herself. A true lady must, however, learn to master her base desires when she was in deep mourning. A true lady kept herself decently confined to her home and took the air in the privacy of her own park, shielded behind its walls from the critical eyes of the prying world. It was certainly not seemly for a lady in mourning to be seen out enjoying herself. Or to be seen at all for that matter, except by her close relatives and servants inside her own home and by her neighbors at church.

Captain Matthew McKay, Matilda’s brother and Samantha’s husband of seven years, had died four months before Matilda delivered herself of this speech. He had died after suffering for five years from the wounds he had sustained as an officer during the Peninsular Wars. He had needed constant tending during those years, or, rather, he had demanded constant tending, and the role of nurse had fallen to Samantha’s almost exclusive lot since he would admit no one else to the sickroom except his valet and the physician. She had hardly known what it was to sleep for a whole night or to have more than an hour here and there outside the sickroom during the day. She had almost never had the chance to go beyond the garden walls. Even a stroll in the garden had been a rare treat.

Matilda had come to Bramble Hall for the final couple of months of her brother’s life, after Samantha had written to her father-in-law, the Earl of Heathmoor, at Leyland Abbey in Kent, to inform him that the physician believed the end was near. But the burden of care upon Samantha’s shoulders had not been lightened, partly because by that time Matthew really had needed her, and partly because he could not stand the sight of Matilda and always told her quite bluntly when she appeared in his room to take herself off and keep her Friday face out of his sight.

Samantha had been very close to the point of collapse by the time Matthew died. She had been exhausted and numb and dispirited. Her life had felt suddenly empty and colorless. She had had no will to do anything, even to get up in the morning or clothe herself or brush her hair. Even to eat.

It was no wonder she had allowed Matilda to take charge of everything, though she had written to her father-in-law herself within an hour of his son’s death.

Matilda had insisted that the second son of the Earl of Heathmoor be mourned according to the strictest rules of propriety, though she had not needed to insist—Samantha had put up no fight. It had not even occurred to her that she might or that the rules of which Matilda spoke were excessive as well as oppressive. She had allowed herself to be decked out from head to toe in what must surely be the heaviest and gloomiest mourning garments ever fashioned. She had not even insisted upon being fitted for the new clothes. She had allowed herself to be cloistered within her home, the curtains always more than half drawn across the windows out of respect for the dead. She had allowed Matilda to discourage any visitors who made courtesy calls of sympathy from coming again, and to refuse every invitation that was extended to them, even to the most sober and respectable of social gatherings.

Samantha had not missed mingling with society in the form of her neighbors for the obvious reason that she never had mingled with them. She hardly even knew them beyond nodding at church on Sunday mornings. She had been at Bramble Hall for five years, and almost every moment of those years had been devoted to Matthew’s care.

For four months now she had not cared for anything beyond the numbness of her own all-encompassing lethargy and exhaustion. If truth were told, she had been rather glad that Matilda was there to take charge of all that needed to be done, even though she had never liked her sister-in-law any better than her husband had.

But numbness and exhaustion could last only so long. After four months, life was reasserting itself. She was restless. She was ready to fling off her lethargy. She needed to get out—out of the house, out of the park. She needed to walk. She needed to breathe real air.

She gazed outdoors, her fingers drumming, and then looked down at her widow’s weeds and grimaced. She felt the blackness of every ill-fitting stitch of them like a physical weight. She had tried reasoning with Matilda earlier. Surely, she had said, it would be harmless to go out for a walk along country lanes that were rarely traveled. And even if they did encounter someone, surely that person would not think any the worse of them for strolling sedately in the countryside close to their own home. Surely whoever it was would not dash off to spread the word throughout the neighborhood that the widow and her sister-in-law were kicking up a lark, behaving with shocking levity and disrespect for the dead.

Had she really hoped to draw a smile from Matilda with her exaggeration? Had Matilda ever smiled? What she had done was stare stonily back at her smiling sister-in-law, deliberately set aside her unfinished mending task, and announce that she had a sick headache, for which she hoped Samantha was satisfied. She had withdrawn to her room to lie down for an hour or two.

Samantha was glad Matilda had never married. Some poor man had thereby been saved from a life of abject misery. She did not even feel guilty at the uncharitable thought.

Her downward glance at her blacks had also encountered the eager, hopeful expression of a large brown shaggy dog of quite indeterminate breed, a stray that had turned up literally on her doorstep two years ago looking like a gangly skeleton, and had taken up residence there after she fed him out of sheer pity and then tried to shoo him away. He had steadfastly refused to be shooed, and somehow, by means quite beyond either her comprehension or her control, he had taken up residence inside the house and grown more bulky and more thick-and-unruly-coated but never sleek or shiny or graceful as any self-respecting dog ought to look. He was seated at Samantha’s feet now, his tail thumping the floor, his tongue lolling, his eyes begging her to please, please do something with him.

Sometimes she felt he was the only bright spot in her world.

“You would come walking with me if I asked it of you, would you not, Tramp?” she asked him. “Respectability notwithstanding?”

It was a fatal question—it had contained a word beginning with the letter w. Actually, it had contained more than one, but one of them also had the letters a-l-k attached to it. Tramp scrambled to his feet in his usual ungainly manner, yipped sharply as if under the illusion that he was still a puppy, panted noisily as though he had just run a mile at top speed, and continued to gaze expectantly upward.

“How could your answer be anything but yes?” She laughed at him and patted his head. But he was having none of such mild affection. He circled his head so that he could first slobber over her hand and then expose his throat for a good scratch. “And why not? Why ever not, Tramp?”

It was clear Tramp could think of no reason at all why they should deprive themselves merely because Lady Matilda McKay had a sick headache as well as strange notions about air and exercise and correct mourning etiquette. He lumbered over to the door and gazed up at the knob.

It was unseemly for a lady to walk alone beyond the confines of her own park—even when she was not in mourning. Or so Samantha had been taught during the year she had spent at Leyland Abbey while Matthew was away in the Peninsula with his regiment. It was one of the many dreary rules of being a lady that her father-in-law had felt it incumbent upon himself to teach the woman his son had married against his wishes.

Well, she had no choice but to go alone. Matilda was flat on her daybed upstairs and would not have accompanied her anyway—it was the very idea of the walk that had put her on the daybed. If Samantha set one toe beyond the boundary of the park and Matilda and the Earl of Heathmoor found out about it … Well, even if she dug a hole all the way to China and disappeared down it, she would not escape their wrath. And the earl would hear about it if Matilda did. There were many miles of countryside between County Durham in the north of England and Kent in the south, but those miles burned up a few times each week with messengers bearing Matilda’s letters home and the earl’s letters to Bramble Hall.

Why had she allowed this to happen? Samantha asked herself. She was beginning to feel like a prisoner in her own home, under the guardianship of a humorless spy. Matthew would not have tolerated it. He had exercised a sort of tyranny of his own over her, but it was not his father’s. He had hated his father.

“Well,” she said, “since I was foolish enough to use the forbidden word in your hearing, Tramp, it would be nothing short of cruelty to disappoint you. And it would be the ultimate in cruelty to disappoint myself.”

His tail waved, and he looked from the doorknob to her and back again.

Ten minutes later they were striding along the path at the west side of the house toward the garden gate, which they passed through to the lane and meadows beyond. At least, Samantha strode in quite unladylike but equally unrepentant fashion while Tramp loped along at her side and occasionally dashed off in pursuit of any squirrel or small rodent incautious enough to rear its head. Though perhaps it was not lack of caution but merely contempt on their part, for Tramp never came close to running his prey to earth.

Ah, it felt so very good to breathe in fresh air at last, Samantha thought, even if it must be filtered through the heavy black veil that hung from the brim of her black bonnet. And it was glorious to see nothing but open space about her, first on the lane, and then on the daisy-and-buttercup-strewn grass of a meadow onto which they turned. It was sheer heaven to allow her stride to lengthen and to know that at least for a while the horizon was the only boundary that confined her.

There was no one to witness her grand indiscretion, no one to gasp in horror at the sight of her.

She stopped occasionally and gathered buttercups, while Tramp frolicked about her. And then, her little posy complete, she strode along again, a thick hedge to one side, all the fresh beauties of nature spread out on the other, the sky stretching overhead with its high layer of clouds through which she could see the bright, fuzzy disk of the sun. There was a brisk, slightly chilly breeze fluttering her veil about her face, but she did not feel the discomfort of the cold. Indeed, she relished it. She felt happier than she had felt for months, even perhaps for years. Oh, definitely for years.

She was not going to feel guilty about taking this hour for herself. No one could say she had not given her husband all the attention she possibly could while he lived. And no one could say she had not mourned him properly since his death. No one could even say she had been glad of his death. She had never, ever wished him dead, even at those times when she had wondered if she had any reserves of energy left with which to tend him and be patient with his endless peevishness. She had been genuinely saddened by the death of the man she had married just seven years before with such high hopes for a happily-ever-after.

No, she was not going to feel guilty. She needed this—this pleasure, this peace, this quiet restoration of her spirits.

It was precisely as she was thinking these tranquil thoughts that her peace was shattered in a sudden and most alarming manner.

Tramp had just returned with the stick she had thrown for him, and she was bending to retrieve it with one hand while she held her posy in the other, when it seemed that a thunderbolt came crashing down upon them from the heavens, only narrowly missing them. Samantha shrieked with terror, while the dog went into a frenzy of hysterical barking and leaped aimlessly in every direction, bowling Samantha right off her feet. Her buttercups went flying about in a hail of yellow, and she landed with a painful thud on her bottom.

She gaped in mingled pain and terror and discovered that the thunderbolt was in fact a large black horse, which had just leapt over the hedge very close to where she had been standing. It might have kept on going, since it appeared to have landed safely enough, but Tramp’s barking and leaping and perhaps her own scream had sent it into a frenzy of its own. It whinnied and reared, its eyes rolling wildly and fearfully, as the rider on its back fought for his seat and brought it under control with considerable skill and a whole arsenal of curse words most foul.

“Are you out of your mind? Are you quite insane?”

“Bring that blasted animal under control, woman, damn it.”

Samantha shouted her rhetorical questions and the man bellowed his imperious command simultaneously.

Tramp was standing his ground and barking ferociously, alternately with baring his teeth and growling in a fearsome manner. The horse was still prancing nervously, though it was no longer rearing.

Woman?

Blasted animal?

Damn it?

And why was the man not leaping from the saddle to help her to her feet and assure himself that he had not done her any fatal injury, as any true gentleman would?

“Tramp,” she said firmly, though certainly not in obedience to the rider’s command. “That is quite enough!”

A rabbit chose that moment to pop up on the horizon, ears pointed at the heavens, and Tramp dashed off in joyful pursuit, still barking and still convinced he could win the race.

“You might have killed me with your irresponsible stunt,” Samantha shouted above the din. “Are you quite mad?”

The gentleman on the horse’s back glared coldly at her. “If you are unable to control that pathetic excuse for a dog,” he said, “you really ought not to bring him out where he can upset horses and livestock and endanger human life.”

“Livestock?” She looked pointedly to left and right to indicate that there was nary a cow or bull in sight. “He endangered human life? Your own, I suppose you mean, since mine clearly means nothing to you. Allow me to pose a question. Was it you, sir, or was it Tramp who chose with reckless unconcern to jump a hedge without first ascertaining that it was safe to do so? And was it you or he who then hurled the blame upon the innocent person who was almost killed? And upon a dog which was happily at play until he had the life virtually scared out of him?”

She got to her feet without taking her eyes off him—and without wincing over what felt like a bruised tail-bone. Perhaps it was a good thing he had not dismounted to help her up, she thought as wrath took the place of terror. She might have smacked his face, and that must certainly be against the rules of propriety for a lady, not to mention a widow in deep mourning.

His nostrils flared as he listened to her, and his lips compressed into a thin line as he looked down at her as though she were a nasty worm it might have been better that his horse had trodden upon.

“I trust,” he said with stiff formality, “you have not come to any great harm, ma’am? I assume not, though, since you are quite capable of speech.”

She narrowed her eyes and bent upon him her most cold and haughty stare, though she was aware that the thickness of her veil probably marred its full effect.

Tramp came dashing back without the rabbit. He had stopped barking. She rested a hand on his head as he sat panting beside her, eyeing horse and rider eagerly as though they might be new friends.

Samantha and the rider regarded each other for a few silent moments, which nevertheless bristled with mutual hostility. Then he abruptly touched his whip to the brim of his tall hat, turned his horse, and rode away at a canter without another word, leaving her the clear victor of the field.

Well.

Well!

Her bosom still heaved with ire. Woman, indeed. And blasted animal. And damn it.

He was a stranger—at least she thought he was since she had certainly never set eyes upon him before. A thoroughly disagreeable stranger. She fervently hoped he would keep on riding until he was far, far away and never return. He was no gentleman despite his looks, which suggested the contrary. He had done something unpardonably reckless, with results that might have been fatal had she been standing six feet farther to the east. Yet she and Tramp were to blame. And though he had asked, or rather trusted, that she had taken no harm, he had not got down from his saddle to find out at closer quarters. And then he had had the effrontery to assume that she must be unharmed, since she could still talk. As if she were some kind of shrew.

It really was a shame that good looks and elegance and an overall appearance of masculine virility were wasted on such a nasty, cold, arrogant, villainous sort of man. He was good-looking, she admitted when she thought about him, even if his face was a trifle too lean and angular for true handsomeness. And he was youngish. She guessed he was not much above thirty, if he was even that old.

He had an impressive vocabulary, almost none of which she would have understood if she had not spent a year with Matthew’s regiment before they were sent off to the Peninsula. And he had used it in a lady’s hearing—without apologizing, as the officers of the regiment had always done quite effusively when they realized they had cursed within half a mile of a lady’s ears.

She sincerely hoped she would never encounter him again. She might be tempted to give him the full length of her tongue if she did.

“Well, pathetic excuse for a dog,” she said, looking down at Tramp, “our one foray into the peace and freedom of the outdoors almost ended in disaster. Behold my posy scattered to the four winds. Father-in-Law would lecture me for a fortnight if he were to hear about this adventure, especially if he knew I had scolded a gentleman instead of hanging my head meekly and allowing him to scold me. Do not, I pray you, breathe a word of this to Matilda. She would have a migraine and a sick headache combined—after berating me, that is, and writing a long letter home. You do not suppose they can be right, do you, Tramp? That I am not a proper lady, I mean? I suppose my origins are against me, as the Earl of Heathmoor was pleased to inform me with tedious regularity once upon a time, but really … Woman and damn it. And you a blasted animal. I have been severely provoked. We have been.”

Tramp, apparently more forgiving than she, fell into step beside her and refrained from offering an opinion.