The Escape by Mary Balogh
20
They went swimming after all. And they dined together after Mrs. Price and Samantha’s maid had left for the day. They spent a few hours in bed before Ben returned to the village inn. They made love twice, slowly the first time, with fierce passion the second.
But there had been something a little … desperate about both encounters, Ben thought as he lay alone in bed at the inn later. Nothing had been quite the same. Real life, in the form of Bevan, had intruded. A small part of his story had been told, and more would be told tomorrow—Samantha had consented to listen. Her life, he suspected, was going to be very different from anything she had dreamed of when circumstances had led her to remember the run-down little cottage in Wales she had inherited.
She had a grandfather, a rich and influential man who, it appeared, cared for her. Whether she could care for him depended a great deal upon the story he would tell tomorrow, but she craved the closeness of some family tie, whether she fully realized it or not. Ben suspected that she would come to care for Bevan. And she needed time and space—and respectability—in which to do that. And in which to recover fully from a seven-year marriage.
It was time to leave. Almost. He had promised two more days after today.
Though they had not spoken of it, they had both been conscious tonight of the fact that their affair, their early summer idyll, was almost at an end. Ben laced his fingers behind his head and gazed upward at the ceiling. Part of him was longing to be gone, to be done with the whole business. He wished he could just click his fingers and find himself on the road back to England. He hated goodbyes at the best of times. He dreaded this particular one.
Tomorrow was Sunday. The first day of a new week. Very nearly the end of his week. He had no idea where he would be next Saturday night, except that it would be somewhere far from here. And he had no idea what he would do. No, that was not strictly true. He was going to go to London, though not in order to participate in the social whirl of the Season or to allow Beatrice to matchmake for him. He was going to explore various ways of employing his time, perhaps in business, perhaps in diplomacy, perhaps in law. He would talk to Hugo, to Gramley, to various contacts he had in the Foreign Office. It did not matter that he did not need to work. He wanted to work. And he would work. His elder brother had done so, after all.
But an obstacle stood between him and the rest of his life. There was the end of an affair to live through and goodbyes to be said. It was Sunday tomorrow. He had promised to go to church with Samantha. They were to dine at Cartref later in the day. And then, after tomorrow …
Goodbye.
Surely the saddest, most painful word in the English language.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Ben walked with painstaking slowness and with the aid of two canes but with evident courage and determination, Samantha thought. Or perhaps it was his lean good looks, enhanced now by suntan, and the indefinable air of command that always somehow clung about him. Or perhaps it was simply that everyone loved a hint of romance, even a touch of scandal.
However it was, they were both greeted with smiles and friendly nods when they appeared at church together on Sunday morning. Samantha had been half expecting cold stares or frowns and turned shoulders, for obviously there had been talk. Her grandfather had heard it.
And though Ben looked almost austere much of the time, he was quite capable of charm. He used it that morning on the people of Fisherman’s Bridge and its environs. And Samantha smiled about her too, as she had not been allowed to do after Matthew’s death, and shook the hands of those who extended their own to her. She was sure she would not remember the names of all who introduced themselves and said so.
“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. McKay,” the doctor told her. “We have only two new names to remember, yours and Major Harper’s, while you have a few dozen.”
Other people within earshot smiled their agreement.
Samantha would have felt warm about the heart as they left church if her grandfather had not been there too. He had shaken hands heartily with Ben and kissed her on the cheek—while half the village looked on with interest—but he had not pressed his company on them. He had sat in the front pew, which was padded, though he did not act the part of grand gentleman after the service was over. He shook hands and exchanged a few words with everyone in his path. He dug into his pockets to bring out sweets for the very little children, coins for the older ones.
Other people’s children, Samantha thought with unexpected bitterness. How she would have loved to have a grandpapa to beam at her thus when she was a child and give her sweets and coins. How her mother would surely have loved to have a papa to do those things.
It was a cloudy day, but it was neither cold nor windy.
“Do you want to swim this afternoon?” she asked Ben when they were walking slowly back to the inn.
She was feeling a bit depressed. She wished the sun was shining.
“What is it?” he asked without answering her question.
“It would be more appropriate to ask what it is not,” she said with a sigh—and then laughed. “The vicar was right about the singing, was he not?”
“Well,” he said, “I was disappointed not to see the roof lift off the building. I was watching for it.”
She laughed again.
“But, yes,” he said. “That church really does not need the choir, does it? The whole congregation is a choir.”
“With harmony.”
“In four parts,” he added. “Yes, let’s swim. There will be time.”
She swallowed and heard a gurgle in her throat. There will be time.
Time before they went to Cartref for dinner.
Time before the week of their affair was over.
They went swimming. They raced and floated and talked, and they played silly games, the main object of which seemed to be to swim underwater and come up unexpectedly to submerge each other. It was not a very effective game since there was never any real possibility of surprise, but it kept them helpless with laughter for a time.
Laughter was better than tears.
A week had seemed a long time when they began their affair. But this was the sixth day. The knowledge weighed upon Samantha as if it were a physical thing. And she could not keep at bay the thought that they would be going to Cartref later. She wished she had not been weak enough to agree. And yet … Her grandfather had written, and Papa had written back to him. She ought to listen to his story, Ben had said.
When they left the water, they went to their usual rock, where they were met by a tail-wagging, bottom-wiggling Tramp, who had been guarding their belongings against seagulls. But instead of spreading her towel on the sand as she usually did, Samantha wrapped it about her shoulders.
“I gave Mrs. Price and Gladys the day off,” she said. “It is Sunday. Besides, I will be out for dinner today.”
He looked back at her. He was leaning against the ledge to take the weight off his legs and rubbing his towel over his chest and up under one arm.
Oh, dear, she was going to miss this—the daily swims, the sight of him, the smell of him, the touch of him. She was going to miss him.
“Come back to the house?” she said.
They always went to the house after their swim and after lying for a while in the sun. But she knew from the look in his eyes that he understood what she meant.
“Yes,” he said.
And, shockingly, they did not stop to dress but walked back as they were, her towel about her shoulders, his draped about his neck. She insisted on carrying his boots.
She had forgotten why he must leave.
But of course he must. He could not stay here in the cottage with her, even if they married. He would have nothing to do here. He would be restless and unhappy in no time at all. And she could not go with him. It was much too soon for her to go with or marry anyone. And though he was not homeless, he had chosen to leave his brother and family in residence in his house but had established no other home for himself. He was probably the most restless, unsettled man she had ever known. It had not always been so, of course, but it was now, and she wondered unhappily if he would ever find himself and his place in life.
Yes, he must leave. Sometimes love was not enough—if it was love between them. It was probably not. She was lamentably naïve about affairs. Perhaps this was not love but mere physical attraction. That was undoubtedly all it was to him. Men did not fall in love as women did, did they?
They went upstairs as soon as they reached the cottage while Tramp padded off to the kitchen in search of his food bowl. Samantha led the way into her bedchamber. She drew the curtains across the window, though they were not heavy and did not block out much light. She peeled off her wet shift, toweled herself off, and rubbed at her hair, even though it was still in its tight knot at her neck.
Ben was sitting with his back to her on the side of the bed. He was pulling off his wet pantaloons, though he had drawn the bedcovers up over himself to mask her view.
“Don’t,” she said, kneeling up on the bed and moving across it toward him.
“Don’t?” He looked over his shoulder at her.
“Don’t hide yourself,” she said.
He held her eyes for a few moments, his own suddenly bleak, and then pushed back the covers, finished removing his clothes, and lay back on the bed, lifting his legs onto it one at a time. He looked at her again, his eyes hard now.
His legs were thinner than they must once have been. The left one was slightly twisted, the right more noticeably so. They were horribly scarred.
“Now tell me,” he said, “that you want me to make love to you.”
His voice matched his eyes.
She moved a little closer and set her hand on his upper right thigh. She stroked it lightly downward, feeling the deep gouges of his old wounds and the hard, raised ridges of the scars where the surgeons had tried to mend them.
And the foolish, brave man had insisted upon walking again.
She returned her hands to her own thighs as she kneeled naked beside him, and raised her eyes to his.
“Ben,” she said, “my dearest, I am so very sorry. I am sorry for the pain you suffered and still suffer. I am sorry that you cannot do what you most want to do in life. I am sorry you feel diminished as a man and inadequate as a lover, that you feel ugly and undesirable. What happened to you was ugly, but you are not. I think you are the toughest, most courageous man I have ever met. I know you are the loveliest. You must believe me. Oh, you must, Ben. And yes, I want you to make love to me.”
He gazed at her, his look still hard, though she had the curious feeling that he was fighting the welling of tears to his eyes.
“You are not repulsed?” His voice was still hard too, though there was a suggestion of a tremor in it.
“Idiot,” she said and smiled. “Do I look repulsed? You are Ben. My lover. For this week anyway. And I have had enormous pleasure with you. Give me more.”
She was remembering that she had called him my dearest, and she did not want him to believe she had fallen in love with him. And so she spoke of the pleasure she had had of him—which was no lie. He must be the most wonderful lover in the world.
He reached for her and she moved to straddle him. His hands moved over her upper thighs, over her hips, in to her waist, up to her breasts, which he cupped lightly.
“You are perfection itself,” he said.
“I am not slender.”
“Thank God for that,” he said without contradicting her. “Do women really believe that men want them looking like sticks?”
“And I am no English rose,” she said. “I am downright swarthy.”
“My Gypsy Sammy.” He grinned at her. “My perfect Gypsy Sammy.”
She laughed, set her hands on either side of his head, and leaned over him to kiss him.
His legs were not quite helpless, as she had discovered on previous occasions. Before she knew it, she was on her back and he was on top of her, his legs between hers, and his lips were on hers, his tongue deep in her mouth, and his hands were fierce on her and then beneath her buttocks and holding her firm while he thrust deep into her.
She lifted her legs from the bed and wrapped them about his lean hips, and they loved each other long and hard until they were both panting and slick with sweat and they broke together into glory and collapsed into the world beyond.
They lay side by side afterward, sated and drowsy and dozing, their hands touching. Last night had felt a bit like goodbye, she thought. The melancholy of it had remained with her this morning. And now?
No, she did not want to think.
“I believe you will make a wonderful new life here,” he said at last. “You have neighbors who seem very ready to accept you and welcome you into their midst. You will make friends here. And you have family here. You have a grandfather who wishes to be a part of your life. Listen to him this evening, Samantha, and think well before you reject him for all the apparent wrongs of the past.”
“I have agreed to listen,” she reminded him.
“I think you did the right thing,” he said, “coming here. And I think it will be time for me to leave tomorrow, before speculation and a bit of gossip can blossom into scandal as they surely would if I stayed longer.”
“I have delayed your travels for long enough,” she said.
He did not answer her, and they lay side by side, no longer either drowsy or dozing. Samantha fought tears. She fought the urge to beg him to stay just one more day or perhaps two. For he was right. It was time for him to leave. It was time for him to go in search of his life and for her to settle to her new one.
It was time to let him go.
After a while he turned and sat up, moving his legs over the side of the bed.
“I had better return to the inn,” he said. “I will bring the carriage later to take you to Cartref?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
She felt about as bleak as it was possible to feel.
Mr. Bevan had the good manners and easy address of a true gentleman, Ben thought, even if he was not one by birth. And he dressed with fashionable elegance yet without any ostentation or grand display of wealth. The wealth was clearly there, however.
He took them on a tour of the house. Everything was of the finest but with not the merest suggestion of vulgarity. The room in which they lingered longest was the long gallery at the back of the house. It was filled with paintings and a few sculptures by the great masters, a few of them acquired by his father, he told them, but the majority by him. And he always purchased what he most liked, he explained to them, rather than what was most valuable. Though Ben guessed there was a fortune in that room alone. There were paintings in every other room too, some of them by acclaimed masters, some by unknown artists Mr. Bevan had admired and wanted to encourage.
And wherever he took them, there were views from the windows, over the rolling Welsh countryside, over the beach and the sea.
He plied them with sherry and conversation in the drawing room and then with good wine and food and conversation in the dining room. He told them about his travels and his reading. And he asked them about their own lives with skilled questions that would draw more than monosyllabic answers from them and yet would not seem intrusive. When Ben asked him about his businesses, he answered thoroughly but without monopolizing all their time and perhaps boring Samantha.
He appeared totally at his ease and in perfect good humor with his guests.
Samantha, Ben guessed, was troubled even as she admired the house and ate and drank and listened to her grandfather’s conversation and Ben’s and made her own contributions. She was looking extremely beautiful in a turquoise blue high-waisted dress he had not seen before. Her hair was elaborately styled considering the fact that she had not had the services of her maid today. It shone in the candlelight.
While they drank tea in the drawing room after dinner, Mr. Bevan told them about the male voice choir made up of eighty or so of his miners.
“There is no finer choir in all of Wales,” he told them, “and that is saying something. I am not entirely impartial, of course, but they did win at the eisteddfod in Newport both last year and the year before. I always say that coal dust must do marvels for the vocal cords.”
“Iced—?” Ben asked
“Eye-steth-fod,” Mr. Bevan said, pronouncing the word clearly. “A Welsh arts festival.”
He turned his eyes on Samantha, who was swirling the dregs of her tea in her cup, and watched her in silence for a few moments.
“Your grandmother was dancing when I first set eyes on her,” he said. “The Gypsies had camped down by the sea, as they sometimes did, and I went to have a look with some of the other lads from around here. I was twenty-one at the time. Her feet were bare, and her bright, full skirts were swirling about her ankles and her dark hair was tumbled about her face and shoulders, and I had not seen anything as lovely or as full of life and grace in all my days. I didn’t know anything at that time about not putting birds or butterflies or wild things in cages. I wooed her and I married her, all within six weeks, against everyone’s advice, her own people’s included. We were going to live happily ever after. She was sixteen.”
Samantha’s cup, held between both her hands, was still. Her eyes had lifted briefly to her grandfather’s and then returned to her cup.
“We were happy for a year or so,” Bevan said, “though we had to keep traveling about. She did not like to be in one place for very long. And then your mother was born, and only a few months after that my father died—my mother was already deceased. I had to take over the running of the businesses. I had been working in them, though not as much as I had before I met Esme. The baby needed a stable home. Esme did not like it, but she understood and she tried to settle. She tried hard. We went on for a few years, but then the Gypsies came back—her own group. She spent some time with them while they were here, and she went to say goodbye to them on the last night. She never came home. I thought she had stayed the night, but when I went looking the next morning, they were gone and she with them. I didn’t go after them. What was the point? She had been withering away at Cartref here. She died four years after that, but I did not know it for another six.”
Samantha leaned forward and set her cup down carefully on its saucer before sitting back in her chair. Ben wished he were sitting beside her.
“I took to drink,” Bevan said. “I made sure your mother had a good nurse and everything she needed, and I made sure that I had a good manager who would look after running the mines, and I dedicated my life to forgetting and dulling the pain—at the bottom of a glass of liquor. A year or so after Esme left, I was in the library one night drinking and feeling sorry for myself as usual. Except it was worse than usual. It was the anniversary of our wedding. After a while I hurled my glass against the wall beside a bookcase, and the glass shattered. And someone started to cry. Gwynneth had come downstairs without her nurse’s seeing her. And she had curled up under a table just below where the glass hit.”
Samantha spread both hands over her knees and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers.
“The next morning,” Mr. Bevan said, “I took her to Dilys at the cottage where you now live, Samantha. We had never seen eye to eye. She had thought me wild and irresponsible as a boy. She had thought my marriage insanity. She was furious when she discovered that our father had left almost everything to me when she was the one with the business head. But I took your mother to her and asked her to take the child until I got myself properly sober. She told me I never would, that I would always be a worthless drunkard. She said she would take Gwynneth but only on condition that she had the sole raising of her, that I would give her up and never see her again except by chance.”
Samantha was looking at him now. Ben was looking at her.
“I drank for six more months,” Bevan said, “and then I stopped. I did not drink at all for years. Now I do occasionally, but only in a social way, never when I am alone. I applied myself to my work. I challenged myself by interesting myself in industries other than just coal. Hence the ironworks. And in the meanwhile, every penny of the money I ever sent to help Dilys with the upbringing of your mother and every gift I sent for birthdays or Christmas was returned. Every time I glimpsed Gwynneth, she was whisked away by my sister when she was younger—she turned away of her own accord when she was older. I wanted her back. I wanted to get her a proper governess. I wanted to get her ready for the life she could have lived as my daughter. I wanted to … Well, I wanted to be her father, but I had forfeited my chance with her. When I heard she was not allowed to go on picnics with the local lads and lasses, though, and was not allowed to go to the village assemblies even though she was seventeen and ready for a bit of life of her own, I went and had it out with Dilys, and we both ended up shouting like fools and behaving like two snarling dogs fighting over the same bone. And Gwynneth was in the house and heard it all. The day after, she was gone. Just like Esme all over again.”
“And as before, you did not go after her,” Samantha said.
“I did,” he said. “She would not have anything to do with me. She would not let me pay for her lodgings. She would not let me give her some spending money. She would not let me help her find decent employment. And she would not come home with me. She got a job acting. I was … proud of her spirit of independence at the same time as I was terrified for her. And then she met your father, who was close to me in age and was everything I was not. I think maybe she was happy with him. Was she?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It was the old story after her marriage,” he said. “She returned my letters and my wedding gift and my christening gift to you and all the other gifts I sent. Though after she … died, the letters and gifts I sent you stopped coming back, and sometimes your father would write to tell me about you and to include little messages of thanks from you for the gifts. I often thought of suggesting that I come to see you, but I could never quite get up the courage. You were the daughter of a gentleman, and his letters were always polite, but not exactly warm. I thought maybe the two of you would say no. And then all hope was gone. You married the son of an earl, and it seemed to me the last thing you would want was a visit from your maternal grandfather. I even stopped sending gifts after the wedding one.”
Samantha was pleating her dress again.
“I daresay your father felt sorry for me,” Bevan said. “But I suppose he felt even more loyalty to his wife, your mother, and agreed with her that it was best you not know me. You did not read any of those letters or see any of those gifts, did you?”
“No.” Her voice was a mere whisper of sound.
“It was not wicked of either your father or your mother,” he said. “I had done nothing to earn her love, and I did not deserve yours. I ruined my own life and your mother’s over grief for what I could not have. And all the time I had a treasure in my grasp that I did not recognize until it was too late.”
“You married again,” she said.
“A year after your mother went to London.” He sighed. “I wanted a son. I wanted someone to hand everything on to. Perhaps I wanted some redemption too. I wanted to try again, to see if I could do better than I had done the first time. Isabelle was a good woman. She was better than I deserved, and we were contented together despite the age difference. But we never did have children. We were denied that blessing. She died two years ago.”
Samantha said nothing. But she turned her head to look at Ben, her eyes wide and blank.
“I am sorry,” Bevan said. “The most useless three words in the English language when they are used together. I wish I could go back. I have wished it year after year since the night I smashed that glass above your mother’s head. But that is something that is not granted to any of us. None of us can go back. I thought at least you must know about me, though. I thought your mother would have told you.”
“No,” she said. “But she ought to have done. Ben said to me yesterday that we all have a story to tell. My mother had a story, but she never told it. Perhaps she meant to. Perhaps she thought I was too young. I was only twelve when she died. My father did not tell it either, but I suppose he felt it was not his story to tell. Except that I ought to have known.”
“You know now,” he said, and he got to his feet to pull on the bell rope, “and it is not a pretty story. I cannot think of anything to add that might make you think it worth your while to accept me as your grandfather, Samantha. I wish I could, but I can’t. I obviously did terrible damage to another human being, my own daughter, and I have no excuse for that. And no right to lay any claim to the affection of her daughter.”
“I have no one,” Samantha said.
“Your brother?”
“Halfbrother,” she said. “No.”
“Your uncles and aunts and cousins on your father’s side? Your father- and mother-in-law and your sister- and brothers-in-law?”
“No.”
He turned his eyes on Ben and gazed steadily at him.
“And when are you leaving, Major Harper?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” Ben said.
They looked at each other for a few moments longer, taking each other’s measure, until a servant answered the summons of the bell.
“You can remove the tray,” Bevan told him, “and have Major Harper’s carriage brought around to the door.”
He waited until the servant had withdrawn and then looked at Samantha’s bowed head.
“You can have me,” he told her. “If you want me.”
She looked up at him. “I want to live in peace at my cottage,” she told him. “I want to be alone. But perhaps one day I will tell you my story. Perhaps I will tell you everything that led up to my coming here. But not yet.”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment of her words.
“It is time for you to go home, Samantha,” he said. “The major will see you safely there.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. It has been a pleasant evening.”
“It has, indeed.”
He shook Ben by the hand, kissed Samantha’s cheek, and was again the smiling, genial host.
