The Escape by Mary Balogh

4

“Iwonder,” Ben said, “if Mrs. McKay has told her sister-in-law what happened a few afternoons ago.”

“I really do not know the lady,” Beatrice replied, “but I must confess that she strikes me as being a bit of a battle-ax.”

They were traveling toward Bramble Hall in an open carriage, with the blessing of Beatrice’s physician, who at last had pronounced her fully restored to health. It was a sunny day and quite warm for springtime. Two days had passed since their encounter with the McKay ladies at church.

“I did not behave as I ought to have when I first encountered Mrs. McKay,” Ben said. “I really do need to make amends, Bea. Yet if I blurt out an apology over tea, I may embarrass her before her sister-in-law. I cannot help agreeing with you about the lady, even though we spoke with the two of them for what was probably no longer than a minute on Sunday, and it was impossible even to see their faces. Have you ever seen facial veils quite as black and heavy as theirs? I wonder they can see out. One half expects them to walk into walls.”

“Perhaps their grief is great,” she said. “Poor Captain McKay is said to have been exceedingly handsome and dashing once upon a time. War is a cruel thing, Ben, not that I need to tell you of all people that. It would have been kinder, perhaps, if he had been killed outright. Kinder for him, kinder for his wife, kinder for his sister.”

Dash it, would he ever escape from those wars? Ben thought irritably. What damnable fate was it that had set him to jumping that particular hedge at that particular moment on that particular day when he had jumped nothing on horseback in longer than six years? And what had led Mrs. McKay to walk just there when apparently she had scarcely set foot outside her own home since she moved there with her invalid husband five or six years ago?

Fate? He very much doubted it. And if it was, then fate was a damnably weird thing.

This visit he was about to pay was the last thing on earth he wished to be doing. One did not like to be caught out in ungentlemanly conduct, and one did not like having to beg pardon of the offended party, especially when she was as cold and haughty as Captain McKay’s widow appeared to be.

“If I see even the glimmering of an opportunity,” Beatrice promised as the carriage drew to a halt outside the front doors of Bramble Hall, “I will draw Lady Matilda away or at least out of earshot, Ben, so that you may make your peace with Mrs. McKay.”

There was an instant response to the rap of the knocker against the door in the form of a deep, excited barking from within. The unruly hound, no doubt.

Bramble Hall was a solid stone house, a manor more than a mansion, but of pleasing proportions and set in gardens that were well tended even if not extensive. The interior too was handsome, Ben soon discovered, though the hall was paneled in dark wood and the sitting room into which they were shown was scarcely any lighter, since the dark wine velvet curtains were more than half drawn over the windows. The furniture was old and heavy and predominantly a dark brown. Dark-toned landscape paintings hung on the papered walls.

The ladies rose to their feet as the butler announced their visitors. They both, of course, wore black dresses that covered them from neck to wrists to ankles. Lady Matilda was also wearing a black lacy cap over her fair hair, tied in a neat black bow beneath her chin. Ben wondered uncharitably that she had not dyed her hair black.

Mrs. McKay’s head was uncovered. Her very dark, glossy hair was styled in a tight coronet of braids about the crown of her head, the rest combed smooth, without a suggestion of a curl or ringlet to soften the severity. Her eyes were very dark too and large and long-lashed, her nose straight, her mouth generous and full-lipped, her skin dark-toned. She almost undoubtedly had some foreign blood in her veins, though he could not place her origin. Spain? Italy? Greece?

Her dress was of some heavy, rather stiff fabric and was ill-fitting and unbecoming. Nevertheless, it could not hide the fact, as her cloak had done on both previous occasions he had seen her, that she was generously curved and voluptuous of figure. She had the height to carry it too.

He had expected her to be ugly. She had looked ugly through her veil. She was, to the contrary, utterly, stunningly beautiful. And younger than he had estimated.

His impression of both ladies was gathered in a moment. Fortunately, he was prevented from staring overlong by the infernal hound, which looked every bit as ugly now as he had in the meadow a few days ago. He was prancing about them in the sort of orgy of undiscipline one might expect of an untrained puppy but not of a grown dog that lived inside the house. He seemed undecided whether to be ecstatic that they had come to visit or offended that they had dared trespass upon his domain. However, he seemed altogether willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they showed the slightest tendency to play with him.

Beatrice laughed and patted his head. “What a lovely welcome,” she said.

“Hush, dog,” Lady Matilda commanded—to no effect. “Samantha, do have him removed.”

“Sit, Tramp,” Mrs. McKay said, “or you are going to have to be banished to outer darkness.”

The dog did not sit, but he did stop his prancing to look up at his mistress, panting, tongue lolling, and then he padded off to plop himself down in the shaft of daylight that beamed through the narrow gap in the curtains, his ears cocked lest he miss someone offering further entertainment.

Wretched hound. Without him, Ben might well have cleared that hedge and ridden back to Robland without even realizing that he had frightened the devil out of a lady and narrowly missed killing her. He would not even have known that an apology was in order. And he would have glanced at those two black-shrouded females in church with absolutely no wish whatsoever of making their acquaintance.

“Lady Gramley,” Mrs. McKay said, stepping forward to offer a hand to her guest, “I do beg your pardon for Tramp’s bad manners. How kind of you to call upon us. You were not very well the last time you did so, I recall. I was touched that you came at all. I do hope you have recovered your health. We have been very dull with only each other for company, have we not, Matilda?”

She turned to Ben after Bea had assured her that she had made a full recovery from her stubborn chill. Mrs. McKay’s expression changed imperceptibly from warmly welcoming to coolly gracious as she shook his hand too.

“Sir Benedict,” she said, “it was good of you to accompany your sister. Do have a seat.”

She glanced at his canes but did not try to steer him to a chair, he was relieved to discover. Some people did.

A polite conversation ensued before a tea tray was brought in. Mrs. McKay poured, and her sister-in-law carried the tea and a plate of sweet biscuits to their guests. The dog came and snuffled first at Beatrice and then at Ben. He seemed to prefer the latter, even though Bea patted his head again and Ben most decidedly did not. He plopped down at Ben’s feet and rested his chin on one of Ben’s boots.

The animal must be as thick as a plank. Had not Bea said he knew who liked him?

“Samantha,” Lady Matilda said, “do call a servant to remove that dog. He really ought not to be allowed to roam at will, especially when you are entertaining visitors. You know my thoughts on the matter.”

He must be the ugliest dog in creation, and Ben had certainly not taken kindly to his decision to favor him with his company. Yet when it came to a choice between a battle-ax of a woman—yes, he had decided, Bea had hit upon quite the right description of Lady Matilda McKay—on the one hand and a gangly, drooling, undisciplined, undiscerning dog on the other, the decision was not even difficult.

“If the dog—Tramp, is it?—is no bother to Mrs. McKay,” he said, “he certainly is not to me, Lady Matilda. I beg you to allow him to remain where he is.”

Mrs. McKay shot him a glance that defied interpretation. Suspicion? Resentment? Reproach? It was surely not gratitude.

Quinn, Ben’s valet, would probably be polishing dog drool off his boot tonight and not looking too happy about it.

“He appeared on my doorstep two years ago,” Mrs. McKay explained, “a determined, decrepit vagabond who would not go away even after I had fed him. My husband said, quite rightly, I suppose, that he would not go away because I had fed him. But how could I not have done? His long legs were like bent sticks, his ribs were all quite visible, his coat was dull and tufted, and he had such a look of longing and hope in his eyes that … Well, I would have had to be made of stone to turn him away. He lived on the doorstep for a while. How he got from there into the house and became master of all he surveyed I do not know, but he did.”

“He would not have done so if I had been living here with you at the time, Samantha,” Lady Matilda said, “as I would have been had Mother not suffered palpitations with every word that reached us about Matthew’s condition. Even now I would urge you to send him to the stables and make him stay there. Animals do not belong in a decent house, as I am sure you would agree, Lady Gramley.”

“You will think me a thorough weakling, I daresay, ma’am,” Mrs. McKay said as a maid removed the tea tray. “I love him, you see. How anyone could love an ugly, impudent fellow like you, Tramp, I do not know, but I do.”

She contrived to look at the dog, Ben noticed, without also looking at him. Her every word was directed to Bea, as though he did not exist. She was obviously very vexed with him.

“Pets become as much a part of one’s family as the other persons in it,” Beatrice agreed. “While our spaniel was still alive, one of my sons once accused me of loving her more than I loved him or his brother. And my reply was that sometimes she was easier to love. I was smothering my son with hugs while I was saying it, I hasten to add.”

Ben had spoken scarcely a word. At this rate he was going to feel worse when he left than he had before he arrived. For if he did not apologize now, he never would, and he would forever feel in the wrong—as he was, dash it all.

Mrs. McKay might be a considerable beauty, but he really could not like her, perhaps because she had held up a mirror in which he had seen the ugliest side of himself. He caught Beatrice’s eye and raised his eyebrows. Good manners probably dictated that they leave very soon.

“Lady Matilda,” she said, “I fear I have eaten too many of those excellent biscuits and would welcome some exercise before the drive back to Robland Park. Would you be willing to take a turn on the terrace with me?”

Lady Matilda looked anything but willing. However, she was a lady and her social manners prevailed.

“I shall fetch my bonnet and cloak,” she said and left the room.

Beatrice drifted after her, having asked Mrs. McKay apologetically and rhetorically if she minded. That lady looked as if she did mind, though she answered politely enough to the contrary. She looked down at the hands clasped in her lap when she and Ben were alone together, and silence descended, apart from one contented sigh from the dog, who had looked interested in the stroll on the terrace but had decided against making himself one of the party, perhaps because its number was to include Lady Matilda.

Clearly Mrs. McKay had no intention of breaking the silence.

Ben cleared his throat. “Mrs. McKay,” he said, “I believe I owe you an apology.”

“Yes.” She raised her eyes and looked so directly into his own that he felt himself move his head back an inch or so even though she was some distance away from him. “You believe correctly, sir.”

Well. Had he expected her to simper and assure him that he had done nothing to offend her?

“What happened the other day was entirely my fault,” he said. “I ought not to have jumped that hedge without knowing what was on the other side. And when I did jump it and almost killed you, I certainly ought not to have thrown the blame upon you and ripped up at you as I did.”

“We are in perfect accord upon that,” she assured him, her chin up, her eyes steady, her whole manner disdainful. She continued. “I suppose it would be a bit absurd if every rider felt obliged to dismount and push through a hedge before he jumped it just to make sure that some stray pedestrian was not strolling along on the other side. He could, perhaps, cry out a tallyho! as he came, but that might sound rather peculiar. What happened was an accident. No one was to blame for that, at least.”

The fairness of her response only cast him more abjectly in the wrong.

“But someone was certainly to blame for what followed,” he said. “I was, in fact. My immediate reaction to throw all the blame upon you and your dog when you were both clearly innocent of any offense was unjust and unpardonable. I hope you will pardon me, nevertheless, ma’am, when I assure you that I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. And I beg forgiveness for the appalling language I am sure I must have used in your hearing, though I hope none of it was directed at you personally.”

She was still looking unwaveringly at him, and it struck him that those dark eyes of hers were a quite lethal weapon. He had to resist the urge to move his head back another inch and lower his own eyes.

“Except for one damn it,” she said, “which was added after you had called someone woman. Since I was the only female present, I was led to understand that you meant me.”

He grimaced. Dash it all, he did not remember that.

“What caused me most indignation, however,” she added, “was the fact that you did not get down from your horse when you saw that I had been knocked over—even though the knocking was done by my own hysterical dog rather than by your horse. Unfortunately, I was forced to relinquish much of my wrath when I saw you on Sunday and understood why you had not dismounted.”

“I ought to have explained at the time,” he said. “I ought to have shown far more concern for the fright you had taken and the harm I may have done you. I ought to have—” He sighed with frustration and ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, the long and the short of it is that I behaved atrociously in every imaginable way. I understand that you are offended I even had the effrontery to present myself here. I will, in fact, remove myself without further ado.”

He reached for his canes.

“I spent a year with my husband in proximity to his regiment,” she told him. “I heard a thing or two that ladies are not supposed to hear. Officers have voices that must carry on a battlefield. Unfortunately, they also carry when they are not on a battlefield. I am not a green girl, Sir Benedict, and I must admit, with some reluctance, that I admire your courage in coming here to speak to me face-to-face. I did not expect it. I take it Lady Gramley did not really feel any burning need to stroll on the terrace with poor Matilda? I believe she ate only one biscuit.”

“I was afraid,” he said, “that if I blurted out my apology in your sister-in-law’s hearing, I might compound my offense by informing her of something she does not know about.”

“Good gracious, you are absolutely right,” she said. “Matilda would have an apoplexy if she discovered I had been beyond the walls of the park without an escort—or even with one.”

“You will forgive me?” he asked her.

“I swore I never would.” Her eyes moved to his canes. “Is it hard for you to ride?”

“Yes,” he said. “But that very fact makes the lure of doing so irresistible. That hedge was the first obstacle I had jumped since … Well, since my great fall more than six years ago. I was inclined to think afterward, in light of what happened and what almost happened, that it would also be my last. But I have decided it will not be. The next time I shall choose a higher obstacle, but I will be sure to approach it with a tallyho! on my lips.”

“You were not born this way, then?” she asked him. “There was an accident?”

“It was called war,” he told her.

Her eyes came back to his, and a frown creased her brow for a moment.

“Well, at least,” she said, “your injuries, though severe, were confined to your legs. Unlike my husband’s.”

He pursed his lips but did not answer.

The dog lumbered to his feet suddenly, crossed the distance to his mistress, set his chin on her lap, and gazed up at her. She patted his head and then smoothed her hand over it while he closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“That was insensitive of me, I suppose,” she said, sounding a little annoyed. “Were your injuries confined to your legs?”

A bullet below the shoulder, not so very far from the heart. A broken collarbone. Several broken or cracked ribs. A broken arm. Cuts and bruises in too many places to name. No significant head injuries, the only miracle associated with that particular incident.

“No.”

She looked at him as though she expected him to enumerate all his hurts.

“Those of us who were wounded in the wars are not in competition with each other to discover who suffered most,” he told her. “And there are many ways to suffer. I have a friend who led his men into a number of desperate battles and emerged each time without a scratch. He led a successful Forlorn Hope in Spain and survived unscathed, though most of his men were killed. He was lauded by generals and awarded a title by the Prince of Wales. Then he went out of his mind and was brought back to England in a straitjacket. It took him several years to recuperate to the point where he could resume something resembling a normal life. I have another friend who was both blinded and deafened in his very first battle at the age of seventeen. He was raving mad when he was brought back home. His hearing came back after a while, but his sight did not and never will. It took him a number of years to put himself back together so that he could live his life rather than merely endure what is left of it until death takes him. It is never easy, ma’am, to decide which wounds are more severe than others.”

She had lowered her gaze again while he spoke. She pulled on the dog’s ears and then rested her forehead briefly against the top of his head. But she got abruptly to her feet when Ben had finished speaking and turned away to take a few steps closer to the window.

“I am so tired,” she said in a voice that vibrated with some strong emotion. She stopped abruptly and started again. “I am mortally weary of war and wounds and suffering and death. I want to live. I want to … to dance.” She tipped her head back. He suspected that her eyes were tightly closed. Then she laughed softly. “I want to dance. Only four months after my husband’s death. Could I possibly be more frivolous? Less sensitive? More lost to all decent conduct?”

He looked at her in some surprise. “Has anyone accused you of those things?” he asked her.

She lifted her head and turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Would not everyone?” she asked in her turn. “You are not married, Sir Benedict?”

“No.”

“If you had been and you had died,” she said, “would you have been shocked if your widow had wanted to dance three months later?”

“I suppose,” he said, lifting one finger to rub along the side of his nose, “at that point it would not have mattered much to me, ma’am, what she did. Or at all, in fact.”

She smiled at him unexpectedly and was suddenly transformed into a woman of vivid prettiness. And she must be, he thought, even younger than he had supposed when he walked into the room earlier—and decades younger than he had thought her when they first met.

“But even before my death,” he added, “I would have wanted to know that she would live again after I was gone, smile and laugh again, dance again if she so desired. I suppose that, being human, I would have liked to think that she would grieve for a while too, but not indefinitely. But could she not have remembered me fondly while she smiled and laughed and danced?”

“Will you come again?” she asked him abruptly. “With your sister?”

“You will surely be happy to see the back of me,” he said. For his part, he could hardly wait to make his escape.

“No one comes,” she said. “No one is allowed to come. We are in deep mourning.”

Her vivid smile was long gone. He wondered if he had imagined it.

“Perhaps,” he suggested unwillingly, “you would like to call upon my sister at Robland Park? It would be an outing for you and perfectly respectable. Or does deep mourning not allow that?”

“It does not,” she said. “But perhaps I will come anyway.”

It occurred to him suddenly that for the past few minutes she had been standing while he had been sitting—and that he had stayed far longer than etiquette allowed.

“Beatrice will be happy to hear it,” he said, reaching for his canes and slipping his arms through the straps. “Her own activities have been curtailed by the persistent chill she contracted before Christmas. I thank you for the tea and for listening to me.”

He could not thank her for her forgiveness. She had not given it.

He hoisted himself upright, aware of her steady gaze. He wished he did not now have to shuffle out of the room in his ungainly manner while she watched.

“We have something in common, you know,” he told her, stopping abruptly before he reached the door. “I want to dance too. Sometimes it is what I want to do more than anything else in life.”

She accompanied him in silence to the front door and the waiting carriage. Beatrice was already standing beside it with Lady Matilda. They all said their farewells, and the carriage was soon on its way down the driveway.

“Well,” Beatrice said on an audible exhalation, “that was a gloomy afternoon if ever I have spent one. I do not wonder if that woman has ever laughed, Ben—I am confident she has not. What I do wonder is if she has ever smiled. I seriously doubt it. She spoke of her father with the deepest reverence. I pity poor Mrs. McKay.”

“She asked if we would come again,” he told her. “I suggested she call on you at Robland instead. It seems, though, that neither receiving visitors nor paying calls is quite the thing for ladies in mourning. Was my social education incomplete, Bea? It seems a peculiar notion to me. But she did say she might come anyway. I hope you will not disown me for making so free with your hospitality.”

“She might come?” she asked him. “But will she, do you suppose?”

Ben shrugged for answer. But he recalled the unexpected passion with which she had told him that she wanted to live. That infamous stroll in the meadow had probably been her way of breaking loose, at least for a short while. And he had ruined it for her.

“Did you make your apology?” Beatrice asked him.

“I did.” He did not add that forgiveness had not been explicitly granted.

“Then duty is satisfied for now,” she said. “It is a huge relief, I must say. And perhaps they will not come.”

“She wants to dance,” Ben said.

“What?” She turned her head to frown at him. “At the assembly next week, do you mean?”

“No. She wants to dance, Bea. I do too. I want to dance.”

She tipped her head slightly to one side. “We will certainly go to the assembly if you feel up to it,” she said, “though I doubt you will be able to dance to even the most stately of the tunes, Ben. You do very well walking with your canes. I am prouder of you than I can possibly say. But dancing? I think it wisest to put it from your mind, dearest, and concentrate upon what you can do.”

Ah, literal-minded Bea! He did not try to explain.