“Harry,” she said, “is alive.”
“And that is enough?” he asked.
“It is always enough,” she said. “Or at least it is the main ingredient for being enough.”
“And you?” he asked again. “Is it enough that you too are alive?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice suddenly curt. “To return to your original question, I do not want to be married because of what I am, Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. At present that is the illegitimate daughter of the late Earl of Riverdale, under the determined protection of the powerful and well-connected Westcott family as well as that of the Marquess of Dorchester, my stepfather. Neither do I want to be marrieddespitewhat I am. I want to be married—ifI am to be married at all, that is—forwhoI am.”
“And who is that?” he asked. Beauty, he noticed, had tired of the stick-chasing game. She had abandoned the stick in the middle of the lawn and gone to stretch out at the foot of the blanket upon which Harry lay.
“Ah,” she said, “that is the key question.” She did not have the answer, it seemed, or if she did, she was not sharing it.
“You wish to be married for who you are,” he said. “But whom do you wish tomarry, Miss Westcott?”
She turned her head to dart an appreciative look at him. “Ah,” she said, “you do understand. Most women are married. Very few, it seems to me,marry. It is always the man who begins the courtship and the man who discusses the marriage contract with another man of her family. It is the man who proposes marriage. It is the man who takes her to live with him and expects her to change not only her name but her very life to fit his. It is the woman’s part to be married and to make the best of it.”
“Should everything be reversed, then?” he asked.
“Oh, by no means.” She actually smiled for a moment and lost her look of cool beauty to become simply pretty. “That would not redress the imbalance, would it, but merely tip it the other way. I believe Camille and Joel marriedeach other. So did my mother and Marcel. And other members of my family. You did not meet Cousin Elizabeth this week—Lady Hodges, Alexander’s sister. She is still recovering at home from a confinement. She is almost ten years older than her husband, buttheymarried each other against all the odds. One only has to see them together for a few minutes to know that they belong together, that they are vibrantly happy.”
It was love after all, then, for which Abigail Westcott searched—and waited. But not the sort of being-in-loveinfatuation he had felt for Caroline when he married her. Though, truth to tell, that was a grossly oversimplified explanation of how he had felt about her and why he had wed her. Ultimately they had married because she was with child.
Miss Westcott seemed to be reading his thoughts. “Did you love your wife?” she asked.
He felt himself closing up—not that he had ever opened up to her or anyone else. He looked away as his thoughts turned to his wife. There had been lust. There had beenbeing in love. There had been dazzlement, an incredulous sort of wonder that she could be so powerfully attracted to him when she might have had her pick of any number of handsome, wealthy, well-connected officers, all of whom were gentlemen, all of whom were clamoring for her favors. And there had been the naïveté, of course—a humiliating, disastrous abundance of it. For it was only later, after they were married, after he had taken her to his home in England, that he understood what it was about him that had attracted her—and no longer did. They were the very things that ought to have repelled her, in fact. And half of them had been imaginary. Perhaps more than half. He was not at all the person she had mistaken him for. Except in one thing. He was as far from being a gentleman as it was possible to be.
Ancient history, all of it.
Except that there was Katy.
“I married her,” he said, and he could hear the stiffness in his voice. “I cared for her in every way I knew how. She died.”
It was no answer, of course, and her silence accused him. She had been open with him. He had been the opposite with her. But to hell with it. No man enjoyed talking aboutfeelings, for God’s sake, or about love and marriage and all the rest of it. Or about his own failed marriage,which had left pain like a raw thing ripping him apart. Or about humiliation that had torn at his very manhood. He felt suddenly irritated, perhaps the more so because he knew he was the one who had started it. She quite possibly would have been happy to discuss the weather or nothing at all during their walk.
Harry had raised himself on one elbow.
“One of these days,” he called out cheerfully as they drew within earshot, “I am going to get out of this habit of having an afternoon nap.” He laughed and pushed Beauty’s head away as she went to stand beside him and tried to lick his face.
•••
I married her. I cared for her in every way I knew how. She died.
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington’s words played and replayed themselves in Abigail’s head far too often for her comfort during the following days. They had seemed totally devoid of emotion, a possibility that chilled her. Or perhaps they resonated with an emotion too deep to break through in words—andthatwas a possibility that wrenched her heart. It was impossible to know which of the two extremes had been in those words. Or perhaps neither. Perhaps he had merely been stating facts. But it seemed to Abigail that this man was unknowable and deliberately so. He was totally self-contained. Trying to know him was a bit like trying to know granite.
Not that she cared. She did not want to know him. He was Harry’s friend, but she had not warmed to him. It was not just that she had been made to look foolish during that first meeting with him—though that had not helped, she had to admit. Actually he made her feel foolish all the time.
She had been taken completely by surprise to learn that he had been married. She could not imagine it. Neither could she imagine the woman who would want to marry him. Oh, but yes, she could. What a stupid thing to think. Although she cringed inwardly at the very sight of him and was distinctly uncomfortable when forced to be close to him, she was honest enough with herself to recognize the source of what she had at first taken for revulsion.
He was disturbingly attractive in a way she could not put into words. She suspected it was something physical, but did not want to explore that possibility. She tried not to think about him at all. She tried to ignore his presence at Hinsford. And it was not as difficult as it might have been. He stayed out of her way except during mealtimes and other times when the three of them were together.
She did admit, reluctantly, that his presence here was good for her brother. He did not fuss over Harry or try offering him any personal care, even an arm to lean upon. The day after everyone left, Harry sent for Mark Mitchell, the publican’s son, who had briefly been his valet before the great disaster. Since then Mark had worked with his father at the village inn. Harry offered him his old job back, and he accepted it and moved in the same day.
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington confined his role to that of companion and friend. He conversed with Harry, played chess with him, moved chairs out onto the terrace and sat there with him on a particularly warm day. He walked with him, accompanied him to the stables to look over the horses and carriages, drove him in the gig one afternoon to the village tavern and to church on Sunday morning while Abigail chose to walk. Occasionally he sat quietly reading with Harry in the library. Abigail was surprised to discover them thus employed one rainy afternoon when she went in to askif they were ready for tea. Harry was reading one of the London papers, which had come with the post that morning, while Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was reading a book.
“You actuallylikebooks, Gil?” Harry asked, lowering his paper.
“I sometimes wish I could read faster,” the lieutenant colonel told him. “I suppose that comes with practice. But yes. Being able to read is a privilege. The vicar who taught me at a village school always said that, much to the eye-rolling disgust of all his pupils, including me. But he was right. I read now because I can.”
