There was a large flat parcel, which apparently contained an embroidery frame, the sort that stood on the floor when unfolded. There was a smaller embroidery hoop, wrapped and stacked against the other. A long, heavier package, Gil was told, was full of sewing needles, crochet hooks, knitting needles, and scissors of various sizes and purposes. There was a heavyish bundle of linen cloth to be embroidered and another, softer package of embroidery silks and crochet thread. There was a second bundle of wool, wrappedseparately from the larger one, which the shopkeeper had not wanted to make too unwieldy.
“Are you quite sure I cannot carry that too?” Miss Westcott asked as they stepped out of the shop.
“If I were to try releasing one thing,” he told her, “I would probably drop the lot.”
“I could not decide which embroidery frame I preferred,” she explained as they walked. “So I purchased both.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had noticed.”
She laughed suddenly and slowed her pace. “I doubt they have ever seen a man inside that shop before,” she said.
“I believe it,” he told her. “I can see why men do not take up knitting and such. They would never be able to pluck up the courage to go and get what they needed.”
She laughed once more, and it occurred to him yet again that his first impression of her had been quite wrong. She was actually good-natured and not at all the pouty, wilting sort of female he had taken her for. He wished she were. Life would be easier.
“Inquisitiveis sometimes a negative word,” he said, referring back to what she had said before they entered the shop. “When coupled withunpardonablyit very definitely is. Having told me how you waited in trepidation during the wars for news of Harry, it was perfectly natural and polite that you should then ask me who awaited word of me.” She might as well know the whole of it. “I am the illegitimate son of a blacksmith’s daughter, Miss Westcott. She kept her own body and soul together and mine after she had been banished from her home by taking in washing in a small village about twenty miles from her own. I acquired what education I have in the village school and at the insistence of my mother. When my chance came to escape I took it without hesitation. By the time I was fourteen mymother had acquired afriendwho did not appreciate me, just as I did not appreciate him. I took the king’s shilling from a recruiting sergeant and left with him and a few other ragged recruits, and never looked back. Your family, I daresay, would have recoiled in horror if they had known all this while they were at Hinsford.”
There was a longish pause. “I do not believe so,” she said at last. “For one thing, you were a guest of Harry’s. So were they. You were kind to him in Paris and in accompanying him home. You are his friend. For another thing, Harry too is illegitimate, thanks to a former head of the Westcott family—the son of my grandmother, the brother of my aunts as well as our father. Camille and I are illegitimate. And so, incidentally, is Joel Cunningham, Camille’s husband, and their adopted children. I believe you misjudge my family. They are of high rank. Most of them are titled. And it may seem that they are high in the instep. In many ways they are. But their vision, never entirely narrow, has been broadened by the events of the past six years. And they love fiercely and well.”
He was not sure she was right on all of that. There was a world of difference between his own birth and hers. She had a lady and a gentleman for parents. She had been brought up a lady, unaware of her illegitimacy. He had worn cast-off clothes and gone barefoot when he was not wearing ragged, ill-fitting shoes. She had enjoyed great privilege and the best education during her formative years, while he had been thin with semihunger and had learned his lessons from a vicar who was more well meaning than scholarly. She had enjoyed the respect of all who knew her. He had been despised by almost everyone and called names, the mildest of which wasbastard. When Harry hadjoined the military, it had been as an officer, his commission having been purchased by his guardian. Gil had joined as cannon fodder.
But they were back at the inn, and he strode directly into the yard to deposit her packages in the carriage rather than carry them inside to the private parlor.
“I am not sure,” he said, taking her bundle from her and loading it in with the rest, “whether the landlord will be prepared to serve us luncheon or if it must be tea. But whichever it is, I am ready for it.”
“So am I,” she said. “I am sorry for delaying you, Lieutenant Colonel.”
“If you will recall,” he said, “it was I who suggested going to fetch your packages.”
“Thenyoushould apologize for delayingme,” she said, and smiled at him just a bit cheekily.
She had better not do too much of that, he thought as he indicated the side door into the inn and followed her toward it. It would not hurt to start finding her company tolerable, since they were stuck living in the same house for a while, but he certainly had no wish to start finding her attractive.
Only disaster lay along that road.
•••
Life fell into a not unpleasant pattern during the next couple of weeks. Abigail went down to the kitchen each day to meet with the cook and plan the following day’s meals. She joined Mrs. Sullivan in the latter’s sitting room twice a week to discuss household matters. The table linens were growing thin with age and needed replacing. The upstairs chambermaid, married to one of the gardeners, had given her notice for a month hence since she was expecting herfirst child one month after that, and she would need to be replaced. The window curtains in the library were heavy and dark and made the room gloomy, a fact that had not escaped Harry’s notice. Mrs. Sullivan was sure there was a lighter set in the attic, replaced during one of the brief extended periods the late earl had spent at Hinsford. He had disliked an excess of sunlight indoors. The two women went up to the attic to have a look.
Harry had dispensed with his morning sleep and was insisting that he should be woken during the afternoons after half an hour if he happened to nod off. More and more he did not sleep at all during the daytime, a fact that was helped along by the frequent arrival of visitors. He took a walk each day. Even on rainy days he went as far as the stables, especially after his horse was delivered. He even spent some time grooming it himself and promising it that he would ride soon.
It was going to be very soon, he told Abigail and Lieutenant Colonel Bennington at dinner one evening. He was sick of being a semi-invalid. He admitted he was irked to see his friend riding out without him—just as the lieutenant colonel had predicted.
Abigail entertained friends of her own at home and sometimes called upon them. She was soon knitting, embroidering, and crocheting to her heart’s content. She was enjoying her newfound freedom to do whatever she wished without feeling obliged to do what would please her family. She felt contentedly at home at Hinsford. Even the presence here of Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was less annoying than she had expected it would be.
His story, briefly told, devoid of almost all detail, had nevertheless shocked her deeply. It was hard even to imagine the sort of poverty in which he had grown up and thehumiliation he must have suffered as the bastard son of the village washerwoman. Yet his father was clearly a wealthy man.
She wondered if her familywouldhave been a bit disapproving had they known more about him when they were here. There were surely limits to the open-mindedness they had learned in the past six years.
But how could Abigail resent his being here at Hinsford? He had no one. His mother, the only relative he had ever known, was dead. His wife was dead. It was no wonder he was such a self-contained, almost morose man. Abigail had suffered too, but in comparison with his, her own sufferings seemed trivial. From the first moment since the truth about her had come out she had been supported by a family’s uncompromising love. She had a home to call her own. She had friends. And now she had a fortune far larger than her dowry would have been if she had married before her father died. It was a comfortable independence. More than comfortable, in fact.
Lieutenant Colonel Bennington spent time with Harry. He spent time alone too, out walking with his dog, riding his horse, grooming it in the stables. He spent time in the village, at the tavern, she suspected, though there was never the smell of liquor about him when he returned or any sign of inebriation. She guessed that he liked the company of other villagers and enjoyed listening to their stories. Perhaps he shared some of his own, though she somehow doubted it. Perhaps he just felt more comfortable with them than he did with her or even Harry.
He had not chopped wood since that first day. He did, however, help repair a leak in the roof above the tackle room. Abigail heard hammering coming from that direction when she was returning from the village one afternoonand was shocked to see him up on the roof. He had been bare to the waist again, hammering while one of the grooms was perched on the ladder propped against the gutter, presumably handing him the nails, and another stood on the ground below, his head tipped back to gaze upward. Abigail was thankful she was far enough away not to be noticed.
She noticed, though. How could she not? He looked as though he enjoyed physical exertion. There was an easy sort of grace about his body when it was hard at work.
Late on another morning she looked into the library to see if Harry wanted more coffee. She forgot her reason for being there, however, when she saw the lieutenant colonel up on a ladder by one of the tall windows.
