“Whatever are you doing?” she asked, startled.
He looked down at her. “Taking down these curtains,” he said. “They weigh a ton. Stand well back.”
“But there are servants,” she said.
“I had noticed,” he told her. “There is also me.”
“This was your idea, Abby?” Harry asked. He was standing at the foot of the ladder, supposedly to make sure it did not slip. “I must say it was an inspired one. These curtains are so heavy they will never pull back far enough to let in sufficient light. Besides which they are such a dark wine color they look black. When they are pulled across, it might as well be midnight even if it is actually noon on a sunny day.”
“It was my idea,” she admitted. “But I did not intend to give extra work to Lieutenant Colonel Bennington.”
He was not bare chested this time. But he had removed both his coat and his waistcoat and had rolled up his shirtsleeves to the elbows. His grandfather had been a blacksmith, Abigail thought. He probably would have been onetoo if he had been born within wedlock. She could just picture him laboring at an anvil.
“This is not work if you listen to Gil,” Harry said, chuckling. “It is just a little light morning exercise.”
The curtains dropped to the floor a minute later, but the lieutenant colonel shooed Abigail away when she would have stepped forward to help fold them.
“They are far too bulky and heavy,” he said as he came down the ladder, “not to mention dusty. I’ll get the ones down from the other window and then fold them all and haul them up to the attic before putting the other set up.”
Abigail would have gone away, but she wanted to watch. She went and fetched her crocheting—she was making a lacy shawl for her niece Winifred’s fourteenth birthday, a garment she hoped would make the girl feel more grown up. And she watched the lieutenant colonel bring down the other set of curtains, fold them, and haul them all together out of the room. Shortly after, he climbed the ladder again and hung the beige brocaded curtains, which transformed the library into an attractive, light-filled room.
“Oh, thank you,” she said when he was finished. “I am so sorry to have caused you so much trouble. But this room is far more pleasant now; I am grateful for your efforts.”
His white shirt was streaked with dirt. So were his breeches. His hands looked grubby. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, as it often did. He wasnota handsome man, she thought. Not in the way Alexander was, for example, or Marcel, even though her stepfather was in his forties. But Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was something just as appealing. Perhaps more so. He wasgorgeous.
It was not something she conceded with any great delight. She was not looking for any sort of flirtation with himor anyone else. She was not interested in weaving any romantic or lascivious daydreams about him. She was prepared to accept him here; that was all. He was good for Harry, and really he did not interfere with her life in any way. He was quiet and courteous and absent much of the time. And he was always willing to make himself useful—to volunteer his services, in fact, since it would never occur to her to ask for his help.
She had learned on the way to the wool shop how alone he was in the world. Did that also mean he had no home of his own to go to? He had not told her where he had lived with his wife, if anywhere. Perhaps she had followed the drum with him. It was altogether possible—no, probable—that he had nowhere. It was also likely he had nothing apart from his officer’s pay. Was that half pay now that he was not on active duty?
She tried not to think about him at all. Her pity was the very last thing he would want. And he seemed like the sort of man who could look after himself. But she knew what loneliness felt like even though she had never been physically alone. She knew what it felt like to be alone deep within herself. It could be frightening. Or it could lead one to make a friend of the aloneness and to be stronger and even happier as a result.
She sensed loneliness in Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. She did not know if it caused him pain. She really did not know him at all, in fact. He had allowed her a few brief, tantalizing glimpses into his life history, but otherwise he still presented the appearance of a shield, unknown and unknowable. She wondered how well Harry knew him but would not ask. It would seem somehow dishonorable to worm out of her brother what the lieutenant colonel chose not to tell her himself.
Later that week, she had a couple of letters in the morning’s post, one from Marcel’s great-aunt, and the other, a far fatter one, from Cousin Elizabeth, Lady Hodges. It was a beautiful day, far more like summer than late spring, and she had already had her meeting with the cook. She would take the letters with her out to the lake, she decided, and sit there basking in the sunshine for a while. The afternoon would be busy enough. The vicar’s wife and a few other ladies were coming to tea. They wished to discuss with Abigail a church bazaar they were planning for later in the summer. Abigail suspected they were hoping to use the grounds of Hinsford for the event, as had happened a few times in the past when her mother was living here. She would be quite happy to agree if Harry had no objection.
She was sitting on her favorite flat slab of rock, conveniently positioned beneath a sheltering weeping willow, when she heard the telltale panting of an approaching dog. She was no longer even remotely afraid of Beauty and turned to greet her, but the presence of Beauty meant of course that Lieutenant Colonel Bennington was not far behind. Abigail pushed aside her feeling of annoyance, set her letters down on the rock, and looked up to smile politely at him.
He looked grim faced. More grim faced than usual, that was.
“I beg your pardon,” he said abruptly. “If I had seen you before Beauty did, I would have stopped her from disturbing you. I see you have come here to read your letters.”
He had had one too this morning.
“Did you see yours?” she asked him.
He stared back at her, his expression even grimmer, if that was possible.
“I saw it,” he said.
Nine
He had seen it, seen that it was from his lawyer, grabbed it, and taken the stairs two at a time to read it in his room.
And then, having read the letter, he had come out walking, though at breakfast he had arranged to join Harry in a short while for a game of billiards. He would have gone riding if he could have been sure there would be no grooms in the stables. He did not want to have to encounter people. Besides, when he had left his room Beauty had come with him without waiting to be told she might. She had been whining almost soundlessly. He could not both rideandtake Beauty. She was not fond of horses. She was especially not fond ofhishorse. There was a bit of jealousy at work, he suspected.
He had walked for what must have been an hour or more, striding along country lanes as though he were late for an appointment, trudging around the edges of cultivated fields and across open meadows, deliberately skirting aboutthe edges of the village lest he be seen and hailed. Yet all that time he had been seeing nothing. He had forgotten to bring Beauty’s leash, but today it did not matter. Today she did not dash off to make her own explorations or to try herding sheep that chose not to be herded. She stayed by his side, panting, occasionally glancing up at him, making that soft whining sound in her throat.
He had no consolation to offer her in exchange.
