“You are lonely,” he continued. “I may not have spent a great deal of time with you in the past six years, Abby, but I still know you well enough to understand that. You were always far more quiet and reserved than Camille ever was when you were growing up, but at least you always knew your way forward. You would have made your come-out and you would have had dozens of suitors to choose among, and you would have chosen the one that best pleased you. By now you would be married and raising your children and living the life you had always expected and wanted.”
“How do you know what I wanted?” she asked, frowning.
“You wanted what every girl wants,” he said. “You are not going to deny it, are you? There is nothing wrong with wanting marriage and a family, Abby.”
“I was blind,” she said. “I was blinded by what was expected of me. So was Camille. She would have married Lord Uxbury. I probably would have ended up marrying someone similarly horrid.”
“No, you would not,” he said. “Cam was an idiot in those days. All that mattered to her was doing what society and her lady’s upbringing expected of her in the hope that at last she would win our father’s love. It never would have happened even if he had lived to be a hundred and even if she had wed one of the royal dukes. He cared for no one but himself. She is far better off now than she was then. She ishappy, for God’s sake. But you were always different. You would have chosen far more wisely than she did when she picked Uxbury. And you would have been contented forever after even if not wildly happy.”
Abigail was surprised at how well Harry seemed to understand his sisters as they had been. She had not realized it at the time. He had been a careless young man, seemingly concerned only with sowing his own wild oats.
“Well, I am glad it did not happen,” she said. “Glad for Camille and glad for myself. Glad for Mama too. I am not so sure about you. It must have been dreadful losing your title and your fortune as you did.”
He shrugged. “I have managed. I have even managed to survive.” He grinned.
“Harry,” she said, frowning again, “I am not lonely. Or if I am, it is not a gnawing ache. Certainly not a raging pain. And I would rather be lonely than married to the wrong man. Or grabbing the first one that seems attainable. I might have done that twice over during the past couple of years at Redcliffe. I did not do it. I am not afraid to be single. There is some freedom in the single state.”
“Not a great deal for a woman,” he said bluntly. “What if I get married one of these days, eh? What will you do then? For my wife would be mistress of Hinsford, and I know you well enough to understand that you would feel more than a bit awkward about remaining here then even if both I and my wife urged you to stay. Where would you go?”
“I will decide that when the time comes,” she told him. “Areyou planning to marry?”
“Not in the foreseeable future,” he said. “But I probably will one of these days. Could you not be happy with Gil, Abby? He is an excellent fellow. And I think he may be just the one for you.”
“Oh,” she said crossly. “When did you decide to become a matchmaker, Harry? I scarcely know Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. He scarcely knows me. And if you think we should suddenly decide to marry each other just so that hewill have a better chance of recovering his daughter, then you must have windmills in your head.”
“Notjustbecause,” he said. “Though itwouldsurely give him a better chance. I had no idea until an hour or so ago, you know, that General Pascoe and his wife would not give the child up to him. I thought he just needed a bit of time first before he took on the responsibility. It is a monstrous thing.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But I am not going to marry him justbecauseit is. And he is not going to marry me either just to give himself an advantage in a legal wrangle. As much as anything else, Harry, there are his birth and upbringing to consider. Can you just imagine how everyone would react if I announced my intention of marrying him? Even given the blot onmybirth?”
“You mean Mama and the grandmothers and all the rest?” he said. “We have not discovered their breaking point yet, have we? They would not let us go even though we are bastards. They accepted Joel when Cam took it into her head to marry him. They have accepted her adopted children. They did not go into a collective swoon—at least, I did not hear that they did—when Cousin Elizabeth decided to marry a man almost ten years her junior. Maybe they do not have a breaking point. But even if they do, do you care, Abby?”
Didshe?Wouldshe? If she made a marriage so outrageously inappropriate that her family turned their backs on her? It would—
“It is a nonsense question,” she said crossly. “I am not going to marry Lieutenant Colonel Bennington. He is not going to offer for me. But you have put us in a ghastly predicament, I would have you know. I am going to find it difficult to look him in the eye the next time I see him, andI daresay he will find it just as hard to look me in mine. You are a horrid man, Harry, just as you were a horrid boy.”
He grinned at her and then yawned hugely.
“I am sorry to have upset you,” he said. “I really am, Abby. But I still think—”
“Oh stop,” she said irritably, getting to her feet and grabbing her knitting bag from beside her chair. “Go and have a sleep. Perhaps you will wake up with some sense restored to your brain.”
All she got for a reply as she left the room was a chuckle followed by another yawn.
She hurried up to her room rather than go to one of the other day rooms and risk being walked in upon. The thing was that Harry’s outrageous suggestion had made some sense. Having a wife probablywouldincrease the lieutenant colonel’s chances of getting his daughter back. But why oh why oh why had he decided to suggest her as a possible candidate? It was ghastly beyond belief. Shewaslonely, though she rarely admitted it to herself in such stark terms. But the idea of trying to alleviate it by marryinghimrather than any other man she knew—either of the two who had hinted an interest in her during the last couple of years, for example—was... Well, it was preposterous. She felt quite uncomfortably breathless, and her knees felt weak.
She had a sudden and vivid memory of walking beside him to the needlework shop, her hand through his arm, every cell of her body aware of his tallness and overall largeness, of the hardness of the muscles in his arm, of the shaving soap or eau de cologne that he wore. Something distinctly masculine, whatever it was. The very idea of beingmarriedto him, of touches far more intimate than a hand through his arm, kisses, for example... Oh, it was a lowering admission to make even in the privacy of her ownmind when she was twenty-four years old, but Abigail had never been kissed. She had never particularly wanted to be, not by any specific man anyway. What would it be like to be kissed by Lieutenant Colonel Bennington?
Oh, blast Harry and his bright ideas.
She closed the door of her room firmly behind her, set her workbag neatly in its place, and went into her dressing room to splash her face with cool water. Why could the mind not simply be shut down when one was mortified by the thoughts and images that were racing through it without a request for permission? How she hated Harry. Sometimes he just blurted out whatever came into his head, without any consideration of the impact his words might be having upon his listeners.
However was she going to face Lieutenant Colonel Bennington again?
Well, there was only one answer to that question, she thought as she dried her face and hands with a towel. She must face him as soon as possible so that she would not give in to the temptation to hide forever.
She grabbed a shawl and drew it about her shoulders, leaving a fold to be drawn over her head, before going back downstairs and stepping outdoors. She stood on the top step and looked around. The rain seemed to have stopped, at least temporarily, though the clouds still hung ominously low. She was fortunate—though she did notfeelfortunate. He was coming diagonally across the lawn toward the house, the shoulders of his coat and the brim of his hat looking damp, his boots liberally strewn with wet grass. A bedraggled-looking Beauty loped along at his side though she increased her pace when she spotted Abigail. He looked up, saw her, stopped a moment, his face looking a bit like granite, and then kept coming. It was too late now for either one of them to turn away.
“Beauty, sit,” he called as soon as his dog reached the terrace, thus saving Abigail from being effusively greeted by a wet dog. He himself stopped a few feet farther back.
