Even with ladies, however, it was unfair to generalize.There had been a few among them whom he had respected, even liked.
He liked most of the ladies here at Hinsford, grudgingly, it was true, since their very presence dismayed him on his own account and worried him on Harry’s. A crowd of visitors was exactly what Harry did not need. It was why he had decided to come home to the country rather than go to London. But these people were at least amiable.
He sat between the Duchess of Netherby and Lady Jessica Archer at dinner, and they both conversed intelligently with him. The duchess was Harry’s half sister. She explained to Gil how she had grown up at an orphanage in Bath, unaware of her true identity. She had been twenty-five and teaching at the orphanage school when she was summoned to London to learn that she was in fact the legitimate daughter of the recently deceased Earl of Riverdale.
“A Cinderella story,” Gil said.
“In many ways yes,” she agreed. “But Cinderella was unhappy with her life before she met Prince Charming. She lived with a wicked stepmother and wicked stepsisters and was given grueling chores she did not enjoy. I was well cared for at the orphanage and had good friends there, including the one who later married my half sister Camille. I enjoyed teaching. I actually liked my Spartan little room and my few possessions, which were very precious to me. I was not entirely delighted to learn the truth about myself.”
“You would go back, then, if you could?” he asked.
“Oh, by no means. I did marry Prince Charming, after all.” She laughed and her eyes twinkled, and Gil liked her.
“You spent time with the garrison on St. Helena, Lieutenant Colonel?” Lady Jessica Archer asked him. “What is Napoleon Bonapartelike? We tend to think of him as an evil, black-hearted villain, but I suppose the truth is farmore nuanced. I expect he is a fascinating though dangerous man.”
She was a dark-haired, bright-eyed beauty, the duchess’s sister-in-law, and Gil wondered why she was not yet married. Was marriage not the goal of all young ladies as soon as they left the schoolroom at the age of seventeen or so? She must be several years past that age.
“I saw him a number of times, of course,” he told her. “But I did not know him or ever speak to him. I felt sorry for him actually. If he had been made to face a firing squad, I would have approved. If he had been shut up for life in a fortress, I would have thought it a just fate. As it was, he was exiled to that island and housed in what many people seem to believe is a luxury he does not deserve. But in reality it is a house in ill repair. It is damp and unhealthy, and nothing has been done to make it more habitable. It seems to me that he is being treated not with justice but with deliberate contempt.”
“And contempt for such a man is not justice?” she asked. It seemed to be a genuine question, not a snide comment. Her knife and fork were suspended above her plate while she gave him her full attention.
“No,” he said. “I believe contempt says more about the person giving it than the one receiving. It demeans what ought to be righteous punishment.”
It occurred to him that this was probably not at all the sort of thing he should be talking about with a young lady of theton—a duke’s sister. And it occurred to him as altogether likely that he was being treated with such warm courtesy only because it was assumed that as an officer he must also be a gentleman. But he could hardly be expected to stand up and announce himself to be the bastard son of a blacksmith’s daughter and a man he had never met or even heard from until he was grown up and a sergeant in India.
After they had adjourned to the drawing room, the Marchioness of Dorchester, Harry’s mother, sat on the arm of her son’s chair and set a hand on his shoulder when he would have risen to give her his place.
“Lieutenant Colonel Bennington,” she said, beckoning him closer. “I understand from Harry that you spent a considerable amount of time with him in Paris every day after your return from St. Helena. That was extremely kind of you. And he tells me you had already made arrangements for his journey home before Avery and Alexander arrived.”
“He wished to come, ma’am,” he explained, “against the advice of his physicians.”
“It was poor advice, then?” she asked him, glancing down at her son with obvious concern and rubbing her hand reassuringly over his shoulder.
“I believed it was,” he told her. “With the best intentions in the world, they were nevertheless coddling him in the direction of the grave. He might have arrived there before I returned to France if he had not been too stubborn to die.”
“Oh.” She looked a bit shocked.
“One knows oneself to be an invalid,” Harry said, “when people talk about one as though one were not present to speak for oneself. I do not believe my case was nearly as dire as Gil describes it, Mama, but I will be forever grateful to him for taking my part and making the arrangements and coming home with me, even after Avery and Alexander arrived and he might easily have bowed out of the commitment he had made.”
“I will be forever grateful too, Lieutenant Colonel,” the marchioness said, smiling at him. “Thank you.”
He inclined his head stiffly, uncomfortable with her gratitude. His reason for coming here had been at least partly selfish.
“We all will be,” the Countess of Riverdale added. She had come to stand beside Gil, a tall, beautiful woman if one disregarded the unfortunately large purple marks down one side of her face. He had thought at first they were burns, but her features were not distorted. They must be a birthmark, then, and had doubtless caused her endless anguish through the years. Yet she seemed unselfconscious about her appearance. The marred side of her face was closer to him than the unblemished side.
“Harry, we all had to come here, you know, just to assure ourselves with our own eyes that you are indeed home safe at last and on the mend. Your grandmother and Aunt Matilda will no doubt be here tomorrow as well as your aunt Mildred and uncle Thomas. But you need not fear that any of us will stay long. You came home for peace and quiet, did you not?”
“Well—” Harry began.
“No gentleman could possibly answer that question without perjuring himself, Wren,” her husband, the earl, said, and she laughed.
“And I would not be surprised,” Harry’s mother said, “if Camille comes from Bath in the next day or two. Abby wrote to her. She has not seen Harry since the Christmas Marcel and I were married. More than three years ago.”
“I am sorry, Gil,” Harry said, chuckling.
He had not done much chuckling or laughing or even smiling in the past few months. Although he still looked pale and exhausted, perhaps this invasion by his family was really not going to be so bad for him after all. At least it assured him that he was dearly loved.
Bleakness assailed Gil for a moment, but he shook it off. He could not miss what he had never had. Never. Not during his growing years—his mother had probably been too borne down by the necessity of feeding and clothing themto have energy to spare for any open affection. And not during his brief marriage. What Caroline had felt for him had never been love. The more fool he for believing it was—for grasping at the notion that it was. Besides, none of this was about him.
