Lydia kept herself determinedly busy throughout the following week, bustling about as though she had a mansion to run instead of a cottage. She cleaned and cooked and baked and cleaned again. She weeded the flower beds behind the house and chopped wood and took Snowball for walks in the early morning, along country lanes no one frequented at that time of day. Even so, every time she left the house, always by the back way, or came to a new turn, she peered in every direction first like a child playing hide-and-seek, to make sure there was no one in sight.
Specifically Major Harry Westcott.
The only person she ever did see was Jeremy Piper, the boy her husband had saved, who liked to slink around at all hours, often carrying what looked like a slingshot. Fortunately, he always seemed intent upon avoiding Lydia. Perhaps she reminded him of an episode in his life he would rather forget.
Lydia could notbelievewhat she had said. She had actually enjoyed the walk home from the Cornings’ house with Major Westcott, though she had been a bit alarmed at first at the prospect of having to make conversation with him. It had proved surprisingly easy, however. They had even joked with each other, something she had not done with anyone besides her women friends for years. It had felt lovely. So had the firmness of his arm beneath her hand and the solidity of his chest and shoulders close to her, accentuated by the capes of his greatcoat. She had not wanted it to end—and it had not ended when they reached her gate. For he had insisted upon seeing her safely inside her house.
That had proved to be her undoing.If onlywhen he had turned to leave she had kept her mouth shut. But no. After they had already said good night, it had occurred to her that this was her big opportunity, probably her only one. Ever. All she needed was the courage to seize the moment …
So she had opened her mouth and spoken. She, Lydia Tavernor, who never spoke without first weighing her words and being quite sure she had something of value to say.Are you ever lonely?she had asked—and had not had the sense to stop there, though even that would have been bad enough.
Her stomach had been a churning cauldron ever since. She had been unable to sleep properly, and when shediddoze, she had bizarre dreams that were so much like reality that she jerked awake in a panic only to find that reality was worse. Her only faint hope—veryfaint—was that she had not said enough to make her meaning clear to him.
I value my freedom and independence too well. But they do come at a cost … I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely …
There was no way on this earth he couldpossiblyhave misunderstood.
What a colossal humiliation!
Two days after it happened, she had the opportunity to go into Eastleigh, a market town eight miles away, with the vicar and his wife, who often offered to take her when they were going themselves. Lydia suspected that the Reverend Bailey did not enjoy shopping and was quite happy for the chance to sit in the coffee room of a comfortable inn while his wife had the company of another female who enjoyed looking around the shops as much as she did. Lydia spent far more than she ought, with Mrs. Bailey’s full encouragement. She purchased a new ready-made dress, plain of design but of such a pretty pink fabric that she could not resist it. Isaiah had always liked her to wear sober colors, and since his death, of course, she had worn almost exclusively black and gray.
She spent most of the rest of her disposable money at her favorite place, which was fortunately Mrs. Bailey’s too—a needlework shop, where she bought a supply of bright yellow wool and a smaller amount of pink wool, several shades darker than her dress. It would make a very pretty shawl. It was an age since she had last knitted. She was going to start again. The vicar’s wife meanwhile left the shop with a fat bundle of embroidery silks.
Back at home, Lydia knitted whenever she could not invent something else to do—she could not concentrate upon reading. But knitting, alas, occupied only the hands, not the mind too. She tried knitting and reading at the same time, but the rather intricate pattern she was working made it impossible.
Perhaps by the next time she saw Major Westcott he would have forgotten. Perhaps he had not paid much attention even at the time. Yet he had stood on her garden path, frowning at her door—not that she had been able to see his expression in the darkness around one lifted corner of her curtain, it was true, but she would have bet the sixpence she had already lost at cards that he was frowning. He had stood there for what had seemed like an eternity.
Denise Franks, one of the friends she had made during the past year, distracted her one afternoon by calling and staying to share a pot of tea. They exchanged news and recipes, and Denise admired her knitting, which was already a few inches long, and chuckled over the bright yellow color. She had come to invite Lydia to a surprise birthday party she and her sister had decided to give for her father’s seventieth birthday. She was very grateful when Lydia offered to make a birthday cake, since she and her sister were swamped with all the other preparations.
“It was an impulsive decision,” she explained. “It was only when Papa told us a couple of days ago that we must on no account make a fuss over his birthday that we realized that yes, really we ought and must. He clearly expects it.”
“He will scold you and be delighted,” Lydia said, laughing.
She baked the cake the next day and decorated it with marzipan and icing the day after. By the time she was finished with the decorating, Snowball was restless. She had had only a brief outing before breakfast and was hovering at the door, whining. The front door.
Lydia hesitated. She had been avoiding the front entrance all week like the coward she was. Her front garden was directly across the street from the entrance to Hinsford Manor. In the past she had often been outside when Major Westcott came down the drive. She had never felt any awkwardness about smiling at him, raising a hand in greeting, even exchanging a few meaningless pleasantries about the weather with him. The sight of him had always brightened her day, in fact, though she doubted he had ever really noticed her.
It would no longer brighten her day to see him for the very reason that now he would almost certainly notice her.
Why oh why oh why had she done it? And why was it impossible to recall words once they were out of one’s mouth? If she could just hide away in a hole somewhere and stay there until he grew old and died or untilshedid, whichever came first, then … Well, then nothing. Sometimes one’s mind churned out the silliest of absurdities.
All her spring flowers were blooming merrily out there, most notably the daffodils, her favorite flower in the world. But the weeds were thriving too. The poor flower beds had never been so neglected. And all because she was a coward and afraid to go out front. Yet she had to see him againsometime.
“Right, Snowball,” she said as she went to get her gardening tools and gloves. “Out we go. You can run around while I tackle the wilderness.”
Snowball rushed out as soon as Lydia opened the door. She dashed over to the fence that bordered the copse, did her business, and dashed back again, bringing with her a stick that looked incongruously big and heavy for her. She dropped it at Lydia’s feet outside the door, wagged her stub of a tail, and gazed up hopefully.
Lydia glanced across at the empty drive. Nothing and no one. She looked at the gardening things in her hands, winced as she saw the flower bed beneath the front window—it seemed even weedier without the barrier of a pane of glass—glanced back at her dog, and laughed. Why not? Good heavens,why not?
Snowball woofed her agreement.
“Just for a few minutes, though,” Lydia said. “I do have more important things to do, you know.”
She was down at the bottom of the garden ten minutes later, her back to the fence, throwing the stick yet again in a game Snowball never seemed to tire of, when she heard the unmistakable sound of clopping hooves. She darted a dismayed glance over her shoulder at the drive and saw no one riding down it. Her relief was short-lived, however. Major Westcott must have ridden into the village earlier while she was busy in the kitchen. He was returning now along the street, his horse’s head just coming into view around the bend.
Foolishly, Lydia turned sharply away and pretended she was so engrossed in the game that she had neither heard nor seen him. She willed him to sneak by without saying anything. He might be just as desirous of avoiding her as she was of avoiding him, after all.
Apparently he was not.
