In his nightmares he saw them. Sometimes they were still frighteningly faceless. Sometimes, even more frighteningly, they had the faces of his friends and family. Occasionally they had the face he saw whenever he looked into a mirror. He could go for days or weeks without those nightmares. And then … not.
He had thought that at least he had learned something from the ghastly experiences of war and from his own loss of status and identity. Concern, compassion for all. A conscious awareness of the existence and precious individuality of everyone he met. Yet unconsciously he had dismissed Mrs. Tavernor as someone not worthy of recognition as a human being.
Maybe because she was a woman? But no. In that at least he was surely being unfair to himself.
He would not absolve himself with that assurance, however. The fact that he loved his mother and sisters and female relatives did not necessarily prove that he saw all women as deserving of the same attention as men. And the fact that he had never totally ignored Mrs. Tavernor did not prove that he had therefore treated her as he ought. No woman was a mere appendage of her husband. No widow belonged in a shadow world.
Harry rode home, aware that he had looked fully and consciously at Mrs. Tavernor for the first time today. He had deliberately stopped to speak with her, though he might easily have avoided talking at all. He was well aware that she had seen him coming but had pretended not to. She had appeared flustered when he spoke to her and forced her to turn to him in feigned surprise. The poor woman had no doubt been consumed with embarrassment over the memory of what she had said to him so impulsively last week.
But he had wanted to look at her, to speak to her, to listen to her, even if it had meant embarrassing her. For if he had ridden past without speaking this time, an awkwardness would have been imposed upon all their future encounters.
She had looked rather pretty, though it was perhaps a bit shallow and condescending of him to notice that about her before all else. Would he have been less surprised by his lack of awareness of her in the past if he had discovered her to be plain? She had been wearing a blue dress, neither dowdy nor in the height of fashion, with a matching shawl about her shoulders to protect her against the chill of the day. She was slim and rather shapely. Her hair was chestnut brown, though he had not been able to see much of it beneath the white cap that covered her head and was tied neatly beneath her chin with narrow ribbons. Her cheeks had been flushed, her nose too in the cold, her eyes large with that pretend surprise, and somewhere between blue and gray in color. She had a wide, generous mouth, which did not seem quite to fit the rest of her face but nevertheless made it more pleasing.
It was actually surprising that he had scarcely noticed her until a week ago. She was a young, good-looking woman. Attractive, one might say. Why, then, had henotnoticed her? He was as red-blooded a male as the next man. He noticed pretty women. Why had he not noticed her? Because she had been a married woman until fairly recently, and her husband had been a man of exceptionally forceful character and piety? But he noticed other pretty wives. Had she perhaps notwantedto be noticed? Had she been content to be the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor’s shadow? The vicar’s wife. The vicar’s helpmeet. He seemed to recall that Tavernor had always referred to her with that word, never as his wife. And never by name. Harry thought back to Mrs. Jenkins. She had perfectly fit her role as the vicar’s wife. Yet she had been unmistakably a person in her own right. The same could be said now of Mrs. Bailey.
Well, even if Mrs. Tavernor had kept herself deliberately in the shadows, Harry was not excused for not seeing her there. Especially as he had not really liked Tavernor. He ought to have looked more closely at the wife.
She had made him a proposition last week. And the memory of doing so had caused her acute embarrassment today. It would be as well to let the matter rest there, Harry thought. She regretted her words, and he had decided during the intervening days that it wouldnotbe a good idea to begin either a flirtation or an affair with her—or with anyone else from the neighborhood when, no matter how discreet they both were, word would inevitably get out and complicate both their lives and even perhaps trap them into a marriage neither of them wanted. One could not get away with sneezing in a village this size without at least half a dozen people who were nowhere in sight blessing one’s soul. To try engaging in a clandestine affair …
Well, it would be madness.
Why, then, had he asked if he might escort her home from Solway’s house tomorrow evening? Why was he even going to a birthday celebration he would normally have avoided? He did not attend every social function to which he was invited, after all. He tended to socialize more with his own class for the simple reason that he had more in common with them and was more comfortable with them— and they with him. He had gone to Tom and Hannah’s last week only because Tom had been his close friend for as far back as he could remember.
Had he accepted this invitation because it might give him an opportunity to see and talk to Mrs. Tavernor again? And good God, she did not need to be escorted home afterward. She lived only a stone’s throw away. But hehadagreed to attend the party, and shewasgoing to be there too, and shehadconsented to his taking her home.
He was not behaving rationally, Harry thought. It must be because his mind was weary from lack of sleep. He had better do some clear thinking between now and tomorrow evening, though. Talk sense into himself.
Mr. Solway was certainly surprised when a large crowd of his neighbors, having gathered first at the church, appeared all at once on the threshold of his house, all yelling,“Surprise!”in unison when his daughters answered the knock upon his door. Those near the front saw him first recoil in alarm, then shake his head and wag an admonishing finger at his daughters, and then smile with what looked like genuine delight as he spread his arms and beckoned everyone inside.
“If it is an old man you have come to commiserate with on his birthday,” he said, “you have come to the right place. I told my girls there was on no account to be any fuss made, but I might as well have saved what little breath is left me to blow on my tea. One’s children don’t pay any attention at all after one passes the age of seventy. Be warned. Come right on in so that those at the back don’t have to spend the evening out in the garden. Have you come too, Major Westcott?” He held out his right hand and beamed his pleasure. “This is an honor indeed.”
He shook Harry heartily by the hand, and Harry squeezed his shoulder with his free hand and wished him a happy birthday and hoped he would have many more. He was always touched when his neighbors treated him with the deference he might have expected if he had continued to be the Earl of Riverdale instead of being plain Harry Westcott, illegitimate son of the former earl.
It was a pleasant, merry evening. It began, after they were all inside and the older ones among them had been given chairs and the noisy greetings had subsided, with the Reverend Bailey offering a prayer of thanks for the seventy years upon this earth that Mr. Solway had enjoyed and asking a blessing upon the celebration and the years, however many of them the Lord had allotted, that lay ahead for each of them. Then a few of Solway’s contemporaries got to their feet one at a time and recounted generally funny stories of their younger years together. The church choir led a round of hymn singing, which was a little ragged without the musical accompaniment Mrs. Bailey always provided at church but was nevertheless hearty. Solway’s grandchildren, who were in attendance despite the fact that several of them would be up well past their bedtime, got under everyone’s feet and upon more than one nerve. And finally everyone feasted upon the savories and dainties Solway’s daughters had prepared in lavish abundance and kept hidden from their father until the party was no longer a secret and everything could be loaded upon the table after two extra leaves had been added.
The birthday cake, elaborately iced, took pride of place at the center of the table. Yet Mrs. Tavernor kept very quiet about it while the guests exclaimed upon how beautiful it looked and what a pity it was that it had to be cut, and then upon how delicious it tasted, so moist and fruit filled and richly spiced, and was it not a good thing ithadbeen cut and not merely kept as a decoration? Harry noticed because he had been particularly watching her—and because he knew that it was she who had made the cake. Her demeanor of quiet modesty was deliberately assumed, he noticed. Even when Mrs. Franks, one of Solway’s daughters, announced that it was Mrs. Tavernor who had baked and iced the cake and thanked her for it, she did no more than half smile before ducking out of sight. As a consequence, Mrs. Franks’s announcement went largely unnoticed. Most would remember the cake tomorrow. How many would also remember that their former vicar’s wife had made it?
Perhaps, then, Harry thought, it was not entirely his fault that he had never taken particular notice of her either until just over a week ago. It seemed that she really did not want to be noticed. That was strange. Most people surely wanted to be seen and recognized and acknowledged. Her late husband, the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor, had always been noticed wherever he went.
Had it been the attraction of opposites with those two?
“A penny for them, Harry, my lad?” Tom Corning slapped a hand on his shoulder. “You look as if your mind is a million miles away. Which may not be a bad thing. It may be less congested there than it is here. Can you imagine living for seventy years?”
“My grandmother will be eighty next year,” Harry told him.
“No!” Tom said. “The dowager countess? Is she aiming for a hundred?”
“It would not surprise me,” Harry said. “Every time death comes calling, she probably gives him the evil eye and he slinks back where he came from to wait awhile longer.”
Tom laughed.
At a certain point in the evening, as usually happened at such gatherings, someone decided it was time to leave, and put the decision into effect without any fuss or fanfare, yet somehow set off everyone else too, with the result that everyone was suddenly standing and there was a flurry of voices calling for children and spouses and coats and shawls and gloves, while other voices were raised in good-night greetings to one another and renewed birthday wishes to Mr. Solway and thanks to his daughters. A great deal of hand shaking and backslapping and cheek kissing and hugging proceeded in Mr. Solway’s vicinity and then everyone was spilling outdoors more or less together and calling out to one another again with yet more farewells and last-minute messages and then dispersing to their various homes, most of them on foot, a few who lived beyond the village in gigs and chaises.
Solway looked sorry that it was over, Harry thought as he stepped outside, one of the last to leave, as the old man had wanted to wring his hand once more and thank him again for condescending to come and make his birthday party even more memorable than it would otherwise have been.
Harry half expected that Mrs. Tavernor would have set out for home alone, especially as her house was so close. But she was still outside the door, hugging each of Mrs. Franks’s three children, who were about to be hauled unwillingly home by their father while their mother and their aunt remained behind to tidy the house.
Mrs. Tavernor waved the children on their way, turned to Harry, and fell into step beside him as they made their way along the street. No one seeing them would make anything of it, he thought. They were just two neighbors taking the same direction home for a few steps before their paths diverged.
