Harry was not proud of his lack of awareness. No one deserved to be totally disregarded, as though their very existence was of no significance. Everyone deserved to be noticed. To be treated with respect. To be listened to. To be recognized as a fellow human being. During his military years he had always made a point of knowing each of the men under his command, down to the lowliest recruit.
For a few moments he felt a familiar clutch of panic in the region of his stomach as his thoughts shifted to all those faceless multitudes of men who in his nightmares marched inexorably toward him and their deaths. Scores of them, even hundreds, coming to be slaughtered by his own hand or by his command to his men to fire their muskets and rifles. Anonymous beings whom he had never dared think of as people. Whom in his nightmares he could think of as nothingbutpeople—for whose deaths he was guilty, for the suffering of whose mothers and wives and sisters he was responsible. Yet he could not put a name or even a face to any of them.
He turned his head to see Mrs. Tavernor’s face, to impress it upon his conscious mind at last—and perhaps to assure himself that yes, of course he knew what she looked like and would recognize her anywhere. But her face was hidden by the brim of her bonnet and would not have been easily visible anyway in the darkness.
“It was a pleasant evening, was it not?” he said, aware of the silence now that they had walked away from the other departing guests. “I won three shillings at cards.”
“I lost sixpence, alas,” she said. “What a good thing it was—for me—that large wagers were forbidden. I shall think for days of how I might have spent those six pennies.”
Her tone was serious. Yet—there surely was a glimmering of humor in her words. That was a surprise, though why it should be he did not know. But yes, he did. Humor had seemed to be totally lacking in her husband. It was perhaps one reason Harry had never quite warmed to him.
“It was, however,” she added, “a pleasant evening. It was kind of the Cornings to invite me.”
“Let us walk down the center of the road,” he suggested. “It is smoother there. The outsides are rather badly rutted after all that rain we had a few days ago. Feel free to hold my arm more tightly, Mrs. Tavernor. I would hate for you to step awkwardly and turn an ankle. Tom would blame me, as well he might, and remind me of it for the next decade at the very least. Sometimes lanterns seem to cast more shadow than light, do they not?” He hoisted the one he held a little higher. It had been necessary to bring it from home, as he had a winding, tree-shadowed drive to negotiate after turning off the village street.
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate your offer to accompany me, Major Westcott, though it was unnecessary. There are enough houses along here that I always feel perfectly safe walking home alone, even at night.”
Harry was no longer a major. He had sold his commission a few years ago. However, most of his acquaintances, those who were not on a first-name basis with him, that was, still addressed him by that title. Perhaps doing so saved them the embarrassment of having to call himMisterWestcott when they had once addressed him asmy lord.
Mrs. Tavernor had a low, rather pleasant voice. Harry deliberately took notice of it, though he could surely forgive himself for not having known what it sounded like. He did not believe he had heard her speak so many words all together before tonight. “Your cottage is a little beyond the end of the street, though,” he said, nodding ahead. It was almost exactly opposite the gateway to the manor drive, separated from the string of houses along the main street and hidden from them by a thick copse of trees and a slight bend in the road. “You are not nervous about living there alone?”
“I am not,” she assured him. “Who would come and bother me there? Bears? Wolves? Ghosts?”
“You have no servants?” he asked, though he was almost sure she did not.
“The housekeeper we had became quite insubordinate after my husband died,” she told him. “She resented taking orders from me when she had always taken them exclusively from him. I decided I could do very well without her and left her at the vicarage for the new vicar and his wife to inherit. It was a bit spiteful of me, perhaps, but I understand Mrs. Bailey quickly established command over her own domain. Mrs. Elsinore is still there. I do not miss her services, however. I have found myself quite capable of looking after my cottage and my needs with only a little help from one of the blacksmith’s sons. Reginald—Reggie. Do you know him?”
“The lad with the turned-up nose and all the freckles?” he asked. “The first lad one would suspect if there had been some mischief afoot?”
“The very one,” she said. “For some peculiar reason he likes to regale me with tales of some of his more daring exploits. He has something of a storyteller’s gift. He does some outdoor jobs for me. Otherwise, I manage very well alone. I am actually proud of my independence.”
“I sometimes find myself claiming that I live alone,” he told her. “And then I look about me and notice that I am waited upon by a butler, a valet, and a small army of other servants, both indoors and out. You put me to shame.”
“Well,” she said. “I cannot quite picture you bustling from room to room at Hinsford Manor, a duster in one hand, a mop in the other.”
“Can you not?” He looked at her, but again all he saw was the brim of her bonnet. “Or cooking my lone lamb chop and single potato in the Hinsford kitchen?”
“When I do try to picture it,” she said after a pause, “my mind presents me with a great big empty blank.”
She definitely had a sense of humor. It was a pleasant discovery. Had he expected, then, that she would be no more than a leftover shade of the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor in every way? That she had no identity apart from his?
“I cannot blame you,” he said. “How does one heat up an oven anyway?”
She recognized the question as rhetorical and did not attempt an answer. “You must console yourself for your helplessness with the knowledge that you are the biggest employer in the neighborhood,” she said. “And not just on your farms. The whole economy here would collapse without a trace if you decided to assert your independence and do everything for yourself.”
“I think I would probably collapse before the economy did,” he said. “Besides, I believe I would feel very alone indeed if I had to rattle about Hinsford without even my valet for company.”
“I have my dog,” she told him.
That little ball of yappy white fluff he sometimes saw behind the fence of her front garden when he came down the drive, he supposed. From any distance it was difficult to tell the front end of the creature from the back or one side from the other. Only the high-pitched yips and barks with which it objected to his approach identified it as canine in nature.
“Can you get a word in edgewise, though?” he asked. “My valet does pause for breath occasionally. I am not sure your dog does.”
“She does like to bark at strangers,” she admitted. “She is guarding her territory, which for her encompasses my house and my garden and the road beyond the fence. She barks at me too when I have been gone for a while and she is excited to see me back. Otherwise she is a very good listener. She never answers back or scolds or lectures. She listens attentively and simply falls asleep if I become tedious.”
“And do you often become tedious, Mrs. Tavernor?” he asked.
“Do not we all?” she asked him in return. “When we become too engrossed in ourselves? When complaint and self-pity creep into our discourse?”
