He pursed his lips but did not answer.
The dog lumbered to his feet suddenly, crossed the distance to his mistress, set his chin on her lap, and gazed up at her. She patted his head and then smoothed her hand over it while he closed his eyes in ecstasy.
“That was insensitive of me, I suppose,” she said, sounding a little annoyed. “Wereyour injuries confined to your legs?”
A bullet below the shoulder, not so very far from the heart. A broken collarbone. Several broken or cracked ribs. A broken arm. Cuts and bruises in too many places to name. No significant head injuries, the only miracle associated with that particular incident.
“No.”
She looked at him as though she expected him to enumerate all his hurts.
“Those of us who were wounded in the wars are not in competition with each other to discover who suffered most,” he told her. “And there are many ways to suffer. I have a friend who led his men into a number of desperate battles and emerged each time without a scratch. He led a successful Forlorn Hope in Spain and survived unscathed, though most of his men were killed. He was lauded by generals and awarded a title by the Prince of Wales. Then he went out of his mind and was brought back to England in a straitjacket. It took him several years to recuperate to the point where he could resume something resembling a normal life. I have another friend who was both blinded and deafened in his very first battle at the age of seventeen. He was raving mad when he was brought back home. His hearing came back after a while, but his sight did not and never will. It took him a number of years to put himself back together so that he could live his life rather than merely endure what is left of it until death takes him. It is never easy, ma’am, to decide which wounds are more severe than others.”
She had lowered her gaze again while he spoke. She pulled on the dog’s ears and then rested her forehead briefly against the top of his head. But she got abruptly to her feet when Ben had finished speaking and turned away to take a few steps closer to the window.
“I am so tired,” she said in a voice that vibrated with some strong emotion. She stopped abruptly and started again. “I am mortallywearyof war and wounds and suffering and death. I want tolive. I want to…todance.” She tipped her head back. He suspected that her eyes were tightly closed. Then she laughed softly. “I want to dance. Only four months after my husband’s death. Could I possibly be more frivolous? Less sensitive? More lost to all decent conduct?”
He looked at her in some surprise. “Has anyone accused you of those things?” he asked her.
She lifted her head and turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Would not everyone?” she asked in her turn. “You are not married, Sir Benedict?”
“No.”
“If you had been and you had died,” she said, “would you have been shocked if your widow had wanted to dance three months later?”
“I suppose,” he said, lifting one finger to rub along the side of his nose, “at that point it would not have mattered much to me, ma’am, what she did. Or at all, in fact.”
She smiled at him unexpectedly and was suddenly transformed into a woman of vivid prettiness. And she must be, he thought, even younger than he had supposed when he walked into the room earlier—and decades younger than he had thought her when they first met.
“But even before my death,” he added, “I would have wanted to know that she would live again after I was gone, smile and laugh again, dance again if she so desired. I suppose that, being human, I would have liked to think that she would grieve for a while too, but not indefinitely. But could she not have remembered me fondly while she smiled and laughed and danced?”
“Will you come again?” she asked him abruptly. “With your sister?”
“You will surely be happy to see the back of me,” he said. For his part, he could hardly wait to make his escape.
“No one comes,” she said. “No one isallowedto come. We are in deep mourning.”
Her vivid smile was long gone. He wondered if he had imagined it.
“Perhaps,” he suggested unwillingly, “you would like to call upon my sister at Robland Park? It would be an outing for you and perfectly respectable. Or does deep mourning not allow that?”
“It does not,” she said. “But perhaps I will come anyway.”
It occurred to him suddenly that for the past few minutes she had been standing while he had been sitting—and that he had stayed far longer than etiquette allowed.
“Beatrice will be happy to hear it,” he said, reaching for his canes and slipping his arms through the straps. “Her own activities have been curtailed by the persistent chill she contracted before Christmas. I thank you for the tea and for listening to me.”
He could not thank her for her forgiveness. She had not given it.
He hoisted himself upright, aware of her steady gaze. He wished he did not now have to shuffle out of the room in his ungainly manner while she watched.
“We have something in common, you know,” he told her, stopping abruptly before he reached the door. “I want to dance too. Sometimes it is what I want to do more than anything else in life.”
She accompanied him in silence to the front door and the waiting carriage. Beatrice was already standing beside it with Lady Matilda. They all said their farewells, and the carriage was soon on its way down the driveway.
“Well,” Beatrice said on an audible exhalation, “thatwas a gloomy afternoon if ever I have spent one. I do not wonder if that woman has ever laughed, Ben—I am confident she has not. What I do wonder is if she has ever smiled. I seriously doubt it. She spoke of her father with the deepest reverence. I pity poor Mrs. McKay.”
“She asked if we would come again,” he told her. “I suggested she call on you at Robland instead. It seems, though, that neither receiving visitors nor paying calls is quite the thing for ladies in mourning. Was my social education incomplete, Bea? It seems a peculiar notion to me. But she did say she might come anyway. I hope you will not disown me for making so free with your hospitality.”
