“I can do arithmetic too,” she said as the flush deepened in her cheeks. “You have been unkissed and celibate since the age of twenty-three.”
He sipped his sherry. “This is not a very proper conversation for a respectable drawing room, is it?”
“This has never been called a drawing room,” she told him. “But you are quite right. Matilda would have an apoplexy if she could hear us. So would Lady Gramley, I suspect.”
“Lord, yes.” He put his plate down on the table beside him, the biscuit untouched. He set his sherry glass beside it, only two sips gone from it, and got to his feet again. “I believe I left common sense, not to mention my manners, outside in the rain when I stepped into Bramble Hall a while ago, Mrs. McKay. My being here alone with youisimproper and would surely cause talk, even scandal if anyone were to learn of it. It must not happen again. I would not make you the object of unsavory gossip among your neighbors.”
There was a twinge of something to her smile. Scorn? Sadness?
“You are perfectly right,” she said. “But I will not regret this afternoon for all that, and I hope you will not. You have lifted my spirits when they were terribly low, and you have made me feel like a woman for the first time in years. I will remember our conversation and our kiss, brief and relatively innocent though it was. I will relive it far more often than I ought, I am sure. But you are right nevertheless. It must not be repeated. Will you give my regards to your sister?”
“I will,” he promised as she pulled the bell rope and then directed the maid to have Sir Benedict Harper’s carriage brought up to the door. “I am sorry about the ride. Perhaps we can try again on a better day. With Beatrice, of course.”
He reached out a hand to her and she took it.
“Do come to call upon Bea whenever you feel lonely,” he said. “She will be delighted. You could perhaps accompany her from time to time when she visits the sick. No one could argue that that is not an unexceptionable activity for a widow in mourning.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You are kind.” And yet there was an edge to her voice now that he could not quite interpret.
He turned and made his way to the door. He felt clumsy, even grotesque, knowing that her eyes were upon him.
He sat in the carriage a few minutes later and raised a hand to her as she stood in the open doorway of the house, the dog beside her, wagging its tail.
So much for offering her his friendship for a while. He had ruined that possibility by being damned selfish and flirting with her and even kissing her. Continuing to visit her alone was out of the question now that he knew shewouldbe alone. It was a shame. She needed companionship. So did he. But a single man and a single woman could not be companions without courting scandal. And justifiably so, it seemed.
Perhaps he could find her other companions, ones who were neither single nor male.
Two days later Lady Gramley paid Samantha an afternoon call, bringing with her Mrs. Andrews, the vicar’s wife, and cheerful conversation and practical suggestions for how Mrs. McKay might involve herself in village life without in any way compromising her status as a newly bereaved widow. Before they left, Samantha’s name had been added to the list of official visitors to the sick, and she had become a member of two committees, one for organizing the church summer bazaar, and one for decorating the altar. She had been urged to pay social calls at Robland Park and the vicarage whenever she wished and was assured that she would soon find herself invited elsewhere too.
“I spoke with my husband about your situation, Mrs. McKay,” Mrs. Andrews told her, “and he assured me that neither church nor society would ever frown upon a widow involving herself in good works and the quiet exchange of companionship with her peers, even during the early months of her bereavement. And you may believe me when I tell you that the vicar is a stickler for correct behavior.”
Samantha suspected that Sir Benedict Harper was behind this visit, and she was grateful. Being busy in a way that was useful to others would surely still her restlessness and help her fulfill her desire to live again, not merely to exist from day to day. And perhaps making new friends here was not going to be so very hard after all.
But Sir Benedict did not come again. Neither was he at Robland Park when Samantha went there for tea, perhaps because she went by invitation and he knew about it in advance. When she saw him at church, he inclined his head politely but neither spoke nor looked fully at her.
She had relived their conversation and his kiss—especially his kiss—for the rest of the day after he left. She had lain awake half the night dreaming of it—ironic, that. And she had watched through the windows for him all the following morning and from the garden during the afternoon, when the rain had finally stopped long enough for her to take Tramp outside for some exercise.
But long before it was borne in upon her that he would not come again, she had succumbed to guilt. She had encouraged him to stay when he would have left after discovering that Matilda was no longer with her. She had encouraged him to flirt with her, though it had not been deliberate. And she had quite explicitly invited his kiss.
She had behaved quite shockingly badly. It was no wonder he did not wish to see her again. And she surely would not wish to see him again if she were not so lonely and so restless.
It would be for the best if she never saw him again, she decided. And then she learned that soon he would indeed be gone. Lady Gramley was planning to leave soon to join her husband in London. And her brother, she reported to a group of ladies at the vicarage one afternoon two weeks after his visit to Bramble Hall on that rainy afternoon, was going to do some traveling about the British Isles, starting in Scotland.
Samantha told herself quite firmly that the news did not depress her in the slightest. It was nothing to her. She had put memories of that afternoon firmly behind her. Soon he would be gone, and she could devote herself to her new life here at Bramble Hall without the distraction of expecting to see him wherever she went. She intended to be active and busy while she lived out the remainder of her year of mourning.
Perhaps she would even be happy.
9
Alittle over a week later, the carriage that had conveyed Matilda to Leyland Abbey returned to Bramble Hall, driven by a different coachman, with different outriders accompanying it. Samantha recognized the coachman from five years ago, but the other men were strangers to her. They were all large, burly men, as servants hired to guard travelers often were. They all also seemed particularly surly of disposition. That was what working for the Earl of Heathmoor did to people, Samantha thought. One of them handed her a letter that bore the earl’s seal.
She took it from him and felt immediately chilled. She did not want any more dealings with Matthew’s family, and this was hardly going to be a friendly missive. And why had other servants returned in place of the ones who had gone with Matilda? She took the letter into the sitting room and closed the door. She shooed Tramp off her favorite chair, upon which he was strictly forbidden to take up his abode—just as he had been strictly forbidden to enter the house once upon a time—and seated herself there in his place.
She did not want to break the seal on the letter. She had been feeling reasonably happy of late. She had friendly acquaintances. She had places to go, things to do while all the time preserving her respectability and her obligation to be in mourning for what remained of the year. She did not want to be plunged back into gloom and guilt. For one moment she considered tossing the note on the fire and forgetting about it. Matthew would have done just that. But the trouble was that she wouldnotforget it. It would be better to read it now and then somehow put it out of her mind.
She broke the seal with a terrible sense of foreboding.
She read the letter through without stopping and then bent her head over her lap and shut her eyes very tightly. After a few moments she could hear Tramp panting nearby and could smell his less-than-sweet breath. A cold, wet nose nudged at her hand and he whined. She set her hand on his head.
