But they had arrived outside their hotel.
“Shall we rest for what remains of today and explore tomorrow?” Ben suggested. “Or would you—”
She interrupted him. “You are going to go to your room to lie down for a while,” she told him. “I can always tell when you are in pain. You smile too much.”
“I shall have to frown ferociously,” he said, suiting action to words, “in order to convince you that I am hale and hearty.”
He did not argue, though, about withdrawing to his room.
The day after tomorrow, Samantha thought as she closed the door to her own room, she was going to be moving into her own home. Her new life would begin in earnest. And Ben would start on his way up the west coast of Wales and the rest ofhislife.
Oh, dear, how could one’s spirit be so elated and yet so depressed all at the same time? She had better take her mind off things by walking Tramp.
Two hours later, when Samantha was back in her room and sitting by the window, alternately looking at the sea and trying to read, there was a knock on her door. She opened it, smiling in anticipation of seeing Ben on the other side. But a thin, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl stood there instead.
She had been sent by Mr. Rhys’s clerk, she explained, to be Mrs. McKay’s maid and look after her clothes and fetch her washing water and do her hair and anything else that was asked of her, if Mrs. McKay pleased, but she was a good girl and Mr. Rhys himself could testify to that fact since her own mother’s sister had been working for his wife’s cousin for five years now and never any trouble, andwouldMrs. McKay give her a chance, please, and she would never be sorry for she would do anything Mrs. McKay pleased and besides, the clerk had told her she must stay for the night even if not forever as the silly English girl who had been Mrs. McKay’s maid had gone away on the stage this morning and abandoned her because she did not like Wales, though what was wrong with Wales, who knew, for it was surely a hundred times better than that England, where there was scarcely a mountain or molehill to make the land interesting and people could not sing to save their lives, but anyway, it would not be respectable for Mrs. McKay to be alone in a hotel without a maid even though her dead husband’s friend, who was both a major and a sir, was here to protect her, though in another room of course, and…andwouldMrs. McKay consider her for the job,please?
Samantha was not sure the girl had stopped once to draw breath. Her eyes were wide with mingled eagerness and anxiety.
“You have the advantage of me,” she said. “You know my name.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “Gladys, Mrs. McKay. Gladys Jones.”
“And how old are you, Gladys?” Samantha asked.
“I am fourteen, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said. “I am the oldest of us. There are seven younger than me and none of us working yet. I would be much obliged to you if you would take me on so that I can give some money to Da to help him feed us all. I am a good worker. My mam says so, and she says she will miss me if I go into service, but Ceris will do almost as well in my place. She is a good girl too and she has just turned thirteen and she is nearly as tall as me. But perhaps you would not need me to live in just yet, and I could go back and forth really easy because I live in Fisherman’s Bridge, no more than a bit of a walk from the empty cottage where you are going to move to. Mam is expecting another of us in a few weeks, and I would rather be there with her for the nights anyway until the new babe is in the cradle. After that I would be more than happy to live in. Though I will live in right away if you would rather and just have my half day to visit Mam and help Ceris out as much as I can.”
Samantha stood back to let the girl into the room.
“I will be happy to give you a try, Gladys,” she said, “whileyougivemea try. And I believe I will be able to do without your services at night at least for a while.”
She thought of the maid she had had at Bramble Hall and how the girl had often kept her up late with her chattering. Gladys might well keep her up all night if she lived in.
“Oh,thankyou, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said, and she began immediately to attack Samantha’s bags, which she proceeded to unpack even though she was going to have to pack everything again the morning after tomorrow.
Word was delivered to the hotel the following morning that a Mrs. Price, widowed mother of the blacksmith at Fisherman’s Bridge, had gone over to the cottage to supervise the cleaners who had been sent in, to open the windows to air the place out, and to remove the covers from the furniture and do a bit of shopping and get fires lit in all the grates after the windows were closed again so that everything would be nice and warm and cozy for Mrs. McKay when she arrived the following day. Mrs. Price had expressed a willingness to be interviewed for a permanent position if Mrs. McKay so desired. She was an excellent cook and had held previous positions as a cook and housekeeper. She had the references to prove it.
And so the next phase of her life was about to begin, Samantha thought as she spent the afternoon with Ben and Tramp, sitting and taking short walks along the top of the cliffs above the sweep of Tenby Bay.
A phase that would not include Ben.
“Ben,” she said in a rush after they had sat silently admiring the view for a while, “will you stay for a few days? After tomorrow, I mean?”
He gazed out to sea, his eyes narrowed against the brightness of the light sparkling off its surface.
“Oh, how selfish of me,” she said. “Please ignore the question. You must be very eager to be on your way.”
“If there is an inn at Fisherman’s Bridge,” he said, “I will stay for a few days. Until I am satisfied that you are properly settled.”
“Did I force that upon you?” she asked him. “I am not your responsibility.”
When he turned his head to look at her, he was frowning slightly.
“Oh, but you are,” he said. “I promised my friend, your husband, on his deathbed that I would escort you here and see you safely settled. Remember? I always keep my promises.”
And then, just when she felt that she would surely dissolve into tears, he grinned at her.
That grin was going to haunt her after he had gone. It always somehow had the power to turn her weak at the knees.
