He looked at her and then down at Tramp, who was barking and prancing and generally behaving in an undisciplined manner.
“A gentleman does not make himself deliberately conspicuous in company,” Mr. Bevan said with a lovely soft Welsh accent. “Sit.”
And Tramp, the traitor, sat and gazed up at his new friend with intelligent eyes and lolling tongue and lightly thumping tail.
“Mrs. McKay?” Mr. Bevan said. “Samantha?”
He fixed his eyes upon her and advanced across the room with confident strides, his right hand extended. He was almost of a height with her, she realized.
She had no choice, short of being deliberately ill-mannered, but to set her hand in his. He held it in a warm clasp and set his other hand on top of it, all the while gazing at her face.
“You are not very like your mother,” he said, “except in coloring. But, oh, girl, you do look like your grandmother.”
He raised her hand to his lips before relinquishing it.
“Mr. Bevan,” she said. “May I present Major Sir Benedict Harper?”
Ben had also got to his feet.
“Sir.” He inclined his head. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Mr. Bevan’s eyes swept over him. “Wounded in the wars, were you, Major?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ben said.
“And a friend of the late Captain McKay’s, I have heard,” Mr. Bevan said. “There is not much local news and gossip that does not reach my ears at Cartref, you know. I could muzzle my servants, I suppose, but why should I? I like a bit of gossip.”
He was looking keenly at Ben as he said it, and Samantha felt anger well inside her. To what gossip in particular was he referring? And what business was it of his?
“I never had the privilege of knowing Captain McKay,” Ben said, and Samantha’s eyes flew to his. “My acquaintance with his widow began after his death. When she decided to come here, goaded to it by circumstances she found intolerable, she had no one to accompany her. I offered my services. It was a less than satisfactory arrangement, sir, but it was the best that could be done.”
Was heapologizingto her grandfather? Samantha raised her chin and glared at them both.
“I did notneedthe protection of any man,” she said, “but Sir Benedict insisted.”
They both looked at her, Ben a little sheepishly, her grandfather with a smile that revealed a fan of attractive lines at the outer corners of both eyes. He must smile frequently.
“That is my girl,” he said, further incensing her.
“Oh,dohave a seat,” she said ungraciously. “Both of you.”
But of course, they both waited for her to be seated first. They were being perfect gentlemen.
“I have neglected you for the last six or seven years, Samantha,” Mr. Bevan said. He was smoothing one hand over Tramp’s head while the dog’s eyes closed in ecstasy.
“For the last six or seven years?” She raised her eyebrows.
“After your father wrote to say you were married,” he said, “I decided to stop writing to you. Captain McKay was the son of an earl, wasn’t he? Very high class. I did not want you embarrassed by a family member who had made his fortune in coal and iron. I knew your husband had been wounded and that you were living in the north of England. I have kept myself informed, you see, even if only from a distance. I had not heard of his passing, though. I am sorry about that. And I am deeply sorry for you, girl.”
He had decided tostop writing? He hadkept himself informed? He had known all about her? All her life? Samantha gazed at the hands she had clasped in her lap. She could see the whites of her knuckles.
“Thank you,” she murmured just for something to say into the silence.
“I have been in Swansea for a week,” he said. “When I got back yesterday and heard you were here, I thought you must be annoyed with me since you had not let me know you were coming. I sent Evans over this morning to test the waters, so to speak, and he reported back that you were indeed annoyed. Sometimes we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t, if you will pardon my language, which is probably not the finest for the daughter-in-law of an earl. But would you not agree, Major? If I had kept writing, that might have been the trouble. I stopped, and it looks as if that was the wrong thing. Though you never wrote back, Samantha, except for the messages you sometimes sent.”
Messages? Samantha looked up at him. A suspicion was beginning to form in her mind. More than a suspicion. Her father had written to him at least once. How muchhadher father kept from her?
“You abandoned my mother,” she said, “when she was little more than an infant. You had nothing to do with her while she lived here with your sister. When she ran away to London, you did not follow. When she married and had me, you did not come. When shedied, you did not come. There was never anything. There wasnothing.”
