“I believe it is more the time they are going to bed,” Ben said, making his way toward the table and propping his canes against a chair before shaking the man by the hand.
“I have no right in the world to ask this,” Bevan said when they were both seated, “and you have every right in the world to refuse an answer, but here goes anyway. What are your feelings for my granddaughter, Major?”
Ben paused in the act of spreading his napkin across his lap. Here was a man who did not believe in wasting precious time on small talk, it seemed.
“Mrs. McKay,” Ben said, choosing his words with care, “lost her husband less than six months ago, sir. She needs time to recover from that loss. She needs time to adjust her life to her new home and circumstances. As she told you last evening, she needs to be alone. Not necessarily without all company, but without emotional entanglements. It would be presumptuous for me to have feelings for her stronger than respect. Besides, at present I have nothing of value to offer her except a baronet’s title and fortune.”
“At present,” Bevan said. “And in the future?”
“I was wounded six years ago,” Ben told him. “I have been well enough for the past three years to get my life in order and set on a new course, since the old one will serve no longer. But I have procrastinated. Until now. I am going to go to London. I am going to find something challenging to do.”
“Other than carousing all night?” Bevan smiled.
“That sort of life has never appealed to me,” Ben told him. “I must be doing something useful and meaningful.”
Neither of them spoke while the landlord set their food before them and exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather with them before withdrawing.
Bevan sat back in his chair, ignoring his food for the moment. “Tell me more about the way you used to be,” he said. “Tell me about being a leader of men. That is what you were, is it not? You were a major, which is not quite the same as being a general, of course, but nevertheless it put you in a position of considerable authority over men and actions and events. Tell me about that man.”
Ben picked up his knife and fork and thought a moment before cutting into his food. Where to begin? Andwhybegin? Why had Bevan come here this morning?
“That man was happy,” he said.
He was not used to talking about himself. It was something he had never been comfortable doing. Even at Penderris he had talked less than any of the others, more content to listen to his friends’ problems than divulge his own. He had always assumed that he could not possibly be of any great interest to anyone else, that he would merely bore other people by prosing on about himself. But for the next fifteen or twenty minutes he did nothingbutthat, led on by skilled, persistent, probing questions and a look of genuine interest on the other man’s face. He talked about his dreams and ambitions, his war experiences, the feeling he had always had that he had been born to do just what he was doing. He talked about the battle in which he had been wounded, about his long fight for survival and his longer fight to restore himself to physical wholeness so that he could get back to the only life he knew or had ever wanted for himself. He talked about the past three years and his reasons for not going home, about his growing frustration and restlessness, about his corresponding determination to overcome lethargy and lowness of spirits by findingsomethingto replace what he had lost.
“I fought hard enough to live,” he said. “Now I have to prove to myself that the fight was for some purpose.”
“Women?” Bevan asked. “Have there been many?”
“None since I was hurt,” Ben said.
“Until now?”
Ben gave him a long, level look.
“You escorted my granddaughter here from the north of England,” Bevan said, “and you have been a good friend to her. Now you are about to leave, for reasons you have just given me. But you will not pretend to me that she is no more to you than a friend, Harper. Or, if you do, I will not believe you.” He smiled in a not-unfriendly manner.
“I will not pretend, then,” Ben told him curtly. “Yes, I have feelings for her.Inappropriateand pointless feelings. And I will be leaving this morning because there is no future for us, because she needs to be left alone to find herself and her place here. I believe she will. And I believe she has a chance for happiness. She has not had much of that in her life. And I will be leaving because I need to findmyselfand my place of belonging. I will do it. You need not fear that I will linger.”
“And I would not believe Samantha,” Bevan said, “if she told me that you are no more to her than a friend.”
“Pardon me,” Ben said stiffly, “but I am not sure you have the right to offer any opinion on this matter, sir.”
The older man’s eyebrows rose, and he picked up his knife and fork and tackled his breakfast. “I like you, Major,” he said. “You are a man after my own heart. And you are quite correct. I have no right whatsoever.”
He paused to eat, and Ben did likewise. He would excuse himself as soon as his plate was empty and be on his way. He did not know why Bevan had come except, perhaps, to warn him to leave without delay and never to return. He did not need to say it. He really did not have the right, anyway.
“I am sixty-six years old,” Bevan said, picking up the conversation again. “I am not an old man—at least, I do not feel like one—but I am not young either. If I had a son, I would be gradually transferring my responsibilities to his younger shoulders, provided he showed the necessary interest and aptitude, of course. It has been one of the enduring disappointments of my life that I have no son, but that cannot be helped now. I have able and trusted men in charge at the mines and at the ironworks. I have been fortunate in my employees. What I have longed for and actively searched for in the past four or five years, however, is an overseer, a supermanager, if you will, someone with the interest and energy and ability to take charge of all my industrial concerns. Someone I can trust, and someone who trusts me. Someone who is as like a son to me as possible. Someone to replace me, in fact, after I retire and until my death, and to be well compensated afterward. He would have to be a special kind of man, for it is not enough just to understand facts or to have ideas or even to have both together. It is not enough even to have organizational skills, though they are necessary. He would have to be someone who could get work done and ensure profits while not neglecting the safety and well-being of all the workers under him. He would have to inspire trust and loyalty and even liking while at the same time demanding the best efforts of his workers. He would have to take a personal interest in what he does as well as just a professional one. He would have to be someone rather like me, in fact. He has not been easy to find, Major. Or to find at all, in fact.”
Ben had stopped eating to look fixedly at the other man. “Are you offering me a job?” he asked.
Bevan set down his knife and fork and poured them each another cup of coffee before answering.
“I pride myself upon being a good judge of character,” he said. “I think it is one reason for my success. I sensed something about you as soon as I met you, even though I was predisposed to dislike you, having listened to some of the local gossip—which was not particularly vicious, I must add. I sensed something about you both then and last evening, and you have confirmed that impression this morning. You liked your men, Major? You were not the sort of officer who commanded obedience with a whip?”
“I never ordered or condoned the British army’s practice of whipping its soldiers,” Ben said. “Yes, I liked my men. Apart from a few irredeemable rogues, most soldiers are the salt of the earth and will give their best, even their lives, when called upon to do so.”
He was being offered ajob. In Wales. Overseeing coal mines and ironworks. Could anything be more bizarre?
