The journey was hard on Ben, Samantha knew. Though he never complained, she had learned to read his face and the tensions of his body, even his smile. What on earth had possessed him to believe that he could spend his life traveling and writing books about his journeys? But it was entirely her fault that he was doing so much traveling these days.

"We have come far enough," she said. "We must take the room, Ben. It will be just for one night."

"You will not be sorry, sir," the landlord a.s.sured him. "We have the best cook between Chepstow and Ross. You can ask anyone."

Ben looked as if he was about to argue. He was also looking rather pale and drawn. They had spent longer than they ought, perhaps, walking about the ruins.

"Very well," he said. "We will stay here."

The room was pretty and clean, and there was indeed a splendid view from the window, but it was not particularly s.p.a.cious. There was no armchair or love seat or sofa, as Samantha had hoped there would be. She would have been happy to sleep on any of the three. The large, high bed dominated the room and occupied most of the floor s.p.a.ce.

But good heavens, it was just for one night, she thought as they stood just inside the door, looking about them with great awkwardness. She spoke briskly. "I suppose if I lie very close to the edge on this side and you lie very close to the edge on that, there will be enough s.p.a.ce between us to accommodate an elephant."

"If you roll over in the night," he said, "you had better be sure to roll the right way."

"And which way would that be?"

She turned to smile at him just as he turned his head to smile at her. And suddenly it seemed as if her words were written in fire on the air between them.

"I would imagine," he said, recovering himself, "elephants take exception to being awoken in the night."

"Yes." She crossed to the window, by far the finest feature of the room.

"Would you rather we went on to Chepstow after all?" he asked. "We still could."

"No, we could not," she said. "You are on the verge of collapse. It has been too busy a day. I shall go back down and make sure Tramp is properly accommodated. I shall have Mr. Quinn sent up to you."

He did not argue.

She spent an hour with the dog, at first sitting on some clean straw beside him, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, her arms wrapped about them, and then walking with him so that he could take care of business before settling for the night.

They had managed to rub along well enough together, she and Sir Benedict-Ben. They could talk and laugh and be silent together. They could enjoy doing a little sightseeing together despite the handicap of his not being able to walk fast or far. But he was a man, and she would have to be inhuman, she supposed, for that fact not to be affecting her, especially as they had, once upon a time, shared a kiss and soared together in imagination beyond the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped in furs against the chill of the upper atmosphere.

It was sometimes hard to ignore his maleness when they shared the close confines of a carriage interior during the daytime. Whatever was it going to be like to share a bed all night?

By the time she returned to the room, making a great deal of unnecessary bustle on the landing outside the door and then taking her time turning the handle, Ben was dressed for dinner and was sitting on the side of the bed, reading. He set his book aside and got to his feet. He did it more easily than usual, she noticed, perhaps because the bed was high.

"I shall leave you the use of the room," he said, "and see you downstairs in the dining room."

"Very well."

He was dressed smartly for dinner in black and white. She could have wished he did not look quite so attractive.

She donned a green silk gown and clasped about her neck the pearls her father had given her as a wedding present.

The only private dining parlor at the inn had been already spoken for by the time they arrived. There were just a few other people in the main dining room, however, and none of them were close enough to make conversation awkward. The food was excellent. At least, Samantha thought it probably was. She did not pay it much attention, truth to tell. She was too busy keeping the conversation going. It kept wanting to die, and they could not seem to hit upon a topic that required more than a question from one of them and a monosyllabic answer from the other.

Oh, what a difference having to share a bedchamber made. They had not had this problem on any previous evening. Not to this degree, anyway.

"If there had only been a private dining parlor available," he said eventually, "there might have been a chair upon which I could have spent the night."

"If you were going to do that," she said, "we might as well have continued on our way to Chepstow. I would have slept on the chair."

"Rubbish," he said. "I would never have allowed it."

"Perhaps," she said, "I would not have allowed you to dictate to me what I could or could not do."

"Are we back to bickering?" he asked. "But, really, Samantha, no gentleman would allow a lady to sleep on a chair in a private dining room while he enjoyed the luxury of a bed in a room with a view."

"Ah," she said, "the view. I had forgotten that. Undoubtedly, then, on this occasion I would have allowed you to have your way. An academic point, however. We do not have a private dining room and so neither of us is able to make the n.o.ble gesture of spending the night on a chair there."

"We both, in fact," he said, "get to enjoy the view."

She smiled and he chuckled, and Samantha gazed at him, arrested for a moment. She had been very fond of her father, but she could not remember ever joking with him or talking nonsense with him-or bickering with him. And though she must surely have laughed with Matthew during their courtship and the first few months of their marriage, she could not recall ever being deliberately silly with him purely for their mutual enjoyment.

It occurred to her that she liked Ben Harper, even if he did make her bristle with indignation on occasion-and turn hot with longing at other times. It occurred to her that she would miss him when he had gone.

"He had a mistress," she said abruptly, and then she gazed at him in some surprise. What on earth had prompted her to say that? She set down her knife and fork, rested her forearms on the table, and leaned toward him. "They already had one child when he met and married me. Another was conceived during the first months of our marriage. I took that to mean that he did not care much for me at all and that I was not much good in the marriage bed."

She gazed at him, appalled. And she looked around furtively to make sure they were not within earshot of any other diners.

He looked from his knife to his fork and back again before setting them down across his plate and copying her posture. Their faces were not very far apart.

"I suppose," he said, "you have spent longer than six years imagining that you are s.e.xually inadequate."

She half expected to see flames flaring up from her cheeks.

"No," she said. "Why should I allow my spirit to be crushed by someone I did not respect? I lost respect for my husband four months into our marriage. That is a terrible admission to make, is it not, to a virtual stranger?"

"I am hardly a stranger," he said. "And I am about to become even less of one. We are to spend the night teetering off the opposite edges of the same bed, are we not?"

"Have you ever had a mistress?" she asked him.

"Of long standing?" he said. "No. And never any children. And even if I had a mistress, I would dismiss her before marrying someone else. And no one would replace her. Ever."

"Was the colonel's niece very beautiful?" she asked.

He considered. "She was pretty. She was small and dainty, all smiles and dimples and blond curls and ringlets and big blue eyes."

"Such a woman would surely have been unwilling to follow the drum with you."

"But she was already doing so with her uncle," he told her. "She looked like a porcelain doll. In reality she was as tough as nails."

"Did you mourn her loss?"

"I cannot say I spared her more than a pa.s.sing thought for at least two years," he said. "By then I was very thankful we had not married."

"I daresay she has grown plump," she said. "Small, pretty blonds often do."

His eyes laughed at her, and he reached across the table and took one of her hands in both of his.

"I believe, Sammy," he said, "you are jealous."

"Jealous?" She tried to withdraw her hand, but he tightened his hold on it. "How perfectly ridiculous. And how dare you call me that name when I have specifically asked you not to?"

"I think you want me," he said.

"Nonsense."

His eyes were laughing, but her stomach was clenched into knots. It was not true. Oh, of course it was true. He did not believe what he was saying, though. He was just teasing her. He was deliberately trying to make her cross-and was succeeding.

"I believe," he said, "you want to prove that you are good in bed after all."

"Oh!" She gaped inelegantly and jerked her hand from between his as she got abruptly to her feet. "How dare you. Oh, Ben, how dare you?"

Somehow she remembered to keep her voice down.

"You may have lost respect for your late husband," he said, "and you may have refused to allow his infidelity to break your spirit, but he hurt you more than you realize, Samantha. He was a fool. And one day you will be given proof of your desirability. But not tonight. You are quite safe from me, I promise, despite the situation in which we find ourselves. I will not take advantage of you."

She was almost disappointed.

"Go on up to our room now," he said, "since you appear to have finished eating. I will stay down here for a while."

She went without a word of protest, even though it could be said that he had issued a command.

He was a fool.

You will be given proof of your desirability.

I believe you want to prove that you are good in bed after all.

I think you want me.

And they were to spend the night together.

Not only ought he to have written to Hugo, Ben thought as he drank his port, but he ought also to have written to Calvin at Kenelston. And probably to Beatrice. No doubt she would soon learn that Samantha had disappeared from Bramble Hall and that he had left Robland very early on the same day. He wondered if she would make the connection. But if she did, he did not believe she would share her suspicions with anyone.

Would anyone else make the connection? He doubted it, since he had taken care not to be seen with Samantha. No one would know that he had had more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance with her, and it was known that he was about to leave Robland anyway.

He could still write the letters, of course. He could call for paper and pen and ink and write them now before he went upstairs. But he was reluctant to do so. There was something rather seductive about the idea of simply disappearing without a trace for as long as he chose. He could go where he wanted and do what he wanted without having to account to anyone. That was always the case, of course, but ... Well, he wanted to be quite free to allow this adventure to develop as it would. He did not want friends and relatives murmuring in the background with either encouragement or disapproval.

Samantha was still up when he returned to their room, though he had lingered in the dining room long enough to give her the chance to be under the bedcovers and at least pretending to be asleep if she so chose. He had been hoping she would take that option.

She was sitting on the bed in her nightgown, her legs tucked to one side, only her bare feet visible beneath its hem, her arms raised to remove the pins from her hair. It was not a deliberately seductive pose. Nevertheless it did something uncomfortable to his breathing.

"I thought you would be asleep," he told her.

"Or feigning sleep, I suppose," she said, "curled up in a ball, breathing deeply and evenly, so that you could crawl by me and ease yourself in on the other side and do likewise?"

He shut and locked the door.

"I did consider it," she confessed, "but you would have known I was not really asleep, and then I would have known that you were not and we would have lain awake all night, each of us hoping that we were doing a better job of faking it than the other."

He laughed.

"Let me help you do that," he said, moving closer and propping his canes against the foot of the bed before sitting beside her. "I might say you are making a bird's nest of your hair, but I believe that would be insulting to the bird in question."

"Well," she said, lowering her arms, "you make me nervous, Ben, and I cannot for the life of me disentangle the last few pins. I believe they are lost in there forever."

He found and removed them, and her hair fell about her shoulders and down her back, heavy, shining, almost black Gypsy hair.

"I intended," she said, "to have it neatly braided before you came up. Could you not have stayed to drink the inn dry of brandy or port or whatever it is you drink after dinner?"

"Port," he said. "Brush?" He held out one hand, and she took a brush off the small chest beside the bed and handed it to him. He made a swirling motion with one finger. "Turn."

Her hair reached to her waist and almost touched the bed behind her. It smelled faintly of gardenia. Her nightgown was of white cotton and covered her as decently as her dresses did during the day. Except that it was a nightgown and she was obviously wearing no stays beneath it-or anything else, at a guess. And her feet were bare. And she was sitting on a bed.

He drew the brush through her hair. It slid downward from the roots to the tips.

"Two hundred strokes," she said.

He felt an immediate tightening at his groin. Two hundred?

"Every night," she added.

"Do you count them?"

"Yes. It was one way my mother taught me numbers."

She had been quite unaware of the double meaning of her words.

He counted silently.

"I was eighteen," she said when he was at thirty-nine strokes. "Barely. I had just had my birthday. I had been married a little less than four months."

He did not prompt her. If she needed to tell the story she had begun downstairs, then he would listen. He had all night, after all, and he knew from his experiences at Penderris that it was important that people be allowed to tell their stories.

Forty-five. Forty-six.

"I was so deeply in love," she said, "that I did not think the world was large enough to contain it all. Youth is a dangerous time of life."

Yes, it could be.

Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three.

"I thought his love for me was just as all-consuming," she said. "I thought we were living happily ever after. How foolish young people can be. Shall I tell you why he married me?"

"If you wish." Fifty-nine. Sixty.