"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 cla.s.s. I did not want you embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing, though. I am sorry about that. And I am deeply sorry for you, girl."

He had decided to stop writing? He had kept 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 d.a.m.ned if we do and d.a.m.ned 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 much had her 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 she died, you did not come. There was never anything. There was nothing."

She wanted to be right. She did not want her world turned suddenly upside down again.

His face had turned pale. His hand was motionless on Tramp's head.

"What did they tell you, girl?" he asked her. "What did they tell you about me?"

"Nothing," she said, "except that early abandonment of my mother after her mother had gone back to her Gypsy people. Nothing at all. You disappeared from her life."

"Ah." His hand slid away from Tramp's head to rest on the arm of his chair. "It was not just that you were ashamed of me for my very middle-cla.s.s wealth, then?"

"I did not know about your wealth," she cried. "I did not know anything. I a.s.sumed you were a laborer or a wanderer who had made a foolish marriage and was left with the enc.u.mbrance of a daughter, whom you then foisted upon your sister. I did not know anything about her, except that she had owned this cottage, which my mother described as a hovel. I a.s.sumed it was a hovel. I only hoped it would be somehow habitable while I made a new life for myself. I did not even know you were alive."

Ben got to his feet again, crossed to her chair, set a large handkerchief in her hand, and then made his slow way over to the window. Samantha swiped at her eyes. She had not even realized she was crying.

"Ah, my dear girl," her grandfather said.

But he had no chance to say any more for a while. The door opened and Mrs. Price came in with a large tray, her face wreathed in smiles. Samantha hastily pushed the handkerchief down the side of her chair.

"Ah, Mrs. Price," Mr. Bevan said. "Trying to fatten people up as always, are you?"

"Just a few pieces of cake to go with your tea," she said, placing the tray on the table beside Samantha and proceeding to pour the tea herself. "What else am I to do with my time but cook? Mrs. McKay is a very tidy lady and she has Gladys Jones to look after her personal needs."

"And how is your son, the blacksmith?" he asked her. "His hand has healed, has it? Hammers are always better used on anvils than on the backs of fingers. In my opinion, anyway."

"They were swollen to three times their size," she told him, "and black and painful too, though he would never admit it. He is better now, though, Mr. Bevan, and thanks for asking. I'll tell him you did. And thank you for sending-"

But she broke off at a slight motion of his hand.

"Well, it was greatly appreciated," she said. "He couldn't work much for a week."

She handed around the tea and left the room.

"I have been justly punished, it seems," he said with a sigh. "And poor Mrs. Price. The last thing I feel like doing is eating a piece of her cake, delicious as I am sure it is. I suppose you feel off your food too, Samantha. Perhaps we had better force some down anyway, had we? She will be hurt if we do not. Major, come and help us, if you will."

Ben looked over his shoulder and then came back to his chair.

"I will tell you my story, Samantha, if you will listen," Mr. Bevan continued. "But not now, perhaps. And I want to hear your story. I want to know why you would come here, expecting only a hovel of a cottage, when presumably you have a n.o.ble family to look after you as well as your father's family. But perhaps not now for that either. Major Harper, how long is it since you were wounded?"

He was a man used to command, Samantha realized, and used to doing it without bombast. Here he was in her sitting room, directing the conversation, taking from it the heat of emotion that had been here just a few minutes ago. And he was feeding cake to Tramp, who was quite willing to make it seem to Mrs. Price that they had all eaten her tea with hearty appet.i.tes.

Ben told him where and when he had been wounded and how, though he did not go into great detail. He told him about the years of his healing and convalescence at Penderris Hall, and about leaving there three years ago.

"You are never going to be able to walk without your canes, then?" her grandfather asked.

"No," Ben said.

"And what do you do to keep busy? Do you have a home of your own?"

Ben told him about Kenelston, and, when asked, about his brother and wife and children and his own reluctance to remove them from his home and the charge his brother had of the running of his estate.

"You are in a bit of an awkward position, then," her grandfather said.

"Yes," Ben agreed. "But I will work something out, sir. I was not made for idleness."

"You were a military officer by choice, then?" her grandfather asked. "Not just because your father had that career picked out for you as soon as you were born? I understand many n.o.ble families do that-one son to inherit, another to go into the church, another into the military."

"It was my own choice," Ben said. "I never wanted anything else."

"You like an active life, then. You like being in charge of men. And of events."

"I will never be an officer again," Ben said tersely.

Looking at him, Samantha realized fully just how that fact hurt him. Perhaps it even explained why he had not taken a firmer stand with his younger brother over his home. Running Kenelston would not be a big enough challenge for him. Perhaps nothing would ever again.

"No," her grandfather agreed, "I can see that, lad."

He talked a bit about the coal mines-he owned two of them in the Rhondda Valley-and about the ironworks in the Swansea Valley, where he had just spent a week. Ben asked a number of questions, which he answered with enthusiasm. And then he rose to take his leave.

"How long do you plan to stay, Major?" he asked.

Ben looked at Samantha. "Another two or three days," he said.

"Then maybe you will come with my granddaughter to dine with me at Cartref tomorrow," her grandfather said. He turned to look at her, a smile on his face but some uncertainty in his eyes. "Will you come, Samantha? I have a cook as good as Mrs. Price. And I would like to hear your story and to tell you mine. After that you can live here in peace from me if you choose. Though I will hope you do not so choose. You are all I have, girl."

She looked at him in some indignation until she remembered what he had said earlier. He had written to her before her marriage and she had sent messages. What had her father done? And after her marriage he had stopped writing for fear that she would be embarra.s.sed by his humble origins and by the way his fortune had been made. She at least owed him one evening in which to plead his case.

But he had still abandoned his own infant daughter. There could be no excuse for that.

"Yes," she said, "I will come."

"And I would be delighted, sir," Ben said.

The older man came toward Samantha, his hand extended again. But when she set her own in it, he smiled at her, that look of uncertainty still in his eyes.

"Allow me?" he said and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. "She was very, very beautiful, you know. I had her for four years and have loved her forever."

She did not follow him from the room.

He had been talking about her grandmother. Yet he had been married to someone else after her.

She and Ben sat in silence until they heard the carriage drive away. Tramp was at the window, his tail waving as if in farewell.

"He has loved her forever," she said bitterly. "Yet he abandoned the only child he had with her."

"Listen to his story tomorrow," Ben said. "And then make a judgment if you must."

"Oh, Ben," she said, turning her eyes on him, "I wish I could wave a magic wand and make your legs all better so that you could resume your military career and be happy and fulfilled."

He smiled. "We are all dealt a hand of cards," he said. "Some of the originals get discarded along the way and new ones get picked up, sometimes not the ones we hoped for. That does not matter. It is how we play them that matters."

"Even if it is a losing hand?" she asked him.

"Perhaps it never needs to be," he said. "For life is not really a card game, is it?"

20.

They went swimming after all. And they dined together after Mrs. Price and Samantha's maid had left for the day. They spent a few hours in bed before Ben returned to the village inn. They made love twice, slowly the first time, with fierce pa.s.sion the second.

But there had been something a little ... desperate about both encounters, Ben thought as he lay alone in bed at the inn later. Nothing had been quite the same. Real life, in the form of Bevan, had intruded. A small part of his story had been told, and more would be told tomorrow-Samantha had consented to listen. Her life, he suspected, was going to be very different from anything she had dreamed of when circ.u.mstances had led her to remember the run-down little cottage in Wales she had inherited.

She had a grandfather, a rich and influential man who, it appeared, cared for her. Whether she could care for him depended a great deal upon the story he would tell tomorrow, but she craved the closeness of some family tie, whether she fully realized it or not. Ben suspected that she would come to care for Bevan. And she needed time and s.p.a.ce-and respectability-in which to do that. And in which to recover fully from a seven-year marriage.

It was time to leave. Almost. He had promised two more days after today.

Though they had not spoken of it, they had both been conscious tonight of the fact that their affair, their early summer idyll, was almost at an end. Ben laced his fingers behind his head and gazed upward at the ceiling. Part of him was longing to be gone, to be done with the whole business. He wished he could just click his fingers and find himself on the road back to England. He hated goodbyes at the best of times. He dreaded this particular one.

Tomorrow was Sunday. The first day of a new week. Very nearly the end of his week. He had no idea where he would be next Sat.u.r.day night, except that it would be somewhere far from here. And he had no idea what he would do. No, that was not strictly true. He was going to go to London, though not in order to partic.i.p.ate in the social whirl of the Season or to allow Beatrice to matchmake for him. He was going to explore various ways of employing his time, perhaps in business, perhaps in diplomacy, perhaps in law. He would talk to Hugo, to Gramley, to various contacts he had in the Foreign Office. It did not matter that he did not need to work. He wanted to work. And he would work. His elder brother had done so, after all.

But an obstacle stood between him and the rest of his life. There was the end of an affair to live through and goodbyes to be said. It was Sunday tomorrow. He had promised to go to church with Samantha. They were to dine at Cartref later in the day. And then, after tomorrow ...

Goodbye.

Surely the saddest, most painful word in the English language.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Ben walked with painstaking slowness and with the aid of two canes but with evident courage and determination, Samantha thought. Or perhaps it was his lean good looks, enhanced now by suntan, and the indefinable air of command that always somehow clung about him. Or perhaps it was simply that everyone loved a hint of romance, even a touch of scandal.

However it was, they were both greeted with smiles and friendly nods when they appeared at church together on Sunday morning. Samantha had been half expecting cold stares or frowns and turned shoulders, for obviously there had been talk. Her grandfather had heard it.

And though Ben looked almost austere much of the time, he was quite capable of charm. He used it that morning on the people of Fisherman's Bridge and its environs. And Samantha smiled about her too, as she had not been allowed to do after Matthew's death, and shook the hands of those who extended their own to her. She was sure she would not remember the names of all who introduced themselves and said so.

"Don't worry about it, Mrs. McKay," the doctor told her. "We have only two new names to remember, yours and Major Harper's, while you have a few dozen."

Other people within earshot smiled their agreement.

Samantha would have felt warm about the heart as they left church if her grandfather had not been there too. He had shaken hands heartily with Ben and kissed her on the cheek-while half the village looked on with interest-but he had not pressed his company on them. He had sat in the front pew, which was padded, though he did not act the part of grand gentleman after the service was over. He shook hands and exchanged a few words with everyone in his path. He dug into his pockets to bring out sweets for the very little children, coins for the older ones.

Other people's children, Samantha thought with unexpected bitterness. How she would have loved to have a grandpapa to beam at her thus when she was a child and give her sweets and coins. How her mother would surely have loved to have a papa to do those things.

It was a cloudy day, but it was neither cold nor windy.

"Do you want to swim this afternoon?" she asked Ben when they were walking slowly back to the inn.

She was feeling a bit depressed. She wished the sun was shining.

"What is it?" he asked without answering her question.

"It would be more appropriate to ask what it is not," she said with a sigh-and then laughed. "The vicar was right about the singing, was he not?"

"Well," he said, "I was disappointed not to see the roof lift off the building. I was watching for it."

She laughed again.

"But, yes," he said. "That church really does not need the choir, does it? The whole congregation is a choir."

"With harmony."

"In four parts," he added. "Yes, let's swim. There will be time."

She swallowed and heard a gurgle in her throat. There will be time.

Time before they went to Cartref for dinner.

Time before the week of their affair was over.

They went swimming. They raced and floated and talked, and they played silly games, the main object of which seemed to be to swim underwater and come up unexpectedly to submerge each other. It was not a very effective game since there was never any real possibility of surprise, but it kept them helpless with laughter for a time.

Laughter was better than tears.

A week had seemed a long time when they began their affair. But this was the sixth day. The knowledge weighed upon Samantha as if it were a physical thing. And she could not keep at bay the thought that they would be going to Cartref later. She wished she had not been weak enough to agree. And yet ... Her grandfather had written, and Papa had written back to him. She ought to listen to his story, Ben had said.

When they left the water, they went to their usual rock, where they were met by a tail-wagging, bottom-wiggling Tramp, who had been guarding their belongings against seagulls. But instead of spreading her towel on the sand as she usually did, Samantha wrapped it about her shoulders.

"I gave Mrs. Price and Gladys the day off," she said. "It is Sunday. Besides, I will be out for dinner today."

He looked back at her. He was leaning against the ledge to take the weight off his legs and rubbing his towel over his chest and up under one arm.

Oh, dear, she was going to miss this-the daily swims, the sight of him, the smell of him, the touch of him. She was going to miss him.