The fairness of her response only cast him more abjectly in the wrong.

"But someone was certainly to blame for what followed," he said. "I was, in fact. My immediate reaction to throw all the blame upon you and your dog when you were both clearly innocent of any offense was unjust and unpardonable. I hope you will pardon me, nevertheless, ma'am, when I a.s.sure you that I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. And I beg forgiveness for the appalling language I am sure I must have used in your hearing, though I hope none of it was directed at you personally."

She was still looking unwaveringly at him, and it struck him that those dark eyes of hers were a quite lethal weapon. He had to resist the urge to move his head back another inch and lower his own eyes.

"Except for one d.a.m.n it," she said, "which was added after you had called someone woman. Since I was the only female present, I was led to understand that you meant me."

He grimaced. Dash it all, he did not remember that.

"What caused me most indignation, however," she added, "was the fact that you did not get down from your horse when you saw that I had been knocked over-even though the knocking was done by my own hysterical dog rather than by your horse. Unfortunately, I was forced to relinquish much of my wrath when I saw you on Sunday and understood why you had not dismounted."

"I ought to have explained at the time," he said. "I ought to have shown far more concern for the fright you had taken and the harm I may have done you. I ought to have-" He sighed with frustration and ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, the long and the short of it is that I behaved atrociously in every imaginable way. I understand that you are offended I even had the effrontery to present myself here. I will, in fact, remove myself without further ado."

He reached for his canes.

"I spent a year with my husband in proximity to his regiment," she told him. "I heard a thing or two that ladies are not supposed to hear. Officers have voices that must carry on a battlefield. Unfortunately, they also carry when they are not on a battlefield. I am not a green girl, Sir Benedict, and I must admit, with some reluctance, that I admire your courage in coming here to speak to me face-to-face. I did not expect it. I take it Lady Gramley did not really feel any burning need to stroll on the terrace with poor Matilda? I believe she ate only one biscuit."

"I was afraid," he said, "that if I blurted out my apology in your sister-in-law's hearing, I might compound my offense by informing her of something she does not know about."

"Good gracious, you are absolutely right," she said. "Matilda would have an apoplexy if she discovered I had been beyond the walls of the park without an escort-or even with one."

"You will forgive me?" he asked her.

"I swore I never would." Her eyes moved to his canes. "Is it hard for you to ride?"

"Yes," he said. "But that very fact makes the lure of doing so irresistible. That hedge was the first obstacle I had jumped since ... Well, since my great fall more than six years ago. I was inclined to think afterward, in light of what happened and what almost happened, that it would also be my last. But I have decided it will not be. The next time I shall choose a higher obstacle, but I will be sure to approach it with a tallyho! on my lips."

"You were not born this way, then?" she asked him. "There was an accident?"

"It was called war," he told her.

Her eyes came back to his, and a frown creased her brow for a moment.

"Well, at least," she said, "your injuries, though severe, were confined to your legs. Unlike my husband's."

He pursed his lips but did not answer.

The dog lumbered to his feet suddenly, crossed the distance to his mistress, set his chin on her lap, and gazed up at her. She patted his head and then smoothed her hand over it while he closed his eyes in ecstasy.

"That was insensitive of me, I suppose," she said, sounding a little annoyed. "Were your injuries confined to your legs?"

A bullet below the shoulder, not so very far from the heart. A broken collarbone. Several broken or cracked ribs. A broken arm. Cuts and bruises in too many places to name. No significant head injuries, the only miracle a.s.sociated with that particular incident.

"No."

She looked at him as though she expected him to enumerate all his hurts.

"Those of us who were wounded in the wars are not in compet.i.tion with each other to discover who suffered most," he told her. "And there are many ways to suffer. I have a friend who led his men into a number of desperate battles and emerged each time without a scratch. He led a successful Forlorn Hope in Spain and survived unscathed, though most of his men were killed. He was lauded by generals and awarded a t.i.tle by the Prince of Wales. Then he went out of his mind and was brought back to England in a straitjacket. It took him several years to recuperate to the point where he could resume something resembling a normal life. I have another friend who was both blinded and deafened in his very first battle at the age of seventeen. He was raving mad when he was brought back home. His hearing came back after a while, but his sight did not and never will. It took him a number of years to put himself back together so that he could live his life rather than merely endure what is left of it until death takes him. It is never easy, ma'am, to decide which wounds are more severe than others."

She had lowered her gaze again while he spoke. She pulled on the dog's ears and then rested her forehead briefly against the top of his head. But she got abruptly to her feet when Ben had finished speaking and turned away to take a few steps closer to the window.

"I am so tired," she said in a voice that vibrated with some strong emotion. She stopped abruptly and started again. "I am mortally weary of war and wounds and suffering and death. I want to live. I want to ... to dance." She tipped her head back. He suspected that her eyes were tightly closed. Then she laughed softly. "I want to dance. Only four months after my husband's death. Could I possibly be more frivolous? Less sensitive? More lost to all decent conduct?"

He looked at her in some surprise. "Has anyone accused you of those things?" he asked her.

She lifted her head and turned to look at him over her shoulder. "Would not everyone?" she asked in her turn. "You are not married, Sir Benedict?"

"No."

"If you had been and you had died," she said, "would you have been shocked if your widow had wanted to dance three months later?"

"I suppose," he said, lifting one finger to rub along the side of his nose, "at that point it would not have mattered much to me, ma'am, what she did. Or at all, in fact."

She smiled at him unexpectedly and was suddenly transformed into a woman of vivid prettiness. And she must be, he thought, even younger than he had supposed when he walked into the room earlier-and decades younger than he had thought her when they first met.

"But even before my death," he added, "I would have wanted to know that she would live again after I was gone, smile and laugh again, dance again if she so desired. I suppose that, being human, I would have liked to think that she would grieve for a while too, but not indefinitely. But could she not have remembered me fondly while she smiled and laughed and danced?"

"Will you come again?" she asked him abruptly. "With your sister?"

"You will surely be happy to see the back of me," he said. For his part, he could hardly wait to make his escape.

"No one comes," she said. "No one is allowed to come. We are in deep mourning."

Her vivid smile was long gone. He wondered if he had imagined it.

"Perhaps," he suggested unwillingly, "you would like to call upon my sister at Robland Park? It would be an outing for you and perfectly respectable. Or does deep mourning not allow that?"

"It does not," she said. "But perhaps I will come anyway."

It occurred to him suddenly that for the past few minutes she had been standing while he had been sitting-and that he had stayed far longer than etiquette allowed.

"Beatrice will be happy to hear it," he said, reaching for his canes and slipping his arms through the straps. "Her own activities have been curtailed by the persistent chill she contracted before Christmas. I thank you for the tea and for listening to me."

He could not thank her for her forgiveness. She had not given it.

He hoisted himself upright, aware of her steady gaze. He wished he did not now have to shuffle out of the room in his ungainly manner while she watched.

"We have something in common, you know," he told her, stopping abruptly before he reached the door. "I want to dance too. Sometimes it is what I want to do more than anything else in life."

She accompanied him in silence to the front door and the waiting carriage. Beatrice was already standing beside it with Lady Matilda. They all said their farewells, and the carriage was soon on its way down the driveway.

"Well," Beatrice said on an audible exhalation, "that was a gloomy afternoon if ever I have spent one. I do not wonder if that woman has ever laughed, Ben-I am confident she has not. What I do wonder is if she has ever smiled. I seriously doubt it. She spoke of her father with the deepest reverence. I pity poor Mrs. McKay."

"She asked if we would come again," he told her. "I suggested she call on you at Robland instead. It seems, though, that neither receiving visitors nor paying calls is quite the thing for ladies in mourning. Was my social education incomplete, Bea? It seems a peculiar notion to me. But she did say she might come anyway. I hope you will not disown me for making so free with your hospitality."

"She might come?" she asked him. "But will she, do you suppose?"

Ben shrugged for answer. But he recalled the unexpected pa.s.sion with which she had told him that she wanted to live. That infamous stroll in the meadow had probably been her way of breaking loose, at least for a short while. And he had ruined it for her.

"Did you make your apology?" Beatrice asked him.

"I did." He did not add that forgiveness had not been explicitly granted.

"Then duty is satisfied for now," she said. "It is a huge relief, I must say. And perhaps they will not come."

"She wants to dance," Ben said.

"What?" She turned her head to frown at him. "At the a.s.sembly next week, do you mean?"

"No. She wants to dance, Bea. I do too. I want to dance."

She tipped her head slightly to one side. "We will certainly go to the a.s.sembly if you feel up to it," she said, "though I doubt you will be able to dance to even the most stately of the tunes, Ben. You do very well walking with your canes. I am prouder of you than I can possibly say. But dancing? I think it wisest to put it from your mind, dearest, and concentrate upon what you can do."

Ah, literal-minded Bea! He did not try to explain.

5.

Samantha scarcely set foot over the doorstep for the rest of the week. It rained almost without ceasing-though that was not strictly accurate. She might almost have enjoyed an honest-to-goodness rain. This was drizzle and mist and heavy gray skies and chill temperatures. Pea soup weather, she could remember her mother calling it, the sort of weather that seeped beneath doors and around window frames even when they were tightly shut and made one feel damp and cold and miserable despite a fire crackling in the hearth and a woolen shawl drawn about one's shoulders.

She did not even go to church on Sunday, a rare omission. Matilda had a head cold as well as one of her headaches and submitted to being sent back to bed with a hot brick for her feet. Samantha might have gone to church alone, as she had done for five years, but Matilda became agitated when she suggested it, and she was actually quite glad to avail herself of the excuse not to go out.

She had seen no one but Matilda and the servants since Tuesday. The visit of Lady Gramley and Sir Benedict Harper seemed weeks ago rather than merely days. But when she had broached the idea of their driving over to Robland Park one day next week to return the visit, Matilda had looked pruneish, as Samantha had fully expected she would. It was a courtesy to pay an occasional call upon a neighbor in mourning, she had explained, but no one would expect a return visit. Indeed, most people of any gentility would be surprised and even shocked if it happened.

Samantha simply did not believe her. Not any longer. And even if Matilda was right about social expectations, how could she possibly submit to remaining inside the darkened house for another eight months with only the occasional foray into the garden for fresh air and one weekly attendance at church? She would go out of her mind with the tedium of it.

She was going to pay that return call, she decided between journeys up and down stairs as she tended to the invalid, a long-familiar role that did nothing to lift her spirits, though she was always careful to be cheerful when she was in her sister-in-law's room and seeing to her comfort by turning and plumping her pillows or straightening the bedcovers or moving her gla.s.s of water closer to her hand or laying a cool cloth on her fevered brow or closing the almost invisible gap between the curtains that was letting in a flood of hurtful light.

She was going to go to Robland Park even if it meant going alone. Indeed, she would far prefer to go without Matilda. Good heavens, she had allowed herself to become a virtual prisoner in her own home since Matthew's death. And she had somehow relinquished her role as lady of the house.

She liked Lady Gramley, who was refined and elegant with the easy manners of a true lady. She had always been kind, though even after five years of living here Samantha scarcely knew her or any of her other neighbors. She hoped it would be possible to make something of a friend of Lady Gramley in the future, even though there must be a ten-year gap in their ages.

Sir Benedict Harper was a different matter. She had felt considerable antipathy toward him before his visit, and it was only with the greatest reluctance that she had admitted to herself that it had been handsome of him to call on her and maneuver matters in such a way that his apology was made to her alone. He had been sensitive enough to realize that it was altogether possible Matilda knew nothing of her escapade that day. And his apology itself had been irreproachable, for he had taken all the blame upon himself. It had been unhandsome of her, on the other hand, to withhold the words of forgiveness for which he had asked. But it was hard to forgive someone who had ruined the only hour of true freedom she had enjoyed in at least six years.

And now she felt like the guilty one. Perversely, she resented him for that. But he was merely visiting at Robland Park. Perhaps he would be gone soon and she need never see him again. Perhaps he would be out riding again when she called on Lady Gramley.

She remembered with some embarra.s.sment her pa.s.sionate outburst in Sir Benedict's hearing. Whatever had possessed her? She had told him she wanted to live. She had even told him she wanted to dance. But she knew what had caused her to speak so. He was more than half crippled. He had suffered other injuries, all courtesy of the late wars. If she had had to encounter a stranger, even under the circ.u.mstances in which they had met, did he have to be yet another wounded soldier?

She could positively scream!

But he wanted to dance too. She wished he had not said that. The words had unnerved her, for they had expressed such an impossible dream that she had wanted to weep. The last man on earth over whom she wished to shed tears was Sir Benedict Harper.

But he wanted to dance.

Matilda came down to sit in the drawing room early the following afternoon, though she still had a wretched cold, poor thing. She sat near the fire, a shawl drawn closely about her shoulders, a handkerchief clutched in one hand and never too far from her reddened nose.

Samantha mentioned casually that since the rain had stopped at last perhaps she would take the gig and return Lady Gramley's call.

"Your sense of duty is misplaced," Matilda said. "But you will not go, of course, especially since I am unable to accompany you. Matthew would forbid it if he could, G.o.d rest his soul."

Quite possibly he would not have done. He had made great demands on her time and presence while he was ill, it was true, but he hated the puritanical, straitlaced att.i.tudes of his family. It was a measure of his annoyance with her, after she had kicked up a fuss over his infidelity, that he had decided against taking her to the Peninsula with him or permitting her to go home to her own father, but had sent her to Leyland Abbey to live for that year instead. It was undoubtedly the worst punishment he could devise. It had been downright mean.

"There is an a.s.sembly in the village in a few days' time," Samantha said. "Attending that would be scandalous, Matilda. I do not, however, have the least intention of going. Paying a courtesy visit to a neighbor who paid one here last week, on the other hand, must be quite unexceptionable. And as for going in the gig myself, I did it every Sunday while Matthew lived, until you came a short while before his death, that is, and he never once voiced any objection."

"Then he ought to have done," Matilda said sharply before pausing to blow her nose. "Father would not have allowed it."

"The Earl of Heathmoor was not my husband," Samantha retorted, "or my own father. Oh, Matilda, let us not quarrel. How tedious this topic is! I need air and a change of scene. And I really ought to show a courtesy to Lady Gramley, who has called here twice since Matthew's funeral despite the fact that she was not at all well the first time. I am going. I daresay I will not be gone long. The bell pull is within your reach. If you need anything at all, Rose or one of the other servants will bring it."

Her sister-in-law looked thin-lipped and mulish as Samantha got to her feet. No doubt she would inform her father about this in her next letter home. Well, so be it. The rules he imposed upon his family, even at this distance, were Gothic, to say the least. Samantha was no longer going to accept them without question. She could show respect for the memory of her husband without incarcerating herself in her own home and being slavishly obedient to a family whose standards of propriety went far beyond what society demanded.

These thoughts caused her only a fleeting moment of uneasiness. Bramble Hall, which Matthew had been convinced would be made over to him while he lived, still belonged to the earl. But it had been willed to Matthew-except that Matthew was now dead. It would be her home for life, though, he had a.s.sured Samantha shortly before his pa.s.sing. His father had to look after her since she had no fortune of her own and no relatives who would be glad to take her in, and he never shirked his responsibilities. It would suit his purpose to perfection to keep her far away here in the north of England in a house he had never lived in himself. The very last thing he would want was to have her living as a pensioner at Leyland and as a constant thorn in his side. Her future was quite secured.

Sir Benedict Harper was riding around the corner of the house at Robland Park as Samantha drew the gig to a halt before the front doors. He looked splendidly virile on horseback, she could not help but notice, his disability not at all apparent. She could have wished, though, that she had come earlier or that he had extended his ride longer.

He reined in his horse beside her and swept off his hat. "Good afternoon, Mrs. McKay," he said. "You are making the most of this welcome break in the weather too, are you? So is Beatrice, I am afraid. She is out on a round of sick visiting with the vicar's wife."

"Oh." How very unfortunate, and what an anticlimax after all the fuss that had preceded her coming here. "Well, no matter. At least I have had an outing. I would have had no excuse for it if I had known Lady Gramley was from home."

"There is no need for you to go away," he told her. "If you will give me a few minutes to stable my horse, I will join you. A groom is already on his way to see to your gig. Do go inside. No, I beg your pardon. That would not do, would it?"

He looked about him.

Samantha ought to announce her intention of leaving immediately. Matilda would be horrified if she stayed, and on this occasion her sister-in-law might be justified. Besides, she had no wish for another conversation alone with the gentleman. On the other hand, she desperately wanted to prolong her outing for at least a little while.

"Why do you not stroll among the flowers here?" he suggested. "There is even a seat over there."

He put his hat back on, touched his whip to the brim, and rode away before she could answer him. She hesitated for only a moment before getting down from the gig and leaving it in the care of the groom.

Matilda would say this served her right, coming to call and finding Lady Gramley from home. Matilda would certainly believe that she ought to drive away without further ado now that she had made the discovery.

Oh, stuff Matilda McKay and her father, the Earl of Heathmoor, too. Samantha was mortally sick of measuring her every move by what they would think. She could perfectly understand why Matthew had left home as soon as he was old enough and had never gone back there to live. Even when he had come home from the Peninsula, dreadfully wounded and expected to die at any moment, he had begged to be taken somewhere other than Leyland. His father had sent them here, to one of his smaller properties, the one most remote from Kent.

Sir Benedict Harper looked at his best on horseback. He looked at his worst when walking, she thought as he came from the stables a few minutes later to join her. He walked with the aid of his canes, though he did not use them as crutches. He really was walking, slowly and painstakingly, and looking rather ungainly as he did so. It would be far easier, surely, and more graceful to use crutches-except that one needed one sound leg for crutches, did one not?

She could not help feeling a reluctant admiration for a man who clearly ought not to be walking but was. Matthew had never made any effort to overcome any of his disabilities or even to control his peevishness. Perhaps this man really would dance.

She went to meet him.

"Come and sit in the garden," he said.

"Oh, look," she said, tipping back her head. "The sun has come out. It would be a great pity to miss all its brightness by being cooped up indoors. Perhaps I am fortunate after all that Lady Gramley is from home. There has been so little sunshine lately."