Survivors' Club: The Escape Part 10

Sir Benedict Harper was still sitting on the sofa when she swung around to look at him. He was gazing quietly at her. Gracious heaven, he had just offered to marry her. How very n.o.ble he was, and how different from what she had thought the first time she encountered him.

"I know where I am going to go," she told him. "At least for now. Perhaps forever."

Forever? Her stomach lurched.

He raised his eyebrows.

"I own a cottage," she told him. "My great-aunt left it to my mother, who grew up there with her. I believe it was a very old, dilapidated building even then. It is probably far worse now, but I have not heard of its falling down or having been demolished. It is mine now, and that is where I am going to go. Even a crumbling ruin would be preferable to Leyland."

"It is in Wales?" he asked.

"On the southwest coast, yes."

"And you intend to go there alone?" He frowned. "You will need to give the matter some careful thought, Mrs. McKay. It is a long way to go, through wild and lonely and possibly dangerous country. And who is to know what you will find at the end of it all? Perhaps the cottage really is uninhabitable."

"Then I will find one that is not," she said, "and rent it. At least I will be in a part of the world where half my heritage lies. And no one will find me there. No one will bother me. I will be able to live again."

"And dance?" But he was still frowning.

"On the beach, if there is one, as I daresay there is," she said. "On the edge of the world with all the wild power of the ocean looking on."

"And you intend to travel there alone and live there alone." He got slowly to his feet while Tramp sat up and watched, ever hopeful. "It would be sheer folly. The idea may seem appealing to you, and I can understand why. I can even applaud your courage. But consider the reality of leaving Bramble Hall behind and traveling alone and unaccompanied into such a distant unknown."

She did consider-for a few moments. And she was frightened-but undaunted. The alternative was far worse.

"Then you must come with me," she said.

Ben could not have been more effectively robbed of breath if someone had planted a fist in his stomach.

Then you must come with me.

They stood staring at each other, four feet apart. Color had flooded her cheeks while he feared it must have drained from his.

"Impossible," he said. "Who would be your chaperon?"

"You."

"But I am neither your father nor your brother nor your husband nor your betrothed. Nor female."

"So?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Your reputation would be in tatters," he told her.

Her lips curved into a half smile. "So?"

Oh, good Lord.

He went at the problem from a different angle. "I am hardly the ideal man to defend you should danger threaten." He looked down deliberately at his canes. "Unless, that is, we were a.s.sailed by a brigand obliging enough to come close enough to be clobbered."

"We will take a loaded pistol," she said, still with that half smile hovering about her lips and the color high in her cheeks, "and you may shoot him from a distance-while sitting."

"Between the eyes, I suppose."

"Where else?"

It struck him that she was actually enjoying herself, that her sudden realization that there was a solution to her dilemma awaiting her, in the form of a cottage that had been dilapidated even during her mother's girlhood, had made her giddy with relief.

"Mrs. McKay," he said, "do consider."

"Why?" she asked him. "I have had seven years of nothing but doing what is proper, Sir Benedict. And for what? I married in expectation of a lifetime of happily-ever-after and remained decently married after the disappointment and heartbreak that followed quickly upon the heels of my wedding. I spent a year at Leyland Abbey trying my hardest to be the sort of respectable lady my father-in-law insisted I be even while he disliked and despised me. I spent five long, weary years here, nursing a demanding, peevish invalid because he was my husband and I had promised on my wedding day to love and obey him in sickness and in health. I have observed every requirement of my mourning period but have still not satisfied my sister-in-law or the Earl of Heathmoor. I am facing the prospect of more years at Leyland while what is left of my youth dwindles into middle age and then old age and death. Where has considering ever got me? Perhaps it is time to do something unconsidered and impulsive. Perhaps it is time to take my life in my own hands and live it."

Her eyes flashed, and there was pa.s.sion in every line of her body. Who was he to tell her she was wrong? And perhaps she was not.

"I have one day in which to make a decision that will affect all of the rest of my life, whatever that decision is," she told him. "I have one day in which to make my escape-or bow to what seems my inevitable fate. I do not know where escape will lead me. On the other hand, I do know where bowing to my fate will. I would be a fool not to take a chance on escape. Perhaps this was meant to be, Sir Benedict. Why else would I have been left that cottage? It has seemed so useless to me since I learned it was mine that I have scarcely ever even spared it a thought. Yet now it is of crucial importance to my future. Do you believe that sometimes life points out a way for us to follow even if it does not force us into taking that particular path? I am going where life points me. I beg your pardon for trying to involve you. Of course you will not wish to accompany me. Why should you? You owe me nothing. You have been more than kind even to listen to me, and that kindness has led to my thinking of a solution for myself. I am going."

Oh, Lord. She looked like some kind of magnificent avenging angel. She could not possibly go striding off in the vague direction of Wales on her own.

Why the devil had he not ducked back into his room the moment he heard her voice? She would have remembered her cottage without his help once she had calmed down. How she got there would have been none of his concern.

It was not his concern now.

Perhaps this was meant to be, Sir Benedict.

Do you believe that sometimes life points out a way for us to follow ...

Lord, Lord, Lord. Why had he not left for London and Hugo's wedding at the same time as Beatrice left for Berks.h.i.+re?

"Even if I were to accompany you on your journey," he said, "what would you do at the end of it, without any servants except presumably a maid and without friends or a companion? What if the cottage needs a great deal of work before it is habitable, a.s.suming it is habitable at all?"

She would find somewhere else to rent, in a part of the country where half her heritage lay. She had already said that.

"I suppose," she said, "there are servants there to be hired. And I can make friends. I do not fear being alone. I have been essentially alone for seven years and have survived. Are you thinking of accompanying me, then?"

His legs were aching from standing so long in the same position.

"How can I allow you to go alone?" he asked her.

Her eyebrows shot up. "You have no power to allow me to do anything, Sir Benedict," she said. "Or to prevent me from doing anything. You are not my husband."

"Thank the Lord," he said ungraciously.

Her chin went up a notch, but she relented and lowered it again. "How very unjust of me," she said. "I burst in upon you uninvited and unburdened myself of all my woes, yet now I am taking exception to your concern for my safety. It is kind of you to be concerned. But it is not your problem, you know. I am not your problem. I had better return home. Thank you for receiving me. I know you did not wish to do so. You have been avoiding me, and I do not blame you."

"For your own good," he told her, exasperated. "How long would it have been before the whole neighborhood was gossiping if we had become friends, Mrs. McKay, and had kept visiting each other without any sort of chaperonage?"

"Not long at all," she said. "I told you I did not blame you. And I do realize that it was you who gave Lady Gramley the idea of bringing the vicar's wife to my home so that I could become involved in parish and community activities. I am grateful to you for that."

He was not really listening. He was thinking of traveling all day with her for a week or more in the close confines of a carriage. Of taking all his meals with her. Of their staying each night at the same inn. And he felt an unreasonable resentment, for she had not asked it of him after that first impulsive suggestion that he must go with her.

Good Lord, her reputation would be in shreds, and that was probably a gross understatement.

"You force me to very bad manners, Mrs. McKay," he said. "I am entertaining you in my sister's house, yet I am afraid I will have to sit while you stand."

"I ought to have noticed your discomfort," she said, seating herself on the sofa while he returned to his chair. "I am sorry. I have caused you nothing but discomfort since the moment of my arrival. I shall leave, and you must forget I was even here. You are going to Scotland, are you not? I have heard it is lovely there."

She got abruptly to her feet again, and her dog took up his position beside her, his tail waving hopefully.

Ben regarded her irritably. "I believe," he said, "I must have been a close personal friend of the late Captain Matthew McKay. I believe I must have promised him when he was on his deathbed that I would escort his widow to Wales, where he wished her to take up residence in the cottage she inherited before her marriage. I believe I must use my full credentials again and be known as Major Sir Benedict Harper."

She looked down at him, her eyes fathomless.

"We may just get away with it," he said, "without completely wrecking your reputation."

"You are coming?" She almost whispered the words.

"We had better take my carriage," he said. "But we need to decide how we are to get you away from Bramble Hall tomorrow without causing a great fuss and bother among the servants, especially those burly strangers."

The dog flopped down onto all fours and proceeded to lick his paws. He had sensed further delay. Mrs. McKay's hands were clasped so tightly at her waist that Ben could see the whites of her knuckles. But then her eyes brightened and even sparkled.

"With great stealth," she said.

11.

Samantha's longtime maid had left her service after Matthew's death, when she had married his valet. Her replacement was the young daughter of the cook, a cheerful girl who was well liked by all the other servants. Samantha liked her too, but she dared not confide in her or suggest taking the girl with her when she left Bramble Hall. Everyone in the house would know about it within minutes.

No one could forcibly stop her from leaving, of course, Samantha told herself. She was not a prisoner in her own home. Those servants from Leyland could not literally force her into the carriage and convey her all the way to Kent against her will. But, much as she tried to talk rational common sense into herself, she was not convinced that they would not do just that.

All the other servants at the house were technically the earl's too. He paid their salaries.

It would be best, she decided, if no one knew she was leaving or where she was going or with whom-especially with whom. There was no point in courting unnecessary scandal. The story of Sir Benedict's having been a close friend of Matthew's would not work here.

She had to wait until her maid had left her room for the night, then, before she could begin packing. The silly girl's head had been turned by the arrival of so many male servants from Leyland, and she felt impelled to discuss at great length the relative merits of each one with Mrs. McKay and to offer her own opinion on which was the most handsome but which had the most manly physique and which had paid her the most outrageous compliment even if he was not quite the best in either looks or build.

Samantha thought the girl was never going to leave. It was close to midnight when she began packing one large valise and one smaller one. But there was no great problem of room. It was amazing how much she was prepared to leave behind without any qualm of regret. She would leave all her mourning clothes except what she would wear for the first stage of the journey. She had been a dutiful wife to Matthew while he lived. She had mourned him for five months. She had nothing whatsoever with which to reproach herself.

It had been arranged that Sir Benedict Harper would send his valet with a gig at five o'clock in the morning. His man would leave the gig outside the side gate, come into the house through the side door, which Samantha would unlock ahead of time, and carry out her bags. She would accompany him back to Robland Park, where Sir Benedict and his traveling carriage would be waiting.

It seemed too clandestine a scheme to succeed, especially when there was a large, sometimes unruly dog to be smuggled out along with her and her belongings, for of course Tramp could not be left to the mercies of Rudolph and Patience. Besides, Samantha would no more leave him behind than she would her own child, if she had happened to have one. Tramp was family.

The scheme succeeded without mishap, however. At ten minutes past five Samantha waited a moment for an eagerly panting Tramp to finish his business at the side of the lane before shooing him up into the body of the gig with her baggage, and then seated herself beside the large, silent man who had spoken only to introduce himself as Quinn, Sir Benedict's valet. At a quarter to six she was being handed into an opulent traveling carriage in the stable yard at Robland. The house was still in darkness.

Tramp scrambled inside after her and settled on the seat opposite. He took up the whole s.p.a.ce as if by right.

Mr. Quinn and the coachman loaded her bags and others onto the carriage in near silence. There were no grooms in sight. After a few minutes the carriage door opened again to reveal Sir Benedict. He looked about the interior.

"You have not brought your maid?" he asked.

"I am not sure she would have come," she told him. "I am sure she would have told all the other servants even if I had sworn her to secrecy."

"This is awkward," he said, but after another moment of standing there, he climbed inside slowly but with practiced skill and took the seat beside her.

The interior suddenly felt only half its former size. This felt very awkward indeed. Perhaps after all she ought to have escaped alone and traveled by stage or even post-chaise.

"Good morning to you, sir," she said briskly.

"Good morning, Mrs. McKay," he said. "I take it Quinn did not have to fight off all those burly servants in order to spirit you away safely from Bramble Hall? There are a couple of servants rousing here, but none of them have voiced any particular consternation over the discovery that I mean to set out on my travels this early and without waiting for breakfast. I do not believe any of them saw you. We will break our fast when we stop for the first change of horses. Will that suit you? Yes, good morning to you too, wretched dog. You do not need to beat the stuffing out of my cus.h.i.+ons with your thumping tail. You are perfectly visible. And I notice that you have commandeered a whole seat for your personal use. If your mistress had indeed brought her maid, she would have had to sit up on the box with my valet and coachman."

He sounded deliberately, artificially cheerful just as she had done when she bade him good morning. He had seemed like a trusted friend yesterday. This morning he seemed like a stranger, which indeed he was.

The fever of excitement in which she had conceived this whole grand escapade yesterday had converted to a quite sick anxiety last night. She had been unable to sleep except in fitful s.n.a.t.c.hes and with bizarre accompanying dreams. This morning she had been consumed by terror, as though she really were a convict making a daring escape under the very noses of a dozen fierce jailers. And now, seated inside the carriage with only a single gentleman for company, she was feeling tongue-tied and self-conscious.

Good heavens, they were going to be alone together for as many days as it took to reach the southwest coast of Wales and her cottage. And the same number of nights. And he had expected that her maid would be with her to lend some sort of respectability. His valet was with him, of course.

She felt physically sick again.

"I am not at all hungry, Sir Benedict," she a.s.sured him, her hands folded in her lap, her back straight and not quite touching the cus.h.i.+ons behind her. As if a strictly ladylike posture and demeanor could miraculously make all proper.

The coachman put up the steps and shut the door with a decisive click, climbed up to the box while Mr. Quinn mounted from the other side, and within moments the carriage lurched into motion.

It was one of the single most panic-inducing moments of Samantha's life. She had to bite her lower lip in order to prevent herself from yelling to the coachman to stop.

Sir Benedict had turned his head and was looking steadily at her. She had never particularly noticed until now how very narrow carriage seats were. Their shoulders were almost touching. Their faces were too close for comfort. And the world had grown light since she had come from Bramble Hall. There was no darkness in which to hide.

"You are having second thoughts?" he asked. "It is not too late to turn around, you know. I daresay we could smuggle you back into Bramble Hall without the servants there suspecting that you have been doing anything more startling than taking an early morning walk with your dog. Do you wish to return?"

The suggestion brought her to her senses.

"Absolutely not," she a.s.sured him. "I would not go back for any consideration. I am going to the only place I can go to be free. I am going to live, not merely exist at the pleasure of my father-in-law. If you have changed your mind about accompanying me, of course-"

"I have not."

"I feel guilty," she told him. "You were going to Scotland."

"I was going to travel," he said. "And that is what I am doing. I could not and would not allow you to travel all the way to Wales alone."

"You are doing it again," she said. "Allowing me, not allowing me. I am very glad we are not married. I suspect you would be a tyrant."

"I hope I would know how to protect my wife, ma'am," he said stiffly, "even if it was sometimes despite herself. And you could not be more glad of our marital status or lack thereof than I am."

She pursed her lips.