Survivors' Club: The Escape Part 23

"Come back to the house?" she said.

They always went to the house after their swim and after lying for a while in the sun. But she knew from the look in his eyes that he understood what she meant.

"Yes," he said.

And, shockingly, they did not stop to dress but walked back as they were, her towel about her shoulders, his draped about his neck. She insisted on carrying his boots.

She had forgotten why he must leave.

But of course he must. He could not stay here in the cottage with her, even if they married. He would have nothing to do here. He would be restless and unhappy in no time at all. And she could not go with him. It was much too soon for her to go with or marry anyone. And though he was not homeless, he had chosen to leave his brother and family in residence in his house but had established no other home for himself. He was probably the most restless, unsettled man she had ever known. It had not always been so, of course, but it was now, and she wondered unhappily if he would ever find himself and his place in life.

Yes, he must leave. Sometimes love was not enough-if it was love between them. It was probably not. She was lamentably naive about affairs. Perhaps this was not love but mere physical attraction. That was undoubtedly all it was to him. Men did not fall in love as women did, did they?

They went upstairs as soon as they reached the cottage while Tramp padded off to the kitchen in search of his food bowl. Samantha led the way into her bedchamber. She drew the curtains across the window, though they were not heavy and did not block out much light. She peeled off her wet s.h.i.+ft, toweled herself off, and rubbed at her hair, even though it was still in its tight knot at her neck.

Ben was sitting with his back to her on the side of the bed. He was pulling off his wet pantaloons, though he had drawn the bedcovers up over himself to mask her view.

"Don't," she said, kneeling up on the bed and moving across it toward him.

"Don't?" He looked over his shoulder at her.

"Don't hide yourself," she said.

He held her eyes for a few moments, his own suddenly bleak, and then pushed back the covers, finished removing his clothes, and lay back on the bed, lifting his legs onto it one at a time. He looked at her again, his eyes hard now.

His legs were thinner than they must once have been. The left one was slightly twisted, the right more noticeably so. They were horribly scarred.

"Now tell me," he said, "that you want me to make love to you."

His voice matched his eyes.

She moved a little closer and set her hand on his upper right thigh. She stroked it lightly downward, feeling the deep gouges of his old wounds and the hard, raised ridges of the scars where the surgeons had tried to mend them.

And the foolish, brave man had insisted upon walking again.

She returned her hands to her own thighs as she kneeled naked beside him, and raised her eyes to his.

"Ben," she said, "my dearest, I am so very sorry. I am sorry for the pain you suffered and still suffer. I am sorry that you cannot do what you most want to do in life. I am sorry you feel diminished as a man and inadequate as a lover, that you feel ugly and undesirable. What happened to you was ugly, but you are not. I think you are the toughest, most courageous man I have ever met. I know you are the loveliest. You must believe me. Oh, you must, Ben. And yes, I want you to make love to me."

He gazed at her, his look still hard, though she had the curious feeling that he was fighting the welling of tears to his eyes.

"You are not repulsed?" His voice was still hard too, though there was a suggestion of a tremor in it.

"Idiot," she said and smiled. "Do I look repulsed? You are Ben. My lover. For this week anyway. And I have had enormous pleasure with you. Give me more."

She was remembering that she had called him my dearest, and she did not want him to believe she had fallen in love with him. And so she spoke of the pleasure she had had of him-which was no lie. He must be the most wonderful lover in the world.

He reached for her and she moved to straddle him. His hands moved over her upper thighs, over her hips, in to her waist, up to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which he cupped lightly.

"You are perfection itself," he said.

"I am not slender."

"Thank G.o.d for that," he said without contradicting her. "Do women really believe that men want them looking like sticks?"

"And I am no English rose," she said. "I am downright swarthy."

"My Gypsy Sammy." He grinned at her. "My perfect Gypsy Sammy."

She laughed, set her hands on either side of his head, and leaned over him to kiss him.

His legs were not quite helpless, as she had discovered on previous occasions. Before she knew it, she was on her back and he was on top of her, his legs between hers, and his lips were on hers, his tongue deep in her mouth, and his hands were fierce on her and then beneath her b.u.t.tocks and holding her firm while he thrust deep into her.

She lifted her legs from the bed and wrapped them about his lean hips, and they loved each other long and hard until they were both panting and slick with sweat and they broke together into glory and collapsed into the world beyond.

They lay side by side afterward, sated and drowsy and dozing, their hands touching. Last night had felt a bit like goodbye, she thought. The melancholy of it had remained with her this morning. And now?

No, she did not want to think.

"I believe you will make a wonderful new life here," he said at last. "You have neighbors who seem very ready to accept you and welcome you into their midst. You will make friends here. And you have family here. You have a grandfather who wishes to be a part of your life. Listen to him this evening, Samantha, and think well before you reject him for all the apparent wrongs of the past."

"I have agreed to listen," she reminded him.

"I think you did the right thing," he said, "coming here. And I think it will be time for me to leave tomorrow, before speculation and a bit of gossip can blossom into scandal as they surely would if I stayed longer."

"I have delayed your travels for long enough," she said.

He did not answer her, and they lay side by side, no longer either drowsy or dozing. Samantha fought tears. She fought the urge to beg him to stay just one more day or perhaps two. For he was right. It was time for him to leave. It was time for him to go in search of his life and for her to settle to her new one.

It was time to let him go.

After a while he turned and sat up, moving his legs over the side of the bed.

"I had better return to the inn," he said. "I will bring the carriage later to take you to Cartref?"

"Yes," she said. "Thank you."

She felt about as bleak as it was possible to feel.

Mr. Bevan had the good manners and easy address of a true gentleman, Ben thought, even if he was not one by birth. And he dressed with fas.h.i.+onable elegance yet without any ostentation or grand display of wealth. The wealth was clearly there, however.

He took them on a tour of the house. Everything was of the finest but with not the merest suggestion of vulgarity. The room in which they lingered longest was the long gallery at the back of the house. It was filled with paintings and a few sculptures by the great masters, a few of them acquired by his father, he told them, but the majority by him. And he always purchased what he most liked, he explained to them, rather than what was most valuable. Though Ben guessed there was a fortune in that room alone. There were paintings in every other room too, some of them by acclaimed masters, some by unknown artists Mr. Bevan had admired and wanted to encourage.

And wherever he took them, there were views from the windows, over the rolling Welsh countryside, over the beach and the sea.

He plied them with sherry and conversation in the drawing room and then with good wine and food and conversation in the dining room. He told them about his travels and his reading. And he asked them about their own lives with skilled questions that would draw more than monosyllabic answers from them and yet would not seem intrusive. When Ben asked him about his businesses, he answered thoroughly but without monopolizing all their time and perhaps boring Samantha.

He appeared totally at his ease and in perfect good humor with his guests.

Samantha, Ben guessed, was troubled even as she admired the house and ate and drank and listened to her grandfather's conversation and Ben's and made her own contributions. She was looking extremely beautiful in a turquoise blue high-waisted dress he had not seen before. Her hair was elaborately styled considering the fact that she had not had the services of her maid today. It shone in the candlelight.

While they drank tea in the drawing room after dinner, Mr. Bevan told them about the male voice choir made up of eighty or so of his miners.

"There is no finer choir in all of Wales," he told them, "and that is saying something. I am not entirely impartial, of course, but they did win at the eisteddfod in Newport both last year and the year before. I always say that coal dust must do marvels for the vocal cords."

"Iced-?" Ben asked "Eye-steth-fod," Mr. Bevan said, p.r.o.nouncing the word clearly. "A Welsh arts festival."

He turned his eyes on Samantha, who was swirling the dregs of her tea in her cup, and watched her in silence for a few moments.

"Your grandmother was dancing when I first set eyes on her," he said. "The Gypsies had camped down by the sea, as they sometimes did, and I went to have a look with some of the other lads from around here. I was twenty-one at the time. Her feet were bare, and her bright, full skirts were swirling about her ankles and her dark hair was tumbled about her face and shoulders, and I had not seen anything as lovely or as full of life and grace in all my days. I didn't know anything at that time about not putting birds or b.u.t.terflies or wild things in cages. I wooed her and I married her, all within six weeks, against everyone's advice, her own people's included. We were going to live happily ever after. She was sixteen."

Samantha's cup, held between both her hands, was still. Her eyes had lifted briefly to her grandfather's and then returned to her cup.

"We were happy for a year or so," Bevan said, "though we had to keep traveling about. She did not like to be in one place for very long. And then your mother was born, and only a few months after that my father died-my mother was already deceased. I had to take over the running of the businesses. I had been working in them, though not as much as I had before I met Esme. The baby needed a stable home. Esme did not like it, but she understood and she tried to settle. She tried hard. We went on for a few years, but then the Gypsies came back-her own group. She spent some time with them while they were here, and she went to say goodbye to them on the last night. She never came home. I thought she had stayed the night, but when I went looking the next morning, they were gone and she with them. I didn't go after them. What was the point? She had been withering away at Cartref here. She died four years after that, but I did not know it for another six."

Samantha leaned forward and set her cup down carefully on its saucer before sitting back in her chair. Ben wished he were sitting beside her.

"I took to drink," Bevan said. "I made sure your mother had a good nurse and everything she needed, and I made sure that I had a good manager who would look after running the mines, and I dedicated my life to forgetting and dulling the pain-at the bottom of a gla.s.s of liquor. A year or so after Esme left, I was in the library one night drinking and feeling sorry for myself as usual. Except it was worse than usual. It was the anniversary of our wedding. After a while I hurled my gla.s.s against the wall beside a bookcase, and the gla.s.s shattered. And someone started to cry. Gwynneth had come downstairs without her nurse's seeing her. And she had curled up under a table just below where the gla.s.s. .h.i.t."

Samantha spread both hands over her knees and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers.

"The next morning," Mr. Bevan said, "I took her to Dilys at the cottage where you now live, Samantha. We had never seen eye to eye. She had thought me wild and irresponsible as a boy. She had thought my marriage insanity. She was furious when she discovered that our father had left almost everything to me when she was the one with the business head. But I took your mother to her and asked her to take the child until I got myself properly sober. She told me I never would, that I would always be a worthless drunkard. She said she would take Gwynneth but only on condition that she had the sole raising of her, that I would give her up and never see her again except by chance."

Samantha was looking at him now. Ben was looking at her.

"I drank for six more months," Bevan said, "and then I stopped. I did not drink at all for years. Now I do occasionally, but only in a social way, never when I am alone. I applied myself to my work. I challenged myself by interesting myself in industries other than just coal. Hence the ironworks. And in the meanwhile, every penny of the money I ever sent to help Dilys with the upbringing of your mother and every gift I sent for birthdays or Christmas was returned. Every time I glimpsed Gwynneth, she was whisked away by my sister when she was younger-she turned away of her own accord when she was older. I wanted her back. I wanted to get her a proper governess. I wanted to get her ready for the life she could have lived as my daughter. I wanted to ... Well, I wanted to be her father, but I had forfeited my chance with her. When I heard she was not allowed to go on picnics with the local lads and la.s.ses, though, and was not allowed to go to the village a.s.semblies even though she was seventeen and ready for a bit of life of her own, I went and had it out with Dilys, and we both ended up shouting like fools and behaving like two snarling dogs fighting over the same bone. And Gwynneth was in the house and heard it all. The day after, she was gone. Just like Esme all over again."

"And as before, you did not go after her," Samantha said.

"I did," he said. "She would not have anything to do with me. She would not let me pay for her lodgings. She would not let me give her some spending money. She would not let me help her find decent employment. And she would not come home with me. She got a job acting. I was ... proud of her spirit of independence at the same time as I was terrified for her. And then she met your father, who was close to me in age and was everything I was not. I think maybe she was happy with him. Was she?"

"Yes," she said.

"It was the old story after her marriage," he said. "She returned my letters and my wedding gift and my christening gift to you and all the other gifts I sent. Though after she ... died, the letters and gifts I sent you stopped coming back, and sometimes your father would write to tell me about you and to include little messages of thanks from you for the gifts. I often thought of suggesting that I come to see you, but I could never quite get up the courage. You were the daughter of a gentleman, and his letters were always polite, but not exactly warm. I thought maybe the two of you would say no. And then all hope was gone. You married the son of an earl, and it seemed to me the last thing you would want was a visit from your maternal grandfather. I even stopped sending gifts after the wedding one."

Samantha was pleating her dress again.

"I daresay your father felt sorry for me," Bevan said. "But I suppose he felt even more loyalty to his wife, your mother, and agreed with her that it was best you not know me. You did not read any of those letters or see any of those gifts, did you?"

"No." Her voice was a mere whisper of sound.

"It was not wicked of either your father or your mother," he said. "I had done nothing to earn her love, and I did not deserve yours. I ruined my own life and your mother's over grief for what I could not have. And all the time I had a treasure in my grasp that I did not recognize until it was too late."

"You married again," she said.

"A year after your mother went to London." He sighed. "I wanted a son. I wanted someone to hand everything on to. Perhaps I wanted some redemption too. I wanted to try again, to see if I could do better than I had done the first time. Isabelle was a good woman. She was better than I deserved, and we were contented together despite the age difference. But we never did have children. We were denied that blessing. She died two years ago."

Samantha said nothing. But she turned her head to look at Ben, her eyes wide and blank.

"I am sorry," Bevan said. "The most useless three words in the English language when they are used together. I wish I could go back. I have wished it year after year since the night I smashed that gla.s.s above your mother's head. But that is something that is not granted to any of us. None of us can go back. I thought at least you must know about me, though. I thought your mother would have told you."

"No," she said. "But she ought to have done. Ben said to me yesterday that we all have a story to tell. My mother had a story, but she never told it. Perhaps she meant to. Perhaps she thought I was too young. I was only twelve when she died. My father did not tell it either, but I suppose he felt it was not his story to tell. Except that I ought to have known."

"You know now," he said, and he got to his feet to pull on the bell rope, "and it is not a pretty story. I cannot think of anything to add that might make you think it worth your while to accept me as your grandfather, Samantha. I wish I could, but I can't. I obviously did terrible damage to another human being, my own daughter, and I have no excuse for that. And no right to lay any claim to the affection of her daughter."

"I have no one," Samantha said.

"Your brother?"

"Half brother," she said. "No."

"Your uncles and aunts and cousins on your father's side? Your father- and mother-in-law and your sister- and brothers-in-law?"

"No."

He turned his eyes on Ben and gazed steadily at him.

"And when are you leaving, Major Harper?" he asked.

"Tomorrow," Ben said.

They looked at each other for a few moments longer, taking each other's measure, until a servant answered the summons of the bell.

"You can remove the tray," Bevan told him, "and have Major Harper's carriage brought around to the door."

He waited until the servant had withdrawn and then looked at Samantha's bowed head.

"You can have me," he told her. "If you want me."

She looked up at him. "I want to live in peace at my cottage," she told him. "I want to be alone. But perhaps one day I will tell you my story. Perhaps I will tell you everything that led up to my coming here. But not yet."

He bowed his head in acknowledgment of her words.

"It is time for you to go home, Samantha," he said. "The major will see you safely there."

"Yes," she said. "Thank you. It has been a pleasant evening."

"It has, indeed."

He shook Ben by the hand, kissed Samantha's cheek, and was again the smiling, genial host.

21.