Survivors' Club: The Escape Part 28

"One is t-tempted to challenge you to a race along the village street, Ben," Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, said. "But one would not wish to make a s-spectacle of oneself."

"Or lose ignominiously to a man in a wheeled chair, Flave," Ralph, Earl of Berwick, added.

"You will be able to race against Vince in March, Ben," Hugo, Lord Trentham, said. "He is having a race track built about the outer boundary of his park. Had you heard? That will be a sight to behold."

"A blind man and a c-cripple," Flavian said. "Heaven defend us."

"Call me that again, Flave," Ben said cheerfully, "and you may find yourself being beaten about the head with a cane."

"It might cure his stammer," George said.

"Ben." Imogen, Lady Barclay, was looking intently at him. "You have danced?"

"Waltzed, actually." He grinned at her. "There is an alcove at one end of the ballroom at Cartref. I waltzed all about it with Samantha during a ball just before Christmas."

"Was that wise, Ben?" Calvin asked him. "I have always thought you may do more harm than good to your legs by insisting upon walking on them. But dancing? I worry about you, you know. All the time."

But the Survivors were all beaming at him.

"Bravo," the duke said quietly.

"I s-suppose," Flavian said, "this alcove is the size of an egg cup, Ben?"

"Probably a thimble, Flave," Ralph said, grinning and winking at Ben.

"It does not matter if it is the size of a pin, you fatheads," Hugo said, holding out one huge hand and giving Ben's a hearty shake. "Good for you, lad. My Gwendoline dances too, and you have all seen how she limps when she walks."

Imogen bent to kiss Ben's cheek. "It was your dream to dance one day," she said. "Everyone ought to have a dearest dream come true."

Ben caught her hand in his. "And what is yours, Imogen?" he asked her.

He immediately regretted the question, for everyone fell silent to listen to her reply, and she gazed back at him, her eyes large and luminous. Something flickered in them and then died.

"Oh," she said in her soft, cool voice, "to meet someone tall, dark, and handsome and be swept off my feet, of course."

He squeezed her hand and held it to his lips for a moment. He wanted to apologize, but that would be to admit that he knew she had not answered his question.

"I am sorry, Imogen," Hugo said, "but I am already taken."

"She said handsome, Hugo," Ralph said.

They all laughed and the moment pa.s.sed.

"There must have been something in the air in Cornwall last spring," George said as the landlord came into the room with a loaded tray. "Three of our number married within the year. And my nephew too."

"The heir?" Ben asked.

"Julian, yes," George said. "And all love matches, it seems to me. One has only to look at you and Mrs. McKay, Ben, to smell May blossoms. You have done well. You will have a wife for whom you obviously care deeply and a way of life that seems to have been custom made for you, all in one neat package."

"And all in the d-darkest bowels of the wild country," Flavian said. "I expected savages to j-jump out at me from behind every r-rock as I traveled here, Ben, intent upon slitting my throat."

"It is more likely," Ben said, "that they would want to kidnap you so that they could sing to you, Flave. You should hear the miners' choir where I work. It would be enough to make you weep sentimental tears."

"S-spare me," Flavian said faintly.

Hugo had a tankard of ale in his hand. "We must not keep Ben from his beauty sleep tonight of all nights," he said, "and we will not try to get him foxed. But we will drink a toast to you, Benedict. That all your life your heart will dance as your person did in that alcove before Christmas."

"Oh, the devil!" Flavian said, getting to his feet and holding aloft his gla.s.s of port. "Marriage is t-turning Hugo embarra.s.singly poetic. But he has the r-rights of it, Benedict, my boy. M-may you be happy. It is all we have ever w-wanted for one another."

"To you, Benedict," Imogen said, lifting her gla.s.s of wine. "And to Samantha."

"To your happiness, Ben," Ralph said, "and Mrs. McKay's."

"To you, brother," Calvin said. "I always admired you greatly. You knew what you wanted and you went after it and did superbly well. It almost killed me when you were so badly hurt so soon after Wallace was killed. But then I learned to admire you more than I ever had. And I still do even if you do cause me worry when you won't come home and let me look after you and when you insist upon walking and even dancing, for the love of G.o.d. To you, brother-all the happiness in the world and to Samantha too."

Ben, smiling at him, felt rather as if he were seeing his brother for the first time.

"And may you always ride your wheels as fast as we can run, Benedict," the duke said.

They all drank, and Ben laughed.

"If you do not want to see me turn into a watering pot," he said, "and if you do not want to find the doors of Cartref locked against you, you had better leave. I will see you all in the morning."

"One word of advice, Ben," Hugo said as they were taking their leave. "Get your valet to tie your neckcloth looser than usual tomorrow. There is something about being at the front of the church when you are a bridegroom waiting for your bride to arrive that makes the neck expand."

"And he is not lying, Ben," Calvin told him.

Samantha's half brother arrived the day before her wedding. She had already moved into the big house and greeted him there on his arrival. They shook hands and conversed politely. She asked about her sister-in-law and nephews and nieces. He asked her about her home and her connections in the village. He shook hands with Ben and conversed politely with him.

But it was all done in company with others. Samantha was touched that he had come so far and at the worst time of the year for her sake. But he seemed more like a stranger she had once known than someone who was close to her. She hoped he would not regret coming. But she supposed he would not. He had come out of a sense of duty to their father, not out of any fondness for her.

Ah, life was difficult sometimes.

It was not until the following morning that she finally saw him alone.

She was dressed for her wedding. She had chosen a simply styled dress of warm white velvet with a gold chain and locket about her neck and gold earrings. A small gold-colored bonnet hugged her head. Her heavy cloak, which was flung over the back of a chair in her dressing room, was also of white velvet with gold frogged fasteners at the front and fur lining.

She had considered various bright colors but had rejected them all in favor of white. She wanted simplicity. She wanted just herself on display to her bridegroom, not the brightness of her clothes.

"Ooh," Gladys said when she had fitted the bonnet carefully over Samantha's curls and tied the ribbons in a bow to one side of her chin, "you were right and I was wrong, Mrs. McKay. White is your color. Every color is your color. But you look perfect today. The major is going to eat you up, he is, when he sees you. Not that he'd better do it, mind, not when-"

But her monologue was interrupted by a knock on the dressing room door and she went to see who was there.

"Thank you, Gladys," Samantha said. "That will be all."

She smiled at John. She had thought everyone had left for the church by now.

"You look very fine," he said, his eyes moving over her. He was frowning. "I have always thought of you, you know, as your mother's daughter. I would never think of you as my father's too. But you were-you are. You look like your mother, of course-well, a bit like her, anyway. I was always thankful about that, for I am like my father. I can see it when I look in a gla.s.s. But you do too. Not in obvious ways. Just sometimes in a turn of the head or a fleeting expression-not anything I can put my finger on exactly. But you are his daughter. Not that I ever doubted it. I just ignored it."

"John." She stepped forward and extended her right hand. "You have come all this way and I am touched. I know it was hard for you when our father married my mother."

"You are my sister," he said. "I had to come and tell you that, Samantha. Not that you did not know it, but ... Well, everyone needs family, and I know you have always been denied half of yours and didn't know about the other half until recently. I am glad you have discovered that half. Bevan seems a decent sort as well as being as rich as Croesus."

"John," she said hesitantly, hoping she was not about to introduce a discordant note into their meeting, "why did you keep his letters from me and all of Mr. Rhys's except the one you sent soon after Papa's death? Why did I not know about the money my aunt left me or all the gifts my grandfather sent?"

He frowned. "I knew nothing of any gifts or money," he told her. "I do know that when our father was dying he had me find two bundles of letters and burn them while he watched. He told me your mother had not wanted you to have anything to do with her Welsh relatives, that they had treated her badly and must not be allowed to bother you. He wanted to honor her wishes, especially as you had made such an advantageous marriage. All I ever had was letters asking what you wanted to do about the cottage. Father had said it was just a run-down building, not worth anything. I sent the one letter on to you after answering it myself-I thought perhaps you ought to see it so that you could send an answer of your own if you wanted. You did not write back, and your husband was in a bad way, and I didn't bother you with the other few letters that came. But they did not mention any money, Samantha-only the cottage. I had no idea it was the house it is."

"Me neither," she said, smiling at him. "As it has turned out, John, it is a good thing I knew nothing, but discovered the truth only when it would mean most to me."

"You are marrying a good man," he said, "even if he is half a cripple."

"There is no one less crippled than Ben," she said. "But thank you, John. I wept, you know, when I knew you were coming."

"You did?"

"I did." She smiled and looked beyond his shoulder.

Her grandfather had come to fetch her. He was beaming at her and then smiling genially at John.

"The bridegroom will have heart palpitations if we are late," he said. "Bridegrooms always do. It is a hazardous thing to be."

"I know." John smiled at him and looked so much like their father that Samantha's heart turned over. "I see enough of them. And I was one myself once."

He turned back and took a step closer so that he could kiss Samantha's cheek.

"Be happy," he said. "Our father loved you very dearly, you know."

"I do know," she said softly. "Just as he loved you."

He hurried away, and Samantha looked at her grandfather.

"Oh, dear G.o.d, girl," he said, "but you look like my Esme. Except that I never saw her in white. It was a color she never wore. You are beautiful. And what an inadequate word that is. Come, let me help you on with your cloak, and we will go rescue the major from death by heart failure, shall we?"

"Oh, by all means, Grandpapa," she said. "But I must not forget my m.u.f.f."

It was her wedding day, she thought, and felt a flutter of almost unbearable excitement in her stomach.

It had been decided at Christmastime that Ben would take three months during which to get married and enjoy a wedding trip and a stay with his fellow members of the Survivors' Club. After that, as Mr. Bevan's grandson-in-law rather than simply as his employee, he would gradually take over the running of the mines and ironworks while Bevan himself relaxed into a semi-retirement. The newly wedded couple would live at the cottage, though the invitation to take up their residence at Cartref was an open one. There would be homes in Swansea and the Rhondda Valley too.

All of which was satisfying, even exciting to consider, Ben thought as he sat beside his brother at the front of the church in Fisherman's Bridge while his family and friends and Samantha's murmured in soft conversation behind him. But in the meanwhile there was today.

His wedding day.

He had not really expected to be nervous. How could one feel any anxieties when one was so entirely happy? But he knew what Hugo had meant about his neckcloth. And he could not stop himself from fearing that he would drop the wedding ring just when he was about to slide it onto Samantha's finger. Indeed, he had woken up more than once during the night with just that fear. He would have to let someone else crawl around on hands and knees to retrieve it, and then he would have to go through the ordeal all over again.

"You are in pain, Ben?" Calvin asked, his voice full of concern.

"No." Ben looked at him in some surprise, but he realized he had been rubbing his hands over his upper thighs. "Make sure I have a good grip on the ring, Cal, before you let it go."

His brother grinned at him. "No one ever does drop it," he said.

Now he was in for it for sure.

And then the Reverend Jenkins, gorgeously clad in his clerical robes, was telling the congregation to stand and the pipe organ was striking a chord.

It seemed to take Ben forever to push himself to his feet with his canes, but when he had done so, she was only just coming into sight at the end of the nave, on the arm of a proudly beaming Bevan.

Oh, Lord G.o.d, Ben thought with reverence rather than blasphemy, had there ever been such beauty? Could she possibly be his? His bride?

And then she looked along the nave, and her eyes came to rest upon him, and she smiled. He was quite unaware of the slight little sigh that rippled through the congregation as he smiled back.

And then she was beside him, and they both turned toward Mr. Jenkins.

"Dearly beloved," he said in his lovely Welsh accent.

And just like that, all within a few minutes, the world changed.

They were married.

And not only did he not drop the ring, but he did not even think about the possibility as he took it in his hand and slid it over her finger while he spoke the words the clergyman recited ahead of him. He did not even think about how he was to manage without his canes for a few minutes.

They were married.

And then they signed the register and it was all done up right and tight.

They were man and wife.

They made their slow way back up the nave. Ben did it with one cane. Samantha's hand was through his other arm, holding it firmly without appearing to do so. In her other hand she held her white m.u.f.f. He felt no pain from the walk as he looked to left and right, acknowledging their guests with nods and smiles while Samantha did the same.

And then they were outside, and a chill wind cut at them and they turned their faces toward each other and laughed.

"Lady Harper," he said.

"Absolutely," she said. "Your friends are not holding what I think they are holding, are they?"

There were a number of villagers in the street beyond the church, come to see the show and cheer the bride and groom. But in their midst, sure enough, were Flavian and Ralph, who had obviously slipped out of the church early. Where they had found flowers in January, the Lord only knew. There must be a hothouse somewhere. But those were unmistakably flower petals clutched in their hands and then raining over bride and groom as they made their slow way to the carriage that was waiting to convey them back to Cartref.

"I think the answer was yes," Ben said, laughing as he climbed in after Samantha. "And I think what is trailing behind the carriage is what I think it is too."

The church bells were ringing. The crowd was cheering. The congregation was beginning to spill out of the church.

"Here," Hugo said, "I'll close the carriage door for you."

Which he did-after tossing another great handful of petals inside.

Ben sat back on the seat and laughed. And he took Samantha's hand in his as he turned to her.

"Happy?" he asked.