She stopped pacing after a while and clutched the windowsill with her free hand to prevent herself from falling. She inhaled and then found it impossible to exhale until the breath shuddered out of her in slow, jerky spurts, and then she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe in again. Her vision blackened about the edges. And then air wheezed in again. She willed herself to wake up. Right now this minute. This had to be a nightmare. But of course it was not.
She had to get out of the house, from which some force had surely sucked most of the air. The ceiling was pressing down upon the top of her head. And the house was no longer hers in any way at all. Rudolph and Patience would be here within two weeks. She turned and ran upstairs for her bonnet and cloak and outdoor shoes, Tramp thumping along at her heels.
The garden did not have enough air either. She strode along the side path without hesitating and out through the gate and along the lane beyond it until she saw a cart swaying beneath a large load of hay coming in her direction. She struck out across a field and then over a meadow—the very one in which she had met Sir Benedict Harper once upon a long time ago.
Robland Park was still a fair distance away, but she knew suddenly that it was her destination, that it had been from the start. No one could help her, but she needed the company of a friend, and Lady Gramley was the closest thing to a friend she had had for many years.
She strode onward, Tramp frisking at her heels and occasionally dashing off in pursuit of some wild creature more fleet of foot than he and therefore not at all timid about showing its head. He never learned that lesson, poor, foolish dog.
Whatever would become of him? He would certainly not be allowed to accompany her to Leyland Abbey.
Oh, she would die if she was torn away from him. Surely she would.
Samantha was not the only person in the neighborhood to have received a letter of some significance that morning. Both Ben and Beatrice had received one too. Their letters were beside their plates as they sat down to breakfast.
Beatrice’s letter was from her husband’s sister, fifteen years younger than he. Caroline, Lady Vere, was in imminent expectation of the birth of her first child and had been impatiently awaiting the arrival of her mother-in-law to help her through the ordeal of the confinement. But that lady had recently taken to her bed with some unnamed disorder of the nerves, and Caroline begged Beatrice, in closely crossed lines and with what seemed like near hysteria, to please come in her stead, since Vere very nearly had a fit of the vapors every time anyone so much as touched upon the coming event in his hearing and there was no one else to whom she could turn except her old nurse, who always scolded so and whose hands shook with some sort of palsy.
“I had hoped to spend at least another week or two at home before going to London,” Beatrice told Ben with a sigh after sharing with him the contents of her letter. “Now it seems I must set off for Berkshire without further ado—today if at all possible. I could be there the day after tomorrow if there are no unexpected delays. I would not put poor Caroline through the terror of being alone except for her apology for a husband and a nurse who has always terrorized her. Men are always useless under such circumstances, you know, especially the expectant father himself, who always entertains the illusion that he is the great sufferer at the very heart of the crisis.”
“Then you must go,” Ben said, laughing.
“But what about you?” she asked with a frown. “I cannot expect you to remove yourself from Robland at a moment’s notice when I specifically invited you here to keep me company. You are welcome to stay on alone, of course, but it seems very inhospitable of me to abandon you.”
“I will not hold it against you,” he assured her, “since Lady Vere’s need of your company appears to be greater than mine. I shall be perfectly comfortable here on my own, Bea. And I daresay I will be off myself within a week at the longest.”
“To Kenelston?” she asked hopefully.
“Still not to Kenelston,” he said. “Probably to Scotland. I have never been there, you know. It is reputed to be very scenic and beautiful, as are Ireland and Wales and numerous parts of England. Perhaps eventually, when my adoring public is begging for more books, I will even venture abroad.”
“And never settle down, I suppose,” she said, still frowning. “Has it not occurred to you, Benedict, that that is the whole cause of your restlessness?”
“Not settling down? It is a somewhat obvious conclusion, I suppose,” he admitted. “If I were settled, I would not be restless. If I am restless, I cannot be settled.”
“I should know better by now,” she said, getting to her feet after setting her napkin across her plate, “than to try to discuss your personal affairs with you.”
“Alas,” he said, “I have no affairs to discuss.”
“Ah, these double meanings,” she said. “Who invented the English language, I wonder? He did not do a stellar job of it, whoever he was.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “he was a she.”
She gave a bark of laughter. “On the assumption that women are by nature muddleheaded? I cannot stay to argue. I must get busy if I am to leave as close to noon as possible. The bulk of my things can be sent directly to London in a few weeks’ time, of course.”
Ben reread his own letter after she had left the breakfast parlor. It was from Hugo Emes, Lord Trentham, one of his fellow Survivors. Hugo was getting married, to Lady Muir. Ben was genuinely pleased at the news. He had wondered if Hugo would go after her when they all left Penderris. She had sprained her ankle down on the beach when they were all staying in Cornwall, and Hugo had found her and carried her up to the house like the brawny giant he was, scowling all the way, Ben did not doubt. He had fallen head-over-ears in love with her, as she had with him, if Ben was any judge of female sensibilities. But Hugo had felt restrained by the fact that though titled and enormously wealthy, he was a man of middle-class origin, while she was the sister of the Earl of Kilbourne and the widow of a viscount. And so he had let her go without a fight, the idiot, when her brother came to fetch her a few days later. Obviously, though, he had gone after her. They were to be married at St. George’s on Hanover Square in London.