Samantha stood back to let the girl into the room.
“I will be happy to give you a try, Gladys,” she said, “while you give me a try. And I believe I will be able to do without your services at night at least for a while.”
She thought of the maid she had had at Bramble Hall and how the girl had often kept her up late with her chattering. Gladys might well keep her up all night if she lived in.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. McKay,” the girl said, and she began immediately to attack Samantha’s bags, which she proceeded to unpack even though she was going to have to pack everything again the morning after tomorrow.
Word was delivered to the hotel the following morning that a Mrs. Price, widowed mother of the blacksmith at Fisherman’s Bridge, had gone over to the cottage to supervise the cleaners who had been sent in, to open the windows to air the place out, and to remove the covers from the furniture and do a bit of shopping and get fires lit in all the grates after the windows were closed again so that everything would be nice and warm and cozy for Mrs. McKay when she arrived the following day. Mrs. Price had expressed a willingness to be interviewed for a permanent position if Mrs. McKay so desired. She was an excellent cook and had held previous positions as a cook and housekeeper. She had the references to prove it.
And so the next phase of her life was about to begin, Samantha thought as she spent the afternoon with Ben and Tramp, sitting and taking short walks along the top of the cliffs above the sweep of Tenby Bay.
A phase that would not include Ben.
“Ben,” she said in a rush after they had sat silently admiring the view for a while, “will you stay for a few days? After tomorrow, I mean?”
He gazed out to sea, his eyes narrowed against the brightness of the light sparkling off its surface.
“Oh, how selfish of me,” she said. “Please ignore the question. You must be very eager to be on your way.”
“If there is an inn at Fisherman’s Bridge,” he said, “I will stay for a few days. Until I am satisfied that you are properly settled.”
“Did I force that upon you?” she asked him. “I am not your responsibility.”
When he turned his head to look at her, he was frowning slightly.
“Oh, but you are,” he said. “I promised my friend, your husband, on his deathbed that I would escort you here and see you safely settled. Remember? I always keep my promises.”
And then, just when she felt that she would surely dissolve into tears, he grinned at her.
That grin was going to haunt her after he had gone. It always somehow had the power to turn her weak at the knees.
“I am going to take Tramp for a quick walk,” she said, getting hastily to her feet.
The cliffs got lower as they traveled west along the coast the next morning, though they rose high above the sea again in the not-too-far distance. They had been told that the village of Fisherman’s Bridge and therefore the cottage on this side of it were in the dip where the cliffs were at their lowest.
Samantha fully expected that the cottage would be no more than the hovel her mother had called it. But she would not be disappointed, she told herself. At least it was habitable. It would do for a while even if not forever. And this was such a beautiful part of the world she would surely not regret moving here.
And then, quite suddenly, just as they were approaching a line of rolling sand dunes, partly covered with grass, there it was. Or what must be it since there was no other dwelling in sight and the village must be beyond the dunes.
Except that it was not a cottage. Or not what she thought of as a cottage, anyway.
“Oh, goodness,” she said.
Ben leaned sideways, his shoulder pressed against hers, so that he could see it with her out of the window on her side of the carriage.
It was a sturdy, square house of gray stone with a gray slate roof. It looked as if it must have at least four bedchambers upstairs and as many rooms downstairs. There was a porch at the front and a dormer window in the roof above it. A square garden surrounded it, bordered by a whitewashed wooden fence. There was a sizable barn in one corner. What had obviously been flower beds at one time were bare apart from a few weeds, but the grass had been newly scythed. Its green expanse was unmarred by either daisy or buttercup.
“That is a cottage?”
“Well,” Ben said, “it is not a mansion, but it is not a hermit’s shed either, is it?”
“It is a house,” she said. “How on earth could my mother have called it a hovel? Do you suppose there is some mistake?”
“No,” he said. “The carriage is turning toward it. Your new maid would say something if this was the wrong place, even though I notice that the sight of Quinn awed her into silence when she met him in the stable yard this morning and I have not heard her voice from up on the box, have you?”
“My great-aunt could really not have been impoverished,” she said. “I always assumed she was.”
A large woman in a dark brown dress with a voluminous white apron and matching mob cap had appeared on the steps outside the porch, a welcoming smile on her face. Mrs. Price, Samantha assumed. She dipped into a curtsy as the coachman lowered the steps and handed Samantha down at the garden gate. Mr. Quinn opened it. Gladys was clambering down from the box, unassisted.
“Welcome, Mrs. McKay,” Mrs. Price said. “Everything is ready for you, even at such short notice. I kept everyone’s nose to the grindstone yesterday until everything shone and not one speck of dust or dirt remained. And I came over early this morning to get some baking done so that you would have something nice to eat as well as having the smell of cooking in the house. There is nothing so homely as that smell, is there? And is that you, Gladys Jones? Your mam said you had gone off to see if you could be Mrs. McKay’s maid. Come inside, ma’am. The gentleman has hurt himself, has he?”