“This roast beef is almost tender enough to cut with a fork,” Ben remarked. “And the roast potatoes are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside—just as I like them.”
“I do like to see a man tuck in to a hearty meal,” she said, clearly pleased.
“The present Mr. Bevan still has the mines, does he?” Ben asked.
“Those and the ironworks up the valley by Swansea there,” she told him. “That is where our oldest boy has gone to work. He earns good money. A number of lads from around here go there for work, and to the mines too. He is a good employer, Mr. Bevan is. Good to his workers. But he is getting on in years, and he has no sons to carry on after him, more’s the pity. Mrs. Bevan—the second one, that is—never was blessed with children before she died, poor lady.”
Ben was feeling guilty. All this was none of his business—except that he probably would have been having this exact conversation even if he were a stranger here. He would have been asking questions and finding out information of interest for his book. Indeed, he probably would have been delving deeper.
He wondered what Samantha was going to make of these facts when she knew them. What had she said to him earlier?
I am a bit afraid, perhaps. Afraid of Pandora’s box.
Some box!
“Perhaps he will take comfort from his granddaughter,” Mrs. Davies added. “A widow, is she, sir?”
“Her husband was my friend,” Ben explained. “I promised him before he died that I would see her safely settled here.”
Someone called from the kitchen, and Mrs. Davies hurried away with an apology for leaving him.
Was Bevan going to be pleased to find his granddaughter living on his doorstep? And did he know yet that she was here?
One thing was sure, though, Ben thought as he cleaned off his plate. He was going to remain here until some of his questions had been answered. Samantha might yet need him.
It felt like an enormous relief, that realization.
Ben rode a horse from the inn stables to the cottage the next morning, Quinn behind him in order to help him dismount and then mount again for the return ride.
The sun was sparkling off the sea by the time they had ridden over the dunes, and there was warmth in the air. The front upstairs windows of the cottage were open, and the curtains were flapping in the breeze. The front door stood open too, and Samantha—yes, it was she—was bent over one of the bare beds under the parlor window, pulling out weeds. She was wearing gloves and an apron and an old, floppy-brimmed straw bonnet he had not seen before. She had left off her blacks again. Her dress was a pale lemon muslin and looked as if it had probably seen better days.
Ben drew his horse to a halt in order to enjoy a longer look at her. She looked relaxed and wholesome, as if she had always belonged here. The realization caused him a pang of something. Exclusion? Loneliness? For she would probably belong here long after he had gone.
Something alerted her even though the horse’s hooves were making no great noise on the sandy grass. She straightened up and turned their way, a small trowel in her hand. She smiled. The dog, who had been stretched out in the sun at the foot of the porch steps, was on his feet too, wagging his tail and woofing.
“I always fancied myself as a gardener,” she said as Ben rode up to the garden fence. “I used to dabble as a girl, but I never had a chance at Bramble Hall—Matthew always needed me in the sickroom. Now I do have a chance. Mr. Rhys said that my great-aunt kept a pretty flower garden here, did he not? Well, I am going to restore it, even if I have to start with some destruction. I hate killing weeds. They are plants, after all. They are living things. And who decides what are flowers and what are weeds, anyway? I love daisies and buttercups and dandelions, but everyone banishes them from their lawns as if they carry the plague.”
“Perhaps because they would destroy those lawns if left to grow and spread unchecked,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
She had been in the house alone since neither her maid nor Mrs. Price was to live in, at least for a while. He wondered if that fact had bothered her. He had worried about her a bit during the night.
“I slept with the window open,” she told him. “I could hear the sea and smell it, but only for a very short while, I must admit. I fell deeply asleep and did not rouse until I could smell bacon cooking. Mrs. Price put me to shame and came early. Is the inn a decent place?”
“Very comfortable,” he said. “You have a barn at the back big enough to stable the horses while I am here. I’ll go back there now with Quinn, if I may, and then come visiting.”
The apron and the gloves and trowel had disappeared by the time he walked back to the house from the barn, but she was still outside and still wore the floppy-brimmed bonnet, which was surely as old as the hills and made her look absurdly pretty. The dog was beside her, wagging his tail in clear expectation of being entertained. He really did assume that the world revolved around his large, ungainly self.
“You could never walk on the beach at Penderris Hall, I remember your saying,” she said, “because it was at the foot of a high cliff. Was there a way down?”
“There were a few steep paths,” he said. “The others went down all the time, even Vincent, despite his blindness.”
“There is nothing to stop you from walking on the beach here,” she said. “It is not far away and the slope down to it is not steep. The sand looks flat and smooth. Shall we go?”
“Now?”