Ben looked over his shoulder and then came back to his chair.
“I will tell you my story, Samantha, if you will listen,” Mr. Bevan continued. “But not now, perhaps. And I want to hear your story. I want to know why you would come here, expecting only a hovel of a cottage, when presumably you have a noble family to look after you as well as your father’s family. But perhaps not now for that either. Major Harper, how long is it since you were wounded?”
He was a man used to command, Samantha realized, and used to doing it without bombast. Here he was in her sitting room, directing the conversation, taking from it the heat of emotion that had been here just a few minutes ago. And he was feeding cake to Tramp, who was quite willing to make it seem to Mrs. Price that they had all eaten her tea with hearty appetites.
Ben told him where and when he had been wounded and how, though he did not go into great detail. He told him about the years of his healing and convalescence at Penderris Hall, and about leaving there three years ago.
“You are never going to be able to walk without your canes, then?” her grandfather asked.
“No,” Ben said.
“And what do you do to keep busy? Do you have a home of your own?”
Ben told him about Kenelston, and, when asked, about his brother and wife and children and his own reluctance to remove them from his home and the charge his brother had of the running of his estate.
“You are in a bit of an awkward position, then,” her grandfather said.
“Yes,” Ben agreed. “But I will work something out, sir. I was not made for idleness.”
“You were a military officer by choice, then?” her grandfather asked. “Not just because your father had that career picked out for you as soon as you were born? I understand many noble families do that—one son to inherit, another to go into the church, another into the military.”
“It was my own choice,” Ben said. “I never wanted anything else.”
“You like an active life, then. You like being in charge of men. And of events.”
“I will never be an officer again,” Ben said tersely.
Looking at him, Samantha realized fully just how that fact hurt him. Perhaps it even explained why he had not taken a firmer stand with his younger brother over his home. Running Kenelston would not be a big enough challenge for him. Perhaps nothing would ever again.
“No,” her grandfather agreed, “I can see that, lad.”
He talked a bit about the coal mines—he owned two of them in the Rhondda Valley—and about the ironworks in the Swansea Valley, where he had just spent a week. Ben asked a number of questions, which he answered with enthusiasm. And then he rose to take his leave.
“How long do you plan to stay, Major?” he asked.
Ben looked at Samantha. “Another two or three days,” he said.
“Then maybe you will come with my granddaughter to dine with me at Cartref tomorrow,” her grandfather said. He turned to look at her, a smile on his face but some uncertainty in his eyes. “Will you come, Samantha? I have a cook as good as Mrs. Price. And I would like to hear your story and to tell you mine. After that you can live here in peace from me if you choose. Though I will hope you do not so choose. You are all I have, girl.”
She looked at him in some indignation until she remembered what he had said earlier. He had written to her before her marriage and she had sent messages. What had her father done? And after her marriage he had stopped writing for fear that she would be embarrassed by his humble origins and by the way his fortune had been made. She at least owed him one evening in which to plead his case.
But he had still abandoned his own infant daughter. There could be no excuse for that.
“Yes,” she said, “I will come.”
“And I would be delighted, sir,” Ben said.
The older man came toward Samantha, his hand extended again. But when she set her own in it, he smiled at her, that look of uncertainty still in his eyes.
“Allow me?” he said and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “She was very, very beautiful, you know. I had her for four years and have loved her forever.”
She did not follow him from the room.
He had been talking about her grandmother. Yet he had been married to someone else after her.
She and Ben sat in silence until they heard the carriage drive away. Tramp was at the window, his tail waving as if in farewell.
“He has loved her forever,” she said bitterly. “Yet he abandoned the only child he had with her.”
“Listen to his story tomorrow,” Ben said. “And then make a judgment if you must.”
“Oh, Ben,” she said, turning her eyes on him, “I wish I could wave a magic wand and make your legs all better so that you could resume your military career and be happy and fulfilled.”
He smiled. “We are all dealt a hand of cards,” he said. “Some of the originals get discarded along the way and new ones get picked up, sometimes not the ones we hoped for. That does not matter. It is how we play them that matters.”
“Even if it is a losing hand?” she asked him.
“Perhaps it never needs to be,” he said. “For life is not really a card game, is it?”
20
They went swimming after all. And they dined together after Mrs. Price and Samantha’s maid had left for the day. They spent a few hours in bed before Ben returned to the village inn. They made love twice, slowly the first time, with fierce passion the second.