“Goodbye, Samantha,” he said. “I will wait here until you are safely indoors with a lamp lit.”
He rapped on the front panel and the coachman appeared in the doorway to hand her down.
“Goodbye.” She drew her hands from his. “Goodbye, Ben.”
And then she was stepping down and dashing up the garden path and fumbling with the key in the lock and almost being bowled over by an exuberant Tramp. She lit a lamp in the sitting room with a trembling hand and darted to the window, desperate for one last sight of him. But the carriage door had been closed, and the coachman was up on the box, and the carriage was moving away. She could not see through the darkness into the interior.
“Oh, Tramp.” She collapsed onto the nearest chair, set her arms about him, and wept against his neck. Tramp whined and tried to lick her face.
Ben was down early to breakfast the following morning. Everything was packed, and he was eager to be on his way as soon as possible. He did not care what direction he took, though he had told his coachman last night that they would return the way they had come. All he really wanted was to put as much distance between him and Fisherman’s Bridge as he possibly could.
He was down early, but someone was earlier. Mr. Bevan rose from his place at a table by the window when Ben appeared, an open watchcase in his hand.
“Is this the time,” he asked, “that the idle rich normally break their fast?”
It was shortly after seven o’clock.
“I believe it is more the time they are going to bed,” Ben said, making his way toward the table and propping his canes against a chair before shaking the man by the hand.
“I have no right in the world to ask this,” Bevan said when they were both seated, “and you have every right in the world to refuse an answer, but here goes anyway. What are your feelings for my granddaughter, Major?”
Ben paused in the act of spreading his napkin across his lap. Here was a man who did not believe in wasting precious time on small talk, it seemed.
“Mrs. McKay,” Ben said, choosing his words with care, “lost her husband less than six months ago, sir. She needs time to recover from that loss. She needs time to adjust her life to her new home and circumstances. As she told you last evening, she needs to be alone. Not necessarily without all company, but without emotional entanglements. It would be presumptuous for me to have feelings for her stronger than respect. Besides, at present I have nothing of value to offer her except a baronet’s title and fortune.”
“At present,” Bevan said. “And in the future?”
“I was wounded six years ago,” Ben told him. “I have been well enough for the past three years to get my life in order and set on a new course, since the old one will serve no longer. But I have procrastinated. Until now. I am going to go to London. I am going to find something challenging to do.”
“Other than carousing all night?” Bevan smiled.
“That sort of life has never appealed to me,” Ben told him. “I must be doing something useful and meaningful.”
Neither of them spoke while the landlord set their food before them and exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather with them before withdrawing.
Bevan sat back in his chair, ignoring his food for the moment. “Tell me more about the way you used to be,” he said. “Tell me about being a leader of men. That is what you were, is it not? You were a major, which is not quite the same as being a general, of course, but nevertheless it put you in a position of considerable authority over men and actions and events. Tell me about that man.”
Ben picked up his knife and fork and thought a moment before cutting into his food. Where to begin? And why begin? Why had Bevan come here this morning?
“That man was happy,” he said.
He was not used to talking about himself. It was something he had never been comfortable doing. Even at Penderris he had talked less than any of the others, more content to listen to his friends’ problems than divulge his own. He had always assumed that he could not possibly be of any great interest to anyone else, that he would merely bore other people by prosing on about himself. But for the next fifteen or twenty minutes he did nothing but that, led on by skilled, persistent, probing questions and a look of genuine interest on the other man’s face. He talked about his dreams and ambitions, his war experiences, the feeling he had always had that he had been born to do just what he was doing. He talked about the battle in which he had been wounded, about his long fight for survival and his longer fight to restore himself to physical wholeness so that he could get back to the only life he knew or had ever wanted for himself. He talked about the past three years and his reasons for not going home, about his growing frustration and restlessness, about his corresponding determination to overcome lethargy and lowness of spirits by finding something to replace what he had lost.
“I fought hard enough to live,” he said. “Now I have to prove to myself that the fight was for some purpose.”
“Women?” Bevan asked. “Have there been many?”
“None since I was hurt,” Ben said.
“Until now?”
Ben gave him a long, level look.
“You escorted my granddaughter here from the north of England,” Bevan said, “and you have been a good friend to her. Now you are about to leave, for reasons you have just given me. But you will not pretend to me that she is no more to you than a friend, Harper. Or, if you do, I will not believe you.” He smiled in a not-unfriendly manner.