“Lady Gramley appears genteel enough,” Matilda observed.
“I have always found her both kind and gracious,” Samantha said, “though I have not had many dealings with her over the years. Or with any of my other neighbors, for that matter. Matthew needed almost all my time and attention.”
“Sir Benedict Harper is crippled,” Matilda said.
“But not bedridden.” He could even ride, Samantha thought. “Perhaps he will not accompany his sister if she calls on us.”
“It would be tactful of him not to,” Matilda agreed, “since he is a stranger to us. It is a pity we could not have avoided the introduction.”
For once Samantha was in accord with her sister-in-law. It did not happen often.
Matilda was as different from her brother as it was possible to be. A self-avowed spinster at the age of thirty-two, who had long ago professed her intention of devoting herself to her mother in her declining years, she seemed to lack any softness or femininity. Her father was next only to God in her esteem. Matthew had been three years older, handsome, dashing, charming—and quite irresistibly gorgeous in his scarlet regimentals. Samantha had met him at an assembly when his regiment was stationed a mere three miles from her home. She had been seventeen years old, young, naïve, and impressionable. She had tumbled headlong into love with Lieutenant McKay, as he had been then, as had every other girl for miles around. It would have been strange, perhaps, if she had not. When he married her, she had thought herself the happiest, most fortunate girl in the world, an impression that had remained with her for four months until she discovered that he was shallow and vain—and unfaithful.
Yes, he had been very different from his sister. Of the two, she would take Matthew any day of the year. Not that she any longer had a choice in the matter. The thought brought a stabbing of grief.
The severe wounds he suffered in battle had destroyed Matthew in more ways than one. He had been a difficult patient, though she had always tried to make allowances for his pain and his disabilities and the deteriorating condition of his lungs. He had been demanding and selfish. She had devoted herself to his care without complaint even though she had fallen out of love with him before he went away to the Peninsula.
His death had caused her real grief. It had been hard to watch the destruction of a man who had been so handsome and vital and vain—and to watch him die at the age of thirty-five.
Poor Matthew.
Matilda reached over and patted her hand. “Your grief does you credit, Samantha,” she said. “I shall tell Father so when I write to him tomorrow.”
Samantha reached beneath her veil and dashed away a tear with one black-gloved hand. She felt guilty. For there was relief mingled with the sadness she felt at Matthew’s having to die. She could no longer deny that fact. She was free at last—or would be when this heavy ritual of mourning was at an end.
Was it wicked to think that way?
4
“I wonder,” Ben said, “if Mrs. McKay has told her sister-in-law what happened a few afternoons ago.”
“I really do not know the lady,” Beatrice replied, “but I must confess that she strikes me as being a bit of a battle-ax.”
They were traveling toward Bramble Hall in an open carriage, with the blessing of Beatrice’s physician, who at last had pronounced her fully restored to health. It was a sunny day and quite warm for springtime. Two days had passed since their encounter with the McKay ladies at church.
“I did not behave as I ought to have when I first encountered Mrs. McKay,” Ben said. “I really do need to make amends, Bea. Yet if I blurt out an apology over tea, I may embarrass her before her sister-in-law. I cannot help agreeing with you about the lady, even though we spoke with the two of them for what was probably no longer than a minute on Sunday, and it was impossible even to see their faces. Have you ever seen facial veils quite as black and heavy as theirs? I wonder they can see out. One half expects them to walk into walls.”
“Perhaps their grief is great,” she said. “Poor Captain McKay is said to have been exceedingly handsome and dashing once upon a time. War is a cruel thing, Ben, not that I need to tell you of all people that. It would have been kinder, perhaps, if he had been killed outright. Kinder for him, kinder for his wife, kinder for his sister.”
Dash it, would he ever escape from those wars? Ben thought irritably. What damnable fate was it that had set him to jumping that particular hedge at that particular moment on that particular day when he had jumped nothing on horseback in longer than six years? And what had led Mrs. McKay to walk just there when apparently she had scarcely set foot outside her own home since she moved there with her invalid husband five or six years ago?
Fate? He very much doubted it. And if it was, then fate was a damnably weird thing.
This visit he was about to pay was the last thing on earth he wished to be doing. One did not like to be caught out in ungentlemanly conduct, and one did not like having to beg pardon of the offended party, especially when she was as cold and haughty as Captain McKay’s widow appeared to be.
“If I see even the glimmering of an opportunity,” Beatrice promised as the carriage drew to a halt outside the front doors of Bramble Hall, “I will draw Lady Matilda away or at least out of earshot, Ben, so that you may make your peace with Mrs. McKay.”
There was an instant response to the rap of the knocker against the door in the form of a deep, excited barking from within. The unruly hound, no doubt.