Samantha wove the silk thread invisibly through her work at the back of the cloth before cutting it and changing to a different shade. She seethed at the condescension of Matilda’s words. She ought to just keep quiet until the subject was changed. But why should she? Anyway, Matilda was going to have to know her plans.
“Lady Gramley was not at home,” she said. “Sir Benedict was just returning from a ride and was kind enough to keep me company in the garden for a while so that I would not have to drive back home immediately.”
“It is to be hoped no one saw you there, Samantha,” Matilda said. “Perhaps now you understand the folly of acting impulsively and contrary to the advice of your husband’s sister.”
“We had a very pleasant conversation,” Samantha told her. “I am going riding with him tomorrow. He is going to have a horse from the Robland stables brought over for me.”
Some imp of mischief led her to omit adding that Lady Gramley would be riding with them. She looked up when there was no immediate response to her words. Her sister-in-law was gazing back at her with red-tipped nose and ashen face and cold eyes.
“I must very adamantly advise you against such a thing, Samantha,” she said. “Indeed, I take it upon myself to speak even more strongly on behalf of Matthew and Father. I forbid you to do this.”
“Matthew liked me to ride,” Samantha said, lowering her head to her work again. “If he could speak now, I daresay he would tell me to go, since he no longer has need of me in the sickroom. I need air and exercise. Quite desperately.”
“Then I will walk with you in the garden,” Matilda said.
“No, you will not,” Samantha told her. “That is a very bad cold you have. You need to stay by the fire and out of drafts. And I need exercise that is more vigorous than a stroll in a confined area. A walk is not enough. I want to ride. And that is what I will do tomorrow. Oh, dear, did I say the forbidden word?”
Tramp, who had been lying in the shaft of sunlight that beamed through the window, looking for all the world as if he were comatose, had scrambled to his feet and was now standing before Samantha’s chair, making pathetic little whining sounds and gazing fixedly and hopefully up at her.
“I used the word walk, did I not?”
His tail wagged. Yes, indeed, she had.
“Oh, very well.” Samantha got to her feet. “We will go into the garden and find a stick for you to chase. Though that is not a fair game at all, you know, for you never throw the stick for me to chase.”
“Samantha,” Matilda said sharply before her sister-in-law could escape from the room to fetch her bonnet and cloak. “I must categorically forbid you to go riding tomorrow. You may say, if you will, that I have no power to command you, but indeed I do. I stand as Father’s representative here.”
Samantha stopped and turned to face her. “I do say that you have no right to command me, Matilda. It is insufferable that you would try. Your complaints and advice I will listen to. You have every right to express them. You have no right to tell me what I must do, or, more important, what I must not do. Nor does the Earl of Heathmoor. He is not my father.”
Though he did own the home in which she was living.
She stayed outside in the garden for longer than an hour, to Tramp’s great delight. She was feeling very close to the end of her tether. The past five years had been difficult ones, but though Matthew had been a demanding, often querulous patient, she had made allowances for his pain and discomfort. Besides, he was her husband. She had not been happy during those years, but she had been too busy and usually too exhausted to feel any great unhappiness.
The four months of her bereavement had been difficult ones too in a different way. They might have been less difficult if she had been able to respond to the very touching outpouring of sympathy and good wishes of neighbors with whom she had had no chance to become well acquainted before Matthew’s death.
She might have made some friends, or at least a few friendly acquaintances, during these months. She had not been allowed to accept the overtures of her neighbors, however, and she had meekly given in to Matilda’s directions on what was correct. She could do it no longer. She was beginning to feel quite mutinous.
I must categorically forbid you to go riding tomorrow … I stand as Father’s representative here.
Oh, it was intolerable.
Finally even Tramp was tired of playing. He came and lay at her feet as she threw his stick once more, and then rested his chin on his paws.
“Ingrate!” she said. “You might at least have fetched it one more time before making your wishes known. It was a perfectly decent stick. Now I will have to search for another the next time you insist upon this game.”
He heaved a sigh of unrepentant boredom.
“We had better go back inside, then,” she said. “I have been avoiding the inevitable. Why did I have to marry into such a horrid family, Tramp? No, don’t answer. I know why. It was because of the fatal combination of scarlet regimentals and a handsome face. He was very handsome, you know, and very dashing. You were not acquainted with him in those days. And it was not his fault his family is so horrid.”
She thought of avoiding the sitting room when they went back inside and taking her outdoor things up to her room, where she would find something to keep her busy. But there was no avoiding Matilda forever, and she was not going to start hiding inside her own home. She left her outdoor things in the hall and opened the sitting room door, prepared somehow to make peace.