“I—” She did not finish what she had started to say. “Thank you. I will just drink a cup of tea and be on my way. I am sorry for being a nuisance.”
She was over by the unlit fireplace, removing her bonnet, when Ben entered the room. Her dog ambled over to greet him, his tail wagging and his rear end wiggling. Ben eyed him with disfavor and scratched him beneath his chin.
“I am sorry …” she began.
“Yes,” he said, closing the door behind him. “You have already made that perfectly clear, Mrs. McKay. What has happened?”
He felt resentful. If she had left this until tomorrow, he would have been gone and known nothing about it. She would have been compelled to cope alone with whatever was troubling her.
“Nothing has happened.” She smiled, a sickly expression that reached no higher than her lips. “I did not know Lady Gramley was leaving for London so soon.”
“She is on her way to Berkshire,” he told her, “where Gramley’s sister is expecting to give birth any day. Her mother-in-law was supposed to attend her, but she has been detained by illness. Beatrice left here just after noon, only a few hours after receiving her sister-in-law’s letter. I am sure she is sitting in the carriage at this very moment thinking of all the people here to whom she ought to have dashed off notes of explanation. What is the matter?”
Something clearly was. She was making an effort to appear composed, but she looked as if she might shatter at any moment. And she was still standing.
“Nothing.”
The door opened behind Ben, and a footman set down a large tray. Ben bent over it and poured a little brandy into a glass. He carried it across the room to her, supporting himself with just one of his canes.
“Drink this,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Brandy,” he said. “Sit down and drink it. I daresay your walk has chilled you.”
“I did not notice,” she said as she half collapsed onto a sofa.
“Drink it.”
She took the glass, sipped the brandy, and made a face.
“Toss it back,” he told her.
She did so and coughed and sputtered. “Oh, that is vile.”
“Pay attention to the aftereffects, though,” he told her.
She closed her eyes briefly. Her cheeks gained some color.
“He is throwing me out of Bramble Hall,” she said, “and sending his son to live there.”
She had not made her meaning at all clear, but it did not take much effort to decipher it anyway. He took the empty glass from her hand and returned it to the tray. He poured a cup of tea and carried it across to her.
He was presumably the Earl of Heathmoor.
10
Samantha took the cup and saucer from him with hands she schooled to be steady. Tramp was seated beside her, at attention, his ears cocked, his eyes intent on hers. He knew there was something wrong, the poor dear.
“Thank you,” she said.
She was dreadfully upset that Lady Gramley had gone away. Although there were other ladies in the neighborhood to whom she supposed she might turn in her distress, none but Lady Gramley felt like a friend. Sometimes friendly acquaintances were simply not enough. Though how she had expected Lady Gramley to help her she did not know.
“Heathmoor is tossing you out without making any provision for you?” Sir Benedict Harper asked, seating himself across from her. “He is literally evicting you?”
“No. He has far too great a sense of family duty to do that,” she said. “I am to go to Leyland Abbey in Kent. He has sent his own coachman and outriders back with the carriage Matilda took, and they have orders to escort me there. I am to leave the day after tomorrow. I do not know if their instructions are to coerce me if I will not go voluntarily or I try to delay, but I would not be at all surprised if they are. My father-in-law made it very clear in the letter he sent me that he sees me as a disgrace to his family and that I must be fetched to a place where he can keep a strict eye upon me and correct my waywardness.”
“And this is because you returned Bea’s visit that one afternoon and agreed to ride with her and with me a few days later?” He was frowning at her as if he did not quite believe his ears.
“They were not small matters to Matilda,” she told him. “They are not small matters to Matilda’s father. Heaven knows what I may get up to if I am left to my own devices here. I may even take it into my head to go about visiting the sick or arranging flowers on the altar at church.”
She took a sip of her tea and discovered gratefully that it was both strong and sweet.
“Perhaps,” he said, “it is not quite what you think. Perhaps your father-in-law’s annoyance with you arises from a genuine concern that you will be lonely here without the companionship of his daughter. Perhaps he thinks you will be happier surrounded by your late husband’s family.”
She took another sip of tea. “I think not,” she said. “But I am sorry to have made such a nuisance of myself. I came here, I suppose, to unburden myself to Lady Gramley, though to what purpose I do not know. I just did not know what else to do. I do not know what else to do.”
“You do not believe you can find any sort of contentment at Leyland?” he asked her. “Even just temporarily, until your year of mourning is at an end?”
“Could you find any sort of contentment in a prison, Sir Benedict?” she asked in return. “Where even smiles are construed as sin, and laughter is unheard of?”