And they were to spend the night together.
Not only ought he to have written to Hugo, Ben thought as he drank his port, but he ought also to have written to Calvin at Kenelston. And probably to Beatrice. No doubt she would soon learn that Samantha had disappeared from Bramble Hall and that he had left Robland very early on the same day. He wondered if she would make the connection. But if she did, he did not believe she would share her suspicions with anyone.
Would anyone else make the connection? He doubted it, since he had taken care not to be seen with Samantha. No one would know that he had had more than a passing acquaintance with her, and it was known that he was about to leave Robland anyway.
He could still write the letters, of course. He could call for paper and pen and ink and write them now before he went upstairs. But he was reluctant to do so. There was something rather seductive about the idea of simply disappearing without a trace for as long as he chose. He could go where he wanted and do what he wanted without having to account to anyone. That was always the case, of course, but … Well, he wanted to be quite free to allow this adventure to develop as it would. He did not want friends and relatives murmuring in the background with either encouragement or disapproval.
Samantha was still up when he returned to their room, though he had lingered in the dining room long enough to give her the chance to be under the bedcovers and at least pretending to be asleep if she so chose. He had been hoping she would take that option.
She was sitting on the bed in her nightgown, her legs tucked to one side, only her bare feet visible beneath its hem, her arms raised to remove the pins from her hair. It was not a deliberately seductive pose. Nevertheless it did something uncomfortable to his breathing.
“I thought you would be asleep,” he told her.
“Or feigning sleep, I suppose,” she said, “curled up in a ball, breathing deeply and evenly, so that you could crawl by me and ease yourself in on the other side and do likewise?”
He shut and locked the door.
“I did consider it,” she confessed, “but you would have known I was not really asleep, and then I would have known that you were not and we would have lain awake all night, each of us hoping that we were doing a better job of faking it than the other.”
He laughed.
“Let me help you do that,” he said, moving closer and propping his canes against the foot of the bed before sitting beside her. “I might say you are making a bird’s nest of your hair, but I believe that would be insulting to the bird in question.”
“Well,” she said, lowering her arms, “you make me nervous, Ben, and I cannot for the life of me disentangle the last few pins. I believe they are lost in there forever.”
He found and removed them, and her hair fell about her shoulders and down her back, heavy, shining, almost black Gypsy hair.
“I intended,” she said, “to have it neatly braided before you came up. Could you not have stayed to drink the inn dry of brandy or port or whatever it is you drink after dinner?”
“Port,” he said. “Brush?” He held out one hand, and she took a brush off the small chest beside the bed and handed it to him. He made a swirling motion with one finger. “Turn.”
Her hair reached to her waist and almost touched the bed behind her. It smelled faintly of gardenia. Her nightgown was of white cotton and covered her as decently as her dresses did during the day. Except that it was a nightgown and she was obviously wearing no stays beneath it—or anything else, at a guess. And her feet were bare. And she was sitting on a bed.
He drew the brush through her hair. It slid downward from the roots to the tips.
“Two hundred strokes,” she said.
He felt an immediate tightening at his groin. Two hundred?
“Every night,” she added.
“Do you count them?”
“Yes. It was one way my mother taught me numbers.”
She had been quite unaware of the double meaning of her words.
He counted silently.
“I was eighteen,” she said when he was at thirty-nine strokes. “Barely. I had just had my birthday. I had been married a little less than four months.”
He did not prompt her. If she needed to tell the story she had begun downstairs, then he would listen. He had all night, after all, and he knew from his experiences at Penderris that it was important that people be allowed to tell their stories.
Forty-five. Forty-six.
“I was so deeply in love,” she said, “that I did not think the world was large enough to contain it all. Youth is a dangerous time of life.”
Yes, it could be.
Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three.
“I thought his love for me was just as all-consuming,” she said. “I thought we were living happily ever after. How foolish young people can be. Shall I tell you why he married me?”
“If you wish.” Fifty-nine. Sixty.
“He had always been the family rebel,” she said. “He hated them all, particularly his father. But his father could never leave him alone. He had been at him to marry someone suitable—suitable in the eyes of the earl, that was. He had even named a few possible candidates. Matthew was eleven years older than I, you know. He met me at an assembly, found me pretty and eager—and, oh, how right he was about the latter! I was pathetically eager. I wore my heart not just on my sleeve, but on my nose and my forehead and my cheeks and my bosom and … Well. Suffice it to say that I made no secret of my adoration. I was pathetic.”