Matilda had come to Bramble Hall for the final couple of months of her brother’s life, after Samantha had written to her father-in-law, the Earl of Heathmoor, at Leyland Abbey in Kent, to inform him that the physician believed the end was near. But the burden of care upon Samantha’s shoulders had not been lightened, partly because by that time Matthew really had needed her, and partly because he could not stand the sight of Matilda and always told her quite bluntly when she appeared in his room to take herself off and keep her Friday face out of his sight.
Samantha had been very close to the point of collapse by the time Matthew died. She had been exhausted and numb and dispirited. Her life had felt suddenly empty and colorless. She had had no will to do anything, even to get up in the morning or clothe herself or brush her hair. Even to eat.
It was no wonder she had allowed Matilda to take charge of everything, though she had written to her father-in-law herself within an hour of his son’s death.
Matilda had insisted that the second son of the Earl of Heathmoor be mourned according to the strictest rules of propriety, though she had not needed to insist—Samantha had put up no fight. It had not even occurred to her that she might or that the rules of which Matilda spoke were excessive as well as oppressive. She had allowed herself to be decked out from head to toe in what must surely be the heaviest and gloomiest mourning garments ever fashioned. She had not even insisted upon being fitted for the new clothes. She had allowed herself to be cloistered within her home, the curtains always more than half drawn across the windows out of respect for the dead. She had allowed Matilda to discourage any visitors who made courtesy calls of sympathy from coming again, and to refuse every invitation that was extended to them, even to the most sober and respectable of social gatherings.
Samantha had not missed mingling with society in the form of her neighbors for the obvious reason that she never had mingled with them. She hardly even knew them beyond nodding at church on Sunday mornings. She had been at Bramble Hall for five years, and almost every moment of those years had been devoted to Matthew’s care.
For four months now she had not cared for anything beyond the numbness of her own all-encompassing lethargy and exhaustion. If truth were told, she had been rather glad that Matilda was there to take charge of all that needed to be done, even though she had never liked her sister-in-law any better than her husband had.
But numbness and exhaustion could last only so long. After four months, life was reasserting itself. She was restless. She was ready to fling off her lethargy. She needed to get out—out of the house, out of the park. She needed to walk. She needed to breathe real air.
She gazed outdoors, her fingers drumming, and then looked down at her widow’s weeds and grimaced. She felt the blackness of every ill-fitting stitch of them like a physical weight. She had tried reasoning with Matilda earlier. Surely, she had said, it would be harmless to go out for a walk along country lanes that were rarely traveled. And even if they did encounter someone, surely that person would not think any the worse of them for strolling sedately in the countryside close to their own home. Surely whoever it was would not dash off to spread the word throughout the neighborhood that the widow and her sister-in-law were kicking up a lark, behaving with shocking levity and disrespect for the dead.
Had she really hoped to draw a smile from Matilda with her exaggeration? Had Matilda ever smiled? What she had done was stare stonily back at her smiling sister-in-law, deliberately set aside her unfinished mending task, and announce that she had a sick headache, for which she hoped Samantha was satisfied. She had withdrawn to her room to lie down for an hour or two.
Samantha was glad Matilda had never married. Some poor man had thereby been saved from a life of abject misery. She did not even feel guilty at the uncharitable thought.
Her downward glance at her blacks had also encountered the eager, hopeful expression of a large brown shaggy dog of quite indeterminate breed, a stray that had turned up literally on her doorstep two years ago looking like a gangly skeleton, and had taken up residence there after she fed him out of sheer pity and then tried to shoo him away. He had steadfastly refused to be shooed, and somehow, by means quite beyond either her comprehension or her control, he had taken up residence inside the house and grown more bulky and more thick-and-unruly-coated but never sleek or shiny or graceful as any self-respecting dog ought to look. He was seated at Samantha’s feet now, his tail thumping the floor, his tongue lolling, his eyes begging her to please, please do something with him.
Sometimes she felt he was the only bright spot in her world.
“You would come walking with me if I asked it of you, would you not, Tramp?” she asked him. “Respectability notwithstanding?”
It was a fatal question—it had contained a word beginning with the letter w. Actually, it had contained more than one, but one of them also had the letters a-l-k attached to it. Tramp scrambled to his feet in his usual ungainly manner, yipped sharply as if under the illusion that he was still a puppy, panted noisily as though he had just run a mile at top speed, and continued to gaze expectantly upward.
“How could your answer be anything but yes?” She laughed at him and patted his head. But he was having none of such mild affection. He circled his head so that he could first slobber over her hand and then expose his throat for a good scratch. “And why not? Why ever not, Tramp?”
It was clear Tramp could think of no reason at all why they should deprive themselves merely because Lady Matilda McKay had a sick headache as well as strange notions about air and exercise and correct mourning etiquette. He lumbered over to the door and gazed up at the knob.