“Thank you,” he said. “I must smell of horse.”
“It is not an unpleasant smell,” she told him without denying it. “I shall be back to riding myself soon. The doctor will be calling here tomorrow, for the final time, it is to be hoped. I feel perfectly restored to health. Relax there for a while before you go to change your clothes.”
“Is there a widow living in these parts?” he asked her abruptly. “A lady? Still in deep mourning?”
“Mrs. McKay, do you mean?” She lifted her cup to her lips. “Captain McKay’s widow? He was the Earl of Heathmoor’s second son and died three or four months ago. She lives at Bramble Hall on the far side of the village.”
“She has a big, unruly dog?” Ben asked.
“A big, friendly dog,” she said. “I did not find him unruly when I paid a call upon Mrs. McKay after the funeral, though he did insist in quite unmannerly fashion upon being petted. He came to lay his head on my lap and looked up at me with soulful eyes. I suppose he ought to have been trained not to do such things, but dogs always know who likes them.”
“She had him in a meadow not very far from here,” he said. “I almost bowled them both over when I jumped a hedge.”
“Oh, goodness gracious,” she said. “Was anyone hurt? But—you jumped a hedge, Ben? Where is my hartshorn? Ah, I have just remembered—I do not possess any, not being the vaporish sort, though you could easily make a convert of me.”
“What the devil was she doing out unchaperoned?” he asked.
She clicked her tongue. “Ben, dear, your language! I am surprised to know she was. I have never seen her outside her own house except at church on Sundays. Captain McKay was very badly wounded in the Peninsula and never recovered his health enough to leave his bed. Mrs. McKay nursed him almost single-handedly and with great devotion, from what I can gather.”
“Well, she was out alone today,” he said. “At least, I assume it was the lady you named.”
“I am surprised,” she said again. “Her sister-in-law has been staying with her for some time. I have very little acquaintance with her, and it seems unfair to judge a near stranger, but I would guess she is as much a stickler for propriety taken to an extreme as the earl, her father, is. He is not my favorite person, or anyone else’s that I know. Had he lived a couple of centuries ago, he would have joined forces with Oliver Cromwell and those horrid Puritans and sapped all the humor and enjoyment from everyone else’s life. I am surprised Lady Matilda did not insist that Mrs. McKay remain at home behind closed doors and curtains.”
“You sound indignant,” he said.
“Well.” She set down her cup and saucer. “When one arranges a quiet dinner with the soberest of one’s neighbors, including the vicar and his wife, with the intention of extending the hand of sympathy and friendship to two ladies who have recently lost a husband and brother, and one has been turned down and made to feel that one’s very existence is frivolous and contaminating, then one can surely be excused for being slightly ruffled when one is reminded of it.”
He grinned at her until she caught his eye and laughed.
“The answer to my invitation was written by Lady Matilda McKay,” she said. “I like to believe that Mrs. McKay would have declined it in a far more gracious manner, if she had declined it at all.”
The grin faded from Ben’s face. “I owe her an apology.”
“Do you?” she asked. “Did you not apologize when it happened? She was not hurt, I hope?”
“I do not believe so,” he said, though he remembered that she had been sitting on the ground when he first became aware of her. “But I ripped up at her, Bea, and blamed her for the near catastrophe—and her dog, which is an ugly brute if ever I saw one. I owe her an apology.”
“Perhaps we will see her at church on Sunday,” she said. “I would not go riding up to the doors of Bramble Hall, if I were you. For one thing, you have not been introduced and it would be vastly improper. For another, I do believe the sister-in-law might well have an apoplexy if she discovered a single gentleman on the doorstep. Either that, or she would attack you with the nearest umbrella or knitting needle.”
He could just forget about the whole episode, Ben supposed a few minutes later as he made his slow way upstairs to change out of his riding clothes. But he hated to recall that he had behaved in a manner unbecoming a gentleman—and that was a bit of an understatement.
He definitely owed her an apology.
Samantha and Matilda went to church as usual the following Sunday. It might have amused Samantha that Sunday service had become the big outing and social event of her week, if it had not also been so pathetic. For so it had been for the past five years, even though she had been only nineteen when she first came to live at Bramble Hall. And the situation was not about to change, despite the fact that she no longer had Matthew to tend at home.
She sat beside Matilda in their usual pew at the front of the church, her prayer book on her lap, and turned her head neither to the left nor to the right, though she would dearly like to have seen which neighbors were also present. She would have liked to nod genially to them as she had always done in the past. But Matilda sat rigidly still, and, foolishly perhaps, Samantha felt constrained to match her piety, if that was what it was.
It was only after the service, then, when they had risen to pass down the aisle and out to the waiting gig, their faces properly hidden behind their veils, that she saw that man again. It was how she had been thinking of him, with growing indignation, for two days.