Dubious pleasure?
He did not believe she expected an answer. But what did her words suggest about her marriage to the Reverend Tavernor? That it had been so perfect that it could never be replicated? Or that it had been quite the opposite and was never to be repeated? It was really none of his business, Harry decided. But she had aroused his curiosity.
“Is a woman quite unfree when she marries, then?” he asked. “I have two sisters who would take issue with that notion. And a mother.”
“They are fortunate,” she said, suggesting an answer to his unspoken questions. “But you have not married.”
“No, ma’am,” he agreed in a tone that he hoped would discourage her from continuing. “I have not.”
“I will never marry again,” she said, folding her arms beneath her bosom and hunching her shoulders as though against the chill of the night. “I value my freedom and independence too well. But they do come at a cost, Major Westcott. I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely … I …” Her words were spilling out quickly and breathlessly and a bit incoherently. “Oh, goodness, I do not know what I am trying to say. Nothing of any sense or significance, I daresay. Ignore me, please. It is late.”
What the devil?
What the devil?
Harry stood where he was on the path just below her doorstep as she gazed at him for a moment, stepped backward into the house, raised a hand in farewell at the same moment as she gave him the ghost of a smile, said good night again though not much sound escaped her lips, and closed the door.
What the devil? Harry thought again.
She had not been flirting with him. One could not imagine Mrs. Tavernor flirting with any man. And she was not in search of another husband. She had said so, and in no uncertain terms.
But she wanted something.
Had she been making him a proposition? Was it even remotely possible? Mrs. Tavernor? The bland, pious, almost silent widow of the zealously puritanical Reverend Isaiah Tavernor?
She wanted a lover?
Specifically him?
I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely …
By God, she had made him a proposition. Or started to, anyway. Until her impulsive words—for they surely had been impulsive—had shocked her and she had tried her best to unsay what had already been spoken and could never be recalled.
Good God!
Yes, he was sometimes lonely. Of course he was. He had admitted it to himself just lately. But was it not true of everyone? As he had said to her? He just never knew quite what to do about his own loneliness when it hit him—which was not by any means all the time or even very often.
Harry wondered suddenly if she was peering out through the curtains drawn over her front window and feeling a bit uneasy about seeing him still standing here like a statue on her garden path. He turned to leave, stopping only briefly after passing through the gate to shut it behind him.
He was not ready for marriage yet. But … an affair? With a willing partner? A social equal? Someone who clearly understood—and would make him clearly understand—that it was not a courtship and never would be? Someone close to home? At the end of his own drive, in fact?
Mrs. Tavernor?
The Reverend Isaiah Tavernor’s widow?
Harry strode along the drive with incautious haste, given that it was pitch-dark and his lantern was not as effective as it might have been.
The very idea ought to be laughable. Or horrifying. Bizarre. Beyond the realm of reality. He was pretty sure, however, that she had been serious, though she had not come out and said specifically that that was what she wanted. She had stopped herself in time. There was nothing else she could have meant, though, was there?
One thing was beyond question. After a number of years during which he had been almost completely unaware of her existence, Mrs. Tavernor had suddenly become a very real person to him in the past hour—not even that long— and quite distinct from her late husband. She had come alive as a woman who valued freedom and independence, even though the price she had to pay was some loneliness and—presumably—an occasional craving for sex.
Devil take it, it really was bizarre. Mrs. Tavernor and sex just did not go together in his head.
But she wanted a lover.
Him.
Are you ever lonely?
Four
Lydia kept herself determinedly busy throughout the following week, bustling about as though she had a mansion to run instead of a cottage. She cleaned and cooked and baked and cleaned again. She weeded the flower beds behind the house and chopped wood and took Snowball for walks in the early morning, along country lanes no one frequented at that time of day. Even so, every time she left the house, always by the back way, or came to a new turn, she peered in every direction first like a child playing hide-and-seek, to make sure there was no one in sight.
Specifically Major Harry Westcott.
The only person she ever did see was Jeremy Piper, the boy her husband had saved, who liked to slink around at all hours, often carrying what looked like a slingshot. Fortunately, he always seemed intent upon avoiding Lydia. Perhaps she reminded him of an episode in his life he would rather forget.
Lydia could not believe what she had said. She had actually enjoyed the walk home from the Cornings’ house with Major Westcott, though she had been a bit alarmed at first at the prospect of having to make conversation with him. It had proved surprisingly easy, however. They had even joked with each other, something she had not done with anyone besides her women friends for years. It had felt lovely. So had the firmness of his arm beneath her hand and the solidity of his chest and shoulders close to her, accentuated by the capes of his greatcoat. She had not wanted it to end—and it had not ended when they reached her gate. For he had insisted upon seeing her safely inside her house.
That had proved to be her undoing. If only when he had turned to leave she had kept her mouth shut. But no. After they had already said good night, it had occurred to her that this was her big opportunity, probably her only one. Ever. All she needed was the courage to seize the moment …
So she had opened her mouth and spoken. She, Lydia Tavernor, who never spoke without first weighing her words and being quite sure she had something of value to say. Are you ever lonely? she had asked—and had not had the sense to stop there, though even that would have been bad enough.
Her stomach had been a churning cauldron ever since. She had been unable to sleep properly, and when she did doze, she had bizarre dreams that were so much like reality that she jerked awake in a panic only to find that reality was worse. Her only faint hope—very faint—was that she had not said enough to make her meaning clear to him.
I value my freedom and independence too well. But they do come at a cost … I sometimes wish … With someone who feels as I do about marriage, that is, but nevertheless is sometimes lonely …
There was no way on this earth he could possibly have misunderstood.
What a colossal humiliation!
Two days after it happened, she had the opportunity to go into Eastleigh, a market town eight miles away, with the vicar and his wife, who often offered to take her when they were going themselves. Lydia suspected that the Reverend Bailey did not enjoy shopping and was quite happy for the chance to sit in the coffee room of a comfortable inn while his wife had the company of another female who enjoyed looking around the shops as much as she did. Lydia spent far more than she ought, with Mrs. Bailey’s full encouragement. She purchased a new ready-made dress, plain of design but of such a pretty pink fabric that she could not resist it. Isaiah had always liked her to wear sober colors, and since his death, of course, she had worn almost exclusively black and gray.