There had been nothing but men in her life since she was eight—twenty years ago—until recently. She had decided during the past fifteen months that she had had enough of them, though none of them had ever been openly cruel to her. But there would be no more men—not, at least, men who would own her and have charge of her life and her very mind and person. Freedom was a wonderful thing, she had discovered. It was far too precious to give up. Ever.
Mrs. Bailey, the vicar’s wife, was arranging her considerable bulk on the pianoforte bench, having been invited to play by Tom Corning himself. She was by far the most accomplished pianist in the community. Unfortunately, the instrument was slightly out of tune, as it had been for as long as Lydia had been at Fairfield, and the key of high C stuck whenever it was depressed with any degree of pressure and had to be manually restored to its position before the music could continue. Everyone listened indulgently anyway while Mrs. Bailey played and Major Westcott stood at her shoulder to turn the pages of the music and lend his assistance with the sticky key.
“Tom,” he called across the room when the first piece came to an end and the smattering of applause had died down, “if you do not hire someone within the next week to overhaul this instrument and repair that key, I swear I will undertake the task myself and you will be sorry.”
“He will probably saw off the key altogether, Tom, and leave a gaping hole in its place for Mrs. Bailey and others to break a finger through,” Dr. Powis warned. “I would not chance it if I were you, though the broken finger would be business for me. Get the dratted piano tuner here.”
“You have been threatening to have the thing tuned for at least the last four years, since I came home,” Major Westcott said. “Hannah must have the patience of Job to put up with it.”
“I am not such a saint, Harry,” Hannah said. “I have been threatening to tune Tom over it for at least that long.”
There was general laughter. Tom Corning and the major had apparently been close friends since childhood and were grinning at each other as they bickered.
Lydia laughed with everyone else.
No, it was not a man that was missing from her life.
It was a lover.
They were one and the same thing, of course, some might argue. But those people would be wrong. A man in her life, whether father, brother, brother-in-law, or husband, would want to own her—he would own her. He would also want to dominate her. She would not allow herself to be owned or dominated ever again. A lover, on the other hand, could be enjoyed and sent on his way when his presence became bothersome.
Mr. Carver, one of Major Westcott’s tenant farmers, who lived a mile or so beyond the village, had come to sit beside Lydia before the music began. As soon as Tom and Major Westcott had finished calling across the room to each other, he launched into an account of the sudden and mysterious lameness of one of his horses in the right foreleg, just when there was a great deal of farm work to be done. Lydia turned her attention to him, though at least part of her mind was imagining how very deeply shocked he and all her neighbors and friends would be if they were aware of her deepest musings.
A lover could be enjoyed and sent on his way …
She had been the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor’s wife and helpmeet. That was the word he had liked to use to describe her. It was as though she had had no identity of her own. She was only his helpmeet. For more than six years, first as a curate’s wife, then as a vicar’s, she had cultivated modesty and invisibility because it was what he had expected of her. Not literal invisibility, of course. Everyone had seen her, welcomed her, apparently liked and approved of her. She had forever been busy about parish business and the performance of good works, as befitted the wife of a vicar. But nobody, it seemed to Lydia, not even her closest acquaintances, had really known her. She had had no close friends while her husband lived. She had been too busy, all her time and attention devoted to furthering the work that was his passion. Sometimes she had had the rather dizzying suspicion that she did not know herself. Was there even a self to know? Someone quite separate and distinct from her energetic, zealous, charismatic husband?
Since Isaiah’s death she had chosen to remain more or less invisible. It had been better thus while she was still in her blacks, and it was easier now so she could guard her fragile, hard-won freedom. She was known, she supposed, as the amiable, placid, even bland Mrs. Tavernor, the brave, tragic widow and helpmeet of their much-revered deceased vicar. She did not mind. At least for the present she did not.
Yet here she was, seated in the midst of a number of her fellow villagers, dreaming of a lover.
Specifically, of Major Harry Westcott.
Who very probably scarcely knew she existed.
She had never flirted with him or tried in any way to engage his interest. She would not even know how to go about either one anyway if she wished to try. She had no serious designs on him. The chance that she would find a lover, any lover, here in this small village was slim to none. Actually, slimmer even than that.
But a woman could dream, could she not? Dreams were often ideal pleasures because one could make of them whatever one wished. And if they never came true, as most did not and this one certainly never would, then what did it matter? Her real life was very nearly perfect as it was. Her dreams merely brightened it a little more.
Major Westcott was a young man, probably about her own age. He was tall and lean—not thin. That was too negative a word. Besides, his arms and shoulders and chest looked strongly muscled beneath the well-tailored coats and waistcoats he always wore. And his legs were long and shapely and powerful-looking beneath his pantaloons. They looked even more so beneath riding breeches and boots, she had noticed on other occasions. He was fair-haired and good-looking even if not outstandingly handsome. He had a good-humored face, with blue eyes that almost always smiled. She was not deceived by either his face or his eyes, however. What had always fascinated her most about him was the suggestion of darkness that he kept very well hidden.
Perhaps it did not even exist. His mask—if it was a mask—never slipped in public, or never had when she had been present to witness it, anyway. And he was generally known as an even-tempered, sunny-natured man without a trouble in the world now that he was back home after the Napoleonic Wars in which he had fought. Lydia did not believe it. She knew very little of his past, but she knew enough to understand that there had been much suffering in his life, and that it was unlikely he had either dealt with it all or otherwise put it behind him. It was far more likely that he had pushed most of it deep. Lydia knew all about that.
Once, very briefly, after the death of his father, he had been the Earl of Riverdale, with properties and fortune that had made him a very wealthy and socially prominent young man. He had been brought up and educated for just that life. But he had lost everything after the bigamous nature of his father’s marriage to his mother had been discovered. It all must have been absolutely devastating to his family. And to him. Oh, he was treated here with great deference despite that huge change in his life. Most people here had known him since he was a child and had always liked him. He was still treated as lord of the manor, somewhat above all of them in rank. He could no longer be called my lord or Lord Riverdale, of course, but he could be and was called Major Westcott as a mark of their respect, even though he was no longer a military officer.