A Properly Conducted Sham (Most Imprudent Matches #5)

Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

BENNET HALL, SURREY - JULY 27, 1816

LEE

Our guests left the next morning, eager to finish their journey. They only had one unwelcome nighttime visitor of the feline persuasion.

The weight of the needed conversation loomed over me in the hours that followed.

I wasn’t too proud to admit I was hiding. The darkness and the unavoidable delay made me brave last night. But the harsh daylight had me cowering in my study like a frightened child.

For the moment, Charlotte seemed content to pluck away at the piano keys down the hall, rather than force a conversation. I couldn’t decide if I was more grateful for the reprieve or annoyed that the swirling, anxious typhoon in my stomach was to carry on indefinitely.

I could have put a stop to it at any moment, I knew that, but knowing and doing were two very different things. Unfortunately, my estate ran well, and there was little in the way of calamities to offer distraction.

She finished one song and began the next—Beethoven, if I was correct. I was struck again at just how talented my wife was. She mastered complex pieces with graceful ease.

This was ridiculous, sitting down the hall listening when I could have been there experiencing. Thought was proving to be the enemy in my marriage.

Before I could muster the necessary courage to face her, Imogen slipped into the study with a perfunctory knock. A tray overflowing with biscuits was balanced gracefully in her hand.

“My lord,” she nodded, dipping to set the tray on my desk. Without a word, she moved to stack the empty plates and cups that littered my desk and the nearby bookshelves. I had noticed those disappearing more frequently than usual.

“You can leave those for Eliza or Jack, Imogen.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather remove them before they grow legs and walk away.”

Feeling sheepish, I averted my gaze. “I—uh—after my accident, I wasn’t always—I would get headaches—in here I mean. I wasn’t entirely gracious with people distracting me from my work. They tend to avoid this room.”

Finally, I met her eyes only to find a raised brow, the gesture seeming more of interest than judgment. “Does your head still ache, sir?”

“Only when Brigsby is particularly vexing.”

She chuckled before adding to her increasingly precarious stack. “Then perhaps you might allow me to collect them at my leisure.”

I nodded, noting the way her teeth caught her lower lip.

“Might I speak freely, my lord?” At my go-on gesture, she began. “I’m not certain what it is between you and Lady Champaign. You should know, she is tenacious—I expect you do know that. But that is because she has had to be. Because there was no one else. She endures.”

“Yes.”

“I was hired on before her first season. She wasn’t... That girl dreamed of more than the hand she was dealt.”

The knot making itself known in my throat wasn’t at all like one of my attacks. I wasn’t capable of more than a solitary head bob.

“I believe you could be more for her, something she does not need to merely endure. But if you—if that is something you do not believe yourself capable of… I would ask that you return to your previous terms.”

“I—” My throat rattled and I broke off to clear it. “I would like to be more.”

“Then is it perhaps time to stop hiding in your study, my lord?” Her expression was one of self-satisfaction and mirth.

I caught my eye roll only a second before I unleashed it at her, then rose wordlessly to follow her out of my study. I turned toward the music room as Imogen proceeded to the kitchens.

The piano overlooked a large window with views of the lake behind the house. It framed her, bathed her in an afternoon glow that poured around her, caressed her—my enduring wife.

At the sound of my footsteps, she broke off, the final note hanging heavy, lingering. She turned to face me with an arched brow.

“Decided to come out of hiding?”

I bit back the instinctual denial. These women… “Yes.” My voice was high and tight. I cleared my throat. “Will I regret it?”

She released a single chuckle. “Probably.”

“I thought I might.”

A cheery whistled note sounded from down the hall, then a second and third mixed to a jaunty tune. Leaning back, I peered out only to find Crawford, oblivious to the rising tension, whistling and spinning his pocket watch on its chain as he strolled through the house.

When I turned back to her, I found my wife peering curiously at me. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Another venue, perhaps?”

I nodded, waiting as she crossed the room before trailing behind her. I followed along like a lovesick sop, desperately dogging her heels.

It was easier when she was ahead of me. Her floral scent was calming, and her dark honey curls were distractingly shiny. I needn’t think with her here. Half the time I was incapable of coherent thought at all, my attention wrapped up in her soft skin, warm eyes, and truly magnificent breasts.

She led me into her sitting room. The one with the door that opened right into her chambers. I was capable of a great many thoughts on that proximity—none of them fit for polite company.

Mutely, she gestured toward one of the chairs, then sat on the settee opposite. Her rooms were above the music room, offering an even more spectacular view of the lake. The sun had dipped a little lower behind the trees and was a little less oppressive when I sat in its cast.

My chest tightened, but not in a concerning way—like one of my fits—but in a way that had everything to do with my proximity to Charlotte and our combined proximity to her bed.

CHARLOTTE

His legs were too long for the chair leaving him crunched up in his seat. I sacrificed my lip in order to keep from laughing at the picture he made, curled up like a frog.

The confident man that left me a lusty husk last night was nowhere to be seen. In his place, an awkward, gangly gentleman, tangled in a chair. Every second or so, he shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. He was never going to find it.

He was also never going to begin talking.

“It’s up to me then?”

Lee didn’t feign confusion. Instead his throat bobbed, drawing my gaze to the long, muscular line of his neck. I hadn’t ever noticed a man’s neck before. Perhaps I noticed it now because his cravat was loose and hanging uselessly and I had a better view. But it was probably just because it was his neck.

“Where do you wish to start?” he finally croaked.

“There are a great many options. And you would know better than I which circumstances I ought to be acquainted with.”

“I didn't mean to keep secrets. I just… This isn’t what I thought it would be like.” Something in my expression must have given away the sinking in my stomach because he rushed to continue. “Not in a bad way. It’s wonderful, truly. But you’re… more than I thought you would be. I thought we would be husband and wife in name only. That you would give birth and a few months after that, you would return to town. And I would stay here, precisely as alone as I was before.”

“If you did not wish for a wife, why did you agree to marry me?”

“I didn’t not want a wife… I—I thought we understood each other. You required the protection of my name. And, well, I couldn’t be a real husband to anyone. I thought at least I could be a fictitious husband to you.”

There was a great deal to consider there, to press him on. But the temptation of another question, the one that had been nagging at me since the moment I learned of her existence was too much to overcome.

“What happened to the previous Lady Champaign?”

His eyes found his feet and he dragged a hand through his hair. There was sentiment in that gesture, but I couldn’t name it from my vantage. “Carriage accident. She passed in a carriage accident.” The notes were sunken, lifeless.

The answer was no surprise at all. I had considered as much for weeks, perhaps since our wedding day. It made a horrifying sense.

“What happened?”

“We were traveling at night, returning from a ball in town. I used to do that occasionally—it’s so easy a journey. We hit a rut and my head bumped the edge of the lantern, knocked it off the hook. It landed on the floor, on Mia’s dress. I’ve never seen anything ignite that fast. I tried to stomp it out, I ripped off the curtains trying to smother it. It just burned faster, hotter. Her screams…”

His gaze dropped to the floor as he battled against tears. It didn’t work, and he wiped angrily at them.

“You don’t have to?—”

“No, you should know. I knocked the rod off the bracket when I yanked the curtains off. I don’t know how, but it got jammed in the door. I couldn’t get us out. Eventually one of the footmen got the other side open, pulled her free. Meanwhile, I managed to get the damn curtain rod—on fire—twisted in the handle and when I tried to turn it, it hit me in the face, and brushed my chest, just enough to set my shirt alight. I fell out of the carriage, backward and on fire. My leg got tangled in the seat and I broke it in the fall. I managed to put myself out. I had to crawl around the damn carriage to find her. I was too late. Mia died, horribly, while her husband did nothing.”

The broken, dispassionate nature of the speech, delivered to the rug, had tears gathering on my cheeks as well. I longed to reach for him, to touch him. But I wasn’t certain it would be welcomed in that moment. The memory of his flinch from that night—from St. John’s—was still fresh.

“Lee—”

“I had one job. One. And no one has ever failed as spectacularly as I have. Not only did I fail to protect her, but it was my fault.”

“It wasn?—”

“It was. It was why I couldn’t… didn’t want to—why I can’t be a husband to you. I can’t be a husband to anyone.”

A thousand tiny moments became clear, and I hated every single one of them. More than anything I had ever wanted in my entire life, I wanted the power to take away the pain creasing his face, the empty hollow of his voice, the wretched thoughts in his head.

In that moment, I would have given him up. If I could turn back the clock, if I had a wish, Amelia Bennet never would have set foot in that carriage. Her death never would have left this man shattered and devastated.

I would be alone, unwed and with child. But Leopold Bennet’s scarred face wouldn’t be buried in his hands. He wouldn’t be bent in half as his chest shuddered with silent sobs. And that would be worth it.

Without permission, my knees met the floor at his feet, and I wrapped my arms around him as best I could, curled up and doubled over as he was. It wasn’t clear he even perceived my presence. I didn’t recognize the notes of my sobs, mixed with his, until his shirt was a soaked mess in the middle of his shoulder.

The shushing sound I was making was warped and ugly between throaty breaths. My pathetic rubs of his back showed no signs of providing relief.

Lee was lost to the world. If anything, his sobs were getting worse, harsher. His breath was ragged and desperate. Every single inhale ripped a hole in his chest. I was seconds away from rising, from pulling the bell, from summoning Brigsby or Crawford, anyone who might know how to help.

Then his hand found mine. He interlaced our fingers, tightening his grip.

“Don’t go,” he gasped.

“I won’t. I’m here.”

“Stay. Please stay.” And for a second the desperate part of me, the part I refused to acknowledge, leapt at the thought that he meant something more than this moment.

He didn’t, I knew he didn’t. But my answer was the same either way.

“Of course.”