The Discerning Gentleman’s Guide

Chapter Twenty-Four

Emotional outbursts in public are unseemly...

L ater that day, Bennett sat next to Lord Liverpool and waited for the end of the debate when he could deliver his long-anticipated, frequently postponed speech. It was no longer just about the need for cleaner slums. After his experiences in Seven Dials, there were a great many more issues that he needed Parliament to be aware of. After several attempts, he had abandoned trying to write down everything he wanted to say. If his speech was to be powerful enough it needed to be honest, not rehearsed. Bennett’s words had to come from the heart, not the head.

He waited patiently at first, but when the half hour of shouting turned into an hour and it looked increasingly likely that it would have to be postponed yet again, his patience began to wane. A half hour after that, he had had quite enough. He was sacrificing his happiness for this institution; the least they could do was listen.

‘People are dying!’ He did not remember surging to his feet or clenching his fists and shaking them or bellowing at the top of his voice, but the deathly silence that occurred after his outburst was something Bennett would remember with great clarity until his dying day. The stunned House stared back at him, clearly flabbergasted that Bennett Montague, Sixteenth Duke of Aveley, and normally a calm presence in their ranks, had sounded quite so impassioned. For a moment he felt as if the floor had been pulled from beneath his feet and then he decided that this momentary quiet might well be the only time that he had to state his case. ‘I have been visiting the slums,’ he began falteringly, ‘and what I have found there is so grotesque, so unjust, that I can hardly believe that we are allowing it to happen.’ Oddly, tears started to form in his eyes, something that had never, ever happened to him before, but he ploughed on. It was too important not to. ‘I saw families starving. Children so emaciated that I doubt that they will survive the winter. If they are lucky, they get to sleep on straw in a filthy room but, more often than not, they sleep on the streets...’

‘Spare us your bleeding-heart liberalism, Aveley!’ someone shouted from the back, but Bennett continued undaunted.

‘We have to do something to help these people. That we allow it to happen is not right...’

‘Those lazy bastards need to find work and stop wasting their money on gin!’

‘Hear, hear!’

‘The slums are filled with criminals who do not want to earn an honest wage!’

Bennett shook his head, bewildered. Three sentences. That was all they would listen to. He was throwing away a life with Amelia for this? All around him, the lords began to shout their own bigoted, unfounded opinions of the poor across the floor like poisoned darts. Within seconds, they were back to braying at each other, the cacophony so loud that no voice or opinion or reasonable argument stood any chance of actually being heard. It occurred to him then that they sounded like a farmyard. A disorganised and disparate farmyard with no farmer to feed them. He turned towards the rest of the Cabinet for support, but they all looked every which way except at him. Only Liverpool glared at Bennett and he looked thoroughly appalled.

‘Use your head, man! I am not sure what has brought on this sudden lapse in judgement, but this unseemly behaviour is not what I expect from a member of my Cabinet.’

Use his head? How many times had his father admonished him to do just the same? Perhaps that would always be the fundamental difference between him and his father. Bennett felt injustice in his heart first and wanted to right it using his head; his father had been pragmatic and always used only his head. He had had no time for emotional decisions. Or even emotions. How had his uncle described him?—a cold fish, incapable of basic human feelings. But Bennett was not his father.

Thank God.

The epiphany was both blinding and liberating. He was not his father! So why was he walking so carefully in his father’s footsteps? He hated all of the chaos and compromise of Parliament. In which case, why shouldn’t he let his heart guide his decisions? Slowly, he allowed his eyes to travel across the furore of the debating chamber, seeing it for the first time with objective eyes. The path here was blocked—but there were other paths. There was another perspective.

Who knew?

Now that he could finally see it, Bennett was amazed he had not considered it sooner.

‘Aveley?’ Lord Liverpool said sternly. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

The huge weight of parental expectations that Bennett had always carried around with him melted from his shoulders as he looked around at the stunned faces of the Cabinet and then at the chaos on the floor. Any quiet here was only temporary, he realised in awe, because this was what they actually did. Bennett watched them all clamour to shout each other down, ears closed, minds closed. Wasting time. Throwing another tantrum. And, as always, any progress was so painfully slow that almost nothing meaningful would get done, even though there was so much that urgently needed doing.

He smiled at Lord Liverpool and shrugged because everything was suddenly clear. ‘I do believe I am going to change the world, Prime Minister.’ And, as there really wasn’t another moment to lose, Bennett strode out of the chamber and out into the busy streets of Westminster.

* * *

Amelia wished that she were a hedgehog. Then perhaps she could roll herself in a ball and hide in a corner. As it was, she was sitting in full view, directly next to the Dowager and surrounded by a room full of intensely curious aristocrats, when by rights she should be safely hidden back at Aveley Castle for another few days. But the Dowager had galvanised them all into action early on Monday, insisting that the best way to deal with a scandal was to meet it head-on and dare anyone to be offended. Then she had promptly sent Lovett back to Mayfair with a stack of invitations for the usual Wednesday reading salon.

‘They dare not cut us—my son is a duke!’ she had announced imperiously the moment Amelia had questioned the logic of returning so soon. ‘And dukes come much higher up the pecking order than venomous viscounts. Once they see that we are perfectly at ease with what transpired, and that we stand by you as the injured party, everything will return to normal. You will see.’

Sir George had been more circumspect. ‘Fear not, Amelia, you will only be a circus sideshow for one evening, my dear. Sit proudly, it won’t hurt to throw in the odd winsome sigh, and once they have all had a good look and a good gossip, they will move onto the next scandal.’

With her fate decided, she had been bundled into the same carriage as the Dowager, Lady Worsted and Sir George early this morning and now found herself sitting in the bosom of that family in their crowded London drawing room, listening to another dire poem read by one of the Potentials. The Dowager had been quite right—nobody had been brave enough to cut them and every chair was taken.

Amelia had yet to see Bennett. The last time she had, he had been gloriously naked and sound asleep in his charming turret while she had stumbled around in the dark, weeping and trying to find her clothes. She had no idea where he was, what he was thinking or even if he was going to make an appearance here this evening. All Lovett had said, rather cryptically, upon their return was that His Grace had been exceedingly busy and he had scarcely been home in days.

She hoped that he was all right, although she very definitely wasn’t. Misery was not really a good enough description of what Amelia was currently feeling, as it was tinged with the twin pains of futility and longing. And those pains were relentless. She hadn’t slept a wink since she had left the comfort of Bennett’s arms. It was difficult to rest when one half of her desperately wanted to accept his offer of marriage while the other, better, half knew that she could not destroy all his hopes and dreams, because to do so would be utterly selfish.

In a week, Amelia was resolved to go back to Bath with Lady Worsted so that Bennett could forget her. It was ironic, when she acknowledged she had once been so dead set against him, that Amelia already knew it would be impossible to forget him. Clearly, a small part of her was exactly like her tragic mother. Once her heart was lost, it was doomed to be lost for ever. She loved Bennett Montague. Hopelessly and completely.

The door to the drawing room crashed open and her dashing duke strode in, closely followed by his loyal butler, and grinned at the assembled crowd. ‘I am so glad that you could all make it tonight at such short notice.’ He looked devilishly handsome with his hair windswept and still wearing his greatcoat. ‘If I am not interrupting, I should be honoured to read something for once.’

‘Please do!’ shouted Sir George, even though the Potential was mid-poem. The poor girl simply closed her book and meekly sat down while Bennett produced a piece of crumpled paper and stood in the middle of the room. He had not even glanced at Amelia and the snub wounded.

‘Ladies and gentlemen—a year ago I wrote a book. It was intended as advice to titled gentlemen like myself on selecting their perfect bride.’

Next to him, Lovett raised a copy of The Discerning Gentleman’s Guide aloft so that everyone could see it and the Duke paused for effect. ‘I should like to extend my humblest apologies to you all for having foisted such a load of patronising drivel on the world. They were not my words. If you bought a copy, I will gladly give you your money back, and if you have a copy this is what I want you to do with it.’

The Duke nodded to the butler and the crowd watched in fascination as Lovett ceremoniously placed it onto a silver tray and then carried it sedately to the fireplace. Almost as if it were something quite offensive, Lovett picked up the book with the tips of his fingers and tossed it onto the flames. Amelia heard an anguished whimper come from Lady Priscilla as those hallowed, sacred pages began to curl and blacken.

‘You see, from my perspective, I was wrong about everything,’ the Duke continued, smiling and slowly scanning the rapt faces in the room, ‘It turns out that the perfect bride for me is not delicate or even-tempered. She does not only embroider or read poetry.’ His eyes finally settled hotly on Amelia. The intense gaze made her pulse flutter as she remembered the last time he had looked at her so possessively, and she hoped that she would not blush. It was clear to everyone present that his next words were solely meant for her, and she felt her cheeks heat despite her best efforts to stop them. ‘The perfect woman for any man is the one that his heart yearns for. In my case, she is fierce and impertinent, kind-hearted and loyal, obstinate and selfless, brave and beautiful.’

Amelia felt the weight of every pair of eyes in the room bore into her but could not seem to unlock her own gaze from Bennett’s. Breathing was now apparently quite impossible. Was he truly about to talk about his feelings in public? That was such an un-Bennett-like thing to do.

‘My darling Amelia, I am not sure if you are aware, but I am a rich and powerful duke. And, as a rich and powerful duke, I realised that Parliament was holding me back. Your soup kitchen did more good in one single day than Parliament had achieved in a whole year. Then it dawned on me. I am so rich and so powerful that I really do not have to wait for the cogs of government to slowly creak into action. I can change things myself. Instantly. As soon as I realised that, I resigned from the Cabinet.’

A collective gasp cut through the silence of the room. Amelia began to feel decidedly queasy—yet, underneath that, she experienced the first blossoming of something else. Hope. Bennett did not appear to have the slightest drop of remorse. In fact, he appeared more relaxed and comfortable in his own skin, in a public forum, than she had ever seen him. Almost as if a great weight had been lifted from his splendid shoulders. ‘You resigned from the Cabinet? For me?’

‘Not for you entirely, my love. For me. For us.’ Then he shrugged those magnificent shoulders as if it was of little consequence. ‘As soon as I left Westminster, I took all of my money to Seven Dials. It is amazing what you can achieve in such a small period of time, if money really is no object. I am quite disappointed in myself that I did not think of it sooner. I have had the streets cleaned! Imagine that. And already I am the proud owner of seven doss houses, five gin palaces and the soup kitchen. At the moment, they are offering free shelter to anyone who needs it, but I fully intend to knock them all down and build something new and purposeful in their place. I thought perhaps a school and a hospital, but I shall need your help to do it properly. And then I thought I might buy up the rest of the slum, because if Parliament is not going to do anything about it, then I thought we might tear it all down and build a better place from scratch. Revolutionise the place. And who better to do that with than the granddaughter of a Revolutionary who has lived in that slum?’

He walked slowly towards her and bent down on one knee. ‘Amelia Mansfield, you are the woman I want to marry.’ The Potentials began to mewl their distress, but Bennett appeared totally oblivious. His hypnotic gaze was fixed on Amelia. He actually wanted to marry her? Despite everything? When he took her hand gently and pressed a soft kiss into her palm, she melted. ‘I know that you have every reason to distrust men with titles and I know that the idea of being controlled by one terrifies you. But you really mustn’t worry. What makes you think that I could enforce my will on you, my darling, when I cannot even get my own butler to stop drinking my port?’

‘He’s right, miss,’ Lovett said from his position by the fireplace. ‘I drink gallons of the stuff. I have done for years and I fully intend to continue.’

Amelia tried to swallow past the enormous lump that suddenly manifested in her throat. Bennett made a valid point. Lovett was still Lovett. And Bennett was not her father. The remaining walls around her heart began to crumble until almost all of her reservations were gone.

Almost—but not quite.

Everyone was staring at them. In a tiny voice she tried to get him to see reason before all of her resolve collapsed. ‘You cannot become Prime Minister if you marry me, Ben.’

A knowing smile spread over his features. ‘Oh, I am not altogether sure that I want to be. That was my father’s dream. Not mine. I was so busy trying to do what he wanted me to do that I never really considered if I wanted to do it. He had his chance. I am tired of walking his path because I am quite certain that it does not take me where I want to go. A wise woman once told me that she believed most people had the good sense to judge men by their deeds rather than their choice of wife. If Parliament has a problem with my marriage to a half-American, illegitimate former guttersnipe, then I do not give two figs. I am a duke, after all. I have no intention of sitting around and waiting for them to actually do something. Not when so much is left undone. Besides, as soon as we are married you will become a rich and powerful duchess. Together we will be unstoppable.’

Like a dolt, she started to sniffle and swiped the tears away. That he would do all this for her was overwhelming. It was a good job that she was seated because her legs had turned to jelly. Her heart was racing. Her pulse fluttered and, for want of a better word, she was gloriously all aquiver again. ‘I just don’t want you doing something that you will live to regret.’

‘The only regret I have is that I never saw it sooner.’ He stood then, pulled Amelia to her feet and looped his arms around her waist, oblivious to the shocked faces all around them. ‘I could never regret choosing you, Amelia. I love you.’

‘And I love you too, Ben, but...’

He hushed her by placing his finger over her lips. ‘For thirty years I have listened to my father’s voice in my head. I have tried to live my life as he wanted me to and it has made me miserable. And stodgy. The last few weeks have been the happiest of my life. A revelation. You drive me to distraction and challenge me, but with you I am a better man. I am not my father. And I am certainly nothing like your father. I am just Ben. So marry me, Amelia, and let’s change the world together.’

Too overcome, she nodded and found herself dragged into his embrace and kissed until she was breathless, by a duke who was neither pompous nor stodgy. But he was hers, just as she was his, so nothing else really mattered. It was Lovett’s polite cough that interrupted them.

‘I am sorry to intrude, Your Grace, but an urgent message has just arrived.’

A magical note that must have blown down the chimney. But Bennett snatched it and scanned its lying contents with concerned gravitas.

‘We are needed urgently in Seven Dials, my darling.’ He winked at her saucily and then whispered close to her ear, ‘I have an empty castle, just over an hour away. Would you like to run away with me?’

Bennett was not the only one who could act. Amelia clasped her hands together and frowned. ‘Oh, Ben, that is a dire emergency indeed. We should probably leave right away.’ And she couldn’t wait. Not just to be alone with him again, but to start a new chapter in her life with this man who meant the world to her. He was right. He was not his father, or hers. And she was not her mother. All that was in the past.

Bennett grabbed her hand and dragged her with him to the door. Almost as an afterthought, he turned around. ‘Uncle George, you were right. Love should never be ignored. I think it is high time you married my mother. Don’t you?’ His stunned uncle merely nodded and reached for the Dowager’s hand. That task done, Bennett waved cheerfully at the crowd.

‘If you will excuse us, ladies and gentlemen, we are off to change the world.’

And that, as it turned out, was exactly what they did.

* * * * *