The Wildest Dream of an Arranged Marriage

Prologue

If Benedict Denham had been born with one less advantage, Harriet might have found him easier to tolerate. He was handsome, wealthy, heir to an earldom and, much to her annoyance, generally correct. The last was the grievance she found most difficult to forgive.

“It cannot be done now,” he said.

They stood near the windows in the drawing room at Alderley, removed by only a few feet from a card table occupied by his mother and two other guests. It was not sufficient distance for privacy, but neither Harriet nor Benedict had ever required privacy in order to quarrel.

“It can be done,” she insisted. “It will only be more difficult.”

“And more expensive. The men will have to shore the bank before they can clear the ditch, assuming they can clear it at all while the ground is so wet.” Benedict glanced toward the windows where rain streaked the dark glass.

“If the work is delayed until spring, there will be less risk and half the expense.”

Harriet knew all of that. She also knew the Harper family had lost the better part of their crop last year and could not afford to do so again. “The expense will be greater if the south meadow floods.”

“Then you must convince your father of that.”

“My father will listen to you.”

His expression changed slightly. She would not have noticed it if she had not known him for most of her life. “Then I will speak to him.”

That ought to have satisfied her. It did not. There was something humiliating in knowing that the same argument, presented in Benedict’s low, measured voice, would be given a consideration it had not received from her.

“I did not ask you to intervene.”

“No. You only informed me that Lord Alderley would listen to me when he would not listen to you.”

“And naturally you seized upon the opportunity.”

“To accomplish the thing you wanted accomplished,” he replied. “You make gratitude exceedingly difficult.”

The worst of it was that he did not appear angry.

Benedict rarely did. His composure was a wall Harriet had been hurling herself against since she was fifteen years old—a mere five years his junior—and he had informed her that climbing onto the stable roof was both pointless and dangerous.

She had proved him wrong on the first count and very nearly right on the second.

At seven and twenty, he had grown broader and more reserved, but otherwise little had changed. He still spoke as if a decision, once reached by him, ought to end all discussion. Harriet still wished to prove that it did not.

“I am perfectly capable of managing my own affairs,” she said.

“The Harpers’ tenancy is not your affair—not really. You should be preparing for London and another season on the marriage mart, not poking about in estate matters!”

“I was only offering suggestions. Reasonable and functional ones, I might add. I did not presume you’d take on the responsibility for it!”

“Didn’t you? I rather thought that was the entire purpose of our conversation, Harriet… You certainly seem to go out of your way to avoid speaking to me otherwise,” he pointed out.

She stared at him. His mouth moved, not quite forming the smile she suspected he was suppressing. And the most painful truth of it was that he was not wrong. She did avoid him. And she wasn’t even entirely certain why. “You are intolerable.”

“So I have been told.” His gaze rested on her for a moment longer than it should have. There was nothing warm in it, and yet Harriet felt the awareness of him move over her skin. “Usually by you.”

She hated when that happened. It had begun sometime in the past year, though she could not have said precisely when.

One moment she would be arguing with the boy she had known all her life.

In the next, she would notice the breadth of his shoulders or the shape of his mouth and become too conscious that he was no longer a boy at all.

“Harriet.” Her father’s voice came from across the room. “Must you and Denham begin?”

She turned toward him. Lord Alderley stood beside Sir Thomas Selby near the hearth.

Her father smiled as he spoke, but there was something in the situation which belied that expression.

He looked tired. He had looked tired often of late, though whenever Harriet asked if he was unwell, he blamed the weather or an interrupted night’s sleep.

Selby said something too low for her to hear. Her father’s smile vanished.

“No, Papa,” Harriet replied. “There is no need to begin. Benedict and I have already reached the customary end of our conversation. He is right and I am unreasonable.”

“I did not say you were unreasonable,” Benedict said.

“You did not need to.” Harriet moved away before he could stop her, though she could feel his attention follow her across the room.

She left through the door nearest the gallery.

It was cooler there and mostly dark, with only a lamp burning near the stairs.

Harriet walked toward it, trying to put Benedict from her mind.

She ought to have been pleased that he would speak to her father about the Harpers.

Instead, she was angry because he could do so when she could not, and angrier still because some part of her had known it when she raised the subject with him.

Taking a long moment to collect both her thoughts and her temper, she faced the unfortunate realization that she’d need to return to the small gathering sooner rather than later.

She’d already been absent for far too long.

Turning once more to make her way back, she noted a widening arc of light at the end of the corridor as the door to her father’s study opened farther down the passage.

Harriet stopped. Selby’s voice carried into the gallery.

“You have had time enough, Alderley.”

The pleasant manner he wore in company was gone. Harriet stepped back from the light and remained still.

“The Oxfordshire property has not sold,” her father said. “If you will allow me until spring—”

“No,” Selby snapped, his tone cold and unwavering. “I offered you an extension last year. You used it to take on more debt.”

“I had no choice… Repairs had to be made. A Season had to be provided for Harriet and another will have to be provided for her sister!”

“There is always a choice,” Selby stated, sounding both condescending and irritated at once. “You simply have not cared for those available to you.”

Harriet moved closer to the door. She knew she ought not listen, but there was something in her father’s voice she had never heard before.

“The eastern farms are worth more than the sum you advanced,” he said.

“Not in their present condition.” Selby’s reply was smooth.

“The south meadow has failed twice. The tenant cottages require repair. The road is almost impassable in winter. You cannot improve any of it because you have no money, and you cannot obtain more money because every unentailed asset you possess is already pledged.”

Harriet pressed a hand to the wall. Some of what he said was true. That did not make the satisfaction beneath it less ugly.

“Those families have been Alderley tenants for generations,” her father said.

“Then they have had generations to make themselves profitable and under Alderley tenancy have failed to do so. There is a commonality there that needs to be remedied.”

“What do you intend to do with them?”

“Whatever best serves the land once it belongs to me.” There was the rustle of paper. “The notes come due on the first. If they are not paid, I will take possession under the terms you signed.”

“And the house?”

“That will depend upon how cooperative you are over the eastern boundary.”

Harriet closed her eyes. The eastern farms, the south meadow and then, perhaps, Alderley itself. Her father had not merely been economizing. He had been trying to keep them from seeing how close they were to ruin.

Selby left the book room a moment later. Harriet retreated into an alcove before he passed. He did not see her. When his footsteps faded, she looked through the open doorway.

Her father stood behind his desk with both hands braced upon it, his head bowed.

He seemed older than he had in the drawing room.

Smaller, somehow. Harriet had spent years resenting him for refusing to listen when she spoke about the farms, the repairs and the tenants.

It had never occurred to her that by the time she began asking questions, the answers might already have been beyond him.

She returned to the gathering by another corridor. Benedict was still near the windows. His gaze found her almost at once, and his brow furrowed as if he saw something in her face that concerned him. Harriet looked away before he could approach her.

For once, she had no desire to argue with him.