Chapter 2 #2
He read it twice, then sealed it before he could reconsider.
A wife of practical disposition. The phrase felt clinical.
Cold. Precisely as he required it to be.
He was not seeking a love match—the notion was almost laughable.
He was seeking an arrangement. A partnership of convenience.
Someone who would fulfil the legal requirements of matrimony without requiring him to be anything other than what he was: a scarred, silent, solitary man who preferred the company of stray cats to that of people.
Someone who will expect nothing, he thought. Someone who will not be disappointed when she discovers there is nothing left to give.
It was not, perhaps, the most romantic foundation upon which to build a marriage. But Benjamin had ceased believing in romance on the same night he had ceased believing in his own invincibility—in a burning field in Spain, surrounded by the screams of men who had trusted him to keep them safe.
Romance was for those who still possessed hope.
He had only duty. And duty, at least, was something he understood.
***
The afternoon brought rain, precisely as his leg had predicted. Benjamin stood at the window of his study, watching droplets streak down the glass, and thought of the cat.
It would be sheltering somewhere dry by now. Beneath the gardener’s shed, perhaps, or in the old dovecote that no one had used in years. Strays learnt quickly where to find safety. They were obliged to. The world was not kind to creatures without homes.
You are projecting, he told himself. It is a cat. It does not suffer existential crises.
Yet he could not entirely banish the image: a small grey body, hunched against the rain, alone in the dark.
You are also alone in the dark, some traitorous part of his mind whispered. The only difference is that your darkness is a choice.
He turned from the window.
Upon his desk, the sealed letter waited.
Tomorrow, a rider would carry it to London.
Within days, the arrangements would begin.
Within a fortnight, he would be standing in some stranger’s drawing room, paraded before women who would assess his title and carefully avoid his face, and he would be required to choose one of them to share the remainder of his life.
Not share, he corrected himself. Coexist. There is a distinction.
The distinction mattered. He would provide for his wife, protect her, ensure she wanted for nothing material.
But he would not—could not—offer her anything more.
His capacity for connection had burned away with everything else upon that Spanish battlefield.
What remained was duty, discipline, and the quiet satisfaction of feeding a cat that would never love him.
It would have to suffice.
It would have to suffice, because it was all he had.
***
The rain continued throughout the evening.
Benjamin took his supper in the study, as he always did, eating mechanically while reviewing estate accounts that required little genuine attention.
The routine soothed by its predictability: food, work, the slow ticking of the clock upon the mantel, the occasional crackle of the fire.
At nine o’clock, Dawson appeared with a final cup of coffee and a carefully neutral expression.
“Will Your Grace require anything further this evening?”
“No.” Benjamin did not look up from the ledger. “You may retire.”
“Very good, Your Grace.” A pause. “The letter for London. Shall I have it dispatched first thing?”
Now Benjamin did look up. Dawson’s face revealed nothing, but his eyes—those shrewd, perceptive eyes that had seen Benjamin at his worst and never spoken of it—held something that might have been concern.
“You read it,” Benjamin said. It was not a question.
“I would never presume, Your Grace.”
“You read it, and now you are concerned.”
“I am merely ensuring Your Grace’s correspondence is handled with appropriate efficiency.”
“Dawson.”
The valet’s composure cracked, if only slightly. “Forgive me, Your Grace. But a wife… it is a considerable undertaking. And you have been alone for so long.”
“I prefer being alone.”
“I know, Your Grace. That is precisely what concerns me.”
They regarded one another across the shadowed room. Outside, the rain had softened to a gentle patter, almost musical against the windows.
“Send the letter,” Benjamin said at last. “First thing.”
“Your Grace—”
“I have made my decision.” He returned his attention to the ledger, though the numbers had long since blurred into meaninglessness. “That will be all.”
Dawson did not argue. He had learnt, over eleven years, which battles were worth contesting. This was not among them.
“Good night, Your Grace,” he said quietly, and withdrew.
Benjamin sat alone in the lamplight, listening to the rain and the fire and the hollow echo of his own breathing. Tomorrow, the letter would be sent. Soon thereafter, his life would alter in ways he could not yet imagine.
But tonight, he was still alone. Still silent. Still master of his own solitude.
He tried not to consider how deeply he dreaded losing it.
***
He dreamed, as he always dreamed, of fire.
The details shifted each time—sometimes he was running, sometimes he was frozen, sometimes he was giving the order, and sometimes he was receiving it—but the fire was always the same. Orange and ravenous and alive, crawling across the Spanish hillside like something possessed of intent.
And the screams. Always the screams.
He woke before dawn, gasping, his scarred hand pressed to his chest as though he might physically contain the violent racing of his heart. The sheets were tangled about his legs. His nightshirt clung damply to his skin.
Only a dream, he told himself. It was years ago. You survived. Others did not, but you survived, and there is nothing to be done about it now.
The words were familiar. Worn smooth by repetition. They did not help.
He rose, lit a single candle, and made his way through the sleeping house to the kitchens. The scraps for the cat had already been set aside—Mrs Holloway was nothing if not efficient—and he gathered them into the familiar dish without troubling to dress properly.
Outside, the rain had ceased. The world smelled of wet earth and new growth, clean and sharp in a manner that made his chest ache for reasons he could not name.
The sky was only just beginning to pale at the edges, that thin grey line between night and day that always felt, to Benjamin, like a held breath.
The cat was waiting.
Not near—never near—but visible, a darker shadow against the hedge. Its ears pricked forward as he approached, though it did not flee. Progress, perhaps. Three months of patience, and the creature had learnt he posed no threat.
If only people were so readily persuaded.
He set the dish in the usual place. Straightened. Stepped back.
“I am to be married,” he told the cat. The words sounded strange in the morning quiet—too weighty for this small ritual, too burdensome for the delicate peace between them. “I thought you ought to know.”
The cat said nothing. Naturally, it said nothing. It was a cat.
Yet it watched him, those pale green eyes unblinking in the half-light, and for a moment Benjamin felt—absurdly, impossibly—understood.
“It will change nothing,” he continued, because he appeared now to be the sort of man who explained his life decisions to feral animals. “Whoever she may be, she shall not disturb your breakfast. I shall see to that.”
The cat’s tail twitched. Dismissal, perhaps. Or acknowledgement. With cats, one could never be entirely certain.
Benjamin allowed himself the faintest ghost of a smile.
“Same time tomorrow,” he said, and turned toward the house.
Behind him, the cat crept forward to eat.