Chapter 22
Asilent tear beaded out of one eye and trickled to her dressing gown. Dropping the brush, Evelina gazed at herself in the dressing table mirror. She did not recognize the person staring back at her.
This person looked hopeless, lost, confused, and utterly despondent. She did not like that Dorian was keeping the truth from her. She didn’t feel that he was lying, but he was certainly giving her halves of the truths.
A lie of omission is as bad as a lie of commission.
Her aunt’s words slipped into her ear as she wiped the tear away.
What was so damning that he could not tell her? He’d told her his past with Carrington and his troubles with his missing uncle. Surely nothing could be as ugly as those were?
Heavy-handed, she resumed brushing her hair as her maid entered the room with a cup of tea and a sweet bun on a tray. Setting it down, she asked, “Is there anything more I can do for you, Your Grace?”
“No, Aggie, thank you,” Ellie forced a smile. “You may go now.”
“Good night, Your Grace,” Agnes curtsied and left the room.
Dorian had walked away, his eyes impenetrable as smoked glass.
Despite everything they had shared, he was steadily drawing away from her, and her heart ached because of that.
No man liked to be taken to task by his wife.
Even she, as a novice, understood that. If her goal was to win her husband’s heart, she needed to tread carefully.
That still did not help her sleep that night, and she did not drift off until the early hours of the morning. True to his word, Dorian was gone long before she’d risen, and she went to breakfast alone.
“What would you prefer for breakfast this morning, Your Grace?” Agnes asked while setting her tea before her.
“The usual.”
That day’s Times arrived, and momentarily, all woes were forgotten to Ellie. With a twinge of apprehension, she turned to the scandal pages.
The ton is still reeling from Lady Tresman’s ball last night.
The enigmatic Duke Wolfthorne, a still unknown in London’s upper echelon, attended with his wife, and for most, the scandal of the night was the scintillating kiss the two shared on the balcony, but it is the riveting impasse between the Duke and Lord Eastbrook that has all the ton twittering.
No one knows what happened between the two, but from the small snippets the onlookers heard and could piece together, the two had a shared past as children.
We have also pieced together that someone in the baron’s house betrayed His Grace, leading to a hefty loss.
We are nay sure what that was, but a document was signed and something critical was lost. Our investigation has led to nothing as neither party has deigned to say what the misunderstanding—or possible sabotage—was in regards to.
We do know that there is no love lost between the two.
Sighing, Ellie dropped the paper to the side and picked up her tea. She did not know what to do, and there was equally no one she could turn to for advice. She had no older woman who was seasoned in marriage to ask, nor was there a friend close by whom she could pour her heart out to.
“Should I confide in Aggie? If only Harriet, or even Victoria was here…” she dipped her butter knife into the marmalade. “I know she is not married or has ever had a lasting relationship, but she still seems older than her years. A penny for her thoughts.”
Ellie needed answers. Real, tangible answers. But truthfully, neither Harriet, nor Victoria nor her lady’s maid could ever give them. And Ellie knew the one person who could.
Benedict.
But Dorian would fall into a fit of apoplexy if he ever learned she went to speak with him, especially in light of the scandal now swirling around town. It would widen the rift between them even further, but if she learned anything useful, perhaps she could make up for it somehow?
Something had to give. Dorian was not willing to tell the full story, but Benedict was. Maybe… just maybe she could get one answer and find a single thread that would pull the full yarn.
Pushing away from the table, she rang for her maid; it was time to get some answers, trouble and meekness be damned.
In the next forty minutes, she was walking through the door to Victoria’s home and found her friend meandering through her vast library. Victoria dropped the book as the two embraced tightly.
“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you anytime soon,” Victoria murmured as she steered Ellie to a couch. “Especially not after last night.”
Ellie pinked. “Why?”
Crossing her legs, Victoria tutted. “Have you read any of the papers today?”
“One,” she huffed. “Which I wanted to fling into the fire.”
“I’d ask if your husband knows you are here, but I think I already know the answer to that,” Victoria sighed. “And I think I know why you are here as well, which, again, I do not think your husband would approve of.”
Ellie tried to play it innocent. “I came to see a dear friend.”
“In part, perhaps,” Victoria said. “But I know the true reason is you wish to speak with my brother.”
“I—”
“I have known you since the schoolroom, Ellie,” Victoria chided gently. “I know when something is plaguing you. I do wish you would confide in me too, though—you know you can trust me.”
Shoulders dropping, Ellie confessed, “I do wish to speak with Benedict, but I fear he might not want to see me after the disaster that was last evening. I do not know the relationship the two have, and I—I do not want to be the catalyst to tear it even further apart.”
“…You cannot tear what is already torn, Your Grace,” Benedict’s tired voice emanated from the doorway.
Both Evelina’s and Victoria’s heads snapped to the doorway where Benedict stood. Benedict was in his shirtsleeves; his cravat was missing, while his bronze waistcoat and brown trousers were fitted superbly to his lean body.
Victoria rose primly. “I’ll call for some tea so you two can talk.”
Benedict took a seat across from Ellie, leaned over, and braced his elbows on his knees before framing his face. Ellie did not speak, she allowed him to gather his thoughts.
It was only when Victoria returned with the tray of tea and coffee that he began his story. “Beaumont and I met as young children. He was four, I was a month away, and we were fast friends. We started Eton at the same time, but that is neither here nor there.
“The fateful day occurred on the eve of his twelfth birthday.
The former Duke had steadily been succumbing to a brain fever, and his uncle Edgar, who always had designs on stealing the Dukedom, pulled his influence to achieve the next best thing.
To become the acting Lord and the sovereign ruler of the lands.
He contrived a document with the help of the family solicitor to usurp the management of the Ducal lands and businesses, while the former Duke was bedridden.
“That fateful afternoon, when his uncle employed my father and the family solicitor’s help in deceiving Beaumont into signing the document, was one where all we had cared about was flying some blasted kites,” he swallowed.
“We were children, neither of us had the mental capacity to think adults would steer us wrong. My father was like a second father to Beaumont, so his cosign held all the leverage in the world to Dorian. Over the following weeks, lands were sold, businesses were hemorrhaged, and by the time Albion—an elderly, shrewd butler who served the Wolfthornes—caught on to what was happening, Beaumont’s uncle came for him and told him he was now exiled.
My heart fell to my feet. I never saw him nor his father again until some years ago, when he resurfaced,” Benedict exhaled, rubbing his face.
“I never, and I swear on my life, I never had a role in the deception,” he muttered.
“I do know that I hastened him to get outside to fly kites, but—but that was only boyish enthusiasm! I am sorry for my part in it. I never meant to hurt him. I begged my father to at least look out for him, to help him somehow, but he never did.”
Ellie remained silent as she mused over this new information. When he finally paused, she handed him a cup that had been brewed earlier by Victoria. “Is that why you do not speak to your parents anymore?”
“Yes,” he uttered with conviction. “And it is why I took Victoria away from them, too. I don’t know if you are familiar with the ill-fated love affair she had with a preacher's son…”
“I am.”
“Hmph. The signs of their greed and prejudices were always there,” he grunted.
Ellie sipped her tea, deep in thought. “You have never seen him in the time he was exiled, and when he finally made his return to high society?”
“No,” Benedict admitted. His eyes lifted to the window and took on a far-away look.
“He was so… hearty and effervescent back then. Now, he is aloof and cold. I sometimes pray there is still a trace of his old self beneath all that veneered exterior. But I swear on everything I ever loved, I was not a willful instrument in his family’s downfall.
” He sipped his drink with a shaking hand.
“Though I have little hope that you believe me.”
Ellie stared at him, her expression unreadable for a moment—then her brows pulled together, her voice low, level.
“Do you honestly think I would believe an eleven-year-old boy was part of some conspiracy to dismantle a Dukedom? That you, a child, were somehow aware of estate law and inheritance politics and... what, complicit by flying a kite?”
Her tone wasn’t mocking — it was tired. Tired of how absurd this all was, tired of how long it had gone unspoken.