Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
NOTHSHIRE WAS GETTING dressed, still swearing under his breath.
She was sitting on her bed with her knees against her chest, curled up, biting down on her bottom lip.
He had apologized about thirty times, and she had said very little.
Why had he been so sure he could do that, keep control of himself in that moment of all moments, especially when she felt like warm, soft perfection around him, when he was drowning in the goodness of her, her sweet body beneath him and surrounding him, and when she was saying his first name and telling him she loved him, and—
Fuck .
“Well, if I am with child, we’ll need to think of something, I suppose,” she said in a tiny voice.
He looked down at her in the bed and then went back to buttoning the falls of his trousers. “You marry me. End of story.”
“Did you do it on purpose?”
“ No. ”
Silence.
He tucked his shirt into his now-buttoned trousers. He slowly lifted his gaze to her. “I am ever so sorry, my lady.”
“Tell me,” she said, sticking out her chin.
He licked his lips. He knew what she meant. She wanted to know about everything, about Champeraigne, his father, all their fathers, the robbing on the highway, the business with Penbrake, everything. “I can’t.”
“Tell me and I’ll marry you,” she said. “You have already invaded my body, have you not? You have taken me over and planted your seed inside me and if I am going to have your child, you will possess me and the babe, and we shall just be… yours. So, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t have a choice anymore, tell me.”
He swallowed. “You have a choice. I swear I shall find a way to give you a choice.”
She leveled an accusing stare at him.
He gestured helplessly. “Maybe you can… expel it.”
“You really think that’s going to work?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I did have some basic anatomy classes in university. I sort of understand how it works, and it needs to get very far in there, I think. There are things inside a woman, they’re sort of like men’s bollocks, but they produce something else. I did not pay close enough attention, because I have no reason to know. I am not ever going to be a doctor.”
She made a very confused face. “You’re trying to distract me and it isn’t going to work. Tell me.”
He scratched the back of his head. “My father…” But then he faltered.
She uncurled, just a bit, softening. “Of course it’s about him.”
This galvanized him a bit. “They were all fast friends, our fathers. They had these ideas about the way they would raise their sons, and we were all so close in age, and we all spent quite a great deal of time together. They were enamored with ancient Rome and Greece, with creating boys—men—who would be very strong and very capable of handling… pain.”
Her eyes widened.
“So, they hurt us a lot. For our own good, they said. Rutchester’s father…” He shook himself. “Anyway, at some point, a body can’t bear these things. When we were small, we didn’t have any notion that anyone else lived a different life, but then we came to understand that other men’s fathers didn’t torture them as a matter of course and we…”
He paused for a long, long time.
She only gazed at him.
“So, anyway, it was meant to look like a hunting accident, but it got out of hand, and they were dead but then they were… someone discovered it.”
“The man who blackmails you. Because he knows you killed your fathers.”
He nodded. “You know of him. Maybe you’ve met him. He is the Comte Champeraigne, a French nobleman.”
“Oh, yes, I have met him,” she said with a nod. “He ordered you here, and it’s to do with the Earl of Penbrake?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“But you don’t know why exactly.”
“Not until tomorrow, when we go to see him.”
“And you always simply do his bidding? Because you have no choice?”
He nodded.
“I see,” she said slowly. She looked away, thoughtful. “I don’t see why you’d think that would make me not wish to marry you.”
He was going to start sobbing. She couldn’t have said that.
“I can’t see how anyone bears that sort of treatment from his father,” she said. “I can’t see how it was even wrong, what you did.”
He could not speak. He would fall apart if he did.
She climbed out of the bed and put her hand on his chest. “I trust you,” she said, gazing into his eyes.
A shudder went through him.
She reached up and touched his face, and he realized it was wet.
He was fucking crying in front of her. He turned away. “I need to go,” he said in a choked voice.
She removed her hand. “It’s all right to weep, I think, with us, with the two of us. It’s all right.”
Because it wasn’t done, crying, not in front of anyone , not unless you were a very small child, and even then, you probably didn’t do it in front of your mother or father, even, just maybe, sometimes, with your nanny, and she would fuss over you and tell you to put a brave face on it and swallow it away, and he knew it wasn’t even remotely all right.
He hurried for the door, bringing along the clothes he hadn’t managed to put back on yet.
“It might be nice,” she said from behind him. “Feeling safe enough to be sad near someone else. It might be very nice.”
He stiffened. “Might be,” he agreed. Then he wiped his face and sniffed very hard and opened the door and left her.
WHEN CHARLOTTE CAME to dress her in the morning, Patience told her, frostily, that it was all going to be all right now, that she was going to marry him, but that she would never trust Charlotte with any more confidences, and that she did not wish to discuss it any further with her.
Charlotte looked badly frightened, more than she should have looked, and this bothered Patience, so she probed her, asking more questions, but Charlotte was silent, only shaking her head and saying she was sorry and that she shouldn’t have interfered, that she was very stupid.
“Tell him, your husband-to-be, that he need not worry I shall speak to anyone about any of it,” she whispered.
“Wait, did he threaten you?” said Patience, who was now torn between feeling livid toward the man and thinking that it only made sense that he was the way he was. To have been raised in such an environment—he had called it torture and indicated it had been perpetrated upon him when he was very small—it would badly affect someone. It was honestly quite amazing he was still as tender and sweet as he was, through all of that.
Because she could see it in him, she could. She could still see that small and frightened boy hiding inside his huge and muscled body, and she wanted only to protect him. If she could somehow go back in time and shield that tiny Benedict from his father’s horrible ministrations, she would.
“I have said nothing,” said Charlotte, eyes very wide. “Nothing at all.”
“All right, well, I shall have a talk with him,” said Patience, sighing.
Truly, she shouldn’t have let him run off that way. They needed to talk about a number of things, not least their impending marriage. If she was with child, it might be able to wait a month or so, but that would still mean, that—as long as they were not going to procure a special license—they must have the banns read in a church, which would take three weeks, and he seemed frightfully preoccupied with whatever it was he was doing at the bidding of the Comte Champeraigne.
She had always found that man a little unsettling. She had met him for the first time when she was only twelve, she thought, and she had later expressed her distaste and, well, truly fear of him, but her father had only laughed and said that, yes, all Frenchmen were awful, weren’t they? “Dreadful accent, isn’t it, my little muffin?” Then he’d kissed her on the forehead.
But it hadn’t been about his accent.
It had been something else, something she could not explain, something that had made her hair stand up at the back of her neck.
But it was funny, wasn’t it? She had never felt that feeling when it came to Balley. She had felt no misgivings about him whatsoever. The first time he’d hit her, it had been a horrible surprise.
This was why it was so easy to override those feelings about people, she supposed. If one’s body had a danger detector, it was horribly faulty.
She was about to reassure Charlotte further when the door to her bedroom burst open and her brother came inside, brandishing a sword, his eyes wild and maniacal.
It was so strange and unsettling and frankly comical that she first laughed.
Then, he looked at her, swiping the sword through the air and the laughter died in her throat.
“What’s happened?” she said.
“It’s Penbrake,” said her brother. “He’s gone, and there’s blood spattered all over his bed and the floor of his room. I was worried whoever it was had gotten to you.”
Charlotte let out a horrified squeak, clapping a hand over her mouth.
“Penbrake,” said Patience, and she knew that Nothshire had something to do with this, just knew it. God in heaven, had he come to her, climbed into her bed, had his way with her, made that awful confession, left in tears, and gone directly to Penbrake’s room?
He lied to me. He knew all along he was going to kill Penbrake.
Damn that man and his lies.
No, wait, that didn’t actually make sense. Why entreat her to come here if he was simply going to murder the man? Certainly, with his skills at sneaking around, he could easily have gotten to Penbrake without her being here at all.
“Stay in your room,” said her brother, pointing the tip of the sword at her.
She held up both hands. “All right, all right.”
He started out. “And bar the door,” he threw over his shoulder. He shut the door behind him.
Patience went over to pull the lock closed.
“My lady,” said Charlotte, “we have to tell someone.”
Patience rounded on her. “No, absolutely not. He threatened you and you wish to betray him at the first sign of trouble? You promise me that you will not say anything. I am fairly confident that I can protect you, but he is… unpredictable.” She let out a shaky breath. “I need to talk to him.”
“You need to stay in your room,” said Charlotte.
“No, I feel confident whatever has happened, it is not going to take place in this household,” she said.
“Well, do you know where he’s staying?” said Charlotte.
“Knotterly,” she said. “It’s owned by the Duke of Dunrose. It’s only two miles through the woods. I shall go there. I think I’ll be able to get out to the stables easily enough on my own. Everyone will be in a panic. No one will be paying attention to me. You stay here, in my room, and preserve the ruse that I am still here. Simply refuse to open the door if anyone tries to come in. Say I’m too frightened. Say I’m unwell. I don’t know. Say anything.”
“My lady, I don’t think it’s wise to go to see that man.”
“I don’t know what happened,” said Patience, “but I don’t think this was his plan. It simply doesn’t make any sense. He told me that he didn’t even know what was to happen to Penbrake, that he would discover this today. So, I need to get to the bottom of this.”
“Why? Why do you need to be involved at all?”
She probably didn’t, actually. She put her hands on her hips, thinking that through. “Oh, I can’t stay here, doing nothing. I’ll go mad.”
“Going mad here in safety is preferable to going out and getting oneself killed, I should think,” said Charlotte.
“Well, there we differ in opinion,” said Patience, and she couldn’t help but smile.