Chapter 15 #2
“This scheme is all I have,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
“There is no other plan, no other way. Without a significant injection of funds, Blackwood will crumble, and I’ll have nothing.
We’ve been planning this, Father and I, for nearly a decade.
Everything, every lesson, every fight, every woman—it was all to get me here, now. This is all I am.”
“Eliza, you might have Eliza.”
Eliza. His heart adopted the word for its own.
Adapting its rhythm until it formed the letters of her name.
But even if he could forsake everything he was, he had nothing to offer her.
He couldn’t support her. All he had was a barren, crumbling house that screamed as the wind raced over the moors and through cracks at night.
Not even that, but the potential of that someday.
West studied him, gaze heavy. “Only you can decide if the price is fair. It’s your soul, after all.
Your secrets die here with me. But I think if you look up, see the horizon beyond this plan, you’ll find that you have a great deal more than you ever realized.
And you could have more than you ever dared to dream. ”
The sincerity threatened to overwhelm Benedict. “Honestly, when did you become so eloquent? It’s unnerving.”
“I read. Try it sometime.”
“You read?”
“I contain multitudes. A study in contrasts, if you will.” Weston spread his hands apart, palms up, as he gestured toward his person in emphasis. “Now, I think I can manage one more drink before you bankrupt me and clear the entire establishment of scotch.”
“Please,” Benedict said.
Another glass appeared before him without prompting, and he paid for it with a grateful smile.
“Of course, the drink will cost you…”
Benedict groaned, letting his forehead flop onto the bar. “What?”
“The girl.”
“What of her?”
“For years, I’ve been working on you to abandon Ambrose to his shithole. And in weeks, she has you considering it.”
Benedict grumbled into his drink.
“Seems as though she’s special.”
Benedict sighed, propping his face against his palm atop the bar.
“She’s just… fascinating. Brilliant, so intelligent, and her wit is so sharp, cutting— I can barely keep up.
But once you get beneath that, she’s… sweet.
No one is sweet to me, Miles, not ever. But she looks at me with these big brown eyes as though I’m her hero.
Can you imagine me, a hero? And her body…
Her frocks, the ones for soup consumption and the like, they’re so buttoned up, but last night…
” Benedict’s voice abandoned him as visions of Eliza’s delectable curves consumed him.
West knocked on the bar, drawing his attention back from the fantasies that refused to leave. “I’m plenty sweet to you.”
“You just told me I was becoming something monstrous.”
“Before you transformed though; that’s very sweet. And I’m paying for a truly obscene amount of scotch.”
Benedict chuckled. “I don’t even remember how many I’ve had.”
“At least five, but I suspect the last four were half water.”
“What? No, Bertie would never!” Benedict protested.
“Who the devil is Bertie?”
“The barkeep!”
West’s brow furrowed. “His name is Sam. He’s worked here longer than I’ve been alive. Where did Bertie come from?”
“I dunno, he seems like a Bertie.”
West merely shook his head. “The tab?” he asked the barkeep. “I cannot stomach another soused sonnet. He’s not even gotten to her eyes yet. Too distracted by the teats.”
“Lady trouble?” Bertie—a much better name than Sam—asked as Benedict protested, “You don’t get to talk about her teats! Show some respect.”
“Bubbies?” West asked with a cheeky grin and a crude gesture.
“Not that either. She’s a lady.”
“Right,” West agreed. Benedict thought there was a hint of placation beneath the word, but his hearing was dulled by drink. “Just the tab,” West repeated to Bertie. “And I’m not paying full price for the watered-down ones.”
Bertie gave him a little wave of acknowledgment as he wandered off to the till.
“Did he admit to—”
“Yes,” West said with a chuckle.
Bertie held up four fingers, and West dropped the corresponding coins on the bar. Then he grabbed Benedict’s hand and hauled him to stand.
“Her bosom is truly spectacular,” Benedict mused. “But her arse…”
“No, I don’t need to hear any more about her arse. It’s all I’ll be able to think of if I meet her, and then you’ll be in a temper when I cannot help but look.”
“You’re not allowed to look!”
“I know! That’s why you cannot wax poetical about Miss Wayland’s arse.
I’m only a mortal. I cannot be expected to have knowledge of an impeccable bottom and not peek.
Now”—West slumped Benedict’s arm over his shoulder—“let us attempt to find a hack that won’t charge extra if you cast up your accounts inside. ”
“No, no. I want to walk.”
West’s head hinged back, and he looked askance at the sky . As though some deity were prepared to help manage his foxed devil of a friend.
“You’re looking the wrong way,” Benedict said. “No one up there will help you.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. I want to walk. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“But—”
“Do you want to be nearby when Bella learns that you’re responsible for my present state?”
“Ah… No.”
“Then make your escape. Quickly.” Benedict added a shooing motion with his free hand.
Slowly, West heaved Benedict’s arm off his shoulder. His hand hovered uncertainly at Benedict’s bicep for a moment as if prepared to catch him if he were unsteady. Mustering every sober thought he’d ever had, Benedict straightened his spine and stood as straight as he was capable of.
“Fine,” West agreed after a moment. “If you’re late tomorrow, I’ll be the one beating your arse. And I’m much better than Harker.”
Benedict shooed him again, then waited until the other man had disappeared from view.
Eliza…
He could force no other thought into his cup-shot head and world-weary heart. West’s words echoed in his mind. “You might have Eliza.” No other notion had ever sounded as wonderful.
Big, fluffy clouds tried and failed to hide the bright moon—down to the last quarter before it was reborn into something new and began life again. The night air was temperate. A soothing breeze caressed his cheek—soft as Eliza’s fingertips.
The thought of walking back to his shabby townhouse, where nothing but his tumultuous thoughts awaited him was a punishing one. His thoughts awaited him—and Bella. Facing Bella with her judgmental, knowing eyes was an appalling prospect. She would see through him in an instant.
A delicate, floral scent whispered on the breeze—violets. It may have been a fiction, brought on by drink and wanting, but he didn’t care. There was nowhere he’d rather be. No one he would rather see.
He wanted—craved—one more moment with her before it all burned down around him. One last fortifying breath.
The decision formed without permission, uncontrollable and inevitable. His feet were already moving, carrying him toward Grosvenor Square and Dalton Place with reckless purpose.
Just one more moment of her.