Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The drawing room was still bright through the window when the hack returned. Benedict tossed the man his due. The butler was nowhere to be found when Benedict returned.
“Norton is peeved with you,” Bella called as he entered.
“It’s mutual.”
Bella rolled her eyes from the settee. “We cannot pay enough for you to chase this one off.”
“Noted.” Benedict spilled too much scotch into a glass, then downed it in a single gulp. He refilled his glass before claiming the broken chair across from her. “Now, what the devil were you thinking bringing her there?”
Benedict never felt like more of a fool than when Bella shot him one of those looks—even though he was certain he had the right of it in this instance.
“She loved it. The girl is desperate for a little excitement in her life.”
“She could have been hurt, Bella. All those drunken men…”
“I am perfectly well, thank you so much for your concern over my safe—”
“You can handle yourself,” he grumbled into his drink.
“And so can she. She’s no stranger to that club of her father’s.”
“I do not care if she’s a decorated member of His Majesty’s army. I’ll not have her hurt!” Benedict’s outburst surprised them both.
Bella froze, her eyes wide as she parsed his words. He watched the inevitable conclusion settle into her mind. Her expression narrowed with a sentiment he could not name. She looked… young, in a way she hadn’t even as a child.
“No. No, no, no.”
“I cannot.” Benedict wasn’t ashamed of the way his voice cracked. No, he rather thought he would’ve been ashamed if he’d kept a steady cadence while speaking of intentionally causing pain to Eliza Wayland. He rose to refill his glass once again.
“Benedict, I am fond of the girl, truly. But you cannot do this to me—to us.” It wasn’t often that Bella was genuine, and his chest ached at the waver in her voice. But it was nothing compared to the thought of destroying Eliza.
“I can’t, Bell. I— She’s… She makes me feel… safe. I’ve never— No one has ever… I can’t. Not to her. I won’t.”
Bella shot up and strode to his side. “Please don’t, please.”
He set the bottle down with a too-loud clank. “No, you don’t—don’t ask me to do this. Father has taken everything from me. But not her. Eliza is the line.”
“There is always more—more for him to take. I promise you there is.” Bella’s voice broke on the final word. For one brief moment, he glimpsed tears pooling on her lower lashes. But before any threatened to fall, she blinked them away.
And there, his heart aching for an entirely new reason, Benedict realized how little he truly knew of his sister. “Bella?”
She shook away whatever sentiment had fallen over her. “So, what is your plan? You’ll marry her? Live happily ever after like a fairy story? What do you imagine Father will do when he finds out? Do you suppose he’ll leave the two of you in peace?”
“No, no, I do not.”
Whether it was the solemnity of his tone, or the words themselves, Benedict would never know. But Bella pulled back as though struck.
She merely shook her head before sweeping out of the room. A moment later her door slammed, finality echoing throughout the house.
He snatched the bottle and wandered over to the settee Bella had vacated, a knot in his throat.
Their father was predictable in only one thing—his virulent hatred of Michael Wayland. If there had ever been a good, caring man who wore his father’s face, those lost thousands of pounds had killed him.
For decades, Ambrose Sinclair had nursed his hatred, tended it carefully with drink and yet more gaming. He’d never held a coin for more than an hour without losing it to some sin or other. And once he’d done that—he’d taken his disappointment and displeasure out on his family.
Benedict had spared Bella the worst of the physical punishments, but no one escaped Blackwood Grange unscathed. Her desperation was entirely understandable. He knew it himself—a riptide threatening to tow him under.
It had taken years—until he had reached his majority and could open accounts and hold contracts in his own name—before Benedict had edged them back from the cliff.
On the precipice of desolation, they teetered for nearly two decades.
Devastation threatened to claim them the moment their guard lowered.
His father would stop at nothing for revenge.
This plan was the work of years. Sometimes Benedict wondered if it was even older than he knew—perhaps as old as Eliza herself.
Father had certainly encouraged him toward various ill-considered seductions—lonely wives, flirtatious barmaids.
Only Benedict’s meager scruples kept him from his father’s more salacious encouragements—the clergyman’s niece, the baronet’s daughter in the neighboring village.
Perhaps Ambrose had been preparing Benedict all his life. Molding him into this final, wretched form.
He took a sip from the amber bottle to wash away the bile pooling in his mouth.
If—when—Benedict failed, his father’s punishment would be swift and all consuming.
A knock echoed from the hall, drawing Benedict away from his morose thoughts and depressing drink. A second knock—more demanding—reminded him that his butler was… elsewhere. He sighed and strode to the door as a third, irate set of pounds reverberated through the room.
Benedict couldn’t have named who he expected to find, but it certainly wouldn’t have been Michael Wayland.
His stomach dropped to the floor at the sight of the furious furrow etched along the shorter man’s brow. He stepped back for the gambler to enter.
Wayland stalked past him before rounding on him. Had Eliza been caught sneaking back in? Had someone at the club told him of the fight? A dozen worst-case scenarios crashed over him at once.
“Drawing room,” Benedict croaked and gestured with two fingers to the entry.
Wayland shoved past, and Benedict heard the clink of bottle against glass before he’d even shut the door.
“I presume this is not a social call,” he forced himself to say when they met at the drink cart beside the fireplace.
“Ambrose Sinclair—Blackwood. Your father.”
Relief and revulsion filled him in equal measure. Once again, Benedict would bear the weight of his father’s hatred. But Eliza—she would be spared from him, from his family. And that relief was a balm he did not deserve.
“Yes.” Benedict was unwilling to trifle with the man.
It wasn’t the response Wayland had expected. That was evident in the man’s widened eyes. “I expected a denial.”
“What would be the point? You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t certain—wouldn’t do that to Eliza.”
“Am I to believe it’s a coincidence that you arrive in town and immediately single out my daughter? Pointedly. Dramatically.”
“You would be a fool if you did.” Benedict knew well that Wayland, while many things, was not a fool.
“So you admit it?”
“I sought your daughter intentionally, knowing who she was in relation to you, yes.”
Wayland glanced down and poured another glass of Bella’s gin. He tipped it back before swallowing with a grimace.
“And your scheme with Lizzie?”
Benedict sighed, his very breath tamping down the shame that welled up. “It was a bit of seduction, followed by humiliation and ransom.”
“Was?”
Benedict’s hesitation stretched onward, broken only by the crack of a log in the hearth. Finally, he whispered, “I cannot... Not to her.”
“‘Not to her’?” There was an inexplicable understanding—almost knowing—that washed over the man’s face.
Benedict caught his gaze. “You know. You must.”
Wayland’s eyes flicked along his person; what he was looking for, Benedict couldn’t say. Finally, after an unending minute, he shifted back on his heels. “You’re in love with her?”
Love… Benedict’s stomach knotted as the word rattled around in his mind. “I don— I’m not certain I’m capable of it. I...”
Wayland nodded and set aside the bottle with a clank. “No more of that gin. It’s vile.” He plucked the scotch from Benedict’s still-clenched fist. He poured two glasses before tipping his head toward the threadbare settee beside the window.
Benedict remained frozen. His extremities tingled in a numb sort of stupor as that word refused to abandon him. He was fond of Eliza, cared for her, could even see himself wed to her were he a different—better—man. But love?
He must have loved something. Once. His mother, surely, though he couldn’t remember.
Bella, probably—though those feelings were entirely opposite of the ones he associated with Eliza.
One of the governesses his father had failed to pay, perhaps.
Maybe that maid when he’d been too young and too naive, head full of hearts and flowers, only to find her in Father’s bed.
None of it compared to the peace he knew in Eliza’s touch, the heat when her lips met his, the ache in his chest from the knowledge that he would inevitably devastate her.
“Sit,” Wayland commanded, breaking Benedict from his wretched musings.
He stumbled forward and collapsed onto the chair diagonal from the older man before taking the proffered scotch.
“Drink.”
Benedict took a perfunctory sip, not tasting the liquor or noting the burn.
“Women will do that to you,” Wayland murmured, gaze distant.
“I know what it is to love someone you cannot have—to feel it down to the bone and know she will never be yours. When I thought hope was lost with Juliet—death would have been preferable. I would not wish that agony on my worst enemy. But you know I cannot allow this to continue.”
“I’ve already decided to end it.” Benedict’s stomach rolled at the realization that his first kiss with Eliza tonight was to be their last.
“What will your father—presuming, of course, that this scheme was your father’s idea—do next?”
“I don’t— This plan was the work of a decade. The drink and debt may take him before he forms another.”
“Or…”
Benedict’s head fell back, gaze catching on a crack along the ceiling. Perhaps it was structural. Perhaps it was weakening to such an extent that the entire house would fall upon him. It would be a blessed relief from the swells of wretched conflicting emotion that threatened to drown him.
“Or… desperation may leave him rash. It’s all he’s ever wanted—your humiliation. But he’s a cruel man, not a clever one. And it’s even money whether he’ll strike at you or me—for my failure.”
“And what would that look like?”
“He’ll probably try to rob you. Anything else requires too much forethought, and he’ll be foolhardy with desperation.”
“I meant for you,” Wayland clarified.
Benedict’s throat was knotted too tight for even the scotch to seep through. He made a pathetic attempt to clear it.
“No way to know. He’s too frail for—” the whip. “The estate is always in low water, so there’s little threat in that respect.”
Wayland nodded thoughtfully.
Another pitiful realization danced through Benedict’s head, his heart clenching. “Eliza… I should tell her—”
“Absolutely not!” Wayland interjected, voice sharp. “You’ll tell her nothing. This plan of yours would devastate her—I don’t need to tell you that. Sophie would’ve found it all a lark, but you chose my Lizzie.”
“Then what—”
“I’ll tell her I disapprove of you, gambling debts most likely. I’ll forbid her to see you.”
Disgust and relief warred for prominence in his gut.
Benedict knew in his bones that he would accede to Wayland’s wishes.
He would choose the easier path—the one that didn’t require him to watch Eliza’s trusting, upturned face crumple in hurt.
The respite Wayland offered—an escape he didn’t deserve—Benedict would snatch it with both hands.
Anything to spare himself the sight of her devastation because he was a pathetic, selfish fool.
“Why would you do that for me?” Benedict croaked.
“I’m not doing it for you. Lizzie will be furious with me, but she will never know that your interest was feigned—that she would never recover from. And her wrath, I can manage. But I could not bear the desolation the truth would unleash.”
Benedict nodded as though he understood that sort of selfless, paternal love. Even as he proved with that very nod that he did not and never would.
“You’ll stay away from her.” It was an order, not a question.
No singular nod delivered to the floor had ever cost Benedict as much. If he could not be gentleman enough, honorable enough, to confess his sins to Eliza directly—he would agree to this. Even as his heart tightened and refused to release.
“You’ll leave the city.”
Another nod.
“Every one of my enforcers knows you now. If they catch so much as a whisper of your name...”
Benedict did not require the totality of that threat.
At last, Benedict met Wayland’s penetrating gaze. Whatever Wayland read there was enough to assure him of Benedict’s sincerity.
“For whatever it’s worth—I imagine very little—I’m sorry for what my choices cost you.”
“Did you cheat him?” Benedict asked weakly, uncertain if the answer truly mattered any longer.
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Wayland said simply, firmly. Somehow, that singular syllable was more convincing than decades of his father’s assertions.
“Nor did I stop to think. But if I had… I wouldn’t have made a different choice, not then.
Now that I’ve seen what reckless gaming does to the children, the whole family… I make different choices now.”
“I suppose that’s something,” Benedict offered.
Wayland’s lips pressed together in a tight line, his head dipping only once. Between one blink and the next, Eliza’s father left the room, leaving Benedict to the rest of his wretched life.