Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The guilt, rage, and anguish churning in Benedict’s gut, swirling with too much scotch, hadn’t lessened in the slightest by sunrise.
It had been the work of but a few moments to pack his meager belongings, leaving him with little by way of occupation, save ruminating on his own hateful musings as the sun rose, its rays spilling along the worn floorboards of his rented room.
With every tick of the clock, he wondered if Wayland had done it yet. Had Eliza’s hopeful eyes dimmed? Or was she still wrapped safely in the bliss of sleep? What falsehood had the man provided on his behalf?
Benedict had been too thorough in his pursuit of Eliza to delude himself with the hope that she might be unaffected. She was too tender, too without guile for him to misconstrue—her affections had been the truest thing he’d ever known.
Eliza was perhaps the only person in his life whose motives he’d never had cause to question. Each touch he’d earned from her had been freely given without ulterior motive. And she had never, not for one second, feigned affection where she felt none.
Had his choices snuffed out that spark of genuine unreservedness? His fate was no less than he deserved, but his heart burned for her—she could not have deserved his hateful choices less.
The queen of guardedness and insincerity, his sister had surprisingly little to say on the subject of his departure when he announced it earlier that morning—not mentioning Wayland’s visit.
Instead, she had nodded with a pinched expression.
Her sharp steps creaking across the landing outside his tomb.
“—send this. Express, if you please?”
The familiar grunt of the butler would have made Benedict chuckle, were he capable of it at present.
Bella’s perfunctory knock followed. She did not wait for a response before striding inside.
She wore a goldenrod-yellow day frock, not her blue traveling dress.
Benedict wasn’t entirely certain what determined whether a dress was appropriate for travel, but he’d complained heartily about the modiste bill for that bit of frippery—enough that he remembered the gown well.
“I’d like to remain for the season,” she said simply.
“Without a chaperone?”
“I’m quite on the shelf. And I’ve my hired companion for appearances. I should prefer to be… elsewhere when you return to Blackwood without the girl.”
Benedict could hardly fault her for that desire. He, too, had no wish to be present when Father learned of his failure.
“Rent and other expenses are paid up for the season after your fight,” she added.
“You are to stay away from Eliza. And not the way you did last night, but truly.”
“As you say.”
“I am sorry, Bella. However little that might mean.”
She dipped her head in half-hearted acknowledgment. “Perhaps his fury in you will be so great that he will actually expire.”
An unexpected. involuntary snort escaped Benedict. “God willing,” he muttered, then toasted her with the dregs of his bottle before tipping it back to catch the remaining amber dribbles.
Silently, she moved to sit beside him on the wrinkled coverings of his bed. “Do you ever wonder who you could have been if he hadn’t made you what you are?”
“I cannot say that I have. It seems too beautiful a dream to consider. I’d never wish to wake.”
“I would be insipid,” she declared. “Frivolous and insipid. The sort of girl I love to mock.”
He could imagine that version of Bella. Every so often he caught glimpses of her—with her exacting travel frock and fastidiously turned-out bonnets. Apparently, there was still room left in his heart to mourn for the girl who never was.
“I would’ve been a wastrel.”
Her smile was soft, false. “No, I rather think you would’ve been a poet. Perhaps an artist. Something romantic.”
“Hardly,” he scoffed.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way, Benedict. I wish it could be different—we could be different. I should have liked to know the other version of my brother, wastrel or romantic.” Bella nudged his shoulder with her own.
“I wish you could have had the opportunity to be frivolous.”
She shook her head, banishing the wistful, fruitless dreams. “When will you depart?”
“With the morning post.”
“Do try to eat something before you leave. And wash. You smell like a distillery.”
“Yes, Bella,” he said with an indulgent note.
Benedict’s pace could be described only as a trudge. The weight of his remorse far exceeded that of his scuffed and scraped trunk as he dragged it along to the nearest coaching inn. His head throbbed and swirled in that state between drunk and stale. Sour perspiration clung to his temples.
He took comfort in the knowledge that his outward state could never hope to mirror his inner turmoil as he half-collapsed on the bench outside the inn.
Bella’s remaining gin had proved too tempting in the face of impending sobriety, but he lamented that choice now when presented with the prospect of traveling for days beside strangers on the rocking stagecoach.
Across the narrow street, he glimpsed a familiar face. In his present pathetic state, it took a moment to place the short, dark-skinned gentleman. The dunner from Wayland’s.
The man—Benedict couldn’t recall the name—dipped his head in acknowledgment from his mirroring bench.
Benedict had never entertained the notion that Wayland’s threat was a bluff. But seeing the evidence in the disapproving set of the man’s brow sent shame rising up his throat along with the damned gin.
Moments later, to his astonishment, Benedict felt better for having cast up his accounts—despite the disgusted expression on a passerby’s face.
Wayland’s enforcer waited, motionless, for more than an hour until Benedict had paid his fare and poured himself into the coach.
He sensed the man’s gaze long after they pulled away.
Benedict had made it as far as Exeter before stumbling into sobriety. He’d missed the coach at a stop twice and had been forced to wait for the next. At Gerrard’s Hall, a lack of funds left him low on drink. The week had not been Benedict’s finest.
Every mile the carriage took him from Eliza left him colder. The sensation began at the tips of his fingers and toes. Now, a mere day’s journey from home, the chill had spread and settled into his very marrow. The warmth of her touch was a vanishing dream.
As he froze, the rolling, churning knot in his gut grew larger.
Neither problem had been dimmed even slightly by drink.
The prospect of sobriety was dismal but necessary.
He hadn’t been lying to Wayland—his father wouldn’t leave the grudge where it lay.
And he was the first line of defense between his father and Eliza.
Benedict had little worry that Wayland could defend his own family. The man certainly had the resources.
But his absence—this meager protection was the only thing of value Benedict could ever provide Eliza.
His was a pitiful sacrifice—far less than she deserved, and nothing at all compared to what he wished. He could never offer her his name, his body, or his heart. But he could do this. He could keep her from Ambrose Sinclair’s wrath.
Before setting off on the final morning of his journey, Benedict had excised the last of the drink from his skin in the shared basin at the inn. Head tragically cleared, he knew would have to remain close to his father—no matter how unpleasant.
The last day of his journey was even less enjoyable than its predecessors. His head pulsated with the aftereffects of too much scotch. His stomach rolled with the anticipatory pangs that always accompanied the sight of his father. And his heart longed for Eliza’s soothing touch.
Far too soon, he breathed in the familiar scent of petrichor as the grumbling croaks of frogs and the rhythmic strums of crickets filled the air.
After departing the coach at the Bodmin inn—the one no one had ever bothered to name—he abandoned his trunk to the keeper’s son until he could return with a wagon.
It cost Benedict his last few pence. He was not the first Sinclair to lose his coin in the establishment, nor would he be the last. His father was a regular fixture, usually huddled around a table near the back with a few regulars.
Those men were at that moment clustered around a game of hazard at their usual table—Enys, Stark, Tonkin, and a man Benedict didn’t recognize. His father wasn’t among them.
The pretty barmaid with ginger hair—whom Benedict had once bedded—offered him a ride. Whether she meant on a horse or herself, Benedict wasn’t certain. He wasn’t interested in either. Instead, he began a lumbering plod down the road and through the moor toward Blackwood Grange.
In a certain light, the moor could be beautiful.
The gently sloping hills carved into mossy valleys by rock-speckled creeks kissed by the golden sun.
But today, the heavens must have felt it appropriate to reflect his mood—dusky and damp with inconvenient, craggy footpaths dotted with muggy puddles and downed oak branches to stumble over.
One tree in particular would need to come down as soon as Benedict had the misfortune to sober up.
Each stumbled step took Benedict closer to a conversation he’d never thought he would have. Failure had never been an option.
Not that he considered his weeks in London a failure—his heart refused to allow him to label Eliza as such. But his father would. His father would consider his empty handed return to be the ultimate betrayal.
Too soon, the sharp grey angles of Blackwood Grange pierced the horizon.
Like the moor it inhabited, the house could have been attractive.
The central stone tower rose above the side wings, flanked by elegant spires on the steeply pitched roof.
But it rested before a perpetually tranquil pond, and the house’s reflection on the stagnate waters lent it an eerie countenance.