Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Are you certain you will not join us tonight, Lizzie? I’m given to understand that the Marchants have a beautiful orangery,” Mama asked at supper the next evening.
Eliza was pleased with her ability to act as though her world had not been shattered—again—hours before.
Sophie had also managed an unaffected countenance throughout the day, covering for Eliza’s occasional slips into melancholy.
But her mother knew she would never turn down an offer to visit an orangery.
She might actually call a physician if Eliza declined.
Without an orangery or greenhouse of her own, Eliza was limited in her plantings. The temptation to experience the exotics of an orangery…
“You purposefully concealed this information until this exact moment so I would not have time to talk myself out of the temptation.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that accusation,” Mama said.
“Fine. I’ll go fetch a dress.”
“I’ll send May up.”
It was the work of no more than an hour before the Wayland ladies stepped inside the grand Marchant home beside her cousin, and aunt. Aunt Kate, the music lover in the family, would never turn down a performance. And Henry apparently knew the son—the cellist for the evening—from his school days.
The Marchants had come to prominence several centuries before, reflected in the opulence of their ballroom. Eliza could only imagine what treasures may be discovered in their orangery.
She impatiently took the seat on the aisle beside Sophie. “Do you suppose there will be a moment to visit the orangery?”
“I doubt it. You’re the only one who is quite so excited about it,” she whispered back as others took their seats. “Sneak out between movements. I’ll tell Mama you were unwell and went to the retiring room.”
“Miss Eliza,” a masculine voice interjected. “I am pleased to see you looking so well.”
“Lord Bellemere,” she said as she turned to find him behind her with his mother. “I am much improved and thought some air would do me good. I am pleased you found me.”
“Might we join you?”
“Of course,” she replied, feeling none of the warmth she managed to infuse in her tone.
“Leo,” Henry said, joining them. Leo turned, to greet him. “It’s good to see you. How have you been?”
Eliza shot him a grateful look from behind Leo’s back. His gaze met hers before returning to his friend, a hint of a smile at the corners of his lips.
Too soon, their hostess urged them to find their seats, and Eliza was pushed into the chair beside Leo—not on the aisle. With Henry and Aunt Kate now ousted to the row in front of them.
Leo leaned in to her side and whispered, “Have you had the pleasure of hearing ‘Oft in the Stilly Night’?”
She nodded, facing the front as the cellist—apparently the new earl—took his place.
He was a handsome man of no more than five and twenty who cut a fine figure and had dark hair.
A beautiful mezzo-soprano quickly joined him.
Eliza had heard of the young woman, Amalia Sogono, who was quite famous, but had never had the pleasure of seeing her perform.
The woman’s hair was fair, like spun gold, and her complexion held a natural flush.
When she opened her lips, her lilting high notes joining the earl’s rich cello, Eliza was momentarily stunned.
And she was not alone, she noted with some bemusement as Henry stiffened in front of her. In his profile, she saw his jaw fall. Sophie leaned in and nudged her, apparently also having noted the awestruck, foolish expression cross the angle of their cousin’s face.
She could not blame Henry. The woman was an exceptional talent, putting the songbirds to shame. The song was an unusual choice for such a musicale. When she heard voice and strings combined, the pairing left her struck.
“It is about the ache of lost innocence,” Leo whispered at her side.
She turned, nodding a bit dismissively before returning to the music.
“It evokes unspoken emotion.”
“Yes, thank you.” She did not reward him with a glance. That, at least, seemed to settle him, and he refrained from further commentary.
The song, though beautiful, was brief. In the midst of the applause that followed, she leaned over to Leo. “I’m feeling a little warm. I’ll step out into the retiring room for a moment.”
“Oh, I’ll accompany you—”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly trouble you. Besides, it wouldn’t do to have you lingering about outside. I’ll return shortly.” Eliza shot Sophie a significant glance. She returned it with a quick wink.
Eliza scurried down the aisle toward the drawing room serving the purpose for female guests. A man with a faint scar along his cheek stepped aside to let her pass and held the door open for her. As soon as she slipped passed him, the cello swelled once more.
She glanced about the hall and was relieved to find no one. She peered into the ladies’ retiring room, hoping for a convenient escape to the courtyard but saw nothing of interest.
A second room, the music room, revealed no such egress either. Finally, in the dining room, she found a set of French doors that led outside.
The moon was wide and bright, illuminating a darkened walking path. And there it was. The orangery.
A pale stone building with a curved entry surrounded by pillars, it was a restrained display of lavishness. The roofline was adorned with a stone balustrade and tall, arched windows lined every side. Eliza’s silver slippers crunched against the gravel path as she hurried to her destination.
She reached the door and tugged on the handle with hope in her heart. To her great delight, it opened freely. The rich, heady scent of jasmine mixed with the honeyed citrus of orange blossoms washed over her. She stepped inside, allowing the door to shut behind her.
The orangery was balmier than the night air, almost sticky.
The moon left the room cast in elegant shadows.
Her footsteps echoed on the stone floor as she spun in wonder, taking in the magnificent sight.
Tropical blooms she had only read of, could only dream of cultivating, lined the path.
Their massive leaves and bright petals hung above the passage in a breathtaking canopy of brilliance.
Breathless, she approached a large orange tree across from the entry and dipped her head to inhale the sweet essence.
The air rushed out from her lungs as the door opened behind her. She gasped and whirled around with a hand pressed to her breast.
A man was silhouetted in the moonlight—tall, broad, and perfect.
Benedict.
“What the devil are you thinking?” he asked, his voice a rich mahogany.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You abandoned your little suitor to sneak out here. Alone. At night. Without the slightest regard for your safety.”
Fury threatened to overtake Eliza, burning through her veins like acid. “I am quite certain the only danger here is you.”
He took a determined step forward. In response, she stepped back. The move was as instinctive as it had been on the dance floor; her body countered his without a thought.
“If that were the case—which I promise it is not—then, because of your foolish, selfish disregard for your own well-being, you’re now trapped out here. With me. Alone.” He punctuated that remark with another step forward. The back of her slipper found the edge of the pavement with her counterstep.
“My very worst nightmare,” she shot back as she switched tactics and pressed forward, driving him back.
“It’s not mine.”
“No, of course not, you’ve dreamed of seducing me for years. Tell me, do you suppose the satisfaction of destroying me, humiliating me, would have eclipsed the physical gratification?”
Benedict shifted closer, and her body betrayed her. Her foot refused the parallel step. “I would have taken no satisfaction in your ruin. I’d already decided I was incapable of it. The very idea sickened me.”
Eliza fought against the instant, agonizing wound his words caused—a knife to the heart. “The idea of touching me sickened you?” She loathed the edge of pathetic hurt she caught in the last words.
His too-large hands wrapped around her upper arms, trapping her in place as his gaze penetrated her own.
“That is not what I said. I said the idea of hurting you sickened me. Since meeting you, and not a single moment before, the idea of touching you, the memory of it, has sustained me, breathed new life into me, left me gasping your name as I spilled across my own chest.” His hips thrust into her belly, underscoring the salacious comment with the evidence of his physical reaction to her.
Eliza’s gasp echoed in the empty orangery before the exotic vegetation swallowed the sound whole.
“You wish to know how I would have seduced you?”
Her head bobbed without permission. The natural dance of their bodies betrayed her, overcame her will.
Benedict’s free hand caressed her cheek, his thumb sweeping across her lower lip, before drawing along her neck and down her shoulder to the hem of her glove.
He pulled it from her hand before dragging its twin free as well.
Pointedly, he ensured he had her gaze as he tucked them into a coat pocket.
“I was made to seduce you, Eliza. In your innocence, you cannot possibly imagine the ecstasy, the heights I would have brought you to. You would have relished every single second of your ruin, drowning in your own pleasure.”
Breath escaped her in a rush, an impossibly soft sound vanishing into the muggy air between them.
“I would have been so good for you, my little violet. There is nothing you could have asked of me that I wouldn’t have relinquished—even the instinctive demands of your body, the needs you don’t yet know how to give voice to—I would have met every single desire with the devotion you deserve.
And you do deserve it. You deserve to be revered.
I would have knelt at your feet, worshiping your sweet center, until time ceased to have meaning. ”
Benedict dropped to his knees in testimony, in supplication. His eyes were dark, blacker than the night sky. Ragged breaths scraped through parted lips, but Eliza wasn’t certain if the raspy, shredded sounds came from her chest or his.
Impossibly slowly, his long fingers caught the edge of her grey dress and tangled with the pearls dotting the hem.
“Let me. Please.” His voice cracked on the final word, and her gut clenched at the sound.
And then, precisely as he’d said, her head bobbed—her body understanding what her mind refused to comprehend.