Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
How many times had he imagined hearing those exact words? They’d certainly never been in this circumstance.
Benedict complied with Eliza’s order and lifted the shirt up and over his head before untangling the ruined bandaging Wayland had assisted with earlier. Once free of the fabric, he found Eliza standing before him, eyes wide with a peculiar expression.
“I can— You do not need to—”
She shot him a look, and he ceased his protesting.
“Sit,” she commanded, her voice wrecked. Benedict’s heart pinched at the sound—evidence of his failures. “Straddle the chair?”
He obeyed, biting his lip as he offered her his back.
A series of hacking coughs followed her gasp. He peered over his shoulder to examine her. “Are you well?”
Eliza nodded and made a “turn around” gesture with one finger.
He did so, wrapping his arms around the back of the wooden chair. It was a necessary effort to keep from bolting out the door.
A soft breath danced across the sensitive, tender skin.
Then, because she was Eliza and always knew what he needed before he did, she pressed a gentle kiss to the base of his neck.
Benedict’s eyes squeezed shut, trying to keep the tears at bay.
One overwrought display was humiliating enough, but two in as many minutes?
“He tried to tear your wings off,” Eliza whispered, seemingly to herself.
“What?”
Her curls brushed against her cheek when she shook her head—Benedict could picture it in his mind. “Nothing, just… nothing.”
Water droplets tinked back into the basin as she dampened a cloth, then wrung out the excess, and Benedict tensed, preparing for the agony that awaited him.
Instead, because she was Eliza, her touch was softer than a whisper. There was pain—it would be impossible for there to not be—but she ghosted the fabric over his wounds with such... love. It was the only word for the care with which she handled him.
Methodically, she worked around the worst of his cuts, cleaning the blood and soot away. With each swipe of her cloth, she stitched him back together.
Benedict didn’t know when he had fallen to pieces—when they pulled his father’s body out of the flames, when he’d collapsed in Eliza’s arms, her single sob that last night in the garden, when he’d lost his mind and kissed her in his bedroom, the moment he met her?
Perhaps it had happened decades before, the morning after Benedict watched his father attempt to drag his mother down to hell alongside him—the first time he’d consciously, intentionally accepted the lie that had shaped his entire life.
What he did know was that every one of Eliza’s brushes against the ripped, ruined flesh of his back left him raw, trembling, and whole.
When she noted his shudders, Eliza pulled her hands away. “I’m sorry. We’ll give you a break.”
He leaned back on his seat, his legs still wrapped around the backrest. He caught her fingers midair where they fluttered, lost. “You could never hurt me.”
Her laugh was all breath. “I could—I’m about to, in fact. Where do you suppose they keep the spirits?” she rasped.
“West’s room, most like,” he said as he pointed to the room off the living area with two fingers. “Try under the bed.”
“Oh, that West! I knew the name was familiar,” she said.
“Don’t move.” A kiss dropped onto the top of his head without warning.
His heart skipped at the gesture. Every one of her prior touches could be excused to fright, her general kindness.
That one, though not strictly romantic, was nearer to it.
Benedict fought to remind himself that it likely meant nothing.
No one, not even Eliza, could forgive a betrayal as grave as his.
Her abduction, abuse at his father’s hands, and the fire—had left her overwhelmed—no tender kiss between them in this moment would extend beyond.
Whatever softness she offered now could not be mistaken for forgiveness—not yet.
Eliza stepped back into the room holding a bottle of some sort of spirit. Her brow furrowed as she examined something in her other hand. It took a second for Benedict to recognize it as his broken pot.
“A violet,” she ground out with a little smile on her lips.
Benedict luxuriated in the sight—the first breath he’d had to take her in since the masquerade.
She was utterly filthy. The fire had singed some of the lower petals on her gown.
She’d taken some care washing her face and her hands, but every other inch of her was caked in soot.
Her hair, those beautiful wild curls, might never untangle again.
But she was safe, and perfect, and thrilled to be holding a little violet—his violet—in her palm.
And he was in love with her.
He’d thought it more than once, but now he knew with no doubt. Benedict was entirely capable of love—overflowing with it, in fact. All for this lovely, tender woman.
She brought the flower over for his inspection and held it before him as she set the… absurdly old gin—ugh—down on the table.
“It’s a fen violet, native to this area. I’ve never seen one in person before.”
Benedict bent down to breathe in the sweet scent, the essence of Eliza filling his senses. “Lovely,” he proclaimed.
“You cannot smell a thing,” she insisted with a grin. Primly, she bopped him on the nose with her index finger. Demonstratively, she pulled it away, displaying a soot-coated finger.
His brow furrowed. “I was wearing a rag. I’m almost certain that was already on your finger. But my sense of smell is perfectly intact, and it smells like you.”
“Fen violets don’t even have a scent.”
Benedict frowned, remembering the moment he breathed in the delicate perfume that morning in the greenhouse. The breath that transported him to Eliza’s arms. He shook his head.
“Smells like you,” he repeated.
“I promise you, it doesn’t.” Her smile was indulgent, though.
He caught her waist and tugged her closer, though the chair back remained between them. Nothing on earth could have stopped him from trailing his nose along the skin of her throat. There, faint, nearly choked out by the cloying scent of ash, was the airy, powder scent of violets, of Eliza.
“Precisely the same.”
The giggle that escaped her, still a little ragged, brought a smile to his lips. “If you insist,” she conceded. “Now, I need to finish with your back. Are you ready?”
Was he prepared for the agonizing burn of alcohol on his broken skin? Not remotely. Was he desperate for Eliza’s soft hands on him? Always. He nodded and turned, offering her his back.
The gin sloshed in the bottle as she poured some onto a clean rag. The familiar scent of resin and pine never made it to his nostrils though—perhaps Eliza was right, and the smoke was affecting his sense of smell. Well, he wouldn’t lament that, not for the gin, at least.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured before she pressed the rag to his torn flesh. Benedict caught his lip between his teeth to trap the hiss of pain.
Eliza worked fast, but with her usual gentle touch.
“So,” she began, attempting to distract him. “Is West the sort of man who appreciates a wildflower? Or does that violet belong to someone else?”
Benedict’s shoulders fell. It wasn’t as though he was trying to hide it from her. It was only that the desperation with which he’d cared for and clung to that flower was perhaps a little unhinged. “Whoever it is, they did a beautiful job of caring for it.”
“Effie,” he grunted.
“And was it always Effie’s?”
“You know it wasn’t.”
Eliza rewarded his honesty with another kiss on the top of his shoulder. “Why do you have a violet, Benedict?” Her little hand slid around to his chest, chest making its way to the other shoulder.
Benedict dropped his lips to the crease of her elbow, pressing them there, breathing in the scent that may only linger in his mind.
“Because it was the closest thing I could have to you,” he mumbled into her soft, filthy flesh. The words spilled out before he could stop them.
Instead of a reproach, her hand continued its journey, tracing up his neck to cup his cheek. She turned his head to face her. Benedict’s gaze caught hers, searching for something, for any evidence that she wanted this, a future together, the way he did.
Eliza’s dark gaze flicked to his lips, drawing Benedict to her like a fish on a hook. His eyes fluttered shut as he closed the gap, less than a breath between them.
Her fingers found his lips and pressed the tips there. Benedict blinked his eyes open, confusion and heartache setting in. Her other hand, still on his cheek, kept him in place when he tried to back away.
“You don’t want to kiss me right now.”
“Oh, I very much do.”
“I promise you don’t—it has been a very long few days and I’ve had no access to tooth powder.”
“I don’t care, Eliza,” he growled.
“But I do. I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.”
He wanted to argue, to beg, to tell her he’d take her in any state she offered.
Benedict grumbled, pressing his forehead to hers before an idea came to him.
“Stay right there. Don’t move, don’t even breathe.
” He rose, only briefly mourning the loss of her touch.
In his eagerness, he tripped up the stairs to the elder Weston’s bedroom.
There, he located the basin the Westons used for washing up.
A quick search revealed a jar of tooth powder.
Successful, he stumbled back down the stairs, clutching his bounty. He opened the jar and thrust it in her direction.
“Benedict,” she laughed.
“You can rinse with the gin. I won’t even complain that it tastes vile,” he offered, which he rather thought was generous, as gin was truly vile. It was the sort Bella used to drink before he’d taken to the ring and they could afford better. “Please, Eliza?”
She softened, then reached for the jar at the precise moment they both heard it.
“Oh, yes, the house is just right through here. You can wash up and Effie’ll make you both something to eat.” Benedict recognized the voice of West’s father—quite a lot louder than usual. Much as he cursed the timing, he appreciated the warning.
Benedict groaned, his head falling back to stare at the ceiling. “I need a shirt,” he muttered, then shut himself in West’s room as the knob turned on the front door.
Silently, he cursed every deity he could name and a few he made up for good measure as he pressed a palm against his too-interested cock.
Glancing around for his bearings, he happened to cast his eyes upon a mirror and laughed. He looked positively unhinged. Every inch of him soot-streaked, save the bottom half of his face and some of his torso. No wonder Eliza hadn’t swooned at the sight of him.
He drew an exhausted hand over his face before opening one of West’s drawers at random.
The first held nothing but a bundle of letters and trinkets, but the next held clean linen shirts.
Benedict would owe his friend a new wardrobe at the end of this.
He tugged it over his still filthy frame.
As eager as he was to be shirtless in Eliza’s presence, that desire did not extend to her father.
Satisfied that he wasn’t about to scandalize the man he hoped, though certainly in vain, might be his father-in-law one day, he stepped out into the main room, only to find four pairs of eyes upon him—though only one so lovely as to steal his breath.
“I see the freshening up has gone well,” Effie said from her resting place by the stove.
“I’ll wash in the pond,” he announced, then strode from the room before Effie or Weston offered any more amusing observations for the crowd.
The dawn air smacked into him as he strode toward the water. There, he scrubbed at his face and torso.
She had held him, tended him, let him glimpse what their life could be—but she hadn’t forgiven him—not truly, not yet.
Until she spoke those words in the harsh light of morning, he had no right to believe her tenderness was anything but kindness and borrowed hope.