Chapter 3 #2
Looking up and perceiving herself under observation by both the Duke of Northwick and her aunt, Lady Louisa blushed charmingly.
He smiled back without any untoward intent, thinking only how preferable he presently found her rosy-cheeked face to the practiced smiles and calculated flirtations of the denizens of London’s drawing rooms.
“Bounce, bounce, bounce!” chanted little Ezra, until Benedict sighed and bounced him yet again on the seat of the carriage.
Childish giggles filled the carriage, prompting sweet peals of laughter from Lady Louisa on the seat opposite. It seemed to Benedict that this game had been going on for ever, although he knew from the ringing of local bells that they could only have been on the road for an hour.
As soon as the bouncing paused, Ezra reached out and seized a handful of Benedict’s stock in his chubby little fist.
“Oh, Ezra! Do not do that to His Grace,” Lady Louisa cried out, reaching forward to loosen the child’s hand. “Dear me, I am sorry, Your Grace. He wants so much to play with you and there seems to be something about your collar that fascinates him.”
“Likely the shiny pins,” muttered Benedict and his companion looked alarmed and pulled back the child’s hands more firmly, despite his protests.
“No, no, Ezra. They will be sharp. You mustn’t touch them. Come here and sit with me. Aren’t you tired, little man?”
“I want to bounce!” insisted the energetic child of almost three years, shaking his head vigorously at any suggestion of sleepiness.
Lady Louisa took a small, brightly painted tin solder from her pocket and offered it to the boy, at least temporarily distracting him from the bouncing game.
“Ezra may feel otherwise but I know I’m exhausted by this game already,” remarked Benedict with a yawn. “I don’t know how Damien and Seraphine do this every single day.”
“Children may tire the body, but they gladden the heart,” replied Lady Louisa with a smile that seemed to bring sunshine into her sparkling hazel eyes.
“Do they indeed?” Benedict retorted. “So far this morning, this young chap has been having a greater effect on my collar than my heart.”
“Surely not,” she objected, seeming genuinely dismayed by this suggestion. “Ezra is the dearest little boy. You cannot really think otherwise.”
“Oh, I like him well enough,” Benedict admitted, ruffling the boy’s hair and then regretting it as he again demanded to be bounced. “But I am glad that fatherhood falls to Damien’s lot and not mine.”
“You have never wished to marry and have children?” asked Lady Louisa, her eyes growing large and curious. “I thought everyone wanted that, as soon as they meet their true love. I suppose some are like Aunt Beatrice and suffer bereavement before they can start a family but that is different.”
Her statements were so innocent and so earnestly spoken that it was hard for Benedict not to laugh. With an effort, he kept his face straight, focusing his eyes on a single honey-gold ringlet that had escaped its pinning and tumbled down the exposed neck above her light-blue summer dress.
“There are many different types of people in the world, Lady Louisa. You will find that some have very different ambitions and lifestyles to the ideal you describe.”
“What do you mean?” she asked him. “What else could someone aspire to other than love, companionship and children? I suppose there is money, of course, but that is only what we must have to live.”
At these unworldly assertions, Benedict could not help laughing despite the reproachful expression he soon read on Lady Louisa’s face.
“Forgive me, Lady Louisa,” he said quickly. “I do not deride your ideas but I think perhaps they belong more in novels and sentimental poetry than in real life.”
“I don’t know how you can say that. The Duke and Duchess of Wexford fell madly in love and have been married happily for six years. Surely the felicity of our mutual friends is proof enough that I am right.”
Benedict shook his head.
“They have been very lucky,” he corrected the young woman. “More often marriage is a practical arrangement between families, and love only a complicating factor in speeding or slowing a suitable match.”
“That sounds to me like nothing but cynicism,” stated Lady Louisa.
“Well, all talk of true love sounds to me like nothing but romantic delusion,” Benedict offered in return.
As they batted these ideas back and forth between themselves in gentle argument, Benedict found his eyes drawn again and again to that one ringlet brushing her neck whenever the carriage swayed or whenever it was caught up in the breeze from the slightly ajar window.
“Surely…”
Lady Louisa’s next words were cut off in a violent lurch of the carriage and a small cry of fear from her lips. Throwing himself forward, Benedict instinctively put his arms about both the young woman and child on the seat opposite and braced his body for a crash which thankfully didn’t come.
Slowly, he sat back, realizing that the vehicle had safely come to a halt, although at an angle. The scent of woodland violets was in his nostrils and he realized it was Lady Louisa’s scent. He wished briefly to inhale it again but pulled himself together firmly.
Lady Louisa looked at him with frightened eyes as she cradled the confused-looking Ezra in her arms.
“All will be well,” he assured them both and was amazed by how gratified he felt at her trusting expression in response.
Opening the nearest carriage door, Benedict leaned out.
“What is to do?” he called to the coachman.
“It’s the wheel, Your Grace,” the coachman told him, already down from his seat and examining the damage together with the footman who was also accompanying them. “I think it was caught in that rut and wrenched.”
“Can it be fixed?” Benedict enquired, jumping down from the carriage now and closing the door carefully behind him. “Or will we have to send to the nearest village for assistance?”
“Yes, I can fix that,” the coachman opined after a few further moments of investigation. “There’s only the pin to straighten and then I’ll refit the whole wheel again. It’s not bent too badly, thankfully, and we have the tools. We should be on the road again within the hour, I reckon.”