Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“Good morning, Lady Esher, Lady Louisa. Ah, you have a guest.”
Three heads spun about or turned sharply as the Duke of Northwick spoke.
When had he even entered the room and how much had he heard?
Louisa supposed that the door had never been closed after Lady Huxley arrived.
For all she knew, he might have been standing in the doorway, or listening in the hall beyond, for the entire awful conversation.
Tall, dark, handsome and with an air of confident assurance, the duke now stood before them with folded arms, an expression of polite expectancy on his face. With very little effort, the room and the conversation seemed to be entirely his.
Benedict…
Louisa could not say his name aloud, but murmured it in her head and found that it soothed her spirit. Despite all her fears and reservations, she was relieved at the duke’s appearance at this moment and could not deny it to herself.
“Your Grace, this is our neighbor, Lady Huxley,” Aunt Beatrice made the necessary introduction very civilly, as though she had not been about to descend into a outright row with the lady in question. “Lady Huxley, this is the Duke of Northwick.”
The duke bowed his dark head in response to Lady Huxley’s curtsy and murmur of greeting. Then, less expectedly, he strode around the table and gently raised Louisa’s hand, bowing over it in what any stranger might take for a gesture of affection and respect.
"My apologies for my lateness this morning, Lady Louisa.”
Louisa stared back at him, utterly confused, but managing to nod. He was behaving as though this was their normal and expected mode of greeting, and he expected everyone else to go along with it.
What does he mean by this?
Taking a seat at Louisa’s side, the duke reached for the coffee pot and turned his attention to their neighbor.
“Forgive me, Lady Huxley, I could not help overhearing some of your conversation from the hallway as I came in,” he stated casually and Louisa saw Lady Huxley’s eyes open wide in surprise at this lightly-spoken but very direct confrontation.
“I see,” she responded with a stiff smile, her eyes narrowing as she tried to gauge what manner of man she was dealing with.
Louisa wished Lady Huxley luck with that and did not rate her chances highly. She herself had not yet worked out Benedict Hale after several weeks of his company.
“Yes, and what I heard surprised me,” he continued in a conversational tone, with the slightest hint of amusement.
“I had no idea that in Cumbria one’s neighbors might take it upon themselves to criticize a gentleman for enjoying an evening conversation with his betrothed in the drawing room of her home, with the approval of her aunt.
What a shocking lapse in my understanding of propriety. "
Louisa heard her aunt make a sound between chuckling and incredulity, as Lady Huxley’s smile disappeared entirely. Her own heart had stopped on hearing one particular word cross his lips…
"Betrothed?" Lady Huxley repeated, her brow knitting in perplexity at a development she had clearly not anticipated any more than Louisa or her aunt.
Louisa swallowed and looked to the duke, feeling as though she had been pushed onstage in a play without knowing even what role she ought to be playing, never mind the lines in the script.
Benedict met her astonished gaze with unwavering certainty that soothed her in one direction while stirring her in another.
“Indeed, Lady Huxley,” he confirmed. “I had intended to wait some weeks more before making a public announcement.
Some dear friends of ours are presently holidaying in Scotland and we wanted them to join us in celebration the engagement.
It appears that local society in Cumbria has forced my hand rather sooner. "
“But it cannot be!” blurted out their now-discomposed neighbor. “My cousin has always intended…”
“I have never met your cousin, Lady Huxley,” pointed out the duke, entirely unruffled, “and I believe Lady Louisa knows him only slightly. If Lord Ashbourne failed to offer his hand at some earlier point, that is his affair. Lady Louisa is engaged to me now. All is fair in love and war, as they say.”
Lady Huxley goggled at him. Whatever she had expected to find when she came marching over to Rosemere this morning, it was not this self-assured nobleman laying claim to Louisa’s hand.
Lady Esher and Louisa herself were only slightly less astonished although they managed to hide it from Lady Huxley.
“I must go home at once,” the blonde woman announced, putting her gloves back on with far less deliberation than she had taken them off. “I am most surprised by all this, Lady Esher. I did think that matters were arranged between our families, even if they were moving slowly.”
“Thank you for calling, Lady Huxley,” Aunt Beatrice responded blandly, rising and going to the bell pull to summon the butler. “Harper will see you out.”
“I shall be writing to my cousin at once,” added Lady Huxley as though this was a threat to be feared. “I expect Edmund will be most unhappy. Good day to you all.”
Louisa shivered again as she watched their neighbor go. While she barely remembered Lord Ashbourne personally, and was still amazed to find he had thought even dimly of making her an offer, she was still beginning to dislike the man, only from Lady Huxley’s mentions of him.
A large warm hand came to rest over hers on the table and Louisa turned to look at the man beside her, still glad of his presence and still bewildered by his behavior.
“All will be well,” he said softly, squeezing her hand and making her feel for at least very short moment as though it really might be true.
When Aunt Beatrice turned back to the table again and raised an eyebrow at the sight of their hands conjoined on the table, the duke did not pull back. Instead, he met her aunt’s gaze steadily.
“Lady Esher, with your permission, I would like to walk in the gardens with Louisa – alone. There are things that must be said this morning and they are best said privately.”
Things that must be said…
Given that the Duke of Northwick had already begun telling people that they were betrothed, was this his way of referring to some sort of grudging proposal of marriage that neither of them really wanted?
Such a thought was bitter to Louisa, who had dreamed of grand romantic gestures and a heroic rescuer kneeling before her to offer his hand by the edge of the sea, or in some other dramatic landscape. Not like this…
“Of course, Your Grace,” replied Aunt Beatrice after some moments of consideration.
Like Louisa, she might have considered refusing, but then accepted that there was no real choice.
“Shall we?” Benedict asked Louisa, offering his arm after receiving her aunt’s approval. “Or would you like to finish your breakfast first?”
“I couldn’t eat anything,” she replied with resignation, getting to her feet. “I had no appetite even before Lady Huxley arrived.”
“If your neighbor returns, with or without her cousin, I would be glad to deal with her,” noted Benedict.
In a grim way, he had enjoyed that confrontation with Lady Huxley. The breakfast room door having been left open, Benedict had overheard the conversation from the moment Louisa had disavowed any understanding on her side with the dilatory Earl of Ashbourne.
“Thank you,” she returned quietly, and laid her hand on his arm, sending an unexpected frisson through his body with this simple and unassuming touch. “Lady Huxley’s visit this morning was unexpected and she…took me by surprise.”
“I gathered that, and you need not thank me, Louisa,” Benedict told her as they proceeded into the hallway. “I know my duty.”
Speaking of duty, Benedict had intended to come straight into breakfast and lay his cards on the table in front of the Rosemere ladies.
He had lain awake for most of the night, waiting for the dawn.
It was not a decision that he agonized over because it was already made it in the moments after the drawing room door opened last night.
Benedict had known then that that he would offer his hand in marriage to Louisa.
It was the only honorable course, regardless of his feelings about matrimony, or hers.
This morning, he had meant to be calm, businesslike and reassuring in proposing a small, quick wedding, expecting that Louisa would wary of him personally and frightened for her future.
Lady Huxley’s presence had thrown Benedict’s rational plans somewhat.
Her assertions of some claim to Louisa on behalf of this absentee cousin, had particularly stirred Benedict’s blood.
How dare these people so blatantly and roughly question the virtue of a sensitive young woman to whom they had no real connection?
Lady Louisa Ascot was not some young mare at the horse sales to be critically examined and haggled over. She deserved better than Lady Huxley and Lord Ashbourne. Frankly, she deserved far better than Benedict, but he had only himself to offer.
They walked through the house and towards the conservatories where the doors to the gardens would be open, temporarily silent but both on the edge of speaking.
“I must ask you why, Your Grace,” Louisa put to Benedict at last. “Why did you tell Lady Huxley that we were betrothed? The servants will have overheard too and it will be out in public already, just like…”
Shyly, she dropped her words and her eyes from him, but the sentence was easy to complete in his head. Just like last night, and their ill-advised embrace in the drawing room…
“It was best to get word of our marriage out as quickly as possible,” Benedict told her.
“That is the only way to scotch whatever rumors are already running after last night. If we had waited a week, the stories could have been entirely out of control and the wedding only a coda to the destruction of your reputation.”
Louisa’s pretty face had crumpled as he talked and she seemed on the verge of tears. Benedict knew her distress was all his fault, one way or another, but what he had said to her was still true. There was no point in comforting lies or half-truths at a time of crisis.
“The servants are all looking at me so oddly today,” she burst out suddenly, stopping and putting her hands to her face. “Oh, I cannot bear it!”
Belatedly, Benedict realized that there did seem to be more whispering maids and footmen about the place generally this morning.
Curtains twitched at windows as the left the house and once they reached the rose gardens, several gardeners seemed to to take a greater interest in the flower beds nearby than was strictly necessary.
Benedict sighed, knowing that this was all inevitable, even if very uncomfortable for such a sheltered young woman as Lady Louisa Ascot.
“Your servants are curious and it will pass,” he told Louisa.
“I am accustomed to people pointing and staring at me and know what I’m talking about.
Let your servants watch us walking together.
If we give them the act they’re expecting, they can confirm what they’ve heard and will grow bored soon enough. ”
When Benedict offered his arm again, Louisa took it, seeming to accept the wisdom of his advice.
Once more, he felt the satisfaction of her hold on him.
While he spoke about putting on an act, and was certainly familiar with such mild dissimulation, nothing of this situation felt staged.
It never did with Lady Louisa Ascot, and he suspected it never could.
This is real. Louisa is real…
Such thoughts shook him and disturbed the equanimity he felt bound to preserve even at such times as this.
“Your Grace,” his companion began.
“Benedict,” he corrected her with a wry smile. “I think we are far beyond the formalities now.”
“Benedict,” Louisa said hesitantly, looking into his face with those bewitchingly open hazel-green eyes.
The sound of his name on her lips touched Benedict like a warm breeze, soothing and exhilarating all at once. How wonderful it would be to hear his name spoken like that every day for the rest of his life… For a short moment, all was well, until he remembered that it wasn’t, and never could be.
“We must talk about what happens next,” he said heavily.
Louisa nodded, apparently with no more enthusiasm for the subject than he felt himself.