Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Good Lord, Fanny and Ezra have been well-spoiled here at Rosemere, I can see,” laughed the Duke of Wexford as he and the Duke of Northwick went into the library together after luncheon, the ladies and children having all retired to rest. “They have taken over the place.”
“I think there are still two chairs over by that window we might use,” replied Benedict, smiling around at the complex construction that had occupied Lady Louisa and the children that morning. “Everything else has been absorbed into the castle.”
Damien dropped into one of the comfortable leather chairs with a long sigh of satisfaction.
“How good it feels to rest on something that is neither moving nor hired for the night,” he said, extending his legs and relaxing.
“I have been on the road non-stop for the last four days, and I believe you owe me some further explanation. I could barely keep Seraphine back long enough for our belongings to be packed.”
“Ah, the moment for explanations,” Benedict sighed in turn, going to stand beside the window rather than taking his own seat opposite his friend.
In his letter to Damien, he had indeed promised to explain when they saw one another and now the time was here.
“So, you are betrothed to Lady Louisa Ascot,” Damien began for him. “That was not quite the result I expected when I asked you to escort this little family party to Rosemere, Benedict.”
“No, it was not what I expected either, nor what I intended,” responded Benedict. “With no disrespect to Lady Louisa, it was not an outcome I had anticipated.”
“Yet you are now only a few weeks away from your wedding, a day many thought would never come. Out with it, man! What brought this about?”
“Honour,” Benedict mused, “duty, and…a damnable lack of self-control on my part.”
“Benedict,” said Damien very seriously. “What did you…”
“I kissed Louisa, that was all,” interrupted Benedict before his friend could start imagining some nefarious seduction of the unworldly young woman. “We kissed, and we were seen, by Lady Esher and two servants. So, you see, there was really nothing else to be done.”
“You bloody fool!” his friend castigated him, nonetheless. “Of all the women you might have chosen to play around with, why Lady Louisa? Unworldly doesn’t begin to do her justice, and you kissed her?!”
Benedict nodded. Louisa had kissed him too, but not until he had awakened that fire in her. He felt as responsible for rousing her desire as for failing to control his own.
“Louisa is very beautiful and I ought to have kept my distance,” he acknowledged. “I meant to, but we kept being thrown together, and I found her more and more…fascinating, simply because she is so different to every other lady I have ever known.”
“You ought to have looked and not touched,” Damien pronounced, stating only what Benedict already knew. “Now you must marry.”
“As honor demands,” agreed Benedict, now turning to face his friend. “We have discussed the matter and Louisa and I understand one another. This may not be what either of us wanted, but I believe we can find some arrangement that works for both of us.”
“Some arrangement?!” queried Damien, incredulous. “Do you have any idea how that young woman feels about marriage? She believes it is something almost sacred and that love conquers all. This kind of talk will break her heart.”
“I know Louisa is a dreamer with some very unrealistic ideas about love and marriage,” Benedict replied, smiling sadly as he recalled some of their conversation during the journey. “I cannot give her those dreams.”
“What about new dreams, better dreams?” his friend questioned him. “A marriage should be built on its own foundations in any case, not imaginary ones from fairy stories.”
“Unless you are talking of the bedroom, I do not believe I have any dreams to offer a woman, Damien. I must be honest with Louisa on that point. I did not grow up in a happy family with a happy marriage at its heart and do not believe I could build one. You know that.”
“Is this is about what happened to your father and mother all those years ago, Benedict? Are you really still letting your past dictate your future?”
Benedict turned away again. How could he possibly expect Damien to understand? Damien knew only the version of the double tragedy that appeared in newspapers and was whispered about among schoolboys behind their masters’ backs.
Damien could never imagine being a child trying to protect his beloved mother against a raging monster who was also his father, and for so many years.
He could not understand the depths of despair from having failed to save her.
It was not only his parents’ deaths that had scarred and warped Benedict, it was their whole lives together.
“It does not presently feel as though my future is in my hands,” Benedict returned with forced evenness, gazing out of the window.
Keen to leave this conversation behind, his eyes settled on a still figure that moved steadily along one of the more distant paths and then paused there. Benedict could not make out much of the figure at this distance except to note that it appeared to be a tall, thin man.
There was something in the figure’s dress and attitude that made Benedict sure it was not a gardener nor gamekeeper going about estate business.
His skin tingled with the threat of physical danger in a way he had rarely felt in adulthood.
Likely, Damien had touched a nerve with his questions and Benedict was responding to that as much as to the figure on the path.
“Pass me that telescope, would you?” he asked his friend, gesturing to the window seat at the next window a few feet away, not wanting to take his own eyes from the stranger.
“Why?” Damien questioned, intrigued but slightly impatient too. “What is so interesting out there that you escape from our conversation into examining it more closely?”
Benedict only held out his hand until the telescope was placed into it. Peering into the lens and focusing it on the resting figure, he felt a strong jolt of alarm and then anger.
“The bloody cheek of the man!”
With the aid of the telescope, Benedict was now able to make out that the man outside was somewhere in his forties with blonde hair and a thin, sculpted face. He was not only looking towards the house, but actually doing so through a pocket telescope of his own - a deliberate and intentional spy!
“What? Let me see,” Damien said, coming now to stand beside him and taking the instrument.
“Standing there, spying on Rosemere, who the hell does he think he is?” fumed Benedict.
“Not one of the staff then?” Damien remarked, returning the telescope to Benedict and not seeming to feel anywhere near as troubled by the sight as Benedict.
“No. I rather suspect it is a neighbor, and that he is not someone who ought to be creeping around a widow’s estate and spying on the household. I ought to go outside now and have it out with him.”
“Dear me,” responded Damien, seeming taken aback by Benedict’s reaction. “You had better inform Lady Esher before you do anything rash, Benedict. Maybe there is an innocent explanation, in any case. He might be a naturalist looking out for birds and that path a local right-of-way.”
“Pigs might fly,” Benedict remarked cynically, his narrowed eyes still on the apparent trespasser, and his blood still up.
“I gather that you know this man?”
“I have come to know his handwriting rather too well since I’ve been here,” admitted Benedict. “Apparently this man once had some vague hopes towards Lady Louisa. I shall tell you a little more presently, but let us talk over our guns. I have a mind for some target practice this afternoon.”
Damien smiled and nodded his agreement.
“Very well, I am intrigued, but I hope you are not planning to shoot a man only because he might be spying on your betrothed?”
He could see that the question was meant largely in jest, but Benedict still felt the tensing of all his muscles and the increasing drumbeat of his heart in response.
Pulling the bell to summon Harper and order the guns prepared, he hoped that the truth of his most vicious and primal instincts would not show on his face.
The Duke of Northwick knew very well that he likely could kill a man who merely threatened Lady Louisa’s safety. Whether he had intended to kill his father or not, he would always regret that he had not shoved the brute away from his mother only a few seconds earlier, before that fatal blow…
Next time, if ever there was a next time, he would not be too slow to act. Love was not within Benedict’s gift, but Lady Louisa could count on his protection.
“No, I only plan to scare this fellow off with the sound of shooting,” Benedict assured Damien, slipping the telescope into his pocket.
“In any case, if his presence is innocent, he will likely be gone by the time we get near him. We might bag some rabbits down near that woodland too, and do the gamekeepers a favor.”
“You should have seen him jump at your first shot,” laughed Damien as they returned from the woodland a few hours later. “I’m glad I had the telescope to watch at close quarters, for I have scarcely seen such good comedy even on the London stage.”
“Good,” pronounced Benedict, his gun now disarmed and slung over his shoulder. “We have done good work this afternoon in keeping down the vermin at Rosemere, my friend.”
Having obtained a physical description of Lord Ashbourne from Harper earlier, he was now sure that this was the man lurking so suspiciously on the Rosemere path today. If so, Benedict wanted him frightened. He wanted him very frightened indeed.
“Ashbourne dropped his own spyglass on the ground and had to scrabble about to find it and then crawled into the bushes for shelter, like a hunted fox.”
“He can certainly run fast enough for a man of his age,” reflected Benedict with satisfaction, having taken the telescope from Damien after his first shot so that his friend might shoot at the rabbits too. “I hope he will think better of repeating such behavior in future.”
“If he doesn’t, there’s something very wrong with him,” responded Damien cheerfully.
Benedict nodded, suddenly less optimistic about this afternoon’s sport having been an end to Lord Ashbourne’s unfortunate behavior. He resolved to speak to Lady Esher on the subject.
There was something very wrong with that man, wasn’t there? Who knew what he might do next?