Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
The village church was crowded. And all eyes were focused on the newly married couple seated so prominently in the first pew. Pillars of the local society that they were, he thought bitterly.
Selby had expected Harriet’s marriage to diminish her. Instead, it had done precisely the opposite. There was a brightness to her, her skin glowing and her eyes glimmering with something that he could not name.
She had entered the church upon Benedict Denham’s arm with her head high and her expression composed, wearing the dark green cloak Selby had seen upon her many times before.
Nothing in her dress proclaimed the change in her circumstances.
She had never required jewels or London finery to draw the eye.
It was the manner in which she occupied a space—the certainty that she belonged wherever she chose to stand—that had first made him decide she would suit his purposes.
Now that certainty had hardened into consequence.
The congregation watched her because she was Lady Everton, wife of Viscount Everton who was the Earl of Denham’s heir.
She would become a countess—the sort of position that he, as a mere baronet, would never be able to match.
The curiosity was less because of her newly exalted position than because every soul within twenty miles knew the marriage had been arranged with remarkable haste.
They watched Benedict as well. Selby watched only Harriet, his gut roiling with burning resentment.
She should have been his. He’d set it all in motion.
The loan to Alderley had been solely to get to her.
It would have been the only way he might have secured her hand.
Not out of some lovelorn devotion, but because he wanted the property.
He wanted Alderley. He wanted Denham Park.
He wanted everyone in the blasted county bowing and scraping to him the way they did to those who deemed themselves his superior.
He sat across the aisle and several pews behind them, near enough to observe without granting either of them the satisfaction of an acknowledgment.
Benedict stood beside her when it was required, offering his arm to assist her as she stood and then remaining standing until she was seated again.
At one point, his hand rested at the small of her back.
The gesture was brief and wholly proper.
Selby’s fingers tightened upon the brim of the hat resting on his knee.
Denham touched her too easily. She was his wife, but she’d been claimed, at least in his own mind, by him long before. And he had never been one to sacrifice his possessions easily.
Worse still, Harriet had permitted that touch.
Had even seemed to lean into it ever so slightly before she settled beside her husband with no outward stiffness, her shoulder near his upon the narrow bench.
When Benedict bent to say something before the service began, Harriet turned her face toward him.
Selby could not hear the words, but he saw the fleeting curve of her mouth before she looked down at her prayer book.
She had never smiled at Selby in that fashion.
Not that her affection had formed any part of his design.
He had not courted Harriet because he was a fool besotted by a woman’s face.
Alderley had been the object, as it had always been.
The viscount’s mounting debts, the neglected accounts and the parcels of land pledged one after another had presented an opportunity too valuable to ignore.
Harriet had been merely the simplest means of securing what the mortgages began.
She was the daughter who understood the estate.
She knew the tenants, the boundaries and the waterways that crossed Alderley before feeding the lower fields at Denham Park.
Married to Selby, she would have given his eventual possession an appearance of continuity.
Those who might condemn a creditor for stripping an old family of its land would have praised a husband for restoring his wife’s inheritance.
And once Alderley belonged to him, Denham would have followed.
Water did not respect boundary stones or noble titles.
Restrict the channels upon Alderley, divert the flow at the upper meadow and Denham’s richest fields would suffer.
Rents would decline. Tenants would depart.
Even an earl could be forced to sell when the land beneath his title ceased to produce.
Selby had not expected the process to be swift, but he had been prepared to wait.
There was satisfaction in acquiring a great estate piece by piece while its owners remained too proud to comprehend what was occurring.
Then Harriet had married Benedict and delivered Alderley into Denham’s protection.
The alteration of the marriage settlement had permitted the earl to discharge the debt and take possession of the mortgaged land.
Selby had received his money, every shilling of it, as though coin alone had been the object.
Men such as Denham believed a debt ceased to exist once it had been paid.
They did not understand that Selby had already regarded Alderley as his own, and the daughter of the house, as well.
He did not mean that he loved her. Love was an indulgence for people who confused appetite with obligation.
But he had selected her. He had accounted for her in his plans and tolerated her sharp tongue because possession would eventually teach her the futility of defiance.
That she had given herself to Benedict instead was not merely inconvenient. It was treacherous.
The congregation rose yet again. Selby stood with them, his attention fixed upon the pair across the aisle. Benedict placed one hand beneath Harriet’s elbow as she came to her feet. Again, she accepted the assistance as though his right to offer it had never been in question.
The service was almost at its end, but Selby had heard little of it.
The measured prayers and solemn responses passed around him while resentment gathered with each small evidence of intimacy before him.
Harriet and Benedict shared a book. Their gloved hands nearly touched upon its open pages.
Once, when Harriet shifted upon the hard pew, Benedict moved to afford her more room without looking at her.
It was the unconscious nature of the consideration that Selby found most offensive.
They behaved not as strangers bound by a bargain but as two people accustomed to one another.
That could not be true. Their dislike had been notorious since childhood.
Selby had witnessed enough of their exchanges to know Harriet considered Benedict arrogant and Benedict considered her contrary.
The marriage had been performed because Alderley possessed no other means of escape.
Whatever ease they displayed must be intended for the benefit of the village.
Selby understood appearances. He had cultivated his own for years.
He lowered his gaze to the prayer book and allowed those around him to believe he followed the service.
Patience had brought him within reach of Alderley once.
It would do so again. A hurried marriage founded upon necessity could not withstand close examination.
If Benedict and Harriet lived as husband and wife only before witnesses, someone within Everton would eventually observe the difference between performance and truth.
Someone already had.
When the congregation knelt, Selby bowed his head and looked toward the rear pews.
The Everton servants sat together near the back of the church.
Mrs. Mercer was unmistakable among them, her posture rigid and her attention fixed upon the pulpit.
Beside the footman sat a man new to the household, but not unknown to him.
Crandell raised his eyes.
Their gazes met for no more than a second. The butler gave the slightest inclination of his head, so slight that any other observer might have mistaken it for an adjustment of posture before prayer.
Selby turned toward the altar again, satisfied that the first strategic maneuver had met with success. The Viscount had hired the very man Selby had sent to seek the position.
Some of the fury within him eased. The London agency had performed precisely as expected.
Crandell was inside Everton, admitted by Benedict himself and trusted with all the access his position afforded.
He would know which chamber the viscount occupied and which belonged to Harriet.
He would hear the movements of servants after dark, observe the household linen and learn whether the appearances presented at church continued once doors were closed.
Selby required no dramatic revelation. A series of small truths would serve him better. Separate chambers. A locked door. A wife who remained a wife in name only. Doubt could be fashioned from less, provided it was offered to the proper ears.
Across the aisle, Harriet shifted nearer Benedict as the congregation rose once more. Their sleeves touched from shoulder to wrist. Benedict looked down at her, and something passed between them which Selby could neither hear nor interpret. Harriet’s expression softened.
The sight struck him with such violence that for an instant he forgot Crandell’s reassuring presence. She ought not to soften for Denham.
Selby had endured her scorn because he knew it would not survive the loss of every alternative.
When Alderley fell wholly into his hands, she would have understood that resistance merely prolonged the inevitable.
She would have come to him because there would have been nowhere else to go.
He had never required gratitude. Submission would have been sufficient.
Instead, she had escaped by choosing the one man capable of standing between Selby and everything he had intended to possess.
He told himself that jealousy was too small a word for what he felt.
Jealousy implied affection, and affection granted its object a power he would never willingly surrender.
This was outrage at theft. Benedict had taken what belonged within Selby’s design and now displayed it before the county as though possession alone created a right.
But when Benedict’s hand closed briefly over Harriet’s upon the prayer book, Selby imagined tearing it away.
The final hymn began. Voices rose beneath the timbered roof, uneven but earnest. Selby stood silent among them.
He watched Harriet sing, watched Benedict turn a page for her and watched the village accept the image they presented.
A united marriage. Two old families joined.
Alderley secured. Denham impervious to his attempts to gain control of it. It was an intolerable fiction.
When the service ended, the aisle filled slowly.
Neighbors lingered to offer congratulations and satisfy their curiosity.
Harriet received them with composure. Benedict remained beside her, attentive without appearing watchful.
Selby did not approach. To do so would suggest that he sought their notice, and he would not diminish himself by joining the line of people eager to acknowledge their triumph.
He remained within the pew until Crandell passed at the rear of the departing servants. The butler did not look toward him again. There was no need.
Selby placed his hat upon his head and stepped into the aisle.
Harriet was near the church door now, pale autumn light falling across her face while Benedict bent to hear something she said.
They stood too close. Whether the intimacy was real or performed mattered less than Selby had supposed.
Others believed it, and belief conferred its own kind of power.
He would strip it from them. By whatever means necessary.
Harriet had mistaken marriage for escape. Benedict had mistaken payment for victory. Both would learn that Selby did not relinquish what was his merely because lesser minds had contrived to place it beyond his immediate reach.
At the threshold, Harriet glanced back. Her gaze found him through the thinning congregation. The ease vanished from her expression.
He smiled at her—a cold expression that reflected his fury.
She turned away at once and took Benedict’s arm.
That small retreat satisfied him more than it should have.
Whatever comfort she had found at Everton, she had not forgotten him.
Fear still gave him a place in her thoughts, and Selby had always understood that fear was merely another form of possession.