Chapter Thirty-One #2
After a quick wash, a change of clothes, and an interminably tedious shave by his young valet, Rand, he headed over to Elysium, where he closeted himself in his office with his man of business, Bell.
Boyd appeared at the door of his office. “Mr. Collier and the Duke of Wells.”
Benjamin had sent for Collier the moment Bell had shown him the incriminating document, but Wells’ appearance was a surprise.
“Jesus, Benjamin, what on earth has happened here?” Wells stood at the door while Collier entered with his characteristic equanimity, seemingly unbothered by the sprawl of papers across Benjamin’s desk and the second table he and Bell had pulled over to catch the spillover.
Benjamin looked up from a folio of documents he had been poring over and took in his friend’s riding breeches and crop. “It is late for you to be out riding, is it not? The mamas of the ton will be out hunting already.”
Wells snapped the crop against the leather of the top of his boot absently. “I told Elk we would be going out later today. I assumed you would still be wound up with your…intended.” He said the last with a sarcastic quirk of his mouth, as if the turn of events was supremely ironic.
Benjamin supposed in many ways it was.
“But it seems perhaps you are more touched in the head than I previously gave you credit for. It is not a sane man who would elect to spend the morning with Bell and a dusty stack of papers. No offence, Bell.”
The owlish middling man quirked a brow before returning to a pile of correspondence he seemed to sort into multiple distinct categories apparent only to his own esoteric mind.
“She is not my intended yet.” Benjamin took a sip of coffee before realising it had gone cold since he last touched it.
Grimacing and setting it back on the mantle, one of the last empty surfaces in the room, he turned back to his work.
“Sorry for the wasted trip. I cannot join our ride today. Besides, it is Elk who you should expect to be occupied with his intended—it is clear he and Lady Elsie are anticipating more than just their vows.” He grinned absently at Wells, who was observing him with such a confounded look, he stopped his shuffling of papers and looked at him again.
“Surely, you noticed her condition as well. The poor woman could not even look at the fish course.”
Wells waved a dismissive hand, still regarding him as if he had woken to find a goat standing in his dressing room rather than his valet—a prank they had played on his father, the former Duke of Wells, when they had been boys.
One that had ended in dire consequences for Jonathan, as any prick of his father’s temper inevitably did.
“Of course I noticed. What I am confounded by is you.”
“Me?” Benjamin crossed his arms, an echo of a defensive habit he had acquired over the years.
“Yes, you. Master of London’s Secrets. You just joked about a detail that could turn a whole life if wielded properly.”
Benjamin frowned but waved it away. “They are friends. I would never use their secrets against them. I need not hoard them. Coffee?”
He gestured to the pot of ostensibly cold coffee and hoped Wells would drop the subject. His friend’s adept scrutiny made him uncomfortable—mostly because he himself could not reconcile the change the last days had wrought.
“What are you doing here?” Wells stepped further into the room and fingered a few cards teetering on the edge of the second table. “After our conversation last night, I assumed you would be discussing more important matters with the fine Lady Charlotte.”
Benjamin found the document he had been searching for and passed it over to Collier, who had been sitting patiently beside the table since he had been announced by Boyd. “I need you to determine the legality of this.”
Collier took the page and crossed his long legs, settling back to read through the tight script.
“I have not informed her of my intentions yet.”
Benjamin's heart thrilled and stuttered at the idea of such a conversation.
Would she accept him? It was clear there was something between them.
Last night had been even further confirmation of her feelings, even if no words were spoken.
But would she agree to marry him? He could not be sure without asking.
That was why he was doing everything he could to sweeten the deal.
“You have not? Ben!” The tone was admonishing, and Benjamin had the feeling Wells would have been a domineering elder brother if the duke and duchess had been blessed with any other children. “You had best do that sooner rather than later.”
The warning set off alarm bells in Benjamin’s head.
“What do you mean by that?” His words were sharpened by fear.
“Nothing. Just that she is in a precarious position, and the longer you wait, the more dire her circumstances become. You would not want to lose her to your own hesitation.”
“I am not hesitating.” He waved at the mess his usually meticulously ordered office had become.
“What do you think I am doing here? I am trying to buy her family’s seat back for her.
And not for the earl to sell it right back out from under her.
It will be hers. The manor will be in her name, so she will never have to worry about losing it again.
” Benjamin had seen how much she missed her home.
How she had been set adrift in the world by all the twists of fate that had robbed her of her mother, her security, and, in many ways, any sense of family.
He would restore that to her. And then she would never turn him down… right?
“It will be tricky,” Collier spoke up from behind the document Benjamin had handed him and another he had drawn from the pile, and was now comparing.
“The current owners have defaulted on a debt here.” He pointed to one of the pages.
“They mortgaged some of the farmland. You may be able to leverage that into an offer. As for transferring it to Lady Charlotte’s name, it will be difficult to guard it from the earl.
Though she has already reached her majority, until she is married, her brother still has some legal sway over her as her guardian de jure. ”
“What do you mean? Not possible? Collier, you are meant to be the most brilliant legal mind of your generation.” Frustration made his voice harsh.
Collier only smiled mildly. “I said difficult. Not impossible. Of course, I can manage it.”
Somewhat mollified, Benjamin turned back to the stack of correspondence Bell had passed him and then up at Wells again. “Is there anything else you wanted?”
Wells just gave him a repressive look and swung his crop around his fingers as he turned to leave. “Do not drag your feet, Ben. There are always wolves in the wings—it is never good to give them a chance to strike.”
∞∞∞
The mail coach was cramped and smelled strongly of cabbage and ale—both of which Charlotte suspected were emanating from the large man slumped in the corner of the conveyance.
The matron beside him had wound her scarf over the lower half of her face upon boarding, ignoring the close warmth of the coach’s cabin.
Despite her malodorous companions, Charlotte was glad for the tightly packed coach—the presence of strangers forced her to keep herself together and not give in to the sorrow that was tearing at her insides. If she had been alone, she would have certainly given over to retching sobs by now.
When she returned from Lady Catherine’s home, she had bound through the bare halls of the Aston townhouse up to her room, packed a trunk with her wardrobe and books, and sat at her desk to pen three letters.
One letter she addressed to Lady Elsie Wylde—it was presumptuous considering their short acquaintance, but after their conversation the evening before, she felt she could rely on Elsie for assistance.
Another, she wrote to Freddie. And the last, she had not been able to finish.
The mail coach would depart at five sharp, and she had only filled the page with scored-out lines, for the first time in her life, unable to put her thoughts into words.
How could she tell him everything in her heart?
That it was the love she felt for him that meant she had to leave.
That she could go no further in this arrangement, pretending it did not mean everything to her.
That she could not allow herself to settle into this beautiful thing they shared any longer, lest she be forced to tear out her own heart when it ended.
A man like Benjamin Scarsdale would not be receptive to such a sentimental display.
So she abandoned the letter, praying the night before had been enough to convey all she felt for him.
The trunk had been impossibly heavy, and it was all she could do to haul it down the steps to the hackney, the scar at her shoulder twinging in the cold, early morning mist. She had planned to pawn the books and Benjamin’s fine gowns before she left, so she would not have to carry the weight, but she no longer had the time.
She would sell them when she arrived in Edinburgh.
Surely the fine London fashions would fetch a better price up north.
As it was, she had just enough saved to pay for her fare up the Great North Road and modest rooms in Edinburgh until she secured a position, hopefully within the next few weeks, with Lady Elsie’s recommendation.
With that hopeful thought, she closed her eyes against the bone-deep weariness that had settled over her.
She fought the drift of her memories of the previous night, the feel of safety upon waking to warm arms and long kisses.
No, she had to keep her thoughts leashed to the present if she was going to scrape out a life for herself.
Once she was settled, she could revisit the gems of her past, with the safe buffer of time between them and her.
Not until then could she allow herself to dwell on what she was leaving behind.
Who she was leaving behind.