Chapter Thirty-Seven
Wells assisted her down the steps and into the cart that had pulled up alongside the crowd.
The runners manoeuvred them all into the small space, and they had set off down the road to the duke’s townhouse.
In no time at all, Benjamin was set up in a plush guest chamber, a doctor tending to the bullet wound, which had, blessedly, been a clean hit, through and through, and would only need cleaning and sutures.
A nurse had appeared to tend to the cuts and bruises on his face as well as the resetting of his nose.
Benjamin had been unconscious for most of it, thank goodness.
Charlotte was not sure she could have endured watching him writhing in pain—especially knowing that she had been the cause.
After he had come to when his nose was reset, swearing and growling at anyone who touched him, the physician declared that, judging by his spirit and foul language, he expected him to make a full recovery.
Not even an infection would dare cross such a man.
The nurse and maid had been dismissed, and then it was only Charlotte left in the room.
For a moment, the two of them just eyed each other. Benjamin reclined with bandages on every visible part of his body, and Charlotte stood in the far corner of the tastefully appointed guest chamber, his blood drying on the bodice of her grey travelling dress.
“I am sorry I shot you.” Her voice seemed small in the aftermath of so much uproar.
“Turnabout is fair play.” He shrugged, clearly forgetting his whole torso had been wrapped in gauze. His already pale face turned a shade whiter as he grimaced at the pain.
“Don’t! You will tear your stitches.” Charlotte took a step forward as if she might need to restrain him if he got the idea in his head to disregard the doctor’s orders and spring up from the sickbed.
As if reading her thoughts, he gave her a wry smile—though it did not reach his eyes.
“Do not worry, I do not plan on being a difficult patient. As much as I hate to admit it, I do not think I have it in me just now to be gadding around town again—certainly not so soon after that quack had his needle in me.”
He closed his eyes briefly as if warding off a wave of pain. Charlotte wanted to comfort him, to reach out and stroke his brow. Was this how he had felt when she was lying abed with the bullet wound he had inflicted? Surely not. They had not even known each other.
“I really think,” he continued, “Wells should see about getting a new physician. Doctor Price is a charlatan—pouring perfectly good spirits onto my gaping flesh rather than down my throat. What a waste.” He opened his eyes again, brow raising when he saw that she had moved closer.
“Though I suppose he did a fine enough job with you.” He eyed her right shoulder as if he could see through the layers of rumpled clothes to evaluate the state of her scar.
“But I had enough of discussing bullet wounds with him the last time around. I cannot countenance another lecture on festering sutures.”
That brought Charlotte up short. The Duke of Wells’ physician had tended to her wound?
And Benjamin had conversed with him at length during her convalescence?
She supposed it should not surprise her.
She had been unconscious most of the time.
Still, it was strangely heartening to imagine Benjamin, still a stranger to her, worrying over her sickbed.
There beside her, caring for her when she could not care for herself. It made her love him even more.
“I promise to ward him off.” Charlotte had meant the words to be light. But Benjamin’s face sobered, and the air in the room grew heavy.
“You plan to stay?” His voice was low and rough, and Charlotte felt her heart breaking at the hope in his words. She had never seen him so vulnerable.
She could not stop herself from rushing to his side and grasping his hand, lifting his bruised knuckles to her lips. “I cannot stay long. I am so sorry.”
With that, his eyes shuttered, and Charlotte felt as if she were watching him slip through her fingers—all over again. The pain in her chest threatened to drown her.
“Benjamin.” She tried to lean in to get him to look at her again, her voice desperate and pleading.
“I am sorry for leaving without a word before. I just—” her voice caught in her throat, and she had to take a few deep breaths to loosen the knot.
“I could not find the words.” She looked down at his hand cradled in hers.
She had been a coward for running—for not telling him why she had to flee.
Now she had to make that right, or at least try. “I was terrified—am terrified.”
Benjamin’s eyes snapped open at that, and she was perversely relieved to see some spirit returned to his face. “I would never let anything happen to you. Deering is no longer a threat.”
His brow was so furrowed, she could not help but reach out to gently smooth the groove worn by years—a lifetime—of scowling.
“I know.” She spoke softly, and her fingers traced the swollen skin of his left eye. “It was not that.”
She almost laughed at his scowl. “Then why did you leave?” The pain in his voice cleaved her heart in two as she saw the boy he must have once been—abandoned by his father, betrayed by his mother, and grieving his sister.
She could not be another arrow in this man’s battered heart.
“I thought—” He stopped, lips clamping tightly shut.
“I was not afraid of Deering.” She saw flashes of the rotting face above her bed and could not suppress a shiver.
“That is not true—though I clearly should have been more afraid of him than I was. But that was not why I left.” She let out a shaky laugh.
“It was not for fear of my reputation either, though that too, I should have taken more care with.” Benjamin frowned at that, but she soldiered on, determined to get the words out before they choked her again. “It was you—us. The promise of it—”
She shook her head and started over, the words making a jumble of themselves between her heart and her mouth.
“The Wylde’s dinner party. Being there with you—with your friends.
Your family, really. It was too real—too much.
I wanted it too much. I thought I could take our month together and be happy with it.
Make it an experience, something I could carry into the rest of my life but comfortably leave behind.
I did not even want to take your money, though it would have solved a lot of problems. But I wanted it to be something I did for me—not for anyone else.
But I was fooling myself to think I could keep it wrapped up in my mind.
The dinner party proved that I had not kept my heart apart.
I mean, it is foolish, really. How could I? It was you.”
She could feel the warmth of his hand and knew he was urging her to look up at him.
But now that the words had started coming, they would not stop.
“I realised I wanted it. All of it. All of you. And that scared me out of my wits. I knew I could never have it, and the realisation was crushing. It was the only thing I could think of doing. Run.” Her breath was coming hard now, and the last words came out in a terrible, gasping jumble.
“Charlotte.” His voice was hoarse, but the gentle touch of his fingers to her chin made her look up at him.
And she was robbed of breath. In his eyes—though one was almost swollen shut—she saw it all: all the pain and longing she had been trying to ignore, even as it gnawed away at her soul, was reflected back at her in his eyes.
And more than that, she saw a tenderness she could not begin to name—or at least, could not begin to hope for.
“You did not need to run.” His voice was still soft and almost admonishing.
“I was going to take care of everything.” She frowned and opened her mouth to argue that it was not his place to take care of her or her family—that she could not ask that of him, as he had already done so much for them.
But he held his finger to her lips, sending a jolt of awareness through her and abruptly halting her contradiction. “I was going to ask you to marry me.”
And then she had nothing to say. The words shot through her mind, numbing her with shock. For timeless moments, the only sound in the room was her heart hammering against her rib cage—for surely he could hear it too.
∞∞∞
“I have shocked you.” Benjamin chuckled and sank back against his pillows, wincing at the pain of the movement. “It does not speak well of me or my behaviour that the mere idea of me proposing has left you speechless.”
He closed his eyes, collecting himself and his strength, and then turned his gaze back to her beautiful, elfin face—still pale from the shock of his admission, save for crimson flags across her high cheekbones and a despicable bruise that had blossomed across her cheek and up her temple.
“It is I who must apologise. I took horrible advantage of you—the truth is, I was captivated the moment I saw you on the ground of that damned field, my bullet lodged in your shoulder. And then, when you were being treated, I was half mad with the knowledge that I had just found you, only to destroy you with my own foolishness. The idea of being so close to something and then watching it slip through my fingers—”
He was pulled back to the close confines of his study in his townhouse—a room he rarely occupied in favour of his offices at Elysium, pacing back and forth, awaiting the doctor’s prognosis.
The feral desperation that had gripped him as she wavered between recovery and the alternative—and then, when she had left, risking infection and fever—he could not revisit that panic, not if he wanted to get his words out.