Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Benedict did not know how he had become involved in a treasure hunt.
He remembered entering the morning room with the reasonable intention of asking Sophia whether she wished to ride before dinner.
He remembered Marjorie appearing with a folded map, Amelia carrying a basket, and Sophia looking at him with an expression of such innocent hope that suspicion should have saved him.
It had not. Now, he was standing in the garden holding a wooden spade painted gold.
“This is undignified,” he murmured.
“It is a ceremonial spade,” Marjorie explained.
“It is a nursery toy.”
“That is why it is ceremonial.”
Sophia walked beside Amelia several paces ahead. At Benedict’s remark, she glanced over her shoulder, and her smile made the absurd object in his hand seem momentarily less offensive.
“The next clue is beneath something which grows but cannot walk,” Amelia read from a folded paper.
“That describes the entire garden,” Benedict pointed out.
Marjorie looked pleased. “It is meant to be difficult.”
The treasure hunt had already led them beneath a stone bench, around the fountain twice, and into the summerhouse, where Marjorie had concealed a clue so successfully that she herself could not find it.
The treasure remained mysterious. Benedict suspected it consisted of sugared almonds taken from Cook’s stores.
Marjorie ran toward the yew walk, announcing that hedges grew and she could not walk. Amelia followed more cautiously. Sophia paused beside Benedict.
“You are doing very well.”
“I am carrying a painted spade through my own gardens.”
“You have not complained for nearly three minutes.”
“I was gathering strength.”
Her laugh followed the girls down the path. Benedict followed more slowly. He had begun to understand that outings with Sophia and the twins did not head toward destinations. They spread. One game became another. One question became six, and every fallen leaf required examination.
It was disorderly, inefficient, and strangely difficult to dislike.
Marjorie disappeared behind the clipped yews. Amelia called for her to wait. Sophia quickened her pace after them, her pale skirts brushing the tall grass at the path’s edge.
Benedict was about to follow when a patch of green caught his attention. He stopped. The bed lay beyond the girls’ small garden plots, near the southern wall. Benedict knew it well, chiefly because Mr. Wilkes had regarded it as a personal enemy for several years.
Nothing grew there. Stocks had failed. Phlox had withered.
Asters had survived only long enough to encourage optimism before dying with particular thoroughness.
Mr. Wilkes had replaced the soil, altered the watering, cut back the roots, and subjected the unfortunate earth to preparations whose smell had reached the house.
Now the bed was covered in shoots. There were no flowers yet. The growth remained young and uncertain, tender green leaves rising from dark soil. But the plants stood upright. They were not yellowed, curled, or struggling. They were thriving.
Benedict stepped nearer, the treasure hunt forgotten.
He crouched and pressed his fingers to the earth.
The soil was moist but not sodden, loose beneath the surface rather than hardened into the familiar impenetrable layer.
He could see where narrow channels had been made through the bed and filled with gravel.
“It is all Her Grace’s doing.”
Benedict straightened. Mr. Wilkes stood behind him with a pair of shears in one hand. His old hat sat low upon his silver hair, and his expression suggested that finding the master of Rivermere kneeling in a flower bed was only slightly less inconvenient than finding Marjorie there.
“What is?” Benedict asked.
Mr. Wilkes nodded toward the shoots. “That.”
Benedict looked back at the bed. “Sophia did this?”
“Her Grace noticed the water gathered after rain and the ground hardened afterward. Said there might be packed clay beneath the good soil.”
Mr. Wilkes crossed to the bed and prodded the earth with one boot.
“Clay pan,” he continued. “Hard as brick. Likely an old cart track beneath the garden. Roots could not get through, and the water had nowhere to drain.”
Benedict frowned. “How did she know?”
“Read it in a book.” There was unmistakable satisfaction in the gardener’s voice. “Sensible, this lady. Leaves a man room to test the thing before pride gets in the way. Narrow shafts, not enough to disturb the whole bed. Filled them with gravel and cinders, then worked leaf mold into the surface.”
He bent and touched one of the small plants with a care that transformed his weathered hand.
“Delphiniums at the rear. White stocks before them. Pinks along the edge. All holding.”
Benedict stared at the new growth. Sophia had been mistress of Rivermere for scarcely more than a month.
Yet she had entered a garden tended by a man with decades of knowledge, listened to him, noticed what others had overlooked, and offered an answer without presumption.
More astonishingly, Mr. Wilkes had accepted it.
Mr. Wilkes did not accept advice. He tolerated weather because arguing with it had proved ineffective.
“She was uncertain,” the gardener added gruffly. “Kept saying she might be mistaken.”
“But she was not.”
“No.”
A strange warmth spread through Benedict’s chest. He thought of Sophia reading beneath the nursery candlelight, of her quiet attention whenever Amelia spoke, of the fierceness with which she defended Marjorie’s right to adventure.
She noticed hidden things: fear beneath severity, sadness beneath silence, clay beneath apparently good soil. Then she found a way through them.
“Uncle Benedict!” Marjorie’s voice carried across the garden. “We have found the treasure!”
“Not the treasure,” Amelia corrected from somewhere behind the hedge. “Only a clue.”
Mr. Wilkes’s gaze fell to the golden spade still in Benedict’s hand. His eyebrows rose. Benedict looked down at it.
“The treasure hunt requires equipment.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mr. Wilkes’ expression remained perfectly respectful. It was considerably worse than laughter.
Sophia appeared at the end of the path. Sunlight touched her brown hair, and her face brightened when she saw him.
“There you are. We thought we lost you.”
Benedict glanced once more at the green shoots.
“No,” he replied quietly. “I merely discovered something.”
Sophia followed his gaze toward the flower bed. Understanding softened her expression.
Before he could speak, Marjorie emerged from behind the hedge. “You are meant to be hunting treasure, not flowers.”
Benedict looked at Sophia. For one bewildering moment, he could not help thinking he might have found something far more valuable than Marjorie had hidden.
He tightened his hand around the ridiculous golden spade.
“Lead on,” he said.
Sophia found the final clue beneath a stone urn in the quietest corner of the garden. At least, she believed it was the final clue.
Marjorie’s map had already led them through the rose walk, behind the summerhouse, and into a patch of shrubbery where Benedict discovered that dignity offered very little protection against cobwebs.
Amelia and Marjorie had now gone ahead to investigate the sundial, leaving Sophia and Benedict to search the narrow lawn beside the old garden wall.
The place felt hidden from the rest of Rivermere. Ivy climbed the warm red brick, and long grass softened the edges of the path. The air smelled of leaves, sun-warmed stone, and the faint sweetness of honeysuckle.
Sophia crouched beside the urn. “I see something.”
Benedict stood behind her, still carrying Marjorie’s painted golden spade.
“Is it treasure?” he asked.
“A folded piece of paper,” she replied.
“Then it is almost certainly another instruction directing us elsewhere.”
“You are becoming rather cynical.”
“I have searched beneath three benches and one overturned flowerpot.”
“And yet you continue.”
He looked at her. The quiet attention in his eyes made her suddenly aware that they were alone.
“I gave my word,” he said.
Sophia lowered her gaze before he could see how deeply the answer pleased her.
The clue had been wedged beneath the urn’s stone base. She leaned closer and reached for the corner of the paper.
“It is caught.”
“Leave it. I shall move the urn.”
“You will crush Marjorie’s clue.”
“That may shorten the hunt considerably.”
Sophia glanced up at him. “You would not dare.”
“No,” he admitted. “She would only create another.”
She smiled and stretched farther. Her fingers closed around the paper.
At that same moment, the sole of her slipper slid upon the damp grass.
Sophia gasped, and the ground vanished beneath her balance, with her shoulder tipping backward.
She had only enough time to think that falling before Benedict would be humiliating when his arm came around her waist.
He caught her firmly against him. The movement stopped all at once. For one breath, Sophia knew only the strength of his arm and the solid warmth of his body behind hers. Then he turned her toward him.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” The word emerged too softly. Benedict’s hand remained at her waist. Sophia’s palm had settled against his chest. Beneath the dark cloth of his waistcoat, she could feel the quick, heavy rhythm of his heart. It was beating as rapidly as hers.
She looked up. They were standing far too close.
The realization moved through her slowly and then all at once.
His face was only inches from her own. Sunlight caught in his green eyes, revealing shades she had never noticed at a dinner table or across a drawing room.
His breath touched her temple. His fingers pressed through the thin fabric of her gown, warm and unmistakable against the curve of her waist.
Sophia forgot the clue still crushed in her hand.
She forgot the treasure hunt. She forgot every sensible rule she had ever learned about how a duchess ought to behave alone in a garden with her husband.
Benedict stared down at her as though equally startled by what he held. His gaze dropped, not to her shoulder, nor to the grass beneath her feet, but to her lips.
Sophia’s breath caught. Something changed in his expression. The severity she knew so well loosened, revealing a hunger so quiet and unguarded that it made heat gather beneath her skin.
He leaned closer only slightly, yet the distance between them became charged with the promise of being crossed.
Sophia did not move away. She could smell clean linen, leather, and the faint trace of the soap he used.
His thumb shifted once at her waist, an unconscious movement that sent warmth through her entire body.
Her lips parted. Benedict’s eyes darkened.
For one suspended second, Sophia was certain he meant to kiss her.
She wanted him to.
The truth arrived without modesty or defense. She wanted to feel his mouth upon hers. She wanted to know whether all the restraint between them would survive the first touch or break entirely beneath it.
He bent his head.
“Sophia!” Marjorie’s voice rang across the garden.
They sprang apart. Benedict released her so quickly that the sudden absence of his hand felt like cold air against her skin. Sophia took one unsteady step backward and nearly slipped again. His hand shot out. She recovered before he touched her.
“I am quite steady,” she said, though she was nothing of the kind.
“Clearly.” His voice sounded rougher than usual.
From beyond the hedge, Marjorie called again. “Have you found the clue?”
Sophia looked down at the crumpled paper in her hand. “Yes!”
“Then bring it!”
“We are coming,” Benedict answered. His voice had regained its authority, but he did not look toward the hedge. He looked at Sophia. She could not read the expression in his eyes now. There was regret, perhaps, or longing restrained so fiercely that it had become indistinguishable from pain.
Sophia smoothed the clue with trembling fingers. “We should go.”
“Yes.”
Neither moved at first. Then Benedict stepped aside and gestured toward the path. Sophia passed him carefully. As she did, the back of her hand brushed his. The contact lasted no more than an instant.
It followed her all the way across the garden.