Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sophia noticed on the first morning. She told herself she did not.
Benedict did not come to breakfast. There was nothing remarkable about that.
A duke had correspondence, estate matters, tenants, accounts, solicitors, and approximately a thousand other responsibilities Sophia had only recently begun to understand.
Before their marriage, she imagined dukes spent much of their time attending Parliament, looking severe at dinner, and possessing estates large enough to be inconvenient.
She had since discovered that Benedict’s days were filled with an alarming amount of drainage.
Still, he usually breakfasted with them, even if only for twenty minutes.
He would sit at the head of the table with his coffee, having unfolded his correspondence with unnecessary precision, having corrected Marjorie’s attempts to feed toast to Admiral beneath the table, and having listened while Amelia described whatever she had read the previous evening.
Sophia had begun to know the small rhythms of him: two cups of coffee, very little sugar, toast before eggs, the newspaper read from the final page backward for reasons she had not yet managed to discover.
That morning his chair remained empty.
“Uncle Benedict is working,” Amelia explained.
Marjorie buttered her toast. “He is always working.”
“He has important letters.”
“He always has important letters.”
Sophia lifted her tea.
“He is a duke,” she smiled lightly. “I believe important letters are one of the principal inconveniences of the position.”
Marjorie considered this. “Do duchesses have important letters?”
“Occasionally.”
“Have you?”
Sophia looked toward the small pile beside her plate. They were from her mother, from Emma, and a note from Frances which began with the words I have heard something extremely interesting and therefore promised very little peace.
“Terrifyingly important.”
Marjorie nodded, satisfied, and the conversation continued. Sophia drank her tea and did not look at Benedict’s empty chair again, not until three minutes later.
The following afternoon, she found him in the library, or rather, she found him leaving it. Sophia had been carrying two books and a small basket of embroidery silks Amelia insisted required sorting when Benedict stepped through the doorway, and they almost collided.
His hand came out instinctively. For one brief moment, his fingers closed around her elbow, warm and familiar. Sophia’s breath caught. Their eyes met. Something passed across Benedict’s face so quickly she might have imagined it. Then his hand fell.
“My apologies.” The words were perfectly courteous.
Sophia blinked. “You need not apologize. I was not looking where I was going.”
“Nor was I.”
There should have been something after that.
There usually was, some dry remark about the danger of carrying too many books, some observation regarding her ability to turn an ordinary corridor into an obstacle course.
Perhaps he would take the books from her despite her objections and carry them wherever she meant to go. Instead, Benedict stepped aside.
“Good afternoon, Sophia.”
Good afternoon.
Not where are you going?
Not what have you found now?
Not even the faint lift of one eyebrow which so often turned his solemn face into something meant only for her.
“Good afternoon,” she replied.
He inclined his head, then he walked away. Sophia remained where she was. The embroidery basket pressed awkwardly against her wrist. She listened to his footsteps disappear along the corridor. Only then did she realize that she had been holding her breath.
She released it carefully. It meant nothing. People passed one another in corridors without conducting elaborate conversations every day. It would have been absurd to attach significance to it.
Sophia entered the library. She put Amelia’s basket upon the table. Then she stood beside it for so long that she forgot why she had come.
By the third day, pretending became more difficult.
Benedict was busy. That was what everyone said. The steward required him. A tenant dispute required him. The accounts required him. A letter from London required an answer. The south field required discussion. Sophia began to resent the south field personally.
Whenever she entered a room, Benedict seemed to be on his way out of it. When she encountered him at dinner, he was unfailingly attentive. He held her chair. He asked whether she wished for wine. He inquired after her morning. He listened to her reply.
Then he turned to Amelia and asked about her lessons. There was nothing she could object to. That was the cruelty of it. He did nothing wrong. He was kind. He was considerate. He was Benedict in every way that mattered to propriety.
Only the small things had disappeared. His eyes no longer found hers after Marjorie said something outrageous.
He no longer lingered when they happened to be alone.
He no longer crossed the drawing room merely because Sophia sat beside the fire.
When their hands nearly touched upon the breakfast table, he moved his first. And every evening, after dinner, he returned to his study.
Sophia began to hate the study, too. It joined the south field upon a growing list of innocent things she regarded with unreasonable hostility.
She tried to be sensible. The kiss changed nothing. They had never discussed it.
Perhaps Benedict regrets it.
The thought came quietly the first time. By the fourth day, it no longer bothered to be quiet. Perhaps he regretted kissing her. Sophia lay awake considering it.
She remembered the garden with painful exactness.
She could still feel his hand upon her cheek and the tenderness with which his mouth had met hers.
She remembered thinking that something had finally changed between them.
She had gone to bed that night unable to stop smiling into the darkness like a girl several years younger and considerably more foolish.
Now, embarrassment burned beneath her skin whenever she remembered it. Perhaps she misunderstood. Perhaps what had seemed enormous to her had been merely an impulse to him. It was just a husband kissing his wife, which was nothing extraordinary.
Nothing was promised, so nothing was altered, except Sophia.
That was the humiliating part.
Something had altered in her. She had begun wanting things she had no right to expect, such as his attention, his company, the private version of his smile that appeared only at the corner of his mouth, and his hand reaching for hers without necessity.
She had begun to believe that perhaps the arrangement was becoming something neither of them anticipated. And Benedict, apparently, had realized the danger before she had.
Sophia pressed her face into the pillow. She wished desperately that the hurt made her angry. Frances would have become angry. Frances would have stormed into Benedict’s study, demanded an explanation, and stayed there until the Duke of Rivermere surrendered from exhaustion.
Emma would have understood how to speak gently enough for the truth to become unavoidable.
Sophia did neither.
Sophia became quieter.
She had always known how.
The corridor outside the morning room was filled with late-afternoon sunlight when she saw him again. Sophia had just left Amelia upstairs and was carrying a book she meant to return to the library.
Benedict came around the corner at the same moment. They stopped.
Once, such meetings had become strangely pleasurable. A pause in the day when five minutes stretched to fifteen because Sophia asked where he was going and Benedict asked what she was reading, and somehow they found themselves arguing over whether Gothic heroines possessed sufficient common sense.
This time, the space between them remained empty.
“Benedict.”
“Sophia.” Her name sounded perfectly gentle, perfectly controlled.
He looked tired. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and the severe line between his brows seemed deeper than usual. For one tender, foolish moment, concern overcame pride.
“You have been working a great deal,” she pointed out.
“I have had several matters requiring attention.”
“So I gathered.”
A small silence followed. Sophia held the book more tightly against her waist.
Before, he might have heard something in her voice. Before, he had noticed everything.
Now, Benedict merely nodded.
“I hope the girls have not troubled you.”
“No.”
“They have behaved?”
“Relatively.”
His mouth moved into what was almost a smile. Sophia’s heart responded before she could stop it, then the expression vanished.
“I am glad.”
There it was again, the politeness. She would almost have preferred anger. At least anger required feeling.
Sophia looked at him. He wore the dark coat she liked best upon him. She had never told him that. She thought, absurdly, that there would be time for such insignificant confessions. His hair had fallen slightly over his forehead, probably because he had pushed one hand through it while reading.
She knew that habit now. She knew too many things about him.
“Are you going to your study?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Sophia nodded. Benedict hesitated. She saw it. His hand moved at his side before stilling again.
For one heartbeat, hope rose inside her. Perhaps he would say something. Perhaps he would explain. Perhaps he would look at her the way he had in the garden and all these miserable days would become only some misunderstanding they would laugh about together.
Instead, he asked her, “Was there something you required?”
The hope collapsed so swiftly it almost hurt physically.
Required.
As though she had stopped him regarding household accounts.
“No.”
His eyes searched hers then. Sophia lowered her gaze before he could discover anything there.
“I only wondered.”
“I see.”
Another silence followed. The corridor seemed suddenly much too bright.
The afternoon sun warmed the floorboards and caught dust drifting lazily in the air.
Somewhere below the stairs, china clinked on a tray.
A clock marked the quarter hour. Everything in Rivermere continued normally.
Sophia felt foolish for expecting the house to notice that something inside her had begun to ache.
Benedict stepped aside. “I shall not keep you.”
She looked up. He meant to let her pass. Once, he would have walked with her. The realization was so small and so painful that Sophia almost laughed. Instead, she smiled. She had years of practice smiling when she wished not to be examined too closely.
“Of course.”
Sophia moved past him. She smelled the familiar clean scent of his coat as she passed, mixed with leather and the faint trace of smoke from his study. Her shoulder came within inches of his chest. He did not touch her. Her entire body noticed.
She reached the end of the corridor before his voice came behind her.
“Sophia.”
She stopped. Hope was a humiliating creature. No matter how often one tried to discipline it, it returned instantly when called.
Sophia turned. Benedict remained where she had left him. For one moment, his expression looked strained, almost unhappy. Then his features settled.
“Will you tell Amelia I shall come to the nursery before dinner?”
Sophia stared at him. Something inside her went very quiet.
“Yes,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She nodded, then turned away again. This time he did not call her back. Sophia walked to the library with perfect composure. She entered, closed the door, and placed the book upon the nearest table.
Only then did she realize it was not a library book at all. It was hers.
She stared down at it. Her vision blurred.
“Oh, how ridiculous.”
She laughed once, though the sound broke in the middle.
Sophia pressed her fingertips beneath her eyes before any tears could fall.
There was nothing to cry about. Her husband had been polite to her.
Her husband was busy. Her husband promised her from the beginning that theirs was not to be a marriage of romance or expectation.
Benedict had broken no promise. That was perhaps what hurt most.
Sophia sank slowly into the chair beside the table. She looked at the book lying uselessly before her.
She had spent much of her life believing herself easy to overlook, then Benedict came. Benedict noticed when she disappeared from crowded rooms. He noticed when other people hurt her. He noticed when she was frightened, when she was angry, when she was pretending not to be either.
Little by little, Sophia had allowed herself to believe she was no longer invisible, that she had finally entered a place where someone might look for her when she was absent. And now, for the first time since coming to Rivermere, Benedict seemed to be deliberately teaching himself not to look.
Sophia bowed her head. She could survive being overlooked. She had done it before.
She had simply never known, until Benedict, how much more painful it was to be seen first.