Chapter Four
“Ha! You were the slowest,” Damien declared loudly in Benedict’s general direction as the last shot of something putrid burned the back of his throat.
“Fine. What’s the next bet?” Benedict conceded easily. Whatever they had been drinking wasn’t worth it.
“That’s the last bet. You’ve lost the last two of three.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means…well, I think you know what it means, don’t you?” Knowingly, Damien tilted his head at him.
“I wouldn’t be asking if I knew,” Benedict gritted out, keeping his lips fixed in a tight line.
“Time to be the hero, old friend.” Damien clapped him on the shoulder. “Go save some helpless woman wrapped in scandal.”
“What are you—”
“Your Grace, you must come with me,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon approached from the side.
“What the devil—”
“That’s how quickly it can happen.” Damien flashed him a huge grin.
“Better you than me, my friend.” The hard thwack from Damien’s open palm on Benedict’s back would have sent a smaller man flying forward.
“Go on. Off with you. Rescue the damsel.” Then with a raised fist and a not so solemn face, Damien drunkenly pronounced, “Redemption is yours, good sir.”
Well. His friend was useless at this point.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon repeated, and none too slowly swiveled on her heel to exit the room. The expectation being that he follow her.
Which, being as close to a good duke as any, of course he did.
It was a quick escape and an even shorter entrance into a dimly lit room.
Without words, Mrs. Dove-Lyon opened the door and gestured for him to go inside.
“I’ll let the lady explain.” And then she was gone.
But he already knew what to expect. So he thought. It all seemed so anticlimactic though. He had lost the series of bets and would now be forced to take a wife who needed saving.
That is why he came here.
Damien knew that.
Benedict knew that.
Losing the wrong bet—or perhaps the right one—could lead to a betrothal.
And that’s what he wanted. He reminded himself for the thirty third time. He agreed with Damien. He was here to defy society. If rescuing someone from ruin could be the byproduct of his rebellion, that was good for his conscience.
“It’s you?” a faint, yet unfamiliar voice whispered in the darkness.
But when she walked closer, further into the light, he saw the blonde. The blonde of which had been the fortune—if one could call it that—of him winning his earlier bet this evening.
But wouldn’t this just be the cat eating his own shit for breakfast if this was the woman he was supposed to rescue?
She didn’t look like a woman who needed rescuing. No. She looked perfectly calm. At peace. Composed. She seemed to be perfectly in control of her world, and perhaps significant parts of the world around her as well.
But…how could one argue with fate?
One didn’t.
But…while he might not be the type to directly argue with fate, he might be the type to poke at fate.
Especially when it showed up looking like this. The epitome of manipulation. It was best to take the upper hand. Show her who was really in control here.
“Well, well, well. When I considered coming here tonight I didn’t think I’d be saddled with a spinster who owned nineteen cats and made needlepoint doilies for each of them.”
Her lips pursed, but she didn’t recoil at his insult. She gave a small sigh and equally small shrug of her shoulders. “Alas, I’m not your saddle.”
Well. He had not been expecting that. He had come in here after losing his bets, thus expecting to marry. “Explain.”
“I am a spinster. I love cats and needlepoint.”
She stopped there, assessing him. He could feel it. Intentionally, she had not addressed the saddle portion of their conversation yet. Was this a standoff? How…interesting.
“And the saddle?”
“Is my sister.”
“What a way to introduce someone.”
She merely shrugged. “My family is facing ruin, so I’m here to find my sister a husband.”
He hadn’t been expecting that either. Relief should have been the prevalent feeling in his mind. It was foolish to paint all blondes with the same brush, but resentment didn’t much listen to logic. And it listened even less when that blonde had the same comportment as a witch he once knew.
So really, he should have been relieved that he wasn’t to marry her. But he couldn’t quite see it past the shock and…was that disappointment?
“So you’re buying me for your sister. Why not for yourself?”
Her eyes flared. “I’m too set in my ways.”
“What ways?”
“I have my ways.”
“Such as…”
“Ways….” Benedict watched her wring her hands. The first and only sign that the woman wasn’t pure grace under pressure. “Ways you need know nothing about,” she finished.
“Humor me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I have my ways. And you’re not in them.”
“And you wouldn’t bend your ways for me?”
“Well.” She huffed. “How fortuitous for you that you have painted me into a corner. I’m now forced to disclose to you one of my ways lest I break it.”
“I’m ecstatic to hear that.”
“You would be.”
“Do tell the way.”
“The way is that I do not jest with men that I do not know.”
Silence. Benedict felt the urge to smirk. This woman was clever. Witty. Private. Poised. Yes…everything he was inclined to fall for in a woman. And everything that had led to his destruction. Even still, he wanted to challenge her.
He moved closer. “And what about with men you do know?”
“You’ll never know.”
“Never say never.”
“I always say never. Such is another one of my ways.”