Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
As one, the three women retreated, pressing their backs against the passage wall to admit them, Rundell still yammering. “Mrs. Marlow’s servant who brought the note said it cost his mistress something fierce to eat her words—”
“What words did she have to eat?” demanded Maria, as she and Benjamin pressed their own backs against the opposite wall, like dancers facing each other across the set.
“—About Miss Allen eloping,” Rundell carried on, “because everyone in Oxford thought it was with Mr. Ellsworth here because that was what his mistress put about—”
“Have they found her?” Maria broke in impatiently.
“Take the note, Maria, and we will know,” her husband advised.
She obeyed, plucking it from Rundell’s fingers even as the landlady rejoined the discussion, her complaints following them as they started up the stairs.
“Note or no note, I’ve never had such goings-on in my house!
What was I to think, when you each went your own way?
Such tenants! Whispers about you, quarrels and wrangles between you—comings and goings—whistling off without warning.
You fooled me with that baron sending furniture and such, but I’ll look more closely next time before I allow suchlike in my house—”
“As our rent is paid, however, and our lease good, if you will pardon us, Mrs. Ellsworth and I would like to be left alone at this time,” Benjamin leaned over the banister to retort, his eyes fierce. “But I promise you, Mrs. Chop, we will not incommode you much longer.”
Cowed by this show of temper, Chop and Co at last buttoned their lips and retired from the field, leaving the Ellsworths to climb the remaining stairs unmolested.
“What did you mean, Benjamin?” Maria whispered, hastening after him. “Where will we go?”
In answer he grinned at her. “I will leave that to you. Come.”
He opened the door to their apartment and, bowing, let her pass before him. It was as chilly and darkened as it had been two days earlier, but this time he hardly noticed. This time, alone at last with Maria, all was summer and sunshine.
Seeing her shiver, though, he led the way to the parlor, striding to the windows to open the shutters and admit the slanted winter light.
Then he bent to build a fire while she stood in her cloak, hugging herself.
If he had known, her shiver was as much from anticipation as cold, and dreamily she watched his movements, wishing the moment might go on forever.
“You might read the note by the window,” he suggested, “while I get this lighted.”
“Right,” she said, blushing that she needed the reminder. Her fingers fumbled with it, and she had to hold the sheet close, but the message was brief.
“Dear Mrs. Ellsworth, please accept my apology for my rash accusations against Mr. Ellsworth in regard to my niece’s disappearance.
We have learned Verity left Oxford in company with her cousin Mr. Eddings.
If I had not wronged you in this fashion, I would rather have kept this information within the family, as you may imagine, and I trust to your discretion. S. Marlow.”
“Oh,” breathed Maria.
He glanced up from tucking spills between the chunks of wood. “Well?”
“Miss Allen eloped with her cousin Mr. Eddings! The family doesn’t all get along, so that must be the reason for the secrecy. She—Mrs. Marlow—thought Miss Allen ran away with you.”
“So I gather.” Briefly he told her of the drunken porter at the Angel Inn.
“Are you angry, Benjamin?”
“To be accused? I might have been, under other circumstances.”
“Then—are you unhappy about Miss Allen eloping?”
“Under no circumstances.”
The blaze had begun to crackle and burn, and he rose, turning to find she had drawn nearer to warm herself, eyes closed and lips now curled in a radiant smile.
She was lovely.
She was his.
Throwing off his greatcoat, he swept a finger through his waistcoat pocket, and when she opened her eyes again, he was before her on bended knee.
“…Benjamin?”
“Maria, darling, will you be my wife?”
Staring in wonder, her throat tightened, and she raised fingers to chafe it. “But—but—I—already am, I thought.”
“I mean in earnest this time. I, choosing you, out of all the world, and you, choosing me.”
Maria’s hand moved to her mouth. It was all she could do to keep her eyes from filling, but she was not going to cry now, if she could at all prevent it—not when she wanted to see and hear every moment of this clearly and forever, with no dribblings or handkerchiefs or spoiled looks to mar it.
“That is not a No…” said Benjamin.
She shook her head.
“Is it a Yes, then, my love?”
One nod.
“You mean it?” He beamed at her. “You will have me out of all the world, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, and all the rest of it, till death us do part?”
“Yes,” Maria whispered. “All that.”
“Then I have something for you, wife.” Opening his hand, he revealed a gold ring, ornamented with a latticed outer band of tiny pink topazes flanked by rows of white jade chips.
“Oh.”
“Give me your hand.”
She obeyed, letting him draw off her glove, and now the tears insisted on coming, and though she feared it might spoil everything, she had to ask—
“Benjamin, is this the ring you meant for Miss Allen?” she blurted around the lump in her throat. “The—one you had in London?”
In a flash he was on his feet. “It most certainly is not.”
Feminine contrariness flared at once. “Then what became of that ring?”
“I gave it back to my mother.”
“If you did, where did this one come from?”
“From her as well—the setting, at least.”
“So you offer me your mother’s second-best ring?” she demanded indignantly. “For Miss Allen you choose Mrs. Ellsworth’s best, and for me her second best?”
Benjamin threw up his hands helplessly. “I supposed you would not want any ring originally intended for Miss Allen!”
“Nor do I!” she cried. “I don’t want Miss Allen’s ring!”
“Quod erat demonstrandum!”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, in this case, ‘exactly as I expected.’ I expected you would not want a ring meant for another—”
“You mean, for the one you wanted before I came along and ruined your plans,” she choked.
“If I’m not mistaken, you didn’t do a thing, Maria,” he retorted, “except go to bed like a good girl in your London inn chamber, and awake to find me lying next to you!”
“Nevertheless, you know what I mean, Benjamin, and you’re being deliberately obtuse. You intended to marry Miss Allen and give her this ring and say all the pretty things to her that you’ve been saying to me, until our mischance at the Bolt in Tun!”
“Look, you maddening creature, do you like this ring or don’t you?”
“I love it,” wailed Maria.
“Then give me your blasted finger, and I’m going to put it on you!”
But Maria objected heartily to hearing her finger thus denominated, and she whipped her left arm behind her back and elbowed him away with the other.
“Give it to me!” he panted, tugging on her arm.
She shoved him with her hip. “I won’t!”
“You’d better!” Seizing her about the waist now, he tried to reach her by going around her back, but Maria circled with him.
“I’ll do what I please, you beast!” She roared, half in earnest and half laughing. The two of them knocked into one of the armchairs, which upset the table, which sent Austin’s backgammon board tumbling to the carpet, dice and men spilling in all directions.
Thump—
thump—
THUMP.
Startled, the Ellsworths ceased their wrestling, holding motionless with Maria pressed to him and his arms about her.
“Shhhh…” he whispered, his lips at her ear. “Or Chop and Co will put us out on the spot.”
Thump—
thump—
THUMP.
“It’s your fault,” she whispered back, “trying to fob me off with second-rate rings.”
“It might have been second rate to begin with, for the stones were paste, but I sent it away to London to replace them.” Discovering his wife’s charming self so near, he began to nuzzle her hair and brow, his lips grazing her cheek.
“When?” she persisted, her head falling back.
“When my mother left.” He traced a path with his mouth along her bare neck, and she felt the ring slide onto her unresisting finger. “She left it with Gray’s when she changed coaches in London, and I picked it up on my way back to Oxford.”
Maria’s head snapped up again, and she came out of her trance.
“That’s right,” she said, giving his chest a push and liberating herself to the length of his arms. “Where have you been, Benjamin? You know, don’t you, that Miss Allen ran away the same morning you left, which was why Mrs. Marlow was persuaded she went with you! ”
He shrugged. “Even if her whereabouts had not been discovered, I assure you the mystery would have interested me not at all.”
“Really, Benjamin? Really truly?”
“Really truly,” he assured her. “And now you must wait down here one minute, while I go up and build another fire. We’re going to finish this conversation upstairs, where we won’t be overheard, especially if you choose to quarrel with me again.”
Laughing at her sputtered protest, he touched the tip of her nose and slipped from the room.
Maria was not alone long, having only time to spin in happiness and to admire her ring by the window before she heard her name called. Then, heart beating, she hurried up to be swept into his arms again at the top of the stairs and carried the length of the passage to the front bedroom.
“Where were we? Oh, yes.” Winding fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back gently and resumed his attentions.
“The tiresome Miss Allen,” he muttered against her lips.
“I daresay I would have forgotten her within a week of marrying you, if you had not always been alluding to her or, indeed, foisting her company on me in my own home.”
“Oh, Benjamin! Have you come to love me, then?”