Sins of Mary Beth Blackthorn

Chapter One What They Say About Mary Beth Blackthorn

CHAPTER ONE

What They Say About Mary Beth Blackthorn

Mary Beth Blackthorn learned she had taken a new lover at half past nine on a Thursday evening.

This surprised her, chiefly because she had spent the previous night alone with a book, a glass of claret, and a hot-water bottle wrapped in flannel.

Apparently the county had improved upon the evening.

“Not the gardener this time,” a woman whispered behind a fan. “The new man from the north lodge.”

Her companion made the small delighted sound of someone receiving excellent news about another person’s disgrace.

Mary Beth stood three feet behind them.

She might have moved away. A well-bred woman would have spared them the humiliation of being overheard. A better-bred woman, according to her late mother, would never have allowed herself to become interesting enough to discuss in the first place.

Mary Beth had disappointed her mother in both respects.

“The north lodge has been empty since Christmas,” she said.

Both women turned.

The first went pale. The second dropped her fan.

Mary Beth bent, retrieved it from the polished floor, and returned it with a pleasant smile.

“You may wish to revise the story before supper,” she added. “People are terribly unforgiving about details.”

“Mrs. Blackthorn, I—”

“Please. Do not let me interrupt.”

A violinist near the far wall began another piece. Around them, conversation continued beneath chandeliers that had been lit too early for the June evening. The room smelled of beeswax, roses, warm silk, and the faint dampness people carried in from a Yorkshire rain.

The woman with the fan had recovered enough to clutch it against her bodice.

“We were discussing nothing of consequence.”

“I should hope not. If my reputation has become consequential, I shall be forced to attend more committees.”

The second woman attempted a laugh and failed.

Mary Beth spared them further suffering. She inclined her head and walked toward the long windows at the end of the drawing room.

She could feel them watching her leave.

That part never changed.

At thirty-one, four years widowed, and in sole possession of Blackthorn Manor, Mary Beth occupied a social position that no one in Yorkshire seemed able to classify to its satisfaction.

She had money, land, servants, tenants, and enough family connections to make a complete exclusion inconvenient.

She also had no father, husband, brother, or son with the legal or moral authority to instruct her in the proper use of any of them.

That alone would have been enough to make her inconvenient. Worse, she appeared to enjoy it; the rest depended upon whom one asked.

To some, it was the gamekeeper; to others, the gardener.

A visiting musician had been added the previous winter, though Mary Beth had never met him privately and could not remember his Christian name.

The gamekeeper, at least, had existed, and so had the affair.

Mary Beth had discovered that an absolute denial was dangerous when a partial truth could be produced later and served up with pudding. She therefore denied very little. The county had eventually learned to mistake silence for confession and confession for insolence.

She preferred insolence.

Outside the windows, rain had darkened the terrace stones. The sky beyond the lawns remained pale at the horizon, summer refusing to become night. Mary Beth watched water gather on the stone balustrade and told herself that she was bored rather than tired.

“You have frightened them again.”

She did not turn.

“Then they are more delicate than they look.”

Lord Benedict Sablehurst stopped beside her.

In the reflection of the glass he appeared exactly as society preferred its men: tall without looming, handsome without prettiness, dressed with the care of a man who employed someone else to make care invisible.

His evening coat fitted perfectly. His fair hair had already begun to silver at the temples, which only made him look more expensive.

Mary Beth met his eyes in the window.

“You heard?”

“The entire corner heard.”

“Then I was too quiet.”

His mouth moved. Benedict rarely laughed in public, but he allowed himself the suggestion of amusement when Mary Beth misbehaved. She had not decided whether that was because he liked her or because he liked possessing private evidence that he was more tolerant than everyone else.

“I told you not to come tonight,” he said.

“You invited me.”

“I advised you afterward not to accept.”

“Ah. I misunderstood the sequence.”

“You never misunderstand anything.”

“That must be exhausting for both of us.”

He turned from the window and faced her fully.

There were women who would have considered Benedict Sablehurst a solution to every problem Mary Beth possessed.

He was thirty-nine, unmarried, wealthy, and possessed of both a title and estates managed so competently that no one ever whispered about mortgages.

His name could reopen drawing rooms. His influence could make other men forget to raise their eyebrows when Mary Beth entered a room.

He had made no secret of his interest in her.

That interested everyone except Mary Beth.

“Walk with me,” he said.

“Is that an invitation or advice?”

“An invitation.”

“Then I may accept.”

He offered his arm.

Mary Beth took it because refusing would have drawn more attention than accepting, and because she was not foolish enough to confuse independence with a duty to make every moment difficult.

They moved through the room slowly. Benedict greeted a magistrate, an elderly dowager, and a young married couple whose expressions became carefully neutral when they saw Mary Beth on his arm.

He did not hurry. That was part of his appeal.

He never behaved as though association with her cost him anything.

Sometimes she almost believed it did not.

“Your mistake,” he said quietly, “is encouraging them.”

“My mistake tonight was leaving home.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

Mary Beth removed her hand from his sleeve.

They had reached the open doors of a smaller morning room where fewer people had gathered. A pair of card tables stood unused beneath portraits of dead men who had probably enjoyed worse sins than Mary Beth and had received larger monuments for them.

Benedict lowered his voice.

“The gamekeeper story would have died two years ago if you had denied it.”

“No, it would have changed shape.”

“Not if you had denied it convincingly.”

She studied him.

“Benedict, I am not going to practice innocence for the comfort of women who dislike me.”

“This is not about their comfort.”

“What is it about?”

“Your future.”

She smiled, though there was less amusement in it now.

“My future has developed a remarkable number of guardians since my husband died.”

“I am not trying to guard you.”

“No?”

“I am trying to make you understand that a woman can be independent without making herself a target.”

Mary Beth glanced toward the drawing room, where one of the women she had embarrassed was now recounting the encounter to a third.

“I did not make the target.”

“You painted it red.”

“That does improve visibility.”

Benedict’s expression cooled.

Mary Beth had begun to recognize the change over the past months. Benedict liked her wit until it refused to stop when he wished it to.

He recovered quickly.

“Come to Sablehurst soon,” he said. “Let me arrange something quieter than this.”

“A carefully managed evening.”

“People who might remember they like you if you allowed them.”

“Then they must be very easily discouraged.”

“Mary Beth.”

Her name in his mouth carried weight, somewhere between rebuke and affection.

She looked at him, and he softened his voice.

“You need not fight every person who offers you kindness.”

“And you need not call management kindness.”

For a second neither spoke.

Then Benedict smiled again, smoother this time.

“You are determined to make me work for every civil conversation.”

“I thought work built character.”

“Among other things.”

Someone called his name from the doorway. Benedict glanced back, then returned his attention to her.

“I will speak to you before you leave.”

Mary Beth did not promise to remain long enough.

She waited until he had crossed the room before releasing the breath she had been holding.

The difficulty with Benedict was that some of what he said was sensible, which made the rest harder to dismiss.

Mary Beth had discovered after widowhood that freedom came with invoices.

Some were literal. Roofs, wages, drainage, seed, veterinary bills, stonework, taxes.

Others arrived in sealed envelopes and whispered conversations.

A woman could own a house and still find half the county behaving as though ownership were a temporary fever from which marriage might cure her.

Benedict offered an easier life.

He also made her imagine doors closing.

She returned to the drawing room in time for supper and endured forty minutes of excellent salmon beside a man who explained tenant agriculture to her without once asking whether Blackthorn had tenants.

It did.

Thirty-seven families depended directly upon the estate.

Another dozen leased grazing or worked seasonal ground.

Mary Beth knew which cottages leaked, which fields flooded, which dairy herd had lost two calves in March, and which tenant had lied about the condition of his south boundary because pride was cheaper than repairs.

She knew Blackthorn.

Her late husband had not believed she needed to.

That had been one of many subjects upon which he had been mistaken.

By eleven, Mary Beth had had enough society for one month.

Her carriage waited beneath the portico. Rain drummed on the roof as she settled against the leather squabs, and the familiar motion of wheels over wet road eased the tension in her shoulders.

Inside the carriage, no one watched her, whispered, or required amusement.

For the first several miles she allowed herself the pleasure of silence.

Then the road worsened.