Chapter Eleven The Wrong Table #2
He drew Ambrose into conversation twice. He asked intelligent questions about railway embankments and even corrected another guest who referred to “Mrs. Blackthorn’s builder.”
“Mr. Tavener is a civil engineer,” Benedict said. “And a successful one, I believe.”
Ambrose thanked him.
Mary Beth understood the maneuver.
Benedict was not defending Ambrose as an equal. He was demonstrating that a gentleman could afford courtesy to a useful man without confusing the social order.
It was much more effective than open contempt.
By dessert, Mary Beth wanted to throw something at him.
Instead she ate strawberries.
When the women withdrew, Mary Beth expected an hour of coffee and polite inspection in the drawing room. She lasted twelve minutes.
The elderly widow sat beside her and whispered, “Your engineer is handsome.”
Mary Beth nearly spilled her coffee.
“I had not noticed.”
“Then your eyesight is poor.”
“Tragic.”
“Sablehurst noticed.”
Mary Beth turned slightly.
The widow lifted one shoulder. “Men always notice the man a woman pretends not to notice. It is one of their few reliable talents.”
Before Mary Beth could answer, the gentlemen returned.
Ambrose came in last.
His face told her the dining room had not improved his mood.
He remained near the door until another gentleman drew him into a conversation about a retaining wall. Mary Beth let him stay there.
She had already defended him once without permission. She would not make a spectacle of rescuing a man who did not need rescue.
Benedict approached her instead.
“May I speak plainly?”
“You usually do it so elegantly that no one notices.”
“You embarrassed your hosts tonight.”
“They will recover.”
“That is not the point.”
“No. Mr. Tavener was.”
Benedict’s eyes moved across the room to Ambrose.
“You are making him more visible than is kind.”
Mary Beth’s fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
“Kind to whom?”
“To him.”
Mary Beth set down her coffee.
“Explain.”
“A man in his position can move comfortably between worlds if no one insists on pretending the worlds are the same. He is respected for his work. He is paid well. Men seek his advice. You cannot give him a pedigree by placing him beside you at dinner. You can only make everyone aware that he lacks one.”
For one unpleasant moment, Mary Beth understood the logic.
That was what made Benedict dangerous. He could take cruelty, polish it, and make it sound like concern.
“Perhaps everyone should be made aware of something else,” she said.
“What?”
“That I decide who is fit to sit beside me.”
Benedict’s gaze sharpened.
“Do you?”
Mary Beth heard the question beneath the question.
She did not answer it.
Benedict did not press.
“Your carriage is being brought around at eleven,” he said. “The roads are poor. I hope you will not make the return alone.”
“I won’t.”
His attention flicked once more toward Ambrose.
“I assumed as much.”
He bowed and moved away.
Mary Beth remained where she was until her pulse slowed.
The carriage ride home began in silence.
Rain tapped lightly against the roof. The lamps threw shifting yellow across Ambrose’s face as the wheels found every rut between the house and Blackthorn.
Mary Beth waited three miles.
“You are furious.”
“Yes.”
“At me.”
“Yes.”
“That is refreshingly efficient.”
Ambrose turned from the window.
“What did you think you were doing?”
“Having dinner.”
“Mary Beth.”
“Correcting an insult.”
“By announcing to a room full of people that I matter to you.”
She went still.
Ambrose seemed to realize what he had said.
Neither of them took it back.
“You do matter to me,” she said.
His jaw shifted.
“That is precisely the problem.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“They are watching you. Sablehurst is watching you. Half the county has only just decided you may be invited into a drawing room again, and tonight you moved your place at a dinner table for me.”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand what they will say?”
Mary Beth laughed without humor. “Ambrose, there are very few things left they have not said.”
“This is different.”
“Why? Because this one might be true?”
He fell silent.
The carriage rocked over a shallow wash of water.
Mary Beth held the leather strap beside the window until it steadied.
“You told me not to let Benedict make my life smaller,” she said. “Do not do the same thing because you dislike the reason people may whisper.”
“I am not trying to make your life smaller.”
“You are angry because I used my own place at a table to insist you had one.”
“I am angry because you paid for my dignity with your reputation.”
“My reputation is not currency.”
“Society treats it as currency whether you do or not.”
“Then I refuse the exchange rate.”
Ambrose exhaled hard and leaned back.
“You make everything sound simple when you are angry.”
“And you make everything sound impossible when you are afraid.”
Ambrose stopped rubbing the edge of his glove. Mary Beth had become very good at recognizing the pause that came when he abandoned an argument he could win and considered the truth instead.
“I hated that room,” he said.
Her anger softened, though she did not let it disappear.
“I know.”
“I hated knowing exactly what every man there thought. Useful enough to repair the bridge. Useful enough to save a road. Useful enough to keep estates standing. Then eat elsewhere, Tavener.”
Mary Beth said nothing.
“And then you crossed the room,” he continued, “and suddenly I hated it for another reason.”
“Which was?”
“Because I wanted to let you.”
His voice had gone quiet.
“I wanted to sit beside you. I wanted everyone to see it. I wanted Sablehurst to see it most of all.”
Mary Beth’s breath changed.
Ambrose turned fully toward her.
“That is the part I am ashamed of. Not you. Never you. I am ashamed that for one minute I enjoyed watching you choose me in front of them.”
“Why should that shame you?”
“Because I want more of it.”
The carriage seemed suddenly too small.
He went on before she could answer.
“I want to walk into a room with you and not calculate which door I should use. I want to sit beside you because that is where I belong, not because you have decided to make a point. I want—”
He stopped.
Mary Beth waited.
“You want what?”
Ambrose stared at her.
For a second she thought he would say it.
Whatever it was, she saw the shape of it before he pulled it back.
“More than I have any business asking for yet,” he said.
Mary Beth’s heart gave one hard, disobedient beat.
“You are very irritating when you become honorable.”
“I have been told.”
“By whom?”
“Mostly you.”
She shifted closer along the seat.
“I did not move my place card to make a point.”
“You told Benedict you required the point.”
“I lied. Slightly.”
Ambrose’s brows rose.
Mary Beth touched the lapel of his coat.
“I moved it because I wanted you beside me. The principle arrived afterward.”
Ambrose shut his eyes for a moment and muttered something she suspected was not intended for polite company.
“That is worse.”
“I thought you might say better.”
“Worse for my self-control.”
“Ah.”
“Do not sound pleased.”
“I am delighted.”
He caught her hand before she could withdraw it.
“Mary Beth.”
She leaned close enough that his breath touched her mouth.
“If you tell me again that you are protecting my reputation, I shall open this carriage door and leave you in a ditch.”
“We are moving.”
“Then consider the danger increased.”
Ambrose laughed, and the last of the anger broke.
He kissed her.
There was no caution in it, but there was no performance either.
No storm, no locked bedroom, no darkness generous enough to pretend they were hidden from themselves.
The carriage lamps were bright. The road was bad.
Mary Beth’s hat struck the padded wall when Ambrose pulled her closer, and she laughed against his mouth.
“Very romantic,” she murmured.
“I can ask the driver to find smoother mud.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He kissed her again.
When they separated, Mary Beth kept her hand at the back of his neck.
“You belonged at that table,” she said.
Ambrose’s amusement faded.
“Because I can calculate drainage?”
“Because I wanted you there.”
He studied her face.
“That cannot be the rule for every room in England.”
“No. Only the rooms I am in.”
The answer silenced him.
Blackthorn’s gates appeared through the rain a few minutes later.
Ambrose did not follow Mary Beth upstairs that night. The hour was late, the household still awake, and neither of them wanted another near discovery simply because a dinner had left them reckless.
At the foot of the back stair, they stopped where the corridor split toward the blue room and Mary Beth’s apartments.
Ambrose touched her fingers once.
“You should know something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“If you keep choosing me in rooms like that, I am going to forget every sensible promise I have made about not asking too much of you.”
Mary Beth’s pulse quickened.
She might have teased him on any other night.
Instead she said, “Perhaps I am becoming tired of you remembering them.”
Ambrose did not move.
A door opened somewhere on the floor above, followed by a maid’s quick tread across the landing. They had lingered too long.
Mary Beth lifted Ambrose’s hand and kissed his knuckles.
“Good night, Ambrose.”
“Good night, Mary Beth.”
She went upstairs alone, counting without meaning to the nights that remained before his work at Blackthorn was finished. By the time she reached her door, she had stopped wondering whether she wanted him to stay. The question was what she intended to do about it.