Chapter 6 #2
Before Amelia had gone more than a few steps toward the gap in the piers, Benjamin caught her arm — lightly, no more than a touch — and she turned, startled, ready to apologize again.
"A moment." He glanced past her, down the lane in both directions, at the empty road and the hedgerows and the still morning air. Nothing moved. "Forgive me. I only wished to be certain no one was on the road to see you leaving this ground."
Amelia understood him at once, and something in her face eased, as though she had been braced for a different kind of caution and had not expected this one.
"That is considerate of you."
"It costs me nothing to look, and it might cost you a great deal if I did not." He released her arm and stepped back. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Lady Amelia."
"And you, Mr. Sterling."
She went, quick and light over the cleared ground, through the gap where the gate had never been, and did not look back.
Benjamin watched until the lane had swallowed her, and then a moment longer after that, before he let his eyes drop to the crushed rose still lying where he had set it in the grass.
He crouched and looked at it.
"Sterling," he said, to no one, and there was no fondness in the word at all. "The name of a coward."
He had told her the truth about the estate.
He had told her his own face, his own voice, the whole of his manner without disguise.
And when the moment had come to give her the one thing that mattered most — his name, his father's name, the name he had sworn to Hale not two days past that he would carry openly, no more hiding — he had reached for the other one instead, smooth as breathing, because it was easier, because it asked nothing of her, because a woman standing in a ruined garden did not need to be told in her first quarter hour that she had been speaking with the son of a hanged traitor.
That was the excuse. He knew it for an excuse even as he made it.
◆◆◆
Benjamin stood at the edge of the cleared ground and looked at what he had done.
By the standards he had spent twenty years learning, it was excellent work.
Two days, a scythe gone orange when he started, and the whole tangled length of the fence line cut back to bare earth — clean, level, nothing left standing that had not earned the right to stand.
In the camp this would have passed inspection without a word said.
A man could be proud of ground cleared like that.
He had not felt proud of it since a woman knelt in front of a ruined rose stock and told him what he had actually done.
Wheels on gravel brought his head round.
A carriage was coming up what remained of the drive, and it was not one he knew. Benjamin's eyes narrowed, and he crossed the grass toward it with the same flat readiness he would have carried toward any unannounced approach, prepared to meet whoever had come uninvited a second time in one morning.
He reached it before it had fully stopped.
"Good day to you." He addressed the driver directly, his tone even and without warmth. "I am the owner of this property. My name is Benjamin. I would ask you to identify yourself and state your business here."
The driver opened his mouth, but the curtain at the window drew back before he could answer.
"Is this how you welcome your old nanny, Benjamin?"
He laughed before he had decided to.
"I no longer have a nanny, my lady."
"Nonsense. You will be ten years old in my eyes until the day I am buried, and you may drop that soldier's face with me. I have seen you cry over a broken toy soldier and I am not impressed by the other one."
He was still smiling as he waved the driver on. "Follow the cleared path, if you would. I have done enough damage to this ground for one morning — I would rather not add wheel ruts to the list."
The carriage moved forward at a walk, and Benjamin fell into step alongside it, one hand resting on the door frame.
"You cleared all of this yourself, Your Grace?"
He stopped walking.
"Mrs. Miller. Please do not call me that.
" He said it quietly, and there was no anger in it at all, only something tired underneath.
"It is too soon. This is a small town, and titles carry a great distance in a place this size.
I would rather not bring that particular storm down before I have so much as put a roof back over your head. "
She studied his face through the open window for a long moment.
"You are right," she said, gentler than before.
The carriage had stopped. She reached out and took his arm through the window, her grip surprisingly firm.
"One day," she said, "you will say your name to the whole of England, and you will say it proudly, and I intend to be standing close enough to hear it."
"Thank you." He covered her hand with his own, briefly. "But we have a long road before we reach that day."