Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Tea, Your Graces?” offered Lady Huxley, recovering herself quickly after her initial surprise at finding the Duke of Northwick and Duke of Wexford at Huxley Manor in the middle of the morning, asking to speak to her cousin.
Closing her book with a snap and laying it on the table, the fair-haired dowager recomposed her face and sat down again on the armchair from which she had risen sharply at their arrival. A golden lorgnette dangled on its chain about her neck.
“No, thank you, Lady Huxley,” declined Benedict, with a polite bow of his head. “Our business with Lord Ashbourne should not take long.”
“Baines,” called out Lady Huxley as her butler began to leave the drawing room after showing the visitors in. “Go and tell my cousin that he has guests from Rosemere.”
“Very good, My Lady.”
“It is good of you to call, Your Graces. I recently had a rather curious message from Lady Esher and wonder whether you can make sense of it.”
“We could not presume to comment on Lady Esher’s correspondence,” answered Benedict, assuming that Lady Huxley was referring to being disinvited to the engagement party. “I shall however, convey to her that her message has been received.”
Pursing her lips, but managing to keep her countenance, Lady Huxley gestured them towards a sofa. Again, Benedict shook his head.
“We will not trouble you for long, Lady Huxley, and our business with your cousin is private. It might be best if we speak to him elsewhere.”
At this, Lady Huxley flushed with displeasure. Indeed, under other circumstances, it would have been rude to pay so little attention and courtesy to the lady of the house. However, after all that had occurred in recent weeks, good manners were not at the top of Benedict’s priorities.
“I assure you that my cousin and I are very much in one another’s confidence and whatever concerns Edmund, concerns me also,” she told them stiffly. “You need have no reservations on that score, Your Grace. There can be no need for a private conference with Edmund…”
“All is well, Emily,” said a deep but slightly hoarse voice as the tall, thin figure of Lord Ashbourne appeared in the open doorway. “I will take our guests to walk in the gardens. I wanted to have a cigar anyway and I know how much you hate the smell of tobacco indoors.”
“You are always so considerate, Edmund,” Lady Huxley declared, casting a sideways glare at their callers. “It is no wonder that some people take advantage of your good nature.”
At this, Benedict could easily have laughed aloud after all that he had learned of the Earl of Ashbourne’s black character.
Good Lord, without the protection of title and fortune, the man would likely be behind bars.
Ashbourne’s cousin likely knew none of it, however – or didn’t want to know.
Lady Huxley struck Benedict as the latter kind of woman.
“Shall we, Your Graces?” said Lord Ashbourne with a cold, amused smile that was more a smirk, gesturing back to the hallway with a cigar in his hand. “It’s a fine day for a walk.”
Bowing a minimal farewell to Lady Huxley, they followed Lord Ashbourne outside.
“Can I offer you both a cigar too?” he said, stopping at a stone bird table on the upper lawn, and producing several from his pocket. "They are the finest Havana.”
“I don’t smoke,” Benedict said bluntly, having always hated the habit and the pathetic dependency it seemed to breed in those gentlemen who took to tobacco.
“Thank you, but my wife prefers that I don’t smoke,” declined Damien with a touch more politeness and humor. “As it is not Christmas, I must decline.”
Damien’s probably was the better way to handle such a man as Lord Ashbourne but his nerve and manner had got under Benedict’s skin.
“You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” Lord Ashbourne queried with pretended solicitousness and goading amusement in his dark eyes.
Benedict shook his head and then waited impatiently while their host went through the ceremony of preparing and lighting his cigar. At last he took a long puff with great satisfaction and then slipped the matches back into his jacket.
“So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company today, Your Graces?” Lord Ashbourne asked, as cordially as if they had all just been introduced for the first time at some unremarkable social event.
There was no sign of nervousness or ill-feeling on the blond man’s face or in his stance.
Who would believe that urbane and well-mannered gentleman was the same individual who had been sending such unhinged and poisonous letters to the Duke of Northwick for weeks and spending significant amounts of time skulking about Rosemere?
If Benedict did not have such early familiarity with someone who wore two entirely different faces, he might have doubted his own judgement in this moment.
However, he remembered all too well the way his father might laugh and joke seconds before suddenly turning and knocking Benedict’s mother to the ground for some imaginary transgression.
“It stops now, Lord Ashbourne,” Benedict said without beating about the bush, his tone as clear and pleasant as Lord Ashbourne’s own, but with steel showing beneath. “No more letters, no more prowling about Rosemere, no more obsessing over my wife.”
“Lady Louisa is not your wife,” the man snarled, his mask slipping for a moment before he pulled himself back and puffed again on his cigar. “There is still more than a week before your wedding, I believe. She might well think better of such a union before then.”
“As far as I am concerned, Lady Louisa is already my wife,” Benedict insisted. “She is entitled to every protection that entails, Lord Ashbourne. I tell you now that your trespassing at Rosemere is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.”
“My trespassing? Ha! My claim to Lady Louisa’s hand long precedes yours, Your Grace. You are the interloper here, not I. By honor, you ought to admit that rather than laying accusations at my feet. What man does not defend his own property and rights?”
Lord Ashbourne’s voice had dropped back into tones of utter reasonableness that contrasted distinctly with the irrationality and problematic nature of his statements.
“Lady Louisa is not property and you have no rights to her hand,” Benedict countered. “As I understand it, you made no proposal, nor even introduced yourself. Even if you had, she would never have accepted your offer.”
“Women are not always aware of what they really want,” Lord Ashbourne claimed with a rather unpleasant smile that twisted his mouth around the cigar. “They do not always appreciate what is in their best interest. They must be guided, steered and, on occasion, forced.”
A strong wave of revulsion rose in Benedict’s stomach. His father had once said something very similar when his young son had pleaded for the vicious man to leave his cowering mother alone.
“Lady Louisa knows exactly what she wants, I assure you,” the Duke of Northwick replied coldly, feeling also a more distant pang of sadness that he could not really give her all that she wanted.
“We will be married shortly and you have no place in our lives. You may take your twisted ideas on the fairer sex and choke on them for all I care.”
“Benedict!”
Damien’s cry of warning was unnecessary. Benedict was already prepared for Lord Ashbourne’s lunge towards him and entirely conscious of the man’s left hand reaching into his coat, having observed from the cigar lighting process that Ashbourne was left-handed.
Seizing Lord Ashbourne’s left wrist in an iron grip, he forced the man back against the stone bird table.
“Don’t even think of drawing your blade on me, Ashbourne,” Benedict growled. “I am no foolish young pick-pocket, drunken clubman or defenseless woman. I know what you are. I know all about you. Believe me, I will destroy you if I must.”
Livid, Lord Ashbourne struggled against him, possessed of an intense wiry strength despite his slimmer build and fueled by the fury of a disturbed soul.
He was no match for Benedict however, an active, healthy sportsman, regardless of his ostensibly scandalous lifestyle in London, and possessed of an inner spirit perhaps as damaged and raging as Ashbourne’s, in its own way.
“You will regret this, Northwick,” Lord Ashbourne told him, his low, slightly hoarse smoker’s voice managing to sound both whispery and vicious.
In response, Benedict twisted his captive about and held him against the bird table with one arm and the weight of his body while his other hand found the shape of the knife in an inner pocket and retrieved it.
It was no decorative weapon, nor any kind of functional pen- or pocket-knife.
This sleek steel folding-blade could have only one grim purpose…
“We should go. Now.”
Damien spoke in a low, urgent voice. Taking the knife from Benedict, out of its owner’s sight, he threw it far across the garden into a tangle of bushes, shrubs and ivy. Benedict released his grasp on Ashbourne abruptly, causing the man to stumble to his knees.
“Good day, Lord Ashbourne. I trust we will not meet again,” Benedict said with contempt as they left him there on the lawn, shouting abuse at their departing backs.
“Christ, I thought you were going to slit his throat,” muttered Damien once they were well away from the house and back on the path to Rosemere.
Benedict shook his head.
“No, rest easy, old friend. The thought never even crossed my mind, although I’d certainly not give Ashbourne the benefit of the doubt if I found him sneaking up on Louisa again. If it came to it, I’d likely kill him before he could kill me.”
“I do believe you would,” acknowledged Damien. “I could not blame you for it, but I hope you have witnesses on such an occasion, to speak for your defense.”
“I fear it is in my blood.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.