Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
The day of the Rosemere picnic dawned gloriously the following morning, with bright sunshine and barely a cloud in the sky. Hampers, blankets and games were assembled and carried out to the coaches while the children rushed about excitably from the moment they awoke.
Much to his parents’ amusement, Ezra attached himself to Benedict like a limpet, apparently fearing that he would slip away and miss the picnic.
“You’re coming to picnic, Uncle Benedict,” the little boy stated firmly, rushing over to seize Benedict’s hand in the breakfast room as soon as Seraphine brought him down from the nursery.
“I don’t believe that’s a question,” guffawed the Duke of Wexford as he watched with great mirth. “If you had any thoughts about slipping out of this extended family outing, forget them now, Benedict. Ezra has spoken and will not be gainsaid.”
“Uncle Benedict is coming too!” Ezra insisted again fiercely, not really understanding his father’s assertion but hearing in it the possibility of Benedict vanishing.
“Of course he’s coming,” sighed Fanny as thought it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He’s going to marry Louisa so they must be together, like Mother and Father.”
“The wisdom of children,” Seraphine chuckled as Damien raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You must stay with me always, Damien, you know.”
“That is no hardship at all,” he told his wife, turning her hand over and kissing her palm this time, before she caressed his face.
Meanwhile, Benedict gave a long sigh and allowed Ezra to scramble up onto his knee and take the buttered roll that he had prepared for his own breakfast.
“You’re coming too!” the boy said again, glaring at him with childish belligerence before attempting to stuff the entire roll in his mouth.
“I am coming with you, Ezra,” Benedict confirmed, breaking the bread to a more manageable size. “You need not argue.”
The little boy’s fears were not actually without foundation.
While Benedict planned to attend the picnic, this was largely because of his fears of Lord Ashbourne’s further trespass and the danger to the rest of the party.
Without this duty, he might well have kept away, for the good of everyone, especially Lady Louisa Ascot.
Raising his eyes slightly across the table, he perceived her looking towards him now with an expression of something close to tenderness.
Likely, Benedict supposed, Louisa was more looking at little Ezra, of whom she was very fond.
Her dress was white muslin today and her honey-gold hair pinned and bound with a green ribbon.
Again, Benedict pictured Louisa as the personification of a warm, ripe summer.
Part of him longed only to lure her away into the woods, kiss her into a state of burning desire, and hear her plead for fulfillment before he satisfied her completely.
The wedding was so close now. Could it still be wrong to wish he could take her her now.. ?
If Benedict waited until the children were napping and Lady Esher resting too, there would be no need to rush. He could lead Louisa to her fullest pleasure before he sought his own…
“Penny for your thoughts, Benedict,” Damien’s voice broke in abruptly upon his private fantasies, and Benedict pushed all erotic daydreams roughly aside.
“They’re rather more costly than that,” he demurred and turned his attention to breaking more bread for Ezra.
Get a grip on yourself, Northwick! You can wait until the wedding night…
“Marriage is a most solemn commitment,” declared Mr. Terrence with great cheerfulness as he ate another slice of pork pie. “It is my duty to make sure that my parishioners understand this before they think to enter upon it.”
“Wine, Rector?” asked Benedict, smiling and raising the bottle from the picnic blanket. “Lady Esher has provided us with plum wine from her own orchards.”
He rather liked the earnest but jolly little rector who had spent at least half an hour in serious conversation with Louisa before apparently considering his job there done and coming over to join Benedict, on the opposite side of the group.
Presumably, having given his standard pre-wedding speech to the bride, he would now do the same with the groom.
Ezra and Fanny were already down at the lake edge with two nursemaids and an accompanying footman while Lady Esher was beginning to doze in a portable chair. Beside her, Louisa read aloud from a poetry book, her voice a pleasant background murmur, like the lapping of the lake on its shore.
A little beyond them, near the first trees of the woodland, Seraphine and Damien were laughing together, likely considering whether they could yet sneak away together and enjoy similar pleasures to those that had fueled Benedict’s earlier fantasies.
“Thank you, Your Grace, I should never refuse any food or drink from Rosemere, for not only is the quality of the highest standard, but all is made and given with love, the finest of all seasonings. But let me pour my own measure for I cannot allow a duke to serve me.”
Benedict laughed and filled both of their glasses regardless of the clergyman’s reservation.
“I think you will find that Lady Esher’s plum wine tastes equally good whether poured by your hand or mine, Mr. Terrence.”
Raising his glass, Benedict clinked it against that of the rector.
“To a long and happy marriage,” toasted Mr. Terrence. “I wish you both joy.”
“You do approve of the match, then?” Benedict asked him, perhaps a little mellowed by the plum wine.
“Lady Louisa approves of you, and Lady Esher’s account gives me every reason to think that the young lady is right to do so,” answered the rector with a shrug. “You evidently care for your future wife’s wellbeing and that bodes well. It is not for me to judge beyond that.”
The apparent nonchalance of this reply threw Benedict and he laughed.
“I was expecting rather more of a lecture, Mr. Terrence, but it seems you will not give me one.”
“A lecture on what?” enquired the rector.
“Morality, perhaps. Sin, certainly.”
Now it was the little clergyman’s turn to laugh.
“You think you need lectures on morality and sin, Your Grace? If you are even thinking of such things, most likely you do not. The worst sinners often go about under the conviction that vices are virtues. You know right from wrong, I believe, as does Lady Louisa.”
“Louisa is a good woman,” remarked Benedict, glancing towards her and feeling another pang of desire as he took in her wholesomely pretty, golden-haired features and curvaceous form. “I hope I can give her something of the life she deserves, no matter how our marriage began.”
“I understand that it began from you doing the right thing. What better start could there be? Many marriages begin from naivety, from ambition, from covetousness, from fear of being alone, from family obligation and so on. Are any of those things better?”
“Not in my book,” Benedict returned, realizing that he was having a meaningful conversation with a clergyman for perhaps the first time in his life. “I am not what Lady Louisa wanted, however. You must know that.”
“Are you not?” questioned the rector mildly. “It seems to me that you and Lady Louisa judge yourselves by impossible standards, Your Grace. You may soon both find that you are not only what Lady Louisa wants but exactly what she needs.”
“Your faith in me is touching,” jested Benedict, wondering what on earth Louisa could have said about him to Mr. Terrence. “I hope it is not misplaced.”
“We men of the church ought to have faith, although in God rather than man,” chuckled Mr. Terrance. “Lady Louisa’s faith in you is what matters for your marriage, Your Grace. It is there and yours for the keeping, if you are wise.”
She had faith in him? What did that mean?
Again, he looked to his wife-to-be, still reading quietly to her dozing aunt, and so very beautiful under the summer sunlight.
If Louisa really could put her trust in him, regardless of everything, then Benedict would do everything in his power to deserve it
“Then let us hope that faith is as good as love,” he replied with a smile.
“Faith is love,” answered the clergyman as though this was obvious.
“Now, rather than wasting your time with me, why don’t you invite Lady Louisa to take a walk?
I notice that you have barely spoken to one another all day.
Lady Esher is sleeping now, I believe, and does not require her niece’s presence. ”
“Ah, I cannot do that,” Benedict responded, his mind instantly flooded with indecent images that he could never entirely dispel, but nor could he allow himself to indulge.
“Walk by the lake, in general view, where you cannot be tempted,” suggested the rector merrily, as though reading the other man’s thoughts. “Oh, I have spoken to many bridegrooms on the eve of their weddings, Your Grace. You could not shock me if you tried.”
“For the sake of the present company, I shall not attempt to rise to that challenge, Mr. Terrence,” the Duke of Northwick returned with a grin. “Sometimes in life, I have shocked even myself.”
Regardless, the rector had made a good suggestion. Standing, Benedict brushed himself down and walked across to where Louisa sat with her poetry book, the pages still open but her voice fallen silent as she peered at her aunt’s closed eyes.
“I believe Lady Esher is sleeping,” Benedict said in a low voice. “Shall we walk by the lake, over there?”
“Oh, I…Yes,” Louisa replied, slightly pink and flustered as she closed her book and took the hand that Benedict had extended to help her rise.
That simple contact and the warmth of her fingers in his created a powerful charge, its effect shooting into Benedict’s gut, his blood and his groin.
The color of Louisa’s cheeks and the shyness of her eyes told him that she felt some similar reaction, especially when they both turned their heads at a rustling sound and observed Seraphine and Damien finally slipping away into the trees.
“We will stay here, in sight of the party,” Benedict reassured her, still speaking under his breath, “however much I wish that you were already mine and we too could seek the privacy of the forest.”
Louisa’s green-hazel eyes looked back at his with such bewildered but intense longing that it took all his energy to maintain his resolution and offer his arm in a civilized manner.
She wanted him, she trusted him and they would so very soon be officially united.
Benedict felt half-maddened by the natural urge to carry Louisa away and ravish her in some hidden glade.
“When you speak like that, Benedict, I…I do not know what to say,” she confessed, her blush deepening and her hand tightening on his arm. “When you are my husband, how should I respond?”
With your lips…
Benedict held back this first instinctive reply and the impulse to take her into his arms and better illustrate his meaning with kisses.
“I doubt there is anything you could ever say or do that would not be right, Louisa,” he told her instead and then changed the subject. “How was your conversation with the rector? He was not as I expected and I understand why you like him.”
“Mr. Terrence is a good sort of man, isn't he?” replied Louisa with a somewhat easier smile. “He spoke to me mainly about the nature of happiness. It was all rather philosophical. How about you?”
“Oh, we spoke of Rosemere and its ladies, then faith and duty, I suppose. I believe we were both more appreciating your aunt’s plum wine.”
Louisa laughed and the sound mingled with the birdsong and the chatter of the children, a short distance along the shore. It was a most wonderful sound and Benedict did not want it to stop.
“You look happy,” she observed, studying his face.
Happy? With a jolt, Benedict realized that Louisa was right.
He was happy – but how could it be so? The two of them were being forced into marriage by circumstances beyond their control.
At the same time, the security of Rosemere was menaced by a jealous and dangerous man.
Both Benedict’s life and Louisa’s were being turned upside down, and yet he was happy…
Despite everything, the greatest fear on Benedict’s mind these past few hours was not the nuptial altar, nor Lord Ashbourne.
It was the prospect of losing self-control in his physical ardor for Louisa.
She too was a picture of apparent contentedness this afternoon, strolling beside him, with the sun in her golden hair and several loosened curls blowing in the wind.
“So do you,” Benedict murmured, stopping on the sand and looking at his wife-to-be. “Are you not afraid?”
“I was frightened at first,” admitted Louisa. “I was afraid of you, afraid of myself, then afraid for all of us after Lord Ashbourne…There are so many things that frighten me, but I realized that I am not alone and that has made it better.”
“You are not alone,” he responded, his hand reaching out of its own volition to touch her face and smooth her hair. “I am here.”
“Benedict,” Louisa breathed, closing her eyes and not pulling away.
How he wanted this woman! Yet Benedict must not yield to his desire, however strongly it urged him to lead Louisa along the path into the woods.
Her cheek was as soft and warm as a damask rose petal in the sun, and he supposed that the skin of her breasts and thighs would be equally delectable to his touch…
Little Ezra’s voice sounded at just the right moment, breaking the powerful tension.
“I want to swim!” the boy shouted as a previous disagreement with his nursemaids suddenly became a vocal argument.
“Not without Father,” said Fanny. “You have to paddle until Father comes back. He said there must be two men in the water to swim. Mr. Hughes is only one man.”
Benedict and Louisa both sighed ruefully and turned towards the voices. One of the nursemaids was holding back the wriggling, struggling child in the shallows as the other nursemaid, the young footman and Fanny paddled in the water up to their ankles.
“But I want to swim! It’s not fair!”
“I think my services are required if we don’t Ezra’s screams to scare away all the wildlife,” Benedict told his bride-to-be, raising her hand and kissing it lightly. “A swim would be good for me.”
Louisa nodded and Benedict was glad to see the regret in her eyes at his departure, secure in the knowledge that she desired him too.
There was also a hint of that unexpected tenderness again.
Benedict felt another flash of heady desire as he imagined seeing the same expression on her face at the moment their naked bodies conjoined.
Yes, cold water would do him good…