Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
The carpet before the fireplace had been woven for ornament rather than repose.
Benedict had determined that within the first quarter hour.
By the end of the second, he had discovered that two folded blankets did nothing to prevent the floorboards beneath it from finding every bone in his body.
He shifted onto his back and drew the spare pillow lower beneath his head.
A hard ridge pressed between his shoulders.
When he turned upon his side, the hearth was too warm against his face; when he turned the other way, he found himself staring directly at the bed which he was not permitted to occupy.
He had endured worse accommodations without complaint.
During a journey north, he had once passed a night in a posting inn where the mattress harbored creatures of such industry that he had chosen a chair instead.
A damaged bridge had left him sleeping in his carriage on another occasion.
Neither memory offered consolation now, for discomfort was only partly responsible for his wakefulness.
Harriet lay in his bed.
He could not see her clearly. The lamps had been extinguished, and the fire cast more shadow than light beyond the edge of the carpet.
But he had seen her before she climbed beneath the covers: her hair loose over her shoulders, the pale wrapper concealing a nightrail he knew must be thinner still.
That single glimpse had been sufficient to torment him.
His imagination, never notably poetic, had developed a distressing attention to detail.
Benedict closed his eyes and ordered himself to think of Everton House.
The stable roof required inspection. The south chimneys had smoked in his grandmother's time, and Pritchard's list had made no mention of whether the cause had ever been remedied.
There would be accounts to examine, servants to interview and a dozen practical decisions to occupy him before they removed there.
Every one of those thoughts led inexorably back to Harriet.
He imagined her walking through Everton with the ring of household keys at her waist. He pictured her in the estate room his mother had described, frowning over a ledger and disputing every recommendation he offered.
He saw her at the breakfast table, her hair pinned severely while the morning sun found the red hidden within its brown.
None of those images ought to have been improper.
They unsettled him more than any improper fantasy might have done.
Because the level of detail his mind supplied hinted that perhaps she’d been occupying more of his thoughts all along than he’d been cognizant of.
Desire could be resisted. The prospect of wanting her woven through every ordinary hour of his life was another danger altogether.
He shifted again, seeking a position in which the brass fender did not threaten his knees and the corner of the pillow did not fold beneath his ear. The blankets rasped over the carpet with a sound that seemed unnaturally loud in the sleeping house.
From the bed came Harriet's voice. “If you turn over once more, Benedict, I shall be compelled to ring for a footman and have you secured to the floor.”
He went still. “I beg your pardon. I had believed you asleep.”
“I might have been, had you not spent the last half hour wrestling the carpet into submission. Since the carpet appears likely to prevail, perhaps you would concede defeat with some dignity.”
Benedict stared up at the darkness of the coffered ceiling.
Her voice was blurred at the edges by fatigue, and the intimacy of hearing it in darkness tightened every muscle he had only just persuaded to relax.
“I assure you, my dignity suffered a mortal wound when I arranged my bed before the grate. There is very little left for the carpet to conquer.”
The bedclothes rustled. A moment later Harriet sat up, her shape faintly outlined by the glow of the fire. Her hair fell loose about her shoulders. Benedict looked away at once, fixing his attention upon the carved leg of a nearby chair.
“This is utterly ridiculous,” she said. “That bed is large enough for four people, yet you are lying upon the floor as if I had banished you there for some grave marital offense. You will be unable to move by morning.”
“Then my valet may dress me where I lie, aching joins and all. He has long complained that I make his work unnecessarily difficult. No doubt he will appreciate the convenience afforded by my immobility.”
“Do not turn this into a joke merely because you know I am right.” Harriet drew the covers higher, though whether against the chill or from a belated awareness of her state of dress, Benedict could not tell. “There is no sensible reason you cannot sleep upon the other side of the bed.”
There were several reasons, none of which he intended to explain while she sat there in her nightrail asking him to join her.
The most pressing was that now being her husband, he’d discovered a heretofore unknown desire for the woman who he’d previously considered the bane of his existence.
Perhaps that had been the source of his irritation with her all along and he had concealed the fact beneath irritation because irritation was safe.
It required nothing from her and exposed nothing in him.
And he had little hope that her own consistent annoyance with him was born of similar cause.
Sharing a bed would not be safe.
He might lie beside her without touching her.
He did not doubt his capacity to keep his word.
But he would feel her warmth across the space between them and listen to her breathing in the darkness.
By morning, the barrier he had erected between marriage and desire would have become far more difficult to defend.
Once he permitted himself to think of her as a wife in truth, he did not know how he was to return to the careful agreement that had allowed her to marry him without fear.
“Our arrangement was quite clear,” he said. “You were to have your own chamber. Circumstances have denied you one tonight, so I have supplied the separation we agreed upon by the only means available.”
“Our arrangement did not require you to cripple yourself in a demonstration of honor. It required only that you make no demands upon me.” Harriet's irritation sharpened her voice, but beneath it he heard something else.
Embarrassment, perhaps. Or concern she would deny if he named it.
“I am not demanding that you touch me. I am suggesting that you occupy your own bed and permit both of us to sleep.”
Benedict folded one arm beneath his head. “You have a touching faith in the restorative powers of proximity. I doubt either of us would sleep more soundly for it.”
“Why should we not? You gave me your word, and I believed you.”
The simple declaration silenced him. She trusted him. Not without reservation and certainly not in all things, but in this she had accepted his promise as sufficient. Benedict ought to have been gratified. Instead, her confidence made him feel more keenly the desire he was concealing from her.
“Your trust is not misplaced,” he said at last. “It is also not a reason to abandon the terms that secured it.”
Harriet threw back the coverlet on the empty side of the bed.
Pale linen flashed in the firelight, an invitation entirely innocent in her mind and nothing of the sort in his.
“Look at the distance between us. You could place a barricade of pillows along the center if you require a visible frontier. I promise not to launch an invasion.”
Against his will, Benedict pictured the scene: Harriet on one side, himself upon the other and a ridiculous rampart of pillows between them.
By dawn, one of them would dislodge it. She might turn in her sleep and lay her hand upon him.
He might wake with her curled against his side.
The thought arrived with such force that he sat up too quickly and drove one hand against the floor to steady himself.
“No.”
Harriet regarded him across the darkened room. “That is not an argument. It is scarcely even a word.”
“It has the advantage of clarity.” Benedict dragged the slipping blanket back over his legs, though the room had ceased to feel cold. “Go to sleep, Harriet.”
“I cannot sleep while you carry on like a penitent monk before the fire. Every sigh announces that you are suffering nobly on my account.”
“I have not sighed.”
“You have sighed repeatedly.”
“I was breathing.”
“With unnecessary emphasis.” Her answer came so swiftly that under any other circumstances he would have laughed. Instead he pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes and attempted to summon patience.
“Very well. I shall breathe more discreetly. You may return to sleep secure in the knowledge that I am suffering without theatrics.”
She did not lie down. Benedict could feel her watching him even after he lowered his hand.
Their quarrels had always possessed a private rhythm.
Harriet advanced whenever she sensed him retreating, while he prodded at her defenses until she forgot she had meant to preserve them.
In a drawing room or upon a country lane, that pattern had been entertaining.
Here, with the room dark and her bed only a few steps away, it had become perilous.
“You are being obstinate,” she said.
“I am attempting to honor the agreement you required before consenting to marry me.”
“And I am telling you that sharing a mattress does not alter that agreement. If I believed you incapable of behaving as a gentleman, I would lock the door between us and place Mrs. Mercer before it with a pistol.”
“Mrs. Mercer would not require the pistol. Her disapproval would be sufficient to dispatch me.”
“Then you acknowledge that I am in no danger.”
“I have never suggested otherwise.” He rose because remaining on the floor while she addressed him from the bed placed him at an intolerable disadvantage.
The blanket fell away, and cool air struck through the fine linen of his shirt.
He stood before the fire with his back to her, bracing one hand upon the mantel.
“The danger is not that I shall forget my promise.”
Silence followed. He had said too much. Behind him, the bed ropes creaked softly as Harriet shifted.
“What danger is there, then?” she asked.
Benedict watched a coal collapse in the grate.
Sparks flared and vanished. He could tell her that the danger lay in what proximity would permit him to want.
He could admit that the sight of her with her hair unbound had driven every sensible thought from his head, or that the idea of lying beside her had become more tempting with every attempt she made to render it practical.
Honesty, however, would oblige her to answer knowledge she had not asked to possess.
It might frighten her after all—or worse, awaken her pity.
He chose the only defense left to him. “The danger of making exceptions on the first night. If we alter our understanding whenever it becomes inconvenient, it will very soon cease to be an understanding at all.”
“That is nonsense dressed as principle. Everton House will afford us separate chambers. Tonight is an exception because we have no better alternative.”
“I have an alternative. It happens to be hard, drafty and determined to deform my spine, but it remains available.” Benedict turned.
Harriet was still sitting upright, the counterpane gathered beneath her arms. Firelight traced the line of one bare shoulder where her nightrail had slipped.
She noticed the direction of his gaze and drew the linen into place.
The small movement stripped away the last of his restraint.
She could not sit half dressed in his bed, invite him beneath the covers and continue to regard the matter as if they were debating the sensible division of a carriage seat.
Perhaps she truly did not understand what she was asking.
Benedict understood it far too well for both of them.
“Harriet, for the love of God, stop asking me to join you in that blasted bed. Unless you're willing to renegotiate the terms of our marriage, I'll stay right here on the floor.”