Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Benedict looked dreadful.
Harriet observed him from the breakfast-room doorway.
He sat at the table with one hand wrapped about a cup of coffee and the other pressed to his temple.
His cravat was tied with its usual precision, but his face was pale, his eyes shadowed and his expression sufficiently grim that no servant had ventured near him since placing the coffee at his elbow.
Whatever Harriet had expected after the previous night, it had not been this.
She entered the room. Benedict lifted his head at the sound of her skirts and immediately winced.
“Are you ill?” she asked.
“Not in any manner which is deserving of sympathy.”
“That has rarely prevented you from attempting to obtain it.” Harriet crossed to the sideboard and picked up a plate. “What is wrong?”
“I am suffering from a peculiar ailment of my own making. Its principal symptoms appear to be a splitting skull, an objection to daylight and the conviction that my valet polishes my boots at an unnecessary volume.”
Harriet looked from him to the decanter upon the sideboard. “You are foxed.”
“Not presently. Presently, I am paying for having been so last night.” Benedict took a cautious drink of coffee. “There is a distinction, though I admit it offers little comfort.”
She selected a piece of toast but did not place it upon her plate. “Why on earth did you drink so much?”
His gaze settled upon her. Even suffering as he plainly was, there was nothing dulled in the way he looked at her. Harriet remembered his mouth upon hers and nearly dropped the toast.
“Because it appeared the lesser of two evils,” he said.
“And what was the greater?”
“Returning to your chamber and breaking the vow I made to both of us.”
Harriet stood motionless before the sideboard. The toast remained caught between the silver tongs. She could feel the heat rising from her throat to her face, but Benedict made no effort to spare her embarrassment by looking away.
Mrs. Mercer had told her that he wanted her. Harriet had known it herself before asking the question. Hearing him speak of the strength of that wanting was another matter.
She returned the toast to the rack and set the tongs down. “I have decided to release you from that vow.”
The cup stopped halfway to Benedict’s mouth.
For several seconds, he did not move. He watched that stillness with bated breath. Then he placed it carefully upon the saucer. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” she replied, her tone deceptively casual. “I have decided that the vow, as it stands, was made in haste.”
“I believe I did, but I am reluctant to trust any conclusion reached while my head is in this condition.” He rose from the table. The movement brought another flicker of pain across his face, though it did not lessen the intensity of his expression. “Harriet, are you certain?”
“No.”
He stared at her.
“I am not certain of anything,” she continued before he could speak.
“That is the difficulty. I insisted upon an arrangement when I knew nothing of what marriage to you would be. I cannot discover whether I want it to remain so while I continue avoiding the very thing upon which I am attempting to decide. I grow weary of my own ignorance in these matters.”
“You wish me to bed you as an experiment?”
Harriet’s face burned hotter. “That is a very crude way of saying it.”
“It is also a clear one.” Benedict came around the table. “I need to understand what you are offering before I allow myself to accept it.”
She lifted her chin. “I am offering to renegotiate, as you suggested. I do not know what the result will be. I cannot promise that one night will alter every other term between us, nor can I promise I will not be frightened when the moment comes. But if I remain ignorant, I shall remain uncertain. I have had enough of both.”
Benedict said nothing. His astonishment would have been gratifying had Harriet not felt so painfully exposed. She had begun to think he meant to refuse when hurried footsteps sounded in the hall.
The door opened, and a servant announced that a rider had arrived from Denham Park with an urgent message.
Benedict took the folded paper. As he read, the desire and disbelief in his expression gave way to alarm.
“What has happened?” Harriet asked.
“My father has fallen from the new stallion.” He scanned the message again, his mouth tightening.
“He is conscious and insists he is unhurt, which my mother correctly interprets as evidence that he should not be trusted. He is refusing to permit the physician to examine him. She wants me to come and talk sense into him.”
“Then you must go.”
His gaze lifted, locking on hers with an intensity that was startling. “This conversation is not finished. It has barely begun, in fact.”
“Your father may have broken his neck.”
“If he had broken his neck, I doubt he would be arguing with my mother about the doctor.” Benedict folded the letter but continued looking at Harriet. “Still, I cannot ignore it.”
“Nor should you. We will speak when you return. I will not suddenly lose my courage. I have made my position clear and I will not be backing away from it now.” She picked up her abandoned plate, though eating had become impossible.
“I mean to visit Alderley this morning. I should like to spend some time visiting with my father and my sister. I promised I would not become a stranger simply because I now live a few miles away. I shall take the carriage and return this afternoon.”
Benedict hesitated. “Take a groom as well as the coachman.”
“I have traveled that road all my life.”
“Humor me.” His tone made the request sound very near an order, but his expression held concern rather than arrogance. “After what you said of Selby this morning, I would prefer that you were not alone.”
Harriet almost argued from habit. She thought of Selby’s smile and did not. “Very well.”
Benedict nodded and turned toward the door. He took two steps, stopped and looked back. Something in his face warned her before he crossed the room.
He caught her about the waist and kissed her.
It was nothing like the careful beginning of the previous night. His mouth settled upon hers with certainty, taking the answer she had given him and making a promise of it. The kiss was brief only because the urgent message remained clenched in his hand. It was no less heated for its brevity.
Before Harriet could recover enough to clutch at his coat, he lifted his head.
“This afternoon,” he said. “We discuss the terms.”
Then he released her and left.
Harriet remained beside the sideboard, breathless and unable to recall why she had picked up a plate. The toast tongs lay where she had abandoned them. Her coffee had not yet been poured. None of it appeared to matter.
A slight movement at the door drew her attention.
Mrs. Mercer stood upon the threshold.
Harriet closed her eyes briefly. “How much of that did you see?”
“Enough.” Mrs. Mercer entered and shut the door behind her. “You have made your decision, then.”
“I have made one decision. I do not know that it answers every other question.”
“It rarely does.” Mrs. Mercer came nearer. The concern in her face surprised Harriet. “You are certain of him?”
“You told me only this morning that I should trust him.”
“With your body. That is not the same as trusting him with everything else.”
Harriet set down the empty plate. “I do not know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” Mrs. Mercer’s voice softened. “Be very certain before you give him your heart. It is one thing to be married to a man. That gives him the power to rule you if he is determined to exercise it. Loving him gives him the power to destroy you, and he need not be cruel to do it.”
The warning struck far more deeply than Harriet wished it to. “You speak as though I am in love with Benedict.”
“I speak as though the possibility for it exists.” Mrs. Mercer looked toward the door through which he had gone. “And as though you have not yet permitted yourself to consider what that would mean.”
Harriet had no answer. She had thought of desire, children and the marriage they might make if she abandoned the distance between them. She had not called any of it love.
But when Benedict left to attend his injured father, she had started toward the window to watch his departure before she had even realized she was moving. Missing a person before they were even gone was surely not a good sign of how well she had shielded her heart.