Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Solomon’s man is in place,” Laurence said, murmuring the words in Ellen’s ear.
She nodded, her blue eyes scanning the busy garden party before them for Benedict.
She could not see him, but she knew that meant nothing.
He could be in the house, or he could not have arrived yet.
He would be there, though. She was sure of it.
She had even gone so far as to secretly send him a letter expressing her interest in seeing him again.
“Remember what I said,” Laurence murmured when she did not answer. “Stay by my side. Always.”
“I am well aware of your rules,” she murmured in response, her tone clipped.
She felt Laurence’s arm tighten around hers, and she finally looked up at him.
It was the first time she’d done so all day.
As they had sat across from one another in the carriage, the ride was tense and silent.
Even as he’d tried to break that silence by telling her she looked beautiful.
She’d merely muttered her thanks and kept her eyes on the view from the carriage window.
She didn’t want to look at him. If she looked, she would feel that want, that pull toward him that had developed over the last few weeks—and it would hurt.
Even as she braced herself for it presently, the slamming sensation in her gut was torture. She hated how handsome he was. How she was falling in love with the chiseled lines of his face. The green of his eyes. She hated how concern flickered in those green eyes.
“Ellen, I know you are unhappy with me,” he said, his deep voice sending longing shooting through her core, despite her best efforts to steel herself from it. “I know that as of late I have not been quite fair to you. But this is almost over. And when it is, perhaps we can…”
She turned away from him and began to walk, not wanting him to finish what he was about to say.
She already knew that, after dealing with Benedict, he did not want to be around her anymore.
He did not have to protect her anymore, and even though she had tried to tell herself over and over again that she was not falling in love with her husband, the truth was, she already had.
She was in love with him, and once Benedict was arrested, she was going to lose him.
Her plan to stop him from talking about it worked, and he hissed out a quiet “Ellen!” as he made quick steps to catch up to her.
“What?” she asked, doing her best to sound unbothered. “I knew you would catch up to me. It is not as if I was running from you.”
Like you are running from me.
Laurence gave her a warning look as that muscle in his jaw ticked, but he did not try to speak about his plans for ‘after’ again.
Instead, as she went to take another step, his arm wrapped around her waist, and he pulled her into his chest. The warmth and pleasure of his body flush against her own instantly had Ellen’s lashes fluttering and womb tightening with need.
“I will chase you through this entire garden, little wife,” he whispered warningly into her ear. “Guests or not. I do not care who sees. What I care about is getting to the end of this day with you being perfectly safe. Do you understand me?”
A shiver of anticipation moved down Ellen’s spine as the imagery of him doing such a thing conjured in her mind.
She thought of how thrilling it would be to dash past all of the prettily dressed guests and elegantly decorated tables.
To make her way into the garden and trees, getting lost as she ran.
The way her heart would race. The way her body would burn.
The way she would be both thrilled and terrified when Laurence no doubt caught her and finally kissed her again.
Ellen drew in a steady breath, willing the images and her arousal to fade, and whispered yes through gritted teeth.
“There’s my good girl,” Laurence praised, his deep voice growling in that way she loved, as he ran the tip of his nose up the shell of her ear.
Hell. She was quite certain she was in hell.
“Laurence.”
Laurence let go of her, and they both turned to see a disapproving Madalene glaring at her brother. Solomon was by her side, looking at Laurence with quiet, speculative intensity.
“Come along, sister,” Madalene said curtly, leaving Solomon’s side to take Ellen’s hand. “Since these men are being rather brutish today, we will get our own lemonade.”
Though her body willed her to stay in Laurence’s embrace, Ellen stepped away the moment she felt his hold on her grow limp, and she hurried to take Madalene’s offered arm.
“We are to stay together,” Laurence seethed through clenched teeth.
“And Ellen and I will stay together,” Madalene countered sharply. “You two go look for your man, and leave us be for a moment. We need a reprieve from your suffocating hovering.”
Laurence blinked in surprise, but before he could respond, Madalene was leading Ellen away from them and toward the refreshment table.
“I swear that man is a walking contradiction,” Madalene grumbled at Ellen’s side. “He needs to stop playing with your feelings.”
“Perhaps he does not even understand his own,” Ellen mused. Unable to help herself, she cast a glance over her shoulder. Laurence was still watching them like a hawk, but Solomon was walking away, no doubt looking for Benedict.
“Well, whatever is wrong with him, he needs to figure it out,” Madalene said with a huff as she placed a glass of lemonade in Ellen’s hand.
A ghost of a smile twitched on Ellen’s lips as she glanced at Madalene with gratitude.
“Madalene Curtis, is that you?” a sweet, feminine voice said excitedly a few moments later.
Madalene and Ellen both turned to the voice, and at Ellen’s side, Madalene set down her glass as she let out a squeal of delight and rushed to a lovely young woman wearing a sun-yellow dress and carrying a matching parasol just a few steps away.
“Jessette, my sweet! You are back from Paris?!” Madalene said happily.
“Only for a few weeks,” Jessette replied, kissing Madalene’s cheeks. “I was so hoping I would get to see you. I have been meaning to visit, but Mama has kept me so busy!”
Ellen stayed back as the two young women fell quickly into a conversation.
She, of course, stepped up and politely offered greetings when Madalene introduced them, but unlike her sister, she did not have a penchant for chatter, so she comfortably waited from a short distance as Madalene caught up with her friend.
As she waited, she brought her glass of lemonade to her lips and let her gaze roam around the sun-drenched lawn and the conversational guests that had gathered into clusters.
She waited for that usual sense of loneliness to encroach upon her, yet it never did.
She smiled, realizing that she no longer cared that she was different.
She no longer cared whether she was or was not the subject of someone else’s conversation, and it was all because of Laurence’s lesson.
“You have always had the sweetest smile, Ellie,” a deep voice purred close by.
Cold leeched into her veins as she recognized that voice, and she looked up across the refreshment table.
There, standing on the other side, was Benedict.
His smile was wide and genuine, but there was something different about his features.
Something dark and unhinged lurked in his gaze.
He had stubble along his jawline, and his dark hair was longer now, long enough to curl around the brim of his black top hat.
“You smile as if you have a secret,” he said quietly, tilting his head slightly to the left. “It was always so alluring.”
Ellen struggled to swallow her lemonade, the sweet drink turning bitter as she worked her throat.
“Hello, Bennie,” she said softly, hoping that using the childhood pet name she’d given to him would keep him calm.
She had thought that she was stronger. That she was prepared to face her cousin one last time, but as he slowly began to walk around the table, his eyes never wavering from her, and her nerves began to fray, she knew she had been wrong.
Ellen threw a glance over her shoulder toward where Laurence had been standing, and her stomach tightened as she found him gone.
She then looked over toward Madalene, who had walked a few more steps away with her friend Jessette, and now had her back turned to her.
“I received your letter,” Benedict said as he reached her side, his deep voice full of longing. “You have no idea how deeply your words touched me. To know that you wanted to see me again was…a revelation.”
Ellen’s breath shook as she exhaled through parted lips, her heart starting to beat a little faster.
“I…I wanted to apologize,” she said, willing her voice not to shake, “For the way I provoked you at the ball.”
Light flickered in Benedict’s widening eyes.
“I forgave you weeks ago, sweet Ellie,” he said, his hand reaching out toward her arm.
Panic flared as his long fingers wrapped slowly around her forearm.
“You must realize by now that I truly do not want to hurt you, my love.” His deep voice was quiet and full of pleading as he stepped even closer to her. “Some lessons just need to be learned, even if they are harsh.”
Fight. Kick. Scratch.
The inner voice demanded her to do these things, but as the party continued on around them, so full of oblivious people, Ellen felt frozen.
“All I ever wanted to do was love you,” Benedict rasped. “Do you remember? Remember how you used to love me?”
Ellen forced in another breath, but it was shallow and not at all enough to calm her racing heart.
“I still love you, Bennie,” she quietly insisted. “But I have always loved you as my cousin. Only my cousin, and that is the only way I can love you.”
Panic shifted in Benedict’s eyes as he furrowed his brows and hurriedly shook his head.
“I can change your mind,” he replied, his grip on her forearm tightening painfully. “Let me change your mind.”
The shattering of a dropped champagne glass erupted from behind Ellen, and though she didn’t know why, the sound freed her from her moment of frozen fear.
She moved, jerking her arm from his grasp, and walked with a hurried pace away from him and toward Madalene. Her heart stuttered when she found she was nowhere to be seen.
Laurence. She had to find Laurence or Solomon.
She remembered Solomon had said he was going to look in the house, and she’d last seen Laurence watching her from the patio.
So she headed there, making sure to bump her shoulder lightly against anyone close enough, hoping that the attention drawn to her would slow Benedict down.
She made it off the lawn and was about to lift her foot to take the first stone step up onto the patio when a force shoved into her from behind, and she was being dragged down into the tall, round bushes that surrounded the base of the large manor.
A hand clamped down on her mouth as she let out a scream, muffling it.
But still, she fought as Laurence taught her.
She threw her elbow back and landed it in his belly.
She stomped her foot, her heel squishing the toe of a boot.
She dug her fingernails into the back of the hand clamped around her mouth, dragging them down until she felt torn flesh gathering underneath them.
“Ellie, stop,” Benedict snarled in her ear.
She could hear the pain in his voice, could feel his now sweat-slicked hand sliding away from her mouth. If she could get in one more hit, if she could get her mouth free, she could scream.
So she writhed, twisting her body so that she could face him, and his fingers slid into her mouth. She bit. Hard. At the same time, she drew her knee up and connected it with his groin.
A low snarl of pain erupted from Benedict as he stumbled away from her, and Ellen drew a deep breath into her lungs as she opened her mouth to scream—
Then, pain—sharp and cruel—erupted in her temple, and she fell into blackness.