Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Wake up,” a deep, gentle voice whispered encouragingly in Ellen’s ear.
A hand, soft and caressing, moved down her cheek. Pain was throbbing in her temple, making it impossible to open her eyes. She opened her mouth instead, and let out a groan as she weakly reached for her aching head.
“There you are,” he said with relief. “My sweet Ellie. Oh, do you not understand how it pains me to hurt you this way?”
Even with the pain in her temple, Ellen’s eyes snapped open as she recognized Benedict’s voice.
The word ‘no’ whimpered from her lips as she tried to push away from him, but his hold on her head was too firm; the arm wrapped around her shoulders, which had her forced to lie in the crook of his shoulder, was too strong.
“Shh, it will all be alright,” Benedict soothed, stroking another gentle hand down her face.
“Benedict, please,” she whimpered, disgust rising in her stomach with every touch of his fingertips.
“I realized something a moment ago,” Benedict went on, ignoring her plea completely. “I never took the time to explain myself to you. To tell you what lengths I have gone to, to ensure that we could be together. No wonder you are frightened.”
Ellen’s lips began to tremble as she heard the madness in her cousin’s calm voice.
She regretted everything. Regretted leaving Laurence’s side despite his command.
Regretted not instantly going to Madalene the moment she saw Benedict.
Regretted not being more honest with herself about her growing feelings for Laurence.
If she had done just one of those things, perhaps she would not be caught in such a terrifying position.
“I do not understand,” she sobbed, the ebbing pain in her head making her feel sick to her stomach.
“Oh, I know, my poor, dumb, sweet girl,” Benedict said, his tone sickly sweet and condescending.
He clicked his tongue as he traced a fingertip from her forehead, between her brows, over the slope of her nose, and down to her lips.
She pressed them tightly together as he did so and tried to turn, but his hold would not let her.
“But you will when I am done,” he continued, in that same overly coddling tone. “I will ensure everything I have done makes perfect sense in that pretty little head of yours.”
“Bennie,” she whispered, trying her best to push away from his hold. He didn’t budge.
“Ever since you were a babe, I knew you were mine,” Benedict went on in a calm but insane tone, stroking her face and hair. “The moment I saw your beautiful, little round face when I was just a boy of ten, I knew. I knew that you had been made for me.”
Disgust roiled in Ellen’s stomach, threatening to make her sick. The carriage was hot and stifled, and it was only made worse by Benedict’s tight grip. There was no air. She could not breathe.
“When I told my parents, much later, when you were ready to join the marriage mart, they were disgusted with me,” Benedict continued. “My mother called me a monster. My father said I was unwell. Their deaths were an act of God, but I felt no sadness once they were gone. I had thought…”
He paused, his maddened gaze searching her eyes for some sort of spark of similar sentiment. Ellen kept her lips pressed firmly together, refusing to give him any reason to affirm that hope.
“I had thought with them out of the way that I could convince your father to allow me to marry you,” he continued after a long beat of silence.
“I had my inheritance, my own money as well, and I tried to prove to him over and over again that I could take care of you. He refused. Even after you aged out of the marriage mart and were threatened with the title of spinster, he refused. So I decided to change his mind.”
Everything went still inside Ellen, and despite feeling as if she was about to be sick, she cast a wary look up at her cousin. He smiled the moment their eyes connected and cooed. “Such lovely eyes. My eyes. My Ellie.”
“What did you do, Benedict?” she asked shakily.
For the briefest of moments, something like regret flickered through Benedict’s eyes.
“It did not start as a plot to end his life,” he answered, his tone shifting toward a plea. “I just wanted him weak. Fearful that he could die and leave you with nothing. I promise you—the moment he finally gave me your hand, I was planning to stop slipping him the poison.”
Ellen’s heart froze in her chest for a long second before it began to beat again.
Murdered. Her father had been murdered.
“He was so stubborn, though, your father,” Benedict went on. “Even as his body started to fail and his mind turned meek, he still would not give you up.”
Benedict turned, shifting his hands to her shoulders to hold her still while he faced her fully in the carriage seat.
“Do you have any idea how long five-and-twenty years can feel when you spend them wanting someone you have been told you cannot have?” His voice was hollow and rasping.
“How such an ache can drive a person mad? I could not wait anymore. I could not suffer another year of you not being mine, so that night you came home in that garish gown and mask, I gave your father a concentrated dose, and I watched the last obstacle between you and me slip away into nothingness.”
Ellen began to quiver with fear and loss as she let out a sob.
“You…killed…him,” she said, her voice and heart broken.
“For us, my love. For us!” he insisted, giving her shoulders a hard shake that forced her teeth to snap together.
Then a look of disgust curled Benedict’s lips.
“Then that stupid Duke of Blackford stole you from me, just as I was about to help you understand where you belonged,” he said through sneering lips. “He turned you against me. Seduced you. Made you hate me.”
He let out a snarl as his fingers tightened painfully on her shoulders.
“But I will fix you, Ellie,” he swore with great vehemence. “I will make you understand that you were meant for me, and when I am through, you will want no one and nothing but me.”
Madness. There was nothing but madness in Benedict’s eyes as he surged toward her and smashed his lips brutally into hers.
Ellen let out a cry of pain as she felt hot copper burst in her mouth, as the fast-driven carriage lurched to a sudden stop.
It was so hard and so fast that they both went tumbling, and for a moment, she was free from his grasp.
“What the devil?” Benedict snarled as his fist banged upon the roof of the carriage. His rage was answered by a single, exploding gunshot close by, and everything stilled.
“Benedict!”
Laurence’s roar was loud and full of fury as it echoed outside the carriage, the sound of it filling Ellen with such relief that she slumped and took in her first deep breath since she’d been knocked unconscious.
The carriage door was suddenly wrenched open so ferociously that it flew away from the carriage and hurtled to the ground. Laurence appeared, his pistol extended, and aimed at Benedict with a vicious, predatory sneer across his handsome face.
“I will be taking my wife back now.”