Miss Benwick Reforms a Rogue

by Maggie Fenton

  He found he didn’t like the thought of that at all, much to his chagrin.

  “I think we understand each other, then,” he murmured. Though she didn’t understand him at all.

  “Quite,” she confirmed. She glanced toward a second rider in Kildale livery who was quickly overtaking Fawkes’ painfully slow pace. Her expression immediately brightened. “There is my groom after all. I shall ride on with him, then, while you see to your secretary. He looks as if he’s had enough.”

  It was a dismissal if he’d ever heard one. Before he could even tip his hat to her, she’d taken off toward the ruins, shouting in a surprisingly informal manner at her groom, who spurred his horse into a gallop. As the man passed by Daisy, the gust of wind in his wake nearly knocked Fawkes’ hat to the ground. The fribble clutched at it frantically and glowered at the groom’s back.

  Julian did not find it endearing at all.

  He watched Lady Ambrosia and her groom disappear from view while he waited for Fawkes to catch up to him, all the doubts conjured by his conversation with the lady clouding his mind.

  He’d been expecting a woman of exquisite manners and impossibly high standards, someone so unfathomable to him that she might as well have come from another planet altogether—someone who was as devoted to her own vanity as she was oblivious to her father’s affairs.

  Lady Ambrosia was not that at all, but rather a pragmatist beneath all of those ringlets and flounces, and just the type of person Hirst could respect. The only thing Fawkes and the London gossips had right was the value she placed on her own self-importance.

  This certainly threw a bit of spanner into the works. To find out that Lady Ambrosia was hardly the same sort of villain as her father was disconcerting. He didn’t doubt that with enough effort, he could find a way around the haughty woman’s defenses. The problem was whether he wanted to. He hadn’t expected to like Lady Ambrosia.

  And despite her obvious beauty, she stirred not the slightest desire in him. That didn’t help his cause either. This was going to be trickier than he’d thought.

  “I take it your conversation with Ambrosia didn’t go as you expected,” Fawkes huffed as he pulled up alongside him with an awkward jerk of his reins.

  Daisy bucked a little at the clumsy handling, and Fawkes’ hat finally started to tumble off his head. Before he could think twice, Julian reached out and caught the hat in one hand and resettled it.

  Fawkes’ eyes popped wide at the interference, and popped even wider when Julian brushed one of the lad’s errant curls behind an ear. Julian’s eyes did the same thing when he finally realized what he was doing. He jerked his hand back and cleared his throat, feeling the heat invade his cheeks once more.

  What was wrong with him?

  “We reached an understanding,” he finally replied.

  Fawkes snorted. “You mean, she told you what your understanding was in no uncertain terms.”

  “Something like that,” he muttered. “Though she’s hardly as horrific as you implied.”

  The arch of Fawkes’ brow was so high that it threatened to touch the clouds. Julian wondered if he could make it go any higher. The moon, perhaps.

  “In fact, I rather like her,” he said.

  This time, Fawkes’ brow reversed direction and furrowed, as if Julian had taken to speaking in tongues. “Like her…” he spluttered. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Should I dislike the woman I mean to court?” he asked disingenuously, finding far too much delight in baiting Fawkes.

  The furrow deepened even more. “What? No, of course not, but…really?”

  “Really,” he confirmed.

  This didn’t seem to please Fawkes at all, who looked away from Julian unhappily.

  Julian’s chest gave a suspicious pang at the fribble’s reaction. Perhaps he’d gone too far with his teasing, for Fawkes’ dislike of Lady Ambrosia seemed stronger than he’d assumed. He found himself wanting to reassure him…and that was even more troubling. In just a few short days, the fribble had gone from an annoyance to a distraction to…He didn’t even have a name for what Fawkes was to him now.

  He could see only one remedy to the situation, and that was to poke Fawkes even more. “Poor Lady Ambrosia. What did she ever do to you?”

  Fawkes’ eyes flashed. “Nothing!”

  It was Julian’s turn to give an arch of the eyebrow. The little liar.

  Fawkes’ expression turned a bit constipated and he glanced away from Julian with a huff. “Fine. She once stole one of my cousin’s suitors.”

  “What did she do, abduct the fellow?”

  Fawkes glared at him out of the corner of his eye. “Ambrosia hardly needs to lift a finger for her brand of thievery.”

  Fair enough. “And what did this cousin of yours do?”

  Fawkes whipped back around to face him, looking supremely irritated. “What do you mean, what did she do?”

  “Well, did she steal him back?”

  “Why would she want to do such a thing?”

  “If this suitor were such a prize, one would assume your cousin would have fought at least a little to keep him.”

  Fawkes laughed bitterly. “Why would she want a man so fickle?”

  “Well, then. It seems like Lady Ambrosia might have done her a favor, then.”

  Fawkes wrinkled his nose in disgust. “It certainly didn’t feel like it at the time,” he muttered.

  He’d never seen Fawkes so riled. The peacock seemed to have taken his cousin’s travails very personally, almost as if they’d happened to him.

  He scrutinized Fawkes’ smooth cheeks and full lips and wondered…

  But just as quickly as the thought entered his head, he dismissed it. Whatever secrets Fawkes had were no business of his. He was so close to his final revenge against Kildale he could taste it, and the last thing he needed to be doing was wasting his thoughts on his secretary. Fawkes was his employee—perhaps even a friend, but that was all.

  It had to be all.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Charlière

  Davina didn’t have to wait long to encounter her next calamity, for it was floating in all of its red and white striped glory in the sky above the castle when they returned from their ride. It was Sir Wesley’s balloon. He’d spent the last several months out in his workshop, rubberizing strips of the red and white silk and devising a system of valves and pulleys to improve upon the original French design. He’d become firmly convinced that if he could work out the flaws, hydrogen balloons would soon replace all horse-driven conveyances in the kingdom.

  No one else shared his enthusiasm, but then again, no one ever did.

  She’d never actually thought he’d get the thing off the ground, though she probably should stop underestimating her brother, at least when it came to his tinkering. He hadn’t blown up his workshop in ages—which was more than she could say for some people.

  Hirst, who’d brooded in silence most of the ride back to the castle (he’d been forced to entertain Ambrosia after all), perked up considerably when he spotted it. “The bastard finally made it work,” he said, pausing at the crest of the final ridge overlooking Arncliffe Castle to admire the charlière’s graceful flight through the ether.

  Davina couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm herself, for if the charlière were here, that meant her brother was here, and that meant utter disaster.

  She sat frozen on Daisy, trying desperately to concoct some excuse not to return to the castle, but she couldn’t come up with any. At least none that Hirst would believe. When they finally arrived in the stable yard, she’d hoped for a few unguarded seconds to herself so she could slip away and hide.

  Unfortunately, Sir Wesley was already there to accost them, having landed his charlière just minutes before their arrival somewhere in the back garden. He waved eagerly at Hirst, hair tousled from his jaunt through the clouds, his face beaming in that same stupid puppy way he always got whenever one of his contraptions worked.

  Davi
na tipped her hat as far down her face as she could and prayed for her brother’s usual obliviousness.

  “Hirst!” Sir Wesley called, bounding toward them. “I say, old fellow, did you see it? Demmed thing bloody well works! Took me less time than a coach and four to get here once I found the right altitude.” His manner turned a bit sheepish. “Landing the blasted thing could have been a jot smoother. I don’t think your rose bushes are going to make it, sorry to say…”

  Davina began to climb down from Daisy, but dismounting proved to be just as vexing as the mounting. When she finally hit the ground and turned to make a run for it, she collided with Sir Wesley’s chest, knocking her hat into the dirt. She scrambled to retrieve it, but she could tell the second Sir Wesley recognized her, for he immediately stopped babbling and stared down at her with a poleaxed expression.

  After a few moments, he finally found his voice. “Who…wha…Dav…”

  She was on top of him before he could get out another syllable, throwing her arms around his neck with such force she nearly toppled them both to the ground.

  “Sir Wesley! Cousin!” she cried. “So lovely to see you.”

  He still looked completely thrown. And entirely too talkative. “But…you…”

  She pinched him in the side so hard he yelped and glowered at her. She glowered back at him pointedly, hoping he wasn’t too thickheaded to miss her silent cue.

  Alas, he was. “But what are you doing here?” Sir Wesley persisted, sounding just as baffled as he had been over Lord Dalrymple’s erroneous views on the solar system.

  “You remember getting me the position as Hirst’s secretary.”

  “Getting you…you mean Leon…that is…OUCH!” he cried as she accidentally stomped on his foot.

  Hirst, who’d finally passed off the horses to a waiting stable hand, observed their strange interaction with a raised brow and a tolerantly amused smile—most people’s standard expression around the baronet. “Did you forget your cousin works for me, Sir Wesley? Perhaps you’ve been inhaling too many vapors from that contraption of yours.”

  Wesley gave Davina a long, confused look. “Perhaps I have. For I could have sworn that my sis…”

  Davina stomped on his foot again to shut him up and began pulling him toward the back of the stables. “I need to speak to my cousin about…a family. Um. Thing,” Davina called back to Hirst.

  “By all means,” Hirst drawled with mock graciousness and not a little suspicion.

  When they were finally alone, Davina sagged against the side of the stables in relief. Somehow, against all odds, she’d managed to avert catastrophe.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” Sir Wesley demanded, looking even more bewildered than usual. “And why are you…you…” He seemed unable to finish his sentence and settled for waving his hand from the top of Leon’s hat to the toes of Leon’s boots.

  She tried to glare him into silence. “Calm down, for heavens sake.”

  “Calm down! Calm down! How can I possibly do that when I find my missing sister dressed like a man…”

  He did indeed stop then, but only because she smacked a hand over his mouth. She glanced furtively around them to make sure they were still alone. “Wesley, please! I shall explain everything if you will just lower your voice.”

  He glared at her indignantly but made no move to continue his tirade. When he’d at last seemed to settle down, she removed her hand with one last warning look.

  “Forgive me for being a bit surprised,” he whispered harshly. “But you can hardly blame me. What in hell’s name are you playing at, Dav? And by the way, I’ve been worried sick!”

  “Have you,” she said doubtfully.

  His brow creased at her tone. “Of course I have!”

  “So worried you thought you’d gallivant off in your balloon?”

  Wesley looked a little guilty at that, but his indignation managed to reassert itself soon enough. “I’ve been looking for you for a week!”

  “It’s been five days at most,” she pointed out dryly.

  “Five days, then. I went to bloody Scotland, Davina, with Dalrymple. And to every inn and tavern in Yorkshire. With Dalrymple. It was odious. I don’t know why you ever wanted to marry the man. He really isn’t very pleasant at all.”

  She was caught between laughing hysterically and wringing her brother’s neck. Now he had an opinion on the matter. “Why do you think I ran away?”

  Wesley scratched at the back of his head the way he did when he found himself out of his depth. Which was more often than not. “Honestly, I weren’t quite sure. What with Leon and Miss Dalrymple absconding at the same time, I thought perhaps you’d gone with them. Are they here too?” He glanced around him as if he expected the couple to jump out of a horse’s stall.

  God, her brother was a complete nuncehead when it came to anything other than his tinkering.

  “Why would I be with them?” she demanded in exasperation. “They’ve eloped. I hardly think they’d have wanted a chaperon. Would you have wanted to drag your cousin along with you when you eloped with Alice?”

  “Considering Alice is my cousin...” he began, seriously considering her question, it seemed.

  She shuddered at that. Marrying one’s first cousin might have been the done thing, but to Davina, it just seemed a bit too…well, incestuous. “Don’t remind me. Ugh. And you know what I mean.”

  When her true meaning finally penetrated his thick skull, Wesley blushed, his eyes glazing over a bit, no doubt at some memory of his wife. Davina shuddered again.

  “No, I suppose I wouldn’t,” he finally concluded. “But when I couldn’t find you, that is what I hoped had happened, anyway. I didn’t like the thought of you out in the world on your own.”

  “I have survived perfectly well,” she said stonily. And she realized that this was the truth. In fact, in the past few days, even with all of the astonishingly odd things that had happened to her, she’d been happier than she could ever remember being in her life.

  “Look here,” Sir Wesley continued, trying to sound stern, “why didn’t you just come to me if you didn’t want to marry the earl? I would have helped you.”

  Unbelievable.

  “When have you ever helped me?” she cried. “You never lift your head out of your workshop long enough to notice anything. Even if I had come to you, you would have tried to talk me into it, just to spare yourself the bother it would have caused.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t…” Her glare was enough to stop him mid-sentence. He had the grace to look at least a little bashful. “Perhaps you’re right. I would have then. But not now. Not after spending the last week with the earl. But, dash it all, Davina, you can’t stay here! Like…like that! It is completely unacceptable.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I don’t give a jot about acceptable or not. Besides, everyone thinks I am Leon.”

  “Is that supposed to reassure me?” he cried. “Even so, you can hardly stay here forever. Where were you planning on going after this, anyway?”

  That was a very good question, and one she still didn’t have an answer to. “Well, certainly not back to Benwick Grange. And it is none of your business anyway.”

  “None of my business!” he blustered. “Of course it’s my business.”

  “Well, I’m not telling you,” she said rather petulantly. She didn’t have anything to tell anyway.

  Sir Wesley looked as if he wanted to argue the point, but decided that it would only be an exercise in frustration for both of them. His mouth grew pinched at the edges and his shoulders slumped in resignation. “Don’t think the subject is closed. And there is no way I am letting you stay here alone,” he declared. “I will remain here. It is the only way I will allow this…this ridiculous farce to continue.”

  “Fine. Stay if you want. But don’t you dare give me away,” she warned, scowling at him.

  He scowled back at her. “Don’t worry, I won’t. I’d rather no one knows what my sister has been up to.”
r />   “Worried about my reputation?”

  “Worried about your future,” he retorted.

  She snorted at that. “Well, it’s a fine time to start caring about that. I could have used your concern when Dalrymple was blacking my eye.”

  This was obviously something Wesley hadn’t known, for his eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he seemed to notice the bruising around her eye for the first time.

  “Davina…”

  “Don’t,” she bit out tersely. “Don’t you dare. You care more about that stupid balloon than you do about me. Five days, Wesley, it’s only been five days, and here you are, already given up on me. I wonder that you even noticed I was gone in the first place.”

  Sir Wesley’s face looked stricken with guilt, but now that she had his assurance that he’d keep her secret, she didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say on the matter. She walked away.

  She hadn’t known until this moment how angry she was at her brother. She’d be damned if he decided for her what was allowed. He’d never taken an interest in her life before now, and she wasn’t about to let him start. Under the law, Sir Wesley was her guardian, but he’d done a terrible job of it over the years. He’d failed her over and over, and her trust in him had long since withered away.

  If the situation had taught her anything, it was that she never wanted to be dependent upon anyone again—a hard thing to achieve when the rule of the land treated women little better than chattel. She’d fight for her independence any way she could, however, even if it meant delivering a few unpleasant truths to her brother.

  As she rounded the corner of the stables, she collided with Hirst, and the impact nearly sent her sprawling. He grabbed her by the arm to keep her on her feet, their legs tangling together. He was all searing heat, sandalwood, and horse, not a terrible combination to her senses at all.

  She made the mistake of glancing up, sending her hat tumbling behind her again. Hirst reached for it before she could, crushing their bodies even closer. He did not back away as he settled the hat on her curls once more.