by Liz Carlyle
That was the last straw. Bentley’s nerves were shattered, his nice green coat was ruined, and now he was accused of being both a cheat and a drunk. Something inside him snapped. He planted four fingertips squarely in the middle of Cam’s chest. “I said bugger off!” he growled, shoving him. “It’s none of your goddamned business if I fucked every woman from here to Newcastle this afternoon. And it’s none of your business if I’m drunk as Davie’s sow and planning to divorce my wife tomorrow. In short, Cam, you are just a holier-than-thou, interfering pain in the arse, and I wish to hell you’d shut up.”
Cam’s fist caught Bentley solidly beneath the chin, snapping his head back. Suddenly, it was as if the bell had clanged at Gentleman Jackson’s. Bentley felt a red-hot rage flash through him. By God, it felt good. And it felt even better when he hit Cam back.
It was a solid blow to the left jaw, and it sent Cam reeling. He caught himself on his desk and came back with fists flashing. A few more punches were thrown, and fewer dodged, but soon it degenerated into wrestling. This time, Cam somehow got him down first, planting one boot firmly on his chest. Bentley caught him behind the knee and jerked hard. Cam fell, catching his chin on his desk as he went. With a curse, he sprawled across Bentley, then tried to scrabble onto his feet.
Bentley caught him around the waist, hauled him back down again, and grabbed a fistful of hair. It was his favorite thing to do, scrub Cam’s face in the carpet. By God, he hadn’t had a chance like this in years. But Cam somehow flopped back over, taking Bentley with him. Over and over they rolled. And then, just for an instant, they froze in a parody of violence, face-to-face, puffing and grunting like King George trying to truss in his trousers.
Suddenly, Cam’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “It’s on your bloody coat!” he roared. “You little shite! It isn’t on your breath! It’s on your coat!”
“Aye, and what of it?” grunted Bentley, seizing the moment to roll over swiftly, taking Cam with him.
Cam shoved him forcibly away. “By God, you’re sober as a parson,” he growled. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Why should I?” Bentley rammed his head back down again on a grunt. Somehow, they’d rolled off the carpet, and Cam’s skull thudded onto the oak floor with a sickening crack.
“Ow!” Cam’s eyes flashed. “Damn you, Bentley, I’m going to make you rue the day you were born.” He grabbed a chokehold on Bentley’s neckcloth and gave it a hearty twist.
“I already do,” gagged Bentley. Somehow, he pried Cam’s hands loose. Fists and elbows began to fly, and Bentley managed to split Cam’s lip. Cam drew back an arm with bloodlust in his eye, but suddenly, a dreadful screech rent the air.
“Get off!” And then Frederica was on the floor beside them, dragging at Bentley’s arm. “Get off this instant, I say!”
Bentley was disinclined to do any such thing. But Cam, the damned sissy, stopped. So what choice did he have? He let Freddie drag him off, giving Cam one last jab in the ribs with his knee as he went.
Freddie saw it and slapped him hard across the thigh. “I said stop it!” she demanded. “Good God, are you both run mad?”
She was in her nightclothes, Bentley realized, with her hair already loose about her shoulders and her high, lovely cheekbones flushed with pink. He swallowed hard. Lord, he kept forgetting how damned pretty the chit was. Well, except for that mean look in her eyes.
Cam staggered to his feet. “Your pardon, Frederica,” he said, touching the back of his hand to his split lip. “We did not realize a lady was present.”
“And you think that’s an excuse?” she shot back. She had a ruthless grip around Bentley’s wrist and the other hand set stubbornly at her hip. “I am shocked, my lord! Shocked at the both of you. Grown men rolling around on the floor like a pair of temperamental ten-year-olds!”
Bentley shook his head. “Freddie, you don’t understand—”
She whirled on him then. “No, I certainly do not!” she agreed, her black eyes flashing. “And don’t you dare try to explain it! I don’t know why the two of you cannot get on. But if you have a legitimate quarrel with your brother, Bentley, then call him out and settle it like gentlemen!”
“Call him out?” Bentley was horrified.
Cam looked sheepishly at his brother. “Your pardon, Frederica,” he said again. “There was a, er, a slight misunderstanding. Bentley and I—well, neither of us really wishes to shoot the other. No, I don’t think it’s come to that, has it, old chap?” He cocked one brow in his brother’s direction.
Bentley had shaken off his wife’s grip and was meticulously righting his clothing with far more attention than the task required. “No shooting necessary!” he snapped. “Just a misunderstanding, Freddie. Tempers get short, things get out of hand. Means nothing.”
Both Freddie’s brows flew up. “Nothing?”
Cam had gone to his desk and had begun shoving ledgers under one arm. “I’ll just be off to bed now,” he murmured, taking up the last one. “Put my candles out, Bentley, before you turn in.”
Chapter Fourteen
In which Mrs. Rutledge puts her foot Down.
It was a long trip back up the stairs to his bedchamber. Bentley followed Freddie, watching the sweet sway of her hips, his heart growing heavier with every step. He had felt perfectly justified in swinging at Cam downstairs. So why now did he feel such a fool? And what could possibly persuade Freddie that he was worth hanging on to?
His worst fears were confirmed when he pushed open the door and followed his wife inside. Two of her bureau drawers were open, and a pile of clothing lay on one chair. He could wait no longer. He seized her by the shoulders and turned her about. “Are you leaving me?”
The raspy whisper had caused Frederica to jump. “What?”
“Are you leaving me, Freddie? If you are, just tell me. Just say so. Good Lord, I can’t bear the waiting.”
Frederica could hear the anguish in his voice. In the lamplight, she looked past his shoulder, and saw her open bureau drawers reflected in the pier glass. To soothe her nerves, she’d been sorting her clothing, but the task had brought her no consolation. So she’d been on her way to the kitchen for a cup of warm milk when she’d heard the thumping and cursing from the earl’s study.
His eyes never leaving her, Bentley stripped off his coat and neckcloth and flung them onto the bed. She went to the bureau and closed the drawers, half afraid to speak. His gaze burned into her back. Was she leaving him? No. No, she wasn’t. But a little part of her wanted to; wanted to turn tail like a frightened rabbit and run home to her family.
Well, by God, she wouldn’t. She was married. She might be in over her head, but she could learn to swim. And Bentley Rutledge could bloody well learn to control his temper—and to communicate with something other than his fists and his penis. Neither of them was getting out of this marriage, not without a fight. She turned to see him closing the distance between them, his hands fisted at his sides, his eyes running down the length of her nightclothes.
“Are you leaving me, Freddie?” he rasped. “Just answer yes or no. For God’s sake.”
She blinked and shook her head. “I’m not leaving,” she said, watching his shoulders sag with relief. “All I’m doing is sorting stockings for Jennie to darn. Now, what were you and Cam doing?”
He shook his head a little sadly. “Acting like lunatics,” he said. “Cam accused me of being drunk—which I’m not—and I was in a low mood, feeling sorry for myself and scared sick over you. And one thing led to another, then Cam hit me. Or I hit him. Hell, I don’t even remember. It happens like that sometimes with us.”
“Where have you been all day?” she asked very quietly.
For an instant, his eyes closed. With his shirt open at the throat, she could see the muscles of his throat work up and down.
She had gone down to the dining room this morning as Queenie had suggested, only to find that her husband had torn off on horseback some half an hour earlier, and no one knew where he�
�d gone. “Cheltenham, perhaps,” Lord Treyhern had murmured. “He’ll be back.”
And so he was. But he was late, and he looked like hell in his two-day beard and yesterday’s clothes. He reeked of smoke and brandy, and his expression was stark in the lamplight. Still, he was home. And he was safe. A sense of relief, swift and unbidden, rushed through her. “Where have you been, Bentley?” she asked more tenderly.
He shoved a hand through his hair. “Ah, God, I hardly know,” he muttered. “To Withington and then to Bellevue. And down in the village at the Rose and Crown.”
“You look tired.”
“You look beautiful,” he said quietly, still unable to hold her eyes. “I can’t think why you’re still here. I thought…you mightn’t be, you know? I kept thinking I’d come home, and this room would be empty.”
Perhaps it was as close to an apology or an explanation as she was apt to get. It would do—for the nonce. She reached up and stroked the backs of her fingers across his stubbled cheek. “We promised one another six months,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “Six months to learn how to go on together, if we can. And that’s what we are doing, I daresay. Learning…how to go on?”
It was more of a question than a statement, but Bentley did not answer. Instead, he captured her hand in his, drew her fingers to his mouth, and set his lips against them. “This morning, you said you didn’t need me,” he whispered, his long lashes dropping nearly shut. “And that you’d never wanted me. But, Freddie, I’ve always known that. You didn’t have to say it.”
Frederica shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said it—”
“Shh,” he said, cutting her off. “I knew you didn’t really want me, from the first moment you touched me that awful night. But I was weak. I couldn’t say no. I’m not the man for you, Freddie. And now I have spent the whole bloody day wondering why I forced this marriage. I don’t know why I didn’t trust you to do what was best for the child. I don’t know why I ever insisted on involving myself. And I damned sure don’t know how to make you happy.”
“Oh, Bentley.” She shook her head and set one hand on her abdomen. “We have a child to care for. Stop feeling guilty for what we—yes, we—did. I am not precisely unhappy, or at least, I wasn’t until this morn—”
“Christ, I know!” he interjected, dropping her hand. “Old habits die hard, I reckon.”
Frederica pursed her lips stubbornly. “Well, a few of those old habits are going to have to go, Bentley,” she said, her voice gentle but unyielding. “I won’t have it. You can use these six months to decide if I am worth the inconvenience.”
“It was just a flirtation,” he protested weakly. “I wasn’t unfaithful and didn’t mean to be.”
But Frederica was done with her tears. Moreover, she was done with making excuses for her husband, too. “But that sort of behavior is disrespectful of me,” she said firmly. “It is as good as a public statement that you don’t care about my feelings.”
“But I do, Freddie,” he whispered. “Don’t you believe that?”
Frederica hesitated. “I’m not perfectly sure,” she said quite honestly. “I don’t know what you feel or think, Bentley. I know that we have a powerful passion between us, and that it has only grown stronger. But that day—in the music room at Strath, remember?—you said we could make something more of it. And yet I don’t…” She shook her head and looked away.
Intently, he seized her shoulders. “Don’t what?”
“I don’t see you trying to do that,” she whispered. “We…never talk. We never plan. We don’t share our fears or our feelings, Bentley. We have passion but no intimacy. At times, I feel as if I hardly know you. Yes, we are good together in—in that one way. But I keep waiting for something more. Yet I don’t know what more is. I feel very…oh! Just stupid and inexperienced and—” Suddenly, her voice broke, and those tears she thought were done with sprang forth anew.
Bentley heard the catch in her voice the instant the tears welled up in her eyes. Cursing himself, he gathered her into his arms and swept her off her feet. He went to the bed then and settled himself against the headboard, cradling her in his lap. And while she wept, he held her tight, making soft, soothing noises outwardly and kicking himself inwardly. She was right, too, God help him. And she meant to insist, didn’t she? It was to be that bleeding vein after all, if Frederica had her way.
Well, that he could not do. It was the worst of all alternatives. Instead, they would probably just go on like this, muddling through tearful arguments and half-told truths, with Frederica fleshing out bits and pieces of what would never be a whole relationship and himself trying to hold it all together as he always did, with his charm and his grin and his cock. Jesus, it would be like trying to stack a bloody hayrick on a windy day. But he would have to try because—and this was the most agonizing part of all—he loved her. Not falling-in-love love. That, he feared, had happened long ago. And not head-over-heels-in-love, with all the tumult and uncertainty that implied.
No, while standing by the lake with Joan and hearing her put into words his greatest fear—that his wife might well leave him—he had known that he loved her. Known it with a certainty. He just loved Freddie, purely and simply, whether he deserved her or not. And if he lost her—if he could not find a way to keep it together—oh, God. It did not bear thinking about.
It was pathetically funny now when he considered it. He had tried so hard to have this marriage—have her—on his own terms. He had tried to force Freddie into it for all the wrong reasons, telling himself that he had ruined her. That she was with child. That he had no choice. But hot-tempered Freddie had refused him his usual easy path to self-deception. Instead, she had made him threaten, cajole, and eventually beg. There was no honest way he could now tell himself that he’d done it for her sake. She had stripped away his excuses with her obstinacy and made him see that he was doing it out of pure, premeditated selfishness. But now she threatened to strip away a vast deal more than his excuses. And it would feel as though she were stripping away his skin.
Her tears were subsiding now. Bentley dipped his head and pressed his lips to her temple, which felt feverish, just like little Madeline’s after a crying jag. He had cradled her—and Gervais and Ariane, too—after untold scraped knees and scoldings, so often he knew the stages. Next would come the hiccuping sobs and then a measure of embarrassment. Frederica had curled herself against him, her left cheek pressed against his neckcloth, her right hand open against his chest.
But his wife surprised him by falling asleep, the deep, heavy sleep of one who has been eviscerated by turmoil and worry, and has finally found respite. Bentley tucked her gently under the covers, shucked off his clothes, and joined her, cradling her back against his chest. With her hips nestled against him and his face buried in her hair, he tried to find his own peace, but, as it often did, it eluded him.
Had he been wrong to marry her? That old sense of having sullied something precious tried to get a toehold in his brain. Ruthlessly, Bentley shoved it away. He had to. He could not fall into that old mental trap. What he and Freddie had—almost had—was right. It was. And his marriage had no chance of survival if he couldn’t remember that much. But already, he was beginning to toss and thrash. And Freddie needed her sleep. Gently, he uncurled his body from hers, trying to slide from the bed as was his habit, but this time, she gave a soft cry of disappointment.
“No,” she murmured, barely conscious. “Don’t. Don’t go away anymore.”
Her tender plea broke his heart. He could not leave her, though he knew he should. So, with her shoulders warm against his chest and his arm wrapped round her waist, he closed his eyes, half of him praying for sleep, the other half fearing it would come.
Frederica was not sure how long she drowsed. She was tired. Tired and shattered and so lethargic that she almost could not rouse herself from her dreams. But something danced there, just on the edge of consciousness, urging her from the depths of slumber.
Sudd
enly, she came fully awake to a strangled cry. Hers? No. Disoriented, she sat up, grappling for awareness in the pitch black. She was at Chalcote. She was with Bentley. She shoved a hand through her hair, dragging it back off her face. What had awoken her? Had she dreamt it?
Beside her, Bentley thrashed again, his powerful legs jerking the bedcovers halfway off. Another awful sound, this one choking in the back of his throat and coming out little more than a whimper.
She rolled against his left side then, circling one arm about his waist and pressing her lips to his collarbone. Even drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, he felt safe and solid. She laid her head against his chest and was shocked to hear his heart hammering.
“Bentley?” she whispered. “Wake up, love. It’s a dream. A bad dream.”
“Wha—?” As if to stop someone, he tried to throw out his left arm.
In response, she nestled her body more fully against his and, to soothe him, stroked one hand down his length. But her arm brushed something hot and heavy. He was incredibly—fully—aroused.
He shuddered at the light touch. “No!” he rasped, as if the words were ripped from the bowels of hell. “No, stop!”
Frederica jerked her arm away at once. But oddly, his hand followed her, capturing her fingers and dragging them to the weight of his erection. “I thought…you wanted me,” he rasped, pressing her hand crudely against his swollen flesh.
“I—I do.” Tentatively, she circled her fingers around his shaft, and he groaned.
“Aah, God, yes,” he whispered, rubbing her hand up and down. “Yes. Yes, do it, damn you.”
Something felt very wrong. “Bentley?”
She felt him jolt fully into consciousness, his whole body going as rigid as his erection. “What?” he rasped. “What is it?”
“I’m here,” she soothed. “You’re dreaming. Just a bad dream.”
“Freddie?”
“It’s all right, Bentley.” Awkwardly, she moved nearer, sliding one leg over his, intending to embrace him. But he cursed violently and shoved her off.