The Bartered Bridegroom

by Teresa DesJardien

  First dance. Benjamin looked around for his supposed fiancee, for he ought to share it with Miss Oakes—Katherine, yesterday she had bid him call her Katherine.

  “You look like a Ben,” she’d said as they’d toured past the paintings for sale at the Royal Academy of Arts.

  “Ben?” he had echoed. “I have never been called ‘Ben’ in my life, always Benjamin.”

  She’d grinned up at him. “You object to ‘Ben’? Why?”

  “It sounds . . . simple. Countrified. As though I live in the Colonies, or some such savage place.”

  “I find it a strong, capable name. Although I like ‘Benjamin,’ too, my lord.”

  “Come now, you cannot dub me ‘Ben’ then revert to calling me ‘my lord.’ I insist, since we have been betrothed over three weeks now, that in informal moments we must use Christian names. You are to call me Benjamin, without the ‘Lord’ before it, and I shall call you ‘Kate.’ Or perhaps ‘Katie’ as your brothers do,” he teased.

  “Or you could call me Kitty,” Miss Oakes had then suggested, not taking umbrage as he’d expected. “Mama used to call me Kitty.”

  “Do you remember her?” he had asked, surprised, and aware of the shadow of regret that even now passed momentarily over her features.

  “Not really. I can tell from her painting that she was pretty, but what I am really remembering is the stories I’ve been told.”

  “And she called you Kitty.”

  Katherine smiled. “Papa always preferred Kate. I am not particular, as you may have noticed, since I allow my brothers to call me The Repository. Perhaps you should nickname me Rep- pie,” she said, then gave a little laugh.

  Benjamin had made an exaggerated face. “I will call you Katherine, and you will call me Benjamin, and then neither of us need offend the ears of the other.”

  “Very well, Benjamin,” she’d said on a crooked but surprisingly engaging grin, and then had proceeded to ask him how his most recent meeting with the solicitor had gone, to which he had happily been able to answer that all went well, that the new pond was nearly dug.

  In fact, later this morning more news had come to him on that front, and he now recalled that he had forgotten to tell it to her when he’d come to fetch her up for this ball being held at Lord and Lady Alwell’s. He would tell her during the first dance.

  Except, she was nowhere in sight.

  Miss Mansell’s foot had begun to tap beneath the hem of her gown, and her smile had taken on a brittle quality. She clearly awaited an invitation to dance.

  “Would you excuse me, please?” Benjamin asked, knowing by the shock in Miss Mansell’s eyes that this was not the reaction she’d expected. “I must dance with my fiancйe for the first dance,” he said, to soften the rejection. He did not, however, wait for Miss Mansell to find her voice, instead turning and moving away, searching the crowd for Miss Oakes’s red head.

  Benjamin made his way around the assembling dancers, until he was finally able to spy her curls. She stood debating some topic within a group of young bucks. Good for her, Benjamin thought, then realized with a start that he had actually approved of Miss Oakes being outspoken. But, why not? Among the five or six bucks gathered around her, it could be that one of them would be charmed by Miss Oakes’s outspoken nature—it

  was possible. At least they would not be misled as to her true personality.

  He listened as the group debated the merits of foxhunting— Miss Oakes thought it a cruel sport—and became a little exasperated that the first dance had come and gone before Miss Oakes was able to turn to him with more than a mere acknowledging glance.

  “I have more news regarding your property at Meyerley Creek,” he told her.

  That secured her attention. “Do you?”

  He nodded. She moved between two men, to Benjamin’s side. He offered her his arm, she placed her hand there, and he led her away from the young men to a quieter spot.

  “I got a letter this morning. Now that the pond is dug, they have been able to locate the head of the underground spring that fed the bog. Your steward thinks that some simple digging will redirect the flow more directly to the pond, and then even more of the land will dry out. As he thought, the water always had flow. It was not stagnant, and now he is certain that you will have sufficient water for the horses and the fields you plant, without having to use the well they dug up by the cottage.”

  “That is wonderful news,” she said, her eyes shining.

  Another set of dancers were assembling. A glance between them and a nod from Katherine was sufficient for Benjamin, who led her into the set.

  Unfortunately, the dance took them apart, two long rows that moved in opposite directions until the movements brought them back together a few minutes later.

  “The steward wrote that your roof is nearly repaired as well,” Benjamin took the chance to explain. “Then you only lack for fresh plastering, and the house will be habitable. You may move in on your birthday if you like.”

  “Wonderful! I do wonder if Papa will allow me to take my bed there with me,” she said, then looked up with a startled expression. “But what a thing to say!” There were the twin spots of color that so easily bloomed on her cheeks. Exertion might bring out the “apples” on her cheeks, and naturally embarrassment, and even delight. Her cheeks, when she had watched Fallen Angel take second place, had bloomed red with pleasure.

  She would hate it, he supposed, but he rather liked it. Be

  sides, to concentrate on her blushes was to divert sudden thoughts of her in bed, her curls lying against her pillow. ... He pulled his mind back to the moment, frowning at the tenor of his thoughts, as unbidden and unexpected as the kiss he’d taken from her at the racecourse ... and just as tempting.

  “Your papa is not pleased that you are determined to live alone, but barring that I cannot imagine he would begrudge you a few belongings,” he said, his voice mostly steady. “Perhaps you should make a list, and ask which of them he would grant you.”

  “An excellent suggestion.”

  The dance took them apart again.

  “Also, have you thought,” he said, when next they stood opposite each other, just keeping a frown from his face and wondering why it tried to form there, “if you were to marry, you could ask your papa to make those belongings a wedding gift to you.”

  “The gentleman I marry will bring some effects with him, I suppose,” Katherine put in. She tilted her head a little on one side, thinking as she danced. “The cottage is not large, only four rooms counting the kitchen at the back. I might not want for so much as I think I do. I wonder if my wardrobe is too large for my, er, bedchamber?”

  “I meant to go,” Benjamin found himself telling her, “to see for myself. To be sure all was well. Now I really ought to go, so that I can measure the rooms for you.”

  “Oh, you needn’t!” she said, looking discomfited.

  “No, no, I really should. I consider it”—he dropped his voice and bowed at the dance’s end, saying the last only for her ears—“I consider it part of our bargain. You wanted a livable cottage and arable fields. It is my duty to see that you get what I said would be delivered to you.”

  She curtsied in her turn. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “My lord? I thought I was ‘Benjamin’ to you now.”

  “We are not in private,” she pointed out, smiling and for once not blushing.

  “Anything but,” he agreed. “Have I said already that we are going to the races again?” He schooled himself not to make a face. “With Miss Mansell and Mr. Cullman.” Plans had been made last night, before Benjamin had realized he had no true interest in Miss Mansell’s company.

  “Lovely,” Katherine said, her expression unreadable. He had expected excitement, not this neutral acceptance.

  “To see Fallen Angel run again,” he thought to add.

  Her eyes brightened. “Tomorrow? Oh, I am glad.”

  He nodded, just before she turned to laughingly agree with a uniformed
marine who touched her elbow that she had indeed promised him the next dance.

  Benjamin watched as the marine led Katherine into the next set, and for a moment regretting having no Miss Mansell at hand, now that he stood here alone and unpartnered.

  A glance around the room would be enough to provide another dancing partner, even if some of the ladies made a point of avoiding Benjamin’s gaze. One Miss Adamson, one of Miss Oakes’s new friends, had no such scruples, however. She happily agreed to give Benjamin a dance. She was no beauty, but she had a kind face, and he soon learned she was accomplished at dancing.

  Benjamin smiled down at the lady swaying at his side, and thought that there were worse things to be than a “Placer” ... and perhaps that was why Miss Mansell had not appealed to him, for she, being a “Winner,” would never understand how someone might enjoy a position—and the freedoms to be had there—somewhere below the topmost.

  After he had restored Katherine to her father’s home, Benjamin was still pondering his position in life as the second son when Mr. Finchley, the manager of his apartments, handed him a sealed missive. Benjamin recognized the script at once. He tore open the seal and quickly scanned the page.

  “Not happy news, sir?” Mr. Finchley sounded doubtful.

  “I am to call upon my brother,” Benjamin said numbly. “He is in London, and he wants to meet my fiancйe.”

  Chapter 15

  The Marquess and Marchioness of Greyleigh wanted to meet Katherine, and now she stood before the dismantled pile that was the marquess’s London residence.

  She knew Benjamin—she was slowly getting used to calling him without the honorific “Lord” attached to his name—had not been eager for the meeting. He’d delayed it by two days, by making a rapid trip to Kent and back again, to view her property there, which he had then declared most adequately prepared. He’d promised he would go—but he could have done so after bringing Katherine to meet his brother. Not that she blamed him for wanting a delay; she would not mind one herself.

  What did the marquess want? Katherine had said Benjamin must go ahead and tell his brother the truth, because it was only three days to her birthday, and they had already agreed that tonight was the night she would publicly cry off from the betrothal.

  Benjamin had shaken his head. “First let us see what he wants with us.”

  The oddity of meeting a man who was not really going to be her brother-in-law, and doing so in the midst of a crumbled pile of bricks that had once been a house, all made Katherine feel unsettled—in large part because Miss Irving was not at her side.

  Her chaperone had left for Kent by mail coach early this morning, to tend to her ailing mother. While Katherine had been a little startled by her father’s generosity of spirit in letting Miss Irving leave for at least two weeks in the middle of what was, after all, Katherine’s first Season, she had kissed her chaperone on the cheek and bid her best wishes for her mama’s

  health. Papa had declared Lord Benjamin capable of keeping Katherine safe—and here Katherine stood, alone with Benjamin, before a ruined house.

  At her side, Benjamin shook his head slightly as he gazed at the house’s shell. There was no front door, only a wooden frame where a door had once been.

  It was not of the house he spoke, however. “How do you mean to cry off?” he asked quietly, still gazing at the rubble but speaking to Katherine.

  “I do not know,” she said, her eyebrows lifting. “I had not given it much thought.”

  “Nothing too dramatic, please,” Benjamin said, a pained look on his face, which he could not hold so that it turned into a smile. Still, did the smile look a shade rueful? Why would it? It must be her imagination.

  “If the crying off is too elaborate an affair,” he went on, “my family will assume I am crushed, and will attempt to whisk me back to Severn’s Well to ply me with tea and tisanes. Or worse, with hugs and hearty words about the brightness of the future once I’ve overcome the storm, et cetera. I’d far, far rather remain in London.”

  “No hysterics, I promise,” she said, trying to echo his light mood, even though she did not feel particularly carefree. “A few glares. A few pouts. Perhaps a tear down my cheek. If I can manage to summon a tear, that is.”

  “Just one tear? I’d always thought I’d be worth a bucketful, to the right lady.”

  To the right lady. That was the rub, was it not? Katherine was not that right lady. They both knew that. And tonight would be the night she gave her performance, the night she rid herself of this unwanted fiancй.

  She could wish their “scene” had been last night, for then she would not be here today at Benjamin’s brother’s half- demolished house.

  “Do you know how he learned about our supposed betrothal?” Katherine asked, also gazing at the house. Its state of ruin seemed an omen, as if to represent that this interview could not go well. What had brought Benjamin’s brother all the way from the west of England? And not just his brother, but the marchioness as well.

  “He heard no word of it through me, I can assure you.”

  She shrugged, looking down at the small reticule she carried, just for somewhere else to look other than his face. “These things get about, even so far afield. But I am sorry. It will prove a trifle awkward for you, I have no doubt.” She turned her head to then look up into his face, and it was the first time she could ever remember seeing him care-worn. Angry, yes. Aggravated, certainly, but never before given over to worry.

  “Perhaps your brother will disapprove of me,” she said on a small laugh. “That would actually make everything easier, when all this does not end in marriage.”

  Benjamin did not seize on the idea of her unsuitability—instead only shaking his head in denial.

  It would have been so simple for him to agree, even to play up her faults. He could have called on his brother by himself, could have told the marquess that Katherine Oakes was a forward, intemperate, heedless creature, with whom he’d made an affiliation only to meet a temporary need. He could have told his brother that she was a nuisance of which he would soon be free.

  But he had not. He'd brought her here today, a witness to what he would tell his brother. Unless she was mistaken, unless this was some elaborate ruse and the brother already knew ... but why then bring her at all?

  “What do you mean to say?” she asked softly. “Are we to playact that the betrothal is real?” Katherine asked. The words were not bitter, but she thought perhaps they sounded ... a little sad? She would not enjoy telling lies, not this late into the day . . . but Benjamin knew his brother best, and Katherine knew him not at all, so Benjamin’s decision would have to stand. “I will not object if you want to tell him that this was all in order to settle a wager.”

  He gazed at her blankly for a moment, as if she’d spoken in a foreign language. “That I offered for you because I was forced to?” he said with a scowl.

  So it was his hand that had been forced—which meant Papa had to have done the forcing, just as Cyril had thought. Katherine had once pondered that theory among others, but it still stung to hear it put that way, to know her presence had been pressed upon someone.

  “But I could not do that, Katherine,” Benjamin went on calmly. “For your sake no one must know this betrothal was a fabrication. Society would forgive you for changing your mind, but never for conducting a ruse. Until you cry off, we must act just as any couple would. You must meet my brother, as would be expected.”

  Katherine gazed up at him, and felt something inside her break away, like an icicle falling of its own weight from the eaves of a house, a harbinger of spring. By that one simple act—choosing not to deny her—he’d proven himself at his core to be a gentleman. It mattered not what the gossips said about his military career, or madness in his family. In that moment, for that moment, he was a man of distinction, of integrity, for he had sacrificed his own ease for her sake.

  She felt tears forming in her eyes, but she could not let them fall, not when she must put on
a good face for this man’s brother. She pretended to sneeze, and hid her face, for one long moment, behind her hands.

  “God bless you,” Benjamin said, and she felt the cloth of a kerchief pressed against one of her hands.

  She uncovered her face, murmured “Thank you,” as she accepted his kerchief, and decided all at once that if this man had sold supplies to smugglers, he’d done it for reasons that he had counted important at the time. Whatever had caused him to do the act, right or wrong, she was certain he’d had some higher motive in committing the act, something far from greed. It was curious that she could have such conviction when she’d known the man little more than three weeks . . . but the seeds of friendship were not always sown by logic’s reckoning.

  He put his hand on her elbow, and then they passed through the open doorway, across what had been the front hall, and to a door that led into a part of the house still standing. A butler greeted their knock, showing them in with a courtesy unmarred by the disintegration around him.

  “Master Benjamin!” the butler cried when they were issued inside a space that must have once been a drawing room. Warmth was written across the butler’s smiling face.

  “Caulfield, you old devil. Did you come back from the military to resume caring for this pile of rubble?”

  “I did, my lord, at your brother’s request.”

  “It is good to see you. Good to know that once the place is restored, it will be properly tended.”

  “Thank you, sir. That it will be, with old Caulfield minding

  the doors.”

  The butler showed them to a parlor that retained all of its walls except for an upper portion on the outer wall, and which contained two chairs, obviously placed there today. The room was otherwise barren, except for peeling wallpaper and a fireplace bare of any decoration. Before departing, the butler begged their pardon for keeping them waiting in such sad estate while he announced their presence. “But the front parlors are all under repair.”