Katherine could not help a giggle at the obvious, which oddly made her feel rather more in control of her emotions. Benjamin stared with open interest down at the floor, which had had most of its tiles chipped up, exposing bare wood and plaster dust beneath. He glanced at Katherine’s gown, completely white but for the royal blue flowers embroidered at random around her hem and blue ribbons on her sleeves and just below her bosom.
“I suspect you might have done better to dress in dark colors,” he said, himself dressed soberly as usual, in dark gray accented with black—even his cravat and waistcoat were black—only his white lawn shirt relieved the severity of the look.
Katherine gave a rueful smile, wishing she’d worn walking boots. Her slippers might recover from a traipse through dust and ruin if scrubbed with the soap the stable lads used on the harnesses, but she was not overly hopeful.
Caulfield soon returned, saying as expected that the marquess was quite pleased to receive his guests. He led the way through a maze of construction and tools, left as they lay for when the workers returned next. Benjamin took Katherine’s arm, for they had to step over piles of debris and sawdust and supplies.
The hallway to the rear of the house was completely blocked by a large, rolled carpet. Benjamin leaped over it, then put his hands around Katherine’s waist and lifted her in one smooth motion up and over it as well. She murmured her thanks, not quite able to meet his gaze as he released her, for an unexpected thrill chased through her. She fixed her gaze on the butler in
stead, as if it were vitally important to watch him scramble over the carpet.
“I hope this is not Gideon's idea of a maze,” Benjamin said lightly.
“We must be sure to tell him they are usually built out-of- doors,” Katherine said.
Benjamin laughed, and Katherine began to tremble, just a little, telling herself it was not Benjamin’s laugh that had wrought the sensation, but from wondering if the marquess would be as dour as Benjamin had first seemed.
Seemed. She knew now that Lord Benjamin was a creature of moods, but not all of them were dark or forbidding. He had a lighter side, even, call it a playful side. Hopefully his brother was the same.
The butler opened a parlor door, revealing a room that had suffered the least amount of alteration so far, and announced, “Lord Benjamin, and Miss Oakes.”
Katherine saw the marchioness first, a very dark-haired woman in an emerald-green gown that allowed for her pregnancy of six months’ time, Katherine guessed. The marchioness had been folding Holland clothes while seated before a cheerily crackling fire, but as soon as Caulfield announced them, she put aside a cloth and stood. She came across the room, arms outstretched to her brother-in-law.
“Benjamin! Such a pleasure to see you again. But look at your hair! I believe I like it longer like this.”
He accepted her into his arms for an embrace, and Katherine saw brotherly affection displace the uncertain expression he’d been sporting since he’d taken Katherine up in his phaeton. “Elizabeth, you look very well. But was it wise to travel now?” he asked as he stepped back to survey her length.
“I think we all know I am hardly fragile,” she said, and then both smiled at some private jest Katherine must remember to ask Benjamin about later. For now her attention shifted to the approaching other occupant of the room. Her mouth dropped open, and she glanced up quickly at Benjamin, wanting to scold him for not alerting her as to what to expect of the Marquess of Greyleigh—for the marquess had an extraordinary appearance.
The man had white-blond hair, worn long and presently in a queue that trailed well past his shoulders, its pale color giving
him a ghostly aspect despite lightly tanned skin. Strangely, the old style did not age him, for he was clearly only a few years older than Benjamin. His face was handsome, similar to Benjamin’s, although the latter’s was longer of line—but one forgot to notice the marquess’s attractive features once one came to gaze into his eyes.
At a quick glance, Katherine thought he must be blind, that the pale gray irises were a reflection of damaged eyes, but then she felt his gaze fix on her unmistakably. She’d never seen such pale gray eyes, like rain, even though before today she would have said that rain has no color. Then she detected the faintest hint of blue ringing their periphery. If Benjamin’s eyes were the pale blue at the zenith of the sky, the marquess’s were a curious otherworldly uncolor that must mark the edges of heaven.
Katherine forcibly closed her mouth, and swallowed, but she could not keep herself from staring. The marquess stared back, not blinking, folding his hands together behind his back, as Benjamin was wont to do.
“Gideon, Elizabeth, this is Miss Katherine Oakes,” Benjamin said. “Katherine, my brother and new sister, the Marquess and Marchioness of Greyleigh.”
Katherine made as if to curtsy, but Elizabeth clucked her tongue. “No bowing between those who will be sisters once you are wed to Benjamin!” she chided, gathering Katherine into an embrace and planting a kiss on both her cheeks. “You must call me Elizabeth, please.”
“How do you do?” Katherine said, knowing she was showing her fluster.
“Quite well,” Elizabeth answered.
Katherine glanced up at Benjamin at the awkwardness of being greeted so warmly when they were only pretending they would one day marry, but she could hardly return warmth with coolness. “Please,” she said, stumbling over the words a little, “call me Katherine, or Kate if you like.”
The marchioness smiled and stepped back, and then Katherine’s hands were taken up by the marquess’s. He airily planted a kiss on both her cheeks as well. .
“Well met,” he said, and smiled down at her. His smile was so familiar, his voice so similar to Benjamin’s that Katherine
instantly lost half the dread she’d carried into the room with her.
“How do you do, my lord?” she said back to him, nodding a greeting.
“Well enough,” came his answer. “Call me Gideon. When we are in the country we are seldom formal with our friends, and never with family, not even in Town,” he said as he stepped back, only to step forward again so that he and Benjamin might embrace. They heartily slapped each other on the back, then drew back long enough to take a long moment to gaze into one another’s eyes, after which each of them nodded as though satisfied.
Katherine knew that look; she had exchanged it with her own brothers. It was a silent way of letting each other know that life was tolerably well, as much as it was a moment of recommitment to a long, old, cherished bond. She felt a new flutter in her stomach, this one an uncomplicated happy response to seeing the warm affection the two brothers shared.
The marquess made a gesture toward the chairs. “Please be seated. I apologize for the discomfort of my home at present, but we could hardly meet at Benjamin’s chambers, and I thought this might be more private than a park or theater or someplace like that.”
“Your home will be beautiful,” Katherine said, taking a seat on a settee. Benjamin sat beside her ... as one would expect of a fiancй.
The marquess laughed, and Katherine felt even more of her nervousness drain away. “ ‘Will be’ are the correct words. It assuredly is not at the moment, but I thank you for your compliment all the same.”
“I am sorry we cannot offer refreshments,” Elizabeth said. “The kitchens are being renovated as well.”
Polite conversation began, now that it was clear that everyone was well. They spoke of the weather, the war, what Parliament had last voted upon, what living in London was like after living aboard ship—but Benjamin kept turning the conversation away from the subject of marriage. His sister-in-law, Elizabeth, looked on him with a perplexed amusement clear on her face, and finally took matters in her own hands by turning to
Katherine. “When do you marry?” she asked pleasantly, if directly. “Have your banns been posted? Here in London?”
“No banns yet,” Benjamin hastened to say, but he was brought up short when Elizabeth gave
him a speaking glance.
“Talk to Gideon,” she instructed him firmly, “while Katherine and I have a little coze.”
“I wish there were time,” Benjamin said, standing and consulting the only decoration in the room, a clock mounted above the mantelpiece. “Unfortunately, we have another engagement. I am sorry this was so brief, as I know you mean to leave London for home tomorrow, but since I... we did not know you were coming, we had made other plans.” He turned to offer Katherine his arm. She rose, gathering up her reticule, knowing she must appear flustered.
“I am so sorry our visit was so brief,” she said, only briefly able to hold Elizabeth’s startled gaze lest the woman read too much in her own.
“We would not dream of making you late for another affair,” the marquess said blandly. “Katherine, it was a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to when next we meet. Benjamin, write to me, and not just about our chess games.”
Benjamin inclined his head.
“Please accept my best wishes on the pending birth of your child,” Katherine said to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth thanked her and extended similar sentiments of best wishes in the coming days as they escorted their guests to the parlor door, where Caulfield had come upon hearing the bellpull, to escort the guests past the rubble.
Once the door was closed behind them, Benjamin emphatically shook his head when Katherine parted her lips to speak. It was not until they were in his phaeton and driving away that he let his shoulders slump. He said hollowly, “I was not clever enough. Gideon knows something is amiss.”
Katherine did not know what to say.
“I thought about telling him, right there and then—but how could I possibly explain that I’d won the betrothal in a card game?” he said, shaking his head. “There is no way to say it that is flattering for you.” He shrugged. “Whatever impressions my brother and Elizabeth are left with when this is all behind us, I must take the blame myself, not shift any part of it to you.
I could not let them think you and your papa to be so ... I do not know the word. Vile, perhaps.”
“Oh,” Katherine said, but instead of fretting at the thought of how he might favorably phrase their odd bargain, Katherine felt an increasingly familiar warmth growing in her very center, spreading outward to the tips of her fingers and toes. She felt it thrum through her, welcome and thrilling and achingly sweet.
He had done it again. He had protected her, at cost to himself.
She gazed up at him, vitally aware of his leg pressed against hers because of the narrowness of the phaeton’s seat, aware of his hands strong and sure on the reins, aware of the agitation he felt but tried to hide from her gaze. Even now, when he had taken steps to preserve her reputation in the eyes of people beloved to him but strangers to her, he also struggled to keep his aggravation turned in, to not transfer any blame or reproof onto her.
“Benjamin,” she breathed his name, “thank you.”
He glanced down at her, still battling to hide his disgruntlement. “I only did as any gentlemen must.”
Katherine sat at his side and struggled not to throw her arms around Benjamin’s neck and tell him that, no, he was wrong— that he knew more about being a gentleman than half of London could even pretend to know.
Chapter 16
“Tell me why Elizabeth is not to be considered fragile,” she said instead, knowing her cheeks had betrayed her yet again by growing red as she furiously fought down the impulse to embrace Benjamin.
The shift in the conversation served its purpose in providing a lighter mood in which they traveled toward her home. Benjamin told her that the striking Lady Greyleigh had once been a penniless runaway who had been cruelly attacked near their home and left in a ditch to die. In nursing her back to health, it had been proved, in the end, that the soul most in need of nursing had been Gideon’s.
As a child, Gideon had defied his father and become his frail and unfortunate mama’s protector—a caring role he had been unable to shed even after Mama had passed to her reward. He had thought to build a paradise in the home that had been a hell for him and his brothers for so long, and had opened his home to every vagrant or doxy or maimed soldier in whom he saw the potential of redemption. But he had forgotten how to tend to his own needs under the weight of caring for so many needy others. Elizabeth had been the only one able to move past the protective walls he had built around his heart, her love clearing his vision so that he could see again that he must sustain his own soul, rescuing it before he could rescue others.
“So, having gone through all she has, that is what she meant about not being fragile,” Benjamin explained.
“How sad a beginning, but, too, how lovely that it ended so well,” Katherine said softly.
“The tale will make for an interesting one when their children want to know how Mama and Papa met,” Benjamin noted, his agitated mood giving way to gentle humor.
“Oh dear, yes it will,” Katherine said, laughing lightly. Then she thought to reach over and pinch his arm.
“Ow! What was that for?” he cried, half laughing in his turn.
“For not warning me about the marquess’s appearance. I quite gaped at him.”
Benjamin grinned, the old devil dancing once again in his gaze. “Believe me or no. but I truly had not considered it. I am accustomed to how Gideon appears. The villagers in Severn’s Well are half convinced he’s a ghost or a demon,” he explained. “Everyone gapes at him.”
“I think he was very gracious, given my poor manners. But what did he mean about writing about chess games?”
“We play chess by post. He does so with Sebastian, our wicked little brother, as well.” Benjamin shrugged. “Keeping the games going forces us to write to one another, sharing little bits about our lives.” He took on a sheepish look. “I have not written to Gideon, for the game or otherwise, in several weeks.”
“Since we met.”
“Er, yes. How could I write and not mention that I was betrothed?”
“Will there be consequences? Will he cut off your funds or something dastardly such as that?”
“Gideon?” Benjamin blew dismissively through his lips. “I would have to cut off the Prince Regent’s head before Gideon would think to use access to my funds as punishment. It was one of the first things he did when Papa passed on, that is, to set up funds for all of us. Papa knew money was yet another way to control us, so he gave and took without any hint of regularity or fairness. But if you wonder why I appear, call it economical, it is because even my quarterly sum is not princely. Gideon may be generous and timely in his giving, but he’s not a fool. He knows young men with too much money tend to buy trouble, and cheerfully told me as much. Still, I felt quite flush when I also had my income from the navy. Well, if flush is the correct word. ‘Able to eat’ might be more accurate. Just as well you are not truly marrying such a pauper, eh?”
She smiled, neither nodding nor shaking her head, and saw with a ripple of disappointment that her house lay just ahead. She would have liked the conversation to go on. She’d suspected he had little funds, for he was careful where Cyril Cull
man was extravagant—in his clothing, his single carriage, and she’d never seen Benjamin in any boots but the pair he wore now. Did he truly want for supper of a night? Although their association was almost at an end, if he ever called on her again she would be sure to call for a tea tray.
When Benjamin came around to help her down from the phaeton, he did not merely offer his hand, but encircled her waist as he had done to help her over the carpet. The same thrill chased through her now as it had then, and she had to make an effort not to lean into his length.
She could not think why he would want to, but to her surprise he followed her into the house and the front parlor, and took a chair across from hers when she sat. She rang at once for tea to be served, after dismissing the thought of asking him to leave, to go about his business until they must meet later for a musical evening. Why must he leave? His comp
any was comfortable, even enjoyable. And this way she could be sure he had something to eat today.
Today—or more correctly, tonight: Tonight would be the scene of their “falling apart,” the scene that would make it possible for the ton to believe Katherine had lost interest in marrying Lord Benjamin and had cried off.
After tonight, he would be free to go to the home of the Marchioness of Greyleigh’s father, where Elizabeth and Gideon meant to pass the night before journeying home tomorrow. Elizabeth had confessed that she and Gideon had come to Town just to meet Benjamin’s “bride.” They had asked to meet Katherine and Benjamin at the ruined house instead of her father’s home, because she and her stepmama were not on entirely convivial terms.
“I had rather we had a more congenial first greeting for you, Katherine, than you might have had at my stepmama’s house,” Elizabeth had explained, covering a touch of sadness with a smile.
After tonight, Benjamin would be free of Katherine’s company, and free to go to this stepmama’s home, not needing a friendly welcome. He would be free to tell Gideon and Elizabeth as much of the truth as he wanted them to know—at the very least that Katherine was not going to be Elizabeth’s “new sister.”
He might even let them believe exactly what Society was meant to believe, that Katherine had found Benjamin wanting among the ranks of marriageables. Katherine guessed he would allow that impression, protecting her reputation yet again, taking all blame or criticism onto his own shoulders.
Papa entered the parlor unexpectedly, drawing the gaze of both occupants of the room. He stopped short. There was a rotund older gentleman trailing him, who nearly collided with Papa in the doorway.
The Bartered Bridegroom Page 18