“Even should I marry, the offer still stands. You must always feel you may call upon me.”
His heart, already too long heavy, fell to his boots, leaving an aching hole in the center of his chest.
Should I marry, she’d said. Not you, she might as well have shouted.
He need not worry about his pride ever again, he realized, for it had been shattered. But not soon enough, not nearly soon enough. A moment’s hesitation, and he had lost her forever.
What good was calling upon her, in her home, if it was also home to another man, any other man?
He somehow moved toward the door to the parlor—almost forgetting to take leave before he went out of Katherine’s life. He turned back toward the three staring faces.
He had one ounce of courage left, however, and knew he had yet to share that one vitally important thing that Katherine should know, must know.
“Katherine,” he said, amazed by the clarity of his voice, so at odds with the weakness of his knees, “I will always be yours to command, whatever you should need. You must call upon me in that need, because you have made me a promise that you would.” He paused, struggling for words, hurt by her stare, and stupidly hopeful still that she did stare, that she listened to his every word. He hoped she searched yet for the message that would move her, would keep the sandcastle moments from slipping away, lost forever to the waves of time.
“It... it is my fondest wish for you that you never feel a need to marry except out of love,” he said, not quite able to look her full in the face now. “Never feel you must settle for less because you are somehow less than Society would have you be. Society is wrong. You are . .. extraordinary. Completely extraordinary. The man you marry ... Do not let it be Cullman,” he blurted out, tired of vagueness, wanting to be as clear as possible.
“You have no say in whom she marries—” Cullman began.
“It cannot be Cullman, Katherine,” Benjamin interrupted, his tone easily overriding Cullman’s. “He does not know what your husband ought to know. He does not know what I know, that you are to be cherished, that you are one of a kind. Because,” he said, now turning his stare downward, to the edge of the carpet where it neared the doorway, staring at its fringed edges as if they represented the fraying nature of the rest of his life, “I know how wonderful you are, how easy it would be for a man to cherish you because”—he swallowed, the words difficult to say so publicly, but far worse to leave unsaid—“because I love you.”
He turned, half stumbling through the doorway, slamming the parlor door behind him without having meant to. He howled at the approaching butler to let him be, and lunged for the front
door as if it would give him sanctuary from his own breaking heart.
“Go after him, Katie!” said her father, with no gruff humor now, only utter and serious calm.
“She will do nothing of the kind!” Cyril declared.
Papa looked at Cyril with daggers, but spoke to his daughter, “Katie, you have to go after—!”
"Katherine,” Cullman overrode Papa. “I love you,” he said, stepping beside her. “More than that simpleton Lord Benjamin could ever hope to love anyone.”
No, he did not, she knew that now. Her hands formed into fists, and she had to choke back an impulse to scream at Cyril, to tell him no, he did not understand anything at all, least of all about love, or sacrifice, or honor.
He had proven he knew nothing about her, nothing at all. He had given her fancy books filled with, yes, knowledge and beauty and words—instead of a plain, blank journal that she could fill with her own words, her own interests, her own heart’s desire. He had given her dust, and could not understand why she did not fawn over its supposed golden glitter.
He said he loved her, and her ears at last heard that he was really saying he loved himself too much to lose a contest, even one involving merely her. She knew, without knowing the hows or whys of it, that Cyril had been the one who had cast her off in the first place. He’d cast her off to another man—she supposed any man would have done, but it had been her great, good fortune that other man had been as estimable as was Lord Benjamin Whitbury.
When she had been bound to another, Cyril had felt he could tell her he loved her, tying her with those precious words as a fisherman ties bait to his hook—she saw clearly now that, at best, he’d only wished to bed her. He would have ruined her, and smiled while doing it. And when he was done with his sport, he would have merely cut the line, abandoning her. That sideways smile of his, the one she’d never cared for—it ought to be on his face, at this crudest moment.
She covered her face with her hands, out of humiliation, out of rage at her own blindness. She shuddered, loss rippling
through her like fire through dry grasses, leaving ashes and desolation in its wake.
There was something good in all this, however: At long last she could make sense of all that had happened. At long last she understood that, somehow, her papa had acted to protect her. She understood that he and Benjamin had been as cruelly caught in a net of Cyril’s making—even as she had been, all along.
She lowered her hands, blind no more. More than anything else, grasping the truth made sense of the dichotomy that was Benjamin—he’d claimed to be a rogue, but had never acted the part. The man she’d found him to be was in actually the man he was; since the moment they’d met, Benjamin had never done one ignoble thing. Even “forcing” her to play at a game of betrothals, Benjamin had insisted in order to save her, a stranger, from herself.
Benjamin had conspired with Papa in some manner, she saw that now. They had come up with a temporary betrothal, making the most of a poor situation. Papa had shouted at Katherine that she was to be betrothed temporarily to Benjamin, and she had been hurt and confused as to why he could make such an unreasonable demand of her. But now she saw that he had to have been manipulated by Cyril—he, Benjamin, and her. Lives had been changed, dreams had been dented, and all for the convenience of one man.
In her ignorance, she had believed Cyril’s words of love. She had wondered if she might learn to love him in return. She had been so willing to believe ....
Benjamin had said he loved her. More words, yes—but these words she believed, as she’d never quite believed Cyril’s claims of love. But how could she, after all the falsehoods she’d been told ... ?
She could believe, because she knew she loved him.
Benjamin loved her!
Katherine spun to face the last gift he had given her, the one yet unwrapped. He had asked her to open it when both he and Cyril had left.
She turned to face Cyril again. “Get out,” she said, looking directly at him, her gaze steady and dry-eyed. “I will never again receive you in my home.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said, drawing back as if she had slapped him.
“I said, get out. I never want to see you again.” she said with absolute finality, then turned her back to him.
He came to stand near her, and she could feel him trembling with outrage. “You do not want to do this,” he warned in a low
voice.
“Yes, I do. Please take your books and go.”
“Very well,” he growled, snatching his expensive gift from the tabletop. Now all that remained there was Benjamin’s final gift. “I warn you, I’ll not come back,” Cyril snarled.
“Good.”
He made a strangulated noise deep in his throat. “I never want to see anyone in this cretinous family again! Be assured that come the morning I shall be delighted to blacken your name to anyone who will lend me an ear! You will be run out of London inside a fortnight,” he said savagely.
“And glad enough to go, if your ilk fill this city!” Papa thundered in return. “My Katie said for you to leave.” He seized Cyril by his coat lapels, and propelled the man from the room.
When the room was empty of anyone but Katherine, the door was closed behind the departing men, perhaps by Langley or one of Katherine’s brothers. She had not turned to look,
instead waiting for Cyril Cullman to be gone, away from her and the gift she must open before time could begin to move forward for her once more.
The closed door was all she needed as signal for her to reach out and pull the string from the package. She parted the package’s paper, her fingers lingering a little where she thought Benjamin's fingers may have touched.
Inside was naught but a few papers: all the papers he’d had and the bill of sale, now signed over to her, on the racing mare, Fallen Angel.
Tears swam in Katherine’s eyes, almost making her miss the note she’d found atop the other documents, written in the same penmanship as on the paper that named her cottage.
“My dearest friend,” he had written, the salutation alone enough to make her choke out a sob. She put a hand to her mouth, pressing her lips hard against her teeth, willing her tears to abate and let her read.
“I could never enjoy keeping Fallen Angel,” he had written, “knowing how much you were missing her. On the other hand, it is the greatest joy to me to know she goes to one who will love and cherish her, win or lose, all her days. Perhaps by having Fallen Angel near, her presence will occasionally cause you to think of me. I pray that this mare may be the genesis of your stables, that she win important races for you, and that her progeny are as fleet of foot as is she.
“This is too grand a gift, I know, for an unmarried man to give to an unmarried woman of his acquaintance, but I hope you can accept it on the grounds that such a gift is not too much between the very best of friends. As I pray ever to be—Benjamin.”
Katherine lowered the note, placing it neatly on top of the papers that allowed her to once again own Fallen Angel, and she could not keep the tears from falling then, even as she gave a blubbery moan of joy.
It was a far, far grander gift than any Cyril could have ever bought with money, even if he’d bought her the finest racehorse ever born.
“Go after him, Kate,” Papa had said—and go she would. Her tears dried on her cheeks even as she picked up her skirts and dashed across the parlor to the door.
She flew up the stairs, determined to fetch her cloak and go to Benjamin, to be direct and forward, to be as outspoken as everyone said the hoydenish Miss Oakes was. No more searching his eyes for some sign that he loved her. She would ask him if he could love her yet, despite everything, and he would answer, and the rest of her life’s contentment rested on what he would say.
She needed no candle on the stairs, and was not entirely sure she needed feet to carry her upward. The gloom did not slow her ... but voices did, rising from the hall below. One voice she had learned to hate tonight, the other she loved and suspected she had loved for some time, if only she had let herself admit it.
Benjamin was here! He had not left her home. She did not need her cloak and bonnet, not now, and Papa would be glad she had not taken one of the coaches and boldly, even wickedly, gone to Benjamin’s bachelor chambers in pursuit of him. She almost giggled, finally thinking to wonder where his chambers
resided? Love would have found him—that, and Papa’s ledger of directions he used to write out his invitations to his card parties.
How she loved Benjamin’s voice, his stance, his humor, his—
“Remove your hands at once!” Cyril snarled.
Alarmed by the harshness now in the voices, she turned at the top of the stairs and bent down, then able to see the two men standing aggressively close. Her brother, Jeremy, was holding Cyril’s arms hard behind his back while Mercer looked on in a readied stance and Lewis unbuttoned the man’s coat.
Something was wrong, gravely wrong.
Chapter 21
Benjamin stood outside Sir Albert’s home, his heart still racing from having told Katherine aloud that he loved her. He lowered his face into his hands. So much for hopes for the future—he had surely just killed any chance that he and Katherine might remain friends. He moaned, and called himself a thousand times a fool.
And all he had left to “enjoy” for the rest of the evening was calling upon Cullman at the man’s chambers.
But wait. Benjamin slowly lifted his head. Why not catch the man in the act, instead of confronting him at his chambers? Here, proof might be had.
Benjamin found himself still trembling with awareness of Katherine, and the aching acknowledgment of the love they might have had, even as he knew he had one last thing to do tonight, the very thing that would keep Cullman from having any chance to woo her. He would have preferred that Cullman had left the house, that the man had no final chance to win Katherine over with false words. No matter. He would take care of Cullman. He would catch the man out, leaving him no room in which to wiggle.
He moved through the moonlit garden surrounding Sir Albert’s home, looking for a window that was obtainable. His search, unfortunately, gave him time to think.
He’d told Katherine he loved her. That undoubtedly made him a fool. But she had deserved to know that at least one man had truly loved her, even be it a man she could not tolerate. She would know that not everyone was blind to her merits—she might even find it ironic that the one man who ought not to have fallen in love with her, had.
It only took a minute more to find an unlatched window.
Benjamin had no more than slithered through the opening and half fallen to the floor of Sir Albert’s bookroom, when Lewis Oakes’s voice said, “Do you. Lord Benjamin, have an objection to butlers?”
“He must, to want to avoid using the front door,” Mercer agreed, standing in the darkened room beside his brother. The two of them had parted from the shadows to stare down at a sprawling Benjamin.
“Do you always linger in unlit rooms?” Benjamin queried in return.
“When we are trying to eavesdrop on two beaux and a little sister, we do,” Lewis assured him, locking his forearm to Benjamin’s and hoisting him to his feet.
“I pray that is not a common event.” Benjamin tugged his waistcoat down into place, and regarded these two of Katherine’s three brothers. “Now I am in, would you care to know what I am about?” he asked.
Within half a minute of beginning to explain himself, Mercer scurried away to fetch Jeremy to join them. The two returned, quietly, in short order, and a confederacy was formed.
The downfall of most culprits, Benjamin had once read in a book on philosophy, was that they felt compelled to take the easy path. Thieves, he’d read, were basically lazy. If not lazy, they would seek honest labor—but labor was equal to effort, the very thing the thief abhorred. For them, far better the easy path of letting others do the labor, then taking the results of it for themselves.
The problem with seeking the easy path, however, was that a trap could be made to look like the best choice.
Benjamin glanced around the room, and would have had no idea there were three other gentleman within if he’d not seen them assume their positions. Two were hidden behind long curtains, and Mercer was lost among the chair legs under a table. Benjamin chose to stand behind a folding screen, where he could have a view of the room through the cracks between its panels. For a moment it struck him they could all be made to look like utter fools if Cullman did not do as Benjamin expected he would ... but then the culprit entered the room.
Cullman had carried a candle in with him, and under his arm were the three books he’d tried to give Katherine. He set the
books and the candle on the desk that stood near Benjamin’s screen. He pulled the candle closer to the edge of the desk, and then began to pull open the drawers of Sir Albert’s desk, pawing through any papers he found.
Inside of a minute, he held a paper near the candle, then quickly surveyed a handful of like papers, and nodded in satisfaction. He folded the pages he’d selected into thirds, and tucked them inside his well-fitted coat, patting the buttoned garment to be sure the papers would not slip and fall out. He blew out the candle, picked up his expensive books, then stalked to the bookroom door. He cracked the door open and peered both ways down the hall.
Be
njamin approached him from behind, and must have made some sound, because Cullman turned at once, fists already raised. A facer took Benjamin in the lower lip, sending him sprawling backward over a chair.
Cullman moved to flee, but a swarm of other bodies overtook him quickly. His books went flying, and his arms were wrenched behind his back at the elbow. After a brief struggle, Katherine’s brothers held him securely.
“Drag him out into the light, gentlemen,” Benjamin said.
Katherine’s brothers complied at once, and Benjamin followed, gingerly sliding his jaw from side to side, satisfied nothing was broken but wincing at the discovery that his lower lip was split and had dribbled blood down his chin and onto his cravat.
Under the glow of the entry hall’s lamps, Benjamin pointed to Cullman. “Open his coat and you will find the papers he took from your father’s desk.”
“Remove your hands at once!” Cullman said, his voice a high-pitched complaint, but Jeremy held his arms even tighter and Lewis unbuttoned the man’s coat. The papers fell to the floor.
Mercer bent down to retrieve the pages, reading them as he stood upright again. “I do not understand,” he said, his tone perplexed. He glanced into Cullman’s face. “Why would you want Papa’s lists?”
“What if they were not merely your papa’s lists of farming equipment and goods?” Benjamin asked.
Lewis took a page as well, reading aloud for Jeremy’s benefit as Jeremy still held Cullman fast by the arms. “ ‘March the twelfth. Chickens, thirty. Eggs laid, twenty-four. Eggs candled/rejected, six,’ ” he quoted, shaking his head as he looked up at Benjamin. “These are naught but the weekly reports our steward in Bexley submits to Papa.”
The Bartered Bridegroom Page 23