A Sinner without a Saint

by Bliss Bennet

  He couldn’t help but edge closer as Strickland rushed away—goaded by Clair, no doubt, off to fix some ridiculous problem he had made up of whole cloth.

  “Were not you supposed to be helping Lady Sayre and her husband in the canvassing?” Harry asked Clair.

  “Not until after my fencing match. Two of the clock, you told me.” Clair held out his pocket watch. “And it is nearly that now.”

  “Yes, but where is your opponent?”

  “Oh, I’m sure Saybrook will be here any moment. He promised to meet me on the field of combat.”

  Saybrook? Had Clair actually convinced Theo to participate in his silly display?

  Whipping out his fencing foil—nothing like the wickedly curved saber of a true corsair—from a scabbard by his side, Clair stepped into the middle of the village green and shouted.

  “Where is he, the miserable cur? Yes, I speak of Lord Saybrook, who has impugned the honor of my country, my family, even my own lord! Saybrook, I defy thee to single combat to the last extremity!”

  The children who had gathered to stare at Dulcie’s outrageous costume now edged even closer, mouths agape at the prospect of a real sword fight in the midst of their annual fair.

  “One of the actors from the troupe, drumming up attendance for the show this afternoon,” said a woman in the crowd with a complacent nod.

  “Yes, but to call for the lord to take part? Overbold, that is,” an older farmer protested.

  “Oh, our Saybrook’s a prime ‘un,” a young fellow insisted. “Won’t rub him the wrong way.”

  Benedict searched the crowd for his brother, but could find nary a glimpse. Serve Clair right if Theo left him here to bellow to nobody but the wind.

  But if Theo had intended to leave Clair in the lurch, what was Benedict’s own sword doing there, leaning on the side of Mrs. Hawley’s booth? Had Theo, who had no weapon of his own, borrowed Benedict’s, then forgotten it? Or had Dulcie brought it, sure that his taunts would draw out his opponent?

  Benedict strode over and picked up the foil before an overly curious village child could injure himself on it. The foil still did not have a protective leather cap.

  The crowd grew restless as the minutes ticked past with no sign of Theo. But Clair, always happy to be the center of attention, escalated his verbal taunts. “Do you disregard my challenge, Lord Saybrook? It is true you hold a higher place than I, but your dignity does not privilege you to do me an injury. As soon as ever you do me an injury, you make myself your equal, and as you are my equal I challenge you!”

  A hand grabbed Benedict’s sleeve. Harry Atherton, worry wrinkling her brow. “Where is he?” she asked.

  “I’ve no idea. And he’s without his foil, too,” Benedict said, snapping the weapon in question through the air.

  “More of such conversation would infect my brain!” Dulcie shouted. “Shall such a man insult me so, and still walk free? Fie upon it, I say. Fie!”

  “Could something have happened to him?” Harry whispered.

  Benedict shook his head, the answer suddenly obvious. “No. He just loses track of the time.”

  “You’d think he might be punctual at least once in his life,” Sibilla huffed as she and her husband joined them. “But he refuses to carry father’s watch.”

  Before he could open his mouth to upbraid his sister for insulting the head of their family, hands on his back shoved him into the center of the village green.

  “Noble Sir Benedict will defend the honor of the Saybrook name from this scurrilous attack,” he heard Harry yell as he stumbled onto the grass in front of Clair.

  He set a hand to the ground to keep himself from toppling over. As he caught his balance, he looked up to see Clair examining him through his jeweled quizzing glass, a wicked smile lighting his face.

  “Ah, at long last! A scion of the Saybrook line, here to answer for the sins of his family.” He lowered his quizzing glass and raised his sword. “En garde, sir!”

  “Really, Dulcie?” Benedict asked as he pushed himself to standing. “Must we engage in such a ridiculous display?”

  “Did you not promise to meet me on this field of combat, and to put on a display your people would not long forget? And did your brother not promise to aid me when it seemed you would go back on your word?”

  “What? I never promised you any such thing, Dulcie, as you well know. And I very much doubt Theo did, either.”

  Clair’s eyes flashed, then he turned to the crowd and shook his sword. “Call me liar? Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile! I demand satisfaction!”

  All the worms of Nile? Benedict struggled to hold back a laugh. Only Clair would hurl Shakespearean insults in the midst of a challenge to a duel.

  But the villagers, it would seem, were not as familiar with the words of the Bard as was Benedict. The circle around them tightened, as if some of them might soon set upon Clair themselves if Benedict did not come to the defense of the honor of his family.

  “Have at it, now!”

  “Dunna let him insult ye so, sir!”

  “You can take ‘im, sure you can!”

  Clair raised his sword once again. “Come, now, Mr. Pennington. Would you show yourself a coward in front of your own people?”

  It wasn’t the insulting goad that propelled Benedict forward. No, it was the invitation in Clair’s eyes, an invitation that promised far more than a simple clash of swords.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said, raising his own foil as he culled his memory for an appropriate verbal riposte. “Thou rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.”

  Clair’s grin widened. “A duel of wits, is it to be, as well as of swords? Pret! Allez, thou damned and luxurious mountain goat!”

  Benedict’s foil parried the sudden thrust of Clair’s with a clang. “Thou lump of foul deformity!” he shouted as he pushed free, then flicked the quizzing glass from Clair’s free hand with the tip of his foil.

  The crowd cheered as the jeweled trinket tumbled to the ground. But Benedict barely heard it, the blood drummed so loud in his ears.

  Clair circled about Benedict, making quick, sharp jabs with the point of his foil, none close enough to prick, just enough to make his opponent dance. “Thou cream-faced loon.”

  Benedict dodged out of reach. “Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.”

  Clair feinted, panting. “Ah, but thy face is not worth sunburning.”

  “The tartness of thy face would sour ripe grapes.”

  “Thou clay-brained guts!”

  “Thou knotty-paged fool!”

  The crowd roared ever louder with each verbal attack. How many more insults from Shakespeare could he dredge up from his memory? Clair, damn him, had always triumphed at every game of cap a quotation at school.

  Benedict lunged at an opening, but pulled back at the rasp of a ripping seam. His shirt? Or his trousers?

  “Would thou wouldst burst!” Clair crowed.

  “Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!” Benedict answered, forcing Clair’s back to the side Mrs. Hawley’s pastry booth. Their swords entangled, their faces only inches apart. The musk of Clair’s sweat made his nostrils flair.

  “You’re supposed to allow me to win,” he muttered in a voice too low to be heard by the crowd.

  “Ah, but that was my agreement with Saybrook. And only if he would convince you to paint my portrait. Otherwise, I promised to inform your sister of how he’s failed to pay over a good portion of her dowry to Sir Peregrine.” With a sudden shove, Clair sent him reeling back.

  Benedict shook the hair out of his eyes. “What did you say?”

  “I said, your eldest brother has failed in his fiduciary responsibilities to my friend,” Clair whispered as he once again circled Benedict. “Not only did he promise him an uncontested seat in Parliament, which he has failed to do, but he’s also failed to pay Per the full amount due to him upon his marriage to your sister.”

&nb
sp; Bloody hell. His brother, the estate, in financial difficulties? And Theo hadn’t thought to confide his troubles to his own brother.

  How long had Clair known?

  “Ah, weren’t aware of that, were you? No, Sir Peregrine is too kind to embarrass your brother by revealing such a thing to you. Or even to his own wife.” Clair’s hand was a blur, his sword flicking and teasing, but never quite engaging with Benedict’s. “But someone has to look out for his interests, if he will not.”

  Damnation. Was Clair threatening to spill Theo’s secrets to Sibilla? Now, when she’d finally started to forgive their elder brother for not embracing a political life, as she and their father before her had always dreamed he would?

  “You will hold your tongue,” he snarled, circling Clair in his turn.

  But Clair only smiled. “Will you be wiser than your brother, I wonder, and accept my generous offer? My silence, as well as my ignominious defeat in this duel—”

  “If I complete your portrait?” Benedict’s voice cracked in disbelief. What a manipulative bastard.

  Clair flicked his sword, teasing at the end of Benedict’s cravat. “As you promised you would.”

  Rage hazed Benedict’s brain. With a sudden thrust, the tip of his foil slipped under Clair’s guard. The tip unprotected by a leather button.

  A thin line of blood seeped into the fine linen of his opponent’s sleeve.

  Clair’s eyes blew wide as his weapon slipped from his suddenly shaking hand.

  “Done.” Benedict swept his sword up and down in acknowledgement, his pulse pounding in his head. Then, before the urge to wound more than Dulcie’s pride conquered good sense, he strode off the field in search of his brother.

  Dulcie sat heavily on his bed and swore as he struggled to wrap a length of linen about the cut on his upper arm. One of Saybrook House’s footmen, eyes wide with barely contained curiosity, had offered to send for a surgeon when a bloody Dulcie returned, alone, from the village fair, but Dulcie had shooed him away. Benedict’s foil hadn’t gone that deep. Besides, the idea of stitches, or even worse, being bled by leeches to stave off possible inflammation, turned his stomach.

  Still, even a glancing cut stung like the very devil.

  He grunted as he pressed his arm against the side of his chest, trying to keep the end of the bandage from slipping. Yes, the wound stung, but not as badly as that look on Benedict’s face had, when he’d demanded Dulcie hold his tongue. He’d never seen such pain in another’s eyes. At least not eyes fixed on him.

  Had Benedict really believed he’d babble away his brother’s secrets? How could he have not known that Dulcie was only provoking him? His earlier challenge to Benedict’s brother, to fight or have Dulcie tell Sibilla all—he’d only made it to push the poor fellow into shaking off his insecurities and showing his true strength. And to help Per, too, because the strain of keeping such a secret from his wife was daily chipping away at the peace and happiness his friend had finally found. A week of standing aside and watching that without stepping in to help was a month too long.

  And it had worked like a charm, just as Dulcie planned. Dulcie’s taunts had finally led Saybrook to stand up for himself as a proper nobleman should. Why, Benedict should be falling to his knees in gratitude, not looking at him as if he were a slug he wished to crush beneath his boot.

  Dulcie dabbed a bit of honey he’d wrangled from the kitchens onto the cut, then whipped the linen about his upper arm. Thank the gods the damned thing had finally stopped bleeding. He’d already ruined one good shirt today.

  But when he raised his arm up and down, testing his mobility, a red stain seeped through the layers of bandage. Damnation. He hated to rely on his valet to tie his cravat. Brookings never could get it to drape to Dulcie’s liking.

  A light tap on the door made him grimace. “Go away, Brookings! I told you I’d call when I’ve need of you!”

  But when the door opened, it revealed not his servant, but Benedict Pennington, a small package tucked under one arm.

  Dulcie stilled, too aware that his shirt, ripped, bloodied, lay on the floor by his feet. He’d often preened and strutted in a far greater state of dishabille in front of other men. Why, then, should he feel so naked under Benedict’s gaze?

  Those dark eyes slowly roamed his bare chest, tracing the trail of hair down his stomach, then moved even lower—

  Benedict’s head jerked up, his gaze skittering to Dulcie’s, then away, finally settling on the bandage flapping against Dulcie’s upper arm. With a scowl, he set down his package on a chair and strode to Dulcie’s side.

  “Why isn’t a surgeon attending to this?” he asked as he ripped the end of the linen and tied it off in a neat knot. “Or your valet, at least?”

  “I’m quite capable of taking care of a minor scratch.”

  “A wound still bleeding after four hours can hardly be accounted minor. I will have Randall summon a surgeon.”

  Whenever Dulcie had suffered any small injury as a child, he’d always enjoyed being the center of solicitous female attention—his mother’s, his sister’s, the housekeeper’s, the cook’s, even a kitchen maid’s—gentle hands and soft words soothing his temper and pride just as their poultices and dressings soothed his physical hurts. Yet today, some unfamiliar feeling urged him to turn away, to lick his wound in private.

  Shame? Why, when it was Benedict who had injured him, not the other way round?

  Dulcie pulled free from Benedict’s hands and reached for the clean shirt he’d laid on the bed. “You do think highly of your swordsmanship, don’t you? But I assure you, it is only a scratch. It stopped bleeding some time ago.”

  “Is that rouge on that bandage, then? Hope to make us all pity you by a false display?”

  “What need have I of pity, when I can charm you all with such ease?” Dulcie answered, struggling not to wince as he lifted the shirt over his head and sent it coursing down over his shoulders. Better to stain another shirt than to stand here another second under Benedict’s unwavering gaze.

  “All except you, of course,” he said as Benedict remained silent. “Why are you here? Come to lord it over your vanquished foe?”

  Benedict took a deep breath, then looked him directly in the eyes. “I’ve come to apologize. I should not have let my feelings get the better of me, no matter how provoking your behavior.”

  “Provoking? And what, precisely, did I do to provoke that simmering temper?” he asked as he struggled with the button on the cuff of his sleeve.

  “You threatened my family.”

  Dulcie swallowed against the surprising lump in his throat. “And you thought I would make good on such a threat? Your brother did, when he finally agreed to tell Sibilla himself about her missing dowry money rather than have me do it. But I expected better of you.”

  Benedict’s forehead wrinkled. “But you threatened—”

  “I made no threat. I only offered.”

  “You’re splitting hairs. I distinctly remember you offering silence in exchange for a portrait.”

  “But I never said I’d tell if you didn’t give it to me. Am I responsible for the inferences you make?”

  “Yes! For you clearly intended for me to infer the opposite. Your entire scheme depended upon it.”

  The stiffness of Benedict’s posture, the flatness of his lip, his rough, noisy breathing—yes, he truly did believe Dulcie capable of hurting his sister, all for his own gain. Of course, Dulcie had wanted Benedict to think—only for an instant—that he might let Saybrook’s secret slip, and act to avoid the minuscule possibility. But at the same time, it cut him, cut him far deeper than Benedict’s sword had, realizing Benedict could not see the truth behind the manipulation, the man behind the act.

  “Perhaps. But I didn’t think you’d actually believe me capable of it.” Dulcie sat down heavily on the bed and shook his head. “Do you not know me at all?”

  Benedict’s expressive hands carved frustration in the air. “How can I know you, Clair, w
hen you hide everything you are?”

  Dulcie tried to hold Benedict’s gaze, but even that small attempt to open himself to another seemed beyond him. His instinct for self-preservation ran fathoms deep.

  But it suddenly mattered, that Benedict see he was more than what he showed the rest of the world. It mattered more than he could comfortably stand.

  If he wanted Benedict to see him, though, he’d have to lower his guard, far more than he ever had with any man.

  How, though?

  As he searched the room for an answer, his eyes caught on the package Benedict had laid on the chair. Dulcie jumped up from the bed and snatched it up from its precarious perch atop the cushion. If it contained what he hoped it did, perhaps it might serve as a bridge, a way for him to begin to step across the chasm he’d created between his own feelings and the rest of the world. A way to show Benedict who he was, by showing him what he loved.

  He ripped off the brown paper to reveal a small portfolio, its boards covered with marbled paper. He ran a hand over its surface, then took a deep, calming breath.

  “Open it,” he said, as he thrust out the portfolio towards Benedict.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Benedict took a step back, away from Clair and whatever the hell he held in his hand. Did he think offering some sort of gift would appease Benedict? Had he not heard a single word Benedict said?

  “It’s for you, Dulcie, not for me.” He snatched his hands behind his back, clutching them tight against the curve of his spine. “Arrived yesterday, Randall tells me, but with all the to-do with the fete and Theo’s birthday, it was overlooked.”

  “No matter. Better, even, since everyone else is still in the village. It’s not something I wish to share with anyone. Anyone except you.”

  Benedict frowned. If Clair had uttered such words on any other day, he’d assume the portfolio held some titillatingly scandalous erotic print. But the tone in which he’d said them—cautious, halting, even a bit fearful—suggested something entirely different.