Of course you would be unhappy with something good happening to me while you have had everything you’ve ever wanted handed to you.
Training her gaze on the man, she smiled as he cocked the mallet over his shoulder and ambled to her side. Self-conscious, she went to brush her hand down the bodice of her stylish white taffeta dress and wondered if she should put on her bonnet.
“I wonder if the lady of the house will let me keep this mallet as a keepsake?” he pondered out loud.
“She might,” Alice said. “If you ask for the pair. I don’t think her ladyship would do with a rogue mallet.”
He cocked a brow, his smile sly. “It is more sensible to replace two than one.” Extending an arm to her, he asked, “Care to join me for a drink?”
“I would love to,” she smiled, taking her mallet with her.
As they moved off, gently picking their way over the green, he said, “Have I told you how ravishing you look today?”
“You have mentioned it once or twice,” she tightened her fingers over his arm. “Possibly thrice, but I will answer the way I did the first time, you are so very kind, my lord. Thank you.”
His peal of laughter drew eyes around them and she did her best to hold her head up high even under the unwelcome scrutiny.“You looked like a savant wielding that mallet. How often do you play croquet?”
Benedict’s lips slanted to the left. “This is my first time in a very long time.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened fractionally. “You must have a fine-tuned intuition and a good memory.”
“My history professor would disagree with you,” Benedict replied. “But then again, Mister Weston is a crotchety old crone who does not agree with anyone.”
They came to the refreshment tables on the back porch of the lady’s palatial country home, and he poured her a refreshing glass of lemonade and took a water for himself.
Looking into her glass briefly, she began, “I’ve always wondered what the inside of a lecture hall would look like. I am sure you know women are not allowed into such hallowed places which might give them the ladder to achieve more than the simplistic life ladies are told they should expect.”
Leaning on a balustrade, Benedict nursed his drink. “It is wholly unfair, isn’t it? My first teacher was my mother who helped me spell my name and count my first numbers, but then we shunt women to the side and go on to achieve degrees.”
She took a sip. “It is lopsided, truly.”
“Tell me,” Benedict said, “If you could study at Oxford or Cambridge, what would you like to pursue?”
“Medicine,” Alice replied immediately. “I would like to know how to heal someone, how to take away someone’s pain and give them ease. Even if it is to learn herbs, I would take that with open arms.”
Benedict rested his glass on the wide balustrade. “I may be able to give you a tour of Oxford,” he offered. “Not on a day when classes are ongoing, but I would love to show you one of the bastions of male companionship.”
“No rivalries?”
“More than you can care to count,” he grinned.
Taking a bracing breath, Alice asked, “I know this is very presumptuous of me, but my cousin Eliza really admires you, and while she has not said it to me, I do know she would love to meet someone like you. Someone who has the morals and values and I would say, appearance you have.”
His smirk turned naughty. “Did I hear a compliment in there?”
She reddened. “Perhaps,” she replied. “You have been free with your compliments, and I decided it was only fair to return one, even as un-subtle as it was.”
“No, no, it was subtle,” Benedict shook his head. “And I feel honored by it.”
Against the sunny sky, the rays gleamed on his perfectly coiffed curls; he looked more like a storybook prince than ever, making Alice flushed with guilt.
It wasn’t Lord Brampton’s fault that she did not feel the pull she so desperately wanted to feel for him—half the women in Town would give their left arm to wed the man and the other half would give much more than that—but she felt trapped in the in-between of duty and guilt.
She had two duties at the moment, the first was to get Rutledge to do the right thing, but if he did not, she had to make sure her sister had a way out of the predicament she was in—and that was by marrying up.
Unfortunately, that was where the guilt came in. She didn’t like knowing that this courtship was being led on the basis of changing her fortunes and saving her sister’s life. Well, for her. She was not sure of the underlying reasons Benedict had for the courtship.
However, it felt as dishonest and deceitful to use him as a tool like an otter would wield a rock to open clams and then discard it.
