He set the bottle down with a too-loud clank. “No,youdon’t—don’t ask me to do this. Father has taken everything from me. But not her. Eliza is the line.”
“There is always more—more for him to take. I promise you there is.” Bella’s voice broke on the final word. For one brief moment, he glimpsed tears pooling on her lower lashes. But before any threatened to fall, she blinked them away.
And there, his heart aching for an entirely new reason, Benedict realized how little he truly knew of his sister. “Bella?”
She shook away whatever sentiment had fallen over her. “So, what is your plan? You’ll marry her? Live happily ever after likea fairy story? What do you imagine Father will do when he finds out? Do you suppose he’ll leave the two of you in peace?”
“No, no, I do not.”
Whether it was the solemnity of his tone, or the words themselves, Benedict would never know. But Bella pulled back as though struck.
She merely shook her head before sweeping out of the room. A moment later her door slammed, finality echoing throughout the house.
He snatched the bottle and wandered over to the settee Bella had vacated, a knot in his throat.
Their father was predictable in only one thing—his virulent hatred of Michael Wayland. If there had ever been a good, caring man who wore his father’s face, those lost thousands of pounds had killed him.
For decades, Ambrose Sinclair had nursed his hatred, tended it carefully with drink and yet more gaming. He’d never held a coin for more than an hour without losing it to some sin or other. And once he’d done that—he’d taken his disappointment and displeasure out on his family.
Benedict had spared Bella the worst of the physical punishments, but no one escaped Blackwood Grange unscathed. Her desperation was entirely understandable. He knew it himself—a riptide threatening to tow him under.
It had taken years—until he had reached his majority and could open accounts and hold contracts in his own name—before Benedict had edged them back from the cliff. On the precipice of desolation, they teetered for nearly two decades. Devastation threatened to claim them the moment their guard lowered.
His father would stop at nothing for revenge. This plan was the work of years. Sometimes Benedict wondered if it was even older than he knew—perhaps as old as Eliza herself. Fatherhad certainly encouraged him toward various ill-considered seductions—lonely wives, flirtatious barmaids. Only Benedict’s meager scruples kept him from his father’s more salacious encouragements—the clergyman’s niece, the baronet’s daughter in the neighboring village.
Perhaps Ambrose had been preparing Benedict all his life. Molding him into this final, wretched form.
He took a sip from the amber bottle to wash away the bile pooling in his mouth.
If—when—Benedict failed, his father’s punishment would be swift and all consuming.
A knock echoed from the hall, drawing Benedict away from his morose thoughts and depressing drink. A second knock—more demanding—reminded him that his butler was… elsewhere. He sighed and strode to the door as a third, irate set of pounds reverberated through the room.
Benedict couldn’t have named who he expected to find, but it certainly wouldn’t have been Michael Wayland.
His stomach dropped to the floor at the sight of the furious furrow etched along the shorter man’s brow. He stepped back for the gambler to enter.
Wayland stalked past him before rounding on him. Had Eliza been caught sneaking back in? Had someone at the club told him of the fight? A dozen worst-case scenarios crashed over him at once.
“Drawing room,” Benedict croaked and gestured with two fingers to the entry.
Wayland shoved past, and Benedict heard the clink of bottle against glass before he’d even shut the door.
“I presume this is not a social call,” he forced himself to say when they met at the drink cart beside the fireplace.
“Ambrose Sinclair—Blackwood. Your father.”
Relief and revulsion filled him in equal measure. Once again, Benedict would bear the weight of his father’s hatred. But Eliza—she would be spared from him, from his family. And that relief was a balm he did not deserve.
“Yes.” Benedict was unwilling to trifle with the man.
It wasn’t the response Wayland had expected. That was evident in the man’s widened eyes. “I expected a denial.”
“What would be the point? You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t certain—wouldn’t do that to Eliza.”
“Am I to believe it’s a coincidence that you arrive in town and immediately single out my daughter? Pointedly. Dramatically.”
“You would be a fool if you did.” Benedict knew well that Wayland, while many things, was not a fool.
