“No way to know. He’s too frail for—”the whip. “The estate is always in low water, so there’s little threat in that respect.”
Wayland nodded thoughtfully.
Another pitiful realization danced through Benedict’s head, his heart clenching. “Eliza… I should tell her?—”
“Absolutely not!” Wayland interjected, voice sharp. “You’ll tell her nothing. This plan of yours would devastate her—I don’tneed to tell you that. Sophie would’ve found it all a lark, but you chose my Lizzie.”
“Then what?—”
“I’ll tell her I disapprove of you, gambling debts most likely. I’ll forbid her to see you.”
Disgust and relief warred for prominence in his gut. Benedict knew in his bones that he would accede to Wayland’s wishes. He would choose the easier path—the one that didn’t require him to watch Eliza’s trusting, upturned face crumple in hurt. The respite Wayland offered—an escape he didn’t deserve—Benedict would snatch it with both hands. Anything to spare himself the sight of her devastation because he was a pathetic, selfish fool.
“Why would you do that for me?” Benedict croaked.
“I’m not doing it for you. Lizzie will be furious with me, but she will never know that your interest was feigned—thatshe would never recover from. And her wrath, I can manage. But I could not bear the desolation the truth would unleash.”
Benedict nodded as though he understood that sort of selfless, paternal love. Even as he proved with that very nod that he did not and never would.
“You’ll stay away from her.” It was an order, not a question.
No singular nod delivered to the floor had ever cost Benedict as much. If he could not be gentleman enough, honorable enough, to confess his sins to Eliza directly—he would agree to this. Even as his heart tightened and refused to release.
“You’ll leave the city.”
Another nod.
“Every one of my enforcers knows you now. If they catch so much as a whisper of your name...”
Benedict did not require the totality of that threat.
At last, Benedict met Wayland’s penetrating gaze. Whatever Wayland read there was enough to assure him of Benedict’s sincerity.
“For whatever it’s worth—I imagine very little—I’m sorry for what my choices cost you.”
“Did you cheat him?” Benedict asked weakly, uncertain if the answer truly mattered any longer.
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Wayland said simply, firmly. Somehow, that singular syllable was more convincing than decades of his father’s assertions. “Nor did I stop to think. But if I had… I wouldn’t have made a different choice, not then. Now that I’ve seen what reckless gaming does to the children, the whole family… I make different choices now.”
“I suppose that’s something,” Benedict offered.
Wayland’s lips pressed together in a tight line, his head dipping only once. Between one blink and the next, Eliza’s father left the room, leaving Benedict to the rest of his wretched life.
Chapter Twenty-One
Eliza wokewith the first muted streaks of dawn dancing through her sheer curtains. A smile etched across her lips while a permanent flutter lived in her chest. She might have been more concerned were it not such a pleasant sensation. Unwilling to ring for May, she slid out of bed and threw open the window to greet the day before she dressed.
Her violets were still damp with dew when she stepped outside and greeted them. The morning was cool, and fog hung like a heavy woolen blanket in the lowest areas of the garden. After retrieving her blanket and donning an apron and gloves, she knelt beside the garden bed and began rooting out the various weeds that fought for purchase in her carefully tilled soil. There, shaded in her own personal cloud, she relived tender kisses and whispered words without interruption.
The mere memory of Benedict’s masculine presence in the ring, contrasted with his tender touches to her lips, left her breathless. Such a man, capable of such feats of strength, made soft byher. It was an invigorating thought, and one she wished desperately to explore further.
When she was satisfied with her violets, she floated over to her rose bed. She crouched beside the house. The creamy white Wickwar roses that climbed the side of the house needed pruning. The rambling roses brightened the brick with the vibrant stamens exploding from their centers in a riot of gold, but they tended toward unruly when left unchecked. Today, their chalky blue foliage threatened to overtake the window of her father’s study.
She reached for the shears in her apron pocket as a door rattled within the room above her. Startled, she glanced up to see the pane open.
