He zigzagged his way around patrons in the packed bar. It was busier than usual, but there was still a corner booth available at the back of the room.
Everyone was packed tight, closer to the stage to see tonight’s invited speaker, a short, muscular man whose political fervor made him seem six feet tall. Charles Tucker hadn’t spoken to the men of Abingdale before, but his reputation preceded him. He was an agitator for change, and tonight he would find a receptive audience.
Benedict had been looking forward to hearing the man talk, but tonight he was too distracted.
Not a wisp of emotion had shown on his wife’s face during the ceremony. She’d been like a perfect porcelain doll, beautiful but cold and lifeless. Standing next to her, he’d been awfully aware of the contrast they presented. Her, delicate and gently bred. Him, with his common lineage writ clear across his oxlike frame.
The carriage ride home had been long and tense, filled with Cassandra’s earnest attempts to engage with her new sister-in-law and Lady Amelia’s terse replies. He hadn’t said two words to her. And after showing Amelia to her room, he’d made a poor attempt at comforting his sister before escaping to the firm—Asterly, Barnesworth & Co.—hoping to lose himself in his work.
Then he’d come to the tavern to lose himself in drink. “Keep them coming,” he said to Edwina, who’d arrived with another ale.
If he was being honest, it wasn’t anger that had pushed him out of the house—it was terror. History seemed hell-bent on repeating, and he could almost hear the devil cackling away. Benedict took another long gulp and tried to swallow down the nausea that always appeared when his thoughts turned to his mother, a woman who’d been born into the aristocracy but had left it when she’d foolishly fallen in love with a footman.
A woman who had regretted her decision so deeply that she’d chosen to abandon her own child to try and establish herself among thehaute tonin France. Dying alone in Paris had been preferable to living a life in Abingdale with him.
And now he was set to live his failures all over again.
An upswell of applause grabbed his attention. The men were standing. Jeremy, the apprentice engine stoker at the firm, climbed onto a table and shouted. “Down with the bloody toffs. The land is ours!Vivela France.”
The comment was met with a clamor of pints against wood, and the young man beamed. Benedict would need to talk to him. He didn’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, although he’d like to avoid the need for a guillotine, but there were dangers in expressing them so openly.
Alastair McTavish slid into the booth opposite him. His grey hair was pulled back into a rough queue, and there was a ring of dirt and sweat along the old man’s hairline.
“Ye nae standing. Did ye nae appreciate Tucker’s fine words?” the grizzled man said in his thick Scottish brogue.
“I was distracted.”
“Perhaps now ye’ve got yerself a fancy wife, the plight of the working man no longer interests you.”
Benedict tightened his grip around the glass. Of all nights, tonight was not the night to press him. “The plight of my men will always interest me, McTavish.”
The grooves in Alastair’s face deepened. A decade ago, the man’s frown could make Benedict stand up straighter, square his shoulders, brush the dirt from his breeches. It didn’t have the same effect it once did.
“You should nae have done it. There was nae gun at yer head.”
It was the same statement he’d thrown at himself over and over in the past eight hours.
“I had no choice. What do you think happens to ladies who are ruined? Should I have that on my conscience?”
Not that his conscience was clear either way. If the past was any indication of the future, he’d condemned her to a life of misery. Riding out a wave of gossip might have been the better choice for her. She might still have found happiness with a man closer to her station.
“Ye’ve fucked yerself, ye ken that? Ye’ve gone from a respected independent businessman, the top o’ the rung, to a desperate hanger-on that will never be accepted. Not unless ye annul the marriage and get this farce over with.”
A hot shame crept up Benedict’s neck. His mind had traveled to that same thought every time his insides twisted in a desperate urge to escape. “Annulment is not an option. I may not be a lord, but I am a gentleman. And my catastrophes are not your business, so I suggest you leave.”
The older man’s face, normally soft and paunchy with the slight yellowed tinge of a man who’s known too much drink, reddened. He slammed the mug he was holding on the table. “Nae. Ye’re a damn fool. But s’pose blood always tells. P’haps ye’re more like yer ma than ye let known.”
Each word was more fuel in the furnace that had been burning for days. As the heat and fury and pressure had built, there had been no easy release. Now the room around them dropped away, and all Benedict could see was the sneer of a man who could’ve—should’ve—been a bit more damned understanding.
It was the work of a moment to drag the Scotsman out of the booth and thump him—days of frustration finally finding relief. With one hand, he lifted the man back to his feet, ready to deliver a further blow before his foreman captured him in a viselike grip. Few men matched Benedict’s size. Oliver dwarfed him.
“Easy now, boss,” Oliver said.
Alastair slumped back against the booth, a scarred hand to one eye, a look of pure contempt from the other. “You’ll regret this.”
Benedict looked around. The whole pub had gone silent, everyone staring at them. Charles Tucker, watching from across the room with his arm lazily across Jeremy’s shoulders, had a gleam of speculation in his eye.
“Go home, McTavish,” Benedict said, though as his blood settled, guilt crept in. McTavish wasn’t the problem, and the man he’d once looked up to had just borne the brunt of Benedict’s true anger.
