Page 29 of Their Wildest Dreams

Instead, she had escaped by choosing the one man capable of standing between Selby and everything he had intended to possess.

He told himself that jealousy was too small a word for what he felt. Jealousy implied affection, and affection granted its object a power he would never willingly surrender. This was outrage at theft. Benedict had taken what belonged within Selby’s design and now displayed it before the county as though possession alone created a right.

But when Benedict’s hand closed briefly over Harriet’s upon the prayer book, Selby imagined tearing it away.

The final hymn began. Voices rose beneath the timbered roof, uneven but earnest. Selby stood silent among them. He watched Harriet sing, watched Benedict turn a page for her and watched the village accept the image they presented. A united marriage. Two old families joined. Alderley secured. Denham impervious to his attempts to gain control of it. It was an intolerable fiction.

When the service ended, the aisle filled slowly. Neighbors lingered to offer congratulations and satisfy their curiosity. Harriet received them with composure. Benedict remained beside her, attentive without appearing watchful. Selby did not approach. To do so would suggest that he sought their notice, and he would not diminish himself by joining the line of people eager to acknowledge their triumph.

He remained within the pew until Crandell passed at the rear of the departing servants. The butler did not look toward him again. There was no need.

Selby placed his hat upon his head and stepped into the aisle. Harriet was near the church door now, pale autumn light falling across her face while Benedict bent to hear something she said. They stood too close. Whether the intimacy was real or performed mattered less than Selby had supposed. Others believed it, and belief conferred its own kind of power. He would strip it from them. By whatever means necessary.

Harriet had mistaken marriage for escape. Benedict had mistaken payment for victory. Both would learn that Selby did not relinquish what was his merely because lesser minds had contrived to place it beyond his immediate reach.

At the threshold, Harriet glanced back. Her gaze found him through the thinning congregation. The ease vanished from her expression.

He smiled at her—a cold expression that reflected his fury.

She turned away at once and took Benedict’s arm. That small retreat satisfied him more than it should have. Whatever comfort she had found at Everton, she had not forgotten him. Fear still gave him a place in her thoughts, and Selby had always understood that fear was merely another form of possession.

Chapter

Fourteen

Harriet did not speak of Selby on the drive to Denham Park. She meant to. Twice, she turned toward Benedict with the words nearly formed, only to find his attention upon his father, who was describing at considerable length the stallion he had recently purchased. Lady Denham was seated opposite them. There was no way to tell Benedict that Selby had spent the better part of the church service glowering at them without alarming his mother and inviting questions Harriet could not answer.

For in truth, what could she tell them? Selby had looked at her. He had smiled. Neither act constituted a threat, however much the memory of his pointed attentions made her skin prickle.

Benedict had not stolen anything from Selby. Alderley had never belonged to him, and neither had she. That was what troubled her most. Selby’s expression had suggested that he believed otherwise.

Harriet glanced out the carriage window. The church had long since disappeared behind them, and the familiar sweep of Denham Park lay ahead. She would tell Benedict when they returned to Everton. In the privacy of her chamber, with no one to overhear them, she could explain what she had seen without sounding like a woman who had allowed one unpleasant gentleman to ruin an otherwise ordinary Sunday.

Benedict looked at her then, his brows drawn together slightly. Harriet offered him a faint smile which fooled neither of them. His gaze lingered, but his father had moved on from the stallion’s lineage to the inadequacies of the man who had sold it, and the moment passed.

By the time they reached Denham, the earl was impatient to show off his acquisition. Benedict was scarcely through the door before his father urged him toward the stables. Benedict looked back at Harriet as he drew on his gloves.

“Are you coming?”

Harriet had spent much of her childhood in those stables and would ordinarily have gone with them, if only to prevent Lord Denham and Benedict from agreeing with one another upon every point and becoming insufferable as a result. But Lady Denham had already taken her arm.

“Not today. Your mother appears determined to keep me.”

“I have seen the creature,” Lady Denham said. “It is large, brown and possesses four legs. I have no wish to stand in the cold while the pair of you pretend there is more to be said of it.”

Lord Denham uttered a sound of deep offense. Benedict smiled, but his eyes returned to Harriet. She knew he had not forgotten her silence in the carriage.

“We shall not be long,” he said.

The assurance was meant for her alone. Harriet nodded, and he followed his father from the house.

Lady Denham led her into the small drawing room and ordered tea. The room had changed very little since Harriet’s childhood. The same faded pastoral scenes hung upon the walls, and the chair near the hearth still bore a small dark mark where Harriet had once overturned a pot of chocolate and attempted to conceal the evidence with a cushion.

“You are troubled,” Lady Denham said when they were seated.

Harriet looked up sharply. “I am not.”

“Then marriage has made you absentminded. I do not know that I consider it an improvement.” The countess poured the tea herself and passed a cup to Harriet. “You have stared at the same patch of carpet since we entered the room.”