But he hadn’t known she was watching, then, had he?
Oh... Ben. He was trying to spare her blushes, that was what he was doing. Oh, but what a stupid moment to go all chivalrous, in a misguided attempt to protect her from either seeing, or letting others know she’d seen, him naked.
Men! Idiots, the lot of them.
‘Keep out of this, Daisy,’ said Jasper. Most unfairly, since he’d been the one to set the whole train of events in motion.
And it felt as if something inside her, something that had been stretched tighter and tighter throughout the frustrating weeks of her Season, only to be given another tug when she’d arrived home to find not only her wardrobe full of pigeons but to overhear this particular brother begging his friends, any of his friends, to take her off the shelf, on which at the time she had literally been lying, finally snapped.
She ran at her brothers, her umbrella held like a cricket bat, and took a swipe at their big, fat heads. Both ducked, but there was a satisfying crump as the steel struts connected with the top of Jasper’s shoulder. And an even more satisfying moment when both took a step back, with almost identical looks of shock on their faces.
‘I have had enough of you two,’ she yelled, taking another swipe at them. ‘Bullies...’ swish ‘...and cowards...’ Swish, swish.
Over the years, Marguerite had seen lots of brawls erupt between various factions of the males staying at the Priory. And the one thing she’d always noticed, but had failed to take into consideration this time, was that the moment one set of males started fighting, all the other males on the premises would start gathering, just as if they had a preternatural ability to smell blood in the air.
So she shouldn’t have been surprised that just as Ben, who’d risen to his knees and had just been raising one hand as if to beg for a chance to explain, went down for the third time, after both brothers sidestepped her and her umbrella, people came running from all directions. Including, for some inexplicable reason, her mother.
‘Daisy,’ she panted, for she had been running. ‘What are you doing? Where have you been?’
For the first time since she’d returned to the Priory, Marguerite was glad to see her mother. Because, surely, she’d be able to calm things down? Once she explained that it was all just the result of one of those stupid pranks the stupid males were always playing on each other.
But Mother never gave her a chance to say a word in Ben’s defence. She’d glanced around swiftly, taking in Ben’s abject, almost naked form, and the angry way two of her brothers were standing over him, fists clenched.
‘Daisy,’ said Mother sternly, ‘stop this at once! This is not the sort of behaviour I expect from you.’
‘But, Mother,’ she began, waving her umbrella at Jasper and James, ‘these two are—’
‘I don’t care what they may be doing. You should not be mixed up in it. Come away. Right this minute.’ Just to make sure Marguerite complied, Mother grabbed her by one elbow, whilst snatching the umbrella from her at the same time.
Which was so unfair. Yet so typical. Once again, the boys were going to get away with behaving as they pleased. She was the only one getting scolded.
As if to set the seal on her sense of injustice, she saw Ben making yet another attempt to get to his feet. This time, as he went down in a sprawl of limbs, the shawl he had tied round his waist came adrift.
‘Don’t look,’ Mother cried, letting go of her elbow to lay her hand over Marguerite’s eyes.
Which was a total waste of time.
Marguerite had already seen it.
* * *
Ben knocked on Lord Darwen’s study door the next morning, and waited until he received permission to enter before opening it, even though he had been escorted here by a footman who’d told him in no uncertain terms that he was expected.
The tall, slender man, whose golden looks and build Daisy had inherited, was not sitting behind his desk but standing by the fireplace, one elegant hand braced against the mantel. He appeared to have been staring into the empty grate because when Ben entered, he lifted his head and gave him a long, cool, considering look.
From long habit of facing superior officers, Ben stood to attention while Daisy’s father just looked at him. Ben knew what he would see. Both eyes were blackened, and his already twisted lip was split and crusted with dried blood. His ribs were bruised as well. In short, he looked, and felt, like a ruffian who’d taken part in a tavern brawl. And felt that he fully deserved to be raked over the coals.
Lord Darwen shook his head. ‘Y’know, Ben, during the years you used to visit us regularly, as Jasper’s schoolfriend, I grew...fond of you.’ Ben almost winced. ‘I followed your career in the army with great interest, not to say a feeling of pride as you grew to manhood in the theatre of war.’
That gentle note of disappointment was worse, far worse than if he’d shouted at him. Called him names. For this was the only adult male who had ever treated him as though he had as much right to be alive as any other boy. Who’d ever stopped, upon meeting him in a corridor, to speak to him and listen to his inarticulate responses with patience. And even, on occasion, appearing interested.
‘Had you proposed to Daisy in form,’ Lord Darwen continued, ‘and had she accepted your offer, I would have been only too pleased to welcome you officially to the family. Would have been proud to have called you my son-in-law.’
Ben squirmed. Because he’d always wished Lord Darwen could have been his father. And not just because he’d made this house, and the estate, feel like a haven for boys and young men. He was a man any boy could respect, and admire, and, yes, feel a deal of affection for. Because he was just so...welcoming. Understanding. Tolerant. And, yes, he had his eccentricities, but...
‘I swear, on my honour,’ said Ben, ‘that nothing untoward occurred...’
‘You call rowing about on the lake, in the dead of night, naked, with my daughter, nothing untoward?’
Ben heard the first note of anger in the man’s voice. And saw it flash from the blue eyes that were normally so lazily tolerant but now looked cold as steel.
‘I mean, sir, that it was not as bad as it looked. We...’
Lord Darwen waved an impatient hand to silence him. ‘No, knowing you as I do, I don’t suppose it was,’ he sighed. ‘A prank, was it, that got out of hand?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s exactly what it was,’ he said on a rush of relief. He hadn’t totally forfeited the man’s regard. Lord Darwen hadn’t automatically assumed the worst, or refused to listen to his side of things. ‘And Daisy, I mean Lady Marguerite, was just trying to help. When the thunder started...’
‘It makes little difference, Ben,’ said Lord Darwen wearily. ‘You are still going to have to marry her. Which, I take it, was the object of the exercise.’
‘No, sir,’ he said firmly. ‘There had been talk, it is true, but...’
‘Yes, Jasper confessed that he put you up to it. And that you were perhaps more determined than most, since you stand in greater need of her fortune.’
‘That is not how it was! I would willingly marry her if she was penniless! I would never stoop to—’
‘Calm down, boy. I did not really believe his accusations, based on what I know of you. And neither does he, I shouldn’t think. Or at least he will probably revise his opinion once he has cooled down and had time to reflect.’
That was good to know. Ben would hate to think that Gem, one of his oldest and closest friends, could really think he’d behave in such a dastardly fashion.
‘However,’ said Lord Darwen heavily, ‘it is what others will think if word of last night’s escapade gets abroad. And you can be sure it will. These things always do.’
Ben tried not to shift from one foot to the other as Lord Darwen heaved a sigh. ‘I have thought about how we should handle it, and,’ he said, giving Ben a rather challenging look, ‘
my solution is that we put it about that you have had a tendre for her for a long time, but were reluctant to declare yourself until she had her first Season, in case she found someone more worthy than you consider yourself to be.’
That statement was so close to the truth, and delivered with such a penetrating stare, that it winded Ben almost as effectively as any of the punches her brothers had landed in his gut the night before. But then he’d probably given himself away just now by declaring he would marry her even if she were penniless.
‘My lord,’ he put in, ‘you know I’m unworthy. Or at least you must have heard rumours...’ The gossip had started while his mother was still alive. Once she’d died, it had grown far worse, he suspected.
Lord Darwen held up one slender hand to silence him. ‘That, my boy, is immaterial. Now, as I was saying, when no such suitor appeared, you finally plucked up courage to, er, make your feelings known. She, er, reciprocated, there was moonlight, the romance of rowing her on the lake, your passion overcame you...what have you,’ he concluded, waving his hand in one of those elegant flourishes that could denote so many things.
Ben was too stunned to speak. Lord Darwen regarded the shameful circumstances surrounding his birth as immaterial? Didn’t he think that Daisy deserved a man who wasn’t living a lie?
‘We shall hold the ceremony in our chapel,’ Lord Darwen continued, ‘as soon as you have procured the necessary licence. And since I happen to know you are unlikely to have the funds to do so...’
Only then did he walk to the desk, on which lay a purse and a sealed letter, both of which he picked up and tossed to Ben, who managed to catch them even though his fingers didn’t feel as if they really belonged to him. Probably because the whole scenario felt unreal, like something he might dream when suffering from a fever. ‘I have written a letter to a cousin of mine,’ Lord Darwen said casually, ‘a bishop, who can expedite the matter for you. It contains my blessing on the union, while glossing over the reasons why I am insisting on a swift and private ceremony, rather than a grand society wedding.’
‘Th-thank you, sir,’ said Ben, cradling the purse and letter to his bruised, aching chest. And feeling like a worm. As if he was taking advantage of a man, nay, a whole family, who had never been anything but generous to him. ‘I don’t know how I can ever repay you.’
Lord Darwen gave him a long look. ‘By being a good husband to my daughter, of course. We shall hold the ceremony as soon as you return. By that time, I will have made her see the merits of accepting this match.’
What? She was still trying to resist the pressure to marry him?
‘Sir, if she is the least bit unwilling, I will not—’
‘Don’t you be as much of a fool as she is being,’ Lord Darwen snapped. ‘I thought you, at least, would see sense. I can understand her having some damn foolish notions in her head since she spends so much time with it buried in books, rather than living in the real world. I indulged her mother’s whims to give her a glittering Season, and what did she do with it? Wasted it! She could have had her pick of the Ton’s most eligible bachelors but, no, she turned her nose up at the very best of them. So she has nobody to blame but herself if I put my foot down over this little affair.’ He leaned back against the desk, folding his hands over his chest. And Ben understood. Lord Darwen was punishing Daisy by making her marry him. He was to be her penance for...disappointing her father.
Now he felt lower than a worm.
‘You appear to be genuinely fond of her,’ said Lord Darwen, ‘which is a start.’
Ben felt slightly less dreadful. For that statement sounded as though her father was glad he was handing his only daughter over to someone who would love her.
‘And from her behaviour last night,’ Lord Darwen continued, ‘I suspect she is not indifferent to you either.’
The moment she’d stood over him, using her umbrella to keep her brothers at bay, flashed into Ben’s mind. Her actions had stunned them all, for she usually flounced off with her nose in the air if ever a brawl broke out in her vicinity. Did her father think...could it really mean...that she cared? About him? The man was usually very astute. But in this particular instance Ben didn’t think her behaviour signified what he’d implied at all.
For she’d been calling her brothers bullies and cowards, so the chances were that it was more about the unfairness of the fight she’d objected to.
‘In fact,’ Lord Darwen was saying, as Ben argued away the possibility that Daisy’s actions might have indicated she cared for him, ‘my only regret about her having to marry you, Ben, is that it is probably too late to give you the advice I have given my own sons as soon as they reached the age of beginning to take notice of women. You have been in the army, too, where there is so much more opportunity for young men to succumb to the temptations of the flesh. So you are unlikely to be able to come to her pure of body.’
Ben’s cheeks flamed. He was all too aware of Lord Darwen’s views on what he termed loose women. Gem had related enough of the talk Lord Darwen had given him to have made Ben far more wary of women of easy virtue than many of his fellow officers. Besides not having the funds to purchase the dubious pleasures those women offered. Or at least that was what he told himself when he wasn’t able to raise much enthusiasm for the blowsy, smiling women who bore so little resemblance to Daisy that they might have been another species altogether. And recoiled from the few who did, superficially at least, because to have bedded any other blonde, slender girl would have seemed almost profane. As though he would have been defiling her memory.
‘I am aware of your views on...er...that sort of behaviour, sir. Gem—’ Ben began.
‘I dare not hope that it caused you to abstain completely,’ said Lord Darwen gloomily. ‘Because even though my son may have repeated some of what I told him, you will not have had the benefit of going to the hospital to see one of the wretches in the last stages of syphilis.’ He shook his head, with apparent regret, while Ben remembered Gem’s account of that visit, and his complaint that most fathers took their sons to a brothel when they reached the age of needing some form of release from the urges that made a boy so restless, not a lunatic asylum.
‘The women who sell their bodies for gain are frequently diseased,’ Lord Darwen said, with a kind of passion that revealed a loathing bordering on obsession. ‘They pass on such diseases to their customers, who then pass on the taint to their poor innocent wives. And any children born to such a couple are never as healthy as they ought to be. It is not what I want for my family,’ he concluded sternly.
‘I did take note of your warnings, sir,’ he admitted. ‘And while I am not completely innocent—’ because he was only human, after all ‘—I believe I am healthy.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’ He frowned. ‘As for the rest of the advice I have given my sons, it is too late for you now that you are betrothed to Daisy.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘I am sorry she does not take after her mother. With her willowy build and obstinate nature, I cannot hope that she will make you a very good wife, let alone provide you with many healthy sons.’
Ben gritted his teeth. And almost clenched his fists as well. Lord Darwen had no need to tell him what advice he’d given his sons about choosing a wife because Gem had told him all about that as well. Lord Darwen had stressed that when Gem started thinking about taking a wife he should beware of women with pretty faces and forward manners. He’d advised him, and no doubt James and Germ as well, to choose a woman who was plain and homely looking, one who would be loyal, with a strong constitution and broad hips so that she could bear him children without going off into a decline immediately after.
A rather smug look crossed Lord Darwen’s face. ‘Her mother, now, she’s so plain that I’ve never had to worry about other men trying to poach her from my side. And she has borne me five strapping sons, as well as a daughter. And look at her now. Does she lie about on a sofa all day, quackin
g herself, like so many of those society wives who were once renowned beauties? No. Healthy as a horse! Still,’ he continued, almost apologetically, ‘Daisy’s dowry will be some consolation to you.’
If this were any other man but Daisy’s father talking about her as though she was the runt of the litter, and only marriageable because she came with a sizeable dowry, Ben would have no hesitation about knocking his teeth down his throat. But it was Daisy’s father. And he really believed what he was saying. That Daisy was somehow unlikely to be a good wife, because she was beautiful, and slender, and had a mind of her own.
‘I don’t care about her money, sir,’ Ben reminded him through teeth that he had gritted in lieu of damaging anyone else’s.
‘Very commendable, given your circumstances, I grant you, but in years to come you will sing a different tune,’ Lord Darwen replied cynically.
Ben didn’t think so. He didn’t think he’d be able to touch a penny of her money, given the way their marriage had come about.
He’d have to see if there was some way he could make it all over to her, so that she could spend it as she wished. Besides, if there was anyone needing consolation it was Daisy. He did, at least, want to marry her.
‘But there is some advice I can give you,’ said Lord Darwen. ‘Advice I intend to give all my sons upon the occasion of their marriage. And it is this...’
* * *
When Ben emerged from Lord Darwen’s study, what felt like several hours later, he found Gem lounging in a chair in the corridor outside, an enigmatic expression on his face.
The scowl faded when Ben took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow.
‘I see the old man gave you a good jobation. Only what you deserve,’ he said almost cheerfully.
If only the man had given him a jobation. He could have withstood that. Because it was what he deserved. But to have been given instead an extremely detailed lecture about how to give a woman pleasure in the marital bed, along with an exhortation to keep the woman in question so occupied, so frequently that she would never have cause, let alone the energy, to stray... And that woman was Daisy! The man’s daughter! It had been the most excruciatingly uncomfortable hour he’d ever endured.
Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 5
