“More,” Ben whispered. “Please. Phillip.”
Phillip groaned and shifted his stance, dropping a kiss onto Ben’s shoulder before moving again. Ben gripped himself with a shaking, sweaty hand, stroking himself almost frantically. When Phillip’s rhythm faltered and the fingers on Ben’s hips were so tight it felt like Phillip was holding on to Ben for dear life, Ben let himself fall into a perfect wave of pleasure.
Mine, Phillip thought, looking at Ben sprawled on the bed, his skin lit by the pale early light falling weakly through the window. Mine.
Even as his mind formed the word, he knew it to be a fantasy. Ben wasn’t anyone’s, least of all Phillip’s. If he could properly be said to belong to anyone, it was that girl he intended to marry.
“What are you thinking of?” Ben asked. “You have that line between your eyebrows.” He traced a finger down Phillip’s forehead.
“Nothing,” Phillip said, automatically deflecting any attempt at sincerity. Ben looked at him steadily, and Phillip knew he wasn’t going to be allowed to wriggle out of honesty. Ben never let him. When he had been inside Ben—a flush spread up his body, as if he hadn’t just spent harder than he had in years, as if he weren’t fast approaching forty years of age—he hadn’t been able to pretend this was just a search for pleasure. At every moment he had been reminded that this was Ben, his Ben, beneath him. Those sounds were coming from Ben’s mouth; the hand gripping his own was Ben’s; the strong body that went pliant beneath him was Ben’s.
“Well, I’m thinking about what we just did.” Ben’s mouth was still half-pressed into the pillow, so his words came out slightly muffled.
“Oh, are you now?” Phillip asked, pushing the hair off Ben’s face.
“Fucking,” he said, as if testing out the word. “Or, you know, the union of souls. Whichever way you want to put it.”
“Is that what we did? Join our souls?” Phillip was slightly startled.
Ben propped himself up on his elbow so he was looking down at Phillip. “I think we’ve been doing that for weeks.”
For a moment Phillip could hardly breathe. “Benedict. God. I don’t want to let you down. You deserve so much better—”
Ben silenced him with a lazy kiss. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t deserve this. Don’t you dare.”
Chapter Nineteen
After last night’s meditation on grief and this morning’s time with Phillip, any doubts Ben had about his marriage had crystallized. He could no more utter the marriage vows to Alice than he could renounce his faith. Alice might hate him, the world might think him the worst kind of cad, he might be consigning himself to a lifetime of solitude and loneliness, but he didn’t see that he had any ethical alternative.
He had expected to find Alice alone or with her mother, but instead he found Mr. Walsh and his sister sitting in the Crawfords’ snug parlor. He had entirely forgotten that they had all dined together last night in his absence. Indeed, they were all so engaged in lively conversation that they didn’t at first notice Ben standing on the threshold. He supposed they all had a jolly time and made fast friends while he had been sitting at a deathbed. He didn’t like that thought, and he didn’t like that he was petty enough to entertain it.
It was Alice who finally saw him. His expression must have communicated some of his gloom, because the smile immediately dropped off her face. “Oh, poor Mrs. Farleigh,” she said immediately. Mr. Walsh and Mrs. Howard made murmuring sounds that could have been condolences or could have been their excuse to leave, but in either event they rose and headed to the door.
“I’ll run that errand for you in Keswick, Miss Crawford,” Mr. Walsh said, looking over his shoulder on his way out the door.
“Oh!” Alice’s face brightened, and Ben feared it would be the last time he would see that kind of joy on her features, certainly for a long while, possibly forever. “Thank you!”
“What’s the matter, Ben?” she asked when they were alone. “It can’t be Mrs. Farleigh, because, well, you’ve had people die before and you didn’t look like that.”
“It isn’t.” He sat on a chair across from the sofa where she lay—she was back to reclining, he saw. Perhaps her attempt to walk last night had been too much. He couldn’t very well ask, couldn’t express concern about her condition and then confess that he could not support her. He filled his lungs with air and let it out. “I need to cry off on our betrothal.”
Her eyes went wide. “Are you all right, Ben?”
He shook his head. “I’d be better if I knew how to get you a bit of money,” he confessed.
She appeared not to mark his words. “I can’t figure out who it is.”
“Pardon?”
“You must have met someone else, and you must be terribly in love with her, or I can’t see you, ah, jilting me.” She didn’t seem angry with him, even though she ought to be. “But I know everyone you do, and even though I haven’t gotten around much in the past few months, I hear all the gossip. And there just isn’t any about you.”
Thank God for that. “There isn’t any other woman, Alice.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to lie to her. “It’s a question of . . .” He tried to find something to say. “It’s a question of ethics.”
“Oh,” she said slowly, something like realization dawning on her face. “Oh dear. I won’t tell Papa. He did mention something about a sermon of yours being rather popish.”
Ben opened his mouth in surprise and snapped it shut again. If she thought his misgivings stemmed from a belief that clergy ought not to marry, he wouldn’t correct her. He certainly wasn’t going to marry anyone else, so she’d never have any cause to be disabused of the notion.
“So, you see my predicament,” he said carefully, not wanting to confirm or deny her suspicion.
“I suppose I do. Well. That does leave me rather up the creek, my friend, but I can’t say I was delighted to be marrying someone who was only lukewarm about the prospect—”
He started to deny it but she cut him off.
“We’ve known one another practically all our lives, Ben. I do know when you’re enthusiastic about something. And I know you love me. Just as I love you.”
“I was looking forward to our marriage,” he said feebly.
“So was I,” she said. “But not, I think, in the way of the butcher’s boy and the baker’s daughter.” He hadn’t understood her meaning when she first invoked these two fictional lovers, but now he did. Now he knew all too well. “I was cross with you,” she went on, “for not understanding that I want more than someone to put a roof over my head. I know that I’m crippled and rather poor, but I wish you didn’t think it was impossible for me to find somebody who wants me. That’s what I want, and I think it’s what most of us want, and who are you to think I can’t do better than charity?”
“I don’t—”
“And I’m grateful to you, too, which only makes me feel ashamed of being angry.” Her voice broke on her last words.
“Alice,” he said, crouching on the ground before her sofa and taking her hand. “You’re my dearest friend and I think you deserve everything that’s good in the world. Everything. I know that after today I’m likely to lose your friendship, but before I leave I want you to know that.”
“We’re still friends, you idiot.” She wiped her eyes. “I just wish everything were different.”
Ben squeezed her hand. “So do I,” he said. “So do I.”
“Sit yourself down,” Mrs. Winston chided as Ben whisked dust covers off the furniture in the vicarage study. After seeing Alice, all he wanted was to burrow in a hole like a wounded animal. He didn’t want to return to Barton Hall, where he had found so much happiness, but had also diverted the course of his life. “That’s my job you’re at, and even if you didn’t see fit to send notice that you meant to come back today, that doesn’t make it any less my job to see that things are done the way they ought.”
Ben attempted to fold one of the covers but Mrs. Winston snatched it fro
m his hand. Dust covers seemed a bit excessive for so short an absence—had it only been a month ago that he left the vicarage for Barton Hall?—but Mrs. Winston liked things done properly. He didn’t want to tell her quite yet that he only planned to be at the vicarage for as long as it took to arrange for a curate to take over his duties or for Sir Martin to appoint his replacement.
“Oh, you’re going to be like that, are you?” she said, hands on her hips.
He attempted a sheepish smile, but it must have fallen flat because she raised her gray eyebrows so high they disappeared into her cap. “You’ll be wanting tea,” she said, and disappeared towards the back of the house.
He wadded up the dust covers and tossed them into a corner of the room for Mrs. Winston to tsk over later, then sat at his desk and buried his head in his hands. He tried to get past his anger and confusion and sort out what needed to be done. First he needed to write an official letter of resignation. Then he needed to write to Phillip.
He performed all the small acts of time wasting, tasks that were adjacent to writing but not actually putting pen to paper. He straightened his blotter, topped off the inkwell, cut himself a new nib. He smoothed out a creamy sheet of writing paper and dated it.
At the sound of tapping on the doorframe, he turned, fully expecting to see Mrs. Winston standing in the open doorway, bearing a tray of tea and demanding explanations for his sudden arrival. But it was Hartley, his hands in his pockets and a self-conscious air about him.
“I saw that the curtains had been opened,” Hartley offered, still in the doorway. “And I thought I might come by.”
“Of course. Sit, please.”
Hartley shut the door behind him and sat in a chair that was covered in threadbare tapestry.
“I’m glad you came to see me.”
Hartley raised his eyebrows in an expression of surprise. “Are you?” he asked with an air of insouciance.
Ben leaned towards his brother. “Yes, Hartley. Don’t ever doubt it.”
Hartley looked around the room. “I forgot how snug this little place is.”
Ben glanced at the door, confirming that it was shut. “I’m resigning.”
“What? Why the devil would you do a thing like that?”
Ben smoothed his hand across the still-blank paper before him. “I need to leave. I need a fresh start someplace new. Maybe I’ll settle in a city and serve the poor.” Surely that sounded plausible.
“Well, that’s a fat lot of nonsense,” Hartley said levelly. “You’ve never shown any interest in going farther than Keswick. What does Alice say? Does she fancy living in destitution among the urban poor?”
“I broke the engagement.”
Hartley’s jaw actually fell open. “Well,” he said, recovering himself, “if we didn’t have Easterbrook to worry about, I might be glad to hear it.”
“But you’ve always liked Alice.”
“Indeed I have, but as much as I hate to agree with our father about anything, it seems unwise to marry where there isn’t love.”
“I do love her!” Ben protested.
“You want to shag the captain, though.”
Ben sucked in a breath. Damn it, he ought to have known that Hartley could have seen that. “That’s ludicrous,” he said, his voice thin.
“What’s ludicrous is that you think I don’t know.” Hartley sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if my life would have gone in a different direction if I had an older brother who was less of a saint and more someone I could confide in. But that’s neither here nor there. Listen, Ben, I don’t much care who you fancy and who you don’t. And I daresay the world is filled with happily married people—our parents among them—who fancy people other than whoever they’re married to. But I can’t see that it’s a grand idea for you to marry a girl when you’re keen to bed your employer.”
“He’s not my employer,” Ben gritted out.
The room was silent for a moment as Hartley stared at him. “That’s the part you object to?”
“Yes,” Ben said finally.
“Ah.”
Ben buried his head in his hands.
“And the captain?” Hartley asked.
“Can’t talk about him,” Ben said, his words muffled by his hands.
“Well, that’s an affirmative. Lord. I go away for a few months and everything is quite upside down.” He tapped his gloved fingers on the scarred wood of his chair. “I ought to go away more often.”
Ben looked up. “Very funny, Hart.”
“I’m not jesting. You seemed quite happy at Barton Hall. So did Captain Dacre, for that matter. Merry as grigs. Quite sickening. I congratulate you.”
“I’m miserable now.”
“Yes, well, it’s my understanding that this is the general course for affairs of the heart. Not my field of expertise, but one does hear reports.”
“So glad you’re amused.”
“I’m not. I do think resigning your position is a trifle dramatic, though.” Suddenly his eyes flew wide open and his air of languor dropped away. “Oh, tell me this isn’t because you think your living is ill-gotten gains. That I earned it on my back or whatever the vulgar saying is.”
“Not entirely,” Ben said, but he knew he was an unconvincing liar.
“Oh, Benedict. For what it’s worth, I would have gone to bed with the Archbishop of Canterbury if it might have gotten you a better living than this.”
“Hartley!” Ben wasn’t sure whether to laugh or remonstrate.
“No, it’s true. I have no morals. Or, if I do, bedding elderly gentlemen for gain isn’t against them.”
“You were a child.”
“Sixteen. But I see your point,” Hartley said thoughtfully. “I do indeed.” He steepled his fingers and furrowed his brow. “Although I suppose it’s just as well to resign. It must be unpleasant to affiliate yourself with an institution that holds your particular vice in such low regard.”
“Don’t call it a vice,” Ben said fiercely. “Bother it all, Hartley. I hadn’t really thought of it that way.” He knew that his brother was invoking this line of argument to make him feel better about resigning, but that made it no less persuasive.
“If I were secretly a portrait artist, I wouldn’t join up with one of those groups that believes graven images to be abominations. Perhaps because I wouldn’t want other artists to think I despised them. Perhaps because I’d worry that after too long in their company I’d begin to despise myself.”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut. He had tried so hard not to come to that conclusion. “There’s good work to be done in the church.”
“I daresay there is,” Hartley said mildly. “There’s good work to be done in a lot of places. Don’t go live in a slum in Liverpool, Benedict. If you do resign, come stay with me in London. I have that whole blasted house that Sir Humphrey left me. And I’m quite alone.”
If Ben hadn’t been quite so wrapped up in his own misery, he might have remarked on the sadness in his brother’s voice. But as it was, all he could think was that all his hopes were getting crushed, one by one.
Phillip had that nausea that comes with an ill-advised wager, a sense of having slid too many coins to the middle of a card table with too bad a hand to justify the gamble. What ought to have been a friendly game of cards had turned into something with far higher stakes, and it had happened right under his nose. He hadn’t only wagered his heart, although that was bad enough. No, what was at stake was Phillip’s entire sense of his place in the world. That morning, for one terrifying moment lying beside Ben, he had thought that perhaps he didn’t need to return to his ship. Perhaps he could stay. Perhaps everything could be different. Perhaps he was different from who he had always thought he was.
It was madness.
“You haven’t shaved,” Walsh remarked. They were lingering at the breakfast table, Walsh reading the morning papers and Phillip staring out the window.
Phillip automatically touched his jaw. Walsh was right; he hadn’t shaved in days.
“Never known you to go more than a day without shaving,” Walsh said, not lifting his eyes from the paper.
That was also correct. Phillip had always maintained that shipboard discipline began with the captain, particularly with small things like polished buttons and neatly shaved jaws. He glanced down at his own wrinkled, soft, country clothes. It would be strange to put on his uniform again.
“I do apologize for my unfashionable ways,” Phillip said facetiously.
Walsh made a dismissive sound. “It’s just that there are times one forgets to shave because one is happily distracted and there’s nobody about to impress, and there are times one forgets to shave because one is too down in the doldrums to give a damn.”
Was Walsh concerned about him? “It’s not the latter.”
They sat in silence a few moments.
“I’m hearing about men selling their commissions,” Walsh remarked conversationally, turning the page of his newspaper. “Peacetime, and all that.”
“Is that what you’re considering?” He couldn’t imagine life aboard the Patroclus without Walsh.
Walsh made a noncommittal sound and went back to his paper for a few moments before murmuring an excuse and leaving the room.
Phillip returned his gaze to the land he’d soon be leaving. During his weeks here, the trees had grown heavier and heavier with leaves, everything had become greener and riper and more emphatically lush. Even the air seemed thick with the sweet scent of summer blossoms and juicy fruit. This was not his first summer at Barton Hall. He was certain that over the years he had spent part of every month here at his house, on his land. But his experiences were fragmented: a week in February, then a month in summer, followed two years later by a few weeks in midwinter. He had never, not since his earliest childhood, spent an entire year here. Never had he watched a summer ripen and then tip gently into autumn.
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