Duke of Thorns

by Monroe, Jennifer

  What nonsense, he thought.

  However, then he came to a part in the letter that made him stop and reread the lines more than once.

  You must know that I have come to care very deeply for you, perhaps even love you. It is for that reason that I do not wish to see anyone hurt you. I know not if you return my affection, but it was imperative that you know how my feelings for you and that I regret how things ended between us.

  If you find yourself also sharing these feelings, or even if you do not, I would ask that, when you are ready, please come to Brightstone Manor to call on me. I believe we should discuss what transpired, for there is no reason that we cannot mend our differences and ultimately come together once again.

  Benjamin reread the letter several times. He had found himself sharing those same feelings for her as she claimed to feel for him. However, her actions belied what she said in this letter. What reasoning she would have for lying to him, he did not know, but he could not help but wonder if she had some ulterior motive for writing to him. Did she believe he would ask that her parents return the money he had given them in exchange for her hand? Had she found the living conditions at Bantry Estate that much more comfortable that she could no longer live in a house that was not as grand? Many stories of women using men of nobility to gain access to their riches abounded, and there was no reason for him to believe that Cecilia did not have some underlining purpose for trying to win him back.

  He dropped into the leather chair that sat before the fireplace and sighed. How could he have allowed himself to fall in love? Doing so could only lead to heartache. The last person he had cared for, respected with every fiber of his soul, had been his father, and look where that had led him.

  With one more glance at the letter, he crumpled it in his hand and threw it to the floor. If he and Cecilia had developed feelings for one another at some point in their marriage, then so be it. However, there was no returning to where they had been before everything fell apart, for what she had done was unforgivable. No wife should be allowed to treat the mother of her husband the way that Cecilia had treated the Dowager Duchess. She would have her answer soon enough, and that answer would be that there was no chance for them to mend their relationship.

  ***

  It had rained for several days, leaving Cecilia to simply gaze with longing at the garden through the window. She needed to be out in nature, in the fresh air, not enclosed inside the house. However, the constant deluge of rain that fell made it almost impossible to venture outside.

  A week had passed since Cecilia had sent her letter pouring out her heart to Benjamin, and she had received no reply. The idea that the man she cared for so deeply would ignore her pleas was almost more than she could bear. Even the sun that shone through the window this particular morning could not take away the heartache and loss that she felt. However, it did allow her to finally leave the confines of the house and breathe in the fresh, clean air as she strolled down the path through the garden.

  Walter had returned to his position as gardener, and the man bowed to Cecilia as she passed by.

  “It is so good to have you back, Walter,” Cecilia said with a smile. “The flowers will certainly be pleased when they are able to see the sun once again.”

  The man shook his head as he peered around him. “I’m glad to be back myself, Miss…erm…that is, Your Grace.” He bowed again, this time even deeper than before. “I’ve a lot of work to do, most definitely.”

  “Well, I am sure you will be very successful,” Cecilia assured him. “Where will you begin?”

  “I figured I’d start with the beds closest to the house, that way when you and Mr. and Mrs. Birks look down from the house, you’ll be able to enjoy what you see straight away.”

  Cecilia nodded. “That certainly is understandable, Walter,” she said. “Well, I will leave you to your work. I look forward to seeing our lovely gardens back to their previous splendor.”

  “As do I,” Walter replied, giving her yet another bow.

  She shook her head as she made her way down the path. Walter was only the first of several who had returned to Brightstone Manor. They had been able to hire two scullery maids and a footman, which pleased Mrs. Vickery, the housekeeper, immensely. Many of the former servants, however, had already found new positions in other households, so one of the scullery maids had to be trained. Mrs. Vickery took up the challenge without blinking an eye.

  “It’s not as if I haven’t had to do so before,” she had said with firmness. “She’ll be up to the job in no time. From what I’ve seen, she’s young, but she’s hearty, so there should be no problems that I can see.” And true to the woman’s word, the girl, Bessie by name, had learned quickly and would soon be completing tasks on her own.

  Cecilia found herself standing before the brambles once again. She sneaked a glance toward the house, and upon seeing no one nearby nor anyone at the windows, she went to retrieve a pair of gloves and the snips. Her parents had left for the day, and Walter, though he might have reservations, would not prevent her from doing the work.

  Soon, she had a nice pile of bramble pieces beside her on the stone path and a clear space in front of here, the earth now turned as if she had used a hoe on it. More than once, a thorn pierced the glove and poked her hand, but it did not deter her from her task. If only it was so easy to clear the brambles that had overtaken her life.

  She was glad for the wide-brimmed hat she had donned, more than likely an inner understanding that she would find herself in that exact spot doing this very task, something she had not planned before heading outside but desperately needed to do. It gave her a feeling of some sort of control over her life where so much chaos currently existed and thus helped calm her mind and soul.

  Her attention was so focused on the task at hand that she did not notice that someone had walked up behind her until his shadow darkened the ground in front of her. She turned and gazed up at the man who had invaded her thoughts and dreams for the past two weeks.

  Benjamin looked as handsome as she remembered, and Cecilia found it difficult to not simply jump up and throw her arms around him. She did not know why he had come, and she certainly could not make a fool of herself in such a way.

  Cecilia stood and pulled on the fingers of her gloves. “Benjamin,” she said in as casual a voice as she could muster, “to what pleasure do I owe this call?”

  “Please, do not stop on my account,” he said as he removed his coat and placed it over the branch of a nearby tree. Then, to Cecilia’s utter amazement, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and squatted down next to her.

  All Cecilia could manage to do was stare down at the man with her mouth hanging open.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Benjamin watched as Cecilia knelt before the flowerbed, leaning over to cut a piece from one of the brambles that had overtaken the flowers. She worked methodically and seemed absorbed in the task. What little he could see of her face had an intensity he had never seen on her before, as if the work before her was of the utmost importance, and his heart swelled.

  He walked to stand behind her, and she turned, a shocked look on her face. When she attempted to remove her gloves, he halted her.

  “Please, do not stop on my account,” he said. She pulled the gloves back onto her hand and gave him a questioning look. As he squatted down beside her, he took the snips she had set on the ground and began cutting away where she had left off. “I apologize for not replying to your letter, but I was unsure how I should respond. There are…things…that you do not know about me, things that might shock you.”

  She stood and walked away, and he wondered if she would be unwilling to listen to him. Had he waited too long to come to see her? Would she give up on what they had built? Even if they had only a beginning, was it not worth revisiting?

  However, she did not leave but instead returned with a small mat, which she handed to him. He gave her a questioning look.

  “For you to kneel on,” she said with a smile
. “The ground can be a bit hard on the knees.”

  He laughed. That was what he loved about her; she was considerate and caring, and it was something he admired in her.

  The snips made a clicking sound as he began cutting away at the brambles where she had stopped when he joined her.

  “I must admit,” he said without looking at her, “this does have a soothing quality to it.”

  “It is why I enjoy doing it.”

  “I must make a confession to you,” he said, the snips clicking and another bramble vine breaking loose, careful not to prick himself with one of the many thorns as he pulled it away.

  “Oh?”

  “Indeed,” he replied. “The reason I asked for your hand in marriage was not to help your parents.” He paused and turned to her. “Not that I was unhappy to give them my aid, of course.”

  She raised a single eyebrow at him but her lips turned upward at the corners, adding a playfulness to her reaction. “I see,” was all she replied.

  “I realize that my reasoning will seem odd, but your eyes radiated a defiance and I wished to take on the challenge.” He returned to the brambles and soon there was another click of the snips. “Once we were wed, however, I realized there was a strength about you, an outlook on life that was so different from my own, and I came to appreciate those qualities in you. In all honesty, they are what led me to care for you as I do now.”

  Cecilia said nothing and Benjamin continued, now caught up in the work before him, the words from his thoughts tumbling from his lips without heed.

  “Yet, despite those feelings, I became frightened.” Click. “You see, love frightens me terribly, for when I have loved, it ended in hurt.”

  Benjamin found his mind reverting to a time much earlier in his life and everything around him dimmed, leaving only the brambles and his memories on which to focus.

  “My father was a caring man, in his way, but he also had great expectations. I had always been a small child, not weak but small in stature, so when I was sent off to boarding school—one Flaskingburg School near Cambridge—several of the older boys took it upon themselves to torment me. However, though I was small, I was also proud and did not appreciate their treatment of me. Thus, when one particular boy stood out from the rest…” He sat back on his haunches and pursed his lips. “Charles Bellamy, I found out later, had a strict father who beat him at every turn. When I learned of this, I understood why he was always so angry.” Then he stopped and sighed. “But I digress,” he said as he leaned back in to continue with his task of cutting away the brambles.

  The sound of Cecilia shifting beside him made him turn. “Please, go on,” she urged him.

  He smiled at her and then returned to his memory—and the brambles. “Well, as I said, Bellamy was an angry young man and he chose me as the one on whom he would vent that anger.” Click. “However, I took exception to such treatment, which he had not expected. So, I struck him.”

  Cecilia gasped. “You struck him?”

  Benjamin did not pause in his clipping. “I did. He had no right to mistreat me, whether I was the son of a Duke or the son of a butcher. Needless to say, we were both called into the Headmaster’s office where we were warned that, if we were found fighting again, we would be expelled.”

  “So, did you fight with him again?”

  “Oh, yes. A week later, he threatened to take me behind the school and pummel me, so I took it upon myself to throw the first punch.” He chuckled as he snipped at another vine. “Needless to say, we were both paddled and subsequently expelled from the school.”

  “How unfair that they should send you home for defending yourself,” Cecilia said with indignation.

  “As I believed, as well,” he replied. “My father was astonished when he arrived home to find me sitting in the drawing room that afternoon. Then he read the letter the Headmaster sent with me and his astonishment turned to anger.” Click. “I tried to explain to him what had happened, but he was so irate, he refused to listen, and whenever something made him that angry, he would go riding to calm himself.” Click.

  Benjamin felt his chest constrict as the memories flooded in his mind, playing out in his head as if they only happened yesterday. They had been locked away so long that the newness of them was almost overwhelming. However, with the calming click of the snips, he was able to continue.

  “That was the last time I saw my father alive.” Click. “My father had been so angry with me that he rode without care. He was found in the middle of a field, his neck broken after a fall from his horse.”

  Something touched him and he turned to find Cecilia’s hand on his arm. Tears ran down her face, a look of anguish marring her beauty. “I am so sorry,” she said in a choked voice.

  Benjamin patted her hand. “Do not be. I have resigned myself to the fault being mine. If he had not been so angry with me that day for my reckless misbehavior, he would not have gone riding, and he certainly would not have ridden so heedlessly. Thus, you can see why I cannot care too deeply for anyone, for if I do, it will only lead to pain.”

  He shook his head and turned back to the flowerbed and was shocked to see a large patch of earth where brambles had been. Beside him lay a pile of bramble cuttings that he did not remember removing from the bed.

  ***

  Cecilia thought her heart would break at any moment as she listened to Benjamin speak about his father’s death and the events that led up to it. How could a boy be left to feel that much anguish, carry so much guilt, at such a young age?

  She took the snips from him and set them aside. Then she took his hands in hers and looked at him straight in the eyes. “What happened to your father was no fault of your own,” she said firmly. “No child, nor an adult for that matter, should be held accountable for such a tragic accident. And that was what it was—an accident.”

  He shook his head. “And yet, if I had not…” he began before Cecilia interrupted.

  “No,” she said with as much decisiveness as she could muster, “you could not have stopped it from happening regardless of anything you had done. Remember, it is the mistakes we learn from in life that matter. If you learned to control your anger at a boy who has wronged you, if you found other ways to defend yourself other than using violence, then you learned a valuable lesson. Your punishment for your actions was the expulsion, not what happened to your father.”

  It became quiet, the only sounds the singing of the birds in a nearby tree, and Cecilia wondered if Benjamin would heed her words. She could not imagine how difficult life had been for him in the following years, but his story helped her understand the man he had become.

  “Benjamin,” she said in a quiet voice, still holding his hand in hers. She was surprised to find small callouses marring his fingertips, and she appreciated them; they showed that he was not afraid of hard work. Perhaps another time she would ask him about them, but now was not that time. “You must let go of this guilt you carry. It will not bring back your father nor change the circumstances of his death. Unfortunately, accidents do happen and there are times no one is to blame. Fate can be nasty that way.”

  He sighed. “I suppose you are right,” he said. “Yet, I have believed it for so many years that I find it difficult to believe otherwise.”

  She let go of his hand and picked up the snips. “Let me tell you what I see,” she began as she shifted onto her knees and began snipping. “When you first came to Brightstone Manor, I found you arrogant and patronizing. However, I also found you quite handsome.” She felt her cheeks heat up but ignored the sensation. The words were on her heart and they needed to be said. And the slips clicked. “Although I knew I should be resigned to my new life, I found my mind and heart warring against one another, one wishing to keep away from you and the other wishing to get closer.” Click. “For that reason, I became defiant. Well, more defiant than I should have been. I feared I would lose who I was, be crushed beneath your arrogance, and just as you defended yourself against that older boy, I felt
the need to defend myself against you in order to maintain who I am.”

  “But I never meant to…”

  “I realize that now,” she said before he could finish. “However, at the time, it was in my best interest, or so I thought, to fight to remain myself.” Click. “As the days passed, I learned that there was a man beneath the one I thought I knew, one who was much different than I had expected to find. That day we rode out and picnicked in the field, that was the day I saw the man I knew you to truly be.” Click. “Yet, just like these brambles, you carried a burden, something that held back the real you. I did not know what that something was, but I recognized that if those brambles could be cut away, a new you, the real you, would emerge, and when that man was revealed, I realized I cared very deeply for him.”

  She stopped and turned toward him. He was studying her with such intensity, she wondered if she had something upsetting.

  However, after several moments, he took the snips from her hand and placed them beside him. “Your words hold such deep meaning for me, Cecilia Birks.”

  She gave him a smile. “Do you not mean Cecilia Young?”

  He chuckled. “I suppose I do,” he said as he brought her hand to his lips. “You have touched my heart in so many ways since we were wed, but I was too foolish to notice. What I wish is for you to forgive me for my foolishness and allow me to love you, for I truly do.”

  The tears once again wet her cheeks, and as he leaned forward and brushed his lips to hers, she felt her heart swell. The kiss began light at first but then intensified and became hungry, urging, and Cecilia thought she would never breathe again. Yet, she did not care, for her life was now with this man, always and forever, and if breath left her in this moment, she knew her life had been fulfilled.

  When the kiss finally ended, both were breathing heavily as they stared into each other’s eyes. It was with effort that Cecilia broke the gaze and turned to the flowerbed once again. “Life is interesting, is it not?” she asked.