He’d done this to all of them.
“Go back to your party, princess. You’re just in the way.”
Shock flitted across her face, disbelief. For a moment, she looked as if she was going to argue, her eyes bright and lips pursed. But then he drew back farther, released her arms, and severed all connection to her. He saw it, the moment she realized that he didn’t want her. Her expression turned to stone, cool and emotionless. She inclined her head and retreated to the drawing room, perfectly poised as she moved.
He was a cad, and every fiber of his being wanted to go after her, but he forced himself to ignore that weakness and turn to Greenhill instead. “Ten minutes and I want everyone in the servants’ hall. Be discreet.”
Walking through to the library, he was sickened by the decadence of what was happening in his home—the giggling debutantes in their silks and pearls and the footmen with platters of hors d’oeuvres. Only miles away, men fearing their loss of livelihood, the ability to put clothes on their backs and food on the table, were driven to violence.
A voice in the corner of his brain—one that sounded suspiciously like his wife’s—reminded him of the good that men in his position could do. Did do. That except for the odd bottle thrown, Wildeforde had not been a target at the rally. In fact, none of the men in attendance were Wildeforde’s tenants.
He shoved the voice away along with any evidence that countered his current frame of mind. The aristocracy were the bad guys. Money and power corrupted men.
Even him.
The door to his study was already cracked open. He pushed it wide. The men inside did not hear his approach. They couldn’t have, or they wouldn’t have said what they did.
“A savage. But clearly not an idiot. He’s got money enough for this brandy.” It was the dry, raspy voice of Lord Karstark. That bastard.
“Rich as Croesus, but I wouldn’t want his wealth if I had to work for it. Ugh.” Benedict couldn’t see the man the thin voice belonged to, but he could picture him. Slight, soft, delicate, without the tan that marked Benedict as a man who spent time outdoors, without the bulk from heavy lifting or the calluses from working with his hands.
“Bournesmouth, please,” Karstark said. “You’d sell your grandmother for enough blunt to buy a new stallion.”
“Correction. I’d have my man sell the old biddy. That sort of transaction is beneath me.”
Karstark snickered. “This entire weekend is beneath us. Face it, gentlemen, we’re here for the entertainment, watching that unfortunate woman dance in an effort to win her way back into our good graces. Little fool. I saw her bosoms, you know. All splayed out for the world to see. Her nipples were like delicious drops of jam. Reminded me of one of the housemaids I enjoyed.”
Benedict’s vision went red at the edges—a roaring sound screaming in his ears. He covered the room between the door and the armchairs in three long strides, grabbing Karstark by his bloody neck ruffles and dragging him over the back of the chair.
Two others jumped up, yelling in alarm. Benedict ignored them and smashed his fist into Karstark’s face, feeling immense satisfaction at the crunch of bone and cartilage. He hit the man again as the lord’s pale and pathetic fingers pulled at the hand clenched around his neck.
Benedict was vaguely aware of the yelling of the other gentlemen. One of them clipped him across the back of the head with a book, but he just laughed.
A book? Seriously?
Releasing Karstark and letting him crumple to the floor, Benedict grabbed the book-wielding man by the waistcoat, lifting him and slamming him against the wall.
The man whimpered like a small boy. Benedict could smell the brandy, his brandy, on the man’s breath. How dare these men come into his home, mistreat his household, humiliate his wife, and then laugh with the hubris of the all-powerful. He leaned forward until his face was close enough to see each bead of sweat on the man’s brow. Their breaths mingled.
“Benedict!” Amelia’s horrified voice broke through the red fog encasing him. He dropped the man, who collapsed at his feet.
She was in the doorway, her eyes wide in horror, her hand pressed to her chest. For a moment, he saw himself as she must: a brute, a monster, hands bloodied, body shaking with rage. No better than an animal. His cheeks blazed, nausea tightened into bilious knots, and he turned away, unable to look at her.
“Go back to your party,” he said. He pushed past her into the foyer, where all their guests had congregated. Lord Karstark had crawled there, holding his nose, his shirt now red with blood.
He pointed to Benedict. “Not fit to be around people, attacking a man my age.”
There was a mutter of agreement from those gathered. Looking at Karstark, wig missing, clothes torn, he looked frail and feeble—like a victim rather than the predator he was. But he had all of these people fooled. Even Lord Bradenstock was looking at Benedict with disdain.
He wanted to defend himself, to expose Karstark for the vile, womanizing, abusive bastard that he was, but he could read a room. He wasn’t getting any sympathy for turning on one of their own.
“Probably time for you to go up, lad. It’s over.” The American drawl was ice down Benedict’s spine. All his efforts—turning himself into another creature, filling his house with those he most despised—had failed. Grunt and Harcombe would not be signing that contract now. And all of those people who depended on him would see him for what he was: a failure.
Before he could think of some response, any response, Greenhill waved at him frantically from the door. The butler gave an exaggerated nod toward the outside.
Damn. Could he not just have one catastrophe at a time?
He pushed through the tut-tutting guests until he was outside, drawing the cold air deep into his lungs, using it to brace himself. In the not-too-far distance, he could see torches—a line of them—coming toward the house.
“Get the guests into their rooms. I want two men at every window on this side of the building. Have Peter check to make sure every door and window is locked.”
“Y-yes, sir.” Greenhill waited for his master to precede him into the house, but Benedict could not go back in there. Not after what he’d just done. Not after he’d just shown himself for the animal he was. Not after he’d just destroyed everything Amelia had worked for. It was over between them now. How could it be otherwise? They were too different. Their lives were too different. He’d been an idiot to think it could have worked.
“I’ll remain out here. I’ll try to talk them down. Tell the men to wait for my signal. These are our friends. We don’t shoot unless we have to.”
Amelia’s face was bloodless as she stepped outside, but her voice was strong. “This is hardly the act of friends.”
“I’ve hardly been a friend. I’d be a hypocrite to condemn them. Go back inside.”
He moved her through the door and then shut it. He would deal with this alone. Taking a deep breath, he faced the approaching mob. They weren’t close enough for him to pinpoint faces. They were at least ten minutes away. There was still time for disaster to be averted if he went out to meet them.
The explosion came without warning. First the ball of light, then the sound, and then the shockwave that knocked Benedict off his feet and rattled the door.
As he sat up, his ears ringing, he saw the red glow of a fire in the distance.
He stood, woozy on his feet. The line of torches had scattered, the little balls of light running in every direction—all away from the house.
The firm.
Chapter 32
By the time Amelia arrived at the firm, after pushing past Greenhill and every footman who tried to hold her back, it was a mass of rubble and fire.
Ten-Tonne Tessie no longer existed. All that was left were twisted pieces of metal, many impaled into stone by the force of the blast. The main workshop had collapsed on one side, the roof falling in.
The stacks of coal and firewood that had been placed a far distance from the buildings were bur
ning, sending vicious, choking plumes of smoke into the sky. It was the biggest bonfire she’d ever seen. Even fifty feet away, she was buffeted by the roaring heat. She threw an arm up to protect her face as she searched for Benedict.
Bright orange spots danced in her vision as she scanned her surroundings until she saw him, hunched over against the wall of the smaller workshop.
“Benedict!” She couldn’t even hear her own voice over the fire. She grabbed her skirts and ran to him, stumbling over fallen rock, cutting her hands on twisted metal, refusing to let the pain stop her from reaching him.
“Benedict!”
As she got nearer, she could see his shoulders heaving in heavy sobs. The palms of his hands were pressed into his eye sockets. He was shaking his head.
“No.” There was more pain in that one word than she’d heard in a lifetime.
“Benedict.” It was a whisper he couldn’t possibly hear as she scrambled toward him, but he looked up nonetheless.
“He was so young.”
Amelia recoiled. The mass of red at Benedict’s feet was not a reflection of fire on scrap metal but a body. Her hand flew to her lips. The figure was unidentifiable, but there must have been something in what was left that told Benedict who he was because, as he cried, he kept repeating the name: Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.
The sight of her husband in such sheer agony almost broke her. Her knees buckled and part of her wanted to collapse in a heap, wreckage on wreckage. But she couldn’t. Because he needed her now.
“Oh, my love.” She stepped around the body and knelt beside him, running her fingers through his hair. “My love.” She went to press a kiss on the top of his head, but he moved out of reach. He scuffled away from her, refusing her touch.
“Benedict.” Her throat tightened as she tried to hold back the tears. She bit the inside of her lip, looking to physical pain to keep the sharp stab of grief at bay. Gently, hesitantly, she reached for his hand.
He shook her off. “I did this,” he said, his words choked. “I did this. I should have been around. I should have kept an eye on him. I knew that Tucker had his claws into him. And I did nothing.”
“No. Sweetheart—”
“I should have spent my time with my workers, my friends, my people, instead of playing dress-up for your lords and ladies.”
She shrank away from the viciousness of his voice. The cruelty of his words. This was not him. This was not the man she knew. “His death is not your fault.” Despite desperately wanting to be calm and controlled, her voice wavered. That he would shoulder the blame was agony. But there was something else in his words that frightened her. He was pulling away from her. From them.
“Then whose fault is it?”
She paused, choosing her words carefully. “If he set the fire, then it’s his fault.” It was a stupid, stupid decision made by a reckless boy. And it could break all of them.
Benedict turned away from her, leaning into the wall, his arms caged around his head as if he could block her words out.
She approached him. Slowly. And sighed in relief when he allowed her to run a hand in circles across his back. It made no sense, but she was sure that the only way they’d get through this whole was if she didn’t let him go. She needed to hold tight to him now, or it was over.
“Death is a high price to pay for stupidity,” she said. “But it happens more than anyone cares to admit. You can’t take this on. You’re a good man, my love.”
He snorted, turning his head so he could look at her. The bleakness of his expression made the blood drain from her face, her body sway off-kilter, and her feet turn to lead. He pulled away. There was no getting through this whole. The rift had already taken place.
His voice was strangled. “I used to think so. But then I let friends I’d grown up with wait on me. I pushed aside my distaste for people who willingly ruin the lives of others and invited them into my home. I accepted a business deal that made me a whole lot of money but took away the jobs I promised my people. I tell myself all of it will let me change lives in other ways, but I’ve just turned my back on who I am. And for what? You? A woman who’s ashamed of who I am?”
Each word was a sharp, stinging cut.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” she whispered.
“No?” His tone was cruel, mocking. His face was twisted in a hateful expression, and he didn’t resemble the man she loved.
“You didn’t pretend to your friends that you’d never done any work at the firm? Like work was a filthy secret?”
“I didn’t want them to know I’d done that. But I love what you do. I love what you’ve achieved. I’m so proud of you.” She gripped his shirt, desperate for him to hear the truth of what she was saying.
“You’re proud of me? Yet you dress me up in silks and velvets because I wasn’t good enough the way I was.”
Guilt crashed into every corner of her. Because she had looked down on the clothes that he wore, the house that he lived in, the way that he’d spoken and acted. She had decided—twice—to turn him into a different gentleman.
“I thought it would be easier for you,” she said. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to be an earl. He was going to have to move in those circles. She was trying to smooth out that course.
“Easier for me or easier for you?”
She couldn’t answer because she didn’t know what the truth was. It was all mixed up. So much had changed—her, him. Life had become a constant tumble, head over feet, over and over. She didn’t even know what she wanted.
And her silence damned her.
He took another step backward, shaking his head as though that split second of non-answer confirmed something he hadn’t fully believed. “Go back to London. You were planning to leave us soon anyway—just do it now.”
“I wasn’t planning anything of the sort.” How could he possibly think that? That after all they’d achieved together, she would pack up and leave?
“You didn’t ask Lord Roxburough if he’d be interested in selling his town house?”
“For the Season. Just for the Season. I assumed you’d come with me.”
He stood, putting miles between them with every step he took away from her. “Well, I don’t want to. You should go, though. I’m better off—we’re all better off—without you around. You contribute nothing and just muddy everything up.”
And there it was. The truth she’d fought against her entire life. She was no use to anyone. No use as a daughter, as a fiancée, as a wife, as a partner.
She’d tried. Lord knows she’d put every ounce of effort she had into proving her worth. She’d spent her days working tirelessly in the firm, helping build it into something bigger and better. She’d spent her evenings leading a household that she had become proud to belong to. She’d loved Cassandra like a sister, giving her all the support and guidance she could.
And she’d spent her nights and days simply loving him with everything she had.
And still it wasn’t enough. He didn’t want her around. He had plans to go to the Americas without her, and he hadn’t even bothered to discuss it with her.
“Fine. If that’s what you want, then fine. I’m leaving. And not because I don’t like my life here. Not because I miss the balls and the theater and people. But because of you. I deserve better than your constant judgment, you damned hypocrite. I deserve someone who loves me without conditions. Who accepts me for who I am.”
It felt good to get the words out. Her entire life had been about trying to live up to other people’s expectations. Her father’s. Her friends’. Now her husband’s. Not any longer.
If the past months had taught her anything, it was that she wasn’t perfect—far from it. But she was who she was, and she wasn’t going to twist herself up into any more knots trying to be what someone else wanted her to be.
If she wasn’t good enough for him, then she was done.
She waited a moment for him to respond. Instead he looked out over the rubble, as though she hadn�
�t spoken a word.
She swallowed. “Good-bye, Ben.” Her voice cracked but she squared her shoulders and turned back toward the house, picking her way through the debris and trying not to cry.
John was standing at the edge of the wreckage, horror-stricken. Tears ran down his face, creating rivers of soot. “Wh-where are you g-going?”
“Back to London. It has been a pleasure knowing you.”
John grabbed her hand. “You can’t leave him. He n-n-needs you.”
She freed her hand gently. “He’s made it clear that he doesn’t. And I won’t live like this.”
Chapter 33
Benedict’s muscles ached as he hauled rock from the ruins of the firm’s primary building to the framework that had been built in the two months since the explosion.
It was dirty, sweaty work. His hands blistered, his arms ached, his back regularly seized up in protest. But he carried on because only exhaustion developed through tough physical labor granted him any sleep at night.
In those first few weeks after Amelia had left, he’d tried drowning his sorrow in brandy, whiskey, and ale. He hadn’t been particular. But no matter how much he drank, he couldn’t sleep without her next to him.
So he got back to work and worked until his body could no longer function.
Beside him, Oliver dropped his own stone into place, finishing off this line of wall. “Rain’s coming,” he said. “We’ll need to get the tarpaulins out.”
“Just ten more minutes.”
“Ten more minutes and we’ll be working in the rain. Go home, Ben. Have a bath. Spend some time with your sister.”
If Oliver had been angry about the contract with the Americans, it had only lasted until he’d arrived at the firm and seen Benedict cradling Jeremy’s body. His foreman had been his rock since then.
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