Indiscreet

by Candace Camp

  Benedict moved closer, his eyes fierce. “Stop it! You know damn good and well I need no place to sleep. My place is in your bed.”

  Camilla met his eyes and replied flatly, “No. It is not.”

  “Damnation, Camilla, stop acting this way!”

  “What way? Like someone whom you have deceived? Someone you have lied to and tricked? Like a woman whom you seduced and betrayed?”

  “I didn’t!” He flushed. “Well, I mean, yes, I suppose I did seduce you. I should have waited. I would have, if I had been stronger. But, dammit, Camilla, I’m only flesh and blood. There was only so much I could stand. Being so close to you all the time, seeing you, smelling you, sleeping ten feet away from you—it drove me insane.”

  There was such raw need in his voice that it raised an answering heat in Camilla’s abdomen. She turned away, flustered. “All right, I will admit it,” she said in a muffled voice. “You did play the gentleman most of the time, and I was just as much to blame as you yesterday. But—” she whirled around, eyes flashing, her voice breaking on her words “—why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “You never told me the truth!”

  “My God, Camilla, what did you expect me to do? I was looking for a traitor. I came here, not knowing anyone, only knowing that this is where it happened. I couldn’t tell anyone what I was really doing.”

  “I knew nothing about you,” Camilla pointed out. “But I trusted you enough to take you into my home, to introduce you to my family as my fiancé. I even let you in here, in my bedroom, trusting that you would not take advantage of that.”

  “That is another matter entirely. I am not talking about personal trust. If I was wrong, it was my country that would suffer.”

  “You believed that I could be a traitor?” Camilla’s voice was like ice.

  “No, of course not. I never thought that you were the person I was looking for.”

  “Only because I am a woman, and you don’t think a woman capable of carrying it off.”

  “No! That is not why. I was certain that you were not capable of betraying your country. But I couldn’t risk your telling anyone the truth about me. I couldn’t risk it getting back to him.”

  “So it was just that you thought me incapable of keeping a secret. I see.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you would not have told Anthony? You certainly told him quickly enough that we were not really married.”

  “For heaven’s sake, he already knew that. He knew that the story I had told Grandpapa was a sham. And he isn’t as gullible as Aunt Lydia. He would not believe that I had actually met and married a man at the same time that Aunt Lydia was telling everyone I had. Or perhaps you thought Anthony was the traitor?”

  “He could have been. I did not think it was Anthony, but it was too important a thing to let my personal feelings interfere. Do you think I enjoyed deceiving you? Or lying to your grandfather? Or any of the other things I had to do?”

  “You mean things like charming your way into my bed? Was that part of your scheme? Perhaps a way of insuring my loyalty to you, in case I discovered who you really were? Well, let me tell you, Lord Rawdon, that it did not work.”

  Benedict flinched as if she had struck him, and bright spots of color stained his cheeks. “Dammit all to bloody hell! God knows I am not fool enough to think that you would be more loyal to me than to your cousin—or to a stranger you find feverish and bleeding among the ruins. You certainly held their secrets from me well enough! And I can promise you that there was no calculation in my making love to you. There was never the least thing in it except blind, unreasoning lust!”

  Camilla paled. For a long moment, there was nothing but silence in the room. Then she said, her voice a trifle shaky, “Thank you for explaining your motives to me. I suppose I should be grateful that even though there was no higher feeling involved in your lovemaking, at least there was no thought or planning, either.”

  Benedict groaned. “I did not mean it that way. My God, do you think that I would marry you if lust was all that moved me?”

  Camilla stared at him. “Marry? What are you talking about? No one said anything about marriage.”

  “I did. Did you not notice that I told young Woollery that you were Lady Rawdon?”

  “Yes, but I—I could not understand why you had done it. You cannot marry me. I mean—the scandal!” It came to Camilla in a blinding flash exactly why she was so furious about Benedict’s deception. She had fallen in love with him and, deep down, she had been nursing the dream that they would actually marry, despite the resulting scandal. With an ordinary man, it might have been possible, but not a nobleman. Certainly she would have been horrified if Anthony considered tying himself to a woman whose name was as besmirched as hers would be once their pretense of marriage was known. “Your family would never allow it.”

  “My family has nothing to say about it. I am the only one who decides whether I marry or not.”

  “But you cannot have a wife whose name is tainted, as mine will surely be when all this comes out.”

  “Your name will not be tainted. That is the whole point of what I am saying. If you and I are married in truth, there is no scandal.”

  “Oh.” Camilla looked at him. “It won’t work. My entire family thinks that your name is Lassiter and that I am already your wife. Now, suddenly, you say you are Lord Rawdon, and we will get married? They will still know that you and I slept in this room together without benefit of marriage for days, weeks, before we were married. If you think that Aunt Beryl won’t talk about it, then you are sadly mistaken. And Cousin Bertram! No wonder he thought you were familiar-looking. No doubt he has seen you about London. It will be a wonderful bit of gossip for him, and there is nothing Bertram likes better. No, it’s impossible.”

  “It is not. I know a clergyman who will marry us and keep absolutely quiet about it. I saved his son’s life in battle. He will never dispute it if I tell everyone we were married two or three weeks ago. I don’t believe anyone will go so far as to check a country parish’s records to see if the dates are right.”

  “But what about your name? Everyone will suspect something havey-cavey when Aunt Beryl tells them that we said you were Mr. Lassiter!”

  Benedict smiled smugly. “Not after we have explained to your family that I was pretending not to be myself because I was hunting a traitor. When this is all over, Jermyn and I shall explain to them how it was all for country and king. I married you secretly, and we came here with this story about who I was because we could not let the traitor suspect my real identity or he would know why I was here. I promise you, by the time Jermyn is through talking, your aunt Beryl will be convinced that she helped capture an enemy and that she knew all along who I really was but kept quiet in order to save England. So you see? Your family won’t go spreading it around, or if they do, they will tell it as we told it to them, with our being married the whole time.”

  Camilla turned away. Benedict was offering her exactly what she wanted, yet she felt only cold. He wanted to marry her for the wrong reasons. There were no words of love on his lips, only reason and propriety. He did not love her, but he had felt an overwhelming lust for her, and because he had allowed his lust to overcome his good sense, now, as a gentleman, he was bound to marry her. As soon as the lieutenant, who knew him as Lord Rawdon, arrived on the scene, he had realized that he must marry her in order to avert a scandal. “I see.”

  She walked to the window and stared out sightlessly. She had never imagined that anything could hurt so much. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she swallowed hard.

  “No.”

  Benedict stared. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said ‘No.’ I will not marry you.”

  “What?” Benedict’s insides turned to ice. In all his planning, it had not occurred to
him that Camilla might refuse to marry him. He had thought that her passionate response had told him all he needed to know about her feelings, just as his lovemaking had expressed his love for her. “Are you this angry about my deception?”

  “It is not a question of anger.” Camilla was proud of the way she managed to keep her voice level, despite her anguish. “I told you when we first met that I intended never to marry.”

  Benedict exploded. “The devil! This is no time for some silly bluestocking idea! For God’s sake, Camilla, think of your family. Think of your own future! Don’t you realize what this scandal will do to all of you? You are absolutely right about the gossip being all over London as soon as your cousin and aunt return. Even if your aunt has the brains to realize how her gossip will affect her own daughters’ futures, I don’t believe she will be able to keep from telling the choicest tidbits to her close friends. Once that is done, everyone in the ton will know. Your reputation will be ruined.”

  “Then I will live in seclusion the rest of my life. I shall retire to the Park. I can live without the social rounds, and country life will suit me well enough.”

  “I am glad to hear that you like the country life, because I prefer it, too, and as soon as I am no longer needed in London, I intend to spend most of my time on my estate. As my wife, you shall be there, too.”

  Camilla whirled around, her eyes flashing. Benedict was so infuriating that it made her forget her own pain and regret for the moment. “I will not! Are you deficient in understanding?”

  “No. Apparently I have far better understanding than you do. But surely even you will be able to grasp this. You will marry me. It is the only course for you, and I don’t care whether you wish it or not. You will marry me.”

  With those words, he swung around and threw open the door with a crash, then stormed out of the room. Camilla let out a shriek of frustration and ran after him to slam the door shut. Well, she thought, as she turned and ran across the room to fling herself onto her bed, at least no one in the house would have any trouble believing that the newlyweds had had a fight. Then she burst into tears.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IF THE SHOUTS and slamming of doors left anyone in the house unaware of the “newlyweds’” spat, they soon realized it from Benedict’s and Camilla’s behavior over the next few days. They stayed apart from each other, speaking rarely and then only if they had to. It was well-known among the servants that they slept in separate beds, equally rumpled and disturbed, as if by fitful slumbers, and only a fool would have missed Camilla’s icy, remote demeanor or Benedict’s air of controlled fury.

  Camilla spent most of her time talking in a spritely manner with her aunt Lydia or her cousin Bertram, or locked up in her bedroom, from which retreats she always emerged with reddened eyes. Benedict, on the other hand, spent most of his time in various gentlemanly pursuits, primarily riding horses or playing cards, with Anthony or the other young man, James Woollery, whom they had brought in and installed in one of the other nursery rooms.

  Camilla had been rather surprised when Anthony and Benedict brought Woollery into the house, saying that he was a friend of Anthony’s and explaining his need to stay in bed the first few days by saying that he had been thrown from his horse on the ride to Chevington Park. It seemed to her a foolhardy move.

  “Aren’t you afraid that his attacker will try again to kill him?” she asked Anthony, pulling him aside after supper that evening. “It seems to me that you are making him an obvious target.”

  “Mmm. Probably.”

  “What? How can you be so casual about it?”

  “It is part of a plan. Benedict thought it up.” The young man’s face glowed with enthusiasm, as it always did nowadays, whenever the subject of Benedict came up. Camilla’s hand itched to slap him. “James is the bait with which to catch the killer. We are hoping he will try to sneak in some night and dispatch him, and we will be waiting to nab him.”

  “Is that where Benedict has been sneaking out to in the middle of the night?”

  “Yes. He and I take turns standing watch for intruders.”

  “And I suppose poor Lieutenant Woollery was fool enough to agree to this plan.”

  “Of course. He thought it was a jolly good idea, and so do I. Really, Camilla, I don’t understand why you are so hard on Benedict. Ever since we found out that there is nothing wrong with him, you have been acting exceedingly strangely.”

  “You would, too, if you had discovered that you had been taken advantage of by someone you trusted.”

  “That’s doing it a bit brown, don’t you think?” Anthony replied with brutal candor. “You never trusted him. You thought he was a thief until I convinced you that he was a customs officer. We always regarded him with suspicion.”

  “But I didn’t suspect him of being a lord or a war hero.”

  “You aren’t making any sense.” Anthony regarded her with puzzlement. “Honestly, Milla, you are not acting like yourself at all.”

  Camilla knew that she wasn’t. She realized that a great deal of what she said nowadays was bitter, and she spent most of her time either crying or acting far happier than she was. She missed talking to Benedict and being with him; most of all, she missed making love with him. She lay awake half of each night, it seemed, tossing and turning and thinking about Benedict’s hands on her body. It seemed bizarre that the absence of the passion, which they had shared so briefly, should make such a huge hole in her life.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t marry him,” Anthony went on quietly.

  Camilla narrowed her eyes at him. “Did he tell you that?”

  “He told me he had asked you. Well, you wouldn’t both be so miserable, would you, if you had accepted?”

  “I am not miserable.”

  “I’m not a green ’un, you know,” Anthony retorted. “If you are happy, I would hate to see someone sad. Even Grandpapa knows there’s something wrong. He was asking me yesterday what it was. He likes Benedict, you know.”

  “I am well aware of that. My entire family loves him.”

  “Honestly, Milla, how much more could he do? It wasn’t his fault, you know, that my mother told that silly story about your being married to him. Nor was he the one who wanted to pretend to be your fiancé. But when you are faced with a ruined reputation because of those things, he up and offered for you, which seems to me the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  “If that isn’t typically male!”

  “Well, I am a male,” he pointed out reasonably. “But I ain’t the only one here who would say he did the right thing. So would Mother and Aunt Beryl, if they knew about it.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s done the right thing,” Camilla responded in a goaded tone of voice. She looked at her beloved cousin with exasperation. How could she make him understand that she didn’t want Benedict’s duty, she wanted his love? She sighed. “Can’t you understand? I don’t want to hold a man because my mistakes have put us in a compromising position. It would be punishment, not marriage, and I refuse to do that. How would you like it if you had been put in Benedict’s position, if you had offered to help a girl, even with ulterior motives of your own, and then you wound up having to marry her in order to save her reputation?”

  Anthony looked taken aback at the thought. “I wouldn’t like it by half.”

  “You see? How can I hold him to it? It was gentlemanly of him to offer, but I can’t be cold and calculating enough to accept it. Especially after I’ve heard the lieutenant go on about what a catch Benedict was on the Marriage Mart and how he did not want to marry.”

  “I daresay it is hard on him,” Anthony agreed undiplomatically. “But, Milla, you have to accept. Your reputation is ruined otherwise. Just think of what Aunt Beryl will say.”

  Camilla let out a low groan. “Please, don’t remind me.”

  There wa
s a pause. Finally Anthony said, “So you aren’t going to change your mind?”

  “No. I think not.”

  Anthony sighed. “And everyone says I am the one who doesn’t think!”

  * * *

  CAMILLA RETIRED EARLY. She had grown to hate the nights, the lying awake and thinking about Benedict, wondering what he was thinking and whether he, too, missed the passion they had shared. There were times when she thought that she was a fool not to accept Benedict’s proposal. Surely marrying a man who did not love her would be better than these long, aching nights alone.

  She looked over at his cot against the far wall. It made it ten times harder, his sleeping in the same room. She ought to have insisted that he move up to the nursery with Anthony and Lieutenant Woollery. They could turn it into bachelors’ quarters and leave her in peace.

  Camilla sighed and began to take down her hair. Perhaps one could make a good marriage out of a mutual lust. Certainly couples married who did not have even that much. At least if they were married, she would not feel so restless and unsatisfied all the time. She grimaced, aware of the persistent, throbbing ache between her legs. She wondered if Benedict knew how his sleeping here affected her, and if that was why he continued to do it. It would be just like him. Last night she had lain in bed, pretending to be asleep, while she watched him undress through slitted eyes. There had been a moment, as he lingeringly pulled his shirt off his shoulders and arms when she was convinced he knew she was watching and was making sure she witnessed every little movement. It had been enough to make her close her eyes and turn away.

  She rang for her maid, undressed and crawled into bed, determined that tonight she would get some sleep. However, the minutes passed slowly, and still she could not sleep. After some time, it occurred to her that Benedict was rather late coming to bed. He usually followed not too long after her.