‘You’re doing well,’ she murmured. He focused on her lips: too close...sweetly full...so tempting. ‘Do not lose your nerve now.’
Benedict dragged in a jagged breath and the icy air swept other memories into focus with a vicious stab in his temples. Not life-threatening memories such as that storm, but soul-destroying nonetheless. Memories of Harriet and her betrayal. His hand steadied and he continued to cut Janet’s boot until it fell apart.
They slid the maid onto the board then and, between them, Benedict and the post boy used lengths of linen to bind her to the plank and keep her still whilst they moved her to a bedchamber. Benedict rose stiffly to his feet as the two footmen lifted the board and carried Janet up the steps and back into the house. Benedict clasped Harriet’s elbow, resisting her attempt to tug free, and supported her up the steps and into the hall.
‘Why have you dismissed the chaise?’ she demanded as soon as the front door closed behind them, shutting out the swirling snowstorm. ‘I have accommodation bespoken at the Rose Inn.’
‘You will stay here tonight.’
‘I most certainly will not!’ Her voice rang with outrage. ‘Stay overnight at Tenterfield Court, with no chaperone?’ Harriet marched over to Crabtree, about to mount the stairs in the wake of the footmen carrying Janet. ‘Send a man to the stables, if you please, with a message to bring the chaise back round.’
‘Your maid cannot travel.’
Harriet pivoted on the spot and glared at Benedict. ‘I am well aware Janet must remain here,’ she spat. ‘I, however, am perfectly fit and well, and I will not stay where I am not welcome.’
‘I thought you were concerned for your reputation?’ Benedict drawled, the drive to thwart her overriding his eagerness to see her gone. ‘Yet you would stay in a public inn without even a maid to lend you countenance? My, my, Lady Brierley. I have to wonder if your reluctance to remain here at Tenterfield owes less to concern over your reputation and more to fear of your own lack of self-control.’
‘Oh!’ Harriet’s eyes flashed and her lips thinned. ‘How dare you?’ She spoke again to Crabtree, waiting patiently at the foot of the staircase, staring discreetly into space, the epitome of an experienced butler. ‘Is there a maid who might accompany me to the inn?’
Crabtree’s gaze slid past Harriet to mutely question Benedict, who moved his head in a small negative motion.
‘I am sorry, my lady,’ Crabtree said, ‘but with Sir Malcolm so ill and now your maid to care for, I am unable to spare any of my staff. And I am persuaded it would be unwise to venture on even such a short journey in this weather.’
The satisfaction Benedict experienced at frustrating Harriet’s plans glowed for only a brief few seconds. Her presence could only reopen old wounds. Why had he been so insistent that she stay?
‘Inform me when the doctor arrives,’ he bit out over his shoulder as he took the stairs two at a time, silently cursing himself for a fool.
In his bedchamber, he stripped off his wet clothes and shrugged into his banyan, then paced the vast room, his thoughts filled with Harriet.
The announcement of her arrival had nearly floored him. His heart had drummed against his ribs as his palms grew damp. She could not have known—could she?—that he was here, attending his dying cousin. That leap of hope, swiftly banished, had angered and unsettled him. Whatever her reason for visiting Malcolm, he didn’t want to know. He was only here himself from a sense of duty to his erstwhile guardian. He had no affection for Sir Malcolm but he was indebted to him for supporting him financially ever since the death of Benedict’s parents. Malcolm had ensured Benedict attended the best schools, followed by Cambridge University, and, for that, Benedict owed him some consideration.
He hadn’t needed to meet with Harriet at all—he could have relegated the task to one of the servants. He should have relegated it but, dammit, that would be tantamount to admitting he still cared. Besides—and he might as well be honest with himself—curiosity had got the better of him. He’d wanted to see what she had become, this jade who had so thoughtlessly betrayed him and his heart: who had pledged her love for him and then coldheartedly wed another man for the sake of a title and wealth.
Before facing her, he’d gone to the library to fortify himself with a glass of brandy from the decanter there. She hadn’t appeared to need any such additional support. He walked into the drawing room to find her—cool and elegant, an utterly gorgeous woman, with the same abundance of lustrous moon-pale hair he remembered only too well. His fingers had twitched with the desire to take out her pins and see her tresses tumble over her shoulders again. She was more voluptuous than he remembered, but then she had still been a girl when they had fallen in love. Correction, he thought, with a self-deprecating sneer, when he had fallen in love. And those eyes—huge, violet blue, thickly lashed; they were as arresting as ever. He had always thought of them as windows to her soul. He snorted a bitter laugh at his youthful naivety. Now, with the benefit of eleven more years’ experience, he could see that those eyes had lied as easily as that soft, sensual mouth with its full pink lips.
Such a pity so perfect an exterior disguised such a mercenary bitch.
* * *
Later, before dinner, Benedict visited Malcolm in his bedchamber, as had become his habit in the seven days since his arrival at Tenterfield Court. Malcolm’s breathing had grown noticeably harsher in the past week and Benedict was conscious that the air now wheezed in and out of his cousin’s lungs faster than ever, as if each breath failed to satisfy the demand for oxygen. He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. Malcolm’s eyes were closed, the thin skin almost translucent. A glance at Fletcher elicited a shake of the valet’s head.
Benedict placed his hand over the paper-dry skin of Malcolm’s hand where it lay on the coverlet. The flesh was cool to his touch, despite the suffocating heat of the room. Sweat sprung to Benedict’s forehead and upper lip, and he felt his neck grow damp beneath the neckcloth he had tied around his neck in deference to his dinner guest.
Damn her! Why did she have to come? And now she would be here all night, a siren song calling to his blood as surely as if she lay in his bed beside him. He forced his thoughts away from Harriet as Malcolm stirred, his lids slitting open as though even that movement was too great an effort for his feeble energy.
‘Water.’
Fletcher brought a glass and held it to his master’s lips, supporting his head as he sucked in the liquid. As Fletcher lowered his head back to the pillow, Malcolm’s eyes fixed on Benedict.
‘Going out?’
Benedict fingered his neckcloth self-consciously. Malcolm still had the ability to reduce him to a callow youth with just a single comment. He had been a careless guardian with little interest in Benedict, who had been a mere eight years old when he was orphaned. As Benedict had matured and developed more understanding of the world, Malcolm’s behaviour and reputation had caused him nothing but shame. Now, although he found it hard to feel any sorrow at Malcolm’s imminent death, he could not help but pity the man his suffering.
‘I dressed for dinner before visiting you tonight.’ The lie slid smoothly off Benedict’s tongue. He kept forgetting that, although Malcolm’s body had betrayed him, his mind was a sharp as ever.
‘Has that harlot gone?’
‘Harlot?’
‘The Brierley woman. She’s no business here... I told her... Fletcher? Has she gone?’
Fletcher glanced at Benedict, who gave a slight nod of his head. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘She left the house straight after she saw you.’
‘Good. Good riddance. Have nothing to do with her,