Page 3 of The Case at Castle Rock Cove (Beau Monde Secrets #4)

B en almost didn’t make it to church that Sunday. On Friday night, he fell prey to some sort of digestive upset. He stayed up half the night sick to his stomach and loose in his bowels. He worried himself half-sick again trying to figure out how he would let W.S. know why he’d missed their meeting.

But by Saturday afternoon, he felt much better. Aunt Faith insisted on taking his temperature, as if he were a sick child, and he showed no signs of fever.

“Probably just something you ate,” she advised him. “You should start off eating bland foods, like beef tea.”

Ben stifled a sigh and smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll try that.” Under other circumstances, he might have argued with her, but he wanted to stay on her good side. She would report back to Grandfather about Ben’s recovery, and if she gave a bad report, they might decide Ben needed to stay home on Sunday.

Not that they could have forced him to stay home. Ben was no longer a minor, and even if he had been, Grandfather Marlowe would not have been his legal guardian. But Grandfather had a way of making his “suggestions” seem more like orders. If he ordered his grandson to stay home to convalesce, Ben would be torn about whether to do as his grandfather asked, or what he’d already promised his new friend he would do. He hated decisions like that.

But by Sunday morning, he felt fit as a fiddle, and perfectly capable of walking to St. Clement’s parish with his aunt. The church was not far from Marlowe Tower, but Ben rarely bestirred himself to make the walk. He had no particular interest in theology or devotion, and he disliked public events on principle.

The worst of it was that he always had to sit in the best pew, near the front of the church, where the whole congregation could stare at him. And the congregation did stare at Ben that Sunday. No doubt they were surprised to see anyone other than Aunt Faith using the Marlowe Tower pew.

Ben had forgotten to bring any lemon drops with him, so he had nothing with which to occupy himself while the clergyman read the lessons for the day in an impressive bass voice. Instead of quietly sucking on a candy, Ben swung his feet back and forth until Aunt Faith silenced him with a stern look, as if he’d been an unruly schoolboy.

After the service ended, he let his aunt leave the pew without him, while he waited for everyone else to exit the church. This was the part of churchgoing he dreaded most. People always wanted to greet their neighbors, stopping to share a word or two with them. Many people stopped Aunt Faith to inquire about Grandfather’s health. The parishioners would have been quite willing to chat with Ben, too, if he gave them the chance. But Ben dreaded such idle chit-chat. He had arranged his life to avoid it as much as possible, and he didn’t intend to change that now.

Finally, the only person left was the vicar, Mr. Traherne. Ben nodded shyly at him, and when the vicar wished him a good day, he mumbled back an inaudible answer. Then he hurried out of the church before anyone else could catch him and drag him into an unwanted conversation.

His heart pounded as he walked into the churchyard. Goodness, you’d think he was meeting the king! It was only now, though, that Ben realized how very uncomfortable this first meeting might be. He had, rather foolishly, imagined W.S. as a young man of approximately Ben’s own age, with similar tastes in books, if not in natural sciences.

But what if W.S. were an old man? Or a boy? Or the sort of wealthy banker or merchant whom his parents would characterize as nouveau riche ? Ben saw nothing wrong with people who worked for their living, but his father was rather high in the instep. Until this moment, it had never occurred to Ben that he might be about to make what his parents considered an undesirable acquaintance.

He glanced about the churchyard, searching for anyone who could possibly be W.S. In one corner, two women and a child were studying gravestones. One of the women seemed familiar, though he couldn’t immediately place her. He felt certain he’d never seen the child before.

Nearer at hand, a young lady in a cloak peered up at the church building, studying the stained glass windows. Ben moved his eyes past her in search of W.S. But there was no one else. He was the only man in the churchyard. Had something delayed W.S.?

As Ben scanned the cemetery again, the bright red of the young lady’s cloak caught his eye. Bright red ? An icy shock washed over him, followed by a flush of embarrassment. It took only a moment for his startling suspicion to become a near-certainty.

Why had he never considered that W.S. might be a woman rather than a man? True, he couldn’t think of many women’s names that began with W, but there must be some. Winifred , he remembered. Maybe her name was “Winifred.”

Of course, there was nothing wrong with being a young lady rather than a young man. Winifred S. (or whatever her real name was) might be a perfectly charming, intelligent, well-educated young lady. But she was still a lady. A young lady, so far as he could tell.

Why, he wondered, couldn’t she have been an elderly spinster with an interest in literature? In that case, he could have spoken to her as he did his aunts. Or if she had been a child, he could have spoken with her much the same way he would have spoken to one of his younger cousins. Instead, she was a grown woman who looked no older than his own twenty-two years. In other words, far from spinsterhood.

Ben had not always been afraid to talk to women his age. When he’d been a child, conversing with girls had been neither easier nor harder than talking to boys. He’d experienced only his usual difficulties in understanding what other people meant and saying the right thing in response. But as he moved from boyhood into manhood, young women seemed to become both more alluring and more confusing.

A faux pas made in interactions with other gentlemen would be bad enough. But somehow, there seemed to be even more potential pitfalls involved when conversing with marriageable young ladies. On top of that, Ben worried that, being marriageable, they might want to marry him . His mother had impressed on him the importance of not paying too much attention to a girl if he did not intend to seriously court her. It would not be fair to raise a girl’s hopes only to dash them, she said.

Since Ben had no way of telling how much attention might lead a girl to expect a proposal, he preferred to pay as little attention to young ladies as possible. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible today. He’d arranged to meet W.S. and meet her he must. After all, it wasn’t her fault that she was a young lady rather than the young man he’d assumed her to be.

He gripped his walking stick more tightly, as if it would somehow protect him from the stranger’s feminine charms. He drew a deep breath and took a resolute step towards her.

Hearing his footsteps, she glanced over her shoulder. Some indecipherable emotion flickered across her face, and her mouth fell ajar. She waited for him to approach, her gloved hands clasped at her waist.

When he came to a halt in front of the stranger, he saw that she was biting her lower lip. Oddly, that reassured him. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who felt nervous.

“Are you B.R.?” Her cultured voice hinted at either an expensive education, exposure to good society, or both. Probably not someone his father would stigmatize as a “mushroom,” then, Ben concluded.

Up close, he saw she had sky-blue eyes framed by sooty lashes. Strange that she had such eyes when her hair was raven-wing black. In Ben’s experience, light-colored eyes most often accompanied light-colored hair.

Deuce take it. W.S. wasn’t just a young lady; she was a pretty young lady, with delicate eyebrows, a strong chin, and symmetrical features. Her clothing also suggested she came from a wealthy family. That made her precisely the most threatening type of female: one who might view Ben as potential husband material!

Dimly, Ben realized she was still waiting for him to answer. Heat flushed his face. “Yes, I am B.R.” He bowed. “W.S., I presume?”

She nodded. “I am Willa Selwyn.” Her voice sounded firmer, and she’d lost her initial wide-eyed stare.

“Willow?” Ben wasn’t sure he’d heard right. He’d never encountered that name. “As in a willow tree?”

She smiled, showing a glint of pearly teeth. “Not Willow. Willa . Short for Wilhelmina.”

“Ah, I see.” His guess of “William” had not been that far off, then, since Wilhelmina was a feminine form of “Wilhelm,” the German version of “William.” Somehow, that made him feel a tiny bit less foolish. He hadn’t been a hundred percent wrong about every detail.

Just the most important details.

While Ben tried to figure out how to introduce himself, the two women and the child accompanying them turned away from the grave marker they’d been studying and approached Ben and W.S.

The younger of the women wore a slight frown, but the older one’s face lit up with pleasure. Now that he was close enough to see the laugh lines around her blue eyes, Ben recognized her as the widow of the previous incumbent of St. Clement’s, though it took him a moment to recall her name.

“Mr. Radcliffe!” the gray-haired woman exclaimed. “Good to see you! Why do you make yourself so scarce around here?”

He ignored her rather intrusive question but responded to her greeting. “Good morning, Mrs. Trimmer! I hope you are well?”

“Fine as fivepence, now that my cousin is visiting me. She brought her daughters, as you see.” Mrs. Trimmer glanced at the younger woman, who still wore a faint frown. Was that her cousin? They looked nothing alike. Mrs. Trimmer was bony and tall; the younger woman was both shorter and plumper.

“Lady Wilhelmina, Lady Phoebe, Miss Hadfield, may I present Mr. Benjamin Radcliffe? He is Mr. Marlowe’s grandson. He moved here a year or two ago to help look after his grandfather.”

Ben hastened to make a proper bow.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Radcliffe,” murmured Miss Hadfield. She wore a prim gray dress, but she had a pleasant face—or rather, one that would have looked pleasant if not for the worry lines. “Have you met Lady Wilhelmina before today?”

Ben’s mouth went dry. How could he answer that? Unmarried men and unmarried women were not supposed to correspond. Not unless they were related by blood. He had done wrong in engaging with a correspondence with her. And if she were Lady Wilhelmina, she must be the daughter of a nobleman. An earl at the least. Good Lord! His stomach sank under the weight of his errors.

Lady Wilhelmina stepped in to answer. “Mr. Radcliffe and I exchanged a word or two in passing, Miss Hadfield, but we were never formally introduced.”

The quiet confidence of her voice reassured Ben, making it easier for him to answer. “Yes, that is quite right.” He flicked his eyes towards his quondam correspondent and smiled. “It is a pleasure to be properly introduced to you at last, Lady Wilhelmina.”

“Oh, I am glad to bring the two of you together!” Mrs. Trimmer gushed. “Back in my husband’s time, Ben’s mother used to teach in the Sunday school I managed. Of course, in those days she was only Miss Charity Marlowe, not Lady Radcliffe. I’ve not seen much of dear Miss Charity since she married, since Sir Lewis’s estate is in Berkshire. But I’m so glad they could spare Benjamin. It must be difficult to send one’s only child off for months at a time—”

Here, Ben interrupted. “You forget, ma’am, that though I did not go to a public school, I did matriculate at Cambridge. That took me well away from home for months at a time, too.” He saw no need to mention that he’d left the university without taking a degree.

Mrs. Trimmer, who was every bit as good-natured as he remembered, did not take offense at his correction, saying only, “Oh, yes, I quite forgot that.”

Ben glanced at Lady Wilhelmina and smiled wryly. In his reply to her first letter, he had very nearly asked her if she’d gone to university. If he’d done that, he might have learned that W.S. was not the young man he’d been imagining. Not the future friend he’d hoped for. That might have prevented today’s disappointment.

Miss Hadfield glanced at the two young ladies. “I am afraid we had best be heading home.” She inclined her head at Ben. “I hope to see again, Mr. Radcliffe.” Next, she caught Mrs. Trimmer’s eye and raised her eyebrows, though Ben had no idea what message she meant to convey.

Fortunately, Mrs. Trimmer seemed to know what was expected of her. “Thursday afternoon is my usual day for calling, but Benjamin knows he is welcome to drop in any day of the week. And bring your aunt if you can, Mr. Radcliffe.” Mrs. Trimmer patted his arm.

Ben, who hated being touched by strangers, could not prevent the flinch that followed. He hoped she did not notice.

Though it went against the grain, Ben said, “I shall have to call one of these days, then.”

What a ridiculous idea! Morning calls were for women. He could imagine few things worse than sipping tea and swapping gossip with locals in Mrs. Trimmer’s parlor. He’d better find a way to avoid such a visit.