Page 7 of To Defend a Damaged Duke (Regency Rossingley #2)

“ YOUNG MEN’S LOVE lies not truly in their hearts but in their eyes ,” the Honourable Beatrice Hazard declared as she took Benedict’s arm. “At least, that’s Will Shakespeare’s learned opinion, anyhow. And his understanding of human desires has no equal.”

Strolling through the gardens at Vauxhall, they deliberately dawdled a short way behind Francis and Isabella.

As Benedict dully appreciated the plain simplicity of a broad avenue of trees, it struck him that he had never seen Tommy outside of a closed room.

They’d certainly never strolled together, arm in arm.

A month had elapsed since Benedict and Tommy’s worlds had collided. Naturally, Benedict had steered clear of Squire’s, much to his brother’s befuddlement. He’d not been very much of anywhere, in fact, except for his stables. Needless to say, the month had not been a happy one.

“Then my brother may have broken the mould,” Benedict responded. “Whilst he is undoubtedly enamoured of Isabella’s outward beauty, I do believe his love for her is heartfelt and true.”

“So do I,” agreed Beatrice. “Sickening, isn’t it?”

He laughed for perhaps the first time that week. “It pains them to be parted from each other for even a day. How will we ever find an undesirable to threaten her virtue and thereby tempt Lord Ludham to receive Francis’s suit if she is forever in his company?”

“Perhaps your own presence, never far from your brother’s shoulder, also shies them away, Your Grace. You put the fear of God into them.”

“I do?” He glanced down at her in astonishment, his thick eyebrows huddled together.

“Yes! You are very forbidding, especially when you regard a person like that. Your eyes scowl .”

“They do?” He twitched the muscles in his cheeks and wiggled his eyebrows up and down as if trying to rearrange them. Hopeless.

She laughed prettily. “You sound as if you are conjugating verbs, Your Grace. And…and appear to have developed an unfortunate tic. Yes, they do. You do.”

“Huh.” With difficulty, he refrained from frowning and encouraged his lips to curve up a little. Now, he probably looked like a simpleton. “Scowling is not my intent.”

“Never mind.” Beatrice gave his bicep a friendly little squeeze.

“I would be thrilled if you persevered with the habit whilst strolling in my company. Being seen on the arm of one of the ton ’s most eligible, dour dukes is a first-rate strategy for maintaining my unmarried status.

” She paused. “It also is excellent at maintaining yours.”

“Hah!” Two laughs in one morning? Unheard of. “Then we must persist.”

Smiling fondly, Benedict walked with her for a while in companionable silence before halting to admire a cheerful splash of early crocuses.

Did Tommy ever pause to appreciate early crocuses?

Did Tommy even like crocuses? Benedict had no idea, but the man crashed his thoughts at every damned turn.

Ahead of them, Isabella’s merry chatter cut through the crisp air.

“Francis is fretting about you,” Beatrice ventured. “He says you work too hard and are not yourself.”

“No,” agreed Benedict cautiously. In the days following his unhappy skirmish with Tommy, he’d risen early to avoid sharing breakfast with his brother and then skulked in the second study for the remainder of the morning until it was time for his daily tour of the stables.

In between those illustrious activities, he had brooded.

“I have…I have suffered with melancholia of late.”

“Ah.” She nodded sadly. “Your usual equanimity is being drained by that old friend. I have, on occasion, been well acquainted with her myself.” She gave his arm another tight squeeze.

“I cannot imagine the strain a father’s sudden death and taking on all his duties has on a person.

Though worth very little, it is my opinion that you are coping admirably. ”

“Your opinion is one that I regard most highly, Beatrice.”

Stooping, she plucked a weed from between two blooms. “You are most kind, Your Grace. But if I may be so bold, I am…I am also of the opinion that ensuring the smooth running of your affairs is not your only concern.”

As Benedict stiffened, she added, “I have a sympathetic and discreet ear.”

“You are most kind yourself, Beatrice.”

At risk of losing sight of Francis and Isabella—heaven forbid someone spread rumours they were unchaperoned—they sauntered on in the general direction of their awaiting carriage.

The breezy morning air carried the sharp tang of rain.

Casting his gaze towards the lumpish grey sky, Benedict picked up the pace.

Soon, they would be blessed by another dreary downpour.

“I recently had cause to spend time with a person I believed lost to me forever,” he began suddenly. Even that simple sentence pained him; it wasn’t something he had anticipated ever confiding in anyone. He pushed on. “A person, I am ashamed to say, I have treated very badly.”

“Are you referring to Lord Lyndon? If so, let me assure you the only person who has wronged Lord Lyndon is himself. Since your father’s passing, you have shown him nothing but compassion and generosity.”

“No.” Benedict shook his head. “Not Lyndon. Although I question myself over him daily too. Papa was of the strong opinion that one must be cruel to be kind. He believed keeping Lyndon poor would show him the error of his ways. But lately, I find myself questioning several of my own moralistic judgements and thus extend those questions to my dealings with Lyndon. And…I wonder if I come up short.”

Beatrice pondered this as the path weaved around a copse. Few of Benedict’s circle—and he included the menfolk—shared her thirst for knowledge, nor indeed, the wisdom she gained from it.

“I believe, Your Grace, that a man who thinks so deeply and questions himself so thoroughly ought, by his very nature, be more adept at guiding his morals along a wholesome route than a man arrogant enough to believe he is right simply because he is a man to whom others must defer.”

“At risk of drearily repeating myself, you are very kind.”

“Only to those who deserve it,” she countered with a chuckle. “To most, I am a harridan spinster with a tongue too tart for her own good. And I shall make use of its acidity by being so audacious as to ask if what concerns you has anything to do with love.”

Benedict made a strangled sound. What ailed him had everything to do with love. “Both your tongue and your perceptiveness should never be underestimated, Lady Beatrice.”

The carriage was in sight; Francis and Isabella paused, ostensibly to admire the bare, clean branches of an elm but mostly to stretch out their fond farewell.

“I was in love, once,” Benedict admitted, his heart inexplicably racing. “When I was very young.”

Beatrice’s fine eyebrows arched with curiosity.

“I imagine you find that hard to believe, do you not? Someone like me, with this scowling countenance?”

Examining him for a moment, she shook her fair head. “It’s not so hard to imagine. I see how your eyes rest so fondly on your brother and Isabella. You are not without soul.”

A soul which, at this exact moment, lay in tatters. His encounter with Tommy had awoken complex emotions dormant for many a year. He sucked in a breath. “Our love was unquenchable. Or so I believed.”

A stark memory of Tommy’s chest heaving against his own flooded his mind. Of him panting, laughing into Benedict’s mouth. “We…we thought we’d invented the damned thing. I was so enamoured. I trusted our roots would be entwined forever.”

“But it wasn’t meant to be,” Beatrice prompted.

He reached out to a low twig and snapped it off. Early crocuses be damned; hope, light, and spring were barely imaginable.

“It could never be,” he corrected. “Though neither of us considered it. We were too young and foolish to ever look beyond the end of our noses. The future was another continent, as far as we were concerned.”

“I’m surmising she was married,” Beatrice responded in her usual blunt fashion. “Or betrothed to another.”

And therein lay the problem. Tommy was neither. “If only it had been that simple.”

“This is the same person you thought you had lost forever and whom you’d wronged, is it not?”

“Yes. And I have no excuses for my actions. I panicked, you see, and behaved abhorrently. I have never forgiven myself. And now this person hates me with a passion burning as brightly and fiercely as the flames of our lost love. And there is nought I can do about it. And…and yet, for my part, there is no hatred. I would like nothing more than to make amends in any way that person sees fit.”

“And you cannot? There is no path back?”

Benedict shivered as the first few spots of rain pattered onto his shoulders.

Thunder grumbled like the boom of a distant cannon.

Did Tommy enjoy thunderstorms? Or did he flinch at every crack?

Ahead, a groom held the carriage door open, ready to transport the duke to wherever he wished to travel next. If only he knew.

“I am of the opinion that person wishes I never darken their door again.”

*

THE PEACEFUL DAILY routine of Benedict’s stables did not have its usual restorative effect.

Despite being firm favourites to win, two of his horses had failed to finish in the top three at Newmarket.

One had pulled up a furlong short, the jockey declaring him lame.

Watching the creature now as a groom walked him around the water pump, all four limbs seemed in perfect working order.

Benedict leaned against Nimbus’s stable door, sneaking him extra carrot treats.

Another thing he didn’t know about Tommy.

Did he ride? Did he wager? He owned a blackleg business—a thriving one if Joe Jonas, his stable master, was to be believed.

Squire’s stands lined all the racecourses these days.

Perhaps Tommy frequently attended himself.

Perhaps he and Benedict had already brushed shoulders.

He didn’t think so. He would have felt it, a crackle between them like the frozen split second before a fork of lightning struck.

He would have jerked around; his eyes would have landed on those harsh cheekbones framed by neatly cropped hair, an ordinary sandy blond until one touched it and discovered it was soft at silk.

And that slightly cruel, thin-lipped mouth that had flitted so readily between kissing Benedict and being kissed by him.

He’d have been drawn to those flashing eyes, too, unable to wrench his gaze away.

The eyes of a feral cat. Were they blue or a devilish grey? Benedict never could tell.

Tommy could never loathe Benedict as much as he loathed himself.

The intervening years only served to highlight the unpalatable truth; he’d left an innocent boy he’d loved to his fate.

So many promises had spilled from his mouth back then, in between the kisses.

It made him heartsick remembering them and how he’d broken them all to save his own pitiful skin so he could become an imposter of a venerable duke, with eighteen racehorses, umpteen fawning staff, and homes littering every county.

And Benedict had the nerve to censure Lyndon’s callous behaviour?

His brother might be a cad, but he wasn’t a damned fraud.