* * *
‘Why did your father disown you?’ She was curled against his chest contentedly, but Bennett had to know. They had been avoiding this conversation for most of the night and in the morning he had to travel back to London.
She shifted slightly so that she could prop her head on her elbow and absently trailed a finger down his stomach. ‘My mother was American and an heiress. By the time she met my father, she was all alone in the world. He had gone to America to find himself a wealthy wife and she was the most obvious candidate. She was young, beautiful and impressionable and hopelessly impressed with his title, and he can be quite charming when he puts his mind to it. To begin with, he was happy with his choice but, after she had me, my mother found it difficult to carry another child. Like all of the aristocracy, my father needed a son and became more and more frustrated by her inability to provide him with one. After a while, he bitterly resented her. We were both shipped out of the house in Mayfair and sent to live in Cheapside when I was twelve. My mother was convinced it was a temporary separation, but my father had quite different ideas. He had her money, but he no longer wanted her, and I believe he even considered divorce. From then on I saw less and less of him. I didn’t mind that. I had never really had that much to do with him anyway, but it destroyed my mother. She spent every hour of every day blaming herself for his disinterest. Then her physical health deteriorated too.’
Her hand stilled on his stomach and a faraway look came into her eyes. ‘The War of 1812 gave my father the perfect opportunity to be rid of her. As soon as England went back to fighting with the Americans, my father applied for an annulment. By then, my mother’s place in society was well and truly forgotten, so he was able to do it quietly. Fortunately for him, British hatred for America was at its peak, so the bishops were sympathetic to his plight and granted it. After that, he refused to continue to pay for the house on Cheapside and we were left to fend for ourselves. The law was completely on his side, of course, because once the marriage had been declared null and void he was legally absolved from any financial responsibility, despite the fact that a great deal of his money had originally come from my mother. Because the marriage had ceased to exist, I went from a viscount’s daughter to being illegitimate overnight. I am not sure how much money he paid to keep the whole sordid affair out of the papers, but he managed it. In the end it all fizzled without much of a scandal and he was able to move on with his life and remarry. You already know the rest of the story.’
Something about the brief tale did not ring true. ‘Annulments are difficult to obtain. Even if your motherwasan American, that would not have given the bishops a valid enough reason to void the marriage, especially as your parents had a child.’
‘Oh, Ben,’ she said on a sigh. ‘That is because I have not told you the worst of it. My father knew something quite damning about my mother’s family that he was able to twist and use for his own benefit. My grandfather fought against the British in the Revolution, and not just as a soldier. He used his fortune to pay for an entire regiment of militia. A very bloodthirsty and successful regiment of militia. And his signature proudly sits on the Declaration of Independence. In the eyes of the British government, my grandfather was a traitor. And although my father knew about all of this before they married, he lied and told the bishops that she had concealed that pertinent information from him. As a loyal peer of the realm, he could not live with the shame of knowing that he had been duped into a marriage with the enemy. The bishops believed him and the annulment was granted with surprising haste.’
Bennett took a moment to let that all sink in. It was certainly much worse than he had anticipated. Not only was she illegitimate, but she was also the granddaughter of a known Revolutionary. Parliament might be accepting of the first, considering the circumstances by which it had come about, but it would never accept the second. Never in a million years would it accept the second. Unfortunately, she understood his silence. ‘You cannot marry me, Ben. Your political career would be over.’
He pulled her close and held her tight. ‘That doesn’t matter, Amelia. So long as I have you I will be happy.’ And perhaps he could be. He still had estates that needed managing, business affairs and investments that needed overseeing. His days could still be filled with purpose—a lesser purpose than he had been born for, granted, but he would make the best of it for her.
‘Of course it matters. I will not be the cause of you abandoning all of your dreams. Besides, I am rather relying on you to change this world we live in for the better. You cannot achieve that from outside of the Cabinet and I am not prepared to allow you to make that sacrifice on my behalf.’
Bennett felt sick at the stark reality that she presented. ‘What about us, Amelia?’
She was quiet for so long that he began to dread her answer. After tonight, surely she did not expect that he would be able to walk away? ‘We will always have tonight.’
‘I want you to be my wife!’
‘We both know that is impossible, Ben. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.’ She rolled on top of him then and waylaid him with kisses that did not fool him. She was trying to distract him and because he did not know any of the answers he let her. His intense frustration at their seemingly hopeless situation combined with his building passion made further conversation on the subject impossible, and by the time he had finished making desperate love to her she claimed that she was too exhausted to continue to discuss it. So Bennett slept with her in his arms.
He wasn’t the least bit surprised when he awoke in the morning to find that she was not there.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Emotional outbursts in public are unseemly...
Later that day, Bennett sat next to Lord Liverpool and waited for the end of the debate when he could deliver his long-anticipated, frequently postponed speech. It was no longer just about the need for cleaner slums. After his experiences in Seven Dials, there were a great many more issues that he needed Parliament to be aware of. After several attempts, he had abandoned trying to write down everything he wanted to say. If his speech was to be powerful enough it needed to be honest, not rehearsed. Bennett’s words had to come from the heart, not the head.
He waited patiently at first, but when the half hour of shouting turned into an hour and it looked increasingly likely that it would have to be postponed yet again, his patience began to wane. A half hour after that, he had had quite enough. He was sacrificing his happiness for this institution; the least they could do was listen.
‘People are dying!’He did not remember surging to his feet or clenching his fists and shaking them or bellowing at the top of his voice, but the deathly silence that occurred after his outburst was something Bennett would remember with great clarity until his dying day. The stunned House stared back at him, clearly flabbergasted that Bennett Montague, Sixteenth Duke of Aveley, and normally a calm presence in their ranks, had sounded quite so impassioned. For a moment he felt as if the floor had been pulled from beneath his feet and then he decided that this momentary quiet might well be the only time that he had to state his case. ‘I have been visiting the slums,’ he began falteringly, ‘and what I have found there is so grotesque, so unjust, that I can hardly believe that we are allowing it to happen.’ Oddly, tears started to form in his eyes, something that had never, ever happened to him before, but he ploughed on. It was too important not to. ‘I saw families starving. Children so emaciated that I doubt that they will survive the winter. If they are lucky, they get to sleep on straw in a filthy room but, more often than not, they sleep on the streets...’
‘Spare us your bleeding-heart liberalism, Aveley!’ someone shouted from the back, but Bennett continued undaunted.
‘We have to do something to help these people. That we allow it to happen is not right...’
‘Those lazy bastards need to find work and stop wasting their money on gin!’
‘Hear, hear!’
‘The slums are filled with criminals who do not want to earn an honest wage!’
Bennett shook his head, bewildered. Three sentences. That was all they would listen to. He was throwing away a life with Amelia for this? All around him, the lords began to shout their own bigoted, unfounded opinions of the poor across the floor like poisoned darts. Within seconds, they were back to braying at each other, the cacophony so loud that no voice or opinion or reasonable argument stood any chance of actually being heard. It occurred to him then that they sounded like a farmyard. A disorganised and disparate farmyard with no farmer to feed them. He turned towards the rest of the Cabinet for support, but they all looked every which way except at him. Only Liverpool glared at Bennett and he looked thoroughly appalled.
‘Use your head, man! I am not sure what has brought on this sudden lapse in judgement, but this unseemly behaviour is not what I expect from a member of my Cabinet.’
Use his head?How many times had his father admonished him to do just the same? Perhaps that would always be the fundamental difference between him and his father. Bennett felt injustice in his heart first and wanted to right it using his head; his father had been pragmatic and always used only his head. He had had no time for emotional decisions. Or even emotions. How had his uncle described him?—a cold fish, incapable of basic human feelings. But Bennett was not his father.
Thank God.
The epiphany was both blinding and liberating. He was not his father! So why was he walking so carefully in his father’s footsteps? He hated all of the chaos and compromise of Parliament. In which case, why shouldn’t he let his heart guide his decisions? Slowly, he allowed his eyes to travel across the furore of the debating chamber, seeing it for the first time with objective eyes. The path here was blocked—but there were other paths. Therewasanother perspective.
Who knew?
