Page 80 of Unbound Duchess

“Jessette, my sweet! You are back from Paris?!” Madalene said happily.

“Only for a few weeks,” Jessette replied, kissing Madalene’s cheeks. “I was so hoping I would get to see you. I have been meaning to visit, but Mama has kept me so busy!”

Ellen stayed back as the two young women fell quickly into a conversation. She, of course, stepped up and politely offered greetings when Madalene introduced them, but unlike her sister, she did not have a penchant for chatter, so she comfortably waited from a short distance as Madalene caught up with her friend.

As she waited, she brought her glass of lemonade to her lips and let her gaze roam around the sun-drenched lawn and the conversational guests that had gathered into clusters. She waited for that usual sense of loneliness to encroach upon her, yet it never did. She smiled, realizing that she no longer cared that she was different. She no longer cared whether she was or was not the subject of someone else’s conversation, and it was all because of Laurence’s lesson.

“You have always had the sweetest smile, Ellie,” a deep voice purred close by.

Cold leeched into her veins as she recognized that voice, and she looked up across the refreshment table. There, standing on the other side, was Benedict. His smile was wide and genuine, but there was something different about his features. Something dark and unhinged lurked in his gaze. He had stubble along his jawline, and his dark hair was longer now, long enough to curl around the brim of his black top hat.

“You smile as if you have a secret,” he said quietly, tilting his head slightly to the left. “It was always so alluring.”

Ellen struggled to swallow her lemonade, the sweet drink turning bitter as she worked her throat.

“Hello, Bennie,” she said softly, hoping that using the childhood pet name she’d given to him would keep him calm.

She had thought that she was stronger. That she was prepared to face her cousin one last time, but as he slowly began to walk around the table, his eyes never wavering from her, and her nerves began to fray, she knew she had been wrong. Ellen threw a glance over her shoulder toward where Laurence had been standing, and her stomach tightened as she found him gone. She then looked over toward Madalene, who had walked a few more steps away with her friend Jessette, and now had her back turned to her.

“I received your letter,” Benedict said as he reached her side, his deep voice full of longing. “You have no idea how deeply your words touched me. To know that you wanted to see me again was…a revelation.”

Ellen’s breath shook as she exhaled through parted lips, her heart starting to beat a little faster.

“I…I wanted to apologize,” she said, willing her voice not to shake, “For the way I provoked you at the ball.”

Light flickered in Benedict’s widening eyes.

“I forgave you weeks ago, sweet Ellie,” he said, his hand reaching out toward her arm.

Panic flared as his long fingers wrapped slowly around her forearm.

“You must realize by now that I truly do not want to hurt you, my love.” His deep voice was quiet and full of pleading as he stepped even closer to her. “Some lessons just need to be learned, even if they are harsh.”

Fight. Kick. Scratch.

The inner voice demanded her to do these things, but as the party continued on around them, so full of oblivious people, Ellen felt frozen.

“All I ever wanted to do was love you,” Benedict rasped. “Do you remember? Remember how you used to love me?”

Ellen forced in another breath, but it was shallow and not at all enough to calm her racing heart.

“I still love you, Bennie,” she quietly insisted. “But I have always loved you as my cousin. Only my cousin, and that is the only way I can love you.”

Panic shifted in Benedict’s eyes as he furrowed his brows and hurriedly shook his head.

“I can change your mind,” he replied, his grip on her forearm tightening painfully. “Let me change your mind.”

The shattering of a dropped champagne glass erupted from behind Ellen, and though she didn’t know why, the sound freed her from her moment of frozen fear.

She moved, jerking her arm from his grasp, and walked with a hurried pace away from him and toward Madalene. Her heart stuttered when she found she was nowhere to be seen.

Laurence. She had to find Laurence or Solomon. She remembered Solomon had said he was going to look in the house, and she’d last seen Laurence watching her from the patio. So she headed there, making sure to bump her shoulder lightly against anyone close enough, hoping that the attention drawn to her would slow Benedict down.

She made it off the lawn and was about to lift her foot to take the first stone step up onto the patio when a force shoved into her from behind, and she was being dragged down into the tall, round bushes that surrounded the base of the large manor. A hand clamped down on her mouth as she let out a scream, muffling it. But still, she fought as Laurence taught her. She threw her elbow back and landed it in his belly. She stomped her foot, her heel squishing the toe of a boot. She dug her fingernails into the back of the hand clamped around her mouth, dragging them down until she felt torn flesh gathering underneath them.

“Ellie, stop,” Benedict snarled in her ear.

She could hear the pain in his voice, could feel his now sweat-slicked hand sliding away from her mouth. If she could get in one more hit, if she could get her mouth free, she could scream.