Page 9 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

“Can it be fixed?” Benedict enquired, jumping down from the carriage now and closing the door carefully behind him. “Or will we have to send to the nearest village for assistance?”

“Yes, I can fix that,” the coachman opined after a few further moments of investigation. “There’s only the pin to straighten and then I’ll refit the whole wheel again. It’s not bent too badly, thankfully, and we have the tools. We should be on the road again within the hour, I reckon.”

“An hour,” mused Benedict. “Well, then. The ladies had best stretch their legs and the children play under the trees for a while.”

Opening the carriage door again, he communicated this news to Lady Louisa and helped her down to the ground with Ezra. The second carriage soon pulled up behind them and Lady Esher was also apprised of the delay, pronouncing this a perfect time for a dolls’ tea party beneath the large chestnut tree in the field beside them.

The nursemaids were amenable to this and imagining that the rest of the party would soon be settled on a picnic blanket beneath the branches, Benedict debated whether to smoke a cigar or return to supervise the wheel repair. If an extra pair of hands would speed the work, he was not too conscious of his rank to step in.

“Don’t you want to join the tea party, Ezra?” he heard Lady Louisa enquire before the small boy dashed off into the long grass in lieu of response.

“Chase me, Lulu!” Ezra replied cheekily and she was forced to oblige.

Sighing and giving up any thoughts of his cigar, Benedict followed in their wake. He was beginning to understand Lady Esher’s over-protectiveness of her niece. With such astonishing naivety, how could Lady Louisa safely navigate any of life’s risks and dangers, big or small?

“Oh, are you coming to play too, Your Grace?” she asked as she noticed him following. “Ezra, don’t go too far!”

“Chase me!” giggled Ezra, circling back and running a ring around the pair of them before heading off into the long grass again.

“I was hoping to supervise more than do any chasing myself,” Benedict admitted. “I am far too old for playtime, I believe.”

“Too cynical for love and too old for play?!” questioned Lady Louisa and burst into peals of golden laughter again. “I could believe that of some crusty old bachelor but I cannot believe it of you, Your Grace. You are too good a man and too young.”

Although her words were patently absurd, her laughter was the most utterly enchanting sound. While feeling bound to dispute her words, Benedict felt he might endure far worse needling than this to enjoy the pleasure of such simple and good-hearted company.

“I have rarely been called good,” he observed with a raised eyebrow, thinking with amusement of other descriptive terms scandal sheet writers had recently applied to him – amoral, rakish and libertine being the best of them. “I am not sure that I like it, or that I even know what it means.”

“Oh, children and animals always know good men from bad, Your Grace,” insisted Lady Louisa, her eyes tracking Ezra’s progress and her direction changing accordingly. “Fanny and Ezra like you and I shall therefore believe you to be good, even if you insist otherwise.”

Dear Lord! Benedict had to laugh quietly to himself again as Ezra called out something about butterflies and dashed away ahead of them into the long grass again. It swayed in the wind, blurring the signs of the child’s movements. Had the boy gone left or right? Lady Louisa had followed right so Benedict went left

“She must think she’s a character in a story, or the romantic heroine of a poem,” Benedict muttered to himself with incredulous amusement.

It came to him that Lady Louisa’s mysterious suitor would have to be a good man, or her naive heart would break on contact with reality. Perhaps wickedly, he longed to tell her some real home truths about life and love, men and women. She really was of an age to know such things and Benedict could justify it as trying to avoid her later and more serious disappointment.

He had, however, made a promise to Lady Esher, and he intended to keep it. Plunging on through the grass for some seconds, he wondered if he had lost the pair. Just as he was preparing to to call out for them, Lady Louisa came hurtling back through the grass and almost crashed into him.

“Ezra isn’t with you?” she gasped in alarm, her pretty face draining immediately of all color. “I thought he must be, because he wasn’t over there.”

“No, he was with you,” Benedict returned, sharing her alarm. “How could he have vanished into thin air?”

Good God, imagine having to return to Wexford Manor and confess to Damien and Seraphine that he had lost their son and heir within only a few hours of having charge of the boy. Worse than that, imagine little Ezra realizing himself lost and alone in a strange place…

This was another thought that called back too many memories for Benedict. It was never, ever the right time to remember and sometimes he wished he could wipe his own childhood from his head forever. Except perhaps the memory of his mother’s smile…

“Ezra!” he shouted, knowing that there was no time to lose. “Ezra, where are you?”

“Ezra! Ezra!” called out Lady Louisa’s desperate voice in turn, wringing her hands as she turned and gazed in every direction, the whole field filled with waist-high grasses that could render a small child invisible and woodland on two sides. “He could be anywhere. Where do we even start to look..?”

Chapter Four

“Ezra!” the Duke of Northwick roared again, his deep voice booming across the overgrown field that was presumably lying fallow that year. “Ezra!”

How red-faced and angry he seemed now. Louisa had seen the moment that the duke’s mood had changed, like a thunder-cloud descending on his handsome face. She was sure that he blamed her for losing Ezra, but not as much as she blamed herself. She had been distracted by that silly conversation about love and marriage and children.

They both ought to have been focused on the children and not some foolish argument, no matter how wrong he was.

“Ezra!” Louisa cried out, wanting to run after the child but knowing that any direction she took might be wrong and only carry her further away from him.