Page 17 of Lord of the Darkness

“How dare you!” Ariana lay sprawled on the floor, her face half-hidden behind her once-perfectly-dressed hair. “Even my own father has never spoken to me like that!”

“What’s going on up here?”

Benedict glanced up in surprise to find the Earl of Hazelworth standing in the doorway. His face burning in shame, he straightened up and stepped down from the bed.

“I’m — I’m sorry,” he stammered, “really. You weren’t supposed to see us like this. I shouldn’t have yelled.”

Suddenly he was eleven years old and kneeling at the feet of his friend, who was bleeding and badly frightened. But to his astonishment Hazelworth’s face curled into a smile of almost malevolent approval.

“Now this is what I like to see — a woman being put in her place. Darkmire, my friend, we’ll make a man of you yet.”

Perhaps it was fortunate that Benedict was too dumbstruck to answer, or he might have told Hazelworth what he really thought of him and his methods.

***

They had, after Hazelworth’s interruption of their argument, all brushed themselves off, and gone down to dinner – but it had been an unpleasant evening of stilted conversation and simmering resentment. He had barely stopped thinking about it all since.

Clearly nothing was working as it should. Benedict had tried being stern with Ariana, and the experiment had ended in discord and humiliation.

What was worse, he felt like he was giving in to the darkest parts of his nature. Ariana’s father was like a tempter, some foul demon whispering in his ear, hoping to corrupt his gentle spirit and poison his marriage before it could even really begin. Sickened with himself, disgusted by the way that he had behaved, Benedict barely spoke to Ariana over the next several days.

He was too ashamed.

More, he didn’t like to be reminded of what he had done — of the cruelty he was capable of, when pushed to his limit. He hated the look of pain he had seen in her eyes as she’d lain there crying on the floor, a look of betrayal and accusation mingled with disbelief. She may not have loved him, and she may not have respected him, but she had expected better of him than this. He had long thought of himself as a fundamentally kind person, but now she was sorely testing his self-image.

Benedict’s head was becoming over-crowded, like a glass full of water that would overflow and spill if a single drop more was added. He and Ariana were being driven slowly mad, trapped in this house with only each other to talk to.

Or rather, not talk to – their interactions were barely civil, and struggled to reach the scale of whole sentences.

He needed to get out. He needed to see a friend and seek their advice. He needed to breathe the open air and plan and think.

He had a friend in the village, Mr James Fitzherbert, who had been Benedict’s one childhood friend in the district, somehow unafraid of the reputation of Darkmire Abbey. Benedict had missed him when he went to war, but James had been amongst the lucky ones – he had come home whole. And unlike many, he had returned carefree, and seemingly unchanged. He had married soon after, to a quiet cheerful woman who appeared to suit him well, and Benedict had not seen him often since.

James was not a rich man, but he survived by performing odd jobs for various people, whilst his wife took in sewing and the like. People regarded him with good charity, even when he took up another odd occupation, for he was kind, and his mother had always been popular in the village. She had been what might, in previous centuries, have been described as a hedge witch, doling out potions and salves made from the plants of the woods and fields. Those potions had often helped heal those who would never have been able to afford a physician. Benedict had always wondered if they might have saved his mother, had his father allowed old Mrs Fitzherbert to see her.

The Fitzherberts lived in the small cottage which had been James’ mother’s, and he moved about as he needed, depending on his work, leaving his wife to care for their home when he was away. The partly itinerant nature of the work he took on sometimes made him difficult to locate, but when Benedict knocked at his door, Mrs Fitzherbert informed him that James had recently gone to work on the grounds of the Harbottle estate.

Disappointed at not finding James home, Benedict thanked Mrs Fitzherbert, and turned back towards Darkmire Abbey. The Harbottle estate was quite some distance from the village – and Benedict did not have time to go there that day. He resolved, however, that, if nothing improved soon, he would seek out James, and hope that he might gain new insight from his old friend.

***

Ariana had not thought that things could get worse, but they had. She supposed it was, to some degree, her own fault, for behaving like a small child and having a tantrum. If nothing else, it had shown her that Benedict was unlikely to ever resort to true violence – that he had pushed her off the bed had been, she could tell, an act of frustration, not one of viciousness.

But whilst that realisation was a relief, it did nothing to improve the bleak prospect of the years ahead – years in which it seemed likely that they would live in perpetual disagreement.

Now, he was almost ignoring her – barely talking to her, and looking at her with that glowering dark expression, as if the entire situation was her fault. The gloom of the house did not help, nor did the Housekeeper’s obvious displeasure with everything that Ariana did.

Helena’s advice had led her to make her situation worse, rather than better, and she had now penned another letter to her friend, asking for further advice, and hoping that whatever came back to her would produce a better result. If it did not, then perhaps she would be forced to make her own choices, in lieu of any advice at all.

On this particular day, Benedict had gone out about the estate, to see some of the tenant farmers, apparently. She did not really care where he had gone – just to be away from his darkly glowering presence was a relief. It was a pity, she thought yet again, that things had not been different – not just two years before, but now. Had she had a chance to get to know Benedict, had she the slightest idea what he truly cared about, she might have dealt with all of this better – he was not an ugly man by any means, and as a Duke, there was wealth to spare – but any appeal he may have held had been negated from the start by the fact that she had been given no choice.

She was sitting in one of the downstairs parlours – a room which had obviously not been changed in fifty years or more, from the state of the drapes and wallpaper. The dark half-panelling of the walls was topped by a wallpaper which might once have been a charming shade of cream, but which had aged to a colour more reminiscent of blotchy mud, and was set off by drapes in a shade rather like that of dried blood. No doubt, if they were washed, their true colour might be revealed to be a moderate burgundy – or they might simply disintegrate at the touch of water.

The sight annoyed her, and a sudden excess of energy sent her to her feet, calling for a footman.

When one appeared, she fixed him with her best haughty expression, and spoke, all the while hoping that he would actually do as she said.

“I want to redecorate this room. But first, I want these drapes washed – let us discover what colour they truly are, before I decide whether to keep them, or to replace them completely.”

He regarded her with a startled expression, then bowed.

“Yes, Your Grace. I will send the maids to take them down immediately.”

A small sense of hope slipped into her. Perhaps there was something she could do, after all, apart from sit about looking decorative and not reading… She followed the footman out of the parlour, not wishing to experience the cloud of dust which would undoubtedly be released by the act of taking down the drapes, and went to the music room – it was a location which gave her some pleasure, even though her skills on the pianoforte were limited – and at least playing the pianoforte was an activity which fell within her husband’s ‘approved behaviour’ list.

When Benedict returned to the house hours later, he found her still there, playing. For a moment, when she looked up as he entered the room, their eyes met, and she thought that she saw something there which she would never have expected – softness, almost warmth. But it was a fleeting impression, and he quickly set his face into its usual hard expression.

“I believe that we should go up and change for dinner, Ariana.”

“Yes Benedict.”

She saw no point in arguing, for he was right – the afternoon had slipped away from her – rather like her life seemed to be doing, in the gloom of Darkmire Abbey.

At least her actions in asking that the parlour drapes be cleaned had not yet caused the incursion of a furious Mrs Haversham – which was what she had expected to happen. That, all by itself, made this a good day.

It was a sorrowful state of affairs, she thought with bitter humour, that her days had come to be measured by such things.