Page 47 of Her Wily Duke

“Ariana, if you allow your father to arrange your marriage,” the strange man said, “you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life!”

Ariana paled and eyed the door, as if wanting to flee inside before he caused a scene, despite the fact that there was no one else there to witness it.

“Who is that man?” Benedict asked.

“Lord Jasper Peele, heir to the Marquess of Wittering,” said Ariana warily. “He’s been in love with me since we were children.”

Benedict turned a surprised glance back to the approaching man. He did not look at all what one might expect from the heir to a Marquess.

“And your father didn’t approve?”

“He threatened to shoot him if he ever came onto the property again.”

“That doesn’t seem to have stopped him. Does he know that we’re married?”

“Apparently not.”

Lord Jasper came striding toward them in a simultaneously menacing and ridiculous fashion, his inebriation making his progress more of a wavering line than a straight path. Benedict ushered a hurrying Ariana through the door which the patient footman held open, his face carefully uninterested. Then he turned back to stand impassively at the top of the stairs to prevent Lord Jasper from entering the house, should he attempt such a thing.

“Don’t come any nearer,” he said, “or you’re going to regret it.”

Lord Jasper paused, looking startled by the menace in this stranger’s voice. Benedict glowered, filled with a degree of intense disdain that he hadn’t thought possible toward someone he had only just met. His marriage might have been arranged, but he still loved – well, hoped to love… - Ariana, and felt an instinctive resentment towards any man who threatened her. He would be a poor sort of husband if he did not protect his wife.

“You wouldn’t be so dismissive,” said Lord Jasper, “if you knew what Hazelworth was planning. He wants to have her married off. He’s selling her into bondage for the sake of satisfying his own desire to see this estate well maintained after his death.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Benedict bristled at the suggestion that his marriage had been purely transactional – even though, to be truthful, it had begun that way. Now, he had discovered that he wanted it to be more, and he resented the implication that he might not feel so. “The Hazelworths will ensure that their daughter marries a man who loves her.”

“Why not just let her marry a man of her own choosing? What are they afraid of?” Raising his eyes towards the house, he cried in a loud voice, “Hazelworth, what are you afraid of?!”

“Lower your voice, fool!” Benedict almost shouted himself, indignant, and wishing the strange encounter to simply be done with. “It might interest you to know that Lady Ariana is already married. She was married yesterday morning.”

Lord Jasper’s face passed from shock to disbelief to disappointment, all in a single instant.

“Sir, you jest! You’re playing a game with me. Who is the lucky husband?” Benedict didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to: his scowl of contempt told Lord Jasper all he needed to know. “It was you, was it?” A strange new respect seemed to have crept into Lord Jasper’s voice as he added in a confidential whisper, “How was it? What was it like, bedding her?” If Benedict had been a fighting man, he would have planted Lord Jasper a facer. Instead, he stepped back down the stairs and shoved him as hard as he could, away from the house. Lord Jasper stumbled backwards, looking afraid of him for the first time. “All right, I was only curious!”

“You leave her alone!” shouted Benedict. “Our marriage is no concern of yours.”

“She would have married me if she’d been given the choice,” Lord Jasper shot back — though not before making sure that he was out of arm’s reach. “She only married you because her father forced her to!”

“If she’d wanted you, she wouldn’t have fled at the sight of you!” Benedict pointed out. “You’re nothing to her!”

However much Benedict might have been regretting the precipitousness of his marriage, he did not wish it undone, and he felt a fierce surge of protectiveness toward Ariana when faced with the insolence of this stranger. He and Ariana belonged to each other: and not just because her father had wanted it. They were committed, beyond any undoing. If Ariana had objected to the marriage, surely she would have said so.

“Of course she fled,” said Lord Jasper, taking another swig from his flask. “But you wait until the night, when you and her father aren’t around, and then just see what she does. She’ll come running to me, like she did before—”

Benedict had heard enough. Blood pounding in his ears, he surged towards the man, intent on delivering him a facer after all. Lord Jasper was only saved by the timely intervention of Ariana’s father, who had flung open the front door and descended the stairs with a well-maintained duelling pistol in each hand. For a moment he stood there, wheezing, fighting the cough enough to speak, then he forced the words out grimly.

“I told you,” he said slowly, “never to darken the doors of this house again!”

He fired off a round into the wet grass at Lord Jasper’s feet.

“All right, I’m leaving!” said Lord Jasper, hands raised in surrender. He was already beating a hasty retreat towards the path to the river which marked the border of the property. “Don’t murder me if you know what’s good for you. You don’t want my blood on your conscience!”

“Don’t be so sure!” Lord Hazelworth called after him, though he lowered the pistol to his side with a look of grim satisfaction. “Idiot!”

“Does he do this often?” asked Benedict.

“Only when he thinks he can get away with it. He knows I haven’t been in the best of health, and that I don’t have the energy now to chase him all over the property. He ought to have been arrested years ago, as a nuisance to public order. Would have been, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s the son of a Marquess. Anyway.” Hazelworth turned to Benedict and his savage expression melted away in an instant. “Come inside, will you? You don’t need to be out here in this drizzle now that we’ve chased that nuisance off. I certainly don’t – bad for m’ cough, you know.”